Broccoli Soups

Mmmm broccoli soup. We all love it around here. Full of vitamins, easy to cook up, and many different ways to cook it. This winter I've tried three different recipes.

The simplest one I found is by Gordon Ramsay and the instructions are to 1) boil the broccoli, 2) drain and reserve the liquid, 3) puree the broccoli, adding in as much cooking water as needed to reach desired consistency, 4) season with salt and pepper to taste, drizzle with olive oil, 5) enjoy. You can fancy it up by pouring it into a bowl that has some goat cheese and walnuts waiting. Simple, delicious, and light.

The next recipe I tried is a rich Cream of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup. Because there's a roux it ends up having a thicker texture and makes for a hearty soup. This is the only one of the three that wouldn't work on a low-carb diet since there's a good amount of flour in it. I made this soup a few weeks ago and served it with a side of quinoa pancakes. The kids liked this one the best and it had the most mild broccoli flavor of the three. The other bonus is that it calls for cooked broccoli which makes it a great leftovers recipe if you happen to have some in the fridge.

Smooth Broccoli Cheddar Soup is the one I made most recently is my favorite at this point. It's kind of a mid-point between the two previous recipes. It boils up the broccoli along with a few other goodies in a broth, so there are more complex flavors than with the simple broccoli puree, and rather than a roux it's only made creamy by adding cheese and cream so not quite as heavy. I pureed it in my BlendTec on the soup setting which made it incredibly smooth as you can see from the photo.

And for all of these soup recipes, bacon always makes for an excellent garnish. There's really very little that bacon doesn't pair well with!

Cream of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup (with roux)

• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1-1/2 cups 2% milk
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup cooked chopped fresh or frozen broccoli
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

1. In a medium pot, saute onions in butter until tender.
2. Whisk in the flour, salt and pepper until blended.
3. Gradually whisk in milk and broth.
4. Bring to a boil while stirring constantly; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until desired thickness.
5. Add broccoli, stirring until heated through.
6. Remove from the heat and stir in cheese until melted. (Don't put it back on the stove to boil after the cheese has been added or it will get a grainy texture.)

Smooth Broccoli Cheddar Soup (no flour)

Lightly inspired by Eating Keto

• 3 cups chicken broth
• 2 large broccoli bunches, chopped. (I peel the stems and chop them up as well)
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1 cup heavy cream
• fresh cooked bacon bits (optional)
• chopped green onions (optional)
• salt, pepper & garlic powder to taste

Directions

1. Combine chicken broth, broccoli and onion and bring to a boil. 
2. Turn down heat, cover, and let simmer for 15 min or until the veggies are soft.
3. Put everything into a blender and puree. Depending on the size of your blender container this might need to be done in a few batches. Try not to fill more than 1/2 full at a time. Alternately, take a handheld stick blender to your pot and blend until smooth.
4. Return the puree to the pot over low heat. Slowly add in the shredded cheese stirring until melted, and then add in the heavy cream. Heat until steamy; try not to let it boil since that can ruin the cheese. Season to taste with salt, pepper and garlic powder.
5. Serve topped with more cheddar cheese, bacon bits and/or green onions.

Lentils in Tomato & Polenta

Since getting my pressure cooker I've been making more legume dishes for weekday dinners because I can cook them up much more quickly than on the stove top or oven. There are a ton of great recipes at Hip Pressure Cooking's blog which have so far all turned out perfectly, and their lentil recipe is no exception!

This recipe has led me to discover that my kids actually like lentils! Go figure. I had assumed the kids wouldn't like them so never bothered to try. And because it's cooked efficiently, the flavors stay fresh and bright. Polenta is a side dish loved by all of us that goes really well with the lentils. I serve it warm for dinner, and then I let the leftover polenta set in a parchment paper-lined pan. 

After dinner, I assemble the leftovers into square lunch containers, layered lasagna-style. I put some lentils into my container, followed by a layer of sliced polenta, and repeat until I have a good serving size, ending with lentils so that the polenta doesn't dry up. It's great either cold or microwaved.

