Hurricane soup

Just a quick note to all my friends on the coast (including one of my closest friends since I was 12), I hope you're all safe and dry.  I'm thinking about you all.  If Issac wasn't bringing on both the noise and the funk, I'd be down there, cooking for you all.  Because I love you.

While we don't get hurricanes this far inland, we are just close enough to get a lot of the wind and rain.  And it's well on it's way.  I think we're supposed to see rain until next Thursday.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Rain equals soup.  It's just that simple. 

On Saturday, Joe, out of the blue, had a major craving for tomato soup.  I, myself, have never been a tomato soup fan.  I think it's because when my brother was little, he LOVED tomato soup, but he'd add ketchup and baby tomatoes to it.  And that made me want to gag.  Does that make my brother seem gross?  he's not gross.  He's awesome.  Whatever.  He's doesn't read my blog.  So I guess he's not that awesome.  I'm kidding.  He's the best.  ANYWAY - I looked up recipes and got a general idea of how to make tomato soup and discovered it's incredibly easy.  Like, done in 30 minutes easy. 

After making it over the weekend, I did some tweaking and turned this soup into a vegan tomato basil bisque.  The results were creamy, rich, and full of flavor.  This is not my brother's ketchup, baby tomato, canned soup.  No sir.

Tomato Basil Bisque

- 1 tblsp olive oil

- 2 large tomatoes, diced (4 cups)

- 1 medium onion, diced

- 2 tblsp minced garlic

- 2 cups vegetable stock

- 3 tsp clove

- 1 cup basil leaves

- 3 tblsp coconut oil

- 3 tblsp flour

- 2 tsp honey

- salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add garlic and sautee until fragrant (about a minute).  Add diced tomato and onions and cook until onions are translucent and tender (about 5 minutes).  Add vegetable stock, clove, and basil and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for about 20-25 minutes.  Remove soup from heat and carefully pour into a blender and blend until completely smooth.  Set aside.  In the same large pot, heat coconut oil until melted.  Then add flour and whisk constantly for about 5 minutes.  It's really important to whisk constantly, otherwise the oil and butter will burn and will be unusable.  Once you've mixed your oil and flour for about 5 minutes and they're starting to thicken, slowly pour in your tomato soup mixture while whisking the whole time to avoid lumps.  Add honey and salt.  Stir over heat until you've reached desired thickness and then remove from heat and serve.

Note:  It's easy to make your own vegetable stock.  I use about 8 cups of water, 3 or 4 carrots roughly chopped, an onion chopped, 3 or 4 celery stalks roughly chopped, corn cobs, and any other vegetables i might have lying around with no purpose. This is a good way to use up otherwise unusable things, like the tops of celery or corn cobs.  Put the water and veggies in a large pot, season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 2 hours.  Strain the liquid into a jar or air tight container and use it the next time you need some rainy day soup!

Yeah, that's a grilled cheese sandwich made on that french bread I gave you the recipe for, with some goat cheese, ricotta, and Parmesan.  NO BIG DEAL.



They call it stormy Monday

It poured here in Mississippi ALL....DANG....MORNING!  We haven't had a lot of rain this summer so 5 hours of rain was definitely welcomed.  My little garden was so thirsty! 

With all the rain and gray skies, I immediately thought about how it was an ideal soup day.  It's really hard to find a good day for soup in the summer, so you've gotta take your opportunities when they come!  "The time to hesitate is through!"

I had several corn on the cobs in my freezer from the farmers market and one large zucchini (when I say large, by the way, I mean it was almost as long and as round as my arm.  Yeah.  I mean large.) from my sister in law's garden.  I've been really into roasting my veggies, so a roasted corn and zucchini soup was kind of a no-brainer.

