Hi there, remember me?

Oh, it's only been a couple of years since I've typed a word on Peas Love Carrots (boy it's dusty in here!), but to quote the Monty Python boys "I'm not dead yet!".  I've just been very busy, partially because I've been working on a new blog, Little Fig.

So if there's anyone still out there, I do hope you'll come visit me over at LF.  There's going to be new recipes and a totally new focus on natural cooking (cause that's the way I eat!).  In any case, it's got to be a little more exciting than this place *crickets*.

Love,

Mae

Midweek Meals: Healthy Delicious Lima Bean Spread with Olives and Yogurt OR How Lima Beans Are Like Christopher Walken

Ok, so I'm posting a midweek meal on a Friday, bu it's been quite a busy week with school and the like and I wasn't able to post photos until today... sure, I could've posted the recipe on Wednesday, but without photos, lima beans are boring in most people's opinions (though I hope you will be forever changed on that after this) and just imagine what they'd be like without the pictures?  I would be a food blog pariah overnight!

After all that bashing of poor Mr. Lima, I think I should be fair to him and tell you there's more to him then smelly, shrivel-y/mush side dish afterthoughts.  The words LIMA BEANS make children collectively shudder and dive under kitchen tables around the globe, I have no doubt.  But the Lima has a bad rep for what really is a pretty amazing little legume: healthy, easy to cook and most importantly quite tasty when properly handled.  Problem is I don't think most people know what to do with them.

Kind of like Christopher Walken.  Amazing actor, right?  I know if I were a Hollywood director, I would be looking at him and thinking "Wow, this dude is freakin' amazing... but how the heck do I cast him?"  He can't play a down and out single father or run around the screen with a gun searching for the kidnapped Declaration of Independence, now can he?  His lines would take 5x as long to say, for one thing.

Just like Mr Walken, the lima bean can't just be thrown into a dish willy-nilly and without taking into consideration its special set of talents. For one, limas have a very nice rich/butter flavor and texture if they're not overcooked.  This recipe takes the lowly lima and puts him in the role he deserves: as a healthy, tasty and even elegant spread that makes a great midweek guilt-free snack!


Oh, and limas are full of fiber, magnesium and iron.  They're said to reduce cholesterol and even have a property that is supposed to "detoxify" bad sulfite preservitives (like in red wine).  The recipe also has garlic, yogurt and olive oil for added health points!


Recipe: Lima Bean Spread with Olives and Yogurt

What you need to get...

1 pound fresh or frozen lima beans (if fresh, blanch first in boiling water for 5 minutes)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dry Greek herb mix (dill, oregano, mint, rosemary)
1/4 cup plain yogurt (thick or Greek-style preferred)
10 pitted kalamata olives
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt to taste (won't need much)

What to do with it all...

1. In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil on medium and add lima beans and herbs. 
2. Saute until soft and very little color (about 5 mins)
3. Add garlic and remove from heat - allow to cool slightly (don't let the garlic cook much, or it will get bitter)
4. Using a slotted spoon, transfer lima bean mixture to a food processor (leaving the olive oil to add back later)
5. Add olive and blend - pouring olive oil in a steady stream to incorporate - until mixture is spreadable but still a little chunky
6. Fold in yogurt and serve with whole wheat bread or pita, crudites, or heck, toss with pasta or layer in a veggie lasagna!

Midweek Meals: Healthy, Quick Mediterranean Vegetable Saute

Vegetables are amazing.  In looking up nutritional content for the ingredients for a midweek meal, I learned some very nifty things about what I was eating...

Eggplant - Is a fabulous "diet" veggie.  It's low in fat and calories, high in thyroid-supporting manganese and a good source of fiber.  Another interesting thing about eggplant?  It has more nicotine than any other edible plant!  Though you'd have to eat a bushel of eggplant before you reached the concentration of nicotine found in just one cigarette, so it's probably not the best idea to light one up, sorry.

Cauliflower - Considered a "nutritionally dense" food, cauliflower is a happy place to find vitamin C and a host of phytochemicals to fight cancer.  There are also studies that show it may work as a estrogen regulator (due to indole-3-carbinol) and glucosinolates that could help your liver detoxify.  Happy news for pub crawlers!

Chickpeas (garbanzos) - A nice low-fat source of protien and fiber.  Tossing a can of these precooked babies into your veggies gives your 29% of your protien in every serving.


