Hello, loyal three readers! I took a little detour for a couple of weeks to jump a couple of headache hurdles and then run a marathon (a real one, not a metaphorical one :)). The race was planned; the migraines were not! But on the plus side, I’m so glad the headaches came a few days before the marathon … I’m just not sure I could have covered 26.2 miles with a throbbing noggin as WELL as throbbing legs!

The first couple of weeks after a big race like that always send me into fits of laziness, where the sofa becomes my new best friend and the cat welcomes a new bedmate once the sun comes up. (When I’m training, I’m up well before the sun and off to the gym!) Though I’ve been dutifully making dinner most nights – and taking photos of each meal, too! – I’ve been a slouch, clearly, in the blogging department. But now I’m back on the wagon – in my writing as well as my training!

And what better way to come back into the blogosphere than with one of my new favorite meals, veggie paella?

I believe I haven’t yet espoused the love I have for my new Le Creuset, which, while certainly a splurge, is quickly becoming one of my favorite kitchen additions. (And truly, it wasn’t really a splurge at all, as I paid for it via a gift card! Oh, I do love a free trip to the cooking store.) Now, the last time I made paella in the French oven, it did not go quite as planned. Oh, sure, it ended up tasting just fine, but it took so long to cook that I finally had to give up, leave the meal in LeeLee’s capable hands, and storm off to my bowling league, where I ate a sad old tired grilled-cheese sandwich so I wouldn’t faint there on Lane 34. I did have some when I got home from bowling, and ate on it all week for lunch, but still. It was not the triumphant Le Creuset arrival I had anticipated!

Tonight, though, changed all that.

See, the problem I had last time (I think) was that I didn’t let the paella mixture come to a hearty boil. I let it bubble up a little, sure, but I didn’t really let it get going before I put it in the oven. So therefore, the rice took forever to cook, sending me into fits of despair each time I opened the oven and popped the lid (I know, not a wise idea either, but I was in A State) and put my teeth on another little hard pellet of grain. This time, I let the paella really get moving before I put the dish in the oven – and within 25 minutes, dinner was ready!

As I write this, it’s all I can do not to sneak back into the kitchen while LeeLee is at a meeting and have another spoonful of paella out of his lunch portion for tomorrow (because I certainly wouldn’t want to steal from myself!). It was really that good. If I do say so myself. And I feel like I can brag a little this time around, because last time’s turned out so very poorly in the cooking portion.

This time, however, the veggie shrimp and chicken simply popped with a saffronny goodness, the peas plumped up, the yellow bell pepper and garlic and onion all nice and golden. All hail the Le Creuset!

No stats today because, to be honest, I have misplaced my grocery receipt. The climb back from post-marathon laziness is steep!

:)

First of all, I apologize for the iPhone photo; my camera’s batteries ran down right there at the dinner table (as did the batteries to our fancy-dancy new corkscrew Mike got for his birthday – I think a battery thief is afoot!). I’ll replace them tomorrow morning.

Anyway. On to tonight’s meal!

Rarely have I gotten the hang of Thai cooking; I adore it so, but I’m never able to truly replicate restaurant quality at home. Even the veggies in peanut sauce I made a couple of weeks ago wasn’t quite up to par. It was good, for a homemade attempt at Thai … but I’d just as soon have gone out for the real deal!

But tonight … wow! Finally, a dish I can make.

This is another one from my new Vegetarian Slow Cooker book, and it didn’t disappoint. This morning, I sautéed some onions, minced gingerroot, and garlic for a few minutes until everything had softened up, and then added a cup’s worth of broth to the mix. Once I brought that to a boil, I poured the whole pan into my Crock-Pot atop some diced sweet potatoes and white potatoes, and let the mixture cook all day while I was at work.

When I got home tonight, I mixed some Thai red curry paste in with some coconut milk, threw in a can of drained peas, and flicked the cooker up to high for a few minutes to let everything heat up nicely. As soon as LeeLee got home, dinner was ready to roll!

