Smoothie time?

I got a new blender for my wedding. It's a nice blender, actually. I was told I want/need a Vitamix. Although, it would be nice; I can't see why I'd pay for one when a friend offered me access to hers. I've tasted those milkshakes, and you better believe I'd be at the yard when she makes another.

Even so, I put some random things in the blender and here's what came out:

About a handful of spinach. Don't be picky with me now, guys.
A celery stalk
A carrot
As much ice as makes you happy
Some lemon juice (do you like lemons? Then use more. Don't like a lot of lemons? Then use less)
An orange
A banana
Enough mango nectar to getcha goin' to where you want to be

Granted, I just made a lot of smoothie. I'm considering adding toasted coconut leftover from when I garnished my lunch yesterday, but then I'd want to add nuts and chocolate and THEN just take a visit to Dairy Queen and..the cycle never ends. Besides, the noise of the blender made my cat go completely insane, and now I have a chair and a box of pens to clean up.
I love using mango nectar for smoothies because it's a bit thicker/more syrupy than orange juice. I get picked on because I don't really have an 'advanced palate' for textures, but there you have it. I don't want it to feel like water. If I want that, I'll drink water or coconut water. I actually have coconut water, and it'd likely be an interesting base to a smoothie. Must try that next time.

My end result filled the whole blender, so unless you want to give away about 5 glasses of the stuff, you might want to consider either storage options or cutting down the ingredients. I leave that to you, as this isn't my problem. :P

No dairy in this, no meat, no eggs, and not hard. Woo!

New soups

And we thought I got away from soups.

Let me tell you, that hasn't happened. I have two new recipes, mostly because of situational things. I made one soup just because I wanted to -- because I wanted to have an emergency 'I left with no real idea of what I'm eating after a while' kind of back up food. I do leave for the weekend here and there, and it's cheaper to make a soup than it is to get a burger.
On top of that, I had been given two HUGE heads of collards. I mean, HUGE. I think they were about 3-5 pounds each, and I had no idea how to eat them before they went bad. So, I cooked them. I mean, what else do you do? And that involved a lot of water and space. I think my new soup pot is 16 quarts, or some crazy thing like that. The collards didn't fit by about 4 inches over the top, after I'd broken the leaves down and whatnot. It was a lot, and I ended up freezing it all.
And then I had no freezer space AND I had just gotten married, which meant I froze some of my cake to save for my 1st year anniversary. Talk about no space! So, I made soup. It was logical, I guess, but who makes soup out of collard juice?


Then a friend of mine tells me she's sick. My response? Make soup. Make spicy soup, no less, which is obviously a good idea for sick people. She felt back to her normal self by the time she got the soup, mostly -- she said it gave her a pick-me-up kind of thing. Not surprising, since it was full of a ton of fresh veggies.

So, I posted the soup ingredients online. My soups, when I do them, aren't hard to do. I don't typically brown this, saute that, pre-cook things, etc, before putting it in the full soup. I might, given I'm really worried about extracting flavors like carmelized onions or something (the most I did was presoak the shiitakes I had in the sick-woman soup, because they're dried and in a container I got from Costco a while back. I only used them in the soup because I don't want to let those go bad, even though dried food takes a while to turn -- they will, eventually).
I posted them online to get names. I haven't chosen for the first, but the second is Melly's Sweet'n'Spicy Soup, which makes a lot of product, isn't terribly bad for you (no added salt, no sugar, but plenty of carbs; it's balanced by how many nutrients it involves from all the v8 juice, tomatoes, tubers, spice, etc). The idea was to get some energy back into her, and it worked.


Funny thing is, a friend requested soup for the Sunday night games which still go on this semester. I think they shall continue until someone graduates and moves away, and even then, unless it's Kevin and I moving away, they'll probably still keep going. Kyle says he wants potatoes and bacon. MOAR POTATOES. So many potatoes!

I shall post what I did and the ingredients I used when I can. I should shower first, because the skinny one and his visiting brother decided they want to go out, and I'm probably tagging along. I'll post by tomorrow night, given things go as I like. I have a few bread recipes I yoinked, which seem to go well with EVERYTHING I put them toward.

Mac'n'cheese

My friend Logan usually just comes over to play games on Sundays, as usual. However, I couldn't make up my mind tonight and I was running out of time. Usually, I have this planned out, but things have been insane lately as far as scheduling goes.
Safe to say, I asked another friend what I should do. He suggests mac'n'cheese. I tell everyone, and offer an opening for them to suggest things to go with it, and Logan jumps on the ability to make mac'n'cheese.

From what I saw, he did the following:


Add a cup and a half of condensed milk to an egg. Mix the heck out of this. Note: do this before making the roux.


Boil and cook your noodles of choice (enough to fill a large saucepan). Since this is mac'n'cheese, perhaps you shouldn't use spaghetti. This is up to you, dear cook. Eventually, when applicable, drain them and set them aside so the hot water doesn't make them mushy.


