Food Friday: Broccoli Cheese Soup

 Dear One loves the Broccoli Cheese Soup he has eaten at Panera.  Well!  That is something to emulate in a healthier way. This is it.

Lenny and Shalva Gale on Life Is No Yoke have a wonderful recipe which I made.  It really is delicious. I will show what changes I made...because I almost always make changes to recipes.

 

This bowl of soup (mine!) has some ground black cumin seeds on top which just add to the enjoyment of eating this.

To make this soup the first thing I did was to chop up a smallish head of broccoli into small bits (Dear One loves Broccoli Cheese Soup but NOT broccoli and has asked that I chop it fine, so I do.  Mostly.) Since there was not very much broccoli in the pot, I chopped up a bag of broccoli and cauliflower and added it to the pot, then steamed in the microwave for 4 minutes. I knew it was ready because I could smell the broccoli.

At this point I put all the other ingredients into the Vitamix and blended for 5 minutes.

The other ingredients:

Almond milk-1 cup
Nutritional Yeast-1/4 cup
Raw almonds-1/2 cup
Raw cashews-1/2 cup
Red bell pepper, de-seeded-1 large
Kosher salt-2 teaspoons (I will only use 1 teaspoon next time)
Onion powder-2 teaspoons
Garlic powder-1 teaspoon
Vegetable broth-1 cup
Tofu-1/2 block

A little crushed red pepper is called for but I forgot/left it out!

When the above has finished its 5 minutes in the blender I threw in the broccoli and blended again on speed 1 for a few pulses but knew it was still not small enough for Dear One so I ran the speed up to 5 or so then back down.

First comment from Dear One: "Too much broccoli."  Well, he is right, there was too much broccoli but it could not hurt him and he DID eat his whole bowl.  We may have company for lunch who can share which will mean he only has to eat this version one more time...!

#LifeIsNoYoke is a such great website to go to, and YouTube channel to watch.  So many good recipes! Such nice people.  And their family is a delight to see grow up, involved in their mom and dad's work.

Munchie Monday: Green Juice!

 This morning a small miracle took place.  Hopefully the beginning of bigger miracles!  When I went to bed last night I had in mind to wake up by 6:00 so I could go to Piggly Wiggly grocery store to get some spinach and a few other items to make green juice as a wake-up-begin-a-new-and-healthier-lifestyle-forever plan.  Plus I needed some mushrooms to use in Creamy Wild Rice Soup.  Then I went to bed.  I was pretty bushed after an 8:30 meeting before church, church, rushing around after church to make lunch for Dear One before going to a funeral, etc etc etc. I was tired.  So I set the alarm for 7:30 which would give me just time to get up and get to the doctor appointment at 8:30.

So the small miracle?  Heavenly Father woke me up at 5:54!  And I leaped/crawled out of bed, did the regular routine, showered, and hopped into the car.  Went to the Pig, purchased some other things, too, and came home.

#LifeIsNoYoke Green Juice is now made and partly consumed.  Dear One drank his right down.  He is not a real fan but it is not nasty so he did drink it. He wants to be healthier, too.

Here is the Vitamix with water, apple, orange, banana, ginger thumb, chia seeds, spinach, and ice.  (Go to LifeIsNoYoke for the specific recipe. It is easy.  It is mild.  Even babies love it.) It blends for 90 seconds so you have a nice smooth drink.  No chance for spinach leaves to get caught between your teeth and embarrass you!

Here is the green juice in my Yeti travel mug ready to go to the doctor with me. I meant to eat my usual oatmeal breakfast as well, but did not get it done.  Because it is uncooked it takes a little longer to chew up than cooked oatmeal. I like cooked oatmeal which apples, raisins, walnuts, flax meal, and cinnamon but that takes even more time.

So I am feeling happy. And virtuous on several fronts: getting out of bed when I woke up, performing my morning ritual which today included listening to a General Conference talk on Miracles by Elder Howard W. Hunter, actually getting through Piggly Wiggly without stopping at their hot deli to collect some freshly cooked sausages which I am trying to avoid at all costs, making the green juice, and all this in time to head out for the doctor appointment ON TIME!  What a great day!  I hope it continues in like fashion.

When I get home I think I will address the kitchen a little bit, the workroom a lot, and even get the Cream Wild Rice Soup made for supper.  This will make the whole day a day of miracles.  Here is hoping....

Creamy Wild Rice Soup

 Finally I made. Lenny and Shalva Gale's Cream Wild Rice Soup.  It is SO GOOD!!!  #LifeisNOYOKE

Start out by soaking 1 cup raw cashew overnight.

