Category: Food and Drink

“I Need to Eat Better” Soup- Lentil, Spinach, and Roasted Butternut Squash Soup featuring Something from Nothing Vegetable Broth

I’m trying to come up with a new soup recipe for dinner tonight.

Hopefully, this soup will be SO delicious, it will help be break my fried food (undeniably delicious) addiction. Yeah, I know this is asking a lot of a simple soup but Good Grief, I need some help! I consider it a monumental battle won if I can make it out of the Mexican grocery store with only the tortillas and produce that I intend to buy and leave the chicharrones behind. Many, many battles have been lost recently.

Sometimes a bit of good advice you once heard is all you need to start that ball rolling toward better habits (or if you are me, away from the french fries and onion rings). For example- I’ve heard that if you really want a great vegetable broth, you’d be smart to freeze vegetable scraps and make your own. Maybe a nice, homemade vegetable broth will help this new soup idea become a winning recipe.

Over about three weeks I have been tossing scraps into a bag that has sat in my freezer. That asparagus we grilled? The snapped-off ends went into the bag. In went the onion trimmings, parsley, spinach and mushroom stems, carrot peelings, as well as the  bits from the beets, cauliflower and broccoli we  boiled, roasted or sauteed. Everything finally found its way into the stock pot of water this morning to simmer along with a bay leaf, salt and pepper.

Hopefully, I will have a great base for tonight’s soup. In the meantime, my house smells great! Maybe that is a good sign…

Evening update:

Oh yeah, this soup is DEE-LISH! And it was definitely worth it to make that vegetable broth… The pre-cooked lentils from Trader Joe’s refrigerator section are better than if I made my own (I cannot seem to cook these properly… so frustrating). Combined with pre-chopped butternut squash that took only 45 minutes at 400 degrees to roast up all caramelized and tender, and finishing this soup with bagged baby spinach brings this soup into weeknight dinner speed.

I will make this soup again… Even if it isn’t as good as fried stuff. Like chicharrones.

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Don’t look at the squash- I left it in the oven too long. I said, “Don’t look!!” It still tasted great, though.

Lentil, Spinach, and Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

  • one onion, diced
  • 4-6 cups vegetable broth
  • 1 can or 1/2 of a 17.6 oz package of steamed lentils
  • 2 cups fresh spinach leaves
  • 1 lb uncooked, chopped butternut squash
  • 4 tsp olive oil, divided
  • salt, spices to taste

-Preheat oven to 400; on a baking sheet, toss squash with 2 teaspoons of the oil and sprinkle with salt and your choice of spices (I used curry and chili powder… it was great!). Roast squash for about 45 minutes or until soft but not mushy.

-While squash is roasting, cook onions in the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Stirring frequently, the onions should become nice and caramelized by the time the squash has finished roasting.

-Once onions are lightly caramelized, add to the same pot the broth, lentils and spinach and bring to a simmer; add the squash when it is done roasting. Stir, adjust seasonings (needs salt, maybe?) and serve!

Makes about 4 servings of really tasty, really good for you soup, and it was very nice with toast and sliced fruit.

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My reward- about 4 quarts of vegetable broth

Want really good vegetable broth, too?

  • Throw vegetable scraps into a zip top freezer bag.
  • When the bag has a variety of trimming or your patience has had it with the bag of junk in the freezer, empty the bag into a large pot and cover with about one gallon of water.
  • Simmer for anywhere from one to four hours- another option would be to use a slow cooker for this job.

 

 

 

 

Recipe: Farro Stuffed Tomato on Arugula with Black Beans and Feta

I started running for one reason only. Well, maybe two:  second helpings of tacos and/or that extra glass of wine. Sidelined by two slight but nagging injuries and five pounds gained, I made this Farro Stuffed Tomato on Arugula with Black Beans and Feta to help steer my food-loving face toward better choices. Bit players on the plate include walnuts and julienned cucumber and red onion- YUM! This is a hearty, filling, flavorful lunch salad yet still a lighter meal. You know, like, if you’ve been eating too many tacos of late.

Farro Stuffed Tomato on Arugula with Black Brand and Feta- this was seriously holy freaking yum good.

Farro Stuffed Tomato on Arugula with Black Beans and Feta
for two servings

  • 1 large, really good tomato
  • 4 cups loosely packed arugula, well washed
  • 1 cup cooked farro
  • 1/2 cup julienned red onion
  • 1/2 cup julienned cucumber
  • 1/2 cup black beans, I used canned
  • 1/4 cup crumbled feta
  • 2 tablespoons toasted walnut pieces
  • olive oil
  • balsamic vinegar salt, pepper, herb blend (Penzey’s Parisien Bonnes Herbes blend is mighty good)

Cook farro according to package directions. I added salt, onion powder and garlic powder to my cooking water, and used the “put the grain in the pot, ad two or three cups of water, cook until tender, then drain off all the extra water” method.

