Lentils with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon

Wednesday is David's night to go to school, so the kids and I are on our own. I fully intended to take them out to dinner after swim practice, but it was 70 degrees and sunny yesterday and they rebelled (and rightly fully so, I might add) against the idea of spending any more time indoors than strictly necessary. There wasn't much in the fridge that could be put together in a hurry - hence, this dish, courtesy of Mark Bittman.

Lentils with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon

1 pound of really good-quality bacon, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 cups lentils, rinsed and picked over (you can use pretty much any kind of whole lentil, but I had the fancy-schmancy little green French lentils on hand)
3 cups of stock
Brussels sprouts
Thyme
Bay leaves
Red wine vinegar

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until it's crispy, then remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set it aside. Spoon off  all but a 2-3 tablespoons of the bacon fat. Add the onions and carrot and cook until the onion starts to soften up, about 10 minutes. Eat some of the extra bacon while you're stirring the vegetables.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the lentils, a bay leaf, 2-3 springs fresh thyme, and salt and pepper. Partially cover and cook over medium-low heat until the lentils are soft, about 45-60 minutes. Eat more of the bacon every time you walk past the stove to check how far along the lentils are.

When the lentils are soft (or you've eaten a quarter pound of bacon, whichever comes first), take the lid off and turn up the heat to cook off any extra water. Trim and cook your Brussels sprouts (I use a Pampered Chef Microwave Steamer and it takes less than 5 minutes).

When the extra liquid is cooked away, take the pan off the heat. Remove the bay leaf and thyme stems, then add about a teaspoon of red wine vinegar. Stir in any bacon that's managed to escape your predation and salt and pepper to taste. The original recipe called for a 1/4 pound of bacon but that seemed a little skimpy, possibly because I ate most of it while I was cooking.

Chop the Brussels sprouts. To serve, put a pile of the chopped sprouts on your plate, then ladle the hot lentils over the top. This is completely delicious and let's you pretend that what you just cooked is very healthy in spite of the bacon fat.

This is fantastic served hot, but it also very good eaten straight out of the refrigerator while you're making lunches the next morning. Totally acceptable, since bacon is a breakfast food.

Imaginary Mom's Breakfast Risotto

There's nothing like weekday breakfast to get the day off to a guilt-laden start. I realize that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, kids who eat breakfast do better in school, etc. etc. And I've read all the info about a balanced breakfast, and how anything in a box pretty much isn't one and how we've all fallen prey to the marketing hype that would have us believe that Lucky Charms is a good source of essential vitamins and minerals. I don't want to send my kids off in the morning with bloodstreams full of easily-metabolized sugar and simply carbohydrates that will make them peak before their morning at school has even begun. I want to balance out their proteins and carbohydrates with a nutritionally sound breakfast that I have crafted from scratch with my own loving hands. I want, in short, to be Imaginary Mom.

Imaginary Mom is the bane of my existence. She's the person that I occasionally think I would be if I didn't have a job and devoted myself to being a full-time wife and mother and homemaker. Imaginary Mom has the backpacks packed the night before, the clean and pressed (matched) clothes laid out for her glowing, perfect children every morning. Imaginary Mom volunteers in the classroom, bakes cookies for the neighbors, and is on time for everything. Imaginary Mom vacuums in high heels and greets her husband at the door every evening with a smile and a kiss. Imaginary Mom makes hot breakfasts for her children on weekdays.

Let's be perfectly clear: I know that actual stay-at-home moms aren't like that (I was one). I know that if I had that much extra bandwidth in any given day, none of that would happen (I would stay up too late every night and still oversleep in the morning). I acknowledge that there was an anomolous period of time during which I was waking up at 5:30 a.m. to run 3 miles every day, but hot breakfasts from scratch didn't happen on those days either. My first breakfast inclination is still a bottle of Tahitian Treat and a Hostess cupcake.

So here's a nice compromise solution, a hot apply-cinnamony rice dish that cooks in the crockpot, keeps in the fridge, and reheats like a dream. Imaginary Mom gets up to make this from scratch at 4 a.m. but I most surely do not.

Imaginary Mom's Breakfast Risotto

3-4 tablespoons butter (or butter substitute, if you're dairy-free)
4 medium Granny Smith apples, cored and diced if you're feeling ambitious or roughly chopped if you're not
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
4 cups apple juice, or an equivalent amount of apple cider diluted with a little water (in the event that your kids decided they hate cider after you buy a gallon of it, and you need to use it up before it turns into vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples and spices and cook until the apples start to release some juice, about 5 minutes.

Spray the inside of the slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray (you skip this step at your peril). Put the apple mixture and all the remaining ingredients in the the slow cooker and stir. Cover and cook on HIGH for about 2 hours or until all the liquid is absorbed. If you have a slow cooker that reliably turns itself onto the WARM setting when something is done, set this up the night before, cook it on LOW, and feel really virtuous in the morning when you have an awesome from-scratch hot breakfast.

