Tagged: grains, lunch, recipes, weekday lunch, winter
Posted on December 13th, 2011
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I’m listing this meal as a weekday lunch, but that’s not how I originally envisioned it. I was scheduled to make this couscous the night before and didn’t (blame it on yoga and then an incredible desire for a veggie burger). Until my first bite, I was unconvinced that roasted vegetables and couscous could make an appropriate lunch. On first glance, the preparation seemed too laborious and the composition too heavy. I was wrong on both accounts.
I dedicated 10 minutes for vegetable prep and 10 minutes to boil the veggie broth and pour it over the couscous. The oven took care of everything else! Unluckily for me, the oven took care of everything else very, very slowly. I neglected to plan ahead and didn’t even start the minimal vegetable prep until 11:45. I ate this lunch at 2 pm, my hunger assuaged by a 1 pm snack of yogurt and honey.
We ate the cold leftovers on Sunday and I noticed very little in the way of flavor degradation. This means that if you work from home, you can make this dish fresh–just preheat your oven around 10am! And if you commute, you can make this dish the night before and eat it cold (or warm it up, if you prefer) at the office.
Slow Roasted Root Vegetable and Herb Couscous
Adapted from The Garden Cookbook
Serves 5-6
Hands on time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 1/2 hours
Ingredients
2 beets
2 carrots
1 sweet potato
2 parsnips
2 onions
2 heads of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
a bunch of thyme
balsamic vinegar
150 ml vegetable stock
salt & pepper
275 g of wholewheat couscous
500 ml vegetable stock
3-4 tablespoons of chopped mint
3-4 tablespoons of chopped parsley
juice and zest of 1 lemon
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 320 degrees.
Scrub the vegetables. Peel and cut the carrots, sweet potato, and parsnips into wedges. Leaving the skin on, cut the beets in half or wedges, depending on their size. Quarter the onions.
Lightly oil a baking sheet and put all of the vegetables, except for the onions, together with the thyme. Gently toss to ensure all are covered with oil. Then sprinkle with a bit of balsamic vinegar.
Roast the vegetables for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, add the onion and the 150ml of vegetable stock (*this will keep the vegetables from burning on the bottom.) Roast the vegetables for another 35-40 minutes until they’re crisp and golden.
When the vegetables have 20 minutes left, bring the 500ml of vegetable stock to a boil. Put the couscous in a deep bowl and pour the boiling stock over it. Stir once and then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Leave for 10 minutes until the couscous has absorbed the stock and the grains are soft.
Then, season the couscous with salt and pepper, and toss in the herbs, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper and then dish out equal portions of each onto plates. Enjoy!
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Tagged: apple butter, PBJ, peanut butter, sandwich
Posted on December 12th, 2011
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I rarely crave peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Like many others, I grew up eating these sandwiches; I learned to associate the simple pairing as important fuel to energize me for the afternoon, but not as a lunch option that made my mouth water with anticipation. When I think more closely about this most American of sandwiches, my aversion makes no sense: I love good peanut butter, and the jam or jelly component offers infinite possibilities. You can toast your bread, choosing between a variety of different grains. I think my overwhelming problem with a basic PBJ is that it’s just too dry. Even typing this, I feel an underlying need to go get another glass of water.
Last Friday our cupboards were basically bare and I wasn’t in the mood to pay $15 for lunch somewhere. We had peanut butter from Brooklyn Larder in our refrigerator and my homemade apple butter sitting beside it. Suddenly, I craved a crunchy, generously portioned Peanut Butter and Apple Butter sandwich. I hurriedly composed the sandwich as my craving lingered, not knowing how long it would stick around.
In this case, butter + butter equals a creamy, well-balanced sandwich. Brooklyn Larder’s peanut butter is slightly salty and my apple butter is decidedly fruity. I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch last Friday, and when 3 pm hit and I felt the familiar rumblings of hunger, I wished I had made a second sandwich for lunch. Unfortunately, by mid-afternoon, I was no longer in the mood for peanut butter and had to go out to find something else to eat! Cravings are fickle.
