Fruit Dip

Fruit Dip

I need to expand my appetizer database and found the perfect fruit dip to add to my appetizer list. The great thing about this recipe is that it is easy, fast, and delicious!

The recipe is adapted from Sweet Flours, a blog that I follow. I modified the recipe a bit to make it dairy free and in doing so I turned a cheese ball into a fruit dip. It tastes good, is easier than a cheese ball, and presents beautifully. In addition, it is low in fat and sugar.

I used Tofutini Better Than Cream Cheese. Here is what it looks like: 

Lemon Fruit Dip

8 ounces Tofutini Cream Cheese

Zest of 1 large lemon

Juice of ½ lemon

2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until mixed throughout.

Pour into a serving bowl and serve with the fruit of your choosing.

   I choose strawberries and grapes this time.

My latest quest: finding vegetable recipes

Vegetables L

I think I mentioned that I do not love vegetables. I have diagnosed myself with a genetic predisposition to a disinterest in vegetables. Thank you, Dad!

As a matter of fact, when I was a kid I asked if I could be a “meat-a-tarian” (on second thought, I also wanted to be a chip-a-tarian so I do like some vegetables ;) )

I realize that vegetables are good for me so I decided that the adult thing to do would be to embrace vegetables. Therefore, I plan to make vegetables a bigger focus in the meals I make.

So, how did we do on the vegetable front tonight? I believe a teacher would give me a “D” at best. I slaved over iceberg lettuce salads complete with cheese and dressing. The take away is that there is room for improvement!

I do have plans to improve, as I was reading an article today about rhubarb, a vegetable that is often forgotten. Lucky for me my parents have an abundance of the stuff and I love it! Rhubarb is in season now, so I encourage you to try it. It is tart, and I like it with truckloads of sugar. I know there are some great savory dishes with pork and rhubarb so you can look forward to some of those recipes in the days and weeks to come!

Stay tuned for the latest vegetable recipes!

Quinoa with Squash and Tomato

I have never made Quinoa before but since it is a new fad food I thought I should make it myself.

Quinoa is grain-like but is a distant cousin to beets and spinach. In addition, it has fiber, protein, and other minerals. You cook it like rice and can dress it up or down just like rice (read: it is ok plain but nothing fancy. The good news is that you can add to it and make it very good)!

It is a fad food, and therefore more expensive than rice or potatoes. I think I paid $13.00 for my package of 16 servings so it is just under $1.00 per serving.

Like rice, you boil 2 parts water (2 c.) and add 1 part quinoa (1 c.). Return the water to a boil, place the lid on the quinoa and let it simmer for approximately 13 minutes or until all of the water is dissolved. (I cooked my quinoa in 1 c. chicken broth and 1 c. water and that helped to give it some extra flavor.)

While the quinoa was cooking I cubed 2 zucchinis and 2 summer squash. I sautéed the vegetables in a pan and added ½ c. chopped onion and 2 small cloves garlic. I let this sauté for about 10 minutes and then I added 1 can chopped tomatoes, ¼ tsp. salt, 1 tsp. chili powder, ½ c. salsa, ½ tsp cumin, and ½ tsp paprika.  Once the vegetables were heated through I added the quinoa and served this with parmesan cheese and goat cheese. ( I thought the goat cheese and tomato made for a funky combination so I probably won’t mix those two together again.)

Homemade Hummus

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to hummus. I cannot get enough of it and in the past 3-4 years I have perfected my recipe.

Think of hummus as a dip. You take chickpeas or garbanzo beans and add other things to them until you have a creamy mixture that is perfect as a dip or sauce. The real benefit is that hummus is quite good for you.

It is good for you, but I make and eat at least a batch of hummus a week which may be in excess. Lucky for me, Bryan does not love it and certainly does not want to eat it weekly like I do, so I get the pleasure of eating all of it on my own!

For me, vegetables are best with hummus. I can eat all of the daily recommended servings of vegetables as long as there is hummus as a dip! Without hummus I rarely get all of the vegetables needed in a day into my diet.

I must warn you that my hummus is American-ized and is not entirely authentic. I am sure that I do not use enough olive oil and occasionally add things like dry ranch mix to change the hummus up a bit. I encourage you to experiment and make it as you like!

Hummus

1 can garbanzo beans or chickpeas, drained, reserving 2 Tbsp of the liquid

1 Tbsp Tahini (this is sesame seed paste) you might find it by the olive oil or peanut butter

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

2 Tbsp. liquid from the garbanzo beans

 Add the above ingredients and combine in a food processor. Drizzle in approx. 4 Tbsp. olive oil as the hummus is processing in the food processor. Process for 3-4 minutes or until smooth.

The Tahini will store in your cupboard for approximately a year. It separates, but just stir it all together and use it until it is gone. You can see it in the container - there is liquid on the top and solid on the bottom:

When you combine it, it looks like this:

 It comes in a larger container (probably 16 oz but when you only use 1 Tbsp at a time you may want to share it with your friends/family/neighbors).

To make this more authentic add more olive oil and more tahini – at least double of both.

I generally eat hummus with carrots and broccoli, but I also eat it combined with tuna or just on pita bread or crackers.

Cooking failure…

I was so excited to make hummus the other day because it is my favorite dip and I haven’t had it in about two weeks! Gasp! (I make it weekly and eat is all on my own because Bryan does notlove it).

I have heard that hummus is much better if you start with the dried garbanzo beans rather than the canned garbanzo beans. It made sense to me, and I was willing to try anything that would make my already mouth-watering hummus even a bit better.

So, the night before I put my garbanzo beans in a pot of cold water and set it in the refrigerator overnight to soak. When I got home from work the next day I immediately started making the hummus.

