Broccoli Pasta Marinara

Lately I have been too busy playing to spend much time cooking. So even though I love to cook, I also love to swim, spend time at the beach, keep in touch with friends near and far. I may not have a job, but I have plenty to do. I guess that makes me a lot like you.

This is another one of those dishes that doesn't really need a recipe. I made it for the first time at my sister's house when we also didn't feel like cooking, but wanted food more healthy than take-out.

Start with a bunch of fresh broccoli, really fresh with nice tight buds. Cut it into florettes. Or, yes, you can just buy florettes. In a steamer basket over boiling water with a cover, steam the broccoli until it is just starting to be cooked. Just before you remove it, add a couple of cloves of garlic which you have sliced thinly and cook for a minute or two. Remove the basket and run cold water over the vegetables to stop the cooking. Set aside.

Cook spaghetti or rotini according to the package instructions and drain.

Heat a jar of fat-free marinara sauce; I use 365 brand from Whole Foods. Add the pasta and stir to cover with sauce. Gently stir in the broccoli. Just before serving, sprinkle each serving with crushed red pepper to taste.

Chili Mac

My research tells me that Chili Mac is a midwestern tradition, known by some people as Kansas City Macaroni. I made this dish for the first time, and only once, a year ago when I saw the recipe in Vegan Planet, by Robin Robertson. That recipe includes soy milk and vegan cheddar cheese, which I try to avoid because of the fat and chemicals in it. We both really liked it, so I tried it again replacing the milk and cheese with faux cheese using a recipe in La Dolce Vegan.

Chili Mac

While this recipe takes some planning ahead to have leftover chili on hand, it doesn’t take long to prepare. Most of the work is accomplished while the macaroni cooks, and then it is all assembled and baked.

Faux Cheese Sauce

1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons tamari

In a small saucepan, stir all ingredients together until smooth. Bring to a boil and then simmer over reduced heat for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and set aside. Makes more than you need for the chili.

Leftovers can be combined with jarred salsa for a quick dip to serve with homemade corn chips.

Baked Chili Mac

1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni
1 small onion, minced
1 cup faux cheese sauce
3 cups bean chili, canned or leftover

Cook macaroni according to package directions, except during the last 3 minutes of cooking add the minced onion. Drain and set aside when the macaroni is cooked.

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine the cooked macaroni with the cheese sauce, distributing the onion as you stir.

Spread the macaroni in a 9 X 13 baking dish. Gently spread the chili over the top of the macaroni.

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until it is bubbly. Serve hot.

Asparagus Passion Salad

I have a passion for asparagus in season. This is asparagus I bought at The Boys Market here in Delray Beach. It was fresh tasting as it should be. However, the asparagus I had at my son's house last week was amazing. First of all, he lives in a rural area in New York State so spring is still cool there unlike here in Florida where it is already hot and humid. Second of all, we purchased it at The Carrot Barn, where they had just picked the asparagus in the field behind the store. It couldn't have been fresher unless we had grown it ourselves. I like fatter spears of asparagus and usually peel them, as I did for the dish above. Sometimes about halfway through peeling asparagus for a crowd, I wonder why I started it. Then when it is served, I remember why it is worth it. But the asparagus from The Carrot Barn was thick but so fresh we didn't have to peel it. I don't think we even broke the ends off of the bottom.

The other passion is in the salad dressing. A few years ago, I found a recipe in Bon Appetit and adapted it to my taste and to make it fat-free (almost). I placed the asparagus over a bed of torn fresh spinach leaves and garnished it all with slices of red onion.

Passion Fruit Vinaigrette

3 tablespoons frozen passion fruit juice concentrate
2 tablespoons minced shallot
1 tablespoon raspberry vinegar
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon whole coriander seeds, coarsely ground
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper

Whisk all ingredients together. Drizzle over salad.

Sunday Brunch

Every day is like a Sunday for us, but we still seem to have weekend brunches. Today we were up so early that we had our regular breakfasts and then mid-morning hunger struck us both. I wanted to take a picture of the pancakes with maple syrup dripping over the sides, but pancakes do not wait for photos. We enjoyed them hot out of the skillet. So, sorry, the best I can do is reuse the photo of the raspberries. I expect fresh berries would also work, but I always use frozen organic berries from Whole Foods.

Growing up in maple syrup country, I was very young when I developed a taste for this traditional sweet. My mother tells me that my grandfather used to have maple syrup for dessert so often that I thought the word was "dessyrup". I like the dark, grade B Canadian syrup, but I expect the best would be from a local producer in New York or New England if you are lucky enough to find one at a farmers' market.

La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer was the inspiration for this recipe. This morning the package of raspberries was nearly empty so I used an additional 1/4 cup of berries which worked beautifully.

Raspberry Walnut Pancakes

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon canola oil
1/2 cup frozen raspberries
1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped (optional)

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda. Add the milk and oil and stir gently into the flour until just barely mixed. Stir in the raspberries and walnuts until blended.

Using a non-stick electric fry-pan heated to 400, pour in 1/4 cup measures of batter. Cook until the center is bubbled. Flip the pancake over and cook the other side until brown.

