Category Archives: Food

Food, health, money saving, pulses, weight loss

Lentil Ball Base

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One thing we eat a ton of are pulses. Pulses are the best- high protein, high fiber, low fat, cheap and taste good. The perfect food, for us.

We have a little too many dry lentils in the pantry, so I played around with them and came up with a lentil base for ‘meatballs’. Take this base and add your favorite meatball add-ins to it, and enjoy!

It’s simple, hands-off, and easy. We use it a lot, because the leftovers are an asked for lunch – they go great in wraps.

Lentil Ball Base:

Serves four for dinner

1 cup dry lentils (about ½ a pound)

2+ cups water

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

1 chopped carrot

Put all ingredients in a pot and simmer covered about 30 minutes. Add water during cooking if they threaten to dry out.

this is all it is. Plus water

Strain them when they are done and allow to cool.

Done. You can mush the lentils on the side of the pot with a spoon.

Add

About ½ cup bread crumbs (you want the mix to stick together, so add ins can be gooey)

with bread crumbs mixed in

Whatever flavors you want

Form into balls I get 24-28 golf ball sized ones.

Bake at 350F sprayed with oil for about 30 minutes, turning once.

After they are baked, they can be reheated slowly in a sauce *gently* without falling apart.

That’s it.

Cheap, healthy, vegan, free of most allergens, and infinitely adaptable.

Baking, Food, scratch cooking

Cooking from ‘Scratch’

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The other day a friend said they hoped to be able to ‘cook from scratch’ one day, like I do. But they are not ready to.

I get that. ‘Cooking from scratch’ takes a lot of planning, effort, practice and shortcuts. And all of those are hard to get.

But I want to let everyone in on a secret.

I do not ‘cook from scratch’.

No one ‘cooks from scratch’. (Well, it’s rare as get out.)

When I bake bread, I do not raise the wheat, harvest it, mill it…

When I roast a chicken, I do not raise it to adulthood, butcher it, clean it…

You get it.

‘Scratch’ cooking is an arbitrary term. YOU pick the place where you are comfortable jumping in and making food that is whole and healthy for yourself and your family. For me, this is making a pound of beans in the Instant Pot and freezing them in 2 cup measures. A can of beans is not ‘less whole’. It’s not less ‘from scratch’.  I grab 5# bags of carrots and peel and cut them before a meal. Grabbing a bag of frozen carrots or fresh baby carrots or even canned carrots and using them is still offering whole good food.

None of those choices is ‘I planted the carrots and grew them’. They are all ‘from scratch’.

Cooking ‘from scratch’? As I said, planning, effort, practice, shortcuts.

Effort needs energy. If you don’t have the energy to do anything other than open a box or a bag and nuke something, you take care of yourself. Not everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. Try to add whole foods to your nuked meals, and try to find shortcuts to get them to you. Cooking is less important than giving yourself the nutrition and good food you need.

If you have the energy, a bag of frozen veg, a can of beans tossed with dressing, are easy additions of whole foods to any busy schedule.  As you get more practice with it, you can get more ideas and it’s easier. A sliced tomato next to a meal. A can of beans stirred into a casserole. A whole fruit for dessert.

Practice is vital. I can have a few onions and carrots chopped in a few minutes, because I know what I am doing *now*.
I didn’t used to.
Have a few minutes? Chop an extra onion or two. Get used to doing it. They freeze well, and then you can toss them into the pan when cooking over the week when you have no time. Same for carrots, celery, green peppers. The more you cut them, the easier it will be.

And look up a video to learn how to cut them. Epicurious is one of my favorites. If no one taught you how to cook and prep, there is no way you can do it fast and easy and that will cause you to not ‘cook from scratch’.

Shortcuts. This one is really hard to explain. Part of it is knowing that bread can rise in the fridge overnight so you do not have to spend all day baking, or that there are breads designed to be stirred up and baked. Part of it is grabbing that chopped onion from the freezer or a can of beans. Part of it is skipping a bottom crust and using a streusel for a pie. Part of it is having the luxury of a food processor and a strong mixer. The more you try to do things, the more shortcuts you will realize you can make.

Planning. This is important, and it’s emotional labor. I used to not plan. Now I plan. I do not know one single thing that helped me out with this switch. But if every night you get home and you are tired and hungry, there is no way you can cook. I used to plan some time every weekend to sit and plan out the week’s meals. Everyone got to pick a meal. I would plan a dish in my clipped recipes file. That worked. It made shopping easier, fewer things went bad, and we had a more varied diet. Now, that is all second nature, I have meals planned out for weeks, food rarely goes bad.

Wait, no, we still have flexibility! I don’t mean I know what we are eating Monday 2 weeks from now. Just that I know what we want and that we have the stuff for it and that I can find a day that works for it.

