green goodness! it's special sauce!

I'm a little slow to jump on the Green Juice Train and I'm not ashamed to admit it's partially because I don't have any unquenchable desire to drink algae.

I think my mom might need a moment.

Anyway, I'm sure it would be more enticing and rewarding if I made my own green juice like this superstar, but I do not have:

• the time
• the desire
• the juicer

So instead, every once in a while, when I feel like I need an extra kick of Healthy, I'll buy some.  I've found that I quite enjoy Naked's Green Machine - enough that I can ignore the algae as long as I shake it before every sip.

Tonight, I stopped into Whole Foods to grab a couple of items I had intended to get at Trader Joe's before remembering I wouldn't be able to get there until Sunday and I didn't have the ingredients for enough complete meals without those things to get to Sunday, so it was all a moot point.  Anyway, I had picked up everything I went in for (except cauliflower, which was either hiding or absent, but I didn't see it) and I'm not even sure how I was in a position for this to catch my eye, but I did see Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness and decided to give myself a little punch since my chest is still tight and I keep hacking up a lung if I breathe too many times in a row and I make too much noise at night trying to breathe for poor mister to sleep and it's probably bad form to cough on customers.... enough reasons?

Good, because truth be told, once I got it home, my courage and drive somewhat evaporated.  I mean, really - you cannot look at this and tell me it screams, "Ooooh ooh, ME!  I'm tasty!"

Not exactly irresistible.  Nevertheless, I hate being sick and I like taking care of my body and if "8 delicious juices" delivering "14 powerful nutrients" including iron, vitamins B6, B12, A, and C has to be green....well....I guess it has to be green.  I have nothing against green, by the way, but that "juice" is what we call in my world murky.

Fortunately, it is quite delicious.  I think it might be slightly less sweet than Naked's Green Machine and I'm okay with that, though I think Naked will still be my favored green smoothie.  I almost bought R.W. Knudsen's Mega-Green juice when I was there yesterday, but I just cannot do it.  There's something about the way it's marketed that makes it look as though there's no way it will be anything but straight-up nasty.  Maybe someday I'll be adventurous enough to find out, but this week was not that Someday.

In other news, Mister and I have an astonishing talent for being at our most OughtToSeeADoctorness during the three months out of the last 5 years that we haven't had health insurance but I still don't regret not devoting an entire paycheck to COBRA coverage between now and when my coverage at work kicks in.

Dinner was chock full of veggie goodness, though (by the way, is everyone else aware of how awful Chock Full O' Nuts coffee is?  Well, now you are).  With the snow peas I picked up at Whole Foods, I was able to make the Hoisin-Braised Tempeh Tofu with Chinese Vegetables from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy that I was daydreaming about all day.  Everyone at work was female today, so instead of music, we had the Food Network on and watched way too much Rachael Ray, who I have deemed The Anti-Vegan.  I swear, I've never seen anyone include that many animal products in their recipes. 

Back to dinner.

It was good and the tofu worked so well I can't really imagine tempeh being better, but I'll probably never know since Mister dies if I even say the cursed word out loud.  Dinner is always fun when it involves snow peas and hoisin sauce amuses me because it kind of looks like Chinese BBQ sauce.

It was good, but not outstanding.  There were two weak points - one the fault of the book and one was my poor choice of accompaniment.  I served it over brown rice, expecting the braising sauce to be more potent.  It wasn't dreadful, but I can almost taste how much better it would have been with rice noodles instead of rice, so I may try that in the future.

In the book, it doesn't actually tell you when to add the hoisin sauce, so I added it just before the 15 minute simmering time.  I figured this was probably right since it was meant to braise the "tempeh" and wouldn't do a very good job of that if I didn't add it before the braising time.  I tasted the sauce when I added the snow peas for the last few minutes of cooking and it barely had any flavor since it was diluted with nearly the same amount of water, so I added more.  The recipe calls for 1/3 cup, but next time I make this, I will probably go with a half cup from the start and possibly less water, since the bok choy seemed to still have some clinging to its leaves, which added to what I had poured in.