Creamy Roasted Corn and Zucchini Soup

- 2 large ears of corn

- 1 zucchini

- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced

- 1 tblsp olive oil

- 1 jalapeno (remove seeds for less heat)

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 cups vegetable stock (or chicken stock)

- 1 cup water

- 1 sprig of rosemary (optional)

- 1/3 cup barley (or rice, brown, white, wild, whatever!)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Remove corn from cob by slicing the kernels off, downward, with the cob standing on a cutting board, vertically.  Put corn on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet.  Reserve cobs.  Dice jalapeno and toss together with garlic, corn, olive oil, and salt, on the baking sheet.  Roast in the oven for 25-35 minutes. 

Meanwhile, add vegetable stock, water, corn cobs (snap those in half for a better fit in the pot), barley, and rosemary (if you're using it), in a medium sized pot.  Bring to a boil and then simmer while corn and peppers continue to roast, letting the barley cook through.

Once corn and peppers are roasted, remove the cobs and rosemary sprig from the broth.  Stir in roasted corn and peppers.  Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until creamy and smooth.  You can also (carefully!) pour soup into a regular blender and blend until smooth.  Reserve 1/4 of roasted corn for garnish, if you'd like.

And that's it!  This soup is sweet, salty, garlicy, and has a little punch of heat.  It's so rich from the sweetness of the corn and it's kind of hard to believe this doesn't have a whole cup of heavy cream in it or something.  It doesn't have cream in it...does it???  Nope.  I just went a re-read the recipe.  Ok.  It does not.

I'm from the s'th and I'd like some s'p

Mitch Hedburg reference in today's post title!  High five.

So, as you probably know by now, I live in Mississippi.  And Mississippi is in the south.  And if there were a "survival list" that we southerners had to compile for the very basic needs in order to survive down here, it would read something like:

1. Oxygen
2. Water (make that sweet tea)
3. Fried Chicken

That's right.  Fried Chicken is a means of survival.  It's just how we live.  My first vivid food memory is my great grandmother's fried chicken.  I can remember being 5 years old and pacing the kitchen just waiting for a plate full of drumsticks (making my great grandma really annoyed.  She had no patience for children.)

But this blog is about a healthy spin on food and also about easy, family friendly recipes.  So I modified my great grandmother's recipe.  Which seems a little sacrilegious and is definitely something Grandma Murray would've whacked me with a ruler for.  But I gotta do me.

These are baked chicken tenders.  But they're coated in cornflakes, flour, and spices, the way God intended.

Baked Corn Flake Chicken Tenders

- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

- 2 cups corn flakes, crushed

- 1 egg yolk (if you're making sweet potato fries with these, save the egg white - you'll be using it then)

- 1/2 cup flour

- 1/4 cup milk (you can use 2%, skim, soy, or even left over corn milk, like I did!)

- 1/8 tsp cayenne

- 1/4 tsp paprika

- 1/4 tsp garlic powder

- 1/4 tsp salt

- 1 tblsp olive oil (or olive oil spray)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Cut chicken breasts into 2 or 3 strips, per breast.  Place strips in a shallow baking dish.  Beat egg yolk and milk and pour over chicken breasts.  Set aside for 10 minutes.  Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Mix together crushed corn flakes, flour, cayenne, paprika, garlic, and salt, in a bowl.  Once chicken has soaked in egg wash, take each strip and coat it in the corn flake mixture, pressing it firmly on the chicken to make sure it sticks.  Place strips on the covered baking sheet, drizzle (or spray) lightly with oil, and bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes. 

And who doesn't want fries with their chicken tenders?  Come on.  We're all a big fan of the "happy meal" approach to life.

Baked Crunchy Sweet Potato Fries (adapted from Naturally Ella)

- 1 medium sweet potato

- 1/2 tblsp olive oil

- 1 large egg white (use the one leftover from making chicken tenders!)

- salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Peel and cut sweet potatoes about 1/4 of an inch thick.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Toss sweet potatoes in olive oil.  Whisk egg white in a bowl until frothy.  Pour egg white over sweet potatoes and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Make sure, after coating, that the fries are in a single layer and not touching.  This just helps make sure they cook evenly. 

