Tag: vegetables

Cauli Cauli Broccoli

What do cauliflower and broccoli have in common? They are both cruciferous vegetables, super-nutritious and best eaten raw.

R.A.W. I love raw food. It feels so alive, all crunchy and juicy and electric.

Other cruciferous vegetables are radish, land cress, watercress, garden cress, mustard, kale, collard greens, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, bok choy, komatsuna, turnips, rutabaga, canola, arugula, daikon, wasabi.

All are best eaten raw to preserve myrosinase, an enzyme known to activate sulforaphane, which removes carcinogens from the body and inhibits tumor growth. (Read more about Anti-Cancer Foods and Broccoli Power.)

So what’s in my lunch salad? Lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, sweet pepper and topped with maple cranberry sauce. Superpowers on a plate.

January 15, 2013
Chicken Pot Pie
A friend once told me that one night each winter his whole family gets together for Pie Night. Everyone brings a pie. Some bring dessert pies, others bring meat pies. Pies are so wonderful in the winter. Pies stay warm for a long time and warms the heart all night.

Pie Crust

This is the same pie crust recipe I have for Pumkin Pie. It’s flaky just the way I like it.

Ingredients:
3 cups pastry flour
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
pinch of salt
1/2 cup iced water

Mix flour, butter and salt, until mixture is in crumbs. Toss with iced water. Do not overmix. Divide pie crust dough into two. Roll out one part of the dough and lay in a pie pan. Roll out the second part of the dough and cut out holes to let the steam out.

Chicken Filling

Ingredients:
1/3 cup organic butter
1/3 cup chopped organic onion
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast tenders, organic and free-range
1 cup sliced organic carrots, steamed
1 cup frozen organic green peas, steamed
1/2 cup sliced organic celery, steamed
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Cook onions in butter over medium low heat until the onion is glassy. Add chicken and cook until browned.
3. Stir flour into chicken broth and pour into the chicken mixture. Simmer until thick.
4. Add carrots, celery and peas. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fold together until nice and creamy.
5. Pour chicken mixture into pie crust. Cover with top crust.
6. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until pie crust is golden brown. Cool slightly before serving.
December 27, 2012
Homemade Pumpkin Puree

Roasting is my favorite way of making pumpkin puree. Not only is it the easiest way to do it, but oven heat also preserves the pumpkin’s sweet flavor.

A pound is equal to a cup of pumpkin puree. I needed 2 cups of pumpkin puree for my pumpkin cupcake recipe so I picked a 2 pound sugar pumpkin.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a baking sheet with butter. (Money-saving tip: I like saving the wax covers of butter sticks in the freezer. Whenever I need to grease a baking sheet, I get a wax cover out of the freezer and rub it on the baking sheet.)

Cut the pumpkin in half crosswise. Scoop out the seeds and strings. Save the seeds for roasted pumpkin seeds.

Put the pumpkin cut side down on the baking sheet.

Bake for 45 minutes. Check if skin can be pierced with a fork, then take it out of the oven and cool. Once the pumpkin is completely cooled, you can pull the skin off easily.

Tadaa! Homemade pumpkin puree!

Now you’re ready to make pumpkin cupcake, or pumpkin cookies, or pumpkin pie or pumpkin ice cream.

Instructions from the book, Halloween Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family (Holiday Celebrations) by Donata Maggipinto

November 5, 2012
Halloween Party Food Menu

Every year we throw a Halloween party to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. We have a big family with many young cousins, so that alone makes the parties pretty big. In addition, my daughter likes to invite her whole class to the parties as well. Not everyone comes, of course (whew!) but we usually get at least 20 children at these parties.

Children are the most difficult people to keep still long enough to eat. We’ve thrown parties in the past when the kids refused to eat anything and insisted only on playing the whole time they were over. So I’ve decided to serve mostly finger foods, snacks they can swipe as they go past the buffet table on their way to some fun game they are playing. Here is my menu:

Mini Pumpkin Pies. I got the idea from Bakerella’s Pumpkin Pie Bites, but I used my own recipe for Pumpkin Pie. It yielded 48 little pumpkin pies.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds. We took the pumpkin seeds from carving out the Jack O’ Lantern and roasted them until brown and crunchy.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. This Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe is a family favorite that has been passed down from generation to generation, tweaked slightly to make it healthier while keeping it just as delicious as ever.

