Spinach salad

I thought I did pretty well at the grocery store this week - no time to get to Sunset Farm. There was a little impulse spending, though, like the avocado, the olives, and a whole bunch of fruit that is neither in season nor from this country. Anyway, I wasn't going to get salad-makings, because salads just take a whole lot of time and effort to make and there is rarely enough leftover for lunch the next day, but the Big Y had a giant tub of baby spinach on sale for $3.00 - ok, done. Probably means it will go bad in a day, but then I'll just cook it. I made it out of there for $24.83, just under that meaningless $25 limit I've set for myself, but I was impressed, given that I went in there with no list, and a lot of the stuff will get eaten next week, thanks to some poor planning. The big spending came on the cantaloupe, mushrooms, spinach, cilantro, avocado, and olives. But the salad I made with some of this stuff was delicious!


The dressing was sweet: olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a little fig jam and some salt. Quite tasty. The filler was baby spinach, and the toppings included toasted walnuts, mozzarella, kalamata olives, avocado, tomato, and orange pepper. I guess I could put less stuff on my salads, and then they'd be quicker to make, but I just don't roll like that.

I don't have a photo, but I cooked up a chicken thigh to go with it - I recently had a lightbulb moment where I realized that if I rendered some of the fat out of chicken skin, and then stuck it in the oven, it would crisp up even better, and I was right. I highly recommend that approach! The rent-a-dogs loved cleaning up all that chicken fat out of the pan, too.

Spinach Quesadillas and beans

I had four corn tortillas left over from when I made tacos, and some cheese leftover from last week from the tomato tart that I haven't put up a recipe for. So, I turned that into quesadillas, served with some of those beans I had made, topped with some greek yogurt.


Quesadillas are easy to make. First, saute some garlic in olive oil. Once the kitchen smells like toasted garlic, add a whole bunch of spinach to the pan, and salt it. Spinach cooks way down, so depending on how much of it you want, you may want to add like four cups of it. Of course, if you just want enough for the quesadillas, just add two handfuls or so.

Next, grate cheese. I used cheddar. Grate lots of cheese.

If you have cilantro, that tastes good in these things too, so chop up some of that.

Once the spinach is done, pull it out of the pan, and add some more oil to the pan. Put down one tortilla, then add a bunch of cheese (probably half a cup?). Put some spinach over that. Then put on the second tortilla. This can all be done in the pan. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes, and then use a spatula and flip the whole thing. Once the looks thoroughly melted, pull it out and let it cool on a cutting board. Cook the other quesadilla while the first one cools. You want it to be relatively cooled before you cut it, or the cheese will just run out of it and it'll flatten. But you don't want it to be cold, because cold quesadillas are gross.


I decided that just eating cheese and corn tortillas for dinner wasn't very well rounded, so added some beans and greek yogurt, and the extra spinach. Pretty tasty.

Texas baked beans

I like beans. But I don't like normal baked beans, the Boston variety I suppose, because I don't particularly like the sweetness. I discovered that Texas baked beans aren't sweet, so I tried making some the other weekend, and they were awesome. I now plan to make a batch of beans every time I'm home, since Ed has the dutch oven, and slow cooking stuff works best in a dutch oven. Apparently, Texas baked beans recipes vary widely, with all sorts of spices and stuff that can go in the pot - it doesn't really seem to matter. As far as I could tell, based on the internet (which never lies), as long as you have beans, water, salt, pepper, and some sort of meat product, you're good to go. I was a little more elaborate than that, but not much.

Don't tell Ed, but I've been hacking off chunks of a giant rack of baby back ribs that he bought a couple weeks ago and stashed in the freezer. I've just been taking one rib at a time, if it weren't for the cut packaging, I'm sure he wouldn't notice... Back to the point, though, that entire rack of ribs cost $5.88. And if you're cooking one rib each week, well, that is a darn economical piece o' meat, especially as you're using the bone for flavor, too.


Right, recipe:

1lb beans (any kind will do, I used pinto this time)
soaking liquid from beans
more water as necessary
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1 can diced or chunk tomatoes
1 beef rib, or other hunk of meat that will do well with slow cooking. A bone would work, too.
bacon grease, or oil - best yet, fry up some bacon first, then use the grease!
spices, in seed form (cumin and coriander for me) ** optional
spices, in ground form (more cumin, cayenne, more coriander, black pepper)
salt
1 bay leaf

The only dishes I used for these beans were a cutting board, knife, and dutch oven. Its a nice change from how I usually trash the kitchen, getting the maximal number of pots and pans dirty. If you don't have a dutch oven, you can use a crock pot, or just a regular pot and check it and stir it regularly - its more likely to burn things. The dutch oven has nice thick sides that hold heat well, so you can use a lower heat.

First, soak your beans for 6-8 hours (i.e. overnight), or do a quick soak - bring them to a boil, then let them sit for an hour.

Dice up an onion, and sweat it in some bacon grease. We always have bacon grease stored in a can in the freezer, its basically free, since you don't really feel like eating it with your bacon. And, it tastes delicious.

