Sweet Potato and Apple Curried Soup

 

Sweet Potato and Apple Curried Soup

4 entree servings or 6 appetizer servings.

Ingredients:

1 jumbo sweet potato (about 2 cups)

2 apples, peeled cored and diced

3 cups chicken stock

2 tsp onion powder (or some real onion)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 tbsp mild curry powder (adjust if your curry powder is hotter)

1/2 tsp ginger powder

sour cream or yogurt for garnish

Directions:

Wash sweet potato, stab generously with fork, and microwave until soft all the way through (approx. 15-20 minutes on high).

Meanwhile, put apples, chicken stock, and spices in a large soup pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer until sweet potatoes are done. Cut sweet potato in half and scoop flesh into pot. Stir until well combined. Simmer 10 minutes.

Puree using immersion blender or in batches in regular blender (do not fill past half full, as it can overflow). Add water as needed to reach desired consistancy.

Serve garnished with sour cream or plain yogurt. 

Freeze up to 3 months. Makes a great low-calorie (but filling and delicious) lunch option.  This is loosely "my" recipe in that I didn't specifically follow anyone else's and definitely wrote my own directions. I'm in love with cooking sweet potatoes in the microwave. I hate peeling those bad boys. This is one of my favorite soups.

Sushi Salad

I like sushi, and I have made some rolls in the past. The flaw is, of course, that I am lazy. This salad has all the sushi flavours I love, but skips the "make it into a roll" steps that really draw out the process. This recipe made waaaay too much for us, though, and I had to give away a few servings to a friend because I knew we'd never eat it all. Rather than having it as a side, I just added some imitation crab meat to make it a full meal. I really enjoyed it - and it will be a lovely lunch for me for the next couple days.

Unfortunately, it's a Cooking Light recipe, and they are pretty strict with their copyright, so I must ask you to check the recipe here: Sushi-Rice Salad . I did find their recipe unclear, as it called for 2 cups of rice and 2 cups of water, while my rice called for 2 parts water to 1 part rice... I did 2 cups rice and 4 cups water, which made a very large amount. But the dressing to rice ratio was perfect. I would advise cutting the whole thing in half, but doubling the water (ie. 1 cup rice, 2 cups water).

This recipe is not freezer friendly, but it was tastey and easy, so I thought I would pass it along. It would be lovely with an asian-flavour salmon on the side, an interesting potluck dish, or you could add whatever maki roll ingredients strike your fancy.

Redneck Cooking: Kool Aid Cake

I'm still on a quest to find a good lemonade cake. Don't tell me to google it. Those ice cream based monstrosities are not what I dream of.

So I set out to try adding the most potent artificial colors and flavours of my chidhood to the goodness of cake. My first attempt: Blue Raspberry, the most baffling of flavours.

The result was a little dense, but overall kind of good. Not "OMG fabulous" good, but good enough I'll be making lemon-lime cupcakes for St. Patrick's day. It would also work to just add the Kool Aid to a cake mix, but I never have a cake mix, so I did it from scratch.

Update: The strawberry mini-cupcakes were much tastier than the blue raspberry cake. At least in part because eating red food feels more normal than eating blue food. They would be really great for a kid to take to school for Valentine's Day, or for an office treat.

Kool Aid Cake

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 packet Kool Aid, flavour of your choice (the kind you're supposed to add sugar to)

Preheat oven to 350*F.

Mix the dry ingredients, including Kool Aid. Add wet ingredients. Stir until well blended.

Pour into 8" or 9" square pan, or muffin tins. Bake 50-60 minutes for cake (shorter for cupcakes,probably 20-25 min, I haven't done that yet). Mini-cupcakes bake for 12 minutes (and look fantastic, and taste pretty darn good). Pictured below: strawberry.

Lemonade Awards!

 

I have been awarded the Lemonade Blog Award by Erica's Kitchen Adventures. This award comes with some guidelines:

- Add the logo in your blog.
- Add a link to the person who gave you the award.
- Nominate 10 other (refreshing…like lemonade) blogs of your choice.
- Don’t forget to add links to those blogs in yours.
- Also leave a message for your nominees in their blogs, informing them about the award.

And so, while I may not have ten and don't wish to obligate the next to have to come up with that many, here are some of the most refreshing blogs I read. (Get it? Refreshing. Like lemonade.)

