Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup

While I was on bed rest for the wisdom teeth removal surgery I watched America's Test Kitchen on PBS. This slow cooker minestrone soup was featured and I knew it would be perfect for us to have now. I made it a few days after watching the recipe because it was a great option for needing softer foods.

The recipe does require quite a lot of prep before going in to the slow cooker but the soup is amazing! I debated halving the recipe but decided to make the full recipe with freezing intentions. We were able to put 3 two cup portions into the freezer so it worked out well.

Slow Cooker Minestrone Soup Adapted from Cook's Country & Lemons and Lavender blog
   Recipe from Cooks Country August/September 2010
Ingredients
1 cup dried medium-sized white beans, rinsed and picked over
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 onions chopped fine
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
8 garlic cloves, minced
1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes
8 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3 cups water
2 cups loosely packed basil leaves, divided
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise, seeded and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 bunch Swiss chard, stemmed, leaves chopped
1/2 cup small soup pasta (I used Ditalini)
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese for garnish

Directions

   Cook Beans.  Bring beans and enough water to cover by 1 inch to low boil in medium saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until beans are just beginning to soften, about 20 minutes.  Drain beans and transfer to slow cooker.
   Saute aromatics.  Heat 3 tablespoons oil in Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering.  Add onions and carrots and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Add tomatoes and cook until pan is nearly dry, 5 to 7 minutes.  Stir in broth, water, 1/2 cup basil, oregano, and pepper flakes and bring to boil; transfer to slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low until beans are tender, 6 to 7 hours (or cook on high 5 to 6 hours).
   Finish Soup.  Stir zucchini, chard, and pasta into slow cooker and cook, covered, on high until pasta is tender, 20 to 30 minutes.  Stir in remaining basil (chopped if you’d prefer) and remaining oil.  Season with salt and pepper and garnish with Parmesan cheese.

Ramen with things

At the end of April Patrick took a solo trip to Chicago to celebrate his brother's birthday.

I took advantage of my time sans husband and had girlfriends over! On Saturday Marianne came over for some gardening and an outdoor picnic. Then on Sunday Stephanie came over for another outdoor picnic and an "August: Osage County" viewing. I think we both decided it wasn't our favorite movie.

You might can imagine I fixed some nicer meals for these outdoor picnics with friends which is true. But I couldn't sustain the nicer meals when I was eating by myself. Saturday evening I fixed boring ramen noodles but made them not boring!

Before I started cooking the ramen I peered into our vegetable drawer to see what CSA vegetable goodies I had hanging around that I could use. I found some kale and spring onions that would be perfect this. I also grabbed an egg. I did quite a bit of google browsing to figure out the best way to make ramen noodles unboring (a quick google search of how to make your ramen noodles better brings up more hits than you can read in a day).

Here's what I did:

   Bring water to a boil and add half the seasoning packet. Once boiling add in ramen. After a minute drizzle the egg (that I had scrambled) around the pot so that it creates threads of cooked egg. Then add in chopped kale to wilt. Everything should be done in another minute. I added the chopped spring onions on top as a garnish with a bit more of the seasoning packet. 

This was the most filling ramen ever! Any of yall have good ramen recipe hacks for making it unboring / better?? If please share!

From the farm pancakes

Since this session started, our CSA has been sending us a recipe every week as a suggestion of how to use their goods. We had the ingredients on hand (many of them from the CSA, of course) for this pancake recipe and were intrigued by the whole wheat and cornmeal components, so we gave this a shot for breakfast. I noticed that the recipe didn't include baking soda, so I was a little skeptical, but made the recipe as printed in case there was some sort of farm-grown pancake magic here. Unfortunately this was not the case, and our pancakes came out quite dense as one would expect. However, I do look forward to trying these again with a proper dose of baking soda to hopefully get some fluffiness. We did enjoy the cornmeal flavor in these.

Brinkley Farms
Whole Wheat, Cornmeal Pancakes

1 cup Brinkley Farms 100% Whole Wheat Flour
½ cup Brinkley Farms Yellow Cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 Brinkley Farms brown egg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Directions:
Combine all dry ingredients, add wet ingredients. Mix well. (Batter will be somewhat thick, but if too thick you can add a little more buttermilk until desired consistency)

Pre-heat griddle or pan on medium heat, add desired amount of pancake batter to make desired size of cake. Cook on one side till the batter begins to form bubbles. Flip and cook till light, golden brown. Repeat till all batter is used. Serve alone or with your favorite syrup or honey. Pairs well with sausage links or bacon as a side!

