Another Sunday in the Kitchen

First, I would like to note that after six months of procrasinating, denial, and just plain forgetting, I finally updated my blogger profile to reflect that I am now ::gulp:: thirty. You know what though? I'm willing to own it. My thirties, thus far, have been surprisingly better than I thought they would be. I may or may not have started to get some much needed focus in my life and feel like I'm finally starting figure out what it is I'm doing with myself. Granted, it seems to me that most people have this figured out during their mid-twenties (or so is the case with at least 80%+ of my friends), but for me it took a bit longer. Somehow, what I thought I was going to be doing the rest of my life took a sidetrack before I even got started and it all had to do with addressing my health- both physically and mentally. Funny enough, addressing my health was actually putting me on a path to deciding what I wanted to do with my life without me even knowing it. I haven't signed up for the Holistic Nutrition degree program yet, but it's definitely what I want to do and I can't wait to figure out how I'm gonna pay for it so I can start learning.

But on to the food, right?

Spent another lovely Sunday afternoon in the kitchen yesterday and cooked up a weeks worth of meals so I don't have attempt to cook in the morning before I go to work (I work 11a-9p Mon-Wed nights, which requires have both lunch and dinner easy and quick to eat so I can avoid fast food or other unhealthy options). It was a perfect day for spending in the kitchen yesterday, we had a snow storm roll through that was lovely to watch but gross to go out in. It was snowing slush, essentially, and that snow is so heavy and wet I couldn't even shovel the driveway this morning. It sure does look pretty on the trees though!

For this week I made recipes out of Clean Eating and Vegetarian Times magazines, as I just got both new issues in the mail this week. I'm like a kid at a candy store when these magazines arrive, feverishly flipping the pages, dog-earing recipes, and showing everything that looks tasty to my husband (which translates to the majority of the magazines, but he plays along like a good sport to humor me). I pulled three recipes out for this week's meals, 2 from Vegetarian Times and 1 from Clean Eating. I'm trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat, though I can't reduce it completely due to my food allergies- veganism is not for those that are allergic to beans, tree nuts and raw soy products. I watched a movie called Eating that talks about how there is a correlation between the rise in disease and the increase in consumption of meat. It was pretty compelling. So, I'm renewing my effort to eat less meat and increase vegetable consumption.

The first recipe I made was Garlicky Leek and Artichoke soup from Vegetarian Times. The recipe is really simple, as most soup recipes are. The taste was exactly how it was described, garlicky and artichokey with a hint of leek.

Yummy! Oh, and super good for the gallbladder, btw (I haven't been pointing these things out lately, so I'm trying to do that again). The garlic, leeks, and artichokes all work on the liver and gallbladder to cleanse and thin the bile. This should not only give me the immune system of a super human, but it will also work on healing my liver and gallbladder which defintely took a hit this last week while I was sick.

The second dish I made was another Vegetarian Times recipe, Italian Orzo and Greens. It uses both kale and chard and is sprinkled with kalamata olives (a favorite of my husband's) and lemon zest and juice. The flavor is bright, though in hindsight I would have left some of the red wine vinegar it called for out. VT mag is obsessed with vinegar, not sure why, but I've noticed this in a lot of their recipes. Against my better judgement, I did add in the feta cheese it called for, though honestly I think it would have been just fine without and kind of wishing I had made a seperate batch without for myself and put the cheese only in my husbands. Funny how your taste buds change when you go dairy free for a while... you really don't even care for it anymore.

Doesn't the kale and chard look amazing once it starts to hit the heat? You just don't get more vibrant coloring than that!

It's quite addicting, if I do say so, despite my ambivalence about the feta cheese in it. Can't wait to eat that for lunch!

The last dish I made was from Clean Eating and it's quite fantastic. Beef and Broccoli with Orange Stir-Fry. The smell of the orange and soy sauce hitting the wok was the best part of cooking this dish. It is so succulent smelling, and it just makes you feel warmed. I will say though, that having made this dish I think I'm going to make it vegetarian next time. The basis for the recipe is good, but it's very flexible and you can mix up the vegetables and what you serve them on. For example, the recipe called for onions, I used leeks. It also called for serving it on Soba noodles, I had Udon so I used those, though I could have just as easily served it on rice. The stars of this recipe are the orange sauce and the broccoli, if you ask me.