In the morning:

chop--

 4 ribs celery
2-3 carrots
1 sweet onion
4 large cloves garlic

8 ounces well-washed and chopped mushrooms

Place 1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock in a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the vegetables and 1 cup wild rice that you rinsed well.  Add in 1 Tablespoon thyme and 2 bay leaves.

Set a timer for 30 minutes for this all to cook.  Put the cover on.

In a blender  place 2 cups vegetable broth.  Drain the cashews and add them and one can white beans (drain the beans ) or 1 1/2 cups home cooked white beans to the blender.  Blend for one minute until completely creamy.  Stir into the cooking vegetables and rice and set timer for another 15 minutes.  When the timer goes off, check to see if the rice is cooked.  It should be chewy.  Not hard!

Serve hot.  Though I can say that I also enjoy this soup cold.  Dear One not so much, but he does like it when it is hot.

Be sure to remove the bay leaves as they are not so pleasant to bite into...

This recipe makes about 3 quarts of soup.  So good!

Food Friday: Busy Early Morning Things!

 This morning I started early on getting things done since I need to be free later in the morning.  Things turned out successfully, which is always a pleasing start to the day.  To make this morning successful I had to start last night!  

To make almond milk you need to soak one cup of almonds in water overnight.  I remembered to put the almonds soaking before bed, a real plus.  This morning I drained and rinsed the nuts then put them into the blender with 5 cups fresh water.  They blended for 90 seconds then were strained in a very good nut milk bag.  The link is to the nut bags we bought.  They are SO MUCH BETTER than anything I have used before. I can certainly recommend them for people who are sick of straining nut milk through cheese cloth, paint strainer bags, dish towels, and any number of other not-so-hot options.  I love these.

Earlier I had seen a recipe in the email from #LifeIsNoYoke for making orange juice in the blender so, since I found a package of 6 medium navel oranges in the "almost gone by" shelving at Piggly Wiggly, I decided to give this a try.   The recipe called for 1/2 cup water, 4 peeled oranges, 4 pitted dates, and 1 1/2 cups ice cubes.  I blended this for a minute then poured into a quart jar.  It is a little pulpy for me, but does taste okay.  Dear One will probably love it since he is all for pulp, for some unknown reason.

The orange juice ingredients are in the blender ready to go.  I DID remember to pit the dates.  A very good thing all around!

This is the orange juice ready to be bottled up, then consumed at some point in the future. I presume Dear One will have a slug of it when he returns from his bike ride.

When making almond milk there is always leftover almond pulp.  In the past I have dried it in the dehydrator, ground it up, and used it as almond meal in recipes but this time I left the pulp from two times making milk in a sealed container in refrigerator.  Last night I hauled it out and made a recipe calling for almond pulp, oatmeal, maple syrup, flax meal, and cinnamon. Oh!  And chocolate chips.  You cannot go wrong with chocolate chips!   The pan of mixture needed to bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.  I put it into a silicon loaf pan and baked it a little longer since the pan made it a little thicker than the recipe called for.  

Instead of leaving these bars out to cool, I put it in the refrigerator overnight to "firm up", but mainly to keep the lovely fragrance hidden from the nasty miserable ants that come a-running any time I leave anything on the counter overnight.  So maddening.  We spend a ton for ant eradication every month but somehow the ants have not gotten the message yet that they are not welcome...

Here is a picture of the orange juice, almond milk, and the chocolate chip almond pulp bars.  They do not look that appealing, and, honestly, they are not great, but they are edible which I can say in all truthfulness as I ate some of the scraps that fell off the bars.

Munchie Monday: Green Juice

Maybe I shared this in the past, but here it is again!  Green Juice by Lenny and Shalva Gale at LifeIsNoYoke which is so good and so easy to make.

We have been having green juice first thing in the morning for a week now.  Part of the reason we made it is because we had some fruit in the refrigerator which was becoming a bit elderly.  I wanted to use it up before it really went bad...! 

This is what we did:

In the blender we put 1 1/2 cups water, 1 apple cored and somewhat chopped, 1 orange peeled and somewhat chopped, 1 lemon slice about 3/4 of an inch thick with peel still on but some of the seeds removed, about 1 inch fresh ginger peeled and cut in half, 2 fresh ripe bananas cut in quarters, a large handful of kale, 1 Tablespoon flaxseed meal and 1 Tablespoon chia seeds, a couple of shakes of red pepper flakes, and 3-4 cups ice.  Put everything into the blender in this order.  Turn on the blender (this is a VitaMix) and quickly increase the speed from 1 to 10 and let it blend for 2 minutes.  It needs that much time to completely liquify the ingredients.  If you don't have a high speed blender, you can still make this but cut up your fruit pretty small and be prepared for it to blend longer.  It will likely need ice cubes when you are ready to drink it if you had to blend longer.

