Daria Can Cook – and so can you!

… make a bean dip and a frittata.

It was a British-isles-type of cool, grey, wet day yesterday, so I mostly hunkered down with tea and books. The little time I spent in the kitchen yielded this:

The green one is a bean dip similar to this one. One cup of white beans, a giant bunch of basil, the juice of one lemon, a few glugs of olive oil, a clove of garlic, and some s&p played in the food processor for a few minutes. The white one is a slice of lactose-free muenster, crumbly from being frozen and thawed. Mmmm.

Dinner was inspired by this post at Tea & Cookies. We had a whole lotta amaranth leaves and kale on their way to spoilage and some CSA bacon leftover from Friday’s dinner, which was these amazing BLTs minus the L because we ate our two heads in two days (woohoo huge salads!):

So we sauteed up our CSA potatoes, leeks, amaranth leaves, and kale along with our fabulous bacon, mixed them with 8 eggs and 2 slice of lactose-free muenster in a casserole dish, and baked them until we got this:

Frittata-tastic! This bacon is out of this world. It’s simply pork, maple syrup, and salt. No nitrates or nitrites, no frightening preservatives. Pure love. I was worried that our frittata would suffer from our failure to add any herbs, but the bacon and the cheese provided more than enough flavor.

It’s still cloudy, but I’m hoping the sun will pop out so I can enjoy it when I go running. Gotta get that natural vitamin D while I can! How is your weekend going?

And on a sidenote, is anyone else having trouble with google reader this morning? Nothing will load in mine, and it’s totally cramping my style.

T and I rarely do lunch together, but we both happened to be home at the same time today. Our veggie CSA partners are out of town, so we have a whole box of produce to polish off by ourselves. A daunting task, but I think we’re up to it.

We did our level best to make a dent by having Hugh Jass salads.

Mine had beautiful purple kale, spring mix, lettuce, and grated white carrot (!) from our CSA share, plus half an avocado and a big ol dollop of my garlicky bean spread.

These white carrots are crazy! They look like this:

but they taste like orange carrots. Intriguing.

Actually, I don’t remember where I acquired this knowledge, but I remember hearing that the orange strain of carrots was popularized to honor a Dutch king and it’s been the dominant variety ever since. History: it’s crazy! (I heart you, Kate Beaton.)

Yesterday I threw some bananas in the freezer in preparation to test out the famous banana soft serve. In a moment of insanity, I thought “why peel the bananas first? I’ll just peel them right before I blend them.”

Folks, this does not work. Of course, you’re probably much smarter than I am and hence you could have told me that, but I had to learn for myself. I left them out for a bit to thaw enough so that I could peel them. T was intrigued by the weird, frosty, brownish lumps on our kitchen table, so he had to watch while I peeled them.

Let’s just say that they did not look appetizing oozing out of their skins. In T’s words, “Ew ew ew, they move exactly like feces!”

And they did.

So if you need a laugh (and have the sense of humor of a 5 year old), I recommend including the “banana poop” stage in your raw soft serve making adventure. If not, skip straight to the “blend and enjoy” stage.

I added cocoa powder to mine, because, as Katie knows, everything is better with chocolate.

T also added some of the Pacharan we picked up in Madrid to his:

Both versions were out of this world. The texture really is identical to soft serve – heaven!

Supper was burgers and warm German potato salad (the recipe’s from the trusty Joy of Cooking). CSA potatoes, scrubbed with the help of a blue man and ready to be boiled:

Hastily snapped photo of unphotogenic but delicious food: it was getting cold fast! This potato salad recipe is one of our favs because it includes bacon. This gave us a chance to use up the last of our CSA bacon, and also an excuse to top our burgers with it. Nothing like an all veggie lunch followed by an all meat dinner.

The green monster smoothie is ubiquitous in the blogosphere. I think I first saw it on Angela’s site, but it pops up everywhere. A green monster of a different sort made an appearance at my lunch table today, and I’m pretty psyched about it.

That, my friends, is a white (turned green) bean dip, inspired by Swell Vegan’s lemony scape and herb spread. It’s served over toast and avocado slices, and it tastes like heaven. The recipe is as follows:

Garlicky Bean Dip

1 15 oz. can cannelini beans

2 large cloves garlic (less if you don’t love it as much as I do)

1 cup, loosely packed, of chopped parsley

2 medium handfulls spinach

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Puree it all in a food processor until it reaches a consistency you like.

SO GOOD!

IMPORTANT ANTI-GAS TIP FOR BEAN-EATERS

I learned this amazing trick from the Nourishing Gourmet. If you soak your beans for a few hours before you cook with them, they’ll digest much easier, which means less gas. Huzzah! I soaked this can overnight and then made the spread mid-morning. This trick has made such a difference for me. Hummus and other bean dips are such good versatile, portable lunch food, but also a big gassy food. This solves that dilemma.

We also made linguine carbonara last night with our CSA bacon (I think the recipe came from allrecipes.com, but I’m not sure). I’m also in love with this bacon – it has such a pure, concentrated pork flavor with just a touch of maple. Perfection!

We served the pasta alongside some of our CSA mystery zucchini (not sure if it’s really zucchini or something more exotic), which we sprinkled with olive oil, salt, and pepper and baked in the toaster oven at 350 for 15ish minutes. I love baking in the toaster oven in the summer - no preheat time, plus the kitchen doesn’t overheat.

Breakfast for the past two days has been Elvis oats. Extremely repetitive? Yes. Still so delicious that it’s the highlight of my whole day? Yes.