lentils: they do a body good

The past two nights, I have removed my block of organic spinach from the freezer, placed it on the counter, and opened Vegan on the Cheap to the recipe for Indian-Spiced Lentil Ragu.  Last night I decided I didn't have the patience to simmer both brown rice and lentils (separately, of course), so I made the chickpea dish (which came together with delightful speed).  Tonight, I was willing to do a long-simmering meal because I didn't want to be very actively involved in meal prep when I got home from another busy, exhausting, but pleasantly productive day.  I pulled the spinach out of its frosty bed, placed it on the counter as I opened the book...let's pause a moment.

I'm still working on my cookware collection.  Presently, it is only as big as a 10-piece bargain cookware set that is beginning to deteriorate and have fewer pieces.  I have two saucepans - 2.5-qt and 1-qt; a 3-qt saute pan, a 6-qt stockpot, and two round skillets.  There are a few other pieces, like my square skillet and double-burner griddle, as well as an uncooperative wok and a couple of heavy cast iron pieces, but that is my main cookware.  I use my 1-qt saucepan as my designated Oatmeal Pot during the colder months and I'm not in the habit of washing dishes in the morning before work.  This means that the remnants of oatmeal have all day to form a bond with my nonstick pot.

Back to the story: My plan was to cook the rice in my 2.5-qt saucepan and boil the lentils in my 1-qt...oh...yes, the one covered in crusty purple oatmeal slime.  Right.  So, it's back into the freezer for the spinach and back to the menu for me.  It didn't take me long at all to change course and make a deliciously chunky, hearty Lentil Stew with Vegetables.

My belly is warm and full of sloshy stew.  The vegetables really came out well, too - yukon gold potatoes, carrots, a parsnip, and a Belgian endive to replace the small head of cabbage I couldn't find.  About halfway through I became worried it would be too brothy, but it was exceptionally thick and chunky.  The spice mixture was also one to be reckoned with: thyme, fennel seeds I crushed with some mortar-n-pestle action, Spanish paprika, and ground savory (which is another one of those ingredients I've been resisting until now when I realized how many recipes I've skipped because of my savory-poverty).  

To be totally honest... if the ingredients were to magically reappear in my crisper & cupboard between now and tomorrow night, I would make it again.  In case you haven't seen the lovely depictions of Colder-Than-Death the weather maps have shown spreading over the entire east coast, let me tell you - it is really freakin' cold right now.  Tomorrow's high temperature is 35.  That means the return from work becomes more bone-chilling every night.  I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to it going all the way up to 44ish on Friday.  Fortunately, I have some innard-warming lentil stew to fill my belly.

too much is never enough

I have eaten waaaayyy too many cookies in the past 24 hours.  They are just so good - I swear, these are absolutely the best oatmeal cookies I have ever made or eaten (although Kylie at Cups & Chairs makes an awfully good oatmeal cookie, too).  I'm pretty sure it's the brown sugar - I don't think I've ever used that as the sole sugar, sole sweetener in a cookie before. 

By the way - I have come to the conclusion (in my vast understanding of brown sugar and how to keep it) that Gladware is the best possible vessel for brown sugar.  I can't remember how long ago I exposed my brown sugar to oxygen, but it's been tucked away in its little Gladware vacuum, kept from sunlight in a dark corner of my cupboard, and when I opened it to scoop out the 2/3 cup for this recipe, it was as soft as it was the first day it tasted air.

Anyway, by sheer force of will (and general lack of other options) I made it through today.  It actually passed quite quickly, to my bemused horror - I keep running out of time!  I already have less than an hour until I start pretending to get ready for bed and I haven't...

• cleaned up dinner
• changed the sheets on the bed (time for the warmer ones - we won't see 40 degrees again until Friday)
• changed the bathroom towels
• put up my Christmas tree (although Mister did point out when I forgot to do it last night that the fewer nights the tree is up, the fewer nights Angst has to try to destroy it, so this one might wait until the weekend when I can also start gift shopping and wrapping...at which point I'll need something to place my pretty gifts beneath!)