Here it is!  All ready to drink up.  This makes a tall glass for me and a short glass for Dear One (who drinks it but does not love it) plus an additional quart for the next day when we eat get a tall glass.

Our experience is that fresh spinach is MUCH MORE TASTY than the kale in this application!  Eat your kale some other way.

We have now graduated to fresh-from-the-market fruit and will probably include pineapple instead of banana tomorrow since the banana may be beyond the pale by morning.  I am too tired to go downstairs and mush it up and refrigerate it to make banana bread so, this time the banana may "go by".

Food Friday: Vegan Broccoli Cheese Soup

It is so wonderful to have a tasty meal that Dear One likes.  This is one of them.  It is also another of the Lenny and Shalva Gale at LifeIsNOYOKE's recipes.  They are so good.

When I went to the Dorr Farm on Friday I picked up a head of broccoli.  It looked really good...so Broccoli Cheese Soup without the fat AND with lovely flavor came onto the menu.

Steam 1 head broccoli that you cut into florets.  Steam just until bright green then set aside to cool.

In your high speed blender add:

1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup raw almonds
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 red bell pepper, washed, seeded, and coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
2 teaspoons granulated onion
Pinch of red pepper flakes

Blend on high speed for about 4 minutes.

Add:
1 cup vegetable broth (I used homemade so it had no salt in it)
1/2 block of tofu (I used Trader Joe's Super Firm tofu)

Blend these for 1-2 minutes.

Add the steamed broccoli and pulse 2-3 times so the broccoli is broken up but still has a little texture.

By now it is hot and ready to eat.  We ate it right then and both loved it.  Take my word for it, I was surprised on Dear One's account.  I asked him if this was something we could take to a party.  He said, "Of course!"  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

This recipe makes four good-sized servings.  We put the leftovers in the refrigerator in a glass jar.  I really like storing food in glass. I feel like the chemicals in plastics are doing in my brain and body, so...this is what I like to do, though it does not always happen.

You can see that the broccoli virtually disappeared into the soup, so anyone who does not think they like broccoli will be surprised to learn the great taste is actually broccoli. This reminds me of a story.

Many years ago a young man named David C. came to visit us on the farm in South Royalton for a while with our much older cousin. (Actually our cousin was our father's age since Daddy was a lot younger than his oldest sister who was the mom.)  Mother had made potato salad.  David told her it was the best thing he had ever eaten and wanted to know what the secret ingredient was.  It turned out to be onions.  He did not believe onions could be so good.  I think that was one of the first times I knew about ingredients in food making a difference in flavor.  I was pretty young.  I have loved onions every since.  Sometimes I tease Dear One by eating an sweet onion sandwich in the evening.  Now that I think about it, I would like to go downstairs and make such a sandwich now.  Sadly, we only have yellow onions and red onions. The last red onion I ate had QUITE a bite to it, so no sandwiches there.

It is late as I write so the only store option is a long way away.  It is also raining hard.  Driving in the rain in the daylight was a challenge today.  At nighttime it could be deadly.  I won't go out and get a bag of Vidalia's now.

Munchie Monday: Dr. Praeger Veggie Burger and Oatmeal Pancake Bun

Well, doesn't this sound interesting!  In the interests of getting away from bread which has a bad effect on our scales, and probably our inwards as well, I thought of using #Life is NOYOKE's oatmeal pancakes for buns for a Dr. Praeger veggie burger.

This is what we had for lunch this weekend!  It was not bad.  Dear One did say that if he had a choice, he likes hamburger buns...but then, he is not a very adventuresome eater!

He did manage to choke down two of them, though!  I thought that was pretty good.

You can find the recipe for the oatmeal pancakes here.

The only things I did differently were:

1. I left out the dried dates because I did not want this to be sweet, and

2. Our aquafaba had been in the refrigerator a little too long so I mixed 1 Tablespoon of ground flax seed with 4 Tablespoons of water and let it sit while I put the other ingredients into the blender jar. That is more water than you usually use to make a "flax egg" but I wanted the batter to be a little wetter than Lenny's recipe turns out.

This worked great.

Easy Homemade Bloody Mary Mix, No Alcohol Needed!

Whenever I have the opportunity to fly somewhere and the cabin attendant offers a beverage, I always choose Mr. and Mrs. T's Bloody Mary Mix.  It is slightly healthy, is savory, and over ice really hits the spot, especially if I have a savory snack also, which lately I have not.

