I’m not dead

So sorry for the lack of, well, life around here. I’m just being a bum. A beach bum, that is.

That’s our view from the condo. Hollllla!

My days have been filled with intense death walks on the beach (AKA walking 4 miles in the blazing heat with my father – he does this for FUN.), adding to my immense sunburn collection, reading Jodi Picoult, and watching stupid movies every single night. Seriously, the movie Seven is dumb. I think Brad Pitt is repulsive. We also took a trip to a local botanical garden. It was hot.

The week has also been filled with delicious eats! We’ve been out to sushi and Thai, and silly me forgot to bring my camera. I had the most amazing Tofu Asparagus (and the most beastly asparagus scented pee) and tofu rolls. We’re searching for a new sushi place to terrorize nosh at tonight, so I’ll be sure to bring my camera.

I’ve also been coming up with concoctions for my very hungry father every night. Last night’s meal included one of my favorite healthy fats – coconut milk! It was more of less a hodge podge of various veggies and not really a curry, but I’m calling it a curry because I can.

Bathing Suit Curry

(Appropriately named because I was in my swimsuit whilst cooking and eating)

1 cup lentils*

2 onions, chopped

1 potato, cubed

1 head of cauliflower

2 carrots, chopped

2 peppers of your choice (I used a red and green bell pepper)

a crap ton of tomatoes

1/2 can of coconut milk

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/3 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon basil

*A quick note about lentils: you’ll want to soak them for a few hours beforehand, preferably overnight. Then boil them for about a half hour or until they’re tender. You could probably just soak them and then put them in the curry as it boils, but I didn’t know if they’d be cooked by then so I just boiled them ahead and added them in near the end.

1.) Heat up some olive oil in a large pot, and then add in your onions. Let them sweat for about ten minutes, or until they’re somewhat tender and translucent. Then add in your potato and carrots. Again, let them sweat like they’re in a sauna.

2.) Chop up the rest of your veggies and set them aside. Realize you should have used a bigger cutting board.

3.) (Optional) After spending far too much time chopping, find a brand new SlapChop and moan about not using it and losing an opportunity to “slap all your troubles away.”

4.) Once the onion, potato, and carrots have been cooking for about ten minutes, throw in the rest of your veggies. Don’t worry your pretty little head if your potato isn’t cooked just yet.

5.) Add in your coconut milk, lentils, tomatoes, spices, and any other veggies. Let that come up to a boil, and then have it simmer for about an hour. You basically just want the potatoes to cook through and the flavors to merge, like Time Warner and AOL.

After about 45 minutes, I plated it up. You could probably let it simmer for as little or long as you want. I went for a walk on the beach, and let it cook while I was gone.

I served it over Jasmine rice that was also cooked in coconut milk. (GASP! White rice!)

So. Good.

SURPRISE! I have another lazy vacay recipe for you. Seriously, it’s probably the simplest thing and I’m willing to bet a monkey could do it. Just make sure he has clean hands… you know where they’ve been.

Lazy Pizza

Get yourself a whole wheat crust.Smother it in tomato sauce. In my case, I was too cheap to buy three packs of sauce seeing as I’d only use one. So I used tomato paste mixed with dried basil, oregano, and a bit of chives.

Top the awesome (AKA vegan) side with whole grape tomatoes, peppers, and then realize you forgot to buy spinach and fresh basil.

Slap yourself on the forehead.

Then realize you have the ultimate topping/meal/deliciousness… hummus. Yes, on a pizza. I put it on in globs and just hoped it would turn out tasting alright. The pizza crust said to bake for 20 minutes, so I put it in for 18, cause I’m a rebel.

3 pieces wasn’t enough.

So for now, I’m off to eat leftover curry and drag my lazy self to the oceanside and then the pool. Oh, what a tough life I lead. Hope your day is going swimmingly. Pun intended.

Where’s your favorite vacay spot?

Summer days

I love asparagus. I really do. And not just because it makes your pee smell funny. For real, it does. Try it if you don’t believe me! No, I love asparagus for its bite, the crunchy, firm texture and how fresh it feels. It just screams spring and summer to me. There’s so much you can do with it – grill it, roast it, put it in soup… or pair it with pasta and spinach.

Summery Pasta with Asparagus, Spinach, and Chickpeas

Serves 4-5 people

6 oz whole wheat spaghetti

1/2 lb asparagus

2 cups spinach

1 15oz can of diced no-salt added tomatoes

3 1/2 cups chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

vegetable broth

1/2 an onion

2 T hummus

Juice and zest of one lemon

First, you’ll want to heat up a pretty big skillet or wok or pan or whatever you’ve got that will be able to fit all of this deliciousness inside. Add 1 T olive oil, and when it’s hot, saute your onion. Once it’s translucent, add your asparagus and about a cup of vegetable broth. It really depends on how much you want to add and how liquidy or how thick you want your sauce to be.

Let your asparagus cook for about 5 minutes (or until they’re just tender) before you add the tin of tomatoes and some chickpeas. I really don’t know what I was thinking when I was in the store. I should have bought grape tomatoes instead of canned. My brain decided to take a day off, I guess.

A little note about chickpeas – if you’re using dried, like I did, let them soak overnight beforehand. You want about 3 1/2 cups of chickpeas total.

In another pot, let some water come up to a boil and drop your pasta in. I cook my pasta with a teaspoon of olive oil so it doesn’t stick together. I also added some lemon juice so that the pasta could absorb that sweet flavor.

