Basic Dal (aka dahl, daal, daahl, aka Lentil Stew)

This is one of my favourite super easy & quick (30 min, tops) suppers. Throw on a pot of rice before you start, and if you’re feeling adventurous add some cumin seeds and/or tumeric to the rice. Combining lentils with rice is a great way to get protein without eating meat. This recipe is written with some cooking times in mind, i.e. the onion cooks while you chop the pepper.

1. Chop or slice one onion and mince two cloves of garlic, throw them into a pot on medium heat with almost a tablespoon of oil/butter/margarine.

2. Add 1/2 teaspoon tumeric, 1/2 tsp Garam Masala (mixed Indian spices), 1/2 tsp curry powder, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, 1/2 tsp salt, pepper. (measurements here are approximate, adjust as you like). Stir spices to coat onion.

3. Chop up 1/2 bell pepper, add to pot, stir well.

4. Once onions are translucent, add 1 cup dry red lentils and 2 cups water, stir well. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

5. If you want, chop up another vegetable like zucchini or tomato, or steam some corn.

6. When the lentil pot reaches a smooth consistencey and most water has been absorbed, add your extra vegetables to the simmering lentils, and add a small amount of water (1-2 tbsp). Simmer on low heat until vegetables are warm.

7. Serve over rice, top with raisins or coconut or toasted nuts as desired.

Date Orange Bread

This is the final recipe that I am posting from the Zen Meditation Camp. They were having a little party following an ordination service and wanted some sweet nut bread. We made Banana Bread and then this recipe. I really liked this one. I don’t usually care for bread with dates in it but this was so good! Enjoy!

Also, just need to give credit where credit is do. These three recipes from the Zen Meditation Camp were given to me by the head cook for the camp. Her name is Laura Fish. I enjoy the experience whenever I get a chance to cook with her and her husband, Jim.

Date Orange Bread

Ingredients:

1 Egg
2 Tablespoons Butter, softened
1 Cup Granulated Sugar
2 Orange Rinds, grated
1 Cup of the Juice from the 2 Oranges (add water to make it the full cup)
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
¾ Teaspoon Salt
½ Cup Walnuts, chopped
1 Cup Dates, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350-degrees F.
Beat egg slightly.
Add butter and sugar and beat until smooth.
Add rind, juice, and vanilla and stir.
Mix the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt in a separate bowl.
Stir in nuts and dates.
Pour flour mixture over batter and stir to moisten.
Spoon into a greased 9×5x3-inch loaf pan.
Put in the oven and bake for 1 hour.
Bread is done when an inserted knife comes out clean.
Pull out of oven and cool for 10 minutes
Remove from pan and finishing cooling and then wrap.

Makes 1 Loaf.

Hummus

This is another recipe that we use at the Zen Meditation Camp. I love hummus! It is really good on flatbread! This is a great recipe to make for a party!!! Enjoy!

Hummus

Ingredients:

15 Cups Garbanzo Beans
5 Cups Garbanzo Bean Liquid (reserved from garbanzo bean can)
5 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 ½ Cups Tahini
15 Garlic Cloves
5 Teaspoons Salt
Bread or Crackers to serve on

Directions:

In food processor, process garlic until minced.
Add the rest of the ingredients, using only about half or so of the reserved liquid at first, then adding more as needed until a smooth and thick but spreadable consistency.
Hummus stores well and may be made a few days in advance.

Serves 30.

Tahini-Garlic Dressing

I am spending the week at Samish Island Community of Christ Campgrounds cooking for a Zen Meditation Camp. All food for the week is vegetarian. I wanted to post some of my favorite things we made this week. This is a salad dressing recipe and is wonderful!

Tahini-Garlic Dressing

Ingredients:

1 ½ Cups Tahini

6 T Canola Oil

¾ Cup Lemon Juice

¾ Cup Water

3 Tsp. Apple Cider Vinegar

6 Tsp. Tamari

3 Garlic Cloves, pressed

¼ Tsp Black Pepper

Directions:

Thoroughly blend all ingredients in a food processor.

Refrigerate.

Makes 30 Servings.

A Recommendation

I know this isn’t a recipe but it is food related. I tried some new jelly this week that is absolutely wonderful and I just had to recommend it to y’all. It is an Organic Pomegranate Jelly from Crofter’s. This is the best jelly I have ever had! If you find it in your local store, you must buy it!

