Delicious food for busy girls

Last week I began a new job.  Its a completely new skillset, and I've been exhausted.  All last week we ate at restaurants, but this week I wanted to return to having home-cooked meals.  Tortellini soup was perfect!

The recipe is from the Easy Everyday Cookbook, but can also be found online at BettyCrocker.com.  I made it as closely as possible to the recipe, subbing the fresh parsley for some dried basil.  In addition, the recipe in my book has vegetarian broth used rather than chicken.  If you chop the vegetables beforehand, or have a lazy spouse with a day off who can do some chopping for you, the entire meal takes about 30 minutes to make.

Look at this awesome tea strainer!

From Limbo in Portland, Oregon, but you can buy one here.  Nice price for a lovely little item like this.  You can use it to brew tea or to strain out tea leaves when you pour from your pot.  A great gift, maybe?

Eat Like an Egyptian

While watching TV late at night I came across an episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain was in Egypt.  I have to say that when I was a young child, studying ancient cultures was a hobby of mine.  Religion, myths and legends, fashion and food and drink of the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Romans and Egyptians continue to fascinate me today.  That is why when I saw Tony Bourdain eating Ful Medames, Egypt's ancient national dish, I decided that I need to find a recipe and make it for myself.

Recipes for this food vary greatly, but mostly involve simmering fava beans (also called 'broad beans'), onions, garlic, tomatoes, and various herbs and spices together in a pan.  While fava beans are a staple in the Middle East as well as Ethiopia and Greece, they are nearly impossible to find here.  I found canned fava beans at Whole Foods...but you know how I feel about canned beans.  Well, maybe you don't.  They're like cheating.  They're like telling your blind grandmother you have a royal flush in poker when you don't.  She won't know the difference, but its still wrong.  Also they don't taste as good (except for in chili where you're using 5 kinds of beans anyway, I don't expect you to cook all those beans yourself).

But I digress.  In Egypt, everyone, rich or poor eats Ful Medames (according to Wikipedia and Tony Bourdain and the recipe book), and there it is mostly a hearty breakfast dish served with a hard-boiled egg and pita.  But I'm from America, and I like to eat Lucky Charms for breakfast.  That's okay, Ful Medames makes a great dinner, too.

Links used in this post:
The recipe I used. This book seems excellent and I want to peruse it more!
Nutrition Data for Fava Beans
Wikipedia article for ful medames.

Food from a real cookbook...

The other day I bought a cookbook.  An actual hard-copy cookbook.The Borders' location nearest to us was going out of business and I don't know what came over me...Especially since the recipes can all be found online. For what its worth, if you know a vegetarian (or someone who is trying to eat healthier) who doesn't love using the internet, I'd recommend this cookbook:  Easy Everyday Vegetarian.

The first recipe I chose to cook out of this new book is Tempeh Stir-Fry with yogurt peanut sauce.  It looked and tasted lovely.  I don't cook with soy too often because sometimes it doesn't agree with me in general, but I wanted to try tempeh just this once. I didn't make any alterations to the recipe, but I think that if tempeh is too odd for you or is unavailable, tofu, chicken, peanuts, mushrooms, or shrimp would all be delicious substitutes.

An easy recipe for a healthy 2011.

What is tempeh?  Read about it over at Wikipedia.
Want to make this?  You don't really need a cookbook at all!  Tempeh Stir-Fry

Edible Geometry.

Now you can have your Fibonacci sequence and eat it, too.

This is Romanesco.  Its a type of cauliflower that looks like it's from another planet.  I first saw it at the Portland Farmer's market a few weeks ago, but I didn't buy any because I had no idea what it was or how to cook it.  I ran into Romanesco again at Trader Joe's the last time I went shopping.  Trader Joe's version comes in a bag with regular cauliflower and in general is foolproof to prepare...And a perfect example of golden section geometry.

How's it taste?   Its a cruciferous vegetable, so its flavor is about halfway between broccoli and cauliflower (as you might guess).  Next time I'll get some to steam myself!