Apples, Apple Cider, Chips with Salsa and Guacamole. We were serving so many sweets so I decided on just having apples, and not caramel candy apples. Chips with Salsa and Guacamole as the savory complement to all the sweet treats. Apple cider for drinks.

Halloween Sugar Cookies. Halloween cookie cutter shapes + this Butter Cookies recipe + cookie icing = Fun colorful Halloween cookies!

Jello AB Normal Brain. Green jello set in brain mold the night before the party, set up next to cut carrots for a fun color contrast.

Bone Pretzels. I love my breadmaker, and this Breadmaker Pretzel recipe is one of the reasons why.

October 30, 2012
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe was passed on to me from my husband’s grandmother, who sent us care packages of her special Pumpkin Cookies every Halloween. Mammie used Crisco Oil and it made her cookies very moist and last for weeks. I used organic canola oil as a healthier alternative, and this makes the pumpkin cookies moist, light and fluffy. If you like your cookies crispy on the surface, use organic butter instead.

This was previously posted at Pumpkin Cookies, but the way I had written it was confusing. I’ve revised the recipe to make it easier to follow. These Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies have become such a family favorite that I have a feeling I’ll be making several batches of it throughout the holiday season.

Mammie’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups organic sugar
1 cup organic canola oil (or softened organic butter – 2 sticks)
2 organic eggs
2 teaspoons organic vanilla
2 tablespoons raw organic milk
1 can organic pumpkin
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder, aluminum-free
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
4 cups organic all-purpose flour
1 large bag semi-sweet organic chocolate chips

Preheat oven 375 degrees F. Whisk sugar, canola oil, eggs, vanilla, milk and pumpkin together until well incorporated.

Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and stir slowly with a spatula or a wooden spoon until smooth. Add chocolate chips and mix.

Spoon rounds onto buttered cookie sheet (use wax paper covers to grease the baking sheet) and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Take the cookies out as soon as they are showing a bit of brown around the outer edges.

October 23, 2012
Sweet Potato Marshmallow (and how to make Thanksgiving Dinner from Scratch)

Ever since I learned how to cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner from my husband’s grandmother, I’ve been cooking and serving the same special meal my family looks forward to year after year. This year’s menu is no different. I keep it simple, but make everything from scratch.

The tricky part is organizing and scheduling which dish to make when, so that everything is served nice and warm on the table at dinnertime. Here’s what I did:

Set the turkey out to thaw the day before Thanksgiving. The night before Thanksgiving, roast a pumpkin and leave on the table to cool overnight. Also, make the stuffing and chill in refrigerator overnight.

On Thanksgiving morning, make the Maple Cranberry Syrup and chill till dinner. Get the pumpkin puree from last night’s roast pumpkin and make Pumpkin Cookies and Pumpkin Pie.

After lunch, start the turkey. In between basting the turkey, make the Sweet Potato Marshmallow, then the Mashed Potato and Steamed Broccoli. Toss the green salad and cherry tomatoes together last.

Sweet Potato Marshmallow

3 sweet potatoes
1 bag large marshmallows

Peel and cut sweet potatoes into 1 inch slices. Steam for an hour, then mash. Transfer the mashed sweet potato to a pie pan and let cool. Top with marshmallows. I wait until the turkey is out of the oven before I put the Sweet Potato Marshmallow in the oven to heat. Take it out and serve once the marshmallows are browned slightly.

November 25, 2011
How Does Your Garden Groove?

Vacation comes, school is out
Summer ends, year in, year out.

-Neil Young

I can’t believe the summer went by so fast. This summer marks Malaya’s first theatre production. My baby girl is all grown up and onstage! Here is a video (a little over 13 minutes) of their summer camp production of “How Does Your Garden Groove?” by Michael and Jill Gallina. She played Pea # 2. And the sweetest pea in the garden, she is.

