Avocado and Black Bean Salad, or Superhuman Energy in a Salad Bowl

Doesn't that look like just the perfect meal?  It is.  If you're a vegetarian or a part-time vegetarian or someone who just wants to have a couple of meatless meals per week, this is the recipe for you!  Actually, this is the blog for you.  I've been an official vegetarian for several years now, and I've been a wannabe vegetarian for a lifetime - I never really liked eating meat.  It was a relief to me to become a vegetarian like I had always wanted to, but like any lifestyle change there are a few things to consider.

For example: protein.  As a social experiment, tell someone that you are a vegetarian and, without a doubt, their first question will be "Do you eat fish?", and, if NO is the answer, the second question will be "Then how do you get enough protein?"  There are a few things you can do in response to this line of questioning.  You can intimate that your husband is a very lucky man, which will end all subsquent questions.  Alternately, you can just list out how simple it is to add protein to your diet without meat, using words like "beans!" and "lentils!" until your audience becomes so bored they ask no more questions.  Beans are many things, but they are not, maybe, so exciting.  But this recipe is!

A nutritionist told me that if a person is lacking in protein, that person will start craving sweets.  I use this as a barometer in my own diet; if I find I'm craving sweets unduly, then I usually tack on some extra bean/lentil/nuts in my meals.  It's one of those fun tricks to remember, although it sounds counterintuitive - instead of chocolate, have some chickpeas! - it's true.  So if you're feeling a little bit like attacking the gummy bear aisle, maybe give this salad a try.  It's a perfect, well-rounded meal with lots of protein, vitamins, and pretty colours, as well as the "good fats" from the avocados.  There is also a bit of the "bad fats" in the dressing and cheese, but hey.  You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of this salad.

Nicole's Superhuman Energy Black Bean Salad

Ingredients:

For the dressing:
1/2 cup low fat mayonnaise
1/4 cup buttermilk (or use 1 tsp vinegar, and enough milk to make 1/4 cup)
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons dried dill
1/4 teaspoon each dehydrated onion and garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste

For the salad:
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
romaine lettuce, cut into bite-sized pieces
pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 roasted red pepper, chopped
1 avocado, diced
shredded cheddar cheese

Mix all the dressing ingredients together.  Add the dressing to the rinsed and drained black beans, the cherry tomatoes, and the red pepper.  Let sit, refrigerated, for an hour.  Place romaine lettuce in a serving bowl, add the bean mixture over top.  Top with diced avocado and shredded cheese, to taste.  Enjoy!

Some of the ingredients.

Making the dressing.  I sometimes add extra dill, because, well, I like dill. 

The beans.  These are not exceptionally exciting pictures.

We interrupt this recipe to show you what my children did while I

prepared this salad. They poked each other while eating lunch! 

What are they eating, you may ask?  Bagel with peanut butter. 

Cut up and eaten with a fork.  They are like Mr. Pitt from Seinfeld.

Okay, back to the recipe.  Roasted red peppers, halved

cherry tomatoes, and beans in the background.

The final product!  A perfect dinner that will give

you tons of energy, as well as tons of yumminess.

Peanut Butter Frosted Chocolate Cupcakes, or Chocolate and Peanut Butter, a Lovely Combination for the Non-Allergic

It was my mom's birthday recently, and as always, I was in charge of the cake.  I'm an only daughter, and we all know how this goes: neither of my brothers bake, and anyway one of them lives six hours away.  If my dad attempted to bake a cake my parents' house would end up as a big smoking hole in the ground.  So cake duty falls to me, although generally I cop out and pick up an ice cream cake on the way. 

At a baby shower recently, a woman had made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, and I so admired the frosting that she gave me the recipe.  I wanted to have it again, but really, making two dozen cupcakes for my own family of four is a little excessive, and I would no sooner send peanut butter anything to the boys' school than I would hang out at the playground wearing nothing whatsoever but a thong bikini and flip-flops.  But a birthday event where there would be fourteen people?  Perfect excuse for cupcakes.

As a side note, did you see that Valentine's Grey's Anatomy where a woman gave a little girl peanut clusters, to which she was anaphylactically allergic?  Then, when the girl's mother chided this woman, she responded "I didn't see the note from the school!  There are just so many notes!"  Okay.  Stop right there, Grey's Anatomy writers.  No modern mother would EVER give a child a peanut based snack unless that child's parents specifically stated that was acceptable.  Any other allergy, I would believe.  But PEANUTS?  Every school has no-nuts policies these days.  Weak writing, Grey's Anatomy.  Weak writing.