Despite the slightly frightful tightness in my chest, I am still looking forward to the first truly cool day of autumn this Saturday.  Since I'm teaching, I can even dress appropriately for the cold, thereby decreasing my chances of catching tuberculosis!

photo credit

harissa: the ultimate in snow removal

Okay, harissa may not be quite hot enough to melt the snow piled all over the sidewalks, street corners, and parking spots in my neighborhood, but it can make me sweat when it's only 20 degrees outside! I read somewhere that in North Africa (not exactly a cold climate), locals employ harissa the way Americans [over]use ketchup. It took me years to put ketchup on my fries, much to Mister's confusion and horror. I cannot even fathom dipping fries or vegetables or ANYTHING in a little pot of harissa - bad things happened when it didn't blend all the way into the broth tonight and I ended up with a significant amount in my mouth. Significant = Barely Visible Speck.

Anyway, let's back up to last night. After a snowy, frosty weekend and a slippery trek to my car, I managed to make it to work yesterday. It wasn't until I was putting a present for Angst (also known as food) in the backseat that I noticed the new beauty mark on my car. Remember how I was worried about the Dueling Backhoes crashing into my car or otherwise harming it? I'm trying to think of the perfect thank you gift for the City of Philadelphia right now - what's the best way to express this sentiment? "thank you for finally clearing the streets in my neighborhood. It's much easier to navigate my car through the half-plowed icy death since you helped me lighten it. I never realized how much the paint on the left side of my car weighed it down until you helped me get rid of it. Here's some flowers." Yes, the Abominable Snow Removers left me a scar in the form of a scratch from the middle of my back driver's side door, across my gas cap, up to my brake light, and it's all the way to the metal - no paint left at all. In fact, it's even indented.

So, I celebrated my great fortune by making The Mariners' Pepperpot Soup. It involved a great deal of chopping, which always helps when you are speechless with excitement about the new detail work on your car. It's a fun soup to make, although I always panic that it doesn't look chunky enough to satisfy Mister. It's fine, though, because what I can't see is that all the rice and a great many of the vegetables are hovering just below the shiny, spiced surface of the broth. It made for some fun picture-taking, though:
When I made the Chickpea Apple Curry the other night, I made extra rice and scooped out one cup to add to this soup. It held the shape of the measuring cup and when I added it to the pot, it just plopped into the center. I found the Rice Meatball pretty funny, so I snapped a picture.

look at how excited Angst is for pepper soup!

not really.

a rainbow of savory goodness

Keeping with my trend of alternating soup dinners with solid food, tonight I made Winter Vegetable Curry despite my strong desire to avoid chopping the head of cauliflower in my fridge. It had to happen sooner or later, though, so tonight was the night. Besides, in an obvious attempt to steal my affections from my husband, Old Man Winter is sending me another Imminent Death Snowstorm tomorrow night. According to The National Weather Service, we're expecting another 10-18 inches between tomorrow afternoon and then throughout the day Wednesday. Sounds like perfect weather for our final soup dinner!
I think it has actually been since last winter that I've made this tasty little curry. It is so good I spent at least half the time I was eating it thinking "you stupid - why don't you make this more often?" Then I remember how much it sucks to chop the whole head of cauliflower. There has to be an easier way to do this that I just don't know. If anyone out there has any ideas, I would love for you to leave me a comment with detailed instructions!
I've been intending to add harissa to about half of the dinners I made this past week, so I'm quite pleased that I actually remembered to stir it in to replace some of the curry paste in this recipe. The recipe calls for 3 Tablespoons of curry paste and 3 Tablespoons of mango chutney. I have discovered that neither Mister nor myself are big fans of mango chutney, so I substituted apricot preserves and that added a nice, surprising sweet bite here and there. In place of the curry paste, I did 2 heaping teaspoons of my now-beloved Frontier brand curry powder and 1 conservative Tablespoon of harissa. It was much hotter than it has been with just the curry powder (I'll admit, I'm a little afraid of curry paste), especially when I got an unmixed chunk of it in my mouth by way of a caulifloret.

The recipe, by Rachael Ray, is one of her [few] vegetarian 30-minute meals and once you've made a mess of the cauliflower...well, chopped it, it comes together very quickly. I'd say there's a total cooking time of almost 20 minutes. I cannot recommend this recipe enough - it tastes great, it's relatively easy to assemble, especially if you cheat and use frozen cauliflower or pre-cut cauliflower. If you go the pre-cut route, be sure to use the cauliflower the same day you buy it or buy it the day you intend to use it - it doesn't keep well. Happy chopping!