Autumn soup part II, and NaNoWriMo

I missed the farmers' market on Saturday because of the Praxis exams. Mark went and only spent about $30 again. (I know, right? How? It's shady, I'm telling you.) I don't have an exact list, but it was basically:

Saturday Shopping List

about 8 sweet potatoes

2 big red peppers

1 lb of red lentils

1 head of green leaf lettuce

a wonderful loaf of white bread

a purple cauliflower

a Roman cauliflower

a portabella cap

a bunch of maroon carrots

1 oz of Season All

...some other things. It's Wednesday now, and I wasn't there, anyway, so this is obviously not comprehensive. Plus, it's November, so all I know is I went to Fu-Wah and bought 8 packs of 3-minute noodle soup. It's Thai Kitchen. Only two varieties of that are vegan - Garlic Vegetable and Spring Onion - the rest have either shrimp essence or for some reason milk fat. Garlic Vegetable is my favorite and I saute garlic and onion to add to them. Quick dinner. I did take time to make a soup, because that saves tons of time later in the week. It's the Indian Lentil soup presented in the last post. I already blogged it, so I shouldn't blog it again, but anything to keep from writing, and also, I have brilliant new pictures and a legitimate piece of information: The soup was better the second time. Much better. And redder.

I added purple cauliflower to the mix. Used more sweet potato. Red onion instead of yellow. More red pepper. Now when you heat it up, you really smell the red pepper. And more lentils. Basically, I made a little bit bigger batch of soup and made it more dense.

Oh, and I found a white sweet potato. From the outside, it looked exactly like all the other sweet potatoes. I cut it open and it was snow white inside. I baked it and it tasted like cake. I swear to god, this sweet potato tasted like cake. It was unreal. I need more of them. I put this one in the soup (the half of it that I didn't eat straight out of the oven), but I need more of them just to eat. Look at this beautiful soup and its beautiful components.

In other food news, while I was at work yesterday, my baby rearranged the kitchen. In a good way. I leave you with this.

Indian Lentil Soup

I'm calling this Jen's Indian Lentil Soup, on account of I got the recipe in the first place from my friend Jen.

I'll be making this soup again today. It was delicious and warming, but somehow it made the weather cold. Warm weather was in the forecast, then I made this soup, which is perfect for cold weather, and then the weather turned cold. So I shouldn't make it again today, because the weather is beautiful and heading up to 70 degrees, but I'm not superstitious and I want my Indian Lentil Soup.

The original recipe I got from

Jen was for a big batch of soup, with one lb of lentils, two sweet potatoes, 8 cups of water, etc. I tried to cut the recipe in half, and I don't have measuring cups, so the recipe depicted here is for sort of half the original recipe and it's not exactly in proportion.

First, cut up sweet potatoes. I used two, one giant and one normal-sized. What you see here isn't all the sweet potatoes I used, the rest were already in the roasting pan. This is just to show you the size chunks I cut them into. Put them in a pan and pop them into the oven at 350 degrees. You're going to let them roast until you get everything else ready, which should be when they're done. I think I ended up leaving them in the oven for about 30-40 minutes. You want them to get very soft, like the filling for a sweet potato pie. It doesn't take long if they're cut like you see above.

The next thing you want to do is put on the water (I used about 6 cup-like-measures, which is not really half of 8 cups, but it seemed like the right amount.) Add red lentils. I used half a pound. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer.

Cut up 2 or 3 carrots (I used, again, one giant one and one medium one - I used maroon carrots). Cut up a medium sweet onion. And a red bell pepper. I used 3 small red peppers. Whatever you use, just be sure the peppers are red, so the soup's color will turn out nice (Thanks for that tip, Jen!). Sautee all these ingredients in olive oil on the stove, adding 1-3 cloves of crushed garlic (I used three, of course). Don't forget salt.

When the lentils are soft and the vegetables in the skillet are soft (but not too soft), add the skillet contents to the lentils. Take the sweet potatoes out of the oven, if they're done, which they should be. Add the sweet potatoes to the soup. Add curry powder and ginger. I have the ginger in powder form, too, but if you have fresh, I imagine that would be great. I don't know how to give you guidance on how much to use. I recommend adding them slowly and letting your taste guide you.

Remove from heat and allow to cool, if you're going to use a regular blender to blend it. If you're awesome and you have an immersion or "stick" blender, just use that. I let mine cool, blended in the blender, a few ladles full at a time, and then transferred it back to the pot to warm it back up before serving.

On a whim, I added a little cinnamon to mine while blending. It seemed to work. Don't tell anyone you put cinnamon in it (oops). They would think that made it a sweet dish. I assure you it doesn't. But they'll ask, "What's in this?" and you can tell them cinnamon if you want, and they'll be amazed. Or you can keep that as your secret.