Lentils in Tomatoes --Pressure Cooker Recipe

from Hip Pressure Cooking

• olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped 
• 1 medium green pepper, chopped
• 14.5oz can of chopped tomatoes (~1.8 cups or 430ml)
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• salt & pepper
• 1 heaping cup of green lentils
• 2 cups water

1. Preheat the pressure cooker, add a splash of oil, and saute the onion, celery and green pepper.
2. When the veggies are softened, stir in the can of tomato, curry powder, and salt and pepper to taste.
3. Stir in the lentils and water.
4. Close and lock the lid, cook for about 15 minutes once pressure is reached. Time will vary depending on the lentils, apparently smaller lentils take longer to cook, but mine are always ready in about 15 minutes and they're what I'd consider standard sized green lentils (if there's such a thing!).
5. When the time is up, use the natural release method to open the pot which takes about 10 minutes. (Turn off the electric pot, or remove the stove-top pot from the heat).

Polenta

• ~4 cups chicken broth (this will vary depending on the coarseness of your cornmeal)
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 tsp salt (if using low/no sodium broth)
• 1 tbsp butter
• a handful of fresh grated Parmesan, Romano, or other similar cheese.

1. Bring the broth to a boil.
2. Slowly whisk in the cornmeal, reduce heat to low.
3. Simmer, stirring frequently, until the mixture is thickened and the cornmeal is tender, about 15 minutes.
4. Turn off the heat, add butter and cheese, and stir until melted. 

Green Day

It's a cold, damp, cloudy Saturday afternoon and half of our family has a bad case of the fevery sniffles. A perfect day for hubby to surprise us all with a few brand new healthy recipes made in our brand new blender! Today's green menu included Creamy Spinach Avocado Soup and Popeye Ice Cream.

One great feature of the blender is that it can blend so quickly as to actually heat up soups. Veggies out of the fridge with cold water out of the tap resulted in steamy soup in a single step! The texture of the soup was very smooth and creamy, the flavors blended together beautifully, and it was very, very garlicky (which is never a bad thing when you have a bad cold!). If you don't have a comparable blender I'd imagine that you might be able to use a good food processor to blend everything together and then heat on a stove top, but I haven't tried that yet.

For desert, hubby used another option on the blender to make some one-step ice cream. The blade spins more slowly on this setting in order to blend the ice with a minimal amount of melting. A main ingredient in the ice cream is fresh spinach which made it a vibrant green color! Other than for the color I wouldn't have guessed that there was anything different in the homemade ice cream than the traditional ingredients of vanilla ice cream. The kids called it 'icy green slime' and loved their portions!


These recipes are adapted from the BlendTec cookbook.

Creamy Spinach Avocado Soup


Makes 2 large bowls of soup


Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 cups spinach
• 1 avocado
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp dry red pepper flakes
• 2 cloves garlic
• pinch salt

Blend all ingredients until steamy on the Soup setting. Garnish with additional chopped spinach, mushrooms or red peppers.

Popeye Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup cream, half and half, milk or milk substitute
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 2 tbsp honey (or sweetener of choice)
• 1 cup spinach
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 4 cups ice

Place all ingredients into the blender in the order listed and secure lid. Blend on the Ice Cream setting. Serve immediately or store in freezer.

Pad Thai

One of my cooking goals this year has been to take dishes that we'd typically order from a restaurant and figure out how to make them at home. Pad Thai is one of those dishes that I'd only ever eaten out, so I took on the task of researching how best to make it. So far it's been the recipe that I've put the most time into researching because there doesn't seem to be one single best accepted way of making it among internet recipe posters.

Some recipes that claimed to be Pad Thai didn't seem remotely close to what I expected and were just a simple veggie stir fry with soy sauce. Others incorporated ketchup into their veggie noodle-y creations and that just didn't sound right to me. Finally after a lot of searching I stumbled on an awesome and comprehensive article on how to make an authentic Pad Thai. One excellent recommendation was to make the sauce ahead of time in order to find the right balance of sour, salty, spicy, and sweet flavours and a few options were given for ingredient choices.