I added everything to the food processor and turned it on.

Humph. I thought to myself, “I know my blades need to be sharpened, but they are not that dull.” So, I took everything out of the food processor, made sure I had it put together correctly (I did – it is not that hard – it is just a food processor) and thought I would miraculously  have better luck. I turned on the food processor but things just did not look right.  

So, I decided that maybe with dried garbanzo beans it takes longer to combine and get all silky smooth so I left it running for about a minute longer than normal.

Finally, I gave up and decided that dry garbanzo beans were not for me. As I was pouring the edible but not great hummus into a container to take to work, I realized something important: You have to COOK the dried and then soaked garbanzo beans! When they are canned they are cooked!

DUH.

I won’t share the recipe or the pictures with you as it is all wrong, but I’ll try it again next week and (hopefully) have success so I can give you the full recipe.

We are all human and make mistakes when we are cooking, and I am not immune from that!

Homemade Pizza

Homemade BBQ Pizza

For more than a year Bryan and I made Pizza every Sunday night. It was a great tradition but we put the tradition on hold because I got tired of Pizza and wanted to expand our pallet beyond the staple food of kids and college students. We tried to come up with appetizer recipes, but we have not been as committed to appetizers and are back to eating pizza weekly.

My sister found this pizza crust recipe somewhere and I like to modify it (imagine that)! It is a yeast dough that has to rise, but I made the crust, let it rise, assembled the pizza, baked it, and sat down to eat in an hour so do not let it overwhelm you.

The dough can be kneeded with a bread hook on a stand mixer or you can kneed it by hand. I rarely use the stand mixer as that means more dishes.

When you combine the yeast and water it will look like this:

Continue to stir the yeast and water until it looks like cloudy water.

Add the salt, olive oil, honey and 1 cup of flour. Add additional flour (you will probably add 2 cups total flour) until it looks like this:

Once the dough looks like the above picture you are ready to start kneeding by hand.

TIP: Take off your jewelry! You can see why in the pictures below.

To kneed, gather all of the dough in one side of the bowl (I put it in the bottom of the bowl). Place ½ c. flour or less in the bowl that does not have dough (for me this is the top of the bowl). Cup your hand where the flour is (at the top of the bowl) and slide your hand toward the dough. Your hand should be in a loose cup shape, like above, and as you gather the dough in your hand push down you wrist. Replace your hand at the top of the bowl and repeat many times.

When the dough is sticky, add more flour, adding ¼ c. at a time and continue kneeding. Repeat this process as much as necessary but do not use more flour than the recipe calls for.

One way I know that I have added enough flour is that the dough no longer sticks to my hand and looks like this:

Place the dough in a container that is at least twice its size and has an airtight lid. Put the plug in your kitchen sink and fill the sink with 120 degree water. You want to fill the sink so that the dough in its container sits in water but does not float. Leave the dough in the water until it is double in size. (The recipe calls for an hour, but I wait for the airtight lit to pop off and then move on. Time is of the essence, right?) Once the airtight lid pops off the dough it will be about double in size and will look like this:

Homemade Pizza Dough:

1 pkg or 1 Tbsp. yeast dissolved in 1 c. 120 degree water

½ tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. honey

2 ½ - 3 ½ c. flour

Once the yeast is dissolved in the water add the salt, olive oil, and honey. Stir to combine and then add 1 cup of flour. Stir to combine. Add another cup of flour and start kneeding the dough and adding the additional flour as necessary.

Cover, and let rise for 1 hour.

Spread on a pan, and bake the dough alone at 450 degrees for 5-7 minutes.

Take the pizza out of the oven and assemble the pizza, then bake at 450 degrees for 10-13 minutes longer.

Tuna Salad

I love to spend time in the kitchen and honestly, the more complicated and time consuming the recipe, the better! Reality and my dreams are not congruent, as I do not always have time to make a glamorous and nutritious meal while life goes on around me (and I am sure that I am not alone in this feeling).

Therefore, one of my goals with this blog is to try to find or make up some fast recipes for weeknight meals. I can already tell this will require some creativity on my part as the only fast meals I know are also a bit dull. I think we all can benefit, so let me know if you have suggestions or things you make that are fast, tasty, and nutritious.

Our recent fast meal proves that I have some work to do as it was very common/plain. Actually, it was plain and tasty – so I succeeded in at least one aspect!

Advance preparation helped make this a quick supper as I served the tuna salad on the cornmeal rolls I made earlier this week (which are oh-so good!) In addition, I boiled two eggs this morning while I was getting ready to go to work and put them as well as a can of tuna in the fridge so that we could eat cold tuna salad sandwiches tonight. You see, I have an aversion to room-temperature tuna. I like my protein either hot or cold. Period.

To a can of drained, water packed tuna, I added:

 2 chopped hard boiled eggs

1/8 c. chopped onions

¼ tsp. garlic salt

¼ tsp pepper

1 tsp. lime juice

3 Tbsp. mayonnaise

I planned to eat this 4 times, (supper for Bryan and I and then lunch for Bryan and I) but we were hungry and ate it all in one sitting J.  

I had some frozen vegetables in the refrigerator so I steamed those and drizzled some balsamic vinaigrette and chopped dried cherries for garnish. I don’t love vegetables; actually, I don’t even like them. As a matter of fact, I asked my dad if I could be a meat-atarian when I was a child! Alas, I know that I need them so I eat them. As I was eating and wishing I had fresh vegetables instead I decided that I am embracing summer and all of its bounty so I will not buy frozen vegetables.

At least for awhile.

At least until I get in a rush and go for the fast, easy option.