Cook fries for 20 minutes.  Remove from oven, flip fries to the other side, rotate the pan, and bake for another 20 minutes or until crispy.

Blammo!  We just healthified fried chicken and fries!  I think coating chicken in corn flakes and baking it, seals the deal that I am a total mom (just in case the whole giving birth thing didn't seal said deal).



When I dip, you dip, we dip

I'm not proud of that title.  But it's the first thing that popped in my head.  So there ya go.

Coming up with new things to make every week is a challenge I've started to enjoy, thanks to starting this blog.  Prior to getting into cooking, Joe used to joke that I had two food groups: nachos and pizza.  That makes me sound kind of gross.  It is also accurate.  This blog possibly saved me from overdosing on nachos and pizza (aka dying from heart failure). 

I've started to write down a running list of ANY ideas that pop into my head or recipes I see in magazines or on websites or just food I really enjoyed when I was out to eat somewhere.  But today I didn't rely on that list.  Today I woke up with spinach dip in my head.  I just wanted something creamy and snacky.  Something rich and garlicy and fresh.  Spinach diiiiiiipppppp.

I generally only ever eat something like spinach dip, at holiday parties or some sort of get together.  It's a go-to appetizer.  And that's because spinach dip has cheese or cream or ranch dressing or something else fatty and delicious.  If I'm going to make spinach dip for just a regular old Tuesday, I feel like I gotta make it healthy or I'm just going to cry into the bowl while I eat it alone in my yoga pants and an over sized t-shirt.   I can't be that person.  I just can't. 

But don't think making spinach dip healthy, doesn't mean it's not every bit of creamy, snacky, rich, garlicy, and fresh as the fattier stuff. 

Creamy Spinach Avocado Dip (oh yeah, and it's vegan!)

- 6 cups of fresh spinach (or one box frozen spinach, thawed and drained of excess water)

- 2 avocados

- 2-3 tblsp minced garlic

- 2 tblsp olive oil

- 1/2 of a yellow onion

- 1 tsp honey

- 1 can white beans, drained and rinsed (try cannellini beans, navy beans, or try 1 cup greek yogurt if you wanna just go vegetarian)

- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast (or 1/4 cup grated parmesan)

- 1 tsp salt

In a medium skillet, heat 1 tblsp of oil.  Add onion and saute until tender, about 5 minutes.  Add honey and 1/2 tsp salt and continue stirring onions until they start to caramelize.  Remove from heat and put onions into a food processor.  Put skillet back on the heat, and add remaining tblsp of oil.  Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about one minute.  Add spinach, one handful at a time and cook until wilted (you'll probably have to do this in batches).  When all the spinach is cooked, add to the food processor, with the onion.  Add avocado, nutritional yeast, beans, and remaining salt to the food processor. Pulse until smooth and serve.

I made a fresh, homemade loaf of french bread, and cut several thin slices, brushed a little olive oil on them, sprinkled them with salt, and toasted them up.  You could eat it with crackers, chips, bread...whatever! 

You could also smear this stuff all over some bread and make a sandwich, with some grilled chicken and tomato.  Get crazy, man.



"You need a really small stool to milk a corn kernel"

That quote is from my dad.  When I mentioned I was going to make corn milk the other day, that was his response.  He seemed impressed with his joke.  So I thought I'd make mention of it here.  Which is probably dumb because now I'm just encouraging these oh so sophisticated jokes.

Do you watch Master Chef?  It's on Fox on Monday and Tuesday evenings.  It's a cooking competition between home cooks.  These folks haven't worked in restaurants or been chef's anywhere.  So it's more relateable.  Well sort of relateable.  I doubt I'll ever be able to butcher anything and those guys can.  Last week they had a challenge of making a desert using corn.  One of the contestants made corn milk and then used that to make a corn shortcake.  I had it stuck in my head all week and eventually looked up what I thought would be a long, messy task in the kitchen. 