Normally I would have made some jasmine rice in the rice cooker, but LeeLee had an evening meeting, so I just brought out a Seeds of Change microwaveable rice pouch and called it a day. Sometimes, one must pay for convenience. :)

Suffice it to say, this is definitely a meal I’ll make again. In fact, I can’t wait to dive into the leftovers tomorrow!

The stats:

Sweet potatoes: $4.98 ($2.49/person)
White potatoes: $2.68 ($1.34/person)
Peas: $0.89 ($0.45/person)
Red curry paste: $0.62 ($0.31/person)
Coconut milk: $1.75 ($0.88/person)
Onion: $0.90 ($0.45/person)
Broth: $1.29 ($0.65/person)
Gingerroot: $0.59 ($0.30/person)
Rice: $3.00 ($1.50/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $16.80 … or $8.37 per person.
BUT WAIT! This recipe makes enough for two lunches the next day. So the per-person price goes down even more!

:)

A day late, I bring you: A Crock-Pot Creation!

(Hey, the snow’s still on the ground! I’m not THAT late.)

When I told a colleague the other day that I would be making pizza soup this week, I’m afraid she took me literally. “Pizza SOUP?” she asked, and suddenly I realized she must be imagining me putting a whole box of Papa John’s into my new food processor (thanks, Mom!) and proclaiming, “Soup’s on!”

Once I explained what the ingredients actually were – basically it’s a, um, souped-up version of tomato bisque (if you’ll pardon the pun – teehee!) – my colleague’s face relaxed and she smiled. “Oh, that sounds GOOD!”

It really is!

Twenty minutes before the meal was to be served, I tossed some penne pasta into the crockery and turned the dial up to High. Five minutes later, I heated up some garlic bread, and voila! A hearty meal fit for a snow day. Add a little wine into the mix – in a glass, I mean, not the soup bowl! – and it was a wonderful dinnertime treat indeed.

The stats:

Pizza sauce: $1.69 ($0.85/person)
Veggie pepperoni: $3.99 ($2.00/person)
Veggie chorizo: $3.99 ($2.00/person)
Penne pasta: $0.99 ($0.25/person)
Bell pepper: $1.17 ($0.59/person)
Diced tomatoes: $1.00 ($0.50/person)
Daiya vegan cheese for garnish: $4.99 ($1.25/person)
Garlic bread: $2.99 ($0.75/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $20.81 … or $8.19 per person.
BUT WAIT! This recipe leaves us enough for at least two more leftover servings – one of which will be going into our freezer for later consumption. :) So the per-person price goes down even more!

:)

I beat the snow home by about 5 minutes tonight, parking the car just before the traffic got really bad, sending even our quiet little neighborhood into a frenzy of honking horns and hazard lights. LeeLee wasn’t so lucky; he arrived home an hour and a half after the snow really got cranked up, wet and cold after having walked the mile and a half from his office.

If I’d really been thinking this morning, I would have put something in the Crock-Pot to really get the house smelling like winter and comfort food. But this morning, I still held out a modicum of hope that I’d be able to attend tonight’s book club a good hourlong drive away! One look at noontime weather report cured me of those dreams, however (and shortly thereafter, the book club organizer sent out a note postponing the meeting, so no harm, no foul!).

So, the Crock-Pot may not have been called into service, but I turned to the next best thing – “steak” medallions with gravy, mashed potatoes, and English peas. If that’s not comfort food, I don’t know what is!

The hidden beauty of this meal is that it also doesn’t take too long to make, in the end. (Though I made it home early from the office, my day’s work duties weren’t done, so I hadn’t the time to play around in the kitchen!) But its taste is exponentially greater than the time it takes to put dinner together. In no time, LeeLee and I had cleaned every morsel of “steak” and peas off our plates, leaving quite a few servings of potatoes in the pot after having more than enough at dinner. (When it comes to mashed potatoes, I always seem to make enough for an army. I can’t help it.) But no matter; they’ll be great for leftovers later!

