24 Pancakes and a To-Do List

In case you were wondering... this is what that Whole Oat Flour Pancakes recipe looks like when sextupled.

That photo is a couple of weeks old now, but I thought it was fun and wanted to share. It looks a lot like my things-to-do pile right now, too. Since deadlines and commitments can destroy good habits, my studio is disorganized and chaotic, and I need to get my eating and exercise habits fully back on track as well. So my goal is to have the following done by the end of the week:

• Clean and organize my art studio
• Reset my sleep schedule
• Un-pause the workout routine that got interrupted last week
• Make and photograph my buddy Aaron's broccoli soup recipe

It's written on the blog now, so it must get done.

Vegetarian Golden Lasagna

Since the last time I made a real update, we've celebrated no fewer than five birthdays among close friends, one of those being my husband's 34th birthday yesterday. I had a dreadfully busy work schedule all last week, so our friends Rob and Sarah (who's birthday is today) were nice enough to do dinner and cake at their place.


That's Super Mario World on the TV in the background of this photo. We may get older, but we'll never really grow up.


And here's an apple pie I made the week prior for my friend Sven's birthday.

Anyway, today is the first day I've gotten back into the kitchen after the week of extreme work and celebrating. It felt so relaxing, and I intentionally chose a dish that takes a while to prepare so I could spend some extra time getting back into my culinary groove.

Vegetarian Golden Lasagna

Ingredients:

• 9-12 whole wheat lasagna noodles
• 2 large sweet potatoes
• 2 yellow squash, thinly sliced
• 2 yellow onions, peeled and chopped
• 1 egg
• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• 1 cup cream
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese crumbles
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup water
• 3 tbsp olive oil

------------Spice Blend:

• 2 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Pre- Preparation:
You can do these first few steps in advance to skim some time off of preparation closer to meal time.

Bring a pot with approx. 8 cups of water to a boil. Peel and chop the sweet potatoes, add them to the boiling water and cook them until tender, about 20-25 minutes. Boil the lasagna noodles in a pot of salted water for 10-15 minutes until al dente.

Slice the squash as finely as you can— if you have a mandolin slicer, use it! Chop the onions into small (half inch) pieces. Then blend the spices (ginger, turmeric, nutmeg, salt, and pepper) together in a small dish. Set all of the above aside for later.

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375° F.

In a bowl, mash the sweet potato and squash with a fork. Add the ricotta cheese, egg, and half of the spice blend. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, cook the chopped onions in olive oil for 8-10 minutes over medium heat, until soft. Add the flour and stir until coated and the onions are slightly brown. Turn the heat to low and add the cream and water, then simmer and stir until the mixture thickens a little bit and becomes creamy. Add the remaining half of the spice blend and stir to combine.

In a 9x13 glass baking dish, layer the different components as follows: First lay down half of the onion-cream mixture and spread evenly along the bottom of the dish, then top that with a layer of noodles. Next, add half of the sweet potato-squash mixture and add a second layer of noodles. Add the remaining onion-cream mixture, then the remaining sweet potato-squash, and a final layer of noodles. Top it all off with the parmesan crumbles.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the edges are bubbling and the noodles on top are lightly browned. Let the lasagna cool for 20 minutes before cutting and serving. Makes about 12 servings.






On a final side note, I'm about to embark on a challenging food experiment with Brendan. For the whole month of March he wants to cut out dairy and wheat gluten. While I won't be actively participating in the experiment myself, I've agreed not to buy or keep anything that falls into those categories in the house, and I'll be finding some recipes to accommodate those changes.

I might miss cheese and milk while it's in Food Jail, but I think I can make it fun.

PopChartLab: The Various Varieties of Vegetables

I had nothing to do with the creation of this graphic, but my friend Cassie shared it with me and it's too cool not to repost here:



Get The Various Varieties of Vegetables by PopChartLab as a print via their website. I hadn't heard of some of these varieties of fruits and veg before seeing the chart, and it's given me some new items to look out for as Spring approaches.

On Having a Plan

I'm in a deadline frenzy this whole week, and I had this post in the can for just such an occasion. Sometimes it's good to take a break from complicated recipes and look back at the simplest building blocks of a healthy lifestyle.



Working from home can be extremely convenient, but even when you have more time available to spend in the kitchen there are plenty of obstacles to overcome when you're trying to eat good, clean food all the time. Even we need a strategy.

It's lunchtime and I'm hungry already, but I'm chasing a deadline and don't have time to make a meal.

