PHOTOS: Well, this month I finally managed to get some good darks and bold colors out of my 11-year-old, 2 MP Canon point-and-shoot, and then Blogger went and washed them out. These first photos of flowers were especially vibrant. I guess they're still okay (UPDATE: Most of the photos look better zoomed in):
I got a little obsessed with this leaf Joey (spotted puppy) found on our walk:
There's an airplane in the center:
Not my veggie sprouts, but very pretty:
In iPhoto, this was a really beautiful soft-focus still life with a receding matte black background. With Blogger's unwanted "help," you can see that my "background" is just a greasy glass stove top:
The next several photos are much less bold here on Blogger:
Lizzie (brown puppy) helped me take this photo (I was carrying her and took a photo of what she was looking at):
Some of the pear leaves turned a lustrous red; others, strange patterns of brown and green:
Not my cat. Used the zoom and shot through beveled glass:
Pear leaves:
The Japanese maple on a rainy day:
100 RECIPES GOAL: At this point I don't think I'll take time to make full write-ups of each recipe, so instead, I will simply list a few notes about each recipe under the pictures:
#56. Individual Italian Summer Tarts
From the book Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I didn't want to go out just for puff pastry, so I tried making my own even though it's such an ordeal that the new edition of Joy of Cooking got rid of the pages and pages that illustrated the old method. I figured that, worse case scenario, it would come out like a very buttery pie crust. In reality, it came out halfway between that and a rather tough puff pastry. The tart toppings were pretty good, though they made me think of the goat cheese and onion tarts (from January?), so I just ended up missing the goat cheese.
A- or B+ (maybe try adding goat cheese?)
UPDATE: #13. Mozzarella Cheese with Fennel and New Potatoes
I thought I'd try this recipe again and give it a fairer shake since I read that fennel is in season in autumn and I had first made this in the spring. Also, I used canned potatoes the first time, which sucked. My second attempt, with real potatoes, fennel in season, and $6 cheese came out much better, although it's still quite a lot of work for something that is basically potatoes and vinegar with cheese (and fennel). I love the stack presentation, but it falls down as soon as you try to eat it, so I ate all the leftover bits from a bowl instead, which was just as good, and almost as pretty:
B+, only because the work and expense don't really justify the outcome
#57. Baked Fennel with Spicy Dressing
I had to use up the fennel, so I tried this vaguely Asian recipe (based on Baked Fennel with Shallots and Spicy Dressing from Easy Vegetarian). I didn't want to spend $8 on sesame oil for just one tablespoon though, so instead of having the rich golden-brown color of the photo in the book, my baked fennel was dull white and pale green. Also, I assumed it would soften in the oven, so I didn't slice it thin (I think the fennel bulbs alluded to in the book were baby fennel, since it only said to quarter them). The flavor (ginger, onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, olive oil) was fine, but I just had to gnaw the soft bits off of spears of fennel.
B-
#58. Chickpea, Tomato and Pepper Salad
From Easy Vegetarian. So similar to #65. Capiscum, Spinach and Chickpea Soup, that I originally wrote this picture up as that and had to cut and paste the words down to the proper photo. This was good with the zesty Peppadews, and this was the dish I bought them for (I used them up in the soup).
Now I remember! I decided that this could be combined well with the recipe I invented, #47. Chickpea, Olive, and Tomato Pasta.
A, (better as a side dish)
#59. Mushrooms and Barley
This is a very straightforward version of Joy of Cooking's Baked Brown Rice with Mushrooms, using the suggested substitutions of pearl barley and veggie stock. It was delicious. I wanted to make it for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately, my family isn't adventurous enough for barley (even though I'm sure they've eaten it in soup). The oregano garnish tasted wonderful with this, and I'm sure thyme or sage or even rosemary would work, too.
A+, (good as a side dish rather than a main meal)
#60. Mushroom Pilau
From Vegan Recipes, ed. Nicola Graimes. Similar to #59. Mushrooms and Barley, but more Indian, with spices and cilantro. British people use the word coriander for both the seed and the leaves, and, not having read the recipe closely, I neglected to pick up cilantro. It was bland without the cilantro, so I got some the next day for the leftovers, and then it was very good.
A+
#61. Bob's Red Mill Muesli Cookies
It's hard to make a plate of cookies look good, so I cheated by neglecting to rotate the top photo. Then I got that slightly off-kilter shot and liked it too. Anyway, these were good cookies, so I wanted to show them off.
I'm a Bob's Red Mill nut and every so often I let myself try another of their awesome bags of whole grains and stuff. The muesli is a mix of whole grains, nuts and dates. I only ate it as a cereal twice though, because the cookie recipe on the side was so good that used up the rest making three batches.
The recipe calls for eggs, but no dairy, and uses applesauce instead of oil or fat. As a result, the cookies are very sticky and gummy, but the flavor is so good I could hardly stop eating them. They're kind of like oatmeal cookies, but with dates and chocolate instead of raisins. I'm glad I bothered to buy brown sugar and follow the recipe to the letter (except that I used about half as much chocolate--chocolate is expensive, and half as much was plenty, even for a chocolate obsessive like me).
A+
#62. Dairy-free Pesto with Spirali and #63. Spaghetti al Pesto
We had an early first frost this year, so when I heard it was coming, I decided to rip up my basil plants, put them in a bucket of water, bring them into the house, and make pesto. The first recipe was from Vegan Recipes, and used a mustard and mint pesto, although I traded out the pine nuts for pistachios, as suggested in the second recipe, which came from Rome, at Home, an excellent, beautifully illustrated, and highly readable cookbook that I found in tragic-looking clearance heap at a supermarket.
