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Posted 2 years ago...

Chinese BBQ Pork

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Mirepoix: Wild Rice Soup

Another way to use the Canned Mirepoix soup starter I posted about here.  If you don't want to put up mirepoix (and I totally respect that), saute a cup or so of chopped onions, carrots and celery before starting the recipe below.

This recipe was the actual OR I got the canned mirepoix base from in Julie Languille's Meals in a Jar.  I held off on trying it because I have a hard time finding wild rice in any but the tiniest of packages at my grocery stores.  You *could* substitute brown rice, barley or similar whole grain here (not white rice or any kind of quick-cooking grain), but for some reason, a creamy barley soup doesn't appeal to me.

Happily, I found wild rice in the bulk bins at my local natural foods store while shopping for nutritional yeast.  Not only was it bulk-stored, it was bulk-priced.  This makes it one of the 3 things I can get cheaper at the natural foods store than I can at the regular grocery (shelf-stable almond milk and yogurt-covered pretzels being the others) LOL

I have no pictures of the finished product because I made it one night when I was the solo-parent-on-duty with the 3 kiddos and also making dinner for my in-laws.  Not enough hands for picture-taking, and also no leftovers.

This soup will take some time to cook on Dinner Day because of the cooking time on the wild rice, but it requires virtually no attention.

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Crockpot Black Beans

I loves a good bean recipe.  I served this the first night as our main dish with salad and bread (cornbread would have been an excellent accompaniment, but alas was not meant to be that night).  I served the leftovers (and there will be a lot unless you're feeding a small army or a couple of teenage boys) as taco filling the next night.

Even though these beans cook all day in a crockpot, you still need to presoak them.  Depending on what kind of schedule you have, that might mean soaking overnight (to put in the crockpot in the morning), through a whole day (to prep in the evening for the next day's crockpotting) or doing the boil-two-minutes-then-cover-and-soak-one-hour thing.

Crockpots keep food very moist, so be sure not to add too much stock, otherwise you'll have bean soup instead of beans.  Add stock until just before the beans would be totally covered; you should still see little lumpy-bumps of beanage peeking through the surface of the liquid.

Crockpot Black Beans
Makes 8-10 servings

1 lb. black beans, soaked several hours or quick-soaked and drained
2 tbsp oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 mild pepper such as anaheim or poblano, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp seasoning salt
1 bay leaf
1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp lime juice
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken broth

Prepare beans.  Heat oil in a skillet and saute onions, garlic, peppers and seasonings 5-10 minutes until soft.  Stir in remaining ingredients, except for broth.  Fridge or freeze, if desired (as a scheduling note, you could do the sauteing the night before Crockpot Day and start soaking the beans at the same time; the next morning mix it all together in the crockpot).

On Crockpot Day, put the onion-bean-tomato mix in the crockpot (still frozen is OK).  Add stock to barely cover the beans.  Cook on low 8-10 hours.


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Aloha Salad (kidney diet)

I found this recipe in a cookbook for renal patients.  A lot of fruits and veggies are actually off-limits for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) because they're high in potassium (a good thing for the rest of us but with impaired kidney function, potassium will build up to dangerous levels in the body).  So finding CKD-friendly side dishes can be tricky.  Especially since I also have to balance a number of food allergies, sensitivities and preferences within my family.  One serving of this salad (pay attention to serving sizes!) is 112 mg potassium and 26 mg phosphorus.

This "salad" proved to be quite a hit (and about the only way I've found to get my 3 year old to eat carrots without squawking).  I am not a fan of describing anything with Jello as a "salad" but it seems to be a thing here in the Heartland (and also in many 1970's era cookbooks...but I digress).  However, this "salad" was more fruit/veggie and less Jello so I'll let it ride.

Since it's a gelatin "salad", you need to make it in advance so it can set up.  My favorite thing ;)  You can also prep this in stages if you need to, like if your baby is teething and NEEDS you to hold her CONSTANTLY except for when she dozes off for a few minutes at a time.  Just a hypothetical example.  Grate the carrots, measure and mix the dry ingredients, measure the liquid ingredients, and fridge each part until you're ready to put it together.

We are avoiding artificial dyes at my house (in addition to all the aforementioned food restrictions...I told you it gets tricky to plan menus), so I got to experiment with substituting a homemade, dye-free mix for the box o' Yellow 6, er, Lemon Jello.  It turned out very well.

The tricky bit about applying this substitute widely in recipes calling for a box of Jello is figuring out what to use for flavoring that doesn't skew the liquid ratio but still gives a punch of flavor, especially if you try to create flavors other than citrus.  In this recipe, I used a bit of lemon juice in place of some of the water called for in the OR as well as a lot of lemon zest.  To substitute for other flavors, I'd look into dye-free flavoring oils over juices or extracts...you'll get more flavor without adding liquids.  If your recipe calls for water, you can swap some or all for a juice or puree but you might need to pay attention to how the acid from your flavoring liquid impacts leavening reactions.

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Cheeseless Pizza

It sounds like pure heresy, no?

Unfortunately, my little girl is dairy-intolerant.  She's also a little iffy with soy foods and I'm not a fan of pretend foods, so a store-bought cheese substitute (which is usually soy-based) is out.  And that soy cheeze stuff doesn't melt well anyway.

So I went looking for *something* that would give that rich, mouth-round texture and flavor to a cheese-less pizza and found this sauce here.  I have made this sauce a couple of different ways now, and I have to say, each way was worked wonderfully.