So equipped with notes from the article, I set out on a trip to the local Asian supermarket.  I'd only been there once or twice before to browse and never with a specific grocery list, especially a grocery list of ingredients that I'd mostly never purchased before. I seriously spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out where to find most my ingredients until I caved and started asking clerks for help. Who knew that fish sauce wouldn't be in the same spot as oyster sauce, or that rice stick noodles wouldn't be in the noodle aisle? Or that peanuts would be in the bulk aisle rather than in the 'nuts and snacks' aisle? Even when I did find the ingredients on my own I spent a fair bit of time mulling over which one to pick -- firm or extra firm tofu? Which thickness of rice stick noodle?

Whew. Finally I had all my ingredients gathered together and knew I'd succeeded in picking the right ones when the cashier smiled and asked if I was going to be making Pad Thai!

I was quite pleased with my first attempt which included chicken, tofu (I went with extra firm!), eggs, peanuts, garlic chives, rice stick noodles (I opted for medium thickness), and lots of bean sprouts. I made the sauce from tamarind concentrate (the sour), fish sauce (the salty), hot paprika (the spicy), and brown sugar (the sweet).

While it was a great meal, it wasn't the same as the take-out place downtown that hubby had recently been to for lunch. So a few weeks later I picked up a carton of their take out (for research purposes, of course!), noted that their noodles were very much thinner, and asked about their mysterious brown sauce which turned out to be not mysterious at all. It was simply hoisin sauce stored in an old sriracha bottle.

More Google-ing yielded another recipe for Pad Thai sauce that incorporated both hoisin and sriracha. I made the meal this time with the new sauce recipe, vermicelli noodles rather than rice stick noodles, thinly sliced beef rather than chicken for the sake of variety, chopped green onions rather than garlic chives since I already had them in the fridge, and I left the peanuts out to be added as a garnish. This new recipe really emulated the take-out place's Pad Thai with the only thing missing being the cardboard take out box!



Pad Thai
recipe inspired by Pim and this one
Serves 2

Sauce 

• 2 tbsp. fish sauce (or soy sauce)
• 2 tbsp. brown sugar 
• 2 tbsp. hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp. sriracha sauce 

 Mix the sauce ingredients together. Adjust to taste and set aside.

Other Ingredients -- quantities are approximate depending on what kind of balance you prefer between protein, noodle, and sprouts.

• vegetable oil
• ~1 cup thinly sliced chicken, beef, firm tofu, and/or pieces of shrimp (I like to use the meat in the freezer aisle that's already prepped for fondue/hot pot)
• 1 clove finely chopped garlic
• 1 egg, beaten
• ~1 cup rice stick noodles or vermicelli  
• ~2 cup bean sprouts
• small handful of garlic chives, Chinese chives, or green onions
• 1-2 tbsp roasted, unsalted peanuts, gently crushed (you don't want it to turn into peanut butter!)
• lime wedges  

Directions

1. Put the dry noodles into hot water and let soak while you prep the rest of the ingredients. You want them to become pliable but not mushy or cooked.  
2. Add a few tablespoons of oil to a large wok (or frying pan since I don't have a wok) and bring to high heat.
3. Add the chicken and/or beef, stirring vigorously about 1-2 minutes until half-way done.
4. Next add the tofu, a tablespoon or two of the sauce for flavor, and the garlic. (Don't add shrimp yet!). Cook for another minute until the tofu is crisp and slightly brown at the edges, adding a bit of extra sauce or oil if the pan is drying out.
5. Add the drained noodles, and the sauce. Stir rigorously, keep everything moving in the pan/wok, and cook the noodle until soft. Remember to break up the noodle and don’t let it lump together. If the sauce evaporates too quickly and your noodle isn’t quite ready, add a bit of water and keep stirring. Add a bit of oil if the noodle still stubbornly sticks together.
6. When the noodle is ready (taste it to be sure), push it up to one side of the wok/pan and add the egg into the middle. Let it set for 10-15 seconds and then scramble it up and toss everything all together.
7. Last, you add the shrimp meat, ground peanuts, and beansprouts. Keep things moving. Add more sauce if it looks a little pale. If you're out of sauce mixture you can just add extra hoisin and/or sriracha to taste. 
8. When the shrimps are done, shouldn’t take more than a minute, add a handful of green bits (garlic chives, Chinese chives or green onion). Turn the heat off, and quickly give the wok a good stirring to mix everything together.

