Marinated Vegetables

I try to following the rules, listen to directions, and stay within the lines when I'm coloring, but sometimes I have to stray a little!  The recipe for Marinated Vegetables described steaming the vegetables prior to seasoning them. I like some steamed vegetables, but this was a cornucopia of goodies like mushrooms and bell pepper ... and really?  Steaming those sounded too mushy to me.  So instead I roasted the veggies.  They turned out great!

I started by slicing and dicing up the required veggies: broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, bell pepper, and garlic.

Then I added the seasonings: olive oil, oregano, dill, basil, and thyme.

I drizzled everything over the veggies and roasted them in the oven.

Afterwards, I stirred some balsamic and red wine vinegar into the pan right before serving.

The veggies were flavorful and tender. They were the perfect accompaniment to the pasta salad we had for dinner!

Wicked Garlic Dip

I made Wicked Garlic Dip as an appetizer on Thanksgiving Day. The ingredient list is simple: potatoes, garlic, mayonnaise, and salt. I boiled the potatoes and blended everything together in the food processor. Unfortunately, the dip was quite gummy; I think I let the concoction whirl around for too long. The flavor of the dip was intense, super extreme raw garlic flavor! A little too intense at times.

Russian Cabbage Borscht

Russian Cabbage Borscht: Not impressive when you ogle, but makes my mouth happy. Potato, beet, cabbage, carrot, celery, and onion all hang out on the stove until cooked down. Then the magic part: dill, black pepper, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and a little tomato sauce. Super hot and toasty! Warmed me up to my core! Look at all those exclamation points!

Roasted Green Beans

Here are some delicious Roasted Green Beans complete with garlic and pine nuts. Pine nuts are divine. I lightly toasted them before adding them to the beans and, oh my goodness, they were tasty!

The green beans are roasted with whole garlic gloves and thinly sliced onion. After roasting, this was tossed with a little balsamic vinegar. Such a lovely side dish for dinner!

Old Country Pie

Old Country Pie is a delicious quiche with just a skosh of egg and a LOT of vegetables. Here's the round up: onion, mushroom, broccoli, carrot, garlic, green onions... I also added spinach and cauliflower in place of cabbage. A superb dinner pie, dense and seasoned nicely.

Summer Vegetable Soup and Custardy Popovers

My typing hands are tired but I pooled up just enough energy to tell you about Summer Vegetable Soup and Custardy Popovers. Yes, I am well aware that we have a few more days until it is officially summer, but I just couldn't wait to make this soup. It is light and healthy and you feel great after you eat it! None of that weighed down by grease business!


I started the soup by boiling a diced potato and whole garlic cloves together in a pot. Once these were tender, they were blended until smooth. After that, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, peas, zucchini, red bell pepper, corn, and spinach made their way through the steamer. I steamed them in small batches and collected them into a gradual heap, then added them to the blended potato and garlic mixture. After heating through, the soup was topped with freshly minced basil and quickly consumed!

Many of the ingredients in this soup originated locally from Full Circle Farm. If you are Seattle based reader, I highly recommend checking out their veggies at your weekly farmers market!

I had never made popovers before but after reading this blog post that Mollie Katzen linked to on her twitter, I must admit that I was quite curious! They are so light and fluffy and very easy to make. The puffiness factor made me feel like a great success and they tasted divine with a drizzle of melted butter and a little dollop of strawberry jam.

Kristina's Potato Salad

Ya know, sometimes I just get too caught up in the moment, and that's when I forget to take a picture of my Moosewood creation. Kristina's Potato Salad fell victim to one such occasion. I was at a BBQ, enjoying the heck out of it, when I realized I needed to document the recipe. The above image is its product. Sorry guyz.

The potato salad itself was quite delicious, however awful it may look in the photo. Lots of parsley, tons of veggies, gorgeous pink new potatoes. If Kristina hadn't already claimed this salad, I would call it "garden vegetable potato salad." Pretty fresh, huh? It was delicious. I even snuck in a few fresh peas. And that Homemade Mayonnaise I made the day before got put to good use. Oh man, that mayonnaise. I am seriously wondering why I never made it sooner. Fantastic stuff!

And here, further documentation of aforementioned salad. On a paper plate, in a dimly lit room, being held by an unsteady (but awfully good looking) hand. I've got a real future in photography.

Sweet Potato Pancakes and Fruit & Vegetable Waldorf Salad

It's always a good time when you throw a little Jon E. Rock into the mix. But in the kitchen? That's a whole new level of awesome.

Sweet Potato Pancakes are shredded sweet potato and onion pumped up with egg, fresh lemon juice, a little flour, and parsley. We cooked them on Jonny's griddle, which was the perfect surface for these little mounds. Tender, lightly seasoned, and served with sour cream and applesauce, the sweet potato pancakes were hearty and fun.


Charlie was appointed head chopper for Fruit and Vegetable Waldorf Salad. The salad is made up of tart apples, fresh pineapple, an orange, celery, carrot, red bell pepper, currants, and almonds. (I chose to leave the almonds and currants out of mine, hence the lack of both in the photo below). The dressing is yogurt, orange juice, and a dash of cinnamon and cardamom. It's a sweet salad with just the right amount of crunch.

