A Variety of Foods

At the Royal Palace in Madrid with Emily

It was almost ten years ago now (!) that I spent a semester in Spain on a study abroad trip.  I was there with about 30 other kids from BYU and we all lived with a family during our 100 day stay.  Each morning we had classes at the local university and each afternoon we were free.  We traveled frequently, sometimes for a week, sometimes just for a day trip, so we stayed busy during our stay.  There were a number of students on the trip that would jump on the train to Madrid every day after class, spending hours exploring restaurants, theaters, museums, palaces and cobblestone streets in the heart of Spain.  I can think of once that I joined them: the rest of the time I walked back home and spent my time with my familia.  My hope in spending time in Spain was to find out what it was like to live there, not just sight see.

A huge part of the Spanish life, and probably European life at that, is eating.  Each day after class I walked the 20-30 minutes home and would help my madre prepare our lunch.  Everyone sat at the table together for a three course lunch each day.  It typically lasted about 90 minutes and was such an enjoyable part of my time there.  Meals are such an integral part of daily life in Spain; it was really neat to watch how food helped form the backbone of their daily life.  

Source

COURSE ONE

We always had fresh bread and typically started with a vegetable soup.  "Vegetable soup" is not what you're thinking: my madre would simply take whatever vegetables needed to be used, boil them until soft and blend them with her immersion blender.  Every day was different: bright orange with carrots, lime green with peas and cabbage, brown from lentils, white from cauliflower.  She always put in some olive oil and seasonings and some days were fantastic while others were...not.  While here in the US we often start with a salad, that was very rare in Spain (I can think of one or two times).  We may have also just had fresh vegetables: sliced cucumbers with some olive oil (are you seeing a theme here?), salt and pepper, for example.

The emphasis for the first course was always lots of vegetables.  I went to Spain thinking I hated vegetables but after having them so well seasoned, cooked so many ways (boiled, pureed, steamed, sauteed, baked, in main dishes, etc.) I found I really love vegetables.  I still shy from raw vegetables, so thank heavens I can cook!

Source

COURSE TWO

After soup we jumped into the main course, which was sculpted by foods I still dream of!  Garbanzo beans with tomatoes and chicken, fish with rice, rice with potatoes and ham, a warm salsa mixture with poached eggs.  It was all so different for me, but always fresh (based on what was at the market that day), always different, filled with vegetables and seasoned beautifully.  I wrote down many recipes there and have sadly not been able to get many to turn out.  I look forward to the day I go back and join my familia at the lunch table again.  

Source

COURSE THREE

The third course was dessert, but so different from our dessert I hesitate to call it that!  Cookies and cakes are usually for breakfast in Spain (my kind of breakfast!), so dessert was often fresh fruit, a cheese platter (which was actually a foot-long tupperware filled with cheese - some of which was there when I arrived and still aging when I left!) or yogurt.  We would sometimes have a plain yogurt cake, which is a simple combination of a few ingredients (called yogurt cake because you use the yogurt container to measure everything).

Over the past few years I've spent a lot of time reading about French eating, a very trendy topic, and have found that the Spanish have very close ties to the French.  Both cultures highly prize their culinary habits and both derive deep satisfaction out of their time eating.  It is a fascinating lifestyle, very different from our own in many ways (they would never eat standing up or in the car, never eat alone, don't really snack, and don't feel guilty for indulging in foods they enjoy).

I don't think it's possible for me to mimic their lifestyle, but I do think variety is realistic.  The French have an unwritten rule of not serving the same meat twice in a week, for example.  The focus is on always changing things, modifying recipes, adjusting seasonings, and focusing on what is fresh.  Fruit is enjoyed in the spring, summer and fall, when it is growing locally and full of flavor.  Winter is for stews, meats and roots.  Vegetables are eaten in season, at their peak, enhancing their phenomenal richness.

Like several of you, I sometimes find myself stuck in the same dozen recipes, making them over and over until I am sick of them.  I want to shift my cooking focus to be on novelty and change, so I want to go one full month without cooking the same recipe twice!  Would anyone care to join me?  I'm just going to focus on dinner, which will likely be just a main dish and a side (no three courses here for us.  Yet.)

A few of my online favorites, to kick you off:

Poached Eggs with Cheese and Chickpeas - we are not often vegetarian, so you can be sure anything vegetarian on this list is fantastic.  This is great with crusty bread.

Balsamic Chicken Noodle Bowl - this is pretty unreal and, I timed it, took me 23 minutes from start to finish.

Carrot Soup - we made this with fresh carrots and were quite surprised at how great it was!

World's Best Lasagna - more than 8,000 reviews and five stars should definitely mean something.

Chicken and Avocado Enchiladas in Creamy Avocado Sauce - a great excuse to eat even more avocados.

Jalapeno Popper Chili - we just made this two weekends in a row and loved it both times.  We have done two jalapenos (no seeds) and it has not been spicy enough for our liking yet.

Asian Slaw with Ginger Peanut Dressing - this is so fresh and a great combination of flavors and crunchiness.  We don't put the dress on ours until we serve: it keeps great in a bowl in the fridge for several days of lunch!  Mary, I bet you could change this to be peanut free easily.

Lemon Lentil Soup - another vegetarian recipe.  This one is also great with fresh bread.


Do you have suggestions of some great dishes?  I'd love to see comments below!

Bon appetit!

