If you’ve never had tabbouleh salad, you’re in for a treat.  This is a great summer dish, perfect as an appetizer with pita or wrap bread and amazing spooned over some grilled chicken.  Healthy, light and easy, make a big batch and eat it through the week.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup bulgur wheat
• 1 bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 1-2 lemons
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Put the bulgur in a bowl and cover it with cold water.  Soak the wheat for about 20 minutes to plump and soften the grains.  Then drain in a sieve and squeeze the soaked bulgur to remove any remaining water.
2. While the bulgur soaks, chop your veggies.
3. Combine the soaked and drained bulgur, parsley, chopped tomato, onion and cucumber in a bowl.   Squeeze the juice of one lemon over the mixture and add the olive oil, seasoning with salt and pepper.  I think this dish is best if left to sit for at least 30 minutes before eating.  If after 30 minutes you need to add more lemon or salt/pepper, add it in.

Alright, alright. I have to admit I have felt immensely guilty about abandoning my blog so hastily.  I really enjoy keeping track of my cooking endeavors and sharing my wins with anyone out there who is interested in listening.  I’ve been struggling with feeling like my plate runeth over with priorities, like working full-time, school, homework, walking the pesky dog, and the newest priority – house hunting.  All of these are exciting endeavors, true.  But what’s all that without being able to share.

So, I’m going to make an effort to post at least once a week.  Even though I haven’t been posting of late, I have still been cooking.  I’m experimenting a lot with new healthy foods as I learn about them in my nutrition classes.  Exotic sounding things like “quinoa” and “dulse” and “gomasio”.  Ooh la la!  I’ve learned that I like greens when chopped small and cooked into soups or mixed in with other ingredients.  I have also mastered the art of the green smoothie and I now know that flax oil and agave nectar combine with vinegar and a dab of mustard to make the perfect easy and healthy salad dressing.  See all of these things I’m learning and not sharing?  It’s a shame, a crime against humanity.

So, if you are out there my loyal reader, I will aspire to blog again (insert cheesy valiant music here).  I may not hit every week but I will try. You will also see me merging my blog with my budding/future health counseling business.  My school has set me up with a website that is in it’s infancy but something I plan to build on and make more my own.  I’ll discuss that more later in an upcoming post but here is a sneak peek:

www.sustainablebites.com

I hope you check it out.  I’m not currently health counseling anyone, just not sure that I’m quite ready.  But I will, hopefully soon, be taking on a few clients at a time.  If you’re interested in eventually working with me, send me an email and we’ll chat.  In the meantime, I’ll share all I can and hope that it sparks something in you just like it does for me.

In good health,

Suzanne

I get this look from my dog a lot these days.  This is the look, emphasized with extra sad eyes, that says “why don’t you have time for me?”.  I know this look well.

To this look, I respond with a nose kiss and a cuddle, pleading with Sasha to forgive me for being so busy these days.  But she can barely stand to look at me.

I then ply her with treats, which she scarfs down.  But soon enough, we’re right back to this.

If you’re feeling like I’ve forgotten about my website, just know that I’ve not forgotten about it anymore than I’ve forgotten about my best girl there.  I actually have a folder full of pictures and post ideas that I just don’t have time to get to.  Why not, you say?  Well, I’m working full-time plus going to school to become a certified holistic health counselor at a school called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  I love love love the program I am in and am thoroughly enjoying where this journey is taking me.  However, school and work suck up most of my blogging time.  Any spare time I have goes to walking Sasha.

Did I tell you she knows the word “walk”?

I promise I’ll be back as soon as my life eases up and/or I have bits of time to post interesting things!

My first round of vegetable gardening was a moderate success filled with good lessons learned.  For example, I will never again plant more than one zucchini at a time, due to their insane production of zucchinis and ability to grow to bohemoth stature.  I finally pulled everything from my first garden up, conditioned the soil, and started again with a few new tricks up my sleeve.

Here is version two of my garden.  The first thing I did was add some new soil to my garden along with compost.  The key ingredient to being a successful organic gardener, from what I understand, is to have good, nutrient rich soil.  Good soil equals healthy plants which are more resistant to pests and disease.  So I bought some good garden soil from my local garden store and sifted some compost into the mix and turned it around with the existing sandy soil.

Next, I added a soaker hose.  A major issue I had with the last garden was finding time to go water. I only had a hose with a spray nozzle so I would have to stand out there for 10 minutes just watering and a lot of the water would just end up running off.  A soaker hose ($15) drips water really slowly so there is no runoff, plus I can turn it on, set a timer for 25 minutes and do other things while my plants get watered.  It’s been a huge help.