Jammy Cereal Bars

My kids love cereal bars and asked if I could look up how to make them at home. I happily obliged and found this recipe which looked really simple and used ingredients we already had in the house. There's a fair bit of sugar and butter in them, so I won't be touting them as health food, but on the other hand they are made from ingredients that are all natural which isn't necessarily the case for store-bought individually-packaged jammy cereal bars.

The recipe seemed simple enough - mix the crust ingredients, put half in the pan, spread the jam, top with the other half of the crust mix. What made it a little trickier than expected is that the crust turned out very crumbly even after I pressed it down, so spreading the jam on top didn't work very well. Imagine trying to spread jam on a sand castle. Same idea. So instead I dropped it by small spoonfuls close together and carefully tried to make it as even as possible, but it was still a little messy. Next time I'll try using jam that's less thick, or maybe heat up the jam a little to make it a saucier before attempting to spread it.

The bars were a big hit. We all loved them. Not sure that I'd classify them as a breakfast food since they are pretty sugary, but the kids are looking froward to having them in their lunches for dessert this week, and especially stoked to be able to say that they were made at home!

Out of curiosity I plugged my ingredient list into an online nutrition calculator and then compared with a store-bought cereal bar. The results indicated that if I cut my sheet into 30 bars we'd have the same number of calories, with mine having a higher fat content and less sodium. And with mine having no artificial ingredients or extra packaging. The cost worked out to be a fair bit cheaper than a box of cereal bars, even including the fact that I used a pricier good quality jam.

Jammy Cereal Bars
recipe was altered slightly from this one

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups quick cook oats
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup strawberry jam

1. Mix sugar, oats, flour, cinnamon, and soda.  
2. Cut in the butter to form a crumbly mixture.  
3. Spread a little over ½ the crumb mixture into 9×13 buttered pan and press down. (I used parchment paper and didn't grease the pan)
4. Carefully spread with jam, leaving a one inch edge with no jam or it will ooze out the sides.
5. Add the remaining crumb mixture on top and press lightly into jam. 
6. Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes.   
7. Cut into bars, let cool at least a little before eating so you don't burn yourself on hot jam.

Hash browns, fast food-style!

Since it's cold and snowy outside, I thought I might make some healthy porridge for breakfast and then blog about the rib-sticking high-fiber goodness, all the different grains we have, and what we top the bowls with... but I'll save that plan for another day.

Instead, my kids made a very specific and unusual breakfast request for cheeseburgers and "McDonald's potato patties." (Totally my fault, since I set the kids up with Netflix on my smartphone in bed in order to catch a few more zzz's and they chose an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. That made them think about eating Krabby Patties with cheese, which of course led to the idea of cheeseburgers for breakfast.) Since it's the weekend and I just bought some ground beef yesterday, I decided to honor their non-breakfasty breakfast request and went googling for a potato patty recipe.

I found a very simple recipe that turned out just perfectly. While it's not exactly a healthy dish given the fact that it is pan fried in a bit of oil, I have no doubt that it came out healthier than if we'd gone to McD's for hash browns!

I did make some small cheeseburgers to go with them but they were eaten faster than I could whip out my phone for a picture!

Hash Browns

• 1 egg, beaten
• 4 medium potatoes, peeled 
• 1 medium onion
• salt and pepper
• vegetable oil for frying

Preparation method

1. Coarsely grate the potatoes and onion into a clean tea towel or strainer and then squeeze out the excess liquid. Place the mix in a large bowl.
   
