Surprize ! That never came from a chicken !

Some things in life are really surprising. A chance encounter with a new person becomes your life long BFF, that accidental wrong turn brings you to discover a new favorite place and so forth. It can happen with food as well. We become culturally conditioned that certain foods go together and certain foods do not. Biscuits and gravy go together, while biscuits and lemons- not so much. Then one day, if we are lucky, we come across a way that combines what we believe to be inharmonious foods in a very delicious way. The following dish is one of those.

It includes potatoes and eggplant

two foods that most people would not normally combine. Why exactly is an eggplant called an eggplant ? It does not look or taste like an egg. Who knows. Who cares ! One thing is for certain- it is from the botanical family called nightshade, and that family includes things like tomatoes, peppers and potatoes. Most of these got their start in Central America. Columbus brought these back into Europe, where they did fantastic things with them . This dish was shown on an episode of David Rocco's Dolce Vita, and I figured out what it should be called in Italian - always makes a dish sound more exotic !

Melanzana patatina fritta con Trapanaise

1 pint grape tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, de-germed and sliced
a bunch fresh basil leaves, torn
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil , plus extra for frying eggplant and potatoes
salt to taste
2 eggplants, cubed
3 large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced into strips
1 lb pasta mufalda
1 cup pecorino cheese, freshly grated ( or any hard cheese you like, freshly grated)

 Place tomatoes, garlic and basil in a large mortar, or smash with an immersion blender(this is a raw sauce)
   
Add extra virgin olive oil, salt and use a pestle or immersion blender to crush the ingredients into a paste. If it looks too dry, add more olive oil.Crush the ingredients until the pesto sauce is even in consistency.
   

Heat up extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan and fry eggplant until golden.
Place fried eggplant on an absorbent paper towel to drain excess oil.
Season the eggplant, while hot, with salt.
Do the same to fry up the potatoes.
Place pasta in a pot of boiling salted water. Stir initially to prevent from sticking.
Drain the spaghetti when it is al dente­.
Place the spaghetti in a large mixing bowl, add the pesto sauce, half the quantity of eggplant, potatoes, pecorino cheese and mix thoroughly.Toss in remaining eggplant and potatoes and toss with cheese. Serve.
   

It makes for a very tasty and hearty dish ! While potatoes and tomatoes can be thought of as going together ( think french fries and catsup), potatoes and eggplant not so much. But it works and it works well ! It's yet another meatless dish that can make the whole Meatless Fridays in Lent seem like Feasting Fridays in Lent.

Godzilla veggie laszgna

For all of those of you who do not cook , or are afraid to cook for fear of messing up, today's post will make you feel good and hopefully give you courage to try anything . I am going to share with you an important fact- that is those of us who do cook, always have those dishes that are a complete fail. I had one yesterday, complete with pictures of the process ! It's something I will call Godzilla Veggie Lasagna

Godzilla Veggie lasagna - makes 6 generous servings

1 box oven ready lasagna noodles
1 cup ricotta cheese( small container)
1 bag low fat shredded mozzarella
1 jar marinara sauce of your choice
1 container red pepper hummus
1 eggplant
2 cups fresh spinach
1 zucchini
2 shallots
1 red pepper
3 Mexican orange peppers( or any other kind of bell pepper you can get your hands on)
2 carrots

Get a 9x13 cake pan. Spread about a third of a cup of sauce on the bottom of the pan and place a layer of the no boil noodles.Top noodles with half of the hummus, half of the ricotta and then begin layering veggies.

Look quizzically at the pan and wonder how you will fit everything in beyond one big layer.

Question physics as you dump the entire bag of cheese in the pan, then add the remaining ricotta and hummus. Place remaining veggies on top , a layer of noodles and then the remaining sauce.


