Kitty Fish


Before I get to today's menu, I just wanted to thank my intrepid readers Katie M. and Jessica for their comments. I really meant to write up the recipe for the beans last night but by the time I had written all of the dinner recipes I was TIRED! So without further ado, here you go:

Cooking beans from scratch is actually super easy. If you are preparing them for a recipe then expect that they will double in size during the cooking process...so if you are going to need 2 cups of beans, start with one cup of dried beans. The first step is to soak them in water...and you have two options here. Option one is to put them in a large bowl and cover them with enough water so that there is three inches of water above the beans (this is 2 to 3 times as much water as beans) and then soak them for 5 to 8 hours. Option two works well if you are tighter on time. Place the beans in a pan and cover with 3 times as much water as beans. Cover the pot and bring the water to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes then remove from the heat and let stand for 2 hours. Speed soaking! I have tried both methods and they work equally well.

After soaking is completed just drain the beans and put them in a pot with, again, three times as much water as beans. Cover and bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for an hour. Some bigger beans can take as much as an hour and a half, but just taste them after an hour and see how "done" they are. Katie, I KNOW you can do all of that...and the payoff is that they don't come from cans lined with BPA and they taste better too.

Onto the veggie burger recipes. I really am just a big google searcher; most of my recipes come from other people and are modified based on my knowledge of what my family likes and dislikes as well as what ingredients I have on hand.

For the veggie burgers, I used the garbanzo bean burger recipe from Heidi Swanson's blog www.101cookbooks.com. She is very talented at developing fresh vegetarian recipes; I made this recipe almost exactly as it was written. You can find the original recipe here: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001567.html I made a couple of substitutions. I omitted the lemon zest (partly because I find zesting a lemon to be messy and a pain and partly because I don't really like lemon zest). I also used panko crumbs instead of plain bread crumbs. I think that they made the burgers a bit more light and fluffy. I also put some extra whole garbanzo beans into the mixture so that there was a little more variation in texture. The resulting burgers were DELICIOUS. We ate a bunch in the first few days and then froze the rest. I have just about used them all up so I will make a new batch (or a double batch) tomorrow. (BTW, If you are wondering where to find the micro greens that she calls for, you can find organic ones at Trader Joe's. They also sell them at Whole Foods but not surprisingly the Whole Foods ones are about three times as expensive.

For the edamame burgers I started with a recipe that I found on the Food Network website. This recipe intimidated me a little bit because it called for millet and I hadn't worked with that before. I decided that it was such a delicious looking burger though that it would be worth a shot so I got a little bit of millet from the Whole Foods bulk section and gave it a whirl. It ended up being very easy to work with and the burgers were addictively delicious, so it was well worth trying something new. The recipe for these burgers can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/edamame-veggie-burger-recipe/index.html I did (of course) amend this recipe a little bit as well. I didn't have a radish, so I used an onion that I chopped very fine. In my opinion this probably worked out better than a radish would have; the onion added some sweetness and extra moisture to the finished product. I also used lemon juice instead of lime juice; we have a bunch of lemon trees around here so rather than pay for limes I basically use sweet lemons for everything. I haven't had a problem in any of my recipes with this particular substitution thus far.

Both of these recipes were very easy to make. The whole process WAS a bit time consuming, but we have been eating the fruits of my labors for a week or two now so I think it was all well worth it. If you haven't noticed we don't eat much meat here; that is partly due to budget cutting measures (three years without income and rising food prices will do that!) and partly just due to the fact that we aren't big meat eaters. We love veggie burgers but the ones found in stores are SUPER expensive...about $5 for 4 patties for the good ones. Both of these recipes were significantly cheaper than that. A win win in my book!

Katie also asked about what, other than lentils, I send in Z's lunch. If he had his way, every day his lunch would contain all of the following: a little box of shredded cheese, a nut butter and jelly sandwich, Trader Joe's orange chicken, and some pickles and olives. Needless to say, that is NOT what he gets every day. I have really resisted the urge to pander to him and make him nut butter and jelly on a daily basis. It is hard because he is really small for his age and I do want him to eat a good big lunch, but I want him to learn to eat a variety of foods also. With that in mind, I tend to send nb&j two days a week maximum. The other days I send a variety of protein and carbohydrate combinations. Today it was lentils and whole wheat rotini with cheese. In the protein department he has also recently taken smoked turkey drumstick meat (from Whole Foods...reasonably priced and really good), teryaki baked tofu cubes (from Trader Joe's), leftover miso glazed chicken thighs (homemade), garbanzo beans, leftover TJ's orange chicken (a special treat when the babysitter comes), hummus, turkey kielbasa, shredded cheese in a little box and hard boiled eggs (shelled). For carbohydrates I pack Trader Joe's organic peanut butter sandwich crackers, plain crackers of his choosing, pastas, homemade bran muffins, and even once gluten-free waffles cut into sticks. Sometimes I make hummus and cheese sandwiches which he really loves...I just make some homemade hummus (I will put that recipe up tomorrow; it is super easy) and spread it on a tortilla. I then sprinkle shredded cheese over the hummus and roll the whole thing up. We also went through a ham and cheese sandwich phase; I used nitrate/nitrite free ham, smoked gouda and a little mayo and made it into a wrap as well. Both of those disappear quickly.

