Spicy Roasted Cauliflower Soup

While my brother and his wife were in town, we ate at one of my favorite places to take visitors, Zaytinya, which is a delicious Mediterranean mezze (tapas) restaurant. One of the dishes we got was Roasted Cauliflower with sultans, caper leaves and pine nut puree, and it reminded me that I hadn't made my spicy roasted cauliflower in ages. I wanted a whole meal of more than cauliflower and today was ridiculously cold, so I went for a soup.

Ingredients

• 1 medium/large head of cauliflower
• 1 medium/large red onion
• 4-6 cloves of garlic
• Red pepper flakes
• Olive oil spray or mist
• 1/2 cup dark red kidney beans
• 1/2 cup barley
• Salt
• Parsley

Preheat oven to 375. Break apart cauliflower and place on baking sheet. Spray with oil, add salt and red pepper flakes (.5-1 TB maybe), and mix until coated. Cut red onion in half and slice into thin half moons. Place on separate baking sheet with garlic and spray with olive oil. Roast 20-30 minutes, stirring a few times.

Meanwhile, cook the barley and when it's done add kidney beans, parsley, and salt and stir. When the veggies are done roasting, add half to the barley and blend the other half with .5-1 cup water until smooth. Add the barley mixture, stir, and serve.

It hit the spot on a cold night.

Split Peas and Barley with Spicy Kidney Bean Cream Sauce

Uninspired. That's how I felt on the Metro ride home from work as I desperately tried to come up with a dinner idea. And that's how I continued to feel as I stared at my bare cabinets in search of something that caught my eye. Nothing. The problem is that I got all my veggies in at lunch with my Spring Vegetable Salad and needed grain and protein for dinner, limiting my choices severely. I really wanted some veggies, but evidently I didn't do such a good job grocery shopping and will barely have enough to last me to this weekend. So I went for my go-to dinner and made split peas and barley. Except I got a sudden flash of inspiration as I was walking the dog.

Ingredients

• .5 cup yellow split peas
• .5 cup barley
• 1 large red onion
• 2 TB Better Than Cream Cheese
• .5 TB chipotle in adobo sauce
• .5 cup cooked dark red kidney beans
• Fresh cilantro to taste
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine split peas, barley, and onion in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20-30 minutes or until tender, checking to make sure there's enough water. Remove from heat and add cilantro, salt, and pepper. Meanwhile, blend together the cream cheese, beans, and chipotle until smooth. It makes 2 medium/small 375 calories servings.



Experiment successful. It wasn't overwhelmingly spicy, but it had great flavor and was easy to make.

Tomato Basil Tofu atop Barley

Thinking I'd mastered pan frying tofu, I thought it would be a great dinner. I finely chopped up 1/2 red onion since I was out of garlic, added a few leaves of fresh basil, salt, and 2 TB olive oil all to the frying pan. I tilted it and let the flavors mingle for a couple of hours.

In a small pot I added 1 cup of water and .5 cup barley, brought to a simmer, and let cook for 30 minutes until all the water was gone. As that cooked, I put the frying pan on medium heat and when the oil was hot, I added some strips of extra firm tofu (I cut 1 block into 12 strips). I let it fry for 10 or so minutes and was getting worried. So I tried to flip it, but most pieces stuck. It was not a good moment.

It looked like some of the bits in the pan were starting to burn, so I added 2 large tomatoes, 2 plum tomatoes, more chopped fresh basil, and .5-1 cup water. I let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. When the barley was done, I made two servings and topped with the tomato basil tofu mixture.

It was a little oily but yummy. It made two 500 calories servings and was filling. It could use a little more flavor- maybe veggie boullion or the rest of the onion. Now I'll go back to cowering in fear of the beast that is tofu...

(No camera batteries yet, my apologies!)

Ugly Soup

My recent lack of culinary innovation is scaring me. I guess I used it all up at Christmas.

Lately I've been a little obsessed with nutritional yeast. A "stand by" of mine is yellow split peas and barley with nutritional yeast, so I went with what I know. I jazzed it up with some red onion, plum tomatoes, and portobellas. I knew that the shrooms would make it a little gross, but it was pretty ugly. Tasted alright, though not as nutritional yeasty as I'd wanted.

Chickpeas and Barley

In need of an easy meal, I cooked .5cup barley (my favorite grain) and mixed in .5cup chickpeas, 2 cloves of roasted garlic (threw them in the oven with the paper on for 15 minutes or so on 400ish degrees until soft), .5TB olive oil, and some dried basil. It was good.

Save the Vegetables! Soup

Evidently I overpurchased on veggies last week, which means that I didn't need to buy much this week, but I had to come up with a way to use them up because the thought of throwing out food makes me want to cry. So I did what I love to do- threw it all in a pot to make a soup.



