Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

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Posts Tagged ‘roasted vegetables’

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A New Recipe To Love – Red Beans and Rice

Posted by terrepruitt on January 15, 2013

For two weeks we didn’t have a working stove or oven.  The oven started beeping one night.  We turned off the circuit breaker and it stopped beeping.  I used it the following night.  But then the day following that it started beeping again.  It beeped and displayed a code.  The code indicated a part was broken.  My husband concluded via internet research and taking the control panel off the appliance that he could order it and replace it himself.  Part of the reason it took two weeks to get fixed was that there was a holiday and a weekend in there.  The part being shipped was delayed because of the Holiday.  By the time we got the part and he was able to put it in, it was the weekend.  The part didn’t clear the error.  Then there were issues in securing a repairman. For those of you that know how much I love my roasted vegetables you might understand having no oven was really difficult for me.  Roasted veggies are not only yummy, but so easy to make.  A few minutes prep then in the oven until they are done leaving you time to do other things.  That is why I love my oven.  During the two weeks we ate take out.  We ordered Chinese Food, which for us equates to a few nights of Chinese Food.  I also used my toaster oven, my electric skillet, my crock pot, and my Cuisinart Grill.  So it was not as if I had no way to cook, it just put a cramp in my cooking a bit.  On the nights I have a Nia class I like to put our dinner in the oven and have it turn on about the time that class is over.  Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia at the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, ZumbaBy the time I get home whatever is cooking is either done or on its way to being done.  Without that I had to come home and start cooking.  But alas I have a stove and oven again.  YAY!  I missed them.  While I was not being able to use my stove and oven I tortured myself by looking at a cooking magazine.  As soon as my stove was fixed I decided to try a new recipe.

The recipe is from Bobby Deen.  I got it out of the Food Network Magazine.   The name of the recipe is Monday-Night Red Beans and Rice and is on the Food Network website.

Not your typical Red Beans and Rice recipe. I made some adjustments, of course!  I am posting it here as I did made it.  I am calling it something different too!

Sausage, Beans, and Rice

Ingredients:

—Three turns of the pan Olive oil
—3/4 medium onion, finely chopped
—8 turkey sausage patties
—1 large green bell pepper, finely chopped
—2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
—1 15 1/2-ounce can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
—1 15 1/2-ounce can garbanzo beans/chickpeas, drained and rinsed
—1/2 cup chicken broth
—1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
—1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
—1 bay leaf
—Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
—Salt, to taste
—Cooked brown rice
—Chopped scallions, for serving

Directions

Cook the onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat.  Add the sausage, chopping it up and separating it as it cooks.  Stirring it and moving it around as necessary.  Cook until almost cooked through.  Add the garlic.  Mix the garlic into the onions and meat.  Cook for about 1 minute.  Add the beans, chicken broth, cumin, thyme, bay leaf, green pepper, salt to taste, and pepper to taste.  Stir the ingredients until it is all mixed well.  Reduce heat and cover.  Let cook about 10 minutes.

Serve the mixture over rice.  Top with the scallions.

Dance Exercise, Nia, Nia at the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, ZumbaThis was so good.  I used my beloved 14 inch pan that I missed for two whole weeks.  Once the beans were added my stirring was gentle as I didn’t want to end up with smashed beans, but I also wanted to make sure the spices were distributed and the bay leaf touched a lot of the ingredients.  So I stirred a lot, but not vigorously.

My typical spices consist of garlic and onions.  I didn’t even have cumin.  I had to buy it with the sausage and onion.  Yeah, I was out of onion.  I have a stock of kidney beans and garbanzo bean.  I have them both for the bean salad I like.  Plus I love to roast the garbanzos.

I actually DID put pepper in this while I was cooking it.  For those of you that know me (either in person or through my blog) you know I don’t like pepper/spicy hot, but the pepper my friend gave me (SMOKED PEPPER) I can handle a little bit of.  So I put a little in the pan while I was cooking.  When I served it to my husband I put a lot of pepper on his.  While he was eating it he kept saying he was surprised I could eat it.  He thought it was too hot for me.  I had him taste mine . . . . which had NO extra pepper and he said the flavor was a little different.  So maybe the pepper brings out a different flavor.

Either way, we both loved it and I can see this becoming one of those meals I cook often.  I can see experiments with different sausages and no meat at all.

I can also see me cooking more with cumin.

Do you like red kidney beans?  Do you like garbanzo beans?  Doesn’t this sound tasty?

Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

YAY To New Things

Posted by terrepruitt on November 3, 2012

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Yay!  I am so excited — I am taking the next level of Nia, Blue Belt AND I received fennel in my organic produce box.  Fennel.  Yay.  Two new things.  As you may know if you’ve read any of my posts about the delivery I receive, I ordered it partly because I wanted to try new stuff.  Yeah, it is possible to go to a store or a Farmer’s Market and purchase produce I have not tried before, but I don’t.  I just stick to what I know.  But when I get it delivered to me then I can work with it.  I am excited to be trying new things.  Ok, I just realized though that while I am cooking with a new-to-me vegetable I did it the same way I do everything.  I have heard about roasted fennel and again, if you’ve read anything about my cooking you know I roast pretty much all my veggies.  So I did that again with the fennel.  This time I also looked at the information on the website of the company that delivers the produce.  Yes, I learned after chopping off the beat greens and throwing them away, that I should find out what portion of the fruit/vegetable can be used.  The information indicated that the bulb can be roasted and the fronds can be used to flavor meat.  I am not familiar with fennel.  It is not a vegetable I even think about.  So I was happy to receive some to try.  Yay a new-to-me vegetable.

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As soon as I cut the fennel I recognized the smell.  So I must have had the flavor somewhere.  Which makes sense because fennel is actually an herb that is eaten as if it were a vegetable.  I’ve probably had it in a Greek dish or something from the Mediterranean region.  I decided to use some of the fennel with the chicken I was cooking.  I just cut off some of the fronds and put them in the dish with the chicken that I was cooking.  I didn’t change the recipe I was planning for the meat, I just put the fennel tops around the chicken.

The bulb of the fennel I sliced, put in a pan, sprayed with olive oil, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with salt, and put in the oven at 400 degrees F.  I cooked it for about 40 minutes.  It was good, but I thought it was sour.  My hubby didn’t think it was sour.  I am wondering if it was because I took the pieces that were drenched in vinegar.  He doesn’t really like vinegar so I decided to take those pieces.  Or maybe it was just what I was tasting.  But I will get some fennel in the future to see.

I still have some of the fronds left so I plan I using them in other dishes.  Maybe cut up on a salad, added to a soup, or cooked with other meat.

Have you eaten fennel before?  Do you cook with fennel?  How do you cook it?

Posted in "Recipes", Food, Vegetables | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Grated Zucchini is GREAT

Posted by terrepruitt on June 21, 2012

As a Nia teacher, my schedule changes a bit sometimes.  I had recently added an evening Nia Class to my Nia Class Schedule that just wasn’t getting the attendance I needed in order to keep it going.  So sadly there is no longer Nia in Campbell on Monday evenings.  The end came rather quickly so the announcement time was short, but sometimes it is better to just rip the bandage off and move on.  The opportunity given to cancel the class was wonderfully kind so I took it.  You know how I have to cook on Sunday to be ready for Monday.  Well, that Sunday’s cooking plan got de-railed because of a party so at the party in my head I was planning on spending my Monday afternoon cooking, but in the wee hours on Monday morning the opportunity arrived to cancel the class.  So I actually was able to cook Monday’s dinner on Monday evening.  Thankfully there were leftovers, because I was asked to sub for a class on Tuesday.  I was still working through my vegetables that I had received.  I had received two zucchini.  Since I have been out of cucumber I have been putting the zucchini in our salads.  I like raw zucchini in salads, but I like it sliced REALLY thin.  I had used a half of zucchini for salads.  I don’t often buy zucchini because the only way I know how to cook it is to roast it or cook it in a pan where you lay the rounds out in the pan.  Then you have to flip each little round to make certain they get brown and yummy on each side.  That is a bit too time-consuming for me sometimes.  That is how I usually cook it, because I forget about grating it.  When I remember I am so happy.  Grated zucchini is GREAT!

I don’t remember where I first learned about grating it.  But I know the first thing I did with it was mix it with pasta.  I am not a big tomato fan.  I have never liked tomato based pasta sauces.  When I cook pasta it is usually dressed with a little butter and cheese or olive oil and garlic, but not tomato sauce.  So one time I grated some zucchini then sautéed it.  I tossed it with the cooked pasta and VOILA my husband actually liked it.  He is not a big pasta fan so to have him like it was great.  As I said I don’t remember when I learned about grating zucchini but it was a long time ago.  And I haven’t done it that often since.

Recently I was visiting my mom and she puts slices of zucchini in her salad.  So I came home and bought some to put in our salads, which I did, but then  I remembered about grating it and I added it to rice.  Again, I was reminded of how good that is.