Brian made this screen for me, which I use to sift compost from my bin into the garden.  The conundrum I was having was that I have all this great compost but it’s mixed with un-decomposed bits and I wasn’t sure how to separate the finished compost material from the unfinished material. This screen does the trick. We just bought some chicken wire and a couple 1×1 wood pieces from Home Depot. We had Home Depot cut the wood for us so all we had to do was nail it into a square and then tack on the screen.  And voila! Homemade sifter tool.  It works perfectly.

In my garden I have some strawberry plants, donated to me from my generous neighbor who is a seasoned gardener. He was actually the one who finally convinced me to plant some veggies and he’s been very helpful with his gardening tips.  He also shares his veggies and veggie seeds/cuttings with me and I try and share in return (although his garden is a bit more productive than mine!).

I decided to man up and plant some tomatoes as well.  I usually hate tomato plants because they attract so many bugs and grow like weeds.  But I love to have fresh tomatoes in the garden so I decided to give it another go.  This guy is already growing like crazy, but thankfully he’s bug free so far.

Basil is another plant I generally avoid because I usually kill it.  Then again, I’ve never planted it in the ground, only in pots (where I subsequently neglect to water it).  So far, this basil is a happy camper so I’m hoping for the best.

Chard is a vegetable that I’m learning to like (Brian is still accepting his hatred for it, though).  So I planted a couple chard plants.  A cool trick with chard? Sneak it into smoothies (just a few leaves). You don’t notice the taste at all and you get a nutritional boost to your smoothie.

Onion, always a good thing to have.  Another thing that Brian doesn’t care for but I love.  He can get over it.

This jalapeno plant is the last “survivor” from my last garden. I put survivor in quotes because this guy looks far from alive. But he’s not dead yet!  So I’m hoping he will be revived in new soil.

I also have some seedlings that I hope to see pop up any day.  I have peas, broccoli, and more jalapenos in seeds but they haven’t come up yet.

The next decision will be whether or not to expand the garden.  As you can see here, half the area is veggies and half is iceplant. We started small with the veggies so as not to overwhelm ourselves but I’m thinking it’s time to branch out and pull up the iceplant.  TBD, for now…

]]> http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=1292 0 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1275 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1275#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:10:22 +0000 suzrutte http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1275

These are actually lemon cake cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting but I used my basic yellow cake recipe and just added lemon juice and rind to the batter for lemony goodness.  The cake is what they call a basic “1234 cake” recipe but I’ll give you some additional tips for how to get a fluffy, moist cake.  You can use this cake batter as a base for other flavors of cake, like lemon!

Cake Ingredients:

• 4 eggs, warmed to room temperature and separated (you can let the eggs sit in a bowl of warm water for 10 minutes, that does the trick)
• 1 cup milk, also left to sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes
• 3 cups of unbleached white flour, pastry flour, or ideally cake flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

*To make lemon cake, add 1 tablespoon of grated lemon zest plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice to the batter.  If it’s not lemony enough for you, add more. It wasn’t lemony enough for me so I added a bit more.

Directions:

1. If you can, think ahead and leave the butter, milk and eggs to sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to get them to room temperature.  Cutting the butter into smaller chunks helps it soften much faster.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Grease your cake pan(s) and line them with parchment paper.  I usually use a little butter to grease pans, smearing it with the butter wrapper, a paper towel, or just my fingers.  Then grease the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.
4. Sift and then measure your flour.  Once sifted, add the baking powder and salt to the flour and mix with a fork to combine.
5. In a bowl or using a stand mixer (best method), beat the butter until it’s light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
6. Add in the sugar and let the sugar and butter cream for about 10 minutes, until it’s fluffy and light yellow.
7. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, and then add in the vanilla.
8. Once that’s well mixed, add the flour and the milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour.  Stir until just combined.
9. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Stir one third of the whipped egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest.
10. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For 2 layer cakes, that’s about 30 minutes (but start testing at about 25 minutes).  For cupcakes, that’s about 20 minutes (but start testing at 18 or so).
11. Once cooked, frost with your favorite frosting. For the cupcakes pictured, I used my favorite cream-cheese whipped-cream frosting, spiked with some lemon juice and colored yellow.