When you dish up the soup, add a spritz of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. I didn't have either of these, and that first serving was lacking. I couldn't place what was wrong with it, it just wasn't perfect. Then I got the apple cider vinegar and added a capful to my next bowl. That made it perfect. So don't skimp on this last step.

This is great with toast or bread. I can't wait to have it with the rustic white bread we just started getting at the Thursday farmers' markets. It's also great to bring in a thermos for lunch.

Enjoy!

Where do Brussels sprouts come from?

I thought they came in little green pint cartons, but no. They come on stalks.

I never even wondered how they actually grow before. This is the best idea Brussels sprouts have ever had.

I can't believe how much stuff we got today.

I got the ingredients for an Indian Lentil Soup my friend Jen gave me the recipe for, and I'm making that tomorrow. It has red lentils, red peppers, sweet potatoes and curry. Would have been great for this very cold week. The coming week should be warmer, so we'll consider this a trial run.

I should have missed the farmers' market today, because I should have been on North Broad Street learning about Discrete Math and Matrix Algebra in my final day-long Math Immersion class. The Praxis exams are next Saturday, and we have our final review session Tuesday night.

But SEPTA drivers are still on strike (pesky union wants the ability to check and see whether the workers' pensions actually exist - imagine that), and even though AccuWeather said it was 40 degrees, as AccuWeather says every morning at 8 o'clock, my face hurt from the cold by the time I got back from the ATM this morning, and that's only a block and a half away. It was in the low-ish 30s, I would say, and windy. There was no way I was riding my bike in that. (I think someone from AccuWeather comes by my living room and paints a "40 degrees" and a sunshine on my computer screen every morning just before 8 o'clock, regardless of the weather.)

So I went to the farmers' market, and I learned that Brussels sprouts grow on stalks. Several tables actually had Brussels sprouts, which is great news, because they've become a staple for me recently. I love to saute them with sauerkraut, as a side for lettuce, tomato, and onion sandwiches. But only one table had them on stalks. So we went for that.

Saturday shopping list

1 stalk of Brussels sprouts
1 lb of red beans
1 lb of red lentils
5 or 6 sweet potatoes
4 red peppers
maroon carrots
1 head of green leaf lettuce
1 head of purple cauliflower
1 head of Romanesque broccoli (Romanesco broccoli, Roman cauliflower)
1 head of Nappa cabbage
a bunch of fresh fennel
6 tomatoes
several small yellow onions
1 Portabella cap
a jar of strawberry jelly
2 apples
1 ounce coriander
1 ounce southern spice mix
1 loaf multi-grain bread
1 loaf sourdough bread
3 chocolate-banana muffins

total: $56.76

No repeat of the bizarrely low bill from last week. I really have to let Mark go to the market alone more often, apparently.

In line at one of the tables today, I was writing down prices and items, and one of the vendors asked about the notebook. I mentioned I write a blog about food, and both the vendor and some other customers asked for the name of the blog. If you're reading, hello, and welcome.

We're going to use the Nappa cabbage in soup. A vendor tells us the fennel is good in stir-fry. The Romanesque broccoli is great in stir-fry with Brussels sprouts.

I think the theme this week is red. Red lentils, red peppers, sweet potatoes, purple cauliflower, maroon carrots, red beans, and I'm making a red soup.

And green, because I learned about the Brussels sprouts. Red and green. Merry Christmas.

Oh, that reminds me, I did go to my class, for the last two hours, when I worked up the nerve to ride my bike all the way from West Philly to North Broad in the wind, which was still cold even though the temperature allegedly warmed up into the upper 50s. My instincts said don't go, but I went because I wanted the textbook that was supposed to be delivered in class today, which I would love to read before my exams next Saturday. Found out in class that it was just a cruel joke - the textbooks will be delivered at our final session Tuesday night.

So. Happy effing Holidays.

Fuel

SEPTA is on strike, so I'm riding my bike to work. It's 40 degrees... real-feel: 38... real-feel on a moving bicycle: god damn cold. So I had a bowl of hot oat bran with molasses and flaxseed, for fuel.

I'll have a cold ride home in the dark to look forward to, so for lunch, I'm bringing a Thermos full of potato-leek soup (extra rosemary makes it seem warmer to me), with a side of red beans with lemon-pepper (the pepper is super-hot). And a couple slices of multi-grain bread for toast right about tea-time.

Here we go!

Sandwich Fail

It wasn't a complete fail. It did its job.

See, today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, and besides that, I have two major exams coming up in 13 days. So, those two situations conspired to cause me to put off eating until I was very very hungry.