Savory, Spicy, Sweet (Liz's Cooking Blog)

Casual Kitchen 

Simple But Delicious 

Love's To Eat 

Get Fit Slowly 

Bluntmoney 

More Green for Less Green 

Ms Moneypenny 

These aren't all food blogs, but they are all excellent. And quite refreshing.

Pineapple Flax Muffins

from Flax Seed Recipes

I decided to make something healthy for snacks and lunches, and I have a bag of flax seed languishing in my cupboard, so I was looking for something flaxy. This looked good - and it is. It isn't a coffee shop muffin. You won't mistake it for cake. The muffin part is not very sweet at all, and they're very dense. The fruit, however, makes it a really nice snack. I love the pineapple. Crushed might be better than the tidbits the recipe recommended, though, as I find the pieces kind of big in proportion to the muffin.

These make a great breakfast on the run (although you'll either want 2 or a piece of fruit on the side).

Alas, the digital camera appears to have left me to go to a wrestling tournament. I'll update with photo tomorrow, perhaps.

Pineapple Flax Muffins

1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup all-purpose flour 3/4 cup ground flaxseed 3/4 cup oat bran 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1-1/2 cups shredded carrots 1 cup pineapple tidbits, drained 1/2 cup raisins 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon egg substitute 2 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup skim milk 1 tablespoon lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. In large bowl, mix flours, flax, oat bran, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
3. Stir in carrots, pineapple and raisins.
4. Combine eggs, milk, lemon juice, applesauce and vanilla in separate bowl.
5. Add liquids to dry ingredients, stir until moist (batter will be lumpy).
6. Coat muffin tin with non-stick spray. Pour batter in tins.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 15-20 minutes

Yield: 18 muffins

Nutrition Info (per muffin): 113 calories, 1.4 g fat, 23.4 g carb (2.2 g fiber, 2.7 g sugar), 3.5 g protein. 2 Weight Watchers Points .

Roasting Coffee Beans with a Popcorn Popper

I have a strange love for doing things at home that normal people just buy from the store. Exhibit A: homemade mozzarella cheese. Exhibit B: homemade deer jerky. And now Exhibit C: home roasted coffee. The beans on the left are the Columbian Supremo beans I received for my birthday. I'm not sure of their cost because they were a gift, but green beans are typically about half the price of roasted ones. A few months ago, I read this article on Lifehacker which pointed me at this series of Flickr photos. It looked pretty easy, and I already own a hot air popcorn popper (which I consider to be the only way to make popcorn - never burnt, never greasy).

This morning, I dug out the popper and aimed it at my sink. I poured in beans up to the popcorn fill line, cranked it up, let it do it's thing for about 7 min (6 min= light roast, 8 min = very dark roast). Then I poured them into a bowl and chilled them in the porch for a few minutes (a fridge or freezer is fine for those of you not in the arctic).

Verdict: delicious. Not a trace of bitterness. A very fine cup of coffee. The roasting process did make a little smoke, but no more than my blackened salmon. I hit the "ignore" button on my smoke detector, though, to avoid that issue. There wasn't a lot of chaff, and it all stayed in the sink. It really was a 10-minute, less than $5 experiment that was well worth it.

If you don't have a hot air popper, there are other alternatives in the Lifehacker link, but they're more involved. Like shaking a frying pan for 15 minutes. I really think investing in a used air popper (if you can find one) is the way to go. Mine was $5 at a garage sale almost 10 years ago. The things last forever... and also make popcorn, in addition to roasting coffee. Part of me now wonders if you can toast nuts in there. I hate stirring those things.

Eggs Mini-session

I have realized something: I am having a crisis of freezer space. I need to repack things more efficiently and organize it properly. So chicken has been put off for a while, but the egg dishes needed to be done, as I bought the eggs and mushrooms. I only made 2 dishes:
Aztec Quiche (doubled recipe)
So- Easy Stuffing-Egg Bake (new recipe, review to follow when we eat it)

Several failed attempts to freeze quiche without spilling some of the filling before it freezes have led me to just freeze the filling in a ziploc bag this time. The plan is to thaw it in the fridge, then dump into a pie shell to bake. I subbed a jalapeno and a red chili for the canned green chilis, which I just don't like. I also omitted the green onion and tomato from the stuffing bake, although I added just a bit of salsa to the top to add back a bit of flavour.

This was a small session, and thus, a very quick session. It only took about half an hour to assemble 3 meals. Eggs are not cooked before freezing, so prep time is really minimal. And yet... it's so nice to have quiche ready for the oven in about a minute.