2. Add the egg, a good couple of pinches of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix the ingredients well. (You need to salt the mix well otherwise the hash browns can be quite bland).
   
3. Heat a good glug of oil in a heavy based frying pan and when the oil is hot (but not smoking), add spoonfuls of the potato mixture into the pan and flatten into patties about 1cm thick. Flip over once browned and crispy - about 2-3 minutes each side.
   
4. Serve hot as a breakfast or supper side dish. Especially good with bacon and eggs. Or breakfast cheeseburgers.
   

Pita Pizzas

If my family had to pick a single food to eat for the rest of their lives, I think they'd all pick pizza. Coming up with simple and creative ways to make pizza while appealing to everyone's varying tastes is not a difficult task when starting with as blank a canvas as a pizza crust. Or, in the case of tonight, a pack of fresh pita bread.

After last night's cheesy meal I wanted my own pizza to be heavy on the veggies. And since I did my last produce shopping at Costco, I had an excessively large quantity of grape tomatoes on hand. So while I was prepping the rest of the toppings, I was also roasting up my grape tomatoes.

My pizza went into the oven with the roasted tomato mixture and some Parmesan cheese, and then I added a little extra Parmesan once it came out of the oven. 

My kids opted for plain mozzarella cheese pizzas, hold the sauce. One of them added garlic salt on top. My little one loves adding extra seasonings and herbs to her dishes!

Hubby's pizza was light on the sauce and topped with mushrooms, green peppers, kielbasa, and both mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. He added a sprinkling of olive oil after it came out of the oven.

Pita Pizza

• pita bread
• pizza ingredients

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Place pita bread on baking sheet and build your pizza.
3. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until your cheese is starting to bubble and the edges are getting toasty.

Roasted Grape Tomatoes

• 2 pints grape tomatoes, halved
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp red wine or balsamic vinegar
• Pinch of salt & twist of pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375F. 
2. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. 
3. Place mixture in a thin layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. 
4. Roast about 30-40 minutes, stirring gently about halfway through, until veggies are looking lightly browned and smell yummy.

Granola

With two large bags of oats that I bought on sale the other week sitting in my pantry, we sat down to brainstorm on what else we could make aside from oatmeal porridge and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

And then my kids came up with the idea of granola! It's something I've never made before, (in fact I don't think I've even bought granola in recent years), but given their fond memories of the granola they were served at their old school we decided to give it a go. A quick Google search led me to The Best Granola Recipe, so needless to say our expectations were high. Plus I already had most of the ingredients in the house and enough time to pull it all together. My 4 year old volunteered to be the mixer and I just measured everything out for her.

It was so simple to make and turned out to be indeed the best (and only!) granola we've ever made!

Granola

Makes about 2 pounds (1kg)

Adapted from David Lebovitz who adapted from Feast, by Nigella Lawson

• 5 cups (450g) quick cook oats
• 3 cups (375g) almonds, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup (125g) sunflower seeds
• 3/4 cup (100g) untoasted sesame seeds
• 1/2 cup (120g) packed light brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon dried ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 3/4 cup (180g) unsweetened applesauce (or another unsweetened fruit puree)
• 1/3 cup (100g) maple syrup (the original recipe calls for rice syrup)
• 1/4 cup (80g) honey
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

 Preheat the oven to 300F (150C).

1. In a very large bowl, mix together the oats, almonds, sunflower and sesame seeds, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and salt.

2. In a small saucepan, warm the fruit puree with the maple syrup, honey, and oil.

3. Mix the fruit mixture into the dry ingredients until thoroughly dispersed, then divide and spread the mixture evenly on two baking sheets. (If you have ones with sides, often called jelly-roll pans, use them.)

4. Bake the granola for about 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes, until the granola is deep golden brown.

5. Remove from oven, then cool completely.

Store the granola in a large, airtight container. It will keep for up to one month.