There’s no magic to this dish, but it always goes over well. And tonight, it provided enough fuel for us to complete Round 1 of snow-shoveling! And if that’s not a ringing endorsement, than I don’t know what is.

The stats:

“Steak”: $4.99 ($2.50/person)
English peas: $2.78 ($1.39/person)
Potatoes: $3.99 ($1.00/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $11.76 … or $4.89 per person.
BUT WAIT! This recipe leaves us with a TON of mashed potatoes to use as lunch ingredients for the rest of the week. So the per-person price goes down even more!

:)

Dinner on the table in 5 minutes’ time? Can do!

Tonight brought with it a quick turnaround time; LeeLee had a meeting tonight that was slated to begin half an hour after his arrival home. I made it home earlier than he did tonight, so when he called to say he was coming, I went into action.

I’ve been so good about using the rice cooker lately, but tonight I simply didn’t have the time, so out came a package of good old Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice. While it cooked in the microwave, I emptied a can of red beans into a stovetop pot and brought the veggie chorizo out of the fridge. Sub the rice out, swap the chorizo into the microwave, and two minutes later, dinner was served!

It could’ve used some collard greens as a side item, but overall I’d say this was a successful Monday-night dish. And tasty, too!

The stats:

Red beans: $0.88 ($0.44/person)
Rice: $2.49 ($1.25/person)
Chorizo: $3.99 ($1.00/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $7.36 … or $2.69 per person.

:)

Perhaps the title of this post should say “Lengthy” rather than “Long” – the latter sounds like it was a boring old extended time cooking things I’d rather not have eaten. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Rather, I thoroughly enjoyed four consecutive days off from work (I took Friday off to augment our Monday holiday) … and I enjoyed puttering in the kitchen, too.

On Thursday evening I made “sausage”-kale soup with garlic bread, which turned out to be the perfect on-the-go dish! LeeLee popped in for a quick dinner break before heading back to work, and I like to think this meal helped sustain him for a long night of burning the midnight (or 2 a.m.!) oil. It helped me, too, during a long night of college-basketball-watching. :)

I spent Friday afternoon making a dozen bagels – which turned out great, if I do say so myself (though I’m sorry I didn’t take any pictures!), and for dinner we treated ourselves to a night out, but come Saturday I was right back to work. We had some errands we needed to run in the afternoon, but before we left the house, I sautéed some winter vegetables and mixed them with some barley, veggie broth, and diced tomatoes before plunking the whole pan’s worth of goodies in the Crock-Pot for an afternoon of simmering. This winter-vegetable casserole was a first for me – another entry in my new Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook. And while I know you’re not supposed to try new recipes when entertaining, I say to heck with that. The risk usually pays off – and it did on Saturday! Served alongside some Quorn cutlets and English peas and paired with a nice red wine, it was a meal fit for guests.

On Sunday, many hours after a morning brunch at home (in the picture above, you can see the homemade bagels propping up our scrambled tofu), we went to some friends’ home for a dinner party – it had a South of the Border theme, so we brought along a “Mexican Lasagna,” from the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. It seemed to go over well; we had just enough left over for two small servings at the next day’s lunch, along with plenty of tacos that our hosts insisted we take (they had dozens of fixings left over!).

I neglected to take a photo of the lasagna on my way out the door – even though our friends live five minutes away, we were running late – but you can see the leftovers in the photo above!

Last night I made a chik’n divan, since I had some extra time around the house, and we devoured the leftovers for lunch today. Chik’n divan isn’t hard to make, but it just takes time, which as you well know is at a premium during a normal workweek!

Which brings us to tonight – succotash with brown rice and “sausage”-cheese muffins! A perfect comfort-food meal for a night where the ice coats the sidewalks outside and makes us long for our native Gulf Coast.