We have had a string of birthdays lately and this time it was my big sis’s turn.  I won’t throw out how old she just turned, but I will say that I’m happy to report she’s older than me!  Woohoo!  Sophia made some yummy porkchops along with…wait for it….mashed potato bar!!  Basically, that’s mashed potatoes with every topping you can think of.  The excitement surrounding the mashed potato bar may have even overshadowed the pumpkin cheesecake we had for dessert! That says a lot.  Few things generally overshadow dessert.

Right before we were going to eat, Sophia tempted us with the trays o’ toppings.  Yes, those are two large hefty trays of potato toppings.  Drool.

Toppings included roasted garlic, one of the best toppings ever to grace a carb.

Naturally, there was also a big bowl of bacon.  Potatoes and bacon are made for eachother.

We also had some salad fixin’s, like croutons, tomatoes, and mushrooms.  Sophia thought of everything!

In a show of sophistication, we got to eat our potatoes from martini glasses, which actually held the perfect portion of potatoey goodness.

Mmm…potatoey goodness…

Potatoey goodness…with toppings.  And yet…something appears to be missing…bacon, check. Mushrooms, check. Roasted red peppers, check.  Green onions, check.

Cheese!  Okay, got that.  Something else…what else…

Duh…sour cream? Check.  A must for any mashed potato bar.

This is what we all look like while we’re serving ourselves.  Lots of arms and grabbing for delicious food.

Oh yeah…that’s a good bite.

Sophia did make other food for dinner that night, including some delicious and giant pork chops.  However, my camera only seemed to capture potatoes.

Amazingly, after dinner we still had room for dessert – the BEST pumpkin cheesecake.  Here’s the birthday girl, pre-cheesecake:

And the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

She’s not too old to blow out her birthday candles! Phew!  We went easy on her and gave her 7 candles, but if you multiply that by…oh wait, I said I wouldn’t mention her age.  It’s so hard to pass up all these opportunities for age jokes.  I think it shows my maturity that I’m holding back, dontcha think?  Although I’m not as “mature” as SOME people I know!

Sweet…cheesecake time!

I think my favorite part of this cheesecake is the gingersnap crust. Mmm!

Happy birthday, sis!

My friend and former roommate Adrienne used to make me this midwest classic for me when we lived together.  Ingredients consisted of canned cream of mushroom soup, some faux meat (she’s not much of a meat eater) and some tots on top.  Brian, being a midwest-born guy, happens to LOVE Tater Tot Casserole. It’s one of the few meals he requests.  And I loved it because I could  keep the ingredients in the pantry and make this when I didn’t have anything planned.  But when I moved us away from processed foods, we were both sad to think Tater Tot Casserole didn’t have much of a place in our life anymore.  So I set on a mini-quest to make a homemade, slightly healthed-up version the old TTC .  While this isn’t perfect and certainly isn’t health food, it’s a good compromise.  TTC is back in our meal plan and that is something to be excited about.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 package tater tots (I actually found organic tots, go figure)
• 2 tablespoons unbleached flour
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup whole milk or half and half
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
• Frozen or canned peas or green beans

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a skillet, brown the ground beef with the chopped onion.
3. In a separate small saucepan, heat the butter over medium high heat until it’s melted.  Then whisk in the flour and let the butter/flour mixture (technically called a roux) cook for about 30 seconds, whisking as it cooks.  Then whisk in the milk and let this come to a simmer. It should thicken up as it heats.
4. When the meat is browned, stir in the chicken broth, spices, worcestershire sauce, and the butter/flour/milk mixture.  Let it simmer for a minute and add salt and pepper to taste.  Stir in the peas/green beans, whichever you like or have on hand.
5. Pour the meat into a casserole dish and top with frozen tots.  Bake for 35 minutes, or until the tots on top are golden and toasty.

This post is more story and less recipe.  Tara just returned from a super cool trip to Korea for work and inspired Suzi to whip up some tasty Korean delicacies as hostess of Girls Night.  Unfortunately, no one (including Suzi or Tara) remembered what said delicacies were called so all we know is we ate lots of “tasty spicy noodle thing” and “yummy pickled kimchee thing”.

Any good Asian meal starts with a little saki.  This was white saki and it really was white.

Here are Suzi and Tara grilling the delicious Korean meat.  We know the beef is called Bulgogi because most of us have had it before and it’s a sure fire hit.  The other dish was a yummy spicy-sweet marinated pork that I think I’ve had before but have no idea what it’s called.  Suzi, where did your hair net go?  Oh Suzi…

Appetizers were these yummy “crackers” (which I actually think were cookies but asian packaging can be confusing).  Anywho, the bean paste spread for the “crackers” was salty and good in contrast to the sweet cookie…err…cracker taste.