But back to the cupcakes.  Happily we have no allergies around here, so peanut butter frosting it was!  I had a recipe for frosting, but needed a good one for chocolate cupcakes.  Dinner with Julie has never failed me yet, and so I used this recipe, with only a teensy bit of modification. 

Another side note: my girlfriends and I bid on a CBC auction raising money for the Calgary Food Bank, and we WON an evening with Julie from Dinner with Julie!  To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement.  I'm just trying not to be all weirdly starstruck about it.  Your biggest fan, this is Stan.  Know what I mean?  I also received a copy of her Spilling the Beans cookbook, which I am ridiculously happy about. 

But anyway, cupcakes!  Try this, you'll love it.  They are quite simple, and so much better than a boxed mix.  I made these and frosted them on a super-busy day in which I was home only for about two hours total.  So simple!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
3 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup boiling water (Julie uses coffee)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, stir together the dry ingredients.  Add milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla and beat on medium speed for two minutes.  Add the boiling water and beat on low until just blended.  The batter will be thin, which is perfect for pouring into a large measuring cup and then pouring into paper cupcake liners - so much easier than spooning it out.  Divide batter between 24 cupcake liners, bake for 25 minutes.  Cool completely before frosting.

For the frosting:

1/2 cup very soft butter
1 cup peanut butter
2 cups icing sugar
3 tablespoons milk

Blend butter and peanut butter together, then slowly add icing sugar.  Add milk in increments while mixing.  Beat until fluffy.  Mmmm.

Such a great combination.  Like a Reece peanut butter cup, but yummier.

Doesn't this make you want to lick the beaters?

Do you ever look at your pans and find yourself revolted and

completely motivated to buy new pans, and yet you never

remember to actually do it?  No?  Me either.

Fluffy, fluffy frosting.  Julie says that these cupcakes are delicious

 perfectly plain, and I believe her, but this frosting!  So tasty!  I mean, as long

as you don't try to feed it to people with allergies.  Grey's Anatomy writers,

I'm talking to you.

Yum.

Red Velvet Mini Cupcakes, or a Conduit for Cream Cheese Frosting

My neighbour was hosting a baby shower for a mutual friend of ours, and she asked if I would contribute some baked goods.  Would I?  I tend to get a little, how shall I put this, competitive when it comes to bringing things to a function: I want to ensure that everyone is going to eat what I bring and that everyone is going to enjoy it, dammit.  A room full of women, and I knew that if I brought regular sized cupcakes then they would be left untouched.  Too big, I envisioned the slender crowd thinking.  But yet, mini cupcakes are just the perfect size, and people could have more than one and not feel guilty!

Red velvet cupcakes - like all cupcakes, I guess - seem very trendy at the moment.  I had never even tried one, let alone made one, and I wondered - what makes red velvet cupcakes red?  The depressing answer is simply food colouring.  It seems a little icky, but hey.  There are many natural food colourings available these days, and even if one opts for the artificial colours, well, it's not like red velvet cupcakes are really a part of our everyday diets now, are they?  So I say use whatever food colouring you want!  Or leave out the food colouring; then you can have just plain velvet cupcakes.  

The cupcakes are secondary anyway.  Don't get me wrong, they are a tasty, solid B- of a cupcake.  The real star is the cream cheese frosting.  They elevate these babies all the way to an A+.  I am not ashamed to say that in the making of these cupcakes I may have sampled the frosting just a little too much.  What can I say, I wanted them to be perfect for the party!  

You could, of course, make these into regular size cupcakes - just increase the baking time, obviously - or you could double the recipe and then have a WHOLE LOT of little cupcakes.  Just be sure to make lots of frosting for it.     

Red Velvet Mini Cupcakes
Yield: 24 (or so) mini cupcakes
Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk, room temperature (I use 1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar, then add enough milk to make 1/2 cup)
1 egg, room temperature
1 tablespoon red food colouring (or not)
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla

For the frosting:

1 8 ounce (250 gm) package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingredients.  In a separate, larger bowl, combine the remaining ingredients.  Whisk gently, by hand, until combined.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, mix until smooth.  Spoon into mini cupcake papers, bake for 15 minutes.  Allow to cool completely before frosting.
For the frosting, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together.  Add sugar, beat on high speed until fluffy.  Taste it several times to make sure you have it JUST RIGHT.  Then swirl onto the cupcakes.  Bask in your own popularity when you take them to a gathering.  Or just eat them all, whatever.