So, without further ado, tonight's dinner was Moroccan Chickpeas with Couscous from Vegan on the Cheap.

It's so pretty and colorful!  Apparently, no one (including me) can write a recipe involving chickpeas, tomatoes, and raisins (cranberries) without plunking the word "Moroccan" in front of it.  Someday, I would like to go to Morocco and see if everything involves chickpeas, tomatoes, and raisins.  Actually, for bizarre, wanderlust reasons I'll probably never know, I've actually wanted to visit Morocco since I was a child.  There's something about the festiveness of the colors, the passion of the firey reds and burnt oranges that just seems regal and outlandishly extravagant to me.  In fact, while dinner was simmering, I was so taken by how opulent the colors of my simmer were, I had to snap a picture:

The broth/sauce was a rusty color that augmented the brilliant beige (find someone else who can say that and mean it) of the chickpeas, while little, barely noticeable green flecks of chives and pepper litter the pot.  I was about to dump some frozen peas in there for a little nutrition and I was irrationally worried it would mar the beauty of my chickpeas.

As you can see, I need not have worried.

limited time offer

So, I knew it wouldn't last forever.  Perhaps, if I ever get tired of the blog being called "Angst Loves Spinach" I'll change the name to Taming of the Brown Rice.  Not quite as catchy, I'll grant you, but I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time discussing my inability to cook brown rice.

I finally tasted victory the other day, but I knew it would be short-lived and tonight's dinner reinforced that belief strongly.

I made Rice Island Casserole from Vegan on the Cheap.  When I started cooking, I asked Mister if anything on the menu jumped out at him.  He refrained from giving any guidance other than "you might want to make something that takes a while, since you're starting early."  Pretty good guidance, actually, considering how darn long it took to cook.

Fortunately, while it was simmering away...for about two hours...it smelled amazing.  That just made the waiting more difficult!  There was such a great combination of herbs and spices that just simmered away smelling very much like the pan of mulling spices left on a back burner in my mother-in-law's kitchen on Christmas Eve.  I thought, as it simmered and simmered, that once it was finally finished, if it tasted anything like it smelled, it couldn't help but be a phenomenal success.

I was absolutely right.  It was so good and it brought out a serious hankering for Isa's Jerk Seitan on Coconut Rice...

Bonus!  I made cookies for a colleague (and because cookies are awesome):

The recipe is that of Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from VCIYCJ, but I used cranberries instead of raisins and I plumped them in some hot water while we were [finally] eating dinner.  My kitchen smells so good right now.

my kingdom for some bread

Bread.  There are so many forms bread can take.  Commonly, it is merely the outside of some delicious inside that makes up a sandwich, but Mister and I quite enjoy bread simply for its breadiness.  We love the house-made focaccia at Horizons, as well as the microwave-warmed pita at Cedars.  We love the hearty whole grain bread from Whole Foods and the meal-in-itself 12-Grain bread by Arnold.  We love to use bread to dip in the hot broth of our soup while we wait for it to cool enough that we can eat it without scathing our tastebuds and Mister especially loves to scoop up various Italian-influenced dinners with some bread.  We have a variety of spreads for our bread: hummus, tahini, peanut butter, apple butter, Dark Chocolate Dreams, and a few samples of Justin's Nut Butters; but sometimes, I just spread some Earth Balance love on mine.

Do you know people have gone to prison over bread?  Even in the popular musical, Les Miserables, one of the main characters, Jean Valjean, spent 5 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family.  I realize the novel and resulting musical are works of fiction, but it is historically-based fiction and you can see the same theme represented throughout literary history.  When I was in college, I was part of a group that visited a local prison, seeking to show kindness and compassion to people who had that in very short supply.  I was intrigued by my new "hobby" and integrated it into my studies, even writing one of my term papers on prison recidivism.   Here's where it gets interesting.