Always such a good time cooking with friends, particularly with two of my favorite gentlemen!

Minestrone

After having a delightful bowl of Minestrone this weekend on the island, I decided to give it a go here at home. I strongly believe that the quality of the ingredients I used played a big role in making it so delicious!

The veggies in this soup were all wonderful: carrot, celery, onion, garlic, zucchini, bell pepper, and kidney beans. I thought the zucchini was a particularly nice choice and I am looking forward to having some grow in my garden this summer!

I topped the soup with Parmesano-Reggiano. This is one of my all time favorite kinds of cheese! I learned from Giada De Laurentiis that cheese is at its peak flavor if served at room temperature and I believe that doing so made for a more delicious soup!

Warm Salad

Warm Salad... the name of this recipe causes bile to collect in the top of my esophagus. It's the equivalent of browsing through recipes and seeing... I dunno... dehydrated fish or grilled oatmeal. Not exactly appetizing. But I gave it a shot. And you know what? This salad rocks.

First I combined escarole, red chard, Napa cabbage, and mustard greens in a gigantic pan. As the greens wilted and cooked down, I added more. I halved this recipe and it was still a lot of food! After these cooked down with a skosh of garlic and salt, I laid them out on a platter.


Next I cooked leeks, onion, mushrooms, celery, and cauliflower in the same pan. These cooked down for about 10 minutes. Then I added them to the platter and gently tossed everything together.
I then drizzled some balsamic vinegar, cracked black pepper, and sprinkled parmesan cheese over the whole thing. And low and behold, Warm Salad! It was quite tasty, reminding my dad and I of a new variety of stir fry. I served it with warm sourdough bread "to mop up the juices." Awesome!

Macaroni and Cheese Lite

I had a bone to pick with Macaroni and Cheese Lite... I made the original Moosewood recipe for "Whole Wheat Macaroni: Russian Style" some time ago on Vashon Island. It was a lot of fun to assemble, and was even cast in a starring role on my blog page (see the banner at the top of ahappytaste. blogspot.com... it's from the production line of WWM:RS). But the recipe itself was... well... gross. The red onion was practically raw, there were too many veggies, too much cottage cheese, in general: a mess. So when I saw that Macaroni and Cheese Lite was the updated version of this failed first attempt, I furrowed my overly plucked brow in concern. I knew that if I wanted to conquer this cookbook, I'd have to at least give it a try.

Butcha know what!? The new recipe was pretty good. I made a half recipe (something I am starting to realize I should do for all of these Moosewood attempts... often it is just too much food!) and baked it with extra cheese, a signature Alli Wright move. Instead of cabbage I used a little cauliflower and some peas. I omitted the caraway seeds. I cooked the veggies a bit longer than directed to sufficiently soften them and prevent any potential raw onion bits. This dish reminds me of tuna noodle casserole without the fish. It was quite tasty and filling!

Sri Wasano's Infamous Indonesian Rice Salad

Sri Wasano's Infamous Indonesian Rice Salad is a highly addictive situation with many fascinating components. I'm not feeling particularly descriptive tonight, so here's whutchoo put in this salad:

brown rice
fresh pineapple
green onion
celery
red bell pepper
water chestnuts (I almost left these out. I think they are disgusting, but I am trying to be a big girl with a big girl palate.)
fresh mung bean sprouts (I know I just said I'm tryin' to be a real adult, but it's one step at a time, K? I straight up left these out... anything with the word "mung" in it should surely be kept at a distance from the mouth)
raisins (Plumped these in a glass of very warm water for about 30 minutes, a trick I learned from a total stud)
toasted peanuts
toasted sesame seeds

All of this gets combined in a mild, oil based sauce with orange juice and garlic and spicy spice. It marinates in the fridge, or until you can't bear it any longer and must have a taste. So you do, and it's delightful, and both you and Charlie are surprised by the contribution, taste and texture wise, that water chestnuts have made, and think they might not be so bad after all, but hey, who knows, it could just be all the basketball you've been watching.

Raw Vegetable Salad with Very Green Dressing

Mollie Katzen writes that "most vegetables can be eaten raw if cut properly... chewing is light and delightful and not a cumbersome chore. Visually, Raw Vegetable Salad can be beautiful, like edible confetti." This makes my heart sing. As someone who has a love/hate relationship with salad, I found that sticking to her instructions and cutting the vegetables smaller than I normally would made the salad much more enjoyable.

I made Very Green Dressing for the salad. It is an oil free dressing with many fresh herbs and a touch of buttermilk. The ingredients were whipped up in the food processor and spooned over the salad. While the dressing was a tad bitter, it was still tasty. I even dipped a little whole wheat pita bread in the dressing. Mmm!

Vegetable Chowder and Carrot Mushroom Loaf

Vegetable Chowder and Carrot Mushroom Loaf: A satiating match made right here, in the kitchen. The chowder was made up of of potato, celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, corn, and onion. The carrot mushroom loaf is shredded carrot and mushroom, mixed with cheese, breadcrumbs, and herbs. The concoction is baked until golden brown on top. Yum!