This is excellent served hot with milk poured over it and some nuts and dried fruit sprinkled on top. It's also excellent eaten straight out of the fridge while you throw together peanut butter sandwiches and wonder if Imaginary Mom will tell the Nutrition Police if the kids don't get a vegetable in their lunches.

I've Worked Too Hard For This To Be Sunday Cherry Lime Rickey

Sometime between Beer-Thirty and Cocktail O'Clock comes the point in the day when you realize that you've just been too ambitious, and whatever you're planning to do with the rest of your day isn't going to get done. This is the point in your weekend when it makes sense to whip up some sort of cold drinky thingy and sit on the deck watching the kids in the midst of their latest terrifying project. Everyone is going to be happier if you just put away the to-do list.

This particular drink happened in just that way. It's an unreasonably hot day and we decided that heading out to the Arts Beats & Eats festival wasn't going to happen in the wake of buying/assembling new deck furniture, doing 6 loads of laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the kitchen, and getting the kids ready for the first day of school. Margaritas sounded perfect, but we're out of tequila, we forgot to put mixers on the grocery list, and if we wanted to head out again we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. Something fruity and light sounded good, so the bourbon was out. The giant bottle of fancy-schmancy cider was either going to be way too much or not nearly enough, since we're expecting company for dinner tonight.

A quick survey of the kitchen reveals: (1) lots of liquor (2) lots of citrus (3) tonic water, diet Coke, and Anna's lemon-flavored sparkling water that we previously decided tastes like Lemon Pledge. Hmm.....

I've Worked Too Hard for This to be Sunday Cherry-Lime Rickey

juice of 2 limes (juice fresh ones, don't use the reconstituted stuff)
about the same amount of maraschino cherry juice from the jar in the fridge that you forgot about after the cupcake-decorating party
3 oz. cherry vodka
1 oz. creme de cassis (or a cherry-flavored liqueur, if you have one. We didn't so I improvised)

Shake all these ingredients together in the nifty bar shaker you got for your wedding shower and only recently rediscovered. Put 3 maraschino cherries into the bottom of a tall glass, add some ice, and pour half the contents of the shaker into the glass. Top with sparkling water (preferably not the stuff that tastes like Lemon Pledge, but if that's all you have the vodka will blunt the worst of it) or Sprite. Stir.

Take out on the deck and compose a blog post while you sip.

A bean salad that people will WANT to eat

"Bean salad" always brings to mind that generic, unseasoned multi-bean staple of the summer picnic .... kinda mealy, kinda bland, kinda blah. It's the sort of thing your aunt brings every year and everyone takes a few bites out of a sense of obligation, but nobody ever gets excited when it shows up on the picnic table.

This bean salad, on the other hand, is completely awesome. In fact, it's so awesome that it needs a different name so it doesn't get mentally lumped in with all the inferior "bean salad" recipes out there. It is shamelessly (possibly illegally) copied with very little editing from one of my very favorite cooking blogs, 101 Cookbooks. (Heidi has wonderful recipes for all sorts of things, and she takes beautiful pictures to go along with her text. I highly recommend a visit.)

This is another favorite to take places, since it's good at any temperature, keeps beautifully, and is allergy/intolerance-friendly (leave the almonds off if nuts are an issue).

Carrot, Dill & White Bean Salad


1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots

more olive oil for cooking
2 cups sliced carrots, cut 1/4-inch thick on deep bias
3 cups cooked white beans (canned is fine)
scant 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
2 tablespoons brown sugar (or honey, but I like brown sugar better)
1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and shallots in a small bowl. Stir and set aside.

In your largest skillet over medium high heat, toss the carrots with a splash of olive oil. Let them cook in a single layer, tossing gently every three or four minutes until the carrots are deeply browned.

Add the beans and dill to the skillet and cook for another five minutes, or until the beans as well heated through. Add a bit more olive oil to the pan if you need to.

Put the contents of the skillet in a large mixing bowl, sprinkle with the brown sugar and pour the lemon-olive oil mixture over the top. Toss gently. Let sit for ten minutes. Toss gently once again, taste and adjust with more salt or sugar or lemon juice if needed. Sprinkle with the almonds just before serving.

A Picnic Favorite: David's Wife's Coleslaw

We spent this last weekend with friends in East Tawas, part of our Annual Fleeing From The Woodward Dream Cruise. I know there are plenty of people who love the Dream Cruise (about a million and a half of them, according to www.woodwarddreamcruise.com), and I can certainly agree in theory with taking a couple of days to celebrate the automobile, which is the foundation of the economy in southeast Michigan.

Most of the cities along the Woodward corridor have related events, fairs, festivals, concerts, etc., and local media talk about little else in the weeks leading up to the Cruise, so by the time the actual event rolls around we’re pretty well ready to be done with it. Staying home means that we can’t leave the house all weekend except on foot, and if we need to venture out we can assume it’ll take several hours to get anywhere – say, the grocery store down the street. Once we get there we’re unlikely to be able to park, assuming that the owner of the parking lot hasn’t shut down their business and rented out the lot to Cruisers all weekend. We don’t have air conditioning in our house, so if we need to keep the windows open to keep from suffocating, we’re also stuck with the accumulated gas fumes and noise from 30,000 extra vehicles driving past our house. (In our defense, the Dream Cruise was NOT this big a deal when we bought our house.)