Dance Exercies, Nia, Nia Campbell, Campbell Nia, Nia classes in Campbell, evening Nia, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, NiaAs I was wondering what to cook for dinner Monday night, I was thinking I would use my baby bok choy with the ground turkey I had taken out to defrost on Sunday.  But when I took the lone bunch out of the fridge it just seem too lonely to mix with all that turkey.  So I decided to use the zucchinis that I had left.  As usual, as I was cooking I thought I should take a picture because I will probably post about it, but then I thought, “No, I won’t post about it.”  But here I am posting about it because I think that grated zucchini is GREAT (Ok, I like saying that!) and I want to share.  I don’t know many people who grate zucchini and add it to things.

So while I was not really that impressed with the entrée overall, I did love the turkey and zucchini.  I grilled some corn tortillas and lined a 9X13 baking dish with them.  My plan was to cook the turkey and zucchini with my “normal” mix of onions and garlic.  I had forgotten until after that I had originally planned to add a bit of Nutritional Yeast for an extra “cheesy” flavor.  Half way through cooking I decided to see if we had and taco seasoning.  I decided NOT to look at the ingredients on that package and I dumped it in the meat.  Then I added the zucchini.  Then I thought, “Well this is going to be weird.”  Well, I might have ended up being weird, but I liked it.  I put the meat on top of the tortillas then put some cheese on top.  Part way through I remembered the green onions and the Nutritional Yeast so I threw them on top.

I use my blog as a bit of a recipe book and to remind me of things.  With this post about how much I enjoy grated zucchini I am sure that I will remember to use it more often.  I might not mix it with taco flavoring but I do love it with pasta and rice.  Since it is is so good I am going to experiment with it an other things.

Do you ever grate zucchini?  How do you cook it?  What do you add it to?

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Posted in Food, Vegetables | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Easiest Way To Cook Eggplant

Posted by terrepruitt on August 4, 2011

Often I hear people say they would like to cook eggplant but they don’t know how.  I also hear a lot of people say you have to get the water out of eggplant before you cook it.  Well, I would like to try cooking it another way because the only way I know how is to roast it, of course.  Recently I bought some eggplant specifically to cube it and sautee it to see how that would be.  But when I started thinking about how yummy it is roasted, I opted for roasting it.   I have used Japanese eggplant, which it nice because it has less seeds.  It is also nice because it is more evenly shaped so all the slices come out basically the same size so they cook at a more even rate.  I typically use the large pear-ish shaped eggplant.   The last time I bought it, the store clerk said she had always wanted to try it but didn’t know how to cook it (see, I told you people tell me that).  So I decided to share my way of cooking it.  You know I love to roast veggies.  Roasting veggies is so easy because you can put them on and work on cooking the rest of dinner.   I was so busy cooking the rest of dinner I forgot to take pictures of the roasted eggplant.  I remembered to take pictures of it as I sliced it, but I forgot to do it after it was cooked.

I slice at about 3/8 of an inch.  I put olive oil on the pan (I use a cookie sheet), then place the slices on the pan in rows, then I drizzle a little olive oil on the slices.  I sprinkle garlic powder on each slice.  Then I sprinkle salt on each slice.  The salt will help release the water.  Pretty much the same way as sweating the vegetables, but the water will evaporate in the oven.  I usually cook them for about 15 or twenty minutes at 400 degrees.  Then I flip them over.  I usually add more seasoning.  It depend on how much salt I put on before.  I might add more or not.  I put them back in the oven.  How long depends on how they look.  Often times they don’t cook evenly so some will be done where others will not.  So I take the done ones off the pan, then I set the timer for the time I guess that the next ones will be done.  When that time is up I take the done ones off the cookie sheet and put the pan back in the oven.  Depending on how they are cooking, I might flip them.  It is a process.  You have to watch them a bit.  That is why it is good to have other stuff to be cooking in the kitchen.  You also have to decide HOW cooked you like them.  You can cook them just a little until they are still really soft and doughy or you can cook them until they are crispy–almost like potato chips.  I like mine crispy.

A friend on FB said she puts cheese on the slices.  That would be excellent.  I haven’t tried that.  I am sure it is really good.

I don’t squeeze out the water before cooking and I don’t take out the seeds.  I also do not cook it for a set amount of time.  I start with 15 minutes and go from there.  It is best to decide as you go along.

I did not realize that eggplant is a fruit, a berry in fact.  I don’t think in terms of botany.  I just think in terms of eating and cooking.  The information I saw said eggplant is a fruit that is used in cooking like a vegetable.  So yeah, I think of it as a vegetable.

So that is how I cook eggplant 🙂 pretty much how I cook all my vegetables.  What about you?  Do you cook eggplant?  How?  I really would like to try it other ways, but I don’t know how to cook it aside from roasting it.  Did you know it is a fruit?  Did you know it is a berry?

Posted in "Recipes", Food | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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