Scallion Pancakes

So this post is from 6 months ago - August 2013! Way back when it was hot and humid, people wore shorts and tank tops and drove with their car windows down. Summer seems like a distant memory with all the freezing temperatures and snow that's covering the sidewalks. I am so sick of the cold weather! Let's hope Punxsutawney Phil was wrong this year...

Anyway, this recipe should help warm you up on a cold winter night! It's perfect comfort food any time of the year, and it is also one of my favorite appetizers at a Chinese restaurant: scallion pancakes! It is a pretty simple recipe, but it does require a bit of time and expertise in flipping pancakes without burning them. However, this treat is worth the effort!

Frying in the frying pan!

Use a pizza cutter to slice the pancakes and serve it with dipping sauce. Unfortunately, I forget exactly what went into the homemade dipping sauce I made, but it was some combination of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, leftover scallion bits, ginger, and garlic. It also goes great with a cold beer!

And that's it!!! I am officially done blogging my food exploits of the 2013 CSA Season...and just in time! The CSA sent out an email notifying everyone it's time to sign up for the 2014 CSA. Guess it's time to start bookmarking more recipes to try this summer and fall...

Curried Stir-Fried Potatoes

A few months ago, iTunes celebrated it's 5 year anniversary by offering some of it's most popular apps for free. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything app, was one of those free ones, so I snatched it up! It's normally $9.99 and it is probably worth the price, but I refuse to buy anything from the app store. This recipe for Curry Potatoes comes from the app:

Curried Stir-Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons neutral oil, like corn or canola
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds (optional)
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped
• 1½ pounds all‐purpose potatoes, peeled and shredded or minced
• 1 tablespoon garam masala or curry powder (to make your own, see Garam Masala, Hot Curry Powder, or Fragrant Curry Powder), or to taste
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch cayenne
• ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Directions

1. Put the oil in a large nonstick or well‐seasoned cast‐iron skillet over medium‐high heat. When hot, add the cumin seeds if you're using them, fry them for 30 seconds, then add half the onion and the potatoes. Add the spice blend, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook, stirring or tossing, until the onion has caramelized and the potatoes are lightly browned, about 10 minutes; the potatoes need not be fully tender.

2. Add the cilantro to the pan, toss once, and transfer to a serving platter. Garnish with the raw onion and serve immediately.

The potatoes were served alongside naan and chicken tikka masala in a pre-made simmer sauce. The potatoes weren't so great - I felt like they needed a lot more curry flavor. Considering that I can't remember when I purchased the curry powder that's sitting in the pantry, maybe it's time to buy a new one? I would try this again, but it is not on the top of my cooking list.

Hibernation

That's my excuse for why I haven't posted in over a month! It was much harder than I thought to finish up posting food from the CSA...even there are only two meals left! Sometimes, when I get closer to the end of completing a task, I get a little lazy finishing it up. Does that ever happen to you? It's like now that I can actually see the end of a project in the near future, I can relax a little...to the point where I stop working. Oops. Don't worry, though, the last 2 meals will be posted very shortly!

Will an adorable picture of Winnie make you forget about how long it's been since the last blog post?

For the past few years, February has been "Vegetarian Month" in our home. This all started while I was in graduate school. I was taking a class about drug addiction, and one of our assignments was to give something up for a month and journal about it. While some of my peers gave up sugar, alcohol, and caffeine, I decided to give up meat. And because I have such a wonderful husband, he agreed to do it with me! Talk about a supportive spouse! It was much harder than I anticipated it to be - we had to be more creative when planning our weekly menus by trying new meals and foods. It was also a challenge attending social functions, like going out to dinner with friends or going to a Super Bowl party, where everyone else was eating meat. Somehow, we survived and we enjoyed it so much that we decided to continue the tradition every year!

This year, however, we decided to challenge ourselves a bit more and go vegan...before 6. A while ago I posted about Mark Bittman's idea of going vegan before 6 pm, where you eat vegan meals for breakfast and lunch and then whatever you want for dinner. It's more of a lifestyle than it is a diet, and it takes a lot of preparation and awareness of what you are eating for you to do it properly. We decided to incorporate this idea of going vegan before 6 into vegetarian month - we're going vegan before 6 and then vegetarian after 6 (so we can eat dairy at dinner). One day in and it's not so bad so far!

Breakfast: coffee with almond milk; cinnamon raisin bread with peanut butter; avocado toast
Lunch: smashed chickpea and avocado sandwich
Dinner: roasted vegetable sandwiches and salad

Stay tuned for more vegan and vegetarian meals this month!