All of this means that we’re happy to escape to East Tawas for a weekend with our college friends. This year we were a little more disorganized than usual heading out the door, so I left without my usual folder of recipes for feeding a crowd. As my husband has pointed out many times in the past, I’m a slavish follower of recipes – I don’t improvise, I don’t substitute, and I certainly don’t “wing it.” And yet I keep getting into these situations where I have to work outside of my cooking comfort zone. Here’s my latest variation on David’s Wife’s Coleslaw, a perennial favorite at David’s company lunches since it doesn’t include mayonnaise and the leftovers keep forever:

David’s Wife’s Coleslaw

For each head of green cabbage:

1-2 yellow onions, sliced very thinly

1 cup cider vinegar

1 1/2 tsp celery seed

1 tsp dry mustard

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

Salt and pepper

½- ¾ cup olive oil

Slice or shred the cabbage as thinly as you like and toss with the onion, then sprinkle with the 14 cup of sugar and toss again.

Heat the vinegar in the microwave until it’s hot but not boiling. Add the dry mustard, celery seed, the 2 tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and as much pepper as you like. Whisk this together, pour it over the cabbage, and toss. Pour the olive oil over the top and toss it again.

Give the cabbage a couple of minutes to get a little wilty from the hot vinegar, then taste it and adjust the seasonings as needed. If I’m adding more celery seed or mustard I’ll usually heat up a little more vinegar and whisk them in rather than putting the spices directly onto the cabbage, so I don’t end up with clumps of seasoning.

This is best if it sits for an hour or so before serving. It’s great the next day (and the next, and the next), and I love to take it to picnics because I don’t have to be paranoid about everyone getting salmonella from a mayonnaise-based dressing on a hot day.

What We Ate This Weekend; or, My Name is Jen and I Have a Quinoa Problem

We have a quinoa problem in our house. At some point I clearly thought it was the answer to our gluten-free troubles – well, OK, I thought this at several points. Several points at Costco, to be exact, which is how we ended up with 12 pounds of quinoa sitting in our pantry. Fortunately for me, this recipe is just right for toting along to events, since it doesn’t need to be kept hot or cold, and is tasty served at any temperature (including straight out of the bowl in the refrigerator. Theoretically.)

In its original form, this recipe appeared in Cooking Light, January/February 2007. It quickly became a go-to favorite for potlucks, picnics, and any other time that I needed to make sure the GF guys could eat something but didn’t have access to a stove or refrigerator. It scales up easily and, as it turns out, is very flexible.

It’s not all that hard to keep most of these ingredients on hand. And if you’re in the middle of making it and you realize that you’re out of a key ingredient, you can substitute. It goes something like this:

Me: Hey, everyone liked the quinoa salad at the potluck last week. I think I’ll make it again for this picnic dinner that we’re already late for.
GF Guy: What a great idea, especially since you ate it all at the potluck and I didn’t get any.
Me: Oops, I’m out of pistachios. I’ll use slivered almonds instead.
GF Guy: OK.
Me: Oops, I’m out of dried pineapple. I guess I used it all last time. I’ll use these dried cherries.
GF Guy: Sounds good.
Me: Oops, I used all the green onions. I’ll use onion powder.
Me: And I’m out of fresh ginger so I’ll use this curry powder.
Me: And we just ran out of sesame oil so I’ll use some really good olive oil and throw some toasted sesame seeds on top.
GF Guy: Do you want me to go to the grocery store?
Me: No, it’s going to be great even though it has absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the dish I set out to make. I promise.
GF Guy: Aren’t you the person who hates improvising in the kitchen? The follower-of-recipes-to-the-very-last-detail person?
Me: Um.

I Have a Quinoa Problem Salad
1 cup quinoa (give or take)
½ cup toasted chopped pistachios
½ cup chopped dried pineapple
1 bunch chopped green onions
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 ½ teaspoons cumin
1 tablespoon sesame oil (the dark kind that actually tastes like sesame, not the cooking kind)
Salt
Crushed red pepper (though we use Szechuan pepper instead, since we're not eating nightshades)

Cook the quinoa in some water or broth (enough to cover it by an inch or so, and let it cook on low heat until it's al dente. Don't overcook the quinoa or it will be pasty instead of fluffy, and you'll end up spending a lot of time issuing disclaimers about your spouse being the one who cooked the quinoa. Or maybe that's just me.)

Mix everything together in a bowl. That’s it. Sometimes we put in a splash of lemon juice to perk it up, and I’ve been known to use a sweet vinegar (fig, basalmic, or rice) as well if the quinoa ends up a little on the drier side.