Last week I went to the local farmers' market.  I was looking for a big armful of collard greens but was instructed that it is way too early for them. In fact,  it is just this week when they will be planted.  To be good they have to have a solid frost and then comes the harvest.  Well, I was so grateful to learn that little tidbit that I bought two baskets of tomatoes from Milton who had enlightened me.  One basket was sweet cherry tomatoes.  The other basket had four large "pineapple" tomatoes.  At that stand you dump the basket into your bag and take them home that way.  Interesting.

Now we had lots of tomatoes.  Dear One does not enjoy raw tomatoes.  I have a raw tomato allergy.  But only if I eat too many.  Well, we had too many...so my skin is going to be screaming at me soon.

Anyway, my favorite people had a recipe to use up a solid pound of tomatoes which I tried.  It is pretty good.


Ingredients you need:

Tomatoes
Olive juice
Worcestershire sauce
Tomato paste
Lemon with peel
Lime without peel
Horseradish
Thai peppers (I did not have that so I added 1/2 teaspoon black pepper)
Celery salt

• As you can see, I stored the bloody mary mix in my memorial glass milk bottle from the Strafford Creamery which is the next  town over from our former home.

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes in the Blender

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes in a Blender

#LifeIsNOYOKE has a pretty good oatmeal pancake recipe.    This is just one of many good recipes Lenny and Shalva have on their channel.

Put all ingredients in a blender jar and blend them up.

1 1/2 cups oatmeal (I used old-fashioned)
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup aquafaba (this is the liquid you get when you drain a can of chick peas.  It has lots of interesting uses so don't throw it away.  Just put it in a glass jar in the refrigerator.)
1 pitted date
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. I used our cast iron skillet.  When the pan is hot, give it a quick spray of vegetable oil.  Did I say to make sure the pan is HOT?  You just do not have a good result with pancakes unless the pan in hot when you put in the batter. At least, that is my experience.

When hot, and lightly misted with oil, put pancake batter on the pan in 1/4 cup blobs.   Spread it out a bit with a spoon and let it cook until there are little bubbles and the bottom seems to be browning.

Flip over and let cook another minute or two.  The next flip is onto your plate.

Serve with your favorite topping.  We used maple syrup one day but raspberry syrup the first time because we did not at that point have maple syrup. Pancakes are really better with actual from-maple-trees maple syrup.

We will make these again.  Especially until we get some more sourdough made. 

We had an accident with a glass that shattered on the counter and (apparently!) some of the dust got into the lightly covered sourdough container.  When I made another batch of this time REALLY GOOD sourdough bread/rolls (I let them rise 7 1/2 hours), we each found a little bit of grit in them.  That made me think it was glass shards so we dumped the sourdough and the remaining rolls just in case.  The thought of chewing glass rather turned my stomach.  If such a thing is possible.

Probably we will start more sourdough in a day or two.  The rolls seemed to have a good effect on blood sugar.  Maybe there really is something to the suggestion that sprouted wheat flour bread is better for us.  And not that hard to do.

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Food Friday: Five-Ingredient California Salsa

The other day I opened the cookbook I got from LifeIsNoYoke when I purchased the Ascent 2500 Vita-Mix. There was an easy-looking salsa recipe so I laid in the supplies.  It is stunningly delicious.  I started eating it with a spoon as soon as I took it out of the blender and could have eaten the whole dish.  After it was about half gone I put it back in the refrigerator so there would be some another day.

This is how I made it...which is not far from Lenny's recipe.

California Salsa


6 Roma tomatoes
1/2 peeled onion (used Vidalia since that is what I had in the refrigerator from another recipe)
1 large jalapeño, cored and seeded
1/2 cup cilantro
1 lime, peeled
1 Tablespoon coarse sea salt

Cut 2 tomatoes and the jalapaño into quarters.  Add to the blender jar add remaining ingredients (except the 4 other tomatoes)

Put you blender on variable speed 5 for 15 seconds.  Add the remaining four quartered tomatoes and blend on variable speed 2 for 5 seconds.  Pour into a bowl and dig in.  So delicious.  Of course, I am a real salt and savory taste-budded person so I was in my glory.

It was still a little foamy from blending when I took this picture.  Next time I make it I will try to have self-control, plus I will take a picture when the foam is gone so it looks more appealing.

Tomorrow we will see how wise it was of me to make this when I step on the scales at the crack of dawn.  Since there are virtually no calories in the recipe any major weight change will be a result of the salt...