Some of the humble ingredients.  Note I used light cream cheese. 

That makes it suitable for any weight loss program, am I right?

The wets, waiting to be joined in holy matrimony with the dries.

So pretty!  So very pretty!

I also took these mint chocolate brownies.  I told you I get competitive.

 

After baking!  This is how many cupcakes I got out of this recipe: 29. 

That seems strange, doesn't it?  I guess it depends on the size of your

cupcake papers/pans.  You see, gentlemen, size truly does matter.

I want to go make this frosting right this second.  People, it is delicious. 

Maybe I could spread it on fruit or something, to assuage the

guilt of eating an entire batch?  What do you think?

Mmmm...cupcakes.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagne, or Love in a 9x13 Pan

I love having people over for dinner, but I don't do it often enough.  I love making new dishes for people who, how can I put this, tend to be more appreciative than the people I normally make dinner for (read: my children).  So, on Friday the 13th, ominously enough, I had a couple of friends over and I decided to make this lasagne.  I got the idea from Dinner with Julie, who made a grilled vegetable lasagne, which I am sure is delicious but a) I don't know how to use the barbeque, b) even if I did know how to operate the barbeque, I'm kind of scared of blowing it up and setting my hair on fire, and c) it was cold and kind of snowy, festively enough for April.

So anyway, I decided to roast, rather than grill vegetables, and it turned out absolutely divine, if I do say so myself.  I served it with Caesar salad and Cosmopolitans, which is pretty much a perfect combination, if you ask me.  I don't think it was just the Cosmopolitans talking.

This is a wonderful dinner and it can be frozen for future consumption (maybe for a new mom?  Perfect baby gift.) but it is fairly time-consuming and involves a number of steps.  You could, of course, omit making your own sauce and purchase the jarred variety, but honestly, the sauce is so simple and delicious, without all the added sodium and sugar that you find in even the "healthy" sauces.  I made the sauce and roasted the vegetables the day before, which just left the assembling of the lasagne for the day of, and it was easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. 

Impress-Your-Friends Roasted Vegetable Lasagne

Ingredients

For the sauce:

4 cups strained tomatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 teaspoons dried basil

In a large saucepan, heat the oil and add garlic, cooking until browned and fragrant.  Add the tomatoes and spices, simmer and stir.  The sauce can be made the day before and stored in the refrigerator.

For the vegetables:

2 medium zucchini, sliced

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

2 roasted red peppers, diced (I used a jarred variety but you could roast your own) 

olive oil for drizzling

pepper and garlic salt to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Drizzle olive oil on a cookie sheet and spread around, so that the vegetables will not stick.  Arrange zucchini on the cookie sheet, drizzle with more olive oil, and sprinkle with garlic salt and pepper.  Roast for about 25-30 minutes.  Arrange cherry tomatoes on a separate, oiled cookie sheet.  Roast for about 15 minutes.  Vegetables can be roasted the day before and then stored in the refrigerator.

For the rest of the lasagne:

12 lasagne noodles, cooked as per package directions and broken to fit in a 9x13 pan (you will need a total of three layers of noodles

2 cups (500 grams) light ricotta cheese

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon each dried oregano and basil

1/2 cup grated mozzarella

Parmesan cheese, to taste

To make the lasagne:

Mix the ricotta cheese with the crushed garlic, oregano, and basil.  Spread one cup of prepared tomato sauce on the bottom of a 9x13 pan.  Top with lasagne noodles.  Spread half of the roasted zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and diced roasted red pepper over the noodles.  Dollop half the ricotta cheese mixture over top of that and spread.  Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Repeat layers: tomato sauce, then noodles, then the other half of the vegetables, then the other half of the ricotta.  Top with another layer of tomato sauce and noodles.  Sprinkle mozzarella cheese and Parmesan on top.  Bake, covered with foil, at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  Remove the foil and bake for 5-10 minutes longer.  Allow to stand for ten minutes before serving to your drooling, happy guests.

These are a few of my favourite things...

Zucchini, pre-roasting.

You have no idea how this picture fills me with zucchini-fueled lust.

