SereneCooking

In German class in the ninth grade, we had a German-foods potluck. The teacher, Mrs. Knapp (at least I think that was her name), handed out recipes and assigned us each a dish to cook and bring in. I got German potato salad. I had never HAD German potato salad. It was an epiphany! Such a perfect blend of flavors, and I wish I still had that recipe today.

These days, I call any vinegar-based (as opposed to mayo-based) potato salad "German potato salad", even when most people wouldn't really think of it as German potato salad, so keep that in mind if you make this recipe. It's very good, very easy, and VERY cheap, but it's not authentic in any way.

What I made:



German-ish Potato Salad

Dressing ingredients:

1 tsp dried minced onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp celery seed
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp mustard powder

2 pounds russet potatoes, boiled, cooled, peeled, and cubed
1 roasted red pepper (I used one from a jar), diced

Place potatoes in a medium bowl. Place dressing ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir for a few seconds, then pour dressing over potatoes and mix well. Add peppers and mix. Chill until cold and serve.

Cost per serving:

4 servings. 20 cents a pound for the potatoes, 17 cents for the pepper (I bought a jar of 6 for 99 cents), and some tiny amount of money for the spices. Total per serving: 15 cents or so.

How we liked it:

someotherguy: "I liked it a lot. I'm not a super-huge fan of German-style potato salad, but it was pretty good."
serene: I would have preferred fresh onions and celery, but I didn't HAVE fresh onions and celery. This was really good for a pantry salad.

I keep experimenting with whole-grain rye bread -- someotherguy is diabetic, and rye has a better glycemic index than wheat -- besides, he likes rye bread. Anyway, I like this one. It's really substantial, but not dry or overly dense. The dough looks dubious straight out of the bread machine (I usually bake in the oven), but it bakes up well.

Whole-wheat-and-rye bread (ABM)

1 1/4 cups water
2 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (I grind my own; you may need a little more liquid if you use store-bought)
1 cup whole-rye flour (see above)
1/4 cup gluten
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. caraway seeds
1 1/2 tsp. yeast

Put ingredients in the breadmaker in the order the manufacturer says. Either do it on dough cycle, let rise a second time in a loaf pan, and then bake 35-40 minutes in a preheated 350F oven, or bake all the way on a whole-grain cycle.

This is today's lunch, served with a green salad.

Smoky Lentil Soup

1 leek, chopped (white part only)
2 small carrots (or 1 medium), sliced
1 1/2 cups red lentils
1-2 Tablespoons roasted garlic (an average head of garlic yields 2T)
1/2 cup loosely packed chopped parsley
6 cups water
1-2 teaspoons salt, to taste
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Combine all in a medium pot; bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer
30-60 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding water as necessary.

This is becoming my favorite soup. I also make it with chicken stock, but today I'm using veggie stock with a tiny bit of soymilk, and I like it, too, with store-bought "unchicken" stock. Either way, it's delicious, and it's so easy: Just peel and cube a celeriac (also known as celery root) and throw it in a soup pot with a cut-up onion, some salt, and whatever else you want (if I have leftover veggies, I toss 'em in; I also like a little salt-free seasoning in there). Cover with stock and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes or so. Puree. Add more liquid if you want, but I kind of like it thick. Eat hot. (I sometimes add a bit of cream at the very end, but that's gilding the lily a bit.)

Right now, I have whole-wheat rolls rising, and we'll have the soup with rolls and salad. The house smells like celery. :-)

If you start wondering where all the fat went in our meals, or why I'm even talking about defatting recipes and so on, it's because I'm working on a blood-pressure issue. Don't worry; I'm still fat and happy, but my blood-pressure has been low all my life, and now it's dangerously high, and the only significant change was the addition of a bunch of meat and fat to my life, so out it goes, at least for the time being.

Breakfast this morning was potatoes and onions "fried" in water/salt/pepper and then drenched in ketchup as is my wont, along with a glass of V-8. Lunch will be a big salad for me and salad and a roast beef sandwich for someotherguy. Soft tacos for dinner, probably, and I'm also going to try my hand at making kim chee. I'll start taking pictures as soon as I find my camera. :-)

I liked the curry powder I made up yesterday, and I'm liking it again in the cold leftovers, so I thought I'd share.

Put the following in a small pan on a hot stove and toast until the mustard seeds start to pop, and then quickly remove from heat:

6 cardamom pods, or rather the insides once you've smashed the pods
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes

Grind in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. Add the following (I would've used whole fenugreek and coriander if I'd had them):

1/4 tsp ground fenugreek
1 T ground coriander
2 tsp turmeric powder


That's it. It's a basic yellow-curry-powder kind of taste, but a little fresher for having come from the whole spices.

There's a bad, blurry picture of last night's dinner here. I decided to put up a picture every day, and just my luck to take bad ones last night. :-)

Some folks have asked me about the menu-planning process, and here's what I wrote about it on one of my lists (that list is focused on no-added-fat vegan foods, and that's what the "McDougall" reference is):

In case it will help anyone else, here are the steps I take to make the list:

1) Make a list of simple McDougall meals your family likes. (Sometimes, I just make a list of 10 things we don't mind repeating, but this time I felt like doing a bigger variety.) For us, we can always go for spaghetti, taco salad, udon soup, or anything with Isa's chickpea gravy on it.