Yes, of course I can relate all this prison talk to dinner.  I guess that doesn't say much for my culinary skills, does it?  Regardless, we had Pasta e Fagioli from Vegan on the Cheap, which I truly thought would be brothier than it turned out (as you can observe in the picture - also note the bread; it's about to be important).  Additionally, when I finally arrived home after a brisk walk through mid-30-degree weather, I had an irrepressible craving for toast.  Not just a "Hey, ya know what might be nice?" kind of craving; rather, the kind of craving that causes all the wind to be knocked out of your proverbial sails when you preheat the toaster oven only to open the refrigerator door and see....no bread.

So, I re-wrapped myself in my scarf, coat, hat, and gloves, and much to the kitty's horror, headed back out the door.  Mister needed coffee creamer anyway, otherwise tomorrow morning would be very sad, so I headed up to Superfresh for some pre-shopping (tomorrow is grocery day).

Has it ever occurred to anyone else [in America] how absurdly fortunate we are that there is an entire aisle at the grocery store devoted to bread?  Take a minute to ponder that, because it's not like that everywhere.  I walked the length of the aisle with my eyes peeled for the bright orange circle that signifies this or that bread is on sale.  Best bargain?  $1.50 for a loaf of whole wheat bread.  However, upon examination, I couldn't figure out why it needed half of the ingredients it contained, so I moved on to the $1.79 loaf.  A little better, but still not really a whole grain product.  What I really wanted was for some Arnold's bread to be on sale, even though I knew the best I could hope for was $2.50.  That's exactly what I found and I did stand there for a moment, pondering whether a 71-cent savings was worth the finely milled wheat flour and HFCS.

People go back to prison because of high-pressure decisions like that one that I was privileged to make and sometimes, I totally get that.  It can be overwhelming.  Think about it: for however long you've been "locked up," someone else decided what and even when you ate.  Not the most favorable situation, but what choice do you really have?  So, you do your time: you're where you're supposed to be, you eat what you're fed, you wear what you're given, and you keep yourself out of trouble.  Now you're back in the free world and you have to go food shopping for the first time...and then the second, and on and on.

I have always had the freedom to choose my own bread and it drives me crazy sometimes because of how many darn options there are.  Can you imagine not having to choose and then having so many choices?  I kid you not - honestly rehabilitated people become so overwhelmed with the decision to buy this bread or that bread, they unconsciously put themselves in situations where they are set up to fall again.  Their motive?  To return to what they know, where they feel safe - a place with no decisions.

Heck of a food blog, eh?

Alright, back to the food.

I would much rather have the burden of choosing my Arnold bread if it means I can also make tasty, hearty, inside-out warming soups like this one.  I'm sure prison food has come a long way since, well, whenever, but I'm still pretty sure my soup is better.  It came together quickly, too, although the broth did require some tweaking.  It tasted very tomatoey and not quite as rich and garlicky as I wanted it to, so I added a bit of sea salt and white wine vinegar.  That seemed to do the trick.  I ended up having my toast for dessert, since there wasn't really any broth to sop up (and I really wanted toast anyway).

Finally, I'll leave you with a happy picture and my new menu:  here is my first purple oatmeal of the season!

I get the frozen mixed berry blend at Whole Foods and then heat about a half cup of berries in a covered saucepan until they get all sizzly and juicy, then I sprinkle in the oatmeal and add 1 cup of almond milk and stir everything up.  I had forgotten how good it is.  And how purple.

Despite my best intentions (and the paycheck I just got), this week's menu comes completely from Vegan on the Cheap...again.  Yup, it sure does appear that I'm getting my money's worth from this one!

1. Moroccan Chickpeas and Couscous

2. Indian-Spiced Lentil Ragu

3. Better-Than-Takeout Tofu Stir-Fry - I have skipped over this the last three times I made my menu from this book because broccoli has had a bad year, but I'm going to try this with frozen broccoli and see what happens because it really does look like an incredibly tasty recipe.

4. Rice Island Casserole - I have no idea what is going to happen here, but I think it'll be good.  Either way, doesn't it have an awesome name?