Green (or French) beans - Great for your bones as they contain 25% of your vitamin K in each serving (helps fight osteoperosis), and a good amount of calcium.  Many sources believe that green food sources of calcium are betterfor the body then dairy sources, too, by the way!  I know my favorite clinical professor way back when I was in school as a bodywork therapist always paraded that theory.

In 2010 I'm making efforts to revive an old way of eating that worked really well for me, but I just got away from.  On the weekdays, I would focus on vegetarian and seafood meals only and enjoy meat only on the weekends.  I always felt like I had great energy when I followed this with care.  The problem came in when I was too busy to make proper meals and ended up eating potato chip dinners.  Bad, bad!  That's where having some nice pre-planned recipes that I love come in handy.  For me, it's motivational to know why the foods I'm preparing are good for me, too, so I've been doing my research!

Essentially, these recipes are going into a sort of food journal for me to improve my eating habits.  In doing so, I figured why not share them with all of you, too?  I'm planning to add some recipes that are based on fun healthy foods lists (if such a thing can be called fun?) such as the recent New York Times article on The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating (thanks to Cheryl for printing that out for me!).

So what do you think?  Would you like to see more recipes like this one?  What are some of your favorite healthy foods to include in weekday meals? 

Recipe: Healthy Quick Medditerrean Vegetable Sautè

What you need...

1 can chickpeas
3 cups chopped eggplant
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 pound whole fresh green beans
3 cups chopped cauliflower florets
2/3 cup chopped yellow onion
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon dry dill (or small bunch of chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry oregano (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry mint (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 1/2 teaspoons allspice
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 lemon, juiced and zested
1 cup vegetable stock or water
Olive oil for sauteing
Salt and pepper to taste

What to do with it all...

• Heat (on medium) enough olive oil in a large heavy bottom sautè pan to coat it
• Add your onions and cauliflower florets and allow to sautè for 3 mins or until they get a fragrant
  
• Add eggplant, red pepper and green beans and cook for another 5 - 8 minutes on medium, stirring occassionally
• Add all the rest of your ingredients, toss/stir to combine and cook on medium-low until cauliflower is just fork tender (about 10 mins)
• Serve over rice!

Warm Orange Beet Salad: 3 Ingredient Recipe #7

Today Jason told me something I've never heard anyone say to me before: Eat your vegetables.  This has never been said to me because there has never been a need.  As a kid, I was always opting for something green over normal kid stuff.  I was the only grandchild on both sides of my family and therefore was never in short supply of sweets to test this theory, either.

The biggest contributor was my father's dad.  Growing up we lived in the same building my grandparents owned.  I would come down from the upstairs apartment and there would inevitably be something waiting for me on the landing of my grandparents' level: a candy necklace, something of the "gummy" variety, or these super-sugary juice drinks that came in red plastic bottles shaped like robots.  The last was my favorite because once the bottles were empty, I would set them up as bowling pins in the hallway and use my stuffed Popple as a bowling ball (does anybody remember those??).

Most of these sweets weren't as eagerly anticipated as the robots, though, and I'd eat maybe one or two pieces and the rest would go into "the candy drawer": the entire top drawer of my dresser which was routinely raided by my visiting friends but I could've cared less.  The real love for me was a good spinach pie, or cabbage and potatoes from a fresh corned beef roast and even a Greek dish called horta vrasta which is nothing more than boiled greens dressed in olive oil and lemon juice.... most kids wouldn't talk to you for a week if you served them what I begged for nightly.

So you see why I was so shocked to hear myself being scolded for the one thing I have always done willingly, but having been a very busy week, my veggie quotient has been shockingly paltry compared to usual.  So tonight I up the ante with this little beauty.  Inspired by those very same horta vrasta combined with a dish Jason's mother makes, it's a hearty salad that works as a whole meal (and did for me tonight!).  It uses the green tops of the beets which are really tasty and NOT poisonous as I know some people think.  They're in the same family as chards and the greens taste very similar to Swiss chard.  I mixed up the cooking methods from boiling to sautéing for added texture/flavor.  The result is a really nice, balanced and health salad that made a perfect meal!

...So go eat your vegetables before you get in trouble, too!

3 Ingredients...


1 bunch of beets with green tops
1 orange, juiced and zested
1/2 a yellow onion, sliced

What to do with it...

