Tag Archives: cooking with herbs

Victory Garden Update and a Recipe

On Martin Luther King Jr. day Tom and I attended a meeting for the Victory Garden at St. Catherine Laboure church where we volunteer. The garden serves multiple purposes. One of the primary missions is to raise produce for food pantries. We are going to be growing vegetables and herbs. One topic that came up in the meeting that has been making me think strategically is that different clientele at different food pantries have preferences for certain foods. If the clientele does not know how to prepare the vegetable or herb and is not familiar with it, they might leave it behind. The people at the Victory Garden have been learning what foods are in demand at what food pantry locations and have been adjusting the distribution and growing patterns to suit the local clientele.

In addition to adjusting supply, it was suggested to also adjust demand by distributing recipes. There are lots of reasons why everyone isn’t familiar with every vegetable or knows how to cook it. Some people are from parts of the world where the cuisine is different. Others might have a lack of grocery stores in their area so have less access to a variety of fresh foods. I also have known several people with plenty of access to food who have never learned to cook because they rely mostly on pizza and fast food. I have seen terrible health issues in some of my friends at relatively early ages due to this kind of deficient diet. It doesn’t have to be this way!

I have been blessed to have been taught to cook by my Mom who was not only a home gardener and a multiple culinary contest winner, but also had a very adventurous palette. She passed on knowledge of cooking and diverse food preferences to me and my late brother. When we were younger my brother and I used to get a silver dollar or a silver half-dollar from a great uncle if we finished all the food on our plates when we had dinner at his house. I guess we kind of neglected to admit that we almost always ate all our food, including the vegetables! We liked almost everything and had pretty hearty appetites. That was decent money when our weekly allowances were about that amount or not much more than that!

I am not a professional chef or food writer but I do like to publish recipes from time to time. I know so many people who are intimidated by food preparation. If I publish a simple recipe that I just made I hope that will inspire someone out there to try it. Since I cook a lot with herbs that I grow I also hope I can suggest ways of using them. A lot of people who don’t cook frequently are very intimidated by dried prepared herbs and spices, much less fresh ones. If you’ve been exposed to a wide range of herbs, spices and flavors your whole life you just know what goes together without having to follow a recipe. I don’t know how you teach this without long-term exposure but at least with a recipe I can show examples of combinations that work.

I am in terrible shape from recent inactivity so I’ll be using recipes from Weight Watchers and healthy recipe books a lot for inspiration as I try to increase my fitness. I inherited a lot of these books from my late uncle, brother, and grandmother. I often start from there and make modifications. If the results are good, I like to tell people about it!

Before I get to a simple new salad recipe, I’ll post links to my Fun With Food page (old but recipes still good!) and recipes of mine that are on blogs.

Fun With Food

The Food section on this blog

The Good Eating section on the Schnarr’s Hardware blog

Recipe: Beet and White Bean Salad with Sardines

Beet and White Bean Salad with Sardines
Beet and White Bean Salad with Sardines

For inspiration I used a recipe called “Dilled Beet and White Bean Salad” (Gagliardi 70) from a Weight Watchers cook book, but I made a lot of changes and substitutions. For one thing, we had no dill! It still turned out great. It really woke up my taste buds.

Ingredients

3 TBSP apple cider vinegar
2 tsp brown mustard
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic salt
2 (15 1/2-ounce) cans white beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 bag of mini sweet peppers, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp dried Parsley
1 tsp dried Basil
1 tsp dried celery pieces
1 jar sliced beets
1 can sardines
1 bag fresh mixed salad greens, such as spring mix, spinach/arugula mix, or something similar
Nutritional yeast

Directions

Get out a large mixing bowl. Open the can of sardines and empty the juice into the bowl. Set drained sardines aside.

Add to the bowl the vinegar, mustard, olive oil, garlic salt, Parsley, Basil and celery pieces. Mix well with a whisk.

Add the drained beans, chopped peppers, onion and tomatoes. Toss well.

Place greens on plates and spoon about 1/4 of the vegetables over the greens per serving. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. Arrange about 5 beet slices and 4 sardines on top of each salad. Enjoy!