In addition to the protein and carb elements of his lunch I also always give Z both a green veggie and an orange veggie. For the green veggie we do edamame, steamed broccoli, cucumber sticks, leftover roasted brussel sprouts, a little green salad with balsamic vinagrette and sugar snap peas. On the orange side I choose from cooked carrot sticks (the school requires the cooking), red bell pepper, baked sweet potato cubes, cherry tomatoes and of all things steamed purple cabbage with a little salt. (He has been eating steamed purple cabbage since my mom made it for him when he was very small and he loves it. I have decided to never argue with him on that one!).

I will also often throw in an applesauce squeezer from Trader Joe's and/or some roasted seaweed. He loves both of these but more often than not they come home untouched...he just never gets to them! He tends to do a really great job on his lunch...all the things I listed are foods that he likes a lot and that I have tried out on him at dinners and on weekends before putting them in his lunchbox. I also used to put in pieces of nitrate and nitrite free turkey rolled up into little cylinders and for a while he loved those. Then (in typical kid fashion) one day he announced that he loathes them so they no longer make the cut.

One more note on his sandwiches. I use a whole variety of nut butters for his beloved nb&j sandwiches. We use peanut, cashew, almond, sunflower seed, walnut and sesame seed butter and all of them are equally popular with him. Frankly, I don't think he notices the difference!

On to his breakfasts. This is easy to tell you about because a couple of weeks ago Z devised a schedule for himself for his breakfasts. One day he declared that he didn't think it was healthy to eat oatmeal every school day (why? I don't know) so he came up with a rotation:
Monday: oatmeal
Tuesday: Hot rice cereal
Wednesday: Hot buckwheat cereal
Thursday: over easy eggs and toast for dipping ("huevos on jueves")
Friday: a protein shake made with vegan protein powder, milk, banana and nut butter
Saturday: pancakes (I make a batch every couple of months and freeze them in servings)
Sunday: waffles

For the mornings that he has hot cereal I mix the 1/3 cup of the dry cereal with 1/3 cup milk (or almond milk) and 1/3 cup water along with a handful of raisins the night before and put it in a bowl in the fridge. Then in the morning I pour the mixture into a pot and add half of a banana, a pinch of salt and a dollop of nut butter (gotta get the calories in this boy!). Prepping it the night before saves me from having to think as much in the morning, cuts down on the cooking time and makes a creamier cereal. If it needs a little extra sweetness I add in a spoonful of maple syrup.

Okay! There you have it...did that answer all of the questions? I hope so! If it didn't, just shoot me another comment and I will clarify or add any information necessary. Now on to today :) Throughout the day I had my routine day of a shake and mint tea in the morning, a huge salad with the last homemade veggie burger for lunch and a chai and milk snack in the afternoon. I also had a chocolate chip cookie. Yesterday I swore off the chocolate chip cookies but my lovely husband pointed out the silliness of that idea...I run 65 miles a week for crying out loud! So today I was right back on the cookies again.

For dinner I made soy-lemon marinated tuna steak with brown rice and a cucumber-cabbage salad. (Z calls all tuna "kitty fish", an homage to our former cat.) I tried to get a photo of tonight's dinner but it actually disappeared so quickly that I never got the chance. I like this recipe a lot because I frankly do not like plain tuna steak at all...I dislike both the taste and the texture. The marinade takes care of both of those issues. I think that this recipe originally came from an Oprah magazine in 2003; I have modified it over the years and have had it in my files for just about forever. The recipe for the fish is as follows:

1/2 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
3 tablespoons sesame oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced (or 1 teaspoon of the wonderful jarred stuff)
2 tablespoons minced ginger (this also comes in a jar, thank goodness)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 and 1/2 pounds fresh tuna fillets

Mix all of the ingredients except for the tuna together in a glass bowl. Put the tuna in a glass dish (don't use metal...some metals are reactive with fish) and pour HALF of the marinade over the fish. Only marinate it for 30 to 45 minutes...you should only ever marinate fish for that long! Any longer and the fish will get mushy and also begin to "cook" in the acids (a la ceviche). You now have two options for cooking the fish: you can grill it for 3 to 5 minutes per side (for rare) or 6 to 8 minutes per side (for medium), or you can pan sear it over medium heat (in a well greased pan) for 2 to 4 minutes per side. Since it was sheeting down rain outside I chose the pan searing option tonight.

For the salad the recipe is as follows:

the remaining marinade that never touched the fish (tricky, huh?)
2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and sliced thin
1 carrot, peeled and shredded or sliced up small
1 scallion (I have also used a few green onions and today a big spring onion), sliced thin
2 cups green or purple cabbage, cut into thin ribbons
1 cup chopped cilantro (use the top part of the stems as well as the leaves...much easier to deal with and all tasty)

Just mix it all together. Super easy!

I also heated up some brown rice that I had frozen last week and put that in with the salad. All in all it was another hit. Z gobbled down the tuna and rice immediately. He was a little uncertain about the salad at first once I got him to try a bite he gobbled that down as well.

Another marathon post, and this one with NO photos! Sorry about that...I will try to remember to use the camera a little more to break things up a bit. Until tomorrow, happy eating!