Tortillas

Impress your friends with this simple and delicious tortilla recipe! Using the two different kinds of flour gives it a very full flavor that makes them tasty to eat by themselves too.

4 cups of flour total -- i like this spread:
2 cups millet or aramanth flour
2 cups spelt flour (or regular or whole wheat flour)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp room temp butter (do not microwave if you can avoid it) or olive oil
1 1/2 cup warm water

Mix together the dry ingredients in a med-large bowl, being sure to break up any clumps and really blend the two flours. Add in butter or oil and the warm water. Try to get the water roughly to your body tempurature. Remember -- if it's too hot for you, it's too hot for whatever you're trying to activate in what you're cooking. Mix the dough into a ball and let it rest for about 5-10 minutes.

Break off bits of dough that roll into a ball of about 2" in diameter. Place on a floured surface and roll out with a rolling pin. Beware of rolling it too thin lest you make it difficult to peel off the surface and rip the tortilla dough.

Heating them: As much as i LOVE cast iron frying pans, i find teflon well-suited for this task. You want to place a single tortilla on an un-oiled pan at med-high heat. "How long should i cook it?" one might ask. It really depends on how crunchy you want them. If you are looking for a tender, pliable tortilla, heat it for about 30 seconds on each side. You can also really impress your friends by making tortilla chips and heating the tortilla for approximately a minute and a half on each side, and breaking them up afterwards. I like to mix it up a it and make some pliable and some chip-like. And let's face it -- it's hard to get them all exactly the same texture ANYWAY, so you might as well make it look intentional.

Lindsay's Mutilated Mueslix

OK, so it's not mutilated. This recipe was modified from a granola recipe i pulled out of an "Eat Right 4 Your Bloodtype" book, and i've modified it so much that i can call it my own. Also, it's more of a mueslix than a granola, so i've named it thus. And most importantly, it's balanced and TASTY.

4 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups cream of rice
1/2 sesame seads
1/2 cup dried currants
1 cup raisins (Thompson raisins are preferable)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup ground walnuts (otherwise known as walnut meal --> you can either put some walnuts in a food processor or coffee grinder, OR if you have to skip this ingredient, make up the volume with more of another ingredient)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil (i don't recommend olive oil for cereal unless it's very mild)
MIX WELL
then add:
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup real maple syrup

spread out in two oiled 9x13 baking pans. Bake at 250 degrees for an hour and a half to two hours, stirring every 15 minutes.

Shepherd's Pie

Traditional Shepherd's Pie is made with lamb. I use brown lentils. It provides a comparable texture to ground meat in a casserole setting, and its flavor is rich and contributes to the dish.

1 cup dry lentils
3 red potatoes
1/4 cup milk
1-2 tbsp butter
garlic powder, salt, and pepper to taste
1 lb frozen corn

Prepare the dry lentils according to the instructions on the package. Always use a large pot for making lentils. It might seem ridiculous when you are putting it in at first, but believe me -- lentils boil over like nothing else i've ever seen.

While the lentils are cooking, make mashed potatoes according to your preferences. I like it with the skin still on it. Here's what i do: i wash the potatoes well, chop them, cover with water, and boil them for about 15-20 minutes. While the lentils and potatoes are boiling, hang out. Check your email. Call your Mum. When you can puncture the potatoes with a fork, remove from heat and drain immediately. Return to the pot in which you cooked them, mash them up, and add in the milk, butter, garlic, salt, and pepper. Mash well.

Drain the lentils.

Use a casserole dish that looks kinda like this.* There are two layers to this Shepherd's Pie, but there are three layers of mashed potato (you begin and end with it. Your layers should go like this from top to bottom: potato, corn, lentils. Potato, corn lentils. Potato. Layering it this way helps to keep everything moist. In the cooler months, there's nothing better than a good, moist, shepherd's pie. Any time of the year, there's almost nothing worse than a dry shepherd's pie. When you have finished layering, cover with the lid. If you do not have a lid, use aluminum foil. Don't like this baby dry out.

Bake at 375 degrees for 20-30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

*If you do not have a dish shaped remotely like this, that's ok. Just be sure to use a baking pan that is large enough to hold all of the ingredients. Play around with it. You might only be able to do one layer, and that's OK too. Just remember to finish with a layer of potato and cover the whole shabbang with foil, and it'll be just fine.