• Remove greens from beets and wash everything thouroughly to remove grit and chop greens
  
• Place beets into a medium pot and cover with water
  
• Bring to gentle boil and cook until fork-tender (about 20 mins).  During this time you can cook the onions (see step 6)
  
• When beets are cooked, drain and allow to cool just enough to handle and slip the skins from them
  
• Slice the beets and set aside
  
• Add onions to a skillet with some butter and cook on medium with a little salt for 10 minutes, watching that they don't burn
  
• At end of 10 minutes, add orange juice to "deglaze" the pan and the remove orange/onion mixture to a medium bowl
  
• In the skillet from the onions, add more butter and saute your beet greens with salt and pepper until wilted but still crisp (about 4- 5 mins) then add to your bowl with onion/orange mixture
  
• Now saute your beets in the same way until they have a little golden crispness on each side (just 4 - 5 mins) and add to the bowl
  
• Top with orange zest and more salt and pepper to taste
  

Seven down, 3 to go!

Asian Potato Salad: 3 Ingredient Recipe #5

3 Ingredient Recipe: Scallion and Ginger Potato Salad

I love potato salad.  It's something I've made many times to bring to potlucks and I always found myself making the recipe more and more elaborate: ham and capers and artichokes.  Yes, they were tasty but at some point you can barely see the potatoes at all drowning under layers of smoked gouda and bacon.  

Here's a simple version of potato salad that uses both sauteed scallions and raw, bright citrusy ginger and nutty sesame oil.  I used a blend of Szechuan and black pepper corns, but just black pepper works nicely.

For a refresher on the rules of my 10 day, 3 ingredient challenge, check out the first post.



3 Ingredients....

• 3 cups quartered red potatoes (or other waxy potato)
  
• 1 bunch of scallions
  
• 1 nob of ginger

What to do with it...

1. Bring potatoes to a gentle boil and cook for approx. 20 mins, or until they can be pierced with a knife, but before skins start to loosen
   
2. Drain and place into large bowl to cool
   
3. While the potatoes cook, chop white & green portion of scallions finely, keeping separate
   
4. Heat a small saute pan with enough sesame oil to coat generously and add white portion scallions
   
5. Saute on medium-low until golden, about 11 mins
   
6. Add sauteed scallions and raw green scallions to potatoes
   
7. Grate in about a tablespoon of fresh ginger (a microplane grater works well for this)
   
8. Add salt and pepper to taste and more sesame oil if desired
   

Just 5 more days left!

Roasted Cauliflower Pasta: 3 Ingredient Recipe #2

3 Ingredient Recipe: Roast Cauliflower Pasta w/Goat Cheese

Day two of my challenge got some help from a post from TheKitchn.com .  I subscribe to the site's newsletter and yesterday as I hashed over ideas for getting more flavor out of 3 ingredients, I received their email with piece called How To Roast Any Vegetable .  As I was planning on making a dish today that I knew would have cauliflower in it, this was perfect.

This recipe for a simple pasta dish gives you a chance to take notice of individual textures and find nuances in a common vegetable normally found pan fried, boiled or muted in sauces or breadings.  Here the roasted cauliflower is crisp, bright and smoky.  Tangy goat cheese is sauteed to create a caramelized crust and oozing rich center.

For a refresher on the rules of my 10 day, 3 ingredient challenge, check out the first post.

3 things to get...

1. 1 head of cauliflower - chopped
2. 4 cups of bow tie pasta (or similar)
3. 8 ounces of goat cheese (tube shape preferred)

What to do with it...

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees
  
• Toss cauliflower in olive oil to coat, paying special attention to coat the floret tops so they brown evenly
  
• Place cauliflower into a roasting pan and roast for 20 minutes, checking occasionally and shaking/turning to get even browning
  
• Cut half the goat cheese into 1/4 rounds and set aside
  
• Prepare pasta according to instructions and drain, place in large bowl
  
• Toss hot pasta with the uncut half of your cheese and 2 tablespoons olive oil and set aside, covered
  
• Heat enough olive oil to a skillet to coat bottom evenly
  
• Add your 1/4 cheese rounds and saute on medium heat for 1-2 minutes until brown, watching carefully
  
• Carefully flip rounds with a metal spatula (cheese may cling to rubber/wood) and saute another 1-2 minutes, then transfer to paper towels to absorb excess oil
  
• Remove your roasted cauliflower from the oven and add to pasta along with salt and pepper to taste
  
• Serve immediately in individual bowls topped with sauteed goat cheese rounds
  

2 down, 8 to go!