Stats will return tomorrow! I hope y’all had as nice of a weekend as we did!

:)

First of all, I just want to register that my trusty old Crock-Pot has really gotten a workout so far this year! It’s been called into service nearly every day, and I just don’t know what I’d do without it!

Today, it cooked BBQ chik’n and cornbread just beautifully. I prepared the meal – placing the filling in the bottom of the crockery and then spooning the cornbread mixture on top – and flipped the switch to Low, and by the time I got home nine hours or so later, the cornbread was beautifully brown and the filling had taken on a smoky and delicious flavor. I love coming home to a Crock-Pot meal – the aroma is great! For a food-lover like me, it’s better than potpourri. :)

Anyway, I felt like the meal needed something to round it out, and I wasn’t really in the mood for a salad – salads and snow seem like a strange combination! So I put on a can (two small cans, actually; Safeway was out of the normal size) of English peas and dinner was served.

This meal never disappoints; we made light work out of a serving and a half or so apiece, and mowed through the peas in seconds flat. But we’ve still got enough chik’n and cornbread for two more hearty lunch servings. Hooray!

The stats:

Morningstar Farms chik’n strips: $4.99 ($2.50/person)
Barbecue sauce: $1.99 ($1.00/person)
Corn: $1.99 ($1.00/person)
Jiffy mix (two boxes): $1.00 ($0.50/person)
Eggs (two): $0.84 ($0.42/person)
Soy milk (2/3 cup): $0.48 ($0.24/person)
English peas (two cans): $2.78 ($1.39/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $14.07 … or $7.05 per person.
BUT WAIT! This meal makes enough for two more servings. So the per-person price goes down even more!

:)

Boy, we’ve been having a lot of soup lately! But these days, as cold as it’s been (with more snow predicted for tomorrow!), soup really appeals to my taste buds in a way that it doesn’t the other, say, 10 months out of the year. In fact, as I check out my menu plan for the rest of the week I see that there are several more days of various and sundry soups coming down the pipe … and I’m totally OK with that.

But back to tonight. I made this Crock-Pot special for the first time a few weeks ago after my friend Jessica sent me the recipe, and it was such a hit at Chez Recessionista that I knew I had to whip up another batch in short order. Already it’s become one of LeeLee’s favorite dishes, and the best part is it takes about five minutes to make in the morning. What could be better?

Jess’ recipe is genius in its simplicity. Simply take some shredded chicken (we used Morningstar Farms strips, of course), put it in the Crock-Pot, and add a can of black beans, a can of corn, a can of chili beans, a can of Rotel (or, you know, in our case, Safeway Tomatoes and Green Chiles), a can of tomato sauce, and four cups of broth, mix in some minced onions, add a packet of taco seasoning, and let ‘er rip! After a long day at work, come home and eat up. And then – if you’re a family of two, like LeeLee and me – prepare to put plenty away in the fridge or freezer for later. :) It makes plenty!

So thanks, Jessica, for the great idea! This will be a wintertime staple, for sure.

The stats:

Chik’n strips: $4.99 ($2.50/person)
Black beans: $0.89 ($0.45/person)
Chili beans: $0.89 ($0.45/person)
Corn: $1.00 ($0.50/person)
Vegetable broth: $2.50 ($1.25/person)
Taco seasoning: $1.99 ($1.00/person)
Tomatoes and Green Chilies: $1.09 ($0.55/person)
Tomato sauce: $0.89 ($0.45/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $14.24 … or $7.15 per person.
BUT WAIT! This meal makes at least two more servings (and probably more, to be honest – it’s cooling now, so I’ve not put any in Gladware just yet). So the per-person price goes down even more!

:)

Well, here we are, coming to the end of another weekend. I’m sorry to see this one go – it was Big Fun!