It's easy to excuse bad eating habits when you're rushed. I used to cave under the pressure of this situation constantly and eat whatever was around- especially if it was made of bread or cheese. Nowadays I take a two-pronged approach to combating this problem: 1- I don't keep bread and cheese-type snacks in the house anymore, or anything I'm likely to eat too much of when I'm not eating consciously. And 2-I have a list of favorite emergency foods that I try to keep stocked at all times:

• frozen edamame
• soup (cans are ok, but leftover homemade is better)
• peanut butter & celery
• yogurt & homemade granola
• bananas & other whole fruits
• whole grain muffins
• raw nuts

Curse the luck, I actually ran out of my latest batch of raisin muffins yesterday, but I've already had two and a half of those items today. I also ate an avocado salad with some parmesan cheese (hey, quit looking at me funny) and discovered that the combination of those two flavors is really similar to bacon... either that or I'm finally cracking.

I have to be in the car traveling for several hours, and the only food available on the road is fast food.

This one comes up for me a lot during convention season. It's tempting to stop at McDonalds or somewhere equally horrible because fast food chains do an incredible job of making it seem like you'll be starving to death if you don't eat one of their extreme high calorie meals, plus a lot of fresh foods won't keep well in the car. But those aren't good excuses; if you're capable of packing a suitcase, you can pack a bag of delicious food for a car trip. Not to mention that nearly every time I've given in and eaten fast food on the road, I've paid for it later with awful stomach cramps and that should be enough motivation right there.

If you own a cooler, by all means use it to pack perishables, but if you don't, try any of these items that will keep fresh without refrigeration for a few hours:

• a water bottle for each passenger (it's important to stay hydrated!)
• trail mix (granola, nuts, dried fruits, seeds, etc.)
• grapes
• apples
• bananas
• kale chips (or other baked veggie chips)
• non-messy sandwiches on whole grain bread
• carrot sticks
• homemade peanut butter crackers
• fresh veg or fruit juice in a resealable bottle

Twisted Portabella Burgers pt. 2

I didn't say these were going to be traditional burgers, did I? Certainly not. Because of the particular shape of my home-grown portabellas, I had to make a decision on how to use them. Since they were slightly bigger than my buns, I decided baking them would be a smart move, so they would be tender and shrink up a bit— I had seen that happen a few times when making stuffed mushrooms, and this basically is a stuffed mushroom on a burger bun.



Twisted Portabella Burgers
(makes 2 burgers)
Ingredients:

• 1/2 of a small yellow onion, chopped
• 1 handful of fresh greens
• 2 tbsp soft goat cheese
• 2 tbsp parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried sage

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 400°F.

Hollow out the stem and gills of your mushroom caps with a spoon or your fingers. Don't dig too deeply, just enough to make a small well for the stuffing.

Begin cooking the chopped onions in olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the paprika, sage, salt, and pepper and stir well. Continue cooking until the onions are slightly translucent and the spices are giving off a strong fragrance.

Remove the onions from heat, and stir in the goat cheese. Spoon the filling into the mushroom caps and sprinkle them with grated parmesan cheese. Transfer the mushroom caps to a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

I ran into a slight difficulty here of which I need to make note. I'm used to cooking with store bought portabella caps, so I dramatically underestimated the water content of these that I grew. There's always a little moisture that bleeds out of a mushroom cap during baking, but mine were weeping like a jilted bride. So I had to remove them and place them on a towel to soak up some of the moisture. The good news is that they shrank exactly as I wanted, still tasted great, and had a good texture after they were dried off. Just be aware that this can happen and use thick caps which have had some time to dry out before baking, or get a towel ready.



The rest is just assembly; I added a bed of baby spinach to my homemade rolls, placed the stuffed mushrooms on top, and that's it— patty, onion, and cheese all in one package. If you're a fan of ketchup and mustard or other burger condiments, you can add those too, though I'd recommend selecting condiments that don't overpower the goat cheese and sage flavors. Go for delicate stone-ground mustard instead of yellow, sliced heirloom tomatoes instead of ketchup, etc. For added richness, you can also brush the sliced rolls with oil and pan toast them over a high heat for a minute before assembly. Enjoy!

Twisted Portabella Burgers pt. 1: The Roll

You know how there are always a disparate number of burger patties to buns at the store? It occurred to me last night that I had two tasty portabella caps left over, and they'd make great burgers— but if I got storebought buns I'd have far too many. So I decided to make my own buns. Why had this never occurred to me before?


Also, why aren't pants made from towels? Necessity, your daughter would like a word.