For dinner, we had quite a lot of condiment items to choose from. Suzi was kind enough to label the dishes so we knew what we were eating.  Except that Suzi had no idea what we were eating.  I really enjoyed the item called “something Tara said was good” (loose translation from Korean, mind you).  If you’ve ever eaten Korean food, you know that they like their little sides, like pickled radishes and marinated green things.  Tara said there are about 100 varieties of kimchee.  We ate kimchee variety #41, Tara thought.

I do have to admit.  The item called “something Tara said was good” really was good. They were little pickled radishes.  Kim, who proclaimed “I hate radishes!!” even enjoyed these radishes and (if I’m gonna be frank) I believe she indulged in them quite freely.  Kim likes radishes!  Hip hip hooray!

Here is kimchee #41.  I like #41 because it’s a finely shredded kimchee.  I don’t really like the big chunky kimchees (probably varieties 1 through 20 fit into that description, would be my guess).

These are red noodles.  I don’t know what was on them but they were noodles and they were red.  While we converted Kim on the radish thing, she was fore square against these noodles.  However, I enjoyed them.  Yum.  How can anyone not like noodles?  Just crazy…Kim has lost her mind.  Falling in love with radishes and out of love with noodles.

Okay, these little guys were odd.  They look like cocktail wieners to me.  They’re really little ricecake, chewy, noodle things.  I couldn’t quite get over the texture of them, which was really, really, REALLY chewy. Not bad, just took some…well…chewing.

And, of course, rice.  Suzi made us eat healthy with brown rice.  Good thing we all like brown rice.  Well, Kim probably hates it – she’s fickle (as evidenced by the radish/noodle conundrum).  But I like it and I think everyone else does too.

Here is my plate of food. You can see I wasn’t too shy about serving myself up.  I loved that dang pork! Wish I knew what it was called…

Tara brought us each back a pair of these beautiful silver chop sticks.  Thanks, Lowelly!

And then there was dessert.  These are the Asian version of Moon Pies.  They’re little marshmallow sandwich cookies.

Suzi must have been trying to fatten us up because she also served us some sort of jelly roll cake with blueberries on top and a little Asian chocolate guy.

This is Sophia’s dessert plate.  Sophia was also not shy about dessert but she probably ran 20 miles that day so who cares.

All in all, a delicious tasty girls night dinner, even if we have no idea what we ate.

]]> http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=1216 0 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1209 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1209#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:36:09 +0000 suzrutte http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1209

This is the crazy crew that calls themselves Girls Night.  We are going on 9 years of weekly Wednesday dinners together.  The faces have changed a little but the majority of the original members remain (minus Steph, who we miss dearly).  Girls Night is a sacred event that none of us take lightly.  We have been together and supported each other through good times and bad; births and deaths, marriages and breakups, new jobs and lost jobs.  We leave our husbands, boyfriends, kids, pets and work behind each and every week to share each other’s company over food, wine and chatter.  The rules of membership are simple but resolute: 1 ) show up and don’t flake; 2 ) hostess must cook good food, including a dessert; 3 ) always have wine; 4 ) always have dessert; 5 ) keep the wine coming; 6 ) keep the dessert coming; 7 ) no boys allowed (except Nate, who we’ve made exceptions for since birth due to his cuteness and charm); and 8 ) don’t ever forget to have wine and dessert.  Simple.

Thanks for 9 amazing years, to some of the best friends I could ask for.  We miss you, Steph!

]]> http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=1209 0 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1200 http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1200#comments Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:45:43 +0000 suzrutte http://www.greeneggsanddirt.com/wordpress/?p=1200

This is Beth’s mom’s cake recipe.  It’s a minty, chocolatey slice of greatness.  If you like grasshopper cookies and/or Andes mints, you’ll like this cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 white cake mix
• 6 tablespoons crème de menthe
• 1 jar (12oz.) fudge topping
• 8 oz. whipped cream or Cool Whip

Directions:

1. Mix cake mix as directed and add 3 tablespoons crème de menthe. Bake and cool.
2. Spread 1 jar fudge topping over cake. (This is easier if your cake is still warm or if you heat the fudge in microwave for a few seconds.)
3. Top with whipped cream to which 3 tablespoons crème de menthe has been added.