 

You could buy prepared sauce, of course, but this recipe is simple, fast, and

doesn't have a ton of added sodium or sugars like jarred tomato sauces.

Mixing up the ricotta with garlic and spices.

It's simple: sauce, noodles, vegetables, ricotta.  Sauce, noodles,

vegetables, ricotta.  Sauce, noodles, STOP.  Just add mozzarella.

Pre-baking.

Post-baking.  Mmmm.  I want to make this again,

right now, and only for my own consumption. 

Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower, or Elevating Nature's Lamest Vegetable

I love vegetables.  Period.  But I've never been a fan of cauliflower.  It's not like I dislike it, exactly.  I just never choose to eat it.  Sure, you can use it to fill out a veggie platter, but I will pretty much choose anything else on said veggie platter.  And cooked cauliflower just seems...mushy.  In a world where I like to eat my colours, cauliflower is a non-colour.

But then I came across my favourite foodie Dinner With Julie's recipe for roasted cauliflower with Parmesan.  You had me at Parmesan, Julie.  But roasting is the popular thing to do with unpopular veggies, it seems.  Brussels sprouts?  Roast them.  Broccoli?  Roast it.  And so I thought I would give this a try.

It was amazing.  Tasty and savoury and crispy with Parmesan - give it a try.  You won't be sorry.

Dinner With Julie's Roasted Cauliflower

Ingredients:

head of cauliflower

olive oil

Parmesan cheese

Break the cauliflower into small florets.  Toss with olive oil (I used my hands to coat) and arrange on a cookie sheet.  Bake at 425 degrees for ten minutes, then remove, flip the florets around, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Bake for another ten minutes.  Remove and devour. 

CHEESE!

I never eat cauliflower, so I didn't even  know how to break it into florets.  I started hacking at it with a big knife, and fortunately did not dismember myself.  This is how you do it, if you're like me and never eat cauliflower: cut the head in half, then break off the little pieces.  So easy!  No dismemberment involved!

Massaging the oil into the cauliflower.  If I had used a bigger bowl, I would have tossed it like a normal person.  Note to self: use bigger bowl.

Start laughing because of using a teeny tiny bowl for a large head of cauliflower.  Joy of cooking!

This really doesn't photograph well.  It just looks weird.  Trust me, it was delicious!

Green Smoothies, or How To Drink Spinach

I came home from a two-week vacation to a giant bagful of mail, including a magazine touting Dr. Oz's Two-Day Wonder Cleanse.  In general I am not a fan of cleanses; I prefer to eat cleanly and healthily 90% of the time, rather than drastically eliminate certain foods and incur extreme intestinal distress.  I did go on a Wild Rose Cleanse about thirteen years ago, with disastrous results.  The only other time in my life I have been so, um, explosive is when I contracted a tenacious intestinal virus from eating a tomato in Egypt.

But yet, I understand the principles behind going on a cleanse and detoxing, especially if one needs a little jump-start on clean eating or, if - theoretically - one has been on vacation for two weeks and has eaten a whole lot of those "hint of lime" tortilla chips.  Say.  I came home from vacation craving fruits and vegetables and have eaten huge amounts of them in the past seven days.  In the past week I've consumed vast amounts of roasted veggies, veggie stir fries, veggie-filled quesadillas, Greek salads, and, one day, three entire Romaine hearts in Caesar salad form.  Then yesterday, I attempted something different.

By pure coincidence, I happened to be on vacation at the same time and in the same place as my lovely friend Joanne, of guacamole and avocado chocolate mousse fame.  Joanne is a big fan of green smoothies and she offered me some tips on making them.  Yesterday, I tried one of my own and angels beamed down from the heavens, angels, I tell you, and my body strengthened and blossomed from the antioxidents and the iron and the deliciousness of vitamins in smoothie form.  The experience made me think of margaritas, minus the tequila and subsequent hangover.  I am now a green smoothie convert, and I am trying to convert everyone in my path.

It sounds strange, I will admit, but I was shocked at how fruity and delicious the smoothie was, without a hint of spinach flavour.  I consumed two large servings myself and then felt like Popeye, without the giant forearms and anchor tattoo.

Green Smoothies

Ingredients

1 big solid handful of spinach leaves

1 1/2 cups frozen berries (I used raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries - but you could substitute any frozen fruit you like)

1 1/2 cups coconut water (or substitute juice)

Blend it all together.  Yields 2 large servings.