Rhubarb Dream Bars

I grew up with my grandma Lillie baking Rhubarb Custard Pies every Spring/Summer. It quickly became my favorite pie and now that my grandma is gone, eating rhubarb is a very nostalgic experience for me. She shared a house with us and when she passed away I got her studio apartment that we had converted the garage into. This also included a garden out the front door of the apartment that has three rhubarb plants in it. She passed away 2 and half years ago but this is the first Spring that I have harvested the rhubarb.

We are having a potluck at church this Sunday and I wanted to make something that involved the rhubarb. I didn’t want to make a pie as it won’t go as far as other items. So I did a search on www.allrecipes.com. I use this website a lot when looking for recipes. It has a conversion option so you can make something for as many or as few people as you want. It also lets other people make comments on recipes so you can see how it turned out for them. Anyways, while searching I came across this recipe for Rhubarb Dream Bars. They looked good. I decided to do two batches of them for Sunday’s potluck. I made the first batch last night and tried some this morning. THEY ARE WONDERFUL! The second batch is in the oven.

The recipe that I got from All Recipes is below. Just a few notes though. Because I didn’t have enough butter at home I used a ½ Cup Butter and ½ Cup Shortening. Of course, that turned out just fine. For the topping, I used all 3 cups of sugar the first time but it was really sweet. For the second batch I am only using 2 ½ Cups. I ended up having to bake it for 55 minutes because at 35 minutes it was still really runny. So set it for 35 minutes and then check on it every 5 minutes. Also I cut it into 21 (3×7) bars instead of 15 (3×5). Enjoy!

Rhubarb Dream Bars

Ingredients:

CRUST-
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 cup butter, softened

TOPPING-
3 cups white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs, beaten
4 1/2 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a medium bowl, mix together 2 cups of flour, confectioners’ sugar and butter until it forms a dough, or at least the butter is in small crumbs.
Press into the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish. (Spray the dish with PAM before putting the crust in)
Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven.
While this bakes, whisk together the white sugar, salt, flour and eggs in a large bowl.
Stir in rhubarb to coat.
Spread evenly over the baked crust when it comes out of the oven.
Bake for another 35 minutes in the preheated oven, or until rhubarb is tender.
Cool and cut into squares to serve.

Serves 15.

Shannon is Learning How to Make Casseroles!

I’m not talking about the condensed-soup, or from-the-box kind, I’m talkin’ real-deal, home-made, from scratch, healthy, one-dish, hot meals.

My casserole adventure began with a batch of homemade carrot soup that I added too much cayenne pepper to, it was just too hot to eat straight-up, so I decided to use it as an ingredient in something else, a casserole! So I looked at a bunch of different casserole recipes and discovered several common factors:

1. Thick soup was somehow involved.

2. There was a starch element (potatoes, rice, etc)

3. There were other ingredients, such as vegetables and meat.

4. There was some sort of topping, like cheese or crumbs.

5. Everything got cooked before it all got mixed together and put in the oven.

So I cooked up a mixture of wild and white rice in the rice cooker, sauteed some chicken and vegetables, then mixed it all up, grated cheese on top, and threw it in the oven on a low temperature. The low temperature was my only mistake, it needed a much higher temperature to actually get the heat all the way through that thick mass of food. I kept pulling it out and checking it, frustrated with its failure to heat up quickly. 45 minutes later I turned up the temperature, walked away for 20 minutes, and came back to happily discover a bubbling, steaming casserole! Perfect!

My second attempt (there was a LOT of that soup to use up) wasn’t nearly as good as the first, too many extra carrots added in (the soup really was enough carrotness for one dish), but I am interested in trying again with another creamy, homemade soup.

So there is a bit of insight into how Shannon cooks. Very intuitively, very independently, very experimentally, with a lot of reckless abandon, know very well that in the end, I will eat pretty much anything, so no matter how bad it is, at least I won’t go hungry, and at least I will have learned something new.

Perogies with Sausage and Chard

I made this for dinner tonight and found it very tasty. Canadians will be familiar with the mighty perogy and it’s wondrous comfort-food qualities. Friends in the US, however, may not be, which I think is supremely sad (and mildly surprising given the US’s predilection for fried potatoes in various forms). Perogies, for the uninformed, are little dough pockets filled with mashed-potato goodness that often includes cheese or onions. They are Ukrainian in origin and once they are made (a long, laborious process, I usually just buy the frozen ones) they are traditionally cooked by boiling, though they can also be fried or baked. I find the baking method to be a consistently successful and simple method of preparation.