The spirali recipe was a lot of work because everything had to be cooked separately and brought together in stages. Maybe with practice it would become easier, but even just making the pesto was a lot of work. The first photo is just the noodles and veggies (good enough with butter); the second shows the pesto mixed in.
The flavor was okay, but not really worth the work, so:
B or B+
This one tasted much better than it looks (I used whole grain pastas for the first time when I tried these recipes, and also, the lighting was really bad--the green of the pesto should have been much brighter). I had enough pesto to save and use for a second meal, and I was very sad that I didn't have enough for weeks and weeks of spaghetti. I wonder if chopping up some basil and garlic and pistachios would have the same effect as hauling out the blender to make pesto. If so, I could see making this again in the summer (i.e. basil season).
The recipe called for a topping of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and I could really taste the space in the flavor where it ought to have been.
A (without cheese), A+ (with cheese, presumably)
#64. French Green Beans Amandine
I bought the haricots verts I needed for the spirali with pesto at Costco, so I had about 1-1/2 pounds leftover. The Pure Fresh brand I bought had an untitled recipe on the package, but I think this is what it is usually called. Butter (I used 1/2 olive oil), lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and toasted sliced almonds. Very good. If you substitute olive oil, I wouldn't bother heating up the liquid ingredients in a sauce pan--the beans are blanched and dunked in cold water to keep their color, and the sauce cools off pretty fast anyway, so just serve it as a cold dish.
A
#65. Capiscum, Spinach and Chickpea Soup
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. Capiscum just means pepper, usually bell peppers specifically. I used Peppadews, a zesty little pepper that comes in a jar all the way from South Africa (They cost $7 for just enough for two recipes--they were that week's "try something new, Diana!") This soup was wonderful. I don't remember it being too hard to make, either, and of course, it ought to be relatively healthy.
I'll just list the main ingredients: olive oil, onion, peppers, garlic, cumin, tomato passata (I can't remember what form of tomato I used), veggie stock, chickpeas, red wine vinegar, sugar, baby spinach
A+
#66. Green Beans and Mushrooms with a Roasted Tomato and Wine Sauce
I threw this together in a last-minute effort to get rid of green beans before they rotted. I didn't like it very much, but my sister loved it and had me make it again for Thanksgiving. My grandmother, who cooks her green beans to death in bacon grease, wouldn't touch them, although she did have some of the sauce. The sauce is a can of Muir Glen roasted tomatoes simmered for a long time with garlic, olive oil and cheap red wine. Close to go-time, blanch, then chill the green beans, sautee the mushrooms, then throw it all together. (In the version above, I also added a bit of veggie stock, which doesn't really help.) This is similar to a recipe I found later that also calls for feta, oregano, and onions.
B+
#67. The Very Best Muffins in the World
Maybe to people who live in fancy cities and frequent delis and bakeries where muffins are regularly sold for $7, these would be some rather ordinary muffins, but to me, they were the best I've ever tasted, and I came up with the recipe myself! Unfortunately, I've misplaced it. Maybe I'll find it and share it with the world someday, or maybe I'll have my very first, very own secret recipe!!!
Poaching eggs is my new obsession, which comes as a shock to me considering I endured a nasty bout of salmonella poisoning at age 14 and have approached eggs with a distrust bordering on paranoia ever since. I've already done a mushroom variation on this recipe-of-my-own-invention, which is delicious. Poaching the eggs, however, does not really improve it. Firstly, the runny yolks of poached eggs taste best soaking into some hearty, whole-grain toast. Secondly, by having the egg concentrated in one spot, it's harder to make each bite have a little bit of everything. I would stick to frying the eggs, although poaching is so much fun.
B+
#68. Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
I was curious why the introduction to this recipe in Rome, at Home contained a colorful description of the prostitutes lining the Appia Antica in Rome, until I remembered what puttana means. (One day, in the frescoed palace hall in Rome where my study abroad classes met, the teacher picked up a piece of chalk and asked us to shout out all the bad names for women we'd learned in our first three weeks in Rome. She filled the board.) In actuality (or at least according to Wikipedia), this pasta has jack squat to do with whores and everything to do with the way that "whore" is used colloquially to mean "garbage". Supposedly a restaurant owner was closing up one night when some stragglers came in and demanded food. He told them he was out of ingredients, but they said that "any garbage would do". He came up with this dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce, Kalamata olives, capers, parsley (or mint), and--if you're not a vegetarian--anchovies (like the cheese in the Spaghetti al Pesto, I could taste the space where the anchovies belonged). I ate this several times in the space of a week, and it was not difficult to prepare, especially the time I used some leftover Bertolli Garlic and Olive Oil jarred sauce instead of making the sauce from scratch.
A
#69. Lebkuchen
I've been dying to try these little German honey bars since I first saw the recipe in Joy of Cooking. Hopefully before Christmas, I will make them in a very special way (I need to find a few special ingredients first).
B+, in this incarnation
#70. Poached Eggs and Wilted Spinach on Buttery Whole Wheat Toast
Like it says in the title. Sooooooooo good.
A+
#71. Baby Bok Choy Sauteed with Minced Garlic and Ginger
I used olive oil and also a little butter. Did I toss in red pepper flakes too? I bought the bok choy because it looked so fresh, then forgot about it for a few days, but even after that it tasted so good and crisp raw that it barely made it to the frying pan. Heavenly, for something so healthy.
A
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