Once the chickpeas and tomatoes are in your sauce, add in some salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and the lemon juice. Let it sit until your pasta is cooked.When you’re ready to add the pasta, put in your spinach. Remember that spinach wilts down – so it looks like you’re adding more spinach than Popeye could eat, but it cooks down to almost nothing.

And now, before you add the pasta on top of the spinach, add your secret weapon… hummus! Yes, I said hummus. In this sauce, it’s almost undetectable but that’s okay – we’re using it to thicken up the sauce and make it creamy.

Don’t stir the hummus in, just take a ladle full of starchy pasta water and pour it on top. The heat from the water as well as the cooked pasta will melt it and help it coat the entire pan. Take the pasta from the pot (don’t worry about draining it, just grab it with tongs) and incorporate it in.

You may now drool all over your computer screen:

The great thing about this pasta is that it can probably be eaten both cold and warm. I’m going to eat it tomorrow as lunch “to go” in the car (who ever ate freaking spaghetti in a car? Not ideal traveling food I suppose). I’m headed to Florida for a week tomorrow! Win. Don’t worry, I’ll still be posting pretty regularly.

Even more of an epic win? This! I snagged it at Old Navy today while I was in search of new jeans. But dresses are cool, too. It’s super comfy and it has pockets, man. Pockets! I love to wear dresses in the summer. I’m not a shorts kind of girl.

What’s your summer style?

Do You Like Pancakes?

You can guess what song I’ve had stuck in my head all morning.

I had planned to make my dad super yummy pancakes, seeing as it’s Day 1 of his better half being thousands of miles away in England (she’s such a lucky beg).

So we came downstairs to find THIS joy..

She hasn’t peed on the carpet since she was a young’n.

Ultimate guiltface.

We figure it was because she’s mad about her beloved mum leaving for vacation. She’s staging a protest now, refusing to eat and camping out on the couch, eyes fixed straight outside the window for her mum. Poor thing. Hopefully she won’t keep that up for 2 and a half weeks.

Anyway, today was a perfect pancake morning. It was sort of dreary and cloudy outside, but not quite cool enough for oatmeal. Enter banana pancakes (and look, I actually remembered the measurements!)!

Banana Pancakes

Serves 2-3 people, depending on how hungry they are. This fed my father and I, but I made them fairly small sized.

1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup vanilla non-dairy milk (I used almond)

1/2 cup water

1 1/2 T pure vanilla extract

2 T maple syrup or agave nectar

1 t baking powder

cinnamon to taste

1 banana, sliced

Heat up a non-stick pan and spray with cooking spray, or you can use oil. While it warms, slice your banana.

Mix all ingredients sans bananas in a big bowl. You may need to add more liquid to the batter if it’s too thick.

Once your skillet is feeling hot hot hot, start putting pancake batter in, then press in your banoonoos. You want to make sure they get all the way through the batter and touch the surface of the skillet so that they will get nice and grilled and warm when the pancakes cook.

You know the rest of the drill…. flip when you can see lots of lovely bubbles throughout, plate, top with real maple syrup (none of that icky maple flavored liquidy stuff) or the fruit of your choice and then proceed to NOM.

Me: “Dad, can you pour a little bit on my pancakes, please?”

The maple syrup then proceeds to LEAP out of the jug and drown my pancake in syrupy deliciousness.

Dad: “Oh, that came out faster than I wanted it to….”

Me: “That’s what SHE said!”

I would go there.

Have a safe Memorial Day! If you’ve got the day off, what are your plans? Dad and I were going to head to the park with the pup but it’s storming now, so we’ll probably stay in and watch junk TV 🙂

A yummy lunch.

I present to you…

Zucchini boats!

Tender baked zucchinis stuffed with broth-infused quinoa and topped with a slow cooked vegetable and bean ragout.

Dude, that sounds hella fancy. But for real, it was hella tasty. And it kind of looks like a boat, haha.

Super easy to make, too.

Zucchini Boats

Okay, I’m not too good with recipes so nothing here is really measured out for you – I’ll tell you that what I made served two people with extra quinoa and ragout left over.

Basically, what I did was cut two zucchinis in half. I then scraped out the innards (don’t throw them away!) and let the zukes bake in the 375 degree oven. While they did their thang, I threw some quinoa in a pot to boil. I cook my quinoa in a mixture of half broth and half water to give ’em a nice color and flavor. In another pot, I sauteed a sweet yellow onion with 1 clove of garlic and some carrots until they were tender. And a little brown. ‘Cause brown food tastes good, in the words of chef Anne Burrell.

Anyway, when those are ready to meet their veggie counterparts, throw in a can of diced tomatoes (make sure to buy the no salt added variety!), some tomato paste, a can of white kidney beans, corn, peas, and the zucchini innards that have been scraped out. At this point, you can really add any veggies you like. I think I added some green beans I had left over. I also threw in some grape tomatoes near the end (with some basil, oregano, salt and pepper) and they were divine. Seriously, if you’ve never cooked grape tomatoes, you’re missing out. They go all soft and kind of explode with flavor in your mouth.

Let the ragout simmer for a while on medium while the zucchini and quinoa finish cooking. When the zukes are done baking away, take them out and cool them, then fill with quinoa. Not too much, though, because you have to be able to fit the veggies on top. Once the veggies are on top, stare lovingly at the delicious looking boats you just made.

These would be great to make for a dinner party, with kids, or for impressing a cute date.