I wasn't satisfied making regular burger rolls, so I looked up a few recipes, and eventually decided I wanted a dinner roll-type texture married to a simplified version of the kaiser roll. This is what ensued:

Twisted Burger Rolls
Makes 4 small or 2 large rolls

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water

-----------------

• 3/4 cup unbleached bread flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp sea salt

Preparation:
Note: This process isn't labor-intense, but it does involve a lot of waiting, so make sure you have about 3 hours worth of things to do around the house while you make these.

In a small bowl, combine the yeast and warm water and gently stir until the yeast dissolves. Combine the milk, one of the eggs, olive oil, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer, and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula. Add the yeast mixture and continue mixing, then add the flours and mix with a spoon until a rough dough forms. Knead the dough continuously with your mixer's dough hook attachment on low speed for 8 minutes*. Lightly flour and cover the kneaded dough with plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter for 2 hours, until it’s doubled in size. Do not refrigerate.

*If you don't have a stand mixer, you can knead the dough by hand on a lightly-floured work surface.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Lightly flour your work surface or counter top. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and roll them into balls on your work surface, being careful not to get too much flour on the outside of each ball.



To make the knots: Form each dough ball into a rope, by gently pulling it out from the center— imagine the dough is a tube of toothpaste, and you're trying to squeeze the toothpaste out from the center in each direction, if that makes sense. Once your rope is pulled out to about 12 inches in length, tie it in a simple overhand knot, leaving one loose end longer than the other [see photos below]. Now take the longer end and attach it to the shorter end, and pressing them together with your thumb. You should now have a bread dough trefoil knot.



Transfer the dough knots to a greased baking sheet and let stand for another hour.

In a small bowl, beat the remaining egg with a fork. Using a basting brush, coat the risen dough knots with egg. Optional: You can add seeds, grated parmesan, herbs, or other toppings at this point if you desire. They will stick nicely to the egg-coated dough!

Bake the buns for 22-25 minutes, or until they’re golden brown on top. Let cool before slicing and serving.



Stay tuned for pt. 2 : The Burgers...

Espresso Chocolate V-Day Cupcakes

Well, I completely forgot tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It's official, I'm a terrible person.

So I'm pulling a Sweets & Treats recipe from my archives to fulfill my holiday posting requirements— You might be spending the day with someone you love, and you might want to make something very special for them. This recipe is quite special and extremely rich, though it flies in the face of my current focus on uncomplicated whole food recipes. But love is a complicated subject, so I think we can let it slide this time.



Espresso Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients for the Cake:
The cake part of the recipe comes from Whisk-Kid.com's Deep Chocolate Cake

• 1 1/3 cup flour
• 3/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter, room temp
• 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
• 2 eggs, room temp
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup sour cream, room temp
• 2/3 cup hot prepared espresso

Ingredients for the Frosting:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 8 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 3.5 oz bar of Green & Black's Espresso Dark Chocolate

Ingredients for the Coffee Bean Medallions (optional):

• 11 oz. white chocolate baking chips
• approx. 72 coffee beans

Preparation:
For the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F

Line your cupcake trays and set aside.

Bowl 1: Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

Bowl 2: Cream the butter and sugar. Since this is an adaptation of a Whisk-kid.com recipe, I'll post her baking tips here too, wherein she discusses proper creaming technique. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well until incorporated, then add the vanilla extract. Pour in the dry ingredients from Bowl 1, 1/3 at a time, then add 1/2 of the sour cream and repeat, mixing until all ingredients are just combined.

Add in the hot espresso and gently combine, then pour the batter into your lined cupcake trays. Each liner should be about 2/3 full. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cool for 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack— let them completely cool before frosting.

For the frosting: In a large bowl, let the butter soften at room temp (do not melt). Add in half of the confectioner's sugar, then the milk and vanilla extract. Beat the ingredients together with an electric mixer on medium speed for 3 minutes until the texture is smooth. Add the remaining sugar 1 cup at a time and continue beating after each addition.

Using a double boiler, melt the espresso dark chocolate. Combine with the prepared frosting and fold together with a spatula. Spoon the frosting into an icing bag. With a star icing tip, apply approx. 2 tbsp of frosting to the top of each cupcake— to get the exact effect in the photos, while squeezing the bag, rotate the icing tip in a very small circle at the center of the top of the cupcake. As the icing emerges, it will expand outward, forming a tidy spiral.

For the medallions (optional): I make these using a petit fours tray with round indentations, but you could also use an ice cube tray if you don't mind oblong medallions. Using the double boiler again, melt the white chocolate baking chips. Pour into the tray molds, and add three coffee beans to each before the chocolate hardens up again. Place medallions in the fridge to set.

When the medallions are set, add one to the top of each frosted cupcake, and voila! You have a really special treat for someone you love.