Once the onions are nice and sweaty, add the diced garlic. Let that toast for a bit, and then add any spice seeds you're planning to use - I find cumin leaves a nice flavor if you add it to the fat in the pan and let it pop open.

Dump everything else into the dutch oven. My beef rib was still frozen at this point.

Stir around the mixture so its all evenly distributed, and add enough water (or stock) so that you have full coverage, but don't make it too deep. This photo is showing liquid that is a bit too deep. Bring this to a boil, and once its there, reduce it to a simmer. Let it simmer for ~3 hours. Add the salt near the end, supposedly salt makes the bean skins tough if you add it too soon. But you don't really need to do anything, you can leave the house and just let it keep simmering away, with the lid on.

After 3 hours, it'll look something like this - most of the liquid will be gone/absorbed, the beans should be tender and delicious, and the meat should be mostly fallen off the rib - you can help it along with a fork. Discard the bay leaf and the rib bone, season with salt and spices the way you like it, and eat your beans. I like them with rice, some chopped cilantro, and a dollop or two of greek yogurt.

If there is still too much liquid after 3 hours, take off the lid and let it simmer away for another half hour or so, until the liquid is at a level you find acceptable. It should be pretty thick, and tasty.

Supposedly, and I have yet to test this, you can mash up the leftovers and it makes very tasty refried beans.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

I suppose these are muffins, but they certainly have enough chocolate to qualify as a cupcake. Where is the line between cupcake and muffin, anyway? These are loosely based on a chocolate applesauce cake of Anna's, but then I tweaked stuff, for no good reason other than not having the full 1-1/3C applesauce. I put in regular chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, I think nuts would have been good, too, but I wanted to be able to share these with Ali on our way to Canada, and she can't do nuts, under penalty of death. So, no nuts.



Chocolate chocolate chip muffins
Made 12 huge muffins

1C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/3C cocoa (I used the special dark variety)
1C applesauce
1/3C oil
1/3C greek yogurt
1 egg
3/4C sugar
1/2C chocolate chips
1/2C white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F. In a big bowl, mix the dry goods. In another bowl, mix together the wet stuff. Add wet to dry, and don't overmix. Line the muffin pan with muffin liners, or just grease each cup, and load 'em up. I found I had to fill the cups above the top, but they didn't explode or anything, they just made big muffins.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a testing stick comes out clean, and the top rebounds when you poke it with a finger. Don't overbake, because these guys are deliciously moist. And dark, holy cow that's a hit of chocolate.

Lunchbox muffins

Lunchbox muffins is sort of a silly name, nobody uses a lunchbox. I've used a plastic grocery bag for the last four years, maybe that counts as a lunchbox. Anyway, these are basically a redo of veggie muffins I made a long time ago. I remembered them being good, and I wanted to see what would happen when I added some greek yogurt. Basically, looking to get these have the right macronutrient ratio to eat as a meal. Although, you'll need like four at a time to get enough calories. Anyway, I came pretty close, thanks to the huge slug of protein the greek yogurt delivers. They also taste really good, but that's because you should never sacrifice taste in the name of "nutrition". The one problem was that these guys stuck to their wrappers, I probably should have greased them.

Lunchbox muffins
Made 15

1/2C white flour
1C whole wheat flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2tsp flavoring - mix of black pepper, red pepper, dried herbs, whatever you like. I used a mix of peppers.
4 eggs
1/4C oil
1C nonfat greek yogurt
1C kale (packed down)
1/2-1C beet greens
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
~1/4C dried tomatoes
~3/4C shredded cheddar cheese
~3/4C shredded pecorino cheese (or other flavorful cheese)

The types of veggies and cheese are totally optional. Its basically 2-3C of chopped veggies, and 1.5C grated cheese.

Preheat your oven to 350F. In one bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, salt, and dried flavorings.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs and greek yogurt and oil. Chop all the vegetables super finely, and add them to the wet stuff. Add the cheeses to the dry mixture, and mix around until they're coated with flour. Add the wet to the dry, and stir to combine. It'll be super dry - I decided that was a good thing, because the veggies were uncooked, so they'd give off some moisture during baking.

Line the muffin tins with muffin tin liners, and spray those with something nonstick. Load 'em up high - they don't rise much on their own, so I just filled each tin as much as I feasibly could. As you can see from my blurry pictures, the muffin stays lumpy. Don't expect it to spread out.

I thought these were delicious, very definitely cheese-y and a bit spicy. They would not have passed the Ed-test, because Ed thinks muffins should be sweet, and preferably frosted. I'm not sure he realizes the difference between a muffin and a cupcake. Maybe he would eat these now, he certainly didn't eat the last ones, and still gets indignant that I put broccoli into a cupcake. Except, its not a cupcake. Sigh.

I added up the numbers, and each muffin is 153 calories. 8.5g fat, 12g carbs, and 8.5g protein. That's 22% of the muffin's calories coming from protein, making it just about a perfect snack/mini meal. If you eat like four of them. I just need bigger muffin tins. I bet sprinkling the cheese on top would be good, too, and might look nicer than having it hidden inside. Also, bacon would be good. That might get an Ed-approval, if I had bacon in the muffins.

Not the most attractive-looking muffin I've seen, but tasty enough to make up for it.