While farro is cooking-

  • slice tomato in half along its equator, and scoop out the inside of the fruit. Dice the part that you’ve removed, and set aside
  • divide arugula between two plates and top each pile with a tomato half
  • sprinkle onion, cucumber, diced tomato guts, beans (rinse ’em off in water first),  feta, and walnuts evenly between the two servings of arugula

When farro is done (taste it… tender + done), drain off cooking water and while it is still in the pot, drizzle about one tablespoon of olive oil and half a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar over the grain. Mix in salt, pepper, and any herb blend at this point, too.

Fill each tomato half with the seasoned farro mixture. Drizzle arugula with a little more salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar and dig in!

Have you tried farro yet? It is one of the ancient grains that have been appearing in the markets recently. Along with quinoa and chia, farro has been cultivated for centuries, if not millennia. How does it taste? Well, I think of the grain as a larger, more mild and more tender version of barley.

It took a recipe this tasty to write up another blog post here on Branching Out on a Limb. I had intended to just snap a picture for my mom and tell her about my lunch creation, but the picture and recipe were too good not to share. This salad would also be great with beets, goat cheese, and pine nuts over romaine; turkey, dried cranberries, and hazelnuts over butter lettuce… please share your own great combinations!

Kir Royale- New Cocktail for the New Year

Dry White Wine + Crème de Cassis = Kir
Dry Champagne + Crème de Cassis = Kir Royale

This was the perfect choice for a celebratory New Year’s Eve cocktail, we all liked it! Perfect for a party yet fuss free.

I’m all for the crossroads where easy meets sophisticated. And if you don’t care for sweets in general, this is your drink. Stick to a 1:4 ratio of cassis to champagne to keep the liqueur’s sweetness in the background, and use the more dry champagne (Brut) or wine (Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc).

Read up at TheKitchn.com for more info, that’s where I found the directions and ratios- Kir and Kir Royale: Two Iconic French Wine Cocktail.

Wishing you all the best in 2016!

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New Recipe-Hasselback Potatoes Gratin à la Serious Eat’s J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

I intended to look up a scalloped potato recipe for tonight’s dinner with the whole fam-bamily, but got sidetracked by Facebook… Uh oh? No! The first things I came across was a New York Times Food link to one of one of my favorite food site people- J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from SeriousEats.com.

Hasselback Potato Gratin (“These Might Be the Best Potatoes Ever”)
Look at this glorious photo and click on it to link to theSeriousEats.com recipe (or click here: SeriousEats.comHasselbackPotatoGratin)

These were easy to put together with the cheese grating delegated to The Girl and potato peeling to The Husband. All I needed was my super-sharp chef’s knife (recently sharpened by my dad, thanks, dad!) to get super thin slices from my russets. Then I tossed them in the cream, salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic.

Here they are, half cooked at 400 degrees for thirty minutes, before they got shoved in a box and carted up to one of the in-law’s house:

(pretend that this is a picture of the half baked potatoes, use your imagination)

And here’s the nearly gone and mostly empty dish, the only pic I could snap of the potatoes that could net the least amount of ridicule from extended family:


These were DELICIOUS! These were unbelievably easy to prepare, travelled well half-cooked (unlike my extended family, LOLOLOL!!) and were gluten-free for the family members with Celiac to whom we wanted to show some kitchen love.

Put this recipe for Hasselback Potato Gratin on you list of new things to try next year.

Ballast Point Spirits- $1 Billion Purchase Nets More Than SoCal-Style Beer

The recent One Billion Dollar purchase of Ballast Point Brewing may have been just a blip on your local new, but here in San Diego this was Big News. San Diegans were either puffed with pride over the price tag, or horrified at the prospect of a local favorite becoming watered down for the national tastes. Ballast Point’s Sextant Oatmeal Stout is the first beer that I liked- up until I tried a stout, I thought that I just didn’t like beer… it turns out that I don’t like hops.

IMG_9787Constellation Brands Inc. not only bought some choice brews, but included in this deal are the Ballast Point Spirits- four of which are available in cans… yow! Conveniently canned mixed drinks include Fugu Bloody Mary, Three Sheets Rum & Ginger, Three Sheets Rum & Cola, and Old Grove Gin & Tonic.

This could seriously alter my adult beverage drinking opportunities!

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Handy guys deserve a good drink.

We tried the Old Grove Gin & Tonic. Could a classic mixed drink work in convenient pre-packaging? Yes. We highly recommend it. Got a little Pre-Holiday home repair going on? This is a fine occasion to serve a drink to the guy who can take apart a Roomba while doing other home repair, too. Just not too much, at least until the vacuum is fixed.