Tomato Bean Soup

olive oil 1 leek, sliced (or one small very thinly sliced onion)
1 clove crushed or finely diced garlic
1 can tomato soup, and 1 same-sized can water
1 can black beans, lightly drained
1 1/2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
dash cayenne (optional)

In saucepan, lighly cover the bottom of pan with olive oil. Bring to low-medium heat. Saute leek and garlic until browned and transparent. Add in the can of tomato soup, then the can of water. (note: do not use milk for this recipe. It's terrible.) Bring to a simmer, not a boil. Add in the can of black beans, only lightly drained (not only is the extra liquid desirable, but there is a lot of flavor in the juice in which it's been marinating). Add the basil, oregano, black pepper, and cayenne. Simmer for five minutes. Serve in pretty blue bowls, if you have them.

Fool-Proof Brownies

Something very close to this recipe was given to me by my dear friend Judy Bog. I adapted it to make it more friendly to my digestive tract, and managed to create a recipe for brownies that is practically fool-proof. It turns out a moist and devilishy rich batch of brownies every time. I have yet to screw up a batch with the following recipe:

In a double boiler, combine:
4 squares of baking chocolate
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
heat until melted

While that's all melting, combine:
1 cup flour (i use spelt flour, but regular flour works fine)
1 tsp baking powder
13 tbsp dry dutch cocoa
1/2 tsp salt

In separate bowl:
4 eggs
1 cup sugar (i use hippie sugar, otherwise known as sucanat, turbinado sugar, or evaporated cane juice, but regular sugar works fine as well)
1/2 cup maple syrup (if you do not use this, use 2 cups of sugar total instead. Be advised, however, that the brownies will burn more easily and be drier.)
2 tsp vanilla

Add the chocolate and butter to this wet mixture.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients. Mix ONLY as much as needed to combine. Dump in a bag of chocolate bits and mix enough to distribute.

Bake in a lightly greased 9x13 pan at 325 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Summer Squash and Soba

What i had for dinner tonight: zucchini and summer squash sauteed in onions and garlic over soba, or buckwheat noodles, with salad on the side.

How to make it:
Get frying pan heating.
1 small onion, sliced thinly and separated
garlic to taste
sautee in 2 tbs of olive oil. While those are sauteeing on med heat,
1 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 small yellow summer squash, thinly sliced
mix into the sautee.
1 cup water
soy sauce to taste. Start with 1 tsp, then keep stirring, tasting. I tend to like somewhere between 2 tsp and a tablespoon.
3/4 tsp herbes de provence.
Stir and simmer medium-high heat.

When the water is gone, turn the heat off. Serve over noodles (i really like it with buckwheat noodles (soba), but i don't usually eat wheat, so i'm weird), eggs, salad, or as a side. Fresh parmessan preferred, sprinkled over everything. YUMMY.

On Organic Produce

Just a brief note on organic produce. One image that is usually associated with being a vegetarian is eating organic food. I want to talk about produce. I'm not going to try to talk you into buying organic food. What i will tell you is that organic food lasts longer. The reason for this is that it is typically local. The closer to the source you are, the fresher the food is going to be, for obvious reasons: it didn't have to go through such a strange packing ritual, it didn't have to be shipped, etc. I'm all about supporting local farmers.

Let's iron this all out a little bit. Something might be organically farmed on a local farm, but is not "certified organic." How can this be? The organic certification, to me, is something of a scheme, because the farmers have to pay to become certified organic, and most farmers i know simply can't afford to keep their licence AND have their vegetables sold at affordable prices. That's why i liked to by things in the grocery store that say, "locally grown," because 9 times out of 10, it's also organic. What i like even better is to buy things at the local food co-op that doesn't necessarily say organic. If a food co-op has it on its shelves, the co-op thought highly enough of that farm to sell their produce without it having been certified.

What you have to decide for yourself is whether it's generally more important to you to make certain that your personal food is certified organic, or whether you think it's more important to you to support farmers who are farming organically who can't afford the certification. Of course there are other considerations as to the cost of organic farming -- it's not just the licence that costs money: when somebody farms organically, that means they're not using pesticides, which means they're losing more of their crops to bugs. That's just all there is to it. So naturally, they have to charge a bit more per pound to make up for that loss. All farmers who don't use pesticides have to make up for that loss, not just the farmers who have the organic certification.

Nothing is cut and dry -- organic stickers doesn't automatically mean that the politics behind the food is without its problems. Food that doesn't say "certified organic" isn't always bad. All i ask is that you think a little bit about where the food is coming from, and what you feel best about at the time. For me, what i feel is best most of the time is going to the local co-op and buying the cheapest vegetables i can find. They last longer! I've had too much lettuce and cucumber from Stop & Shop go bad before i could eat all of it because it was shipped from California. It spent the peak of its good-eatin'-hood in a truck. And i'm too cheap to be OK with that.