August 21, 2011
Farmers Market Finds

Our local farmers market is back! The Coastside Farmers Market at Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California is the best source of locally grown produce from May through November. Today was the first farmers market day of the year.

It was great to see my favorite vendors again. There’s the Indian food stall, the only seller who accepts credit card payments. He also offered to give me cash back today, because everyone else at the farmers market takes cash only. Santiago has the sweetest fruit! He charms me with his rhymes and adds free fruit to my bag after what I selected has been weighed and paid for. Manang and Manong are organic farmers from Fresno who gives my daughter fruit in exchange for a Filipino song.

I was also glad to see something new: springtime fresh local honey from nearby Montara, and the coveted honeycomb (my husband’s favorite!) from San Mateo. Honey grown locally is the answer to springtime pollen allergy. Honey from far away just does not have the same elements as what we are surrounded with, and therefore cannot do its job of providing our immune system with the key to dealing with the pollen in our environment.

Sometimes we have eggs at the farmers market, but sometimes we don’t. Today we had some farm fresh eggs from free range chickens fed only organic feed and rainwater in Half Moon Bay.

I mentioned to the farmer lady that my daughter’s kindergarten class kept eggs in an incubator and they recently hatched! The farmer lady gave my daughter a lesson about chickens and eggs: Did you know that you can tell what color eggs a chicken will lay by looking at the color of its ears? Fascinating, isn’t it?

There are so many reasons to buy our food from the Farmers Market. We support locally grown food that has a smaller carbon footprint than those grown and transported from far away. We support our local farmers and put the money straight into their hands instead of funneling it through large faceless corporations. We support family farms and organic farmers. We get to talk to the people who grow our food, and learn firsthand from them about where our food comes from.

Most of all, when we sit at the dinner table with our families, bless the food we are about to eat and bless the hands that made them, we can visualize the very people we are blessing before we enjoy the food they grew for us.

May 4, 2011
Carrot Cake Pops for Valentine’s Day

My friend Issa made amazing Valentine’s Day cake pops that inspired me to make my own version, using the Carrot Cake recipe for my breadmaker. Here’s how I did it:

First, I followed my breadmaker’s recipe book instructions on how to make Carrot Cake. You might remember the disaster the first time I made this. Somehow getting the cake out of the breadmaker pan was tricky. Now I know what to do with my cake should it crumble getting out of the pan.

While letting the cake cool, make the frosting. Beat together until smooth and creamy:

3 oz cream cheese
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar

After the cake is completely cooled off, crumble it as fine as you can.

Add the frosting to the crumbled cake.

Then mix together with a spatula.

When thoroghly mixed into a paste, roll the cake into balls and refrigerate for an hour or overnight. If you’re in a hurry, freeze for 15 minutes. But really, in the future I would refrigerate overnight for best results.

Make another batch of frosting, this time:

5 oz cream cheese
5 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Push lollipop sticks into the flat side of the cake balls (the part of the ball resting on the plate/baking sheet will be flat after sitting there for a while). Dip into the frosting fully and decorate.

Here’s a more thorough step-by-step tutorial on how to make cake pops, which also includes a video that shows how to dip the balls into frosting and decorate with sprinkles.

And then of course, anyone who makes cake pops should be inspired by the mother of all cake pops, Bakerella. She wrote the book aptly titled, “Cake Pops.”

Have fun!

February 11, 2011
Pumpkin Ice Cream

Ingredients
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 15-oz can pumpkin
2 cups heavy cream, chilled
1 tsp vanilla extract

Follow manufacturer’s instructions on how to prepare your ice cream maker.

1. Heat whole milk in a medium saucepan until it bubbles around the edges.
2. Whisk sugar and pumpkin puree into the heated milk.
3. Transfer to a medium bowl and let it cool completely.
4. Stir in heavy cream and vanilla.
5. Chill for at least 30 minutes
6. Churn the mixture in an ice cream maker for at least 30 minutes or until thickened into a soft-serve consistency.
7. Freeze for at least 2 hours if a firmer consistency is desired.

November 14, 2008