5. Samosa Pie - Mister and I love Indian food, as you have probably observed if you've been reading for a while.  Even more than that, Mister and I love samosas.  There is just nothing bad about them.  The whole pie crust thing has kept me from doing this before.  It may be the wine speaking, but I'm feeling a bit intrepid this week, so let's see how it goes!

6. Vegetable Lentil Stew - yes, it sounds boring after...well, the other 5 menu items, but Mister loves him some lentil stew.

you promised a rose garden?

I had another one of those euphoric laughing spells tonight.  I contained myself a little better this time, but as I left work tonight, I was so happy and relieved to bid the work-week farewell, I could have cried.  As I allowed the train conductor to "drive" me home, the uplifting sounds of Christmas filled my ears (I switched my iPod over the day after Thanksgiving).  I'll admit, I'm still not completely relaxed, considering that when Mister and I were lingering over our empty bowls, I explained to him that I was going to play on my computer for a little while, probably blog, then I was going to drink more wine and then construct our menu.  He didn't bat an eyelash and I laughed at my "agenda."  Then I got to work.

Happy Friday!

I can't believe I actually waited all week to open the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau my dad sent home with me on Thanksgiving, but I did.  I think being sick for half the week helped with that.  I'm feeling much better, but as our dinner adventures will show, my nose and tastebuds have not escaped unscathed!  My first sip of the Beaujolais was not the thrilling experience I so desperately wanted it to be, in fact, it made me feel slightly nauseated.  After I let it "breathe" for about 20 minutes, it was better, but between that, the olives, and our dinner, there was some inescapably floral scent/side-taste following me around.

Tonight, I made Baked Ziti from Vegan on the Cheap.  Takes a heck of a picture, doesn't it?  All week, my intention was to boil the pasta and simmer the marinara sauce the night before I wanted to have it for dinner (which was just about every night this week) so I could assemble it and then let Mister put it in the oven while I nodded off on the train on my ride home.  That didn't happen, since I was too sick to have the energy to do anything for half the week.  So, I made it tonight and although we ate slightly later than usual, it really wasn't a considerable delay.  Additionally, I had a little time to relax while it was in the oven.

First, I mashed up the tofu with a fork and mixed it with nooch, marjoram, parsley, thyme (to stand in for oregano which I still can't tolerate), and salt.  I think I probably could have gotten firm tofu instead of extra firm, but I always like to make the recipe "true to form" the first time.

One of the reasons I chose this dinner recipe was the marinara sauce.  When I first bought this book and did a little review on it, I pointed out that the first section of food in the book was all DIY Convenience foods.  How-Tos on making everything from marinara sauce to tofu feta to pepperoni/sausage.  The first couple of times I made my menus from this handy little book, I wasn't as destitute as we were this past week, so I bought whatever the DIY section wanted to teach me to make.  This time, my brain was so math-oriented (someone take a picture - that will never leave my lips again) that when I saw the recipe called for 3.5 cups of marinara sauce, I realized that was 28oz and that I had a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes in my cupboard.  Imagine my delight when I looked at the recipe for DIY marinara sauce and saw that it was based on a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes!

It was a pretty sauce and it smelled good.  It tasted good, too, but just like the wine, there was a distinctly floral scent/taste going on.  Mister swears his tasted like Italian food and not a garden.  He even humored me by sniffing at his ziti.  It always turned out the same: I'm crazy; the food does not smell like flowers.  Meanwhile, I'm throwing out all these crazy postulations about why my dinner smells like flowers: the herbs in the tofu, the nooch with the tofu (even though I know darn well that smells savory), the dash of cinnamon and teaspoon of sugar in the marinara sauce, the olive marinade.

Nope.  It's just my nose, continuing to misbehave.  At least my dinner still lifes are as pretty as a rose.

you know you wish you had a fork

quick slowcooker soup

I love irony and oxymorons.  I also like saying "oxymoron" around people who don't know what that means.