Make a butter-based roux from a stick of unsalted butter -- much like when I made the gumbo. You're basically lightly browning (see: malaise) a fat, such as different oils or butter. This is done on medium heat so things will melt correctly. Note: this isn't hard. Just doing boil it and you'll be fine.
While this is going, add about a half of a cup of milk (or was it a third? I doubt it'll change things much).
After this is mixed together, slowly add about a half of a pound of shredded cheese. We used a colby jack mix, but this is also up to you. It's your mac'n'cheese. If you like it sharp, then use sharp cheddar. If you like it light, use mozzarella or Swiss. If you like it smoky, use Gouda. This cheese should be added SLOWLY until it starts to thicken and become sticky, but not to the point where it readily hardens if cooled. The whole time you're doing this, stir with a whisk.

When the cheese sauce is melted, add a teaspoon or so of parsely, oregano and seasoned garlic salt -- or some salt and some more of that garlic you may have chopped for garlic bread, or minced garlic from a jar, or what have you. Just put garlic in it. Stir.

Put the noodles in a casserole pan. Put the two sauces in it, the white-egg sauce first. Lightly wiggle the pan so the white sauce spreads evenly, then follow by topping the noodles with the cheesy sauce.Top with more cheese to create a light cheesy-crust, or with cheese and bread crumbs if desired.
Top the pan with foil and cook at 350 for 12 minutes. Remove the foil and cook again for another twenty minutes or so, or until the cheese at the top is at the consistency you like.
Take out and serve.

Tonight: Garlic bread

• There are two parts to this: make the bread, then slice the bread and add a topping.
• As found here:  Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/bread-machine-garlic-bread-107933#ixzz1ktop2aHl
• To make:
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon powdered milk
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 3 teaspoons minced garlic or 2 teaspoons garlic powder (I minced up about 5-10 cloves, so this is up to you about how much you want. If you love garlic like we do, then 3 ts is just not going to cut it.)
• 3 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast (I put in a packet. My bread keeps falling and I keep changing things to see what its issue is)

A few good shakes of the following, each: dried oregano, basil, marjoram, and a small shake of lemon peel. 

Directions:

1. 1
   Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer.
2. 2
   Select Basic Bread cycle; press Start.

Or... Put in appropriate pans, knead away, let it sit and rise for about 45 minutes, then bake at 350 for about an hour and a half or until it's the crust you'd want. 




To top:


Chop up a junk load more garlic. Add more seasonings of choice, as well as olive oil. Eye this to your liking and be sure to remember it may cover a lot of slices. Add butter from the fridge and microwave until it melts. Add this to slices of your freshly baked bread and allow to broil in the oven for a few minutes, until it's as crispy as you like. Serve with your yummy meal.

Baked eggplant

I'm back! I took a trip up north, spent quite a bit of time cooking at my sister in law's (basic stuff like green bean casserole and sweet potato crunch. I didn't share the recipe because, well, it's.. one is super easy and pointless to post, and the other is a recipe in the family and I'm not sure how happy they'd be if it went public.)

Considering it's a new year, I refuse to cook things that you know will turn out tasting like dirt. There are just things I like and things I don't and there's not much one's going to do to it to change my mind. On that note, I don't want to eat a lot of fried foods, red meats or things heavy in fatty oils -- like Crisco, margerine; I'm avoiding vegetable oil due to some finds I've come across. Logically speaking I'd post a link to that, but I can't find it right now.
So I'm making a vegetarian meal that sounds like it should actually be tasty.


Serves 4.
Cook time: assumedly 25-30 minutes.

Ingredients

4 eggplants, cut in half (I'm using two, because the store had three)
1 tb coarse sea salt
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 thinly sliced onions
1 cup olive oil
1 tb freshly chopped parsely (guess who's using dried..)
2 large firm ripe tomatoes, chopped

Short version: stab the eggplant, leave it sit for an hour, cook the rest, cook the eggplant, put everything together and bake it.

Long version:
Make several deep cuts in the tops of the eggplants. Place in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Let drain for an hour. (Note: if you're going to cook rice on the side, or anything where the juice would be possibly included in the food while you're preparing, this would be good to use. The food would absorb any lost nutrients due to draining. I've been calling it the collard-green theory, because southerners often dab up the juice with corn bread).

Preheat the oven to 350.

Saute the garlic and onions in 2 tb of oil in a large pan over medium heat until browned. Season with salt, if desired. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes.

Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan until very hot. Fry the eggplants until the flesh is softened, about 10-15 minutes. Note: you can do this on lower heat, which would avoid destroying the chemical compounds found in the oil and the fruit. This is one reason why frying is generally bad.

Place the eggplants in a baking dish and fill with the onion mixture. Bake until tender -- roughly a half hour.

Sprinkle with the parsley and serve hot.

Considering I have more onion and tomato than eggplant, and I'm not really keen on frying it, I'm probably going to drain the eggplant after cutting it into strips. I'll saute like it says, but instead of frying the eggplant, I'll likely bake it for 10-20 minutes (which I can do while sauteing the other stuff) and then put it all together. This saves me from washing an extra pan, using up a lot of olive oil, and destroying good nutrients from the extra cooking process. I can't see how it would taste much differently, and having extra tomatoes -- therefore extra juice -- I'm not too scared of it drying out on me.


I may add a few potatoes, since, for one, I have a lot of potatoes; for another, I have company coming over; and for a third, I have a love for potatoes. Woo!

Wish me luck!