Midnight Menu and Addressing the Overages

I LOVE the newness of a new year, and I have always loved New Year's Eve. I've usually starred something seafood on the menu, with some kind of lobster, scallop or steak. Instead we had Lobster Mushroom Thermidor, served in a radichio cup (to mimic a lobster shell). The sauce was so CREAMY from the cashew cream! (see photo)

I just finished tidying up the budget for 2010 as well this morning. That looking ahead to the future thing that I am so incredibly fond of. Although I splurged a bit on some things over the holidays, I really did stick to a budget through December and I am very much looking forward to "birthday January" at our house, with both my guys celebrating...

Even if you've been both "bad and good" ("for goodness sake") through December, I'm listing a January recalibration menu to even out some of the "OVER-ages" December typically brings. You know - overeating, overspending, over-the-limit festive consumption of cocktails, and even some new "overs" like over-fatting, over-cholesteroling, and over stressing.

I feel fabulous going into 2010, and even lost a few more inches and a couple of pounds. Even with a bit of an exhaustion/fluey "bug" yesterday, I have had some delicious meals and really tried to modernize my usual holiday menu with new versions of my favourite holiday dishes.

Didn't remotely miss the cheese in the perogies!
Tourtiere was fabulous too - used "PC World's Best Meatless Meatballs" instead of ground meat.
Hollandaise over silken tofu on a crisp muffin was delicious Christmas morning, by making a roux of flour and earth balance, adding cashew cream, and a bit of almond milk till smooth, a squirt of French's mustard to make it yellow, and lots of lemon juice and zest. I even layered sauteed baby bok choy under the tofu. Can honestly say I have never EVER eaten this healthily on Christmas morning.

Christmas brunch at our house was great too - fresh orange juice, waffles with apple caramel, and tourtiere. I decided about a month ago that I wasn't going to add meat/eggs/dairy to our menus any more, so that our family can see that

1. we are not starving to death
2. we are not just staring at empty plates gnawing on a carrot and
3. that food can be healthy and delicious without these things.

Christmas Dinnerwas great too, although (*Over-Vigilant Mistake Alert*)I spent way too much time making a separate entree. Spent too much time making stuffed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, and mushroom gravy, bringing it to my aunt's, heating it up and drawing too much attention...and the work wasn't worth the effort. Even though there would have been a bit of butter and cream in the potatoes, and probably on the veggies, I should have just let the family carry this one. Even the dog got in on the act - with a broccoli "bone":)

Colourburst Comfort Holiday Dinner Menu

Holiday dinner is tomorrow night. Menu is going to be:

Crudites with a Creamy Ranch-Style Dip and a Dijon Cilantro Lemon Dip

Avocado Crisps topped with a mandarin orange segment and lime salt

Butternut Squash Soup garnished with Sage, Pear and Pecans

Stuffed Portobello Mushroom Cap with "Cheesy" Garlic Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes and Mushroom Red Wine Reduction, served with Steamed Broccolini and Lemon

Icewine-poached Pears with Orange Honey drizzle, and Sugared Walnuts.

The dip will get its creaminess from cashew cream and vegenaise, with chives, garlic, carrot, celery and shallots for flavour.

I'm going to marinate the portobello in garlic and steak spice, stuffed with my quite traditional sweet-potato bread stuffing, and topped with panko bread crumbs - baked until the top is crisp.

I made the stuffing puree yesterday by sauteeing chopped carrots, onions, celery and garlic in some olive oil. I boiled the sweet potatoes and mashed them, then used