Invent an aluminum foil girdle type device for the pan , praing that the contents will not leak out. Place pan on a cookie sheet, and place in a 375 degree oven for 1 1/2 hrs, because you are not certain that there will be enough liquid from the veggies to steam the noodles . Serve to family with great optomisim

The verdict ? Veggies were still crunchy. Next time either blanch the veggies before assembly OR find a way to cook this baby in the crock pot. The no boil noodles were a little tough as well, so back to the drawing board. I served it with an AWESOME salad, who's recipe comes originally from Sweet Tomatoes, but I changed a few things to make it closer to my own nutritional standards. I am going to try this again with a healthier substitute for the lemonaid concentrate

Summer Lemon with Spiced Pecans Tossed Salad

Dressing- Yields 5 cups
3 cups Mayonnaise- whole egg
2 cups Lemonade Concentrate
2 ½ TBLS Dijon Mustard
Combine ingredients and whisk until smooth.
( this dressing has an AMAZING lemon flavor and a little goes a long way !)

Spiced Pecans
1 ¼ cups ¼” Diced Pecans
1 c water
2 TBLS White Sugar
¾ tsp Ground Cumin
½ tsp Table Salt
1/8 tsp Cayenne Pepper

Pour water in a small sauce pan. Add sugar, cumin, salt, cayenne pepper. Heat until bubbling and sugar dissolves. Immediately add pecans and stir to coat. Spread pecans on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees until brown and toasted. Store remaining nuts in a jar- try not to mindlessly snack on these !

Salad
place Chopped Romaine and watercress blend in bowl. Add dried crasins, spiced pecans and toss with lemon dressing.

Exercise wise it was a great day. For some reason I am really falling in love with wall squats. They feel amazing on my back . Weird !

Polenta, hummus and weigh in-Oh My !!

First, the food. Yesterday was a pretty much normal day of school, exercise routine and Reiki work. Yay for ordinary , for it makes up so much of our actual lifetimes .

Breakfast was instant polenta cooked with a tablespoon of raisins and then topped with 1/3 of a cup of cottage cheese and frozen blueberries. The decision to use the cottage cheese was made in an attempt to use up the last of the container. Bob takes cottage cheese and cereal 2 mornings a week ( 1/2 cup each time) and Aldi's only sells cottage cheese in roughly a pound container. It means that we either do not have enough or get surplus that carries over to the next week , leaving not enough so buy more and run the risk of the new stuff going bad before it is used. Having a family of 3 and measuring portions can cause some weird little annoying things. I am still looking to find a half egg- which is what you need when you reduce a recipe for 6 people ( using 1 egg) TO FEED 3 !

Lunch was Green Monster soup from the freezer ( kale, broccoli, leeks, sweet potato, white potato), baked sour cream and onion crisps that have been lurking in the cabinet and falling out whenever I go in there for the last 3 months, veggies and 3 different kinds of hummus. Red pepper, walnut and eggplant. Why 3 ? Two were all ready in the fridge and the 3rd was made to use up some leftover baby eggplant

Eggplant Hummus

2 baby eggplants, roasted at 375 for 1 hour
1 can garbanzo beans drained
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
juice of 1 lemon
water as needed


Place all in a food processor and blend till smooth

Dinner was Turkey spinach burgers( ground turkey, frozen spinach, 1/4 c oat bran, 1 chopped onion) , tossed green salad with walnuts and cranberries and Quinoa Bean salad. This one you can make ahead, stores in the fridge for about a week and makes for a very different, colorful, tasty dis to pass at gatherings.

Quinoa Bean Salad

2 cups cooked quinoa
15 oz can garbanzos or white beans drained and rinsed
1 carrot finely chopped
1 cup rasins or currants
1/2 cup raw walnuts chopped
4 plum tomatoes chopped
1 small red or white onion chopped
1 green pepper chopped
1 red pepper chopped
1 yellow pepper chopped
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup goji berries
2 teaspoons soy sauce or braggs annimo acids

Place in a bowl and mix well. Store covered in refrigerator for several hours to allow flavors
to blend

And it is Saturday Morning, so the contestants step up to the scale.

Me- DOWN 2.4 lbs
Nick- DOWN 2 lbs
Bob- DOWN 3.0

Another week down, another week to go !