Works Cited

Gagliardi, Nancy, Creative and Editorial Director. WeightWatchers Ultimate Flex&Core Cookbook. Weight Watchers International, 2006.

Experimenting With Some Flavorful Leftovers

Juicing oranges and lemons to make Tequila Lime Chicken
Juicing oranges and lemons to make Tequila Lime Chicken

At this time of year, if I want to use Cilantro in a recipe I can’t just go to the garden and pick what I need. Usually when I buy a package of fresh Cilantro from the store, there is a lot more than the recipe calls for in the bunch. In the past, if I have time I have pulled the leaves off the extra Cilantro and frozen it. Cilantro is best used fresh, but frozen is better than dried (I’ve tried that too). I have heard of preserving fresh basil, another herb that is just not the same when not fresh, in olive oil and freezing it in ice cube trays. I decided to try that with today’s leftover Cilantro.

I coarsely chopped the leftover cilantro and it's going to be blended with the citrus pulp in the small dish.
I coarsely chopped the leftover cilantro and it’s going to be blended with the citrus pulp in the small dish which I made in ceramics class a long time ago.

I’m making a recipe for Valentine’s Day today from a book that Tom and I were sent as a wedding gift from an anonymous giver – Tequila Chicken from “Barefoot Contessa Family Style” by Ina Garten. I had to juice enough limes, lemons and oranges to make a cup and a half of juice and I have a lot of pulp left. Citrus and Cilantro taste great together – what would happen if I pulverized the leftover Cilantro with the leftover pulp and froze it in ice cube trays to flavor future recipes? I’m already going to have to wash half my kitchen implements today – colander, salad spinner, garlic press, juicer, salad dressing emulsifier, George Foreman grill, mortar and pestle, etc. so what is one or two more?

Oh yeah that works, and it’s a lot less time-consuming than stripping all the leaves off the stems. I added 1 TBSP of grapeseed oil to help it stick together. I even have a fun little citrus wedge ice tray to freeze the mixture in! In the future I’m going to have a lot of fun adding these little wedges to soups, dressings, marinades, stir-frys, pilafs, sauces and who knows what else. I guess I just made Cilantro pesto, which is probably already a thing.

blended

Last fall Tom and I had our first party at our house. It’s a shame that my photo of the drinks table didn’t turn out because I served some cranberry orange tea punch in Tom’s amazing mid-century modern punch bowl with molded decorative ice floating on top. I froze cranberry juice to make the ice and as a garnish I included fresh cranberries and orange slices. I had some fruit left over so I froze the remnants. I knew I’d think of something to do with them eventually.

As Valentine’s Day approached, I decided to make something in my Mom’s vintage heart copper mold. Tom likes gelatin (I’m not using Jello brand, there is nothing wrong with it but I shopped at Aldi, so I guess it’s proper to say “gelatin” and not “Jello”) and fruity flavors seemed to be something that would complement the chicken. I cooked the leftover orange slices and cranberries to make an infusion to use as the water in the gelatin recipe. That should pump up the flavor! I froze it until ready to use and then made the gelatin with it.

gelatin_and_fruit

After filling the heart mold I put some of the leftover gelatin in the glass footed cups below. I remember my Mom getting a whole set of dishes in this style in the 1970s from Liberty supermarket. As I recall there were parts of the set that you could get each week if you spent a certain amount. Mom got tumblers in two sizes and plates in two sizes too. How do you like my space age retro hand mixer? It belonged to my Grandma and Grandpa Hasenfratz. It’s a little beat up looking but it works and I love it! I appreciate being able to incorporate retro items handed down from family members in my cooking. It wouldn’t be as meaningful or as much fun without them!

blender

Final menu:

Cranberry/white cheddar cheese with sliced pears dusted with Fruit Fresh, cinnamon and stevia, with a glass of Italian spumante malt beverage

Salad greens with Creamy Mustard Vinaigrette (also from the Barefoot Contessa book)

Tequila Lime Chicken

Grilled asparagus

Strawberry/Cranberry/Orange Jello with fresh raspberries and whipped topping

That was fun to make and even more fun to eat! Looking forward to taking care of those leftovers…