I've made the Black Bean Soup with Kale and Rice from Vegan on the Cheap before, just to see if I could.  It's in the Slowcooker section of the book.  Problem is, I don't have a slowcooker.  Although I'm beginning to see the value in such a device, I still lack the space to have/store one, so for now, I get to figure out how long something would simmer stovetop if the recipe calls for several hours in a slowcooker.

crappy picture - sorry...my camera is angry right now

Speaking of several hours, it feels like I just wasted that amount of time poking around on the internet.  It really can be a colossal time-suck sometimes.  I'm just so brain-dead at this point in the week, I had all these great plans for what to do after dinner (you know, like cleaning up) and I completely lost the motivation.  Here it is, nearly midnight, and I'm babbling about the internet sucking up my time when I could be babbling about the awesome heartiness and flavors present in this soup!

I know I made it once before, but I really don't remember it having such defined tex-mex tastes.  Maybe last time I wasn't as generous with the rounded tsp of cumin.  Maybe fresh thyme makes a bigger difference than I imagine.  In any case, Mister went back for seconds, which is promising anytime I make a soup, but especially when he finished the bread he ordinarily would have eaten with the soup.

the spark is gone

I have had an on and off love affair for years...pretty much the entire time I've known Mister, to be honest.  He was the one who introduced us, even.  But I have to admit, the romance is going in the "off" direction again... I am losing interest in Yogi Detox Tea.

My basic strategy for handling illness is to try to force it out with foul-smelling, strong-tasting tea, while nurturing my little inner warriors (aka Antibodies) with particularly nutritious food.  As you've probably noticed if you've been reading for, well, let's say a month or more, I generally stuff Good-For-Me things down my gullet, but when I get sick (or perceive a threat of becoming so), I up the ante a little.  Anyway, I have relied on Yogi Detox Tea for nearly a decade - it's meant to detox the liver, but I swear it speeds up my recovery time when I get sick, possibly because a detoxed, clean liver allows for quicker clean-up?

The two things that alternately make me love and despise my detox tea are the taste and the hang-tags.  The ingredients are impressive and might give a little bit of insight into the bizarre flavor of this tea:  indian sarsaparilla root, cinnamon bark, ginger root, licorice root, burdock root, dandelion root, cardamom seed, clove bud, black pepper, long pepper berry, chinese amur cork tree bark, japanese honeysuckle flower, forsythia fruit, gardenia flower, skullcap leaf, chinese goldenthread root, rhubarb root, wax gourd, and juniper berry extract.  mmmm....tasty.  However, once you drink it frequently enough, you get used to the flavor and it does actually taste....well, palatable, as opposed to OMG-drink-it-fast-so-you-don't-taste-it.

And then there's the transcendental, inspirational, feel-good hang-tags.  I've been presenting them as little moments of zen because the first few were really pretty and did actually make me feel good, despite feeling so bad.  Then they started getting super-fruity, and will probably continue to, since we're on that downward trend.

Tonight's moment of zen?

Wow.  Really?  Thanks for letting me know, Yogi.  I've also gotten such gems as "Be your own best friend" and some other ridiculous piece of fortune cookie wisdom.  We had such a good thing going for a while... I guess all good things must eventually end.  Unlike the truth, which is everlasting.

I'm tired of being sick.  Yesterday was awful and I went to bed way before I usually do, fell asleep immediately, slept for nearly 10 hours and still needed my second alarm to get me out of bed this morning.  However, once I got going, I felt fine!  I coughed all day, but I only sneezed a few times and was sniffly once.  Then I waited 30 minutes for the train in 30-something degree weather (it was only supposed to be a 10 minute wait) and walked home through the same temperature.  I couldn't even feel my legs by the time I got home and my feet had frozen and were very angry with me.  Now?  I've been sneezing in patterns of four to ten sneezes in a row and blowing my nose left and right.  I really hope for the same miraculous recovery overnight because I really don't like this and I want to break it off with the Yogi before he leaves me (aka, tea runs out).

So, here's your real moment of zen:

nothing says "zen" like a peacefully sleeping kitty