And our CSA coordinator added "our kids like to add mini-chocolate chips to the batter as well!"

At least I flipped them perfectly!

Meal Plan Monday Post

Hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Due to the holiday our Meal Plan Monday Post has been bumped to Tuesday!

We headed to the beach for a family wedding and long weekend mini-vacation. We enjoyed the get-away.

The week before we left for the beach I made sure that we were cooking at home since we would probably be indulging throughout the weekend. The pork with sauteed apples and leeks is a new recipe; leeks appeared on the CSA last week! Lemon spaghetti is one of Patrick's favorite dishes and is a good "meat-less" dish. The lemon adds a lot of flavor to the dish! Then we had a marinaded salmon with asparagus side. We rounded on the week with a Chicken parmesan meatloaf. I doubled the recipe and froze one! Some meal plans are better than others for variety. Check out my protein variety this week! There was pork, fish (salmon), chicken, and a vegetarian meal.

Meal Plan for Monday May 19 - Sunday May 25

MEAL PLAN:
   Monday - Pork with sauteed apples and leeks
   Tuesday - Lemon spaghetti
   Wednesday - Salmon with asparagus
   Thursday - Chicken parmesan meatloaf
   Friday - Vacation through Memorial Day

We'll have the new recipes up on the blog soon.

Here's to summer starting!!

Egg Baked in Avocado

This egg baked in avocado has been popular on Pinterest and a few other places... I felt like I had seen it so much that I needed to try it! The premise is very simple - scoop out a bit of avocado, fill with egg, bake and top however desired.

A few tips (aka mistakes I made so that you don't):
1. Make sure you scoop out enough avocado. If you think you've scooped out enough, scoop some more to be on the safe side! Of course my egg spilled over the avocado.
2. Allow plenty of time for the egg to bake! Thank goodness Patrick doesn't have to punch a time clock at work or else he would be late quite a bit because his wife wanted to make him breakfast and she underestimated how long it would take to prep (happens a lot; sorry honey!).

The recipe I was following only topped the egg with chives, salt and pepper but I wanted to jazz it up a bit more. My topping mixture was a combination of the avocado I scooped out, chopped tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and salt & pepper. I added the mixture the final few minutes of baking to have it warmed through.

Once the egg has been cracked into the avocado it needs to bake in a preheated 425F oven for 15-20 minutes. It seems like you can really customize these however you want! We particularly enjoyed the tomato mixture on top.

We both really enjoyed it. The time factor is certainly something to consider. I'm not sure this method is that much better than a fried egg with toast and avocado; the tomato topping certainly added a lot of yumminess though. 

Patrick's reaction to learning the recipe was from Pinterest: "yeah, this seems like it would be from there." I guess my Pinterest recipe experiments are a bit on the extra creative side. 

Theater Steak

Whenever I go home my mom usually has a small pile of various things in my bedroom. This pile consists of items that she feels need to be brought to my attention. The pile is never the same; sometimes there are small gifts from neighborhood folks (this happened a lot recently with the wedding), items she's uncovered while cleaning the house that are mine and she'd like to see if I want to have it with me here, and there's also some newspaper clippings of sorts to share articles that I'd be interested in. Most recently in this pile was a section of the paper -- specifically the "Life" section from the N&O -- and this recipe caught my eye! She shared it for some other article but I read the whole section and saved it so I could make that recipe. I'm sure I would've tried the recipe had it not had such an interesting write up.

The recipe is called Theater Steak. The premise of the dish is simple: "a one-dish steak dinner that ... ensured a theater-goer made his curtain call on time." I highly recommend reading the article. And then making the dish!! You can read the article here. The author alludes to the simplicity of the dish and how she challenges herself to follow the recipe as is without making substitutions or altering the cooking method and I followed her lead. The dish turns out amazing. When we returned home with my pile of things (newspaper included) my mom also sent back some of her tasty homemade sourdough bread. I used her bread for the "thick slice of good-quality bread" the recipe calls for -- thanks Mom!

You'll see we served the recipe on our china for a fancy meal. This wasn't one of our anniversary meals. This was a celebratory meal for Patrick's recent promotion at work! He is such a hard worker and a devoted employee (he's working from home this evening as I edit/draft this post) who truly loves what he does. I'm glad he was recognized in this way and that his company sees him as an asset!