On hand:

1 medium onion

6 cloves garlic (I had to buy a giant pack of garlic becuase I needed it one day and the only nearby place tht had it sold it in 6 bulb packages)

3 large yellow squashes

4 plum tomatoes

4 cups of green beans

1 medium head of cauliflower

1 cup frozen corn



1 can light kidney beans



.5 cup barley (my favorite grain)

.25 cup each quinoa and bulgur



Simply seasoned with seasalt and pepper. If it was topped with avocado, it would contain all essential food groups! It's a nice summery soup and should feed me the rest of the week- it made 5 gigantic servings.

Garlic Sesame Asparagus and Herbed Barley

Somehow the asparagus I'd bought 2 weeks ago wasn't quite dead yet, so I felt it was time to finally eat it. I'd been putting it off because I didn't want my pee to smell, but I'm not sure why I was so worried about that. I was inspired by this recipe on vegweb, but I had no sesame seeds so I improvised- shocking I know.

I added 1 TB of sesame oil and 3 cloves of chopped garlic to 24 spears of asparagus. Then I stuck it in the oven on about 375 for maybe 10 minutes until it was done.

Meanwhile, I cooked some pearled barley and when it was almost done, I added a variety of Italian herbs and some vegan margarine (Earth Balance).

Delicious. I just wish I'd remembered to add the garlic to the oil ahead of time to let it infuse like I do with olive oil. But, still wonderful.

Memorial Day Dilemma

I was invited to a Memorial Day potlock with 4 hours notice. Normally that would be plenty of time to go to the grocery store (which was on my list of things to do anyway) and come up with something yummy to make. However, I opted instead to go on a bike ride.



So before I took my bike out, I was waiting for my mom to call me and thought I'd see if I could get started on something (plan B was to buy something, gasp!). I went to vegweb, my favorite for recipes, and checked out the potlucks and picnics category. I stumbled up the recipe for Three Bean Pasta Salad and did a quick inventory of food in my apartment. I thought I could pull something together.



I immediately cut up 4 cloves of garlic and smashed them into a paste, adding a little salt and olive oil to assist. I then let it marinate together in the fridge while I drained and washed a can each of black, garbanzo, and dark red kidney beans. I then decided to use up my baby carrots and carefully cut them up into thin strips. Very time consuming. I also defrosted some frozen cut zucchini that I randomly got the other day (I didn't know they made frozen zucchini). But it seemed seasonal.



I threw in the beans, zucchini, and carrots, then I added the olive oil/garlic mixture I'd made, carefuly not to add a lot of the garlic since I was pretty sure it would be garlicky. I also thought some dill would make a nice addition so I threw some dried dill in as well. I mixed, set in the fridge, added more olive oil and dill to the olive oil/garlic mixture, and went off on my bike ride.



When I came back, I cooked 1 cup of barley and steamed 12 stalks of asparagus. With the asparagus I decided to be fancy- I steamed them for just a couple of minutes and tossed them in an ice water bath. I see it all the time on TV and I'm really sure what it does, but it seemed apporpriate. And it cooked it down so I could add it to the dish. When the barley was done, I put it on a plate and stuck it in the freezer for 10 minutes or so to cool it down. I then added the barley and asparagus to the salad along with the olive oil/garlic/dill mixture and some salt. I'm so scared of over salting so I tried to minimalize the amount I added. It also had a strong garlicky taste, which is fine by me. Then I put it in the freezer just to make sure it's all cold enough.

It was pretty tasty and it lasted forever, which was great during my first week of tri training!

Squashtacular

I bought a few too many yellow squashes last week, so I've been eating them too often. I was tired of stewed squash and wanted to do something new. So I did my favorite cooking trick- I roasted them. I cubed 2 large squash and cut 1 medium onion into strips. I tossed both in 1TB of olive oil and put in a 400degree oven until nice and brown. I only seasoned it with some salt because I couldn't figure out what herb would be best. Meanwhile, I cooked some barley, my favorite.

It was a perfect alternative to stewed squash. I just wish it didn't make my kitchen so hot. Sometimes I had the salt just perfect, but some pieces could use a little more. I blame the sea salt for my inability to flavor things correctly.

More Soup for Me

Since I woke up with a scratchy throat that morphed into a nice little cough by the evening, I decided I need to make some soup for dinner. Yesterday I received a fantastic present of Brussels sprouts and thought I could make a soup with them. One time I steamed them, threw them in the blender with some veggie broth, and added some pan-fried sprouts for a nice, hearty soup. This time, however, I decided to do something slightly different.