Google "Corn Milk"

Reading, reading...

Oh, it's just cooked corn off the cob and a cup of water, blended and strained?  Welp...

Yeah thats really all it is. 

Corn Milk

- 1 large ear of corn (or 2 smaller ears, about a cup of corn if you're using canned corn)

- 1 cup of water

Blend corn and water together and strain liquid through a fine sieve.  If you want it thicker, perhaps to replace whole milk or cream, add more corn. 

Here's a few facts about using corn milk.  It's a great milk substitute.  It can be used in both sweet and savory dishes.  But don't use it in hopes of saving calories.  It has the same amount of calories, cup to cup, as 2% milk.  However, it has less fat.  It does have sugar, but it's natural sugar.  And, my favorite part is this - you know where it's coming from.  You know you don't have to worry about hormones or poor conditions for animals (I mean you still have to worry about those).  Corn is easy to find locally in most places within the US.  Support your local farmers and make you some corn milk!  (Or get your cows milk from local farmers - that's a really good thing too.)

Moving on to a yeasted corn bread, perfect for sandwiches.  It's a tasty way to shake up the regular sandwich.  It's a little on the sweet side so I paired it with spicy additions like black bean hummus with jalapenos and grilled turkey coated in some Emril seasoning.  Balance, baby.  Balance.

Sweet Corn Yeast Bread

- 1 pkg active dry yeast

- 3/4 cup warm corn milk (test warmth on your wrist.  You can use water or regular milk if you prefer.)

- 1 tblsp honey

- 1 tsp salt

- 1 tblsp olive oil

- 1 cup cornmeal

- 2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

In a bowl, mix milk and yeast a few times with a wooden spoon and let sit for about 5 minutes.  Stir in honey, salt, and cornmeal.  Start adding flour, 1/4 of a cup at a time, and mix in well.  Continue to add flour until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl and starts to form a ball.  Dust a cutting board with flour and knead dough until its smooth and elastic, adding any remaining flour to fight off stickiness. 

Place dough in a oiled bowl, roll around in the bowl to coat, and cover with a towel and place in warm place for about an hour, or until dough has doubled.

Once dough has risen, knead dough for a few turns and then form into a loaf.  Place on a baking sheet, cover with a towel, and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  When bread has finished rising, bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.  Let cool before slicing.

Now let's make a sammich. 

As I mentioned, I made my sandwich with spicy black bean hummus, turkey, avocado, and tomato.  I liked the heat mixed with the sweet.  But you could try this with anything.  You could even make a breakfast sandwich with it, using a fried egg or just some jam!

But if you wanna make it like I did, here's my recipe (well it's really dad's recipe) for black bean hummus.

Spicy Black Bean Hummus

- 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

- 4 or 5 slices of jalapeno

- 1 tsp salt

- 2 tsp garlic powder

- 2 tsp cumin

- 1 tblsp olive oil

Pulse all of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth.  Store in an air tight container.

You can use that hummus as a condiment or just eat it as a dip with chips or on a tortilla all rolled up!

And just in case you were wondering, I did end up copying Master Chef and making shortcake using this recipe, but replacing milk with the corn milk I made.  And it was too good to even talk about.

Carbs are my friends

They are my friends.  They are my super mean friends that make me feel fat and bloated, but also happy and satisfied.  Just like real friends should.

I've been trying to limit my carb intake to one meal a day, as I've mentioned before.  So I gotta make those carbs meaningful and delicious, otherwise, what's the dang point?  It's my payoff for exercise doing torture poses in yoga for an hour. 