As a result, when I went into the kitchen to fix a sandwich, I was compelled to put absolutely everything onto it.

Started with toasted multi-grain bread. Cut a small, maroon carrot into very thin slices and sauteed those with garlic, rosemary, curry, and salt. That's going to be the dressing.

So put that on first, and then on top of that, raw onions, raw portabella slivers. Then I was going to have some Brussels Sprout on the side. I only made one, because I figured the sandwich would be pretty filling, I just wanted a little Brussels snack. But it was so crispy after it was sauteed, I decided it would be good on the sandwich. Topped everything with green leaf lettuce. Rub the leaves in the container where you had your carrots and sauce, to get it all.

It wasn't so good. With the curry and the Brussels Sprout, it was all a bit much for a sandwich. The first half was good, because I was so hungry, but there was very little compelling me to finish the second half, other than the desire to not be hungry later. With an evening of writing and calculus coming up, that was enough motivation, and this mess did fill me up for a good while.

I'm at 2,492 words on NaNo. I wish I could quantify for you my progress on learning instructional design, or functions, for that matter. I'm just trying to hang in there at this point. Between the antioxidants in the carrots, the iron in the sprouts, the heat in the curry, and sheer will, I might live to see December. It's going to be a long month.

Look at my perfect math vegetable.

I spent all day in math class today, a crash course in functions and calculus.

Then I come home, and Mark has brought this perfect fractal home from the farmers' market.

It's a Romanesco broccoli, also called a Roman cauliflower, or coral broccoli.

I don't want to cut it.

Sometimes, when someone decides to be an asshole, they say something to me like, "Well, what about plants? Don't you think plants have feelings?" (Unfathomably, used as a reason why I should eat animals, because there's an outside chance plants might have feelings.) Obviously, such a statement doesn't get a serious response.

But in this case?

It's not that I think it has feelings. It's just that it spooks me, because I think it might have reason. How did it do the math, to come up with those perfect spirals and cones? It's a plant. It grew its nutrition into spines and cones like a coral. Shouldn't it live free under the water somewhere off a coast? Shouldn't something with tentacles develop a partnership with it that allows them both to hunt?

Look at it from different angles:


Any non-profit types reading this know how to open a museum?

On top of being stunning, this thing is a good source of vitamin C, potassium, and carotenoids, among other things, I'm sure, but they don't list it on NutritionData.com.

OK. It's late at night. I took a lot of time to unwind after my seven-hour math class today. I couldn't go to the farmers' market this morning; class started at 9 a.m. But I hear we did very well at the market.

Saturday shopping list

That perfect Roman cauliflower
10 Brussels sprouts (a pint)
1 head of green leaf lettuce
1 bunch of kale
4 small white onions
2 red onions
maroon carrots
1 pint tomatillos
2 leeks
blue potatoes
white potatoes
2 portabella caps
1 very large garlic bulb
1 oz ground rosemary
1 loaf multi-grain bread
3 chocolate-banana muffins

total: reportedly about $33

I don't see how that's possible, but that matches up with the amount of money we still have, so OK. Pretty miraculous. I think he flirted with all the Amish girls and got crazy discounts. Heheh. That's my baby.

I was going to broil some potatoes tonight, which would have been my first experience with broiling anything.

When the kitchen filled with smoke, I changed my mind, and after it cleared out, I roasted some blue potatoes.

They are dressed with olive oil, rosemary, oregano, garlic (2 cloves, crushed), and salt. Roasted in the oven for about half an hour at about 375 degrees. But... 375 degrees after pre-heating the oven to broil and then turning it off and letting the kitchen air out, so, however many degrees that is.

I needed some good food. Last night, I fed myself fried potatoes, sauerkraut with semi-nasty fake hot dogs, and raw tomatillos. I was kind of down and only got lower after that dinner. The potatoes were undercooked. Today I had Subway for lunch (6" Veggie Max on wheat with spinach, lettuce, tomato, onion, green peppers, and mustard, and a bag of barbecue chips). After class, I had a tofu hoagie from Fu-Wah, which is great, but, you know, it's another tofu hoagie from Fu-Wah.

So tonight, with the perfectly-roasted and seasoned potatoes, I had a couple of Brussels Sprouts I had seared in a pan with just oil and salt. Brussels Sprouts are great for protein and iron. I love how the outer layers of the sprouts get crispy in the oil, and I love the burned taste of the browned, cut edges.

Here are things I want to do in the coming days: Make a potato-leek soup and garnish each bowl with crispy Brussels Sprout layers. Make mashed potatoes and do the same thing. Do something with that perfect vegetable at the start of this post.