And also, ‘planned overs’. Again, with the labor. Nothing goes into the fridge or freezer without a plan for it. We had stir fried veg the other day. Putting it away, I thought it would go well as lunch with a pack of Ramen.
Yes. Ramen. Cooked with an egg in the pot, with leftover veg added. No more ‘work’ than regular ramen, but way better for us. Ok, yes, I added some scallion and sesame seed and cilantro, but that’s because I have them and need to use them before they go bad.
Planning. Clean out your freezer, make a list of what you need to get rid of, and then make a cup (or pour a glass) of something good to drink, and make a list of 5 meals to attempt next week. Compare prep and cook time with your calendar (no way an hour long prep/cook can be done after soccer practice, but a crock pot meal can be) and give it a try. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

So, cooking ‘from scratch’ is a sliding scale. You pick the place you are comfortable with on any given day, and you work with it, with your tools and your experience.

Baking, Buffalo, desserts, Food, pulses, scratch cooking, soup, sourdough, whole grain

Quarantine meals- foods we ate before we went shopping (we were too stocked)

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Over the shut down, we managed to not go shopping for 5 months.

Yes. Five months. No deliveries, no curbside, no groceries at all. For humans at least, we did get the pup more food and we did pick up out medicine at the pharmacy.

Now, we had just hit bulk with the idea that we would not be shopping anytime soon, so we had bags of frozen veg in the standing freezer, and eggs, bacon, butter, etc. I had also just come home with two bags full of half price of meat from Aldi’s. And we had beans. Because I love our pulses. And we accidentally purchased a case of lentils when we already had half a case of lentils…

We ate a lot of lentils.

We also planted seeds from the peppers and tomatoes we had, and used clover from the yard and leeks from the garden for fresh food. And we planted a red potato that had sprouted, so we had fresh potatoes soon. And we had been gifted venison.

We make our own bread, and were stocked up on flour and yeast, so all good there.

And this was normal for us. We’ve had a standing fridge our whole relationship, and trips to restaurant supply stores and the farmers market have helped us keep it nicely stocked. Also, we had leftovers from the holidays and from our BBQ, and most people would not have those.

Anyway, here’s a list of basically what we ate over the shutdown. It required a bit of balancing and creativity, but over all we ate well and healthy. There were starches and veg with most meals. I just didn’t always record them…
Let me know if you want a recipe for any of this.

We made gnocci and pierogi and pasties over the shut down, which figure into meals below. And I had bought boxed stuffing as a treat. And bagged stuffing. We had a lot of instant stuffing.

These are NOT in order. I do have a list where I kept what we ate when, but it made no sense for me to type ‘ragu and pasta’ 6 individual times, when I could just type that.

And now you see why I try to do ‘pantry clean outs’ a few times a year. Want to join me in my next one? Oh, who am I kidding- no one is reading this!

Leftover ‘ragu/sauce/gravy/Sunday sauce/ I will not argue about what to call it’

Over pasta 12 times, over gnocci twice, as pizza sauce, made into baked ziti (2 dinners, one lunch), served as subs

Leftover BBQ  

            Pot pie, with fried corn and couscous, with yellow rice and veg, with bean salad, with potato croquettes, with frozen hash browns, with masa, with plain rice

Pizza

margarita, leftover meat, Sicilian 2x

Battered fried fish and chicken and fries (this was my birthday meal in early April)

Brats in beer, kraut and (instant) potatoes. This was Hex’s birthday dinner. We had it 2x

The kid’s birthday! We had fish cake soup (frozen from Hana Mart) frozen crab cakes and sushi from Aldi, homemade samosas (we made a TON, so lunches et al) and a raspberry (our bushes were bearing) orange-chocolate roll

Fried Rice

Veal cutlet sandwiches (twice) (once with tomatoes and lettuce, once with sauce and cheese) I had just bought a box to try at Aldi. We also had a third meal from the single box, as parmesan.

‘sushi’- made with nori, rice, fake crab sticks, cream cheese

French toast and sausage

Turkey with stuffing (leftover)

Hot Brown (twice)

BLT (with the last of the tomatoes and lettuce)

Bean flautas

Burittos

Kielbasa and pierogi

Brown sugar bacon chicken (planned before the shut down)

Mulligan stew with gnocci and on noodles (two meals)

Ham sliders (with spam and frozen ground turkey meat)

‘haystack’ sandwiches, made with venison

Arancini (multiple lunches from this)

Salmon and quinoa

Fejoda and cabbage

Sheppard’s pie with venison- made twice

Halloumi ‘burgers’

Chicken and stuffing

Cornish hen soup 2x, as we had 2 hens. This was a ‘kit’ from Hana Mart, that has everything in it except a Cornish hen and water.

Fish head soup. We had this several times, as I had just picked up and frozen fish heads for the kid’s oral surgery, and we had several soup worth frozen…

‘candy beans’ and brown bread

Venison liver and oinions.

Crepes with goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes

Chili nachos

Alio olio (had to teach the kid how my people didn’t starve)

Puttenesca twice

Pork sausage risotto – this sounds good. I do not remember it. I think we decided it ‘wasn’t a keeper’.

Sausage with peppers and onions 2x (freezing peppers is great)

Crab cakes with red papper slaw (that used the last of our fresh peppers. I remember that distinctly)

Lamb croquettes (using leftover frozen lamb) twice

Pasta with ham, peas and cream

Lentil burgers several times. We love lentil burgers.

