Vegetarian Vegetable Stir-fry

Finally, another cooking post!

I decided to try making a stir-fry! I have made stir-fries before, but I wanted to try this out:

That's right! Electric wok! It has amazing temperature control, by the way. I sort of inherited it from my parents who never used it.

When choosing veggies for my stir-fry, I basically wandered around the produce area and picked up things that seemed like they'd be good. I ended up with: carrots, zucchini (my favorite!), snow peas, red bell pepper, and broccoli.

And no stir-fry is complete without rice! I used a long grain brown rice. It's good for you! Also, I don't know why I chose not to use my rice cooker...

Finding stir-fry sauces is difficult for vegetarians because most of them have oyster in them. Oyster juice? Anyway, not vegetarian friendly. I ended up going with this because it was the only vegetarian one I found.

I started the rice because it takes about an hour to cook. I chopped up my veggies, as seen above. To the wok I added olive oil (I almost always use olive oil and that works for me. What do other people use?) and the sauce. I turned the wok on to about 350. It heated much quicker than expected.

Colorful!

Stir-fry is nice and easy, especially without meat (maybe I will try tofu next time). You just add everything in. Try to give the veggies that take longer to cook more time in the wok, ie: broccoli and carrots (depending on how they are cut). Keep stirring the veggies so nothing burns. I probably left it in there for about 10 minutes? And then left the temperature on warm until the rice finished.

I got this wine as a gift from my friend, Lydia, so we popped that open to have with dinner. I must say, I don't usually like dryish red wines, but this one was quite tasty!

And voila! Our meal is complete! We just put the stir-fry over rice and enjoyed! And it was delicious!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 For anyone who is interested, I wanted to share a couple of food-related blogs run by a couple close friends of mine.
Tubby Jubby's Food Blog: http://tubbyjubby.blogspot.com/. She is just starting out, but it looks great so far!
Easy Entertaining Food: http://easyentertainingfood.tumblr.com/. She finds good stuff!

An Update and Amish Friendship Bread

Sorry for the lack of updates (again). One of my best friends was in town and I don't get to see her often, so I spent TONS of time with her and our circle of friends.

So today is Tuesday: my turn to make dinner! While my friend, Amie, was in town she gave me some Amish friendship bread (AFB) aka a yeast starter. That was exactly 10 days ago. I was very excited to experiment with it. I knew that I would end up with enough AFB by today to make 3 items and still have one left over to continue my starter. One I will be giving to my mom, so I have 2 to work with. (Also, I am going to have to freeze a lot of this if I can't keep up with the baking! Let me know if anyone needs a yeast starter!).

So I'm thinking: dinner and dessert (who doesn't love dessert?). I really wanted to make pizza and chocolate chip cookies. Both of which I have made before (though it has been many years since I have made home-made pizza) so I figured they would be alright.

To begin, it was nearly impossible to find a recipe for AFB pizza dough. I finally stumbled upon this blog post: http://digrat.blogspot.com/2008/11/amish-friendshippizza.html. This was the recipe I followed. Only thing I didn't follow was letting the dough rise for 12-18 hours... because I did not plan this far enough in advance. Story of my life. I settled for putting the oven on very low and leaving it in for about 30 minutes. It didn't rise much. I am not sure it mattered all that much. Next time I will do it correctly and let you know.

For the sauce I used this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/exquisite-pizza-sauce/. The sauce was the main success of the dish, I think. I altered it a bit (no anchovy or honey, to name a couple changes), but overall that is roughly what I made. I used lots of mozzarella cheese and a pre made pizza mix. It was a good combo: mostly mozzarella with a little provolone, parmesan, and romano.

Main problem: The pizza dough didn't cook in the middle very well. I put it in a little longer but didn't want to burn the cheese. Thoughts for next time: Cook the dough for a while on it's own before adding sauce and cheese. I am not sure that will work, but it's worth a try. Otherwise it was pretty good. Due to the AFB, the dough was a touch sweet for my taste, but since the sauce was a bit spicy, it worked out pretty well.

This website came with the AFB and has lots of info and recipes: http://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/. Using this I found this recipe for cookies: http://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/pantry/afb-chocolate-chip-cookies.

I did not use shortening. I don't have any (and have never used it before) and I did not want to go to the store for the second time today and the third time in the last two days. Instead I used a little more butter. Most sources I found said that butter or margarine can be used in place of shortening in equal exchange. I did not do a full equal exchange because it already had butter in it and I couldn't bring myself to put in THAT much butter. The cookies turned out alright and they tasted pretty good. Next time I should try using shortening, however. Next time. Sigh. Another side note: this recipe makes LOTS of cookies. I feel like I was baking all night.

In other news, I have worked on my Shuiichi costume a bit. The shirt that scared me? I'm still a bit scared. However, I managed to get it mostly put together and (drum roll) I made a collar! I was excited. Of course I made the whole thing before I remembered it was supposed to be blue, not white... so I made a little case for it. Like a pillow case. It worked fine. Right now I am tackling the interfacing (I hate interfacing) which is supposed to go on the shoulders and down the front. It isn't actually *attached* to the shirt yet, however, but is attached to the facing.