-Rachel

Roasted Vegetables

Harmon’s grocery store offers fantastic cooking classes that I love to consider attending.  To date, I have been to two:  TJ and I attended a knife skills class that we loved and for a friend’s birthday last year, she and I attended a class on herbs and oils.  It was enjoyable (though I stink at tasting spices and naming them blindly) and we made roasted vegetables, which has become one of our regular recipes.  This is a great way to enjoy fresh vegetables and roasting makes them extra flavorful.  Feel free to mix up which vegetables you use (we have never used zucchini because…I just don’t adore it).

Roasted Vegetables

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

½ yam, cubed (*I usually just use the whole thing)

1 zucchini, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 parsnip, diced

½ red onion, quartered

1½ teaspoons chopped fresh thyme (worth getting fresh, but if you don’t have it, just use dried)

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (worth getting fresh, but if you don’t have it, just use dried)

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

On a half sheet tray combine all ingredients and cook in a 375 degree oven.  Cook until vegetables are fork tender, but still have a snap.  Cooking time should be around 25-30 minutes depending on how the vegetables are cut.

*Note on cutting these: peppers and onions will cook fastest, so cut them largest.  Also, we typically use a parsnip in this.  Have you ever had a parsnip?  They look like big white carrots.  They are great (disclaimer: we have only had parsnips roasted, so can't attest to their flavor raw or otherwise).

*Another note: I thought that the longer these marinated in balsamic vinegar (which I could drink) the better they would be.  Wrong.  They get mushy, so don’t do that.  

*A final note: we don't peel our carrots anymore.  We wash them well and save ourselves a lot of time and peels by just eating them as they come.  It's terribly liberating.

Enjoy! And HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY (here's hoping Holly gets a ring!)

Egg and Avocado Quesadillas

Sometimes you just need a dinner that is quick, simple, delicious, and uses ingredients that you almost always have on hand: this is that recipe.

You'll notice the recipe is written pretty loosely: it's quite adaptable/forgiving so adjust as you like.  The one downside is that if you want to eat them piping hot you can't all eat at the same time (unless you can master having multiple pans going simultaneously, which would be impressive indeed).  TJ and I make two and eat them while the pan is off the heat so we can eat together. 

Egg and Avocado Quesadillas

Adapted from Everyday Reading

Egg

Avocado

Cheese (queso blanco, cotija, cheddar, a Mexican blend - any of these taste great)

Tortilla 

Salt and pepper

Butter

Salsa

Sheri, I think this would be great with corn tortillas, so it's gluten free.  If you heat the corn tortillas first - almost until you can't touch them - they will fold without breaking.  Of course you probably already know that.

1. Heat a good pan over medium high heat (we do between 6-7 out of 9).

2. While it's heating, beat one egg in a bowl and put salt pepper on it.

3. Put some butter in the pan (it should be hot enough that it sizzles rather immediately) and move it around so it covers the whole bottom of the pan.  I will confess here that we have never tried using non-stick spray, but it would probably work.

4. Pour the egg in and let it sit until it's mostly set.

5. Put a tortilla on top of the egg and flip the whole thing over, so you're holding the tortilla with the egg on top.

6. Put some sliced (or mashed or whatever) avocado on half the egg.

7. Put some cheese on half the egg.

8. Fold in half (quesadilla style) and put back into the pan.

9. Cook until golden/browned (whatever your flavor).

10. Serve with salsa on top.

And now, these same directions in pictures.  :)  Enjoy!

-Rachel

Menu Planner

Every single day, multiple times a day, I hear the infamous question, "Mom! What's for dinner?!"  And, if you are like me, you are racking your brain for an answer.  Or perhaps you are on top of your game plan already because on Mondays you have tacos, Tuesdays spaghetti, Wednesday enchiladas, etc.  Or maybe you have just finished a long day of classes and work, and you now need to attempt to whip up something from the belongings of your fridge and pantry.  While pregnant with Cooper and Brock, my appetite and energy levels drastically changed.  I found myself frantically searching my cookbooks for something appealing (and easy) that I could put together.  If I needed to run to store, I could load Max and Kate into the car and head over to Wal-Mart to grab the rest of my ingredients.  However, once we doubled the number of kids in our family, dashing off to the store and throwing a recipe together at the last minute was not possible.  I needed a game plan.  I searched online until I found something I could work with- a monthly menu planner.  I tweaked it a little bit to fit my needs.  There are three tabs at the bottom of the page titled: Menu, Main Dishes, and Side Dishes.  I went through all my different cookbooks (and had my kids do it too for things that looked good to them), and added the meals to planner.  

The Main Dishes have the following headings: Chicken, Ground Beef, Beef, Pork, Breakfast, Other, Vegetarian.  I have added the meals that my family would eat under each proper heading.

Under the Side Dishes tab you can add: Sides, Vegetables, Breads, and Desserts.  I have also added cookbook info (OBB= Our Best Bites; WCB= Ward Cookbook, 6S= Six Sisters, etc).  Admittedly, I did not really do many desserts.  I only ever make dessert on Sundays when we have people over, so I go through my cookbooks and decide, typically on the day of, what looks good.

Once your Main Dishes and Side Dishes are filled in, you go the Menu tab and select what meal you would like when from the pull down option.  You can then print out the calendar if you would like to post it.

 When I have my calendar filled in, I am able to go to the grocery store and get all the ingredients I will need for the week/month.  When I hear the question, "Mom, what's for dinner?" I am now able to give an actual answer!

If you would like me to email you the excel document, please let me know and I will happily send it your way!

-Julie