Getting steamy in the pan.

Gobble it up.

A Turkey is a strange animal.  If done correctly, it is also a tasty animal.  I was commissioned to prepare a turkey for my neighbor this Thanksgiving, but I hardly ever cook meat.  At first I was definitely apprehensive, but after some recipe research I was ready to give this traditional holiday bird a go.  The bird turned out great, but I still have plenty of improvements to make before I'm a turkey pro.

I started with this recipe from allrecipes, which suggests brining the turkey in a saltwater solution overnight before cooking it.  The brining process allows the turkey to absorb water and results in a perfect, juicy turkey.  In an ideal world, you have a stock pot large enough to submerge the turkey, but instead I had to do half at a time.  Each side probably only got about 6 hours of brining time, but in the end it seemed like enough. Next year maybe I'll have a bigger pot.  

15 pound turkey brining.

For the stuffing, the recipe suggests stuffing the turkey with chopped carrots, celery and onion.  I found that even after cooking the turkey for 4 hours, the stuffing didn't get cooked...so next year for stuffing I would probably prepare an oven-style stuffing separate from the bird.  I have heard that simply putting a halved lemon or orange inside the turkey will also keep it moist, and I'd definitely like to try that.  Cutting up all those vegetables was too much work for something I couldn't eat, even if I used the Vidalia chopper.

The prepared stuffing mix.

I made a few more changes to the recipe.  Instead of fresh thyme, I used fresh rosemary because its growing outside and it was readily available.  I also already know that I like rosemary and turkey together.  I'm not sure about thyme though I'd like to try it someday.

Cooking the turkey breast-down definitely helps keep it moist, however the recipe suggests turning the bird 3/4 of the way through.  Be prepared for this to be incredibly difficult, as turkeys tend to be heavy.  We accomplished it somehow.  I also removed the stuffing and  turned the oven up to 400 for the last 20 minutes of cooking to make sure the inside was done. (I decided to do that because once I discovered the stuffing wasn't done, I was worried about the inside of the turkey may also have been undone.  I hope next year to have both a meat thermometer and a turkey baster.)

The finished bird!  I don't have any pictures of it carved, sadly.  It was very
very juicy though! 

Unfortunately I turned down the carcass at the end...I just don't have enough time right now to make turkey stock.  I did bring home a lot of extra meat, so turkey chili is in order for later this week.

New hat...and a new cat!

My latest knitting project is Super Cupcake.  Its one of the first non-free patterns I have actually finished.  The price tag for this pattern and two neckwarmer-type scarves is $5 $4.  Honestly, I think that's a little pricey for the simplicity of this pattern, which only consists of 1x1 rib and "shaker rib" which has a bunch of other names, but is also a very simple stitch to do. That being said, I do recommend putting a safety line every inch or so while knitting, because if a stitch is dropped in this pattern, it is nearly impossible to fix. I am pleased with the hat, but if I were doing it over, I would just have tried to find a similar free pattern.

At least I finished it just in time to lose my other hat...

We'd also like to welcome a gorgeous  new member to our family!  Balloon is 2 1/2 year old tortoiseshell domestic shorthair.  She's so much different from our first cat.  All cuddle and no play!  She's from Washington State, so we can forgive her for being a little weird.

No, she's not stuck in a Tron-style video game environment... she's hiding under the bed from Furball!

Balloon is a little bit of a pushover, so she's afraid of Furball, who is still hissing at her every time he passes by.  Luckily for us, she's too laid back and aloof to escalate the drama between the two in any way, so we've had no fighting or caterwauling.  She's been hiding though, which means that if we want to see her, we have to lock Furball up for a few hours so she'll come out from underneath the furniture.  Its going to take some adjustment, but we hope the two will be friends someday.

She may look chunky, but her jowls are pure fur!  

We know she's found the furrlosipher's stone...she's turning half of herself into gold!