Riding the Love Grain

I am not a very healthy eater. Inherently. Clue number one is that I probably wouldn’t just be learning how to cook now. I always thought my bent was a rebellion of sorts against my alfalfa-sprout-and-rice-cake childhood. Potato chips and beer for dinner. Mac and cheese. Chow fun.

But the truth is... I love grains. I love quinoa, farro, millet, bulgur, barley, buckwheat, whatever. Anything earthy. Love them. Prefer them.

Same thing with pasta. I love whole wheat pasta. I hear about people choking it down, trying to suffer through it. I don’t understand it. I love it. I prefer it. So maybe I am inherently healthy! Maybe I just don’t know it!

Tonight we made a large batch of Berley’s Quinoa Salad with sunflower seeds and hiziki (with a lime vinaigrette). Sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds. Corn, red onion (which he has you steam with the corn!), bell pepper, carrot, hiziki and radish (though we used edamame instead) and it was sooooo good. Really. Soooooo good. Swap this veg for that. This grain for that. A lot of prep work but sooooo worth it.

This salad has micro and macronutrients—whateverthoseare. Lotsa colors, which is important. Dunno, I think it is beautiful. It might end up being high in PointsPlus values (about 11?), but it fills me up. Tasty and filling. I always end up losing weight on the weeks we make these types of salads for lunches. And I need a little help this week after so much Easter candy this weekend.

I just can’t wait to eat it again. I love it. Prefer it.

Our Flexitarian Table

JustAwesome grew up eating very little meat. Naturally, she became a vegetarian and thankfully, for practical (read: traveling) purposes later started eating fish. Coincidentally, she doesn’t love shellfish beyond the occasional lobster-roll, so I think of her as a kosher-style pescetarian. And so, we are, flexitarian.

I don’t feel punished by meatless meals. We have tons of variety, especially when adding fish to the mix. I do hate when restaurants have only one vegetarian option and it is usually more like a consolation prize. I eat plenty of meat, usually when we go out, but once in a while I’ll make some meat or treif for myself. I don’t believe people should lose themselves for their spouses—avoiding onions, for example, that their spouse deems “stinky poo-poo”—like Laura Linney’s character on Showtimes new series The Big C.

Last night I decided to follow Berley’s recipe for Grilled Shrimp in Harissa, found in, of course, The Flexitarian Table. This kind of, sort of, went with-ish the cauliflower and corn and pea red curry that I made for our main entrée. (I broiled it).

Then I saw the recipe and rather than improvise and try something else, I kept going. Next thing I know, I am toasting fennel and cumin seeds and then grinding them with a mortar and pestle because we didn’t have already ground spices. WHAT??? WHO AM I?????

The mortar and pestle, by the way, we only own because I saw it at a HomeGoods store, it was really, really cheap and it matches our Le Creuset stuff!

Anyway, this cracks me up. I don’t recognize me. The shrimp was good and the house smelled amazing because of the toasted seeds. YUM!

Grain Salads That Deliver!

As I mentioned in a post in May, JustAwesome took a class called Wholesome Grain Salads That Deliver with Peter Berley at the Natural Gourmet Institute. These grains salads are perfect summer meals when it is too darn hot. This one is a lentil and barley salad with sweet peppers and basil - though we were out of basil (I know!!) so she put arugula instead. Maybe a few other alterations too.

Delicious. Perfect dinners. Perfect leftovers for lunches. Filling, not boring. Very Tasty.

Very Tasty

A Very Large Lunch

Today for lunch I had marinated tofu, shaved spring vegetable salad, whole grain risotto with spinach and asiago, cranberry bean ratatouille, steak & portobellos with breadcrumb salsa, arugula salad with mustard vinaigrette, grilled shrimp in harissa, fresh corn polenta with sautéed cherry tomatoes, grilled zucchini with mint oil, striped bass and tofu (separately) with lemon, white wine and butter sauce, quinoa salad with corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado, chilled asparagus soup, seared fish and tofu (separately) with spicy black beans and mango salsa, chilled tomato soup with shallots, cukes and corn, and warm green beans and new potatoes with sliced eggs and grilled onion.

And a strawberry soup with a digestive cookie for dessert.

For my birthday, JustAwesome got me a class at the Institute of Culinary Education, so I waited until the busiest work week ever (Thanks, MST!) and took Flexitarian Fresh Food Fast with Peter Berley. Peter is in the holy trinity of our home: Berley, Bittman and Oliver. Buy his book. Take his class. Spend an intensive cooking weekend with him on LI. His recipes are really good. He is cute.

Fiddlehead ferns. For one.

When left to fend for myself at dinnertime, I usually don’t put in much effort. I order sushi. Or just have potato chips. Or, when I realize I have an opportunity to have meat, steakonaplate (Meaning: Steak. On a plate. No veg. Goes well with an episode of Dexter.)

Tonight JustAwesome is off to a class called Wholesome Grain Salads That Deliver (Peter Berley) at the Natural Gourmet Institute, which will probably be really useful this summer when we want to eat light, healthy and I’m still trying to lose some tonnage. The NGI, by the way, has a Friday Night Dinner, which can be a fun activity with some friends.

Since it is still soft shell crab season (and JA doesn’t love them), I’ll do that tonight. And spare you the gruesome details of how you have to cut off their eyes to kill them. Oops. What makes this night different from all other nights, is that we have some fiddlehead ferns in the fridge that I’m afraid won’t be good if I don’t make them tonight (ok, they might be a little past their prime). And I hate to waste veggies. And so we have: Fiddlehead ferns. For one. Maybe I’ll even make a salad, with some leftover dressing from the Challenge. We'll see...

There are tons of ways to prepare them. I’ll do what I always do. Sauté with garlic & olive oil. Add herbs. Smoke herbs.

Um, someoneawesome didn't charge the camera battery so I took this with my cell. It’s just as well. The ferns look disgusting. Taste yummy.