This is how much spinach one big solid handful yields for me, but then, I have giant hands.

Add the berries and the coconut water.

At about this time my dog wandered over to see why I was noisily blending spinach.

To be honest I expected it to be more green.  I think the blueberries overrule the green.

Crusty Rustic Bread, or How to impress everyone you know

One of the reasons I decided to start a cooking blog was to show how accessible good food could be.  I used to be quite intimidated by cooking, thinking that one needed special culinary talents to be able to be a good cook, which is not true.  Making your own salad dressings, cookies, desserts, and meals - these are all things that are at the core very simple.  Sure, you might need some special skills to make your own perfectly uniform crepes, but most of the time, you just need good ingredients and the willingness to make that leap.

One thing I was always wary about was baking bread.  It just seemed so complicated - all that yeast!  And letting things rise!  And kneading!  But I am here to tell you that bread baking is really astonishingly easy, and it is one of the most rewarding baking experiences you can have.  I baked this bread myself, you can say modestly and just wait for the praise to roll in.  Because this is good bread.  Really, really good bread.

I recommend everyone interested in bread baking buy the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day; this book will change your life and have you raving about bread baking in a slightly creepy, cult-like way.  DO IT.  DO IT.  DO IT NOW.  The beauty about this is that you really do spend about five minutes putting things together - hence the clever, clever title - and then you can reap the rewards like cutting off the crusty end and slathering it with butter - perhaps homemade butter? - while the bread is still hot.  Mmmm.

This recipe is very slightly adapted from the one for European Peasant Bread, in the aforementioned book.  It is ridiculously easy and yields two loaves.  Once the dough is made it can sit in your refrigerator for up to two weeks.  This suits me very well - I can make the dough ahead of time, and then bake it up when I feel like it, not unlike my recipes for sugar cookies and gingerbread. 

Crusty Rustic Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoon yeast
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rye flour
1/4 cup multigrain flour
extra flour and cornmeal for baking day

Pour warm water into a container that has a lid - but not an airtight one, I use a small dutch oven - and sprinkle in the salt and yeast.  Add the flours and stir with a large wooden spoon until all the flour is incorporated.  The dough will be very sticky, and strange-looking, if you are used to baking bread.  That's how it is supposed to look.  Cover the container - but not with an airtight cover! - and allow to rise in a warm place for two hours. 

After the dough has finished rising, put the container in the fridge until you are ready to bake - the dough lasts up to two weeks in the fridge.

When you are ready to bake, slice off half the dough.  Flour the dough lightly, and your hands as well, and form into a ball, with the ends tucked underneath it.  Set on a cutting board that has been heavily floured and sprinkled with cornmeal.  Cover with a clean cloth and allow to rest for 1 1/2 hours. 

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Sprinkle flour on top of the dough, and slice a cross in the top with a sharp knife.  The cross should be about 1/2 inch deep.  Transfer the dough to a cookie sheet.  Fill a broiler pan or any old pan (I use an old cake pan I have reserved for this purpose) with about a cup of very hot tap water.  Put the pan of water in the oven on the bottom rack and shut the door.  STEAM BAKING, people.  Then quickly put the dough in the oven.  Bake for 35 minutes.

Technically you are supposed to allow the bread to cool on a cooling rack prior to slicing, but I never do that.  To do that would be to deprive myself of eating hot, buttered, crusty bread.  If loving crusty bread dripping with butter is wrong, I don't want to be right.

The stars!

 

Just sprinkle the yeast and salt in the warm water - you don't

need to let it foam or anything - just sprinkle it in.

Then throw the flour in there.

Mix it up.  It's supposed to look weird.

I keep my house at 19 degrees Celcius.  The dough will never rise in that temperature,

so I put the little pot on a heating pad.  Remember, no airtight lids!

This is what it will look like at the end of two hours of rising.  Still weird.

This is what it will look like once you make it into a ball.  Cover it up

with a cloth and allow to rest.  Rest.  It's such a cute term for bread dough.

After the dough has had its little rest, spread flour on the top and mark it with an x! 

You could probably make other letters or shapes if you're artistic.  I am not. 

Put it on a cookie sheet.  If you have a pizza peel or stone or something, that would probably work even better, but I have always had success with my crappy cookie sheets.

I immediately sliced off the end and ate it with my butter, forgetting that I was blogging this and needed to photograph the finished product.  So, here's the finished product, less one crusty end.