The other day I got my carb fix from pasta.  I've been wanting to try udon noodles in a dish.  Mostly because I'm fascinated by them.  Udon noodles are generally seen in Korean cuisine and are made from wheat flour.  They're thick but they only cook for 2 or 3 minutes and not a minute more.  Which is kinda awesome.  I'd read about different eggplant purees and decided I wanted to make one into a "cream" sauce in place of actual cream.  Trying to make this carb dish as guiltless as possible. 

I went vegan with this dish, but you could add parmesan in place of the nutritional yeast.  I roasted the eggplant for extra flavor, and the heat from roasting the eggplant should melt the parmesan right into this sauce. 

This is ridiculously satisfying and delicious.  Try it with any leftover veggies you have sitting around.  You can also use whole wheat linguine noodles or spaghetti noodles instead of udon.  I think I really just wanted to say I used udon noodles.  You can find them at Kroger in the Asian food section.

Asparagus, Portabella, and Udon with Roasted Eggplant Cream Sauce

- 1 bunch of asparagus

- 5 or 6 baby bella mushrooms

- 1/2 pack of Udon noodles

- 1 medium sized eggplant

- 2 tblsp nutritional yeast (or 1/4 cup grated parmesan)

- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic

- 1 tblsp olive oil

- 1 tsp sesame oil

- 1 tblsp grated ginger (or 1 tsp powdered ginger)

- 1 green chili, sliced

- salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Slice eggplant, lengthwise, and place, cut side down, on a foil lined baking sheet.  Cook until skin is blackened, about 25 - 30 minutes. Set aside and cool.

When eggplant is ready, bring a large pot of water to a boil (if using udon noodles, don't salt the water).  While water is heating up, scoop out the insides of the eggplant, pulling away from the peel.  Place eggplant in a food processor and pulse with nutritional yeast, garlic, and a pinch of salt. Set puree aside.

In a medium skillet, heat olive oil and sautee 1 clove of minced garlic and ginger for about a minute.  Add sesame oil, asparagus, and baby bellas.  Sautee veggies for about 3-5 minutes or until tender. 

Meanwhile, once water is boiling, drop udon noodles in the water for 2 minutes (seriously, don't go over 3 or the noodles get mushy.  Yuck.).  Drain noodles.  Add noodles to the veggies and stir in the skillet.  Stir in cream sauce and serve.

This is some really amazing stuff.  And, once again, it's pretty guilt free, it's fresh, and it satisfies the carb monster.  We all have one. 



50 shades of purple

I really have no idea what I'm doing when I title posts sometimes...
I almost hate starting a sentence with "I saw this recipe on Pinterest", just because it's used so much it almost makes my head spin.  I love Pinterest and it's such an amazing source for inspiration.  But errrrrrrrrrrrbody is on Pinterest and it's becoming so big that I rarely go a week without hearing or saying the phrase "Oh, I got it from Pinterest!".  But I did get this idea for a recipe from Pinterest.  I am part of the phenomenon.  I'm cool with it.

I had some beets that had been forgotten (poor beets) in the back of my crisper and was so excited to try the beet hummus I'd seen.  But I only had 2 or 3 small beets. So I tweaked the original recipe I'd seen and roasted the beets I had and then combined them with the usual chick peas.  It's a hybrid!

Roasted Beet Hummus

- 2 or 3 small to medium sized beets, rinsed
- 1 tblsp olive oil for roasting
- 1 can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 tblsp tahini
- 2 tblsp olive oil
- 2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp turmeric
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1/4 cup plain greek yogurt (optional.  I like to add it just to make the hummus extra creamy.  Yum.)
- salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400.  In a baking dish, place rinsed beets and drizzle with olive oil.  Cover dish with a lid and bake for 35-40 minutes.  After beets have cooled, remove skin.

In a food processor, pulse roasted beets, chick peas, garlic, tahini, olive oil, cumin, turmeric, lemon juice, yogurt, and salt until well combined and smooth.

Serve with homemade pita bread (recipe here), veggies, or chips.


Not only is this hummus SO pretty to look at, but it's sweet and roasty and divine.