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Tagged: birthday, cake, one girl cookies, personal
Posted on December 10th, 2011
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Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband, Justin! Chocolate buttercream cake brought to you by One Girl Cookies.
(It tastes even better than it looks!)
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Tagged: fall, Ottolenghi, pumpkin wedges, recipes
Posted on December 8th, 2011
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These pumpkin wedges capitalize on the remaining whole pumpkins you can still snag at the farmers’ market or grocery store. We ate them as an appetizer the other night and the crispy crust on each wedge gave me nearly the same pleasure an onion ring might, but without the grease or unwanted calories.
You can use nearly any cheese you’d like. Ottolenghi suggests Parmesan; we had leftover Gruyere to use, so we substituted that. A cheddar or other easily grantable cheese would also work. When you chop your parsley and thyme, the smaller you chop the herbs, the more likely the entire crust will stay on the wedge. I made large cuts of parsley and so part of the crust ended up on the baking sheet (which isn’t exactly a crisis; just pick it up and put it back on the wedge!)
We served our wedges with a dill sour cream, not pictured.
Crusted Pumpkin Wedges
Serves 4
Adapted from Plenty
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs pumpkin; skin on
1/2 cup grated hard cheese (Parmesan, Gruyere, Cheddar)
3 tablespoons whole wheat breadcrumbs
6 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
2 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped thyme
grated zest from 1 lemon
salt and pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
sour cream and finely chopped dill
Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 375. Cut the pumpkin into 3/8 inch thick slices and lay them flat, cut side down, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
2) In a small bowl, mix together the cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, half of the lemon zest, the garlic, a bit of salt, and some pepper.
3) Brush the pumpkin wedges with olive oil and then sprinkle each wedge with the crust mixture. Press the mixture down a bit and make sure each wedge is evenly coated.
4) Roast the pumpkin for 30 minutes, until tender. If the topping starts to char, cover it with tinfoil.
5) Serve with the dill sour cream. Enjoy!
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Tagged: "Food Politics", book review, food issues, food writing
Posted on December 6th, 2011
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The failure of federal efforts to feed the poor cannot be divorced from our nation’s agricultural policy, the congressional committees that dictate that policy, and the Department of Ag that implements it. Hunger and malnutrition in a country of abundance must be seen as consequences of a political and economic system that spends billions to remove food from the market, limit production, and guarantee/sustain profits for large producers of basic crops.
This quote is taken from the 1967 documentary, Hunger in America. Sadly, despite the 45 year gap between the documentary and today, the quote is still both relevant and accurate.
Before 2011 ended, I wanted to patch up the gaping holes in my knowledge of food politics. With this goal in mind, I spent September through the end of October reading Marion Nestle’s Food Politics. I brought the book everywhere I could (including to a pedicure, where I received confused looks. Where was my US Weekly?!) because with a book as dense as this one (405 information packed pages), it wasn’t a light read. I found that I could only read about 10 pages at a time before my brain felt overwhelmed by a deluge of information.
This is not a knock against Nestle’s writing: she took an incredibly complicated subject and sifted through the political undercurrents, complicated court cases, and marketing tactics that have created America’s contemporary food culture. She originally wrote Food Politics in 2002 (republished in 2007), so I can only imagine how many additional pages she could write about food politics in the nearly five years since. I slogged through certain chapters, skimmed others (notably “Deregulating Dietary Supplements”), and found myself riveted by a few sections (“Exploiting Kids”; “Inventing Technofoods”), scarfing up information as quickly as I could.
I’ve now let a month pass and my notes have started to gather dust. Some of the key concepts have remained with me while other information I read is lodged in the back of my mind, waiting to be synthesized. This post is the result of that synthesis; I hope that it’s as helpful to you reading it as it was for me writing it, in case you’re disinclined to tote a giant textbook with you everywhere you go.
My summarized take-away from Food Politics is simple: don’t trust food companies. Instead, view their actions from their perspective. They exist to sell products. They exist because they keep a pulse on a society’s habits, and in some cases create a society’s habits, and then market products to respond to those habits. If a certain diet is in vogue, that’s where the food companies’ attention will go.
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