You really do not miss the cheese.  I mean, I am highly motivated to find alternatives to my favorite cheesy foods because of my daughter, but my other two kids will spit out anything they don't find up to snuff, and this pizza sauce passed muster with them.

Even though we don't need to be tomato-free at our house, I did not use any tomato sauce with this pizza.  The garlic sauce is, well, a sauce after all, not a firm cheese-like product and two sauces just seemed too much.  You could absolutely use some sliced tomatoes as a topping though.

Extra bonus, as a way to enjoy a cheese-loaded favorite without the cheese (and also can be tomato-free), it's a boon for the dialysis diet.  Feeding two birds with one stone, if you will ;)

As far as the garlic goes, I like this sauce both with roasted garlic and sauteed garlic.  The flavors *are* different, so I'd say use whichever you prefer.  To roast a head of garlic, slice the top third or so off the whole head, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, wrap in foil and bake an hour or more at 350F.  Or if you're grilling, put the foil-wrapped garlic on the top rack in your grill and leave it there while the grill cools.

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Dairy-free mac and cheese, Take 1

This cheese-free mixture combines with almond milk to make
the mac-sans-cheese sauce

My darling nearly 1-year-old daughter (Miss H) has an apparent dairy protein sensitivity.  It's not a true allergy, thankfully.  She can eat small amounts of "hidden" dairy products (like the amount of milk in a single pancake is OK), but yogurt, cheese, a cup of milk and we are in Digestive Distress Central.  Unfortunately that means that dishes are that are basic food groups at my house are off limits for her :(  Like mac and cheese.

So I am exploring the world of cheese-free mac and cheese.  As best I can tell, dairy-free mac and cheese recipes fall into 4 main categories...those that use processed faux cheese and plant-based milk for the sauce, those that use miso paste and plant-based milk, those that use some kind of nut puree and plant-based milk and those that use a product called nutritional yeast and plant-based milk.

I'm starting with the last one.

You might remember that I said I wasn't going to make a special trip to get nutritional yeast to make this recipe awhile back...I apparently shoulda gone ahead and done it.  So off to my local natural foods store I went.  $4.50 for half a pound and it looks like it might last forever.

I've also had to try plant-based milks...we've settled on almond milk mostly because she doesn't barf it back up and that's good enough for us.  I was surprised to see that most plant milks have added sweetener.  When I compared the nutritional information on these milks with cow's milk though, I realized that without the additional sugar, most of these milks (the ones made from protein sources like nuts anyway) are far lower in calories and natural sugar than cow's milk.  Great for adults who want to cut calories, not so great for growing babies.  There are flavored versions of most non-dairy milks, and those have LOTS more added sugar which we *will* be avoiding.  Just a tidbit for you.  Back to the recipe.

I tried this recipe from the Bad Mama Genny blog.  I liked that it was easy, fast and could sit on the shelf like the boxes of mac and cheese do.  Nice and easy for me or my Dear Husband to throw together for a quick kid-friendly meal.  And it absolutely was.  And Miss H LOVED her cheese-free mac.

Full disclosure...the boys did not like this.  They were 100% rock-solid prepared for Kraft and were disappointed.  I thought it needed a little acidity from, say, some white wine vinegar or tomato paste, but otherwise I'd absolutely eat it again.

Full disclosure...I'll probably make up a few small jars of this mix (as recommended here, though I prefer the sauce-to-pasta proportions of the above-linked version) and make it just for Miss H while continuing to keep the boxed stuff, the "real" stuff for the boys.  And I'll keep trying other recipes too.

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Honey Oatmeal Pie

Warning: big fat brag to come.

The honey pie is the one dead center on the table

I won a blue ribbon at the State Fair for this pie this year ::pop my collar:: I'm quite pleased with that fact alone, but even better is that the honey pie category was the one of the few in which this year's Grand Champion pie maker (and one of the top ribbon winners for DECADES at the State Fair) entered and did not take 1st place.  So good on me :-D.

Bragging done now.

I think the "secret" to this pie is three-fold...

1) Use very flavorful honey.  The best is going to be a locally harvested honey rather than a commercially-available national brand.  I use a wildflower honey from a producer two counties south of where I live. You can use this locator to find local producers in your area.

2) Use quick-cooking steel oats instead of conventional rolled oats.  Rolled oats will come out, well, mushy-feeling.  You know, like oatmeal.  The steel-cut oats will be chewy and a bit like finely chopped nuts.

3) Use bourbon in your pie crust.  Oh yeah.  Trust me.

I totally understand using a prepared crust (in fact, I have posted several times about using those guys without *any* shame *at all*), but I have sworn off store-bought crusts personally.

Not because I am a crust snob though.  I am a homemade crust convert because a) as a competitive baker, it seemed appropriate to learn how to make them and because b) I found a recipe I cannot screw up and because c) all brands of store-bought crusts I have found have artificial dyes in them which we have cut out of my son's/our diet.

So use whatever you like, but really, the homemade crust will make a difference...not so much because of the homemade-ness of it, but because you can put bourbon in it.

And really, the pie itself is so freaking easy to make that you have plenty of energy for making homemade crust.

Finally, you may not, absolutely not, make this pie on the bottom shelf with something else baking away above it.  I didn't have a fancy scientific convection-current-tracking setup in my oven, but I'm *pretty* sure that having something on the top shelf forces heat back down into the pie that would otherwise move and circulate more freely.  I am *completely* sure that if you try this, you will wind up with a pie volcano.  I screw up so you don't have to.

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