I started off by cooking 3 small onions and 4 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil. Then I added some water and .5 cup of barley. After it cooked about 15 minutes, I added 1 cube of vegan vegetable buillion and some whole Brussels sprouts. I let it cook until the sprouts were done. And it really hit the spot.

I also needed to use up the rest of the firm tofu that was in my fridge. I cut it into 2 inch by 1 inch pieces and then dipped it in some concotion I came up with. I added about .75 cup of pinto beans, a giant squirt of mustard, some leftover canned tomatoes from my pizza, Mexican-style chili powder, and a little olive oil together and blended until smooth. I rolled (dreged?) the tofu in the dip (which would make an excellent dip on it's own) and then rolled it in finely crushed Cheerios. I started crushing the little o's by hand, but that was way too much work, so then I put them in a random paper lunch bag I had, but they broke it, so I resorted to using the bottom of the mustard container to finely crush them. I then baked for 30 minutes or so on 400 and when the tops weren't brown like I wanted, I turned on the broiler until they were nice and crispy.

As always, I forgot any salt or pepper. And I think it would have been better if I'd thought about it in advance and soaked the tofu in my bean mixture for awhile. But, they were neat and I plan to try to make them again, next time with extra firm tofu and a nice long soak. Finally, a new use for Cheerios.

I'm Quitting My Job

If I didn't love fighting cancer so much, I'd quit. Because I enjoy sitting around my apartment cooking all day just as much. I didn't have to be at work today so I did my favorite thing in the world. And wore my awesome "Vegan Cowgirl" t-shirt while doing it! (Thanks jennilicious!)

For breakfast I cooked 1/4 barley (100 calories) and added 1 TB peanut butter (100 calories), .5TB unsweened cocoa (10 calories) , and a splash of 8th continent light vanilla soy milk (20 calories). It was a tasty breakfast, although I sort of felt like a 5 year old. This might be a new weekend staple, probably with a mushy banana added to it.

Lunch was even more fun. I decided I had to have mashed cauliflower and it had to look just like mashed potatoes. So I steamed a head of cauliflower (I once read that cooking veggies in water destroys a lot of the good stuff in them, but steaming is ok) and simultaneously cooked 2 very tiny onions (40 calories) and 4 cloves of garlic (20 calories) in 1 TB of Earth Balance margarine (100 calories). When the cauliflower was done, I added it and 1/2 the onion/garlic to the blender with a splash of unsweetened soy milk (30 calories) and blended until it was nice and creamy. If you were looking at it (if I would buy new batteries or a new camera), you'd think it was mashed potatoes. I also threw in some salt and pepper. I added the rest of the onion/garlic mixture to them so there's be a few lumps.

I swear I couldn't tell it was cauliflower. And I love cauliflower...I generally roast it in some olive oil and add some red pepper flakes, or lately I've been putting it in my lentils with some curry. Sometimes I just eat it plain steamed. Anyway, this dish was amazing. For people who claim they don't like veggies, they've just never had them cooked the right way, and this is a great way to do it. I cannot wait to have leftovers for dinner. Yum!

Oh, and I also decided I needed a couscous dish to go with my mashed cauliflower. So I put in 1/3 cup whole wheat couscous with .25 cup golden raisins (because they didn't have sultanas when I needed them and these were a last minute replacement for another dish awhile ago), some hazelnuts (I wanted walnuts, but I was too lazy to reach farther into the cupboard to find them), and some now dried mint that was once fresh but I stashed into the freezer in it's regular package without protecting it in a fit of panic because I didn't want it to go bad when I used it in the dish I needed the sultanas for, and 1/3 cup hot water. I covered the bowl and 5 minutes later mixed it up and threw it in the fridge. Then I decided it might be too dry and it needed some liquid. For whatever reason I chose unsweeneted soy milk instead of something like olive oil that might have been a better choice. But it came out delicious- a good breakfast dish. Now I can't wait to keep using the mint...

I Heart Barley

Barley is my new favorite grain. It's so versatile, not too mention quite tasty. I hear there are different kinds of barley, but I bought mine in the international aisle and the package doesn't tell me anything about it.

Normally I just boil up some barley and when it's done, I throw in some vegan margarine and some dried Italian herbs. Then I scarf it down like I haven't eaten in months. Tonight, though, I needed some legumes/beans/nuts for dinner (according to mypyramidtracker.gov, the greatest FREE resource ever!). So I threw 1/2 cup barley and 1/2 cup lentils into a pot, added some water, and boiled until everything was nice and soft. Oh and I added some dried basil and dried rosemary. And the whole giant bowl (well, I had 2 medium sized bowls) is only 550 calories.

Delicious! I would have taken a picture, but the batteries are dead. But wait, did I post pictures of cupcakes and polenta? Yeah, I don't want to talk about it.