2) Go through and mark the days when you have time to do something new or more elaborate.

3) Put the simple stuff on the other days. Try to vary it a little -- spaghetti one day means probably not lasagna the next.

4) For the days that you plan to do new or elaborate stuff, here's the fun part -- get out your cookbooks, check the fatfreevegan site, look in this list's archives, etc., and find something yummy you've been wanting to try. Personally, if we like something, I move it to the next menu I'm working on, too, so we can start adding it to the rotation. The chickpea gravy was like that. It was an experiment that went so well that now we try to have it every couple of weeks -- it would be more often, but there's so much other yummy stuff to eat. :-)

5) Make another pass and add fruits or carb sources or leafy/dark/colorful vegetables to each menu. I usually see if there are veggies in the recipe itself, then add some if there aren't. I try not to be too specific on what veggies we will eat, because we have a good source for a variety of produce in season.

6) Every week, when I'm checking out the menu for the week to come, I add some advance-preparation notes. Here's an example for next week:

Week of 6/4

Friday [*]: Whole-wheat spaghetti w/tomato sauce and mushrooms, steamed asparagus
Saturday: Street fair with Guy
Make for tomorrow: Baked tofu
Sunday: Peanut noodles from Vegetarian Times (includes veggies & tofu), cucumber salad
Buy for tomorrow: corn tortillas, stuff to make salsa, avocados


Week of 6/11

Monday [*]: Tacos (soft corn tortillas, TVP, fresh salsa, guacamole)
Buy for tomorrow: Garbanzos, veggies, check gravy recipe to see if anything else
Tuesday: Potatoes w/chickpea gravy, steamed veggies
Buy for tomorrow: Udon, bok choy, tofu, onions if necessary,
Wednesday: Udon with tofu, bok choy, onions
Make for tomorrow: batch of seitan
Buy for tomorrow: veggies for soup, potatoes if necessary

1) A fat-free, vegan version of my mom's spaghetti sauce is on the
stove. It takes hours and hours to cook (hers takes a day and a half,
but her version has lots of meat and fat that keep it from reducing as
quickly). My house smells GOOD.

2) We were picking up fruit at the store, and I decided to buy a bag of
grape tomatoes to eat by themselves as my fruit for the day. Yum,
tomatoey joy.

3) We've been saying lately that with such a wonderful produce section
at our store, we should be buying something besides romaine lettuce,
bananas, and all that usual stuff. So yesterday we bought two spiny chayote squashes. I made a kind of gratin out of them, and it was pretty good:

2 medium chayotes, peeled, seeded, quartered, and sliced thinly
2 medium potatoes, ditto except the seeded part
1 small onion, ditto
2 cups unsweetened soymilk
1/2 teaspoon of salt or to taste
pepper to taste
parsley (I used about a teaspoon of dried)

Preheat the oven to 350F as you cut the veggies. (You can also cook it
on a higher temp if you're doing something else in the oven; just lessen
the time.)

Place the veggies in a baking dish. Mix the remaining ingredients
together and pour over the veggies -- it may be more or less liquid,
depending on your baking dish, as the liquid should almost cover the
veggies.

Bake 60-90 minutes, uncovered, until the top is browned, liquid is
bubbly, and veggies are nice and soft.

I'm a bit headachy from the dairy I ate yesterday, but it should go away soon. I hope. I have LOTS of work to do today!

Breakfast: Farina with raisins
Lunch: Tomato sandwich on homemade bread; kim chee
Dinner: Craft night spread: Fresh bread, baked chips with bean dip and fresh salsa, crackers and garbanzo spread (recipe below), water/coffee/tea. (I'll also be making non-fat-free kettle corn for the gang, because they expect it)
Snacks: Fruit, popcorn, toast

Garbanzo spread

1 onion
1 bunch parsley, chopped fine
Juice of 1 lemon
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
3 cups garbanzos with some cooking water (or 2 cans garbanzos, one drained and one not drained)
salt to taste

Sautee onion in a small amount of water until it just turns translucent. Remove from heat and add the parsley. Stir until the parsley wilts. Pulse everything together in a food processor or blender until it's chopped fairly finely, but still a little chunky. (I use a pair of hand-held chopping scissors, shown at the top of this page: http://www.silvermk.com/products.cfm )

What I ended up eating yesterday:

Breakfast: Farina, an apple
Lunch: Bean soft tacos: Corn tortillas, pinto beans, tomatoes, onions, avocado
Dinner: Boiled potatoes and chickpea gravy (leaving out the oil in the recipe -- it tasted the same to me, but then it's only a tablespoon of oil in the whole thing); fresh peas; baked asparagus
Snacks: another apple; a bunch of grapes; some wheat-garbanzo bread I made; a sandwich of roasted peppers on that same bread

Today's plan (it needs to be simple, because I have a TON of work to do before my date tonight)

Breakfast: toast
Lunch: lentil-and-veggie soup
Dinner: miso soup, rice, tofu
Snacks: bread, popcorn (still haven't tried it without the oil in the stir-popper)