Here is a lovely way to serve perogies. I often serve them with sausage and onion (sausage & saurkraut are traditional friends of perogies) and today decided that a bunch of chard would be a great addition to my frying pan of sausagey-oniony goodness.

Ingredients
4 large, traditional sausages, any type, removed from casings
1 large or 2 small onions, halved & sliced
1 bunch chard, stems & ribs separated from leaves, and separately chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp water
18 perogies, baked
sour cream (if desired)
Method
1. In large frying pan, fry sausage until almost cooked, add onion and cook until soft.

2. Add chard stems & ribs to fry pan, cook until soft. Add chard leaves & water, cook until soft.

3. Serve perogies atop sausage mixture, top with sour cream as desired

Serves 3

Mr. Potato Head’s Chicken & Cheese Soup

Every Spring there is a Fine Arts Retreat at Samish Island Campgrounds. I have attended the past 7 out of 8 of them with plans to go to my 8th one in April. Occasionally, the retreat offers a cooking class. At one of the earlier Fine Arts Retreats that I attended the cooking class was focused on soups. The teacher showed us all the available ingredients and then all the class participants were able to make a soup of their choice using whatever available ingredients we wanted to use. The soup was to be served that night to the campers for dinner. Well, this soup was my creation! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

4 Chicken Breasts
20 Baby Red Potatoes
10 Cups Chicken Broth
1/8 Cups fresh dill, chopped
2 Carrots
4 Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Olive Oil
Black Pepper
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Salt

Directions:

Shred the potatoes.
Put broth in pan on medium heat and add the potatoes.
Cut chicken in cubes and sautee them in butter until no longer pink in the middle and then add the chicken to the soup.
Slice the carrots into slices and sautee in oil and crushed garlic and then add to soup.
Add the spices (except the dill) to the soup.
20 minutes before serving add the cheddar cheese and dill.

Serves about 10.

The great thing about soup is that it is so easy to take any recipe and make it your own. Looking back, I definitely would have added mushrooms to this. You can choose to dice instead of shred the potatoes. You can choose to peel all the skin off the potatoes, only off half of the potato (my preference), or peel it all off. You can also choose to use shredded chicken instead of cubed. You can take a leftover roasted chicken and use it for the soup. You can add as much or as little of the spices you wish as well as omitting some and/or adding your own!

Let the experimenting begin!!!

Creamless Creamy Mushroom Soup

This was one of my fist ventures into the world of creating my own soup recipes, now I do it all the time, and many are based on what I’ve learned from making this particular soup many times. The idea was to make my favourite comfort food, cream of mushroom soup, while also accommodating a vegan roommate I had at the time. The soup is not particularly aesthetically pleasing (it can have a strange browny-green look to it depending on what exactly is in it) but is very hearty and makes an excellent dinner with a basket of warm biscuits.

Every time I make this soup it turns out a bit differently, it all depends on what I have in the fridge. The basis, though, is always the same, so I will set that out and then elucidate the possible additions. Please note that all measurements are estimates – add whatever looks & feels right to you!

Ingredients
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk celery, chopped thinly (include celery leaves if there are any)
10 (approximately) white mushrooms, stems separated from tops, stems chopped, tops sliced thickly, keep separate.
2 Tbsp olive oil
2-3 cups vegetable broth
3 potatoes, any kind, peeled and chopped into cubes
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp rosemary

Instructions
1. In large pot on medium-low heat put 1 Tbsp olive oil. When oil is warm add onion, garlic and celery, cook until onion is translucent. Add chopped mushroom stems and cook until stems begin to soften. Add sliced mushroom tops, thyme, salt, pepper, cinnamon and rosemary, cook until mushrooms are soft. Add in potato and stir to cover with spices and juices from vegetables.

2. Add vegetable broth, bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, 15-20 minutes, or until potato is very tender.

3. Allow soup to cool slightly (turn off heat and remove cover), then ladle out 2-3 cups of soup, being sure to include lots of potato and mushroom, into a blender. Blend until smooth. Return blended soup to pot and stir to combine with the rest of the soup.

Possible Additions
Leeks are an excellent addition to this soup. Thinly slice one large leek, adding white part at onion, garlic & celery stage and green part at mushroom top stage.

Broccoli is very nice in this soup. Slice the broccoli stems and add at mushroom top stage. Chop top into medium sized florets and add after potato.

Green onion can be chopped and added in the same way as leeks.

Cauliflower can be chopped and added in the same way as broccoli.