Daria Can Cook – and so can you!

Last week we found ourselves slammed with both snow and veggies. Our summer/fall CSA had its final delivery, which happened to coincide with our new winter CSA’s delivery. Thus in addition to getting 10 inches of snow, we got what felt like 10 million pounds of vegetables. When we were invited to a dinner party, we knew we had to bring a dish that would help us get through some of our roughage.

This root veggie mash was a huge success. It was incredibly easy, delicious, and pretty. Well, pretty if you think baby-food-like purées are pretty. Which I do.

Roasted Root Veggie Mash

Ingredients:

3 medium potatoes

7 parsnips

3 LARGE carrots

olive oil

salt and pepper

nutmeg

almond milk (you can of course use cow’s milk, but we’re lactarded in our apartment)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prep veggies (wash, peel, chop into roughly equally sized cubes). Toss the veggies with a glug or two of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Spread in a baking dish (we used a 9×13 Pyrex) and roast until the veggies are soft and browned.

2. After veggies have cooled, blend them in a food processor in batches along with a few tablespoons of olive oil, a cup or so of almond milk (to taste, depending on how thick you’d like your mash to be), and a teaspoon-ish of nutmeg.

3. Reheat the mash in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes if desired. Enjoy!

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Unpictured step 4: devour.

What are your favorite winter side dishes? I won’t lie, one of my favorite winter side dishes is a giant plate of Christmas cookies. But when I can overcome that craving, I’m a pretty big fan of anything involving roasted veggies.

In honor of Trent’s cultural heritage, we made latkes tonight to mark the first night of Chanukah. Neither of us is religiously inclined, but we both believe in celebrating oil, light, and organic potatoes.

We cobbled together a few different recipes to come up with ours. We grated 5 or 6 organic potatoes from our CSA, along with one small CSA onion, then wrung as much water as possible out of the grated potatoes. We then added 2 eggs and 2 tablespoons of flour…

…and dropped heaping spoonfuls of the mixture into a quarter inch or so of hot oil. After they browned thoroughly on one side we flipped them for maximal fry-age.

Imagine the most amazing hash browns you’ve ever tasted, then imagine them getting 10 times better. That was how these latkes tasted. Success!

For our protein, we stuck with the frying theme and made salmon patties. I mixed together a can of wild Alaskan salmon, a pinch of dill, a squirt of Sriracha, 3ish tablespoons of flour, and 1/4 cup or so of mayonnaise. I formed this mixture into 2 patties, which we then fried. Trent cooked them to perfection – crispy on the outside, creamy and smooth on the inside. To balance out the heaviness of our meal, we added some steamed CSA broccoli.

Although fried foods obviously aren’t a great idea every day, I felt pretty good about this meal. I just read about “The 7 Foods Experts Won’t Eat,” which include farmed salmon and non-organic potatoes. Make sure you’re buying wild Alaskan salmon and not “fresh” Alaskan salmon – “fresh” is apparently a euphemism for “farmed.” Boo! And remember that potatoes are one of the so-called dirty dozen. They get sprayed with fungicides and herbicides while they grow, and then with more chemicals after they’re harvested to stop them from sprouting. So if you’ve got the choice, spring for the organic potatoes.

Which winter holidays do you celebrate? I grew up celebrating Christmas, but I enjoy being introduced to traditions from other belief systems…especially when they involve delicious food.

I’m so happy to be back! Vacation was lovely, but it’s always good to come back to familiar surroundings and to wonderful blog readers. I hope you guys enjoyed the running tips – I enjoyed your comments!

Food on the beach was rough. I was trying to be frugal and I was there with friends who aren’t so into healthy eating, so there were lots of hot dogs and bar food and beer and soft serve and other crap. I definitely could have done a better job making healthy choices, but c’est la vie. I’m so happy to be back to normal! I had steel cut oats for breakfast, an AMAZING salad at the most wonderful veggie restaurant in my area for lunch, and then the seemingly unhealthy but actually pretty nutritionally packed combo pictured below:

boiled CSA potato topped with an over-medium egg and lots of delicious ketchup. Potassium from the potato, sodium from the ketchup, and protein from the egg = perfect post-run dinner. I’m currently eating frozen peaches. Delish!

Veggie CSA pickup is tomorrow, so I should have some good eats to share in the next few days. Yay vegetables!!

I haven’t made any great meals in the past few days, but I have been playing in the kitchen. Last night I remembered that we have a bag of CSA potatoes hiding out in storage, so I made myself some oven-roasted beauties.

Potatoes aren’t potatoes without copious amounts of ketchup.

Then I got the baking bug and tried out two recipes with the almond meal I bought at Trader Joe’s. Note: almond meal is NOT the same as almond flour. It’s coarser are more suited for dense fare like breads than for cakes or lighter baked goods. There’s a good explanation of the differences here.

First up were the Savory Grain-Free Crackers from Karina’s Kitchen. I subbed in 1 cup of regular flour just because I wanted to ease into the whole nut meal/flour thing, and I used sage and tarragon instead of the Italian herbs since I didn’t have any. I also used paprika rather than turmeric for the splash of color.

These are SO GOOD! The parmesan really comes through, so they taste quite rich. I would make one small adjustment next time, however. The recipe tells you to just flatten the dough with your hand directly onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. This technique left the dough far too thick – most of these are more like flatbread rather than like crackers, which is what I wanted. Next time I’ll roll out the dough first.

Next up: Comfy Belly’s banana bread, made into muffins.

I had one for breakfast this morning and they’re also delicious. Very dense and nutty and satisfying. I subbed 1 cup of all-purpose flour here too (so I used 1.5 cups almond meal and 1 cup regular flour total). This recipe made 12 muffins that clock in around 300 calories each.

The verdict on baking with almond meal:

If you’re craving a light, fluffy, airy baked good, steer clear of nut meal. But if you want to pack some extra nutritional punch into your baked goods, almond meal gives you all kinds of vitamins, minerals, fats, phytonutrients, and antioxidants that you just can’t find in all-purpose flour. If you go in knowing that your muffins are going to be a dense, nutty affair, they’re absolutely scrumptious.

I have plans to try my hand at macaroons and lemon curd later today. Sometimes I just get into a domestic groove and want to keep going.

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.