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Veggie Full

December 14, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 15 comments

Halfway through a Market Basket shopping trip at 2:30 in the afternoon, it hit me. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. As much as I love to cook and eat, there are definitely days where I seem to wake up busy and completely miss the most important meal of the day. On this particular day, I woke up, did some quick blog and social media work, got ready, and headed to visit family for a few hours.

Market Basket shopping is definitely not my favorite thing in the world. It is crowded, disorganized, and not super clean, but boy is it cheap! Once I realized I needed to eat, I was a speedster, winding in and out of people as my husband stood in one spot with the grocery cart.

With a growling stomach and lingering sore throat, all I wanted were vegetables, and Market Basket tends to have cheap veggies in bulk which was perfect for what I wanted for our mid-day meal.

The second we got home, I got started chopping carrots, zucchini, red peppers, Brussels sprouts, potatoes, an onion, some garlic, and yes, that is a habanero.

vegetables

I love spicy. Angry smile

veggie ingredients

I also gathered olive oil, tahini, curry powder, almond butter, coconut milk, couscous and wheat berries.

wheat berries

I added some boiling water to the wheat berries and whole wheat couscous to let them soak while I prepped the vegetables.

garlic and habanero

I made several extra servings of this dish for weekday lunches, so the pan was FULL of veggies. I ended up transferring everything to a bigger pot with some olive oil to get the cooking started.

pile of veggies

I separately boiled the couscous and wheat berries until cooked through.

couscous

When the veggies were starting to soften, I poured in coconut milk, a few shakes of curry powder, a scoop of tahini, and a scoop of almond butter. Stirring everything together made for a creamy, flavorful sauce.

vegetable curry

At the last minute, I added in the cooked wheat berries and couscous, gave it a good stir, and served.

I probably share way too many recipes with coconut milk on this blog, but I just love it. It makes eating lots of veggies somehow much easier, and who doesn’t want to fit more veggies in their diets?

Do you ever skip meals completely unintentionally because of work or other activities?

P.S. The winner of the Kerrygold giveaway is Brian from A Thought for Food! Brian, please email me with your address so I can get that to the awesome people at Kerrygold.

Tags: coconut milk, Food, healthy, recipe, vegetables, Vegetarian

Thanksgiving Soup

October 7, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 13 comments

Cooler weather and rainy days have gotten us in the mood for soup, and long days at work, class, and events have made the slow cooker my best friend. We had some frozen turkey breasts that my mom sent the last time we were in NJ, a plethora of apples from our apple picking weekend, and carrots left over from my carrot ginger soup. Thanksgiving soup was born.

I started by adding the turkey to the slow cooker and seasoning it with pinches of sage, celery seed, black pepper, and a bit of cayenne pepper. Then I poured in a cup of apple cider and 2 cups of organic vegetable broth. After I added about 10 carrots, simply broken into pieces, I set the slow cooker to low and cooked it for about 3 hours.

At this point, the turkey was cooked almost all the way through (it started out frozen), and after letting it all cool, I removed the pot and popped it into the refrigerator to eat the next day.

We ended up ordering pizza Tuesday night; my Pizza Fail tasted fine, but it did not satisfy the need for pizza. So the Thanksgiving Soup sat in the refrigerator for another day.

Yesterday while working from home, I brought the soup back out, added a small chopped onion, 2 chopped apples, a little more cider, a pinch of sage, and a drizzle of white truffle oil, then set the soup on low for about 2 hours.

turkey soup

The soup is not very photogenic, but it was really delicious! It was a fork, knife, and spoon soup because I literally tossed most of the ingredients in whole, a meal that couldn’t be any less fancy, but one that hit the spot for 2 cold and tired people.

Served with a side of roasted cauliflower with white truffle oil, salt, and pepper, the soup made a great dinner.

roasted cauliflower

While finishing up the soup, I realized that our cider donuts from Smolak Farms were getting stale and decided to whip up some bread pudding. I didn’t have a recipe, so I just pulled together some regular bread pudding ingredients: 3 eggs, 1 cup of heavy cream, a couple shots of Irish whiskey, and cinnamon.

cider donuts

I poured the mixture over the donuts, made sure they were all nicely soaked, and put it in the oven at 380 for 10 minutes. You know it’s done when the liquid mixture is nice and firm

cider donuts bread pudding

YUM. You must make this. It is so simple and open to other mix in’s like pumpkin, vanilla, rum, honey, maple syrup. . . one reason I love bread pudding. I served it warm with a drizzle of maple syrup from our friend’s family farm. This could be my new favorite fall dessert and one I might just make for Thanksgiving.

It’s only Thursday, and I feel like I am about to fall over I am so tired. It will be nice to have a long weekend in NYC and NJ.

What is your favorite part of your Thanksgiving meal?

Tags: autumn, bread pudding, cider donuts, healthy, recipe, soup, turkey

Gazpacho & Gripes

September 30, 2010 in Uncategorized by traveleatlove | 21 comments

I know, I know. It’s autumn, and I should have moved on to everything pumpkin and squash, but I am loving heirloom tomatoes as long as I can get them! This week I bought quite the local summer veggie haul, and with the weather being in the 80’s, I couldn’t really help but take advantage of it. I am up and running again, building my base for the 2011 Boston Marathon, and I simply needed to make one of my favorite warm-weather dishes, gazpacho.

I started with 3 large heirloom tomatoes, 3 cloves of garlic, a small yellow onion, a yellow pepper, and a cucumber.

gazpacho ingredients

I couldn’t find any ripe peaches, so I cheated and used 2 peaches from a jar of Trader Joe’s peach halves, quite delicious, especially chopped up in oatmeal.

 

Trader Joe's peaches gazpacho ingredients

 

yellow pepper

To make the gazpacho, I chopped all of the above ingredients and tossed them in the food processer with 6 ice cubes, a cup of cold water, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, and a few dashes of hot sauce.

tomato peach gazpacho

The combination of peaches with the other ingredients is delicious and one I first had at Union a few weeks ago. I am ready for fall, but I will savor as long as I possibly can!

Now for the gripes! One of my favorite blogs is Melissa Nibbles, and I love her “Three Things Thursday” where she has a little venting session on things that are annoying her. While I tend to be a happy and positive person overall, there are certain things that just KILL me, and so I decided to take a page from Melissa’s book (er. . .  blog) and let it all out there. If you haven’t read her blog, definitely do, she is hilarious and delightfully real.

1) People who get on an escalator, stand in the middle, and hold on to both sides. . . then stay there. Why do we even have escalators? I am pretty sure most healthy Americans could stand to walk up or down a flight of stairs once in awhile. I find myself out and about during lunch, in a huge rush, and constantly stuck behind people who don’t get the “stand on the right, walk on the left” system that is a given in Europe. Haven’t we gotten the escalator memo?

2) Littering/not picking up after your dog – I see a LOT of this in my neighborhood and once had a neighbor who shared our backyard and didn’t pick up after her dog. This behavior makes you a gross human being. Period.

3) Adults who ride bikes on the sidewalk – bikes are vehicles, and if you are over the age of 16, you should be in the road, following the rules of the road, not riding up the back of my ankle on Comm Ave.

I love interactive posts. . . so tell us, what are you griping about?

Tags: gazpacho, healthy, recipe, soup, vegetables

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