Theater Steak with Mushrooms, Onions & Grilled Bread Adapted from The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook | published on www.thekitchn.com
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 tablespoons neutral cooking oil, such as canola or safflower
2 (8-ounce) beef filets, preferably 1 1/2-inches thick, at room temperature
1/4 cup chicken stock or white wine
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 pound mixed mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 large onion, sliced into half moons
4 thick slices good-quality bread
1 cup spicy greens, such as arugula or watercress
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Directions
   Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a baking sheet with foil and set aside.
   Heat two tablespoons of oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high to high heat. Pat the filets very dry and season the side facing up generously with salt and pepper. When the oil is shimmering, place the filets, seasoned side down, in the skillet. Season the top with additional salt and pepper.
   Cook the steaks without disturbing until a deep golden brown crust has formed, 3 to 5 minutes. Flip the steaks and allow to cook for another minute or so. Place the steaks on the baking sheet (they should still be on the rare side, about 120°F on an instant read thermometer) and transfer to the oven.
   Return the skillet to high heat. Add the stock or wine and swirl to remove any caramelized bits from the bottom of the pan. Lower heat to medium and add 2 tablespoons butter. Add the mushrooms and onions and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook the mushroom mixture, stirring frequently, until tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
   Remove steaks from the oven and check their temperature: if they have reached 130°F remove them from the baking sheet and set aside to rest; if not, return them, along with the mushroom mixture, to the oven.
   Melt the remaining two tablespoons butter in the skillet. Add the bread and cook until toasted and golden brown on each side. Remove the steaks and mushroom mixture from the oven. Place about 1/4 cup greens over each piece of bread, followed by 1/4 of the mushroom mixture. Thinly slice the steaks lengthwise and arrange over the bread; pour any juices from the cutting board over the top.

Wisdom Teeth Removal Diet

Two and a half weeks ago I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. At this point in my recovery I am still cautious with crunchy / hard items but am just about back to normal. I thought I'd share a bit of what I ate the first week after recovery!

First week after wisdom teeth removal diet
   These first few items are all things you'd assume would be good for soft diets - jello, pudding, and ice cream. Yogurt and meal replacement drinks (like Slim Fast) were other things I ate to keep myself nourished.
   After just a few days I was really wanting something savory. All the other sweet soft foods just weren't very filling! I pureed two different vegetables on various days to satisfy this craving. In hindsight I should've researched homemade baby foods to have on hand for after the surgery!
   The first vegetable pureed was baby carrots! I boiled them in water until soft. Then added honey, some seasonings, and cream before pureeing. I adjusted the cream until the desired consistency was reached. Since larger food particles could get stuck in the back of the mouth I pureed the carrots until they were very smooth!
   The following day I made some super mashed potatoes. After the potatoes were boiled I used our Ninja blender individual attachment for pureeing the vegetables.

   After the potatoes were boiled, I added cream, seasonings, and spinach to make the mashed potatoes. I boiled too many potatoes for the individual attachment to puree at once so we had to do it twice. This meant that my spinach ratio was off a little bit. When Patrick made the leftover container of mashed potatoes he used the two different potato mixtures to make some nice artwork.

The smiley face has the extra spinach in it.

Second week after wisdom teeth removal diet

   When the second week rolled around I felt like I could start to venture back into normal foods little by little. It just so happened to be Cinco de Mayo and we met friends out at a Mexican restaurant. Unfortunately I couldn't have any margaritas (on pain meds) or chips and salsa (chips too crunchy) -- both of these things are my favorite things about Mexican restaurants. But I still enjoyed the company of friends! I was able to eat a combo plate with an enchilada and cheese quesadilla served with rice and refried beans. 

   At this point I can prepare meals in the kitchen that I can eat and would pass as substantial enough for Patrick. The prior week he was having to fend for himself for dinners. The first meal I prepared for us was this Cream of Tomato Soup with grilled cheese sandwiches. Then the next night I made macaroni and cheese, applesauce, and salmon cakes. Patrick commented that I fixed him all his favorite things... 

From this point on I slowly started introducing more heartier foods back into my diet. It will sure be good to be back to normal!

Special thanks to my mom and Patrick for taking such good care of me!!