Kielbasa and beans

Dal makhni

Black bean cakes

Lentil soup. Several times

Ham and bean soup

Scotch broth

Tuna melt

Ham and red cabbage

Lentil and rice patties

Crab casserole and foccacia

Bacon and smoked cheddar sandwiches

Veggie burgers

Gyros with pita

Cajun pasta

Take out style ribs

Pork schnitzel and mashed potatoes

Twice fried wings

Burgers with A1 sauce

‘hogbake’ (a vegetarian onion casserole from the Redwall cookbook)

Pierogi poutine x2

Meatballs and squash

Roman burgers and bean salad  (We had them twice)

Dal and squash curry

Beet pasta

Cheeseburger roll two times- I was tweaking the recipe

Black bean burgers

Fish in pastry

Sausage and pepper meatloaf

Onion burgers

Pasta with marinara

Mapotofu 2x (had bought 2 packs of tofu)

Sicilian mackerel on cous cous

Meatloaf sandwiches

Bratwurst (these had been 99¢ a pack at Aldi)

Dutch beans

Pot pie

Salmon and stuffing (again, boxed stuffing had been on sale)

Lasagna Verdi and leftovers

General Tso’s chicken

Cubano sandwiches

Maple beans

‘carving ham’

Baked bean casserole

Turkey, stuffing, and sautéed grape leaves (from pruning the vines in the yard)

Chili fries

Cheese patties and knots

Pizza burgers

Biscuits and gravy

Butter chick peas

Chicken Fried Vension

Goose rillettes

Venison stroganoff

Tortellini with pesto (this is what our kid requested for his birthday meal, but we ended up having enough food he got a different one)

Chicken applejack

Turkey sausage and stuffing

Roast beef with garlic rolls and onions

Bhan Mi turkey

Bflo chicken dip and bread (716 day!)

Hamburgers in gravy with noodles

Venison in oyster sauce

Lentil and sausage salad

Sourdough bread and hummus and baba ganoush

Ham loaf

Nachos with beans

Lentil salad

Leftover goose with plum sauce

Meat on Naan

Sardine soufflé and corn fritters

Pork spidini

Pesto

Lentil balls with marinara, satay style, BBQ

Steak, potatoes, carrot salad

Pogaca and lathera (cheese stuffed bread and slow stewed veg. I love this meal)

Spring rolls

steak and liver pie

Tuna pockets x2

Penne with sauce

Ramen

Fish, new potatoes (we harvested them!), peas

Spam and hash browns

Pasta con vodka

Turkey wings and ‘staple’ (A pasta veg mix we love)
sausage and stuffing

Refried bean and yellow rice casserole

Brats and sprouts

And then we shopped…

Lunches

Fish soup

Mixed soup

Assorted leftovers

Lentil spread on bread and crackers

Brie on bread

Pizza 3x (leftovers from dinners)

Pastrami sandwiches

Herring on pumpernickel

Fish cakes

Frozen lunches for Hex that he obviously wasn’t gonna take to work

Quinoa salad 2

Wheat berry salad

Avocado tomato mozzarella salad

Waffles x2

BBQ on rolls (little oinkers)

Jalapeño sausage dip x2

Foccacia with Utica greens

Sambar

Semolina pudding

Tuna salad wraps, sandwiches

Stuffed shells (frozen from Aldi)

Pasties: During the shut down I found three THREE separate packs of chopped beef labled ‘beef for pasties’. They all got made. So we had 3 batches, which made about 9 meals.

Potato pancakes

Lentil soup at least 2 times

Lentils cooked with bbq

Dal makni

Smoked cheddar on pumpernickel

Bean dip

Caponata

Shrimp spring roll

Lentil salad with salsa

Lentils in wraps

Tuna edamame bowl

Hamburger and edamame salad

Fish on crackers

Spanakopita (frozen from Aldi)

PB&J

Meatball wraps

Bean salad

Mac and cheese

Tuna salad

Bean and couscous salad

Ramen and fish soup

Lentil burgers

Salmon pasta salad

Fish balls

Snacks

Lentil spreads, Greek and Indian style

Nimki

Sugar nuts

Peanut brittle

Hard candy

Savory nuts

Chex mix

Bought cookies

Persimmon muffins

Indian pickles

General pickles

Fire and ice pickles

Desserts

Cinnamon rolls x3

Coconut cream pie (my birthday)

Steamed pudding

Strawberry cream cake

Brownie cookies

Donuts: frozen and 3 tests

Roman cherry pie

Gulab jamun

Apple turnovers

Nanaimo bars

Baklava

Paska cheese in cream puffs (this sounds really good! I am glad I am writing these up!)

Chocolate chess pie

Sugar pie

Oatmeal pie

Marguerite cake (Hex’s birthday)

Berries and goat’s cheese

Gingerbread, pears and caramel sauce

Mini éclairs

Pear crumble

Apple tart with dulce de leche

Macaroons

Peach crumble

Bread pudding

Tea bread

Black magic cake (several times)

Peach and coffee granitas

Self saucing fudge cake (several times)

Butter tarts

Raspberry tart with canolli filling.