Makes about six pancakes.

Couscous Salad

Lunch today was quick, easy and delicious. I love to use couscous because it is simplicity itself. Follow the directions on the box, but you will find that couscous is basically made by pouring boiling water over the couscous in a bowl, covering the bowl for about 10 minutes and then fluffing with a fork and serving.

While the couscous is absorbing the water, chop red onions, celery, and carrots. Stir in drained and rinsed chickpeas from a can. Cut grape tomatoes in half and add them along with a pinch of dried oregano. Add a finely sliced small clove of garlic if you love garlic. When tomatoes are in season, I also like a slice of tomato which I dice and add to the other vegetables. Stir in a little red wine vinegar and olive oil (optional). Add the completed couscous. Squeeze a little fresh lemon juice over the mixture. Garnish with a few spinach leaves and serve with pita toasts.

It takes so little time you can find the time to blog.

Choosing organic

In the 1970's I became interested in whole foods and avoiding chemicals in the foods that I ate and served. For a while I wanted to write a cookbook which I would have called The Oncologist's Wife's Chemical Free Cookbook. That didn't happen, but you can see that I have a long standing interest in the chemicals in the foods that we eat. Since becoming a vegan I have thought that it would make sense to go one step further and purchase organic foods. But... you know how much more those foods can cost and there are so many questions about whether the additional cost is actually purchasing foods with fewer chemicals.

Grub: Ideas For an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry has been helping me make the decision. For one thing it lead to a shopper's guide to pesticides in produce. While I have seen the list before, I never paid attention to the explanation for it. The Environmental Working Group performed research that showed that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables. Of course I am not going to stop eating peaches, apples, bell peppers, and the other nine items on the list. I am going to purchase organic versions of the so-called dirty dozen as a beginning to getting those dangerous chemicals out of my body.And it is even more important now than it was when I was first concerned about the issue.

Another book I recommend is Barbara Kingsolver's new book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life". In that book, according to co-author Seven L. Hopp, environmental studies teacher at Emory and Henry College, in 1965, US farmers used 335 million pounds of pesticides. As the pests became resistant (through natural selection, of course), the agriculture establishment increased the dosages of pesticides. In 1989, they used 806 million pounds; 1999, 985 million pounds. Twenty percent of those approved for use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

He also says that the bugs are holding out just fine. When pesticides were first introduced farmers used roughly 50 million pounds and lost about 7 percent of their crops and in 2000 they used nearly a billion pounds of pesticides and lost about 13 percent of their crops.

Not my idea of the way to grow foods that I want to consume.

The raspberries above are though. I purchased organic berries, brought them home, rinsed them with cool water and ate the entire package! Those berries tasted just as good as the berries that Susie Smith and I snatched from her neighbors bushes in the 1950's. We crawled on our bellies through the woods, lay on the ground out of sight under the bushes, and ate raspberries until we couldn't eat another one.

Cruise ship meals

What do vegans eat on a cruise ship? Most cruise lines have vegetarian options on the regular menus in the formal dining rooms as well as the buffets. While they sound delicious, the meals include lots of cheese, cream and eggs. Since becoming vegans, we have had some fabulous meals onboard ships. Princess was the first line that said yes, they could provide vegan meals for us. And they did for 24 days last year. I wish I had my camera at more dinners, but I like to travel light when dining. Unlike the rest of my life when traveling light is the last thing I can manage to do.

Our most recent cruise ended on May 3 in Barcelona. The Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas had sailed from Fort Lauderdale on April 21 bound for Bermuda, Gibraltar, Alicante and Barcelona, Spain. On the first night the Maitre D' seemed a bit surprised by our request for vegan as opposed to vegetarian food, but she was quick to respond in a very gracious manner. She spoke to the chef and said that he had agreed to cook for us a surprise vegan meal for dinner each night. And he got it right 100% of the time.

Breakfast was not a problem with hot oatmeal and fruit. Lunch was easy with a suitable vegetarian option like some delicious Indian curries or with pasta prepared a la minute with broccoli, chopped red pepper, garlic, tomato sauce. One day we had lunch with new friends at Johnny Rockets - a veggie burger, onion rings and French fries. Not fat free of course, but we were at sea and on vacation so we threw caution to wind and had a fun meal.

After we left the ship in Barcelona, we stayed at the Hotel Continental Barcelona on Las Ramblas. They had a 24 hour breakfast buffet with oatmeal, dry cereal, fruit, dried fruit, pastries, and beverages.

For lunch, we had an excellent vegetable paella in a restaurant in the Gothic Quarter. Dinner found us back on Las Ramblas, where we walked and walked and began to think we might have oatmeal for dinner. Then we saw Maoz Vegetarian Restaurant and had a fabulous falafel sandwich with an incredible toppings bar which included caraway cabbage, chopped tomatoes, chick peas, cooked onions, cooked sliced carrots and about a dozen other choices.

Jerry said too bad there is not one of these restaurants near us in Florida. Today as I was sorting through the mail there was a coupon for a discount at a restaurant about 5 miles from our house - Maoz! So we will enjoy a good meal and have happy memories of our Transatlantic cruise to Barcelona.