During all of this, I learned what it meant to layer a seam. I had no idea what this meant and my google searching failed to clear it up until I found this wonderful video: http://www.ehow.com/video_4438184_sewing-collar_-grading-seam.html. Cleared everything right up. There are some other parts I am going to have to look up later. I will be sure to share those for any other amateur seamstresses out there. I will  post a picture when it is finished.

And I promise that I will be posting about my new little niece very soon! With a couple pictures because she is the cutest baby in the world (surely no bias here...).

So there you have it. An update and my Tuesday cooking. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I just wasn't feeling up for the extra work.

"Always Kiss the Cook"

Wow, costume updates on Mondays, cooking on Tuesdays, what''s next?!

 

So this week I decided to experiment with three food items that I have never used before: udon noodles (not so daunting), miso, and tofu. Yes, despite being a vegetarian, I have never made tofu myself.

Three new ingredients!

 I used a recipe from a book called The Tofu Book. Basically, that is. It called for leeks which I didn't know what to do with and didn't have time to find out so I left them out (four never-before used items maybe a bit too much?) and seaweed (which I haven't used before but did not include only because I couldn't find it at our grocery store). It did NOT call for udon, but sticking with the Japanese theme and trying to make a soup into a meal, I decided to add them.

I started by pressing the tofu. Per the advice of friends, I used three, large, heavy books and pressed it twice while I prepared other things.

Pressing tofu.

 The miso I bought had a very similar recipe to the one I was using on the side. The only difference was that it recommended cutting it with a stock, so I used vegetable (of course).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Apparently miso should not be boiled. This was very good to know because I was going to use the miso as stock and cook my noodles and carrots in it.

So I boiled some water with vegetable stock and added my noodles and chopped carrots. While this went on I dissolved some miso (about a tablespoon maybe? It was pre-cut) in some warm water and cubed my tofu. Once the noodles and carrots were about done, I lowered the temperature and added my miso and tofu and let it sit on very low for a while.

Here is how it turned out:

Taste test: alright, but not as flavorful as I would like. Maybe some more stock and/or miso. Or maybe more miso and no stock. I needed to add a little salt. Isaac agreed that it was a little bland, but he liked it otherwise. And it would be nice to have more veggies in it. Perhaps potatoes? Overall, not as successful as last week's dinner.

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”

~W. C. Fields

Since I completely skipped my costume update of the week, here is a cooking update instead!

So tonight is my cooking night, again. I was pressed for time and quinoa came to mind. I did a quick search on my phone for quinoa recipes and this came up: Quinoa and Black Bean. Sounded delicious to me! First thing I did was change the servings from the default 10 to 4 (I like left overs).

It was pretty easy overall. Simmer the quinoa in seasoned vegetable broth (seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, and cayenne pepper) and when it is almost finished, add corn and beans (I used canned for both, though the recipe calls for frozen corn). Before the quinoa finished simmering, it smelled amazing! I did end up needing to add more vegetable broth.

Here is the end result! Again, I need serving dishes...

Verdict? I thought it was quite tasty! Isaac liked it, too. I think the seasoning came out well, considering I hardly know what I am doing. I probably added the most cumin because I like it. Very little cayenne pepper and pepper. However, even though it was altered for four, I felt as though we barely had enough for two... In the future, 10 may not be too many servings.

"Love people. Cook them tasty food."

I got this free bumper sticker from Penzeys Spices (http://www.penzeys.com/) which is an amazing spice store. If you haven't been there, go! I highly recommend their vanilla and taco spice. Anyway, I got this bumper sticker which is hanging on the fan above our stove:

On that note, Isaac and I decided to start cooking more dinners. We've been eating out quite a bit lately, which is expensive and not very healthy. So we each picked two nights a week to make dinner. Tonight is my first night. I cook on occasion, but I am not very adept. I hope to keep note of my cooking endeavors here. I will try to post helpful hints for those who, like me, know very little about cooking.

So I used this recipe tonight: Five Ingredient Pasta Toss. It calls for olive oil, bow-tie pasta (I bought the Barilla Plus brand because it is healthy and tasty), a couple of garlic cloves, fresh basil, white beans, and fire-roasted diced tomatoes. All of this was fine for me. Except the garlic. First, I mis-read and only needed two cloves when I bought two heads... So I need to find other things to do with the other one...

So I needed to crush the garlic cloves and combine them with the olive oil. I didn't really know how to work with garlic, so like the all-modern-woman, I googled it. This video was super awesome (and it worked!): How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds. From there I could handle chopping and crushing, but here is a pretty good little video just in case: Garlic: Easy way to crush garlic.

Here is how my garlic turned out! So proud.

Just like the video!

And this is how the dish turned out. (Of course, I should probably invest in some serving bowls or something...)

And the verdict?

The garlic flavor didn't come through quite as well as I'd hoped and the whole could use a little salt and pepper. But otherwise, it was good. Isaac also approved. I call this fairly successful and I know how to change it for next time.