So, what did we do? Well, we cooked quite a bit – more than a usual weekend! But LeeLee and I felt like we needed to make up for lost home-cooked meals since we’d eaten out several times during the week (a rarity for us). And if I do say so myself, the homemade end results weren’t really much of a sacrifice in the quality department. (I’ll let LeeLee chime in down in the comments if he disagrees. I trust he can set the record straight. :))

On Saturday morning, after my run, I prepared a recipe from a book I received for Christmas – Mixed Vegetables with Peanut Sauce from The Vegetarian Slow Cooker. I flipped the Crock-Pot to low and we promptly left for the afternoon, and when we returned, dinner was nearly complete! I just had to whip up a quick peanut sauce and mix it in with the veggies … and since we were running late for a movie, I decided to forgo the rice cooker in favor of good old Uncle Ben. Sometimes time trumps savings!

The verdict? Success! Next time I will add a little something sweet to cut the peanut sauce’s tanginess a little, but other than that I was quite pleased with how this meal turned out. It was hearty, easy to make, wonderful to eat, and gave me a chance to whip up something in a cuisine style I’m not used to cooking with. I can’t wait to give it another go!

This morning, we woke up way early to hit the early service at church, and then returned home and actually spent a rare Sunday morning truly relaxing – reading the newspaper, watching the morning news shows, drinking coffee, the whole nine yards. While we relaxed, I took 10 minutes to put tonight’s dinner in the Crock-Pot – a vegetable soup teeming with odds and ends from the pantry and crisper.

We’ll get back to dinner in a second; we have to eat lunch first! And today’s took on a more brunchy theme – the menu consisted of tofu breakfast burritos and a side of grits. It was also served much earlier than a normal lunch (try 11 o’clock on for size) because we had woken up with the sun for church. So brunch fit the bill.

I think I’m finally figuring out the tofu scramble I’ve made for nearly a decade. Recently, I added a can of tomatoes and green chiles (that’s Rotel for you brand-name people; we’re sticking with Safeway brand till there’s a sale!) to the pan as I began to sauté my tofu, and I feel like the dish is better for it. Within about 15 minutes, the liquid has evaporated and you’re left with a meaty, flavorful dish that really pops. (I also add turmeric, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and minced onion at the beginning of the cooking process; I always have. The tofu absorbs it all beautifully!)

The last time I made this scramble, LeeLee and I decided to serve it in flour tortillas to create breakfast burritos. Genius! With a base layer of refried beans and a generous portion of scramble, these burritos are perfect for a lazy Sunday morning. And we wouldn’t be Southern if we didn’t serve grits, so you’ll always find them on the menu, as well. (Next time, though, I just might sauté some home fries, instead. We shall see.)

Anyway, brunch was as well-received as ever (it could have been just because LeeLee was starving!) … and I had an extra burrito left over, which I enjoyed tonight after arriving home from an evening out with friends. :)

But before I headed out to meet friends, I needed a quick dinner! The vegetable soup was ready and waiting; about 15 minutes before I was to serve it, I put some garlic bread in the oven as well to complete the meal.

I’d not tried this particular soup configuration before (“soup configuration” – there’s a phrase that doesn’t get used often enough! :)), but I was pleased with the results. I mixed together two cans of diced tomatoes, a can of green beans, a leftover turnip (the root, not the greens), some cole-slaw mix, some potatoes, half an onion, some garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and then poured a box (four cups or so) of vegetable broth over the top, and just let the Crock-Pot do the hard work for the day. Around 3, I determined the potatoes weren’t cooking fast enough on Low, so I kicked it up to High for a couple more hours. And voila! A hearty, healthy soup that produced plenty of leftovers for this week’s lunches!

A little red wine would have complemented the meal beautifully, but I was getting ready to drive, so I held off. But next time I’ll have a bottle uncorked and ready!

So, all in all, not a bad weekend of dining-in here at Chez Recessionista. Stats to return tomorrow; in the meantime, have a great week!

:)