Be more with less

Sometime back somehow I landed on a post at this blog, Be more with less, The post struck a chord with me and since then I’ve become a huge fan of this blog. Courtney’s writings always make so much sense and they’re always so new! Many a times with popular blogs that you read regularly, you tend to find that the author runs out of things to say and is simply trying to fill. I haven’t found that true with her, at least not till now. Initially I wanted to link a few posts of hers which I simply loved and then I realized that that list was growing and growing. So I figured I would instead mention her blog itself. If you’re a minimalist or want to be one, hop over to her blog and I’m sure you’ll get highly motivated!

Oats Idli

Sounds weird doesn’t it?!?! It doesn’t taste weird, trust me! In fact it’s delicious and it is healthy! How many times have you heard delicious and healthy in the same sentence?!?! I found the recipe here.

Ingredients:

• Instant oats - 1 cup
• Suji - 1/2 cup
• Curd - 1/2 cup
• Water - 3/4 or as required
• Carrot - 1 medium sized grated
• Mustard Seeds - 2tsp
• Green chilli - 1 tsp finely chopped
• Salt - to taste
• Hing - 1/2 tsp
• Coriander leaves - 2 tsp finely chopped (I didn’t have these)
• Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
• Oil - to grease idli plates

Method:

1. Dry roast oats for 3-4 minutes. Let it cool and then grind to a fine powder ( I used my coffee grinder to do the job).
2. Dry roast rava for 3-4 mins.
3. Heat a tsp of oil and add mustard seeds. Let them splutter. Then add green chillies and grated carrot. Saute till carrots are slightly cooked.
4. Mix all the ingredients (except oil for greasing plates). If the batter is too thick, add a more water.
5. Fill cooker about 1” with water. Heat to a rolling boil. Grease the idli plates.
6. Spoon the batter into the plates. The idlis are going to fluff up so leave the idli cups half empty.
7. Put the idli stand in the cooker (do not put a whistle). Steam for 15 minutes.
8. To remove the idlis from the idli plate, use a spoon dipped in cold water. I’ve found that it works the best for me.

Notes:

• If the idlis are hard, it’s quite possible that the batter was thick. The batter should not be running consistency but it shouldn’t be too thick either.

Potato Leek Casserole

Since we subscribed to the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) , we’ve been inundated with new and never-eaten-before vegetables. Well not that the CSA forces that on us, we can pick what we want but we always feel like getting new vegetables to break the ennui resulting from the same-old-veggies! So one time we got leeks. Now let me tell you  there was a time when I wasn’t sure that leeks were vegetables!

Thus began my search for a recipe that uses leeks as the primary vegetable. My favorite source is allrecipes.com but sometimes I like to search foodgawker too – it’s a feast for the eyes! And it’s the last site you should go to if you’re hungry! Anyways, I found this Cheesy Potato Leek Casserole through foodgawker and I must say that we absolutely loved it! Here’s a poor photo of it – unfortunately I couldn’t grab a photo when it came right from the oven. Our tummies beckoned it more than the camera.

Well you must be thinking being half eaten is not the only problem with the photo There’s poor lighting, bad background and so on and so forth. However I though no photo is better than a not-so-good photo!

I modified the ingredients a little bit based on what I had at home and would suggest the same to all. There’s no need to stick to the veggies listed here – feel free to substitute them with what you like and what you have. Having said that I’m not sure how it’ll turn out with veggies that contain a lot of water like tomato, zucchini, etc.

Here’s what I used:

• 4 leeks
• 1 onion
• 1-2 big potato
• 3-4 fresno peppers (or any other mild pepper)
• 2 carrots
• 4 oz cream cheese (= 2 mini tubs of cream cheese)
• some leftover heavy cream (around 1/4 cup)
• 1/2 cup shredded mozarella
• 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs

To cook:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F.
2. For the veggies:
• Potato – peel and slice thinly about 1/8 inch
• Peppers, Leeks and onion – chop them
• Carrot – grate it.
3. Stir fry all veggies except potato.
4. Soften the cream cheese by microwaving it and then whisk it a little.
5. Add the cream cheese and the heavy cream to the veggies and mix well. No need to heat them together.
6. Grease a 8” X 8” baking dish.
7. Line it with potatoes and then spread the veggie mixture on top of it. Spread the bread crumbs and the mozzarella cheese on top.
8. Bake for 30-40 minutes.

Winter/Fall vegetable gardening

Back in June, we’d planted a few vegetables. Except for the zucchini and eggplant, all did well. We didn’t get a bumper crop of tomatoes thanks to the lack of heat in northwest. I’m so glad we didn’t plant any peppers! However to compensate we did get an Indian summer which turned a few our tomatoes bright red. Here’s a look:

All the tomatoes we got were from the hybrid plant, didn’t get any from the heirloom variety. If you compare the strawberry plant from this post, you can see how much it’s loving it’s new location! We found that it too like most of the plants loves sunlight.

Motivated by our summer trysts, we planted some fall/winter veggies:

Yep – that’s the zucchini plant at the very back. It grew pretty well but unfortunately some animal would eat away all the baby zucchinis. Ok so we’ve some cauliflower in the front, then a row of cabbage on the right, behind the cauliflowers are come herbs and you can see some starters around which weren’t planted then. This photos was taken when we just planted these veggies and I can tell you they’ve grown – like really grown! So let me snap a photo of them soon to show you how well they’re doing!

Strawberry Ice cream

As a child it always fascinated me that some people on this earth could make ice cream at home – the kind that you get at stores! It was like a dream come true! That fascination wore off a little when I came to US and I saw that you could buy ice cream in “tubs” and they were so economical!! However when I started looking at the list of ingredients I put an ice cream maker on my wish list so that I could make pure and natural ice cream! My initial thought was to purchase a used one as I wasn’t sure how long my fad is going to last. However that wasn’t God’s intention. He intervened in the form of a costco coupon which made a brand new IC maker cheaper than a used one. So my “dream” came true and we brought home a glossy red Cuisinart ice cream maker! Enough with the stories let me get down to what I did with this beauty!

My first attempt was a peach frozen yogurt – though tasty it was a little icy for a frozen yogurt. Second was a mango tango sorbet – I simply churned some Naked mango smoothie. It was quite tasty considering how healthy it was; but I wasn’t there yet. I wanted to make some “real” ice cream. So I hunted and found this Eggless strawberry ice cream recipe. The ice cream was AWESOME! It brought back childhood memories. It was just like the Amul ice cream we used to have in India (except mine had real fruits )! That was the first time I realized the difference between the ice cream in US and India. In my research for an ice cream recipe I’d found that ice creams here were more custard-like and in most cases had egg; they were dense. Indian ice cream is more creamy and light (I don’t think there’s anything good or bad with either – just that they’re different). That’s exactly what my home-made ice cream tasted like – creamy and fluffy! Eureka!

I halved the recipe to fit in my ice cream maker. Since I didn’t have whole milk as well as coloring and I forgot to put salt, these are the ingredients from the recipe that I ended up using:

• 1/2 cup low fat milk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cups mashed pureed fresh strawberries – I pureed the strawberries because I didn’t want big chunks. I left some tiny little chunks while pureeing.
• 1-2 tsp honey – I’d read that honey prevents crystallization. Did it really? I don’t know but since my ice cream turned out perfect I’m not making it without honey!

To make ice cream:

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients. Prepare the ice cream in your machine per manufacturer’s direction. In my machine, I’d to switch on the machine and pour the mixture through the opening. I believe in churning a little more so I timed it for 30 minutes; and off I went to do my chores. When I came back, the machine was almost overflowing. Thankfully the batter was all frozen otherwise I would’ve had a mess.

Do you see the rose pink color of the ice cream? Pureeing the strawberries gave that. I didn’t use any coloring!

I think this is a great basic recipe and I’m going to try it out with different fruits.

Tailored expectations

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me” – George Bernard Shaw

This was the quote on my calendar (I absolutely dig that calendar, it’s called Chicken Soup for the Soul calendar) last month – and I quite liked it. Very thought provoking.

We all need The Seam Ripper!

The other day I was sewing something (yes I sew and if you would like a peek into my sewing adventures then check them out here) and I accidentally made a wrong stitch. Well it often happens, this wasn’t the first time; but it sure was the first philosophical seam ripping time! You see when I was ripping the seam, I thought to myself that it took me just a few seconds to make a wrong seam but almost 15 minutes to rip it off and I realized that draw an analogy to so many situations in life. It’s so easy to gain weight but so hard to lose it. It’s easy to adopt bad habits but so hard to let them go. And so many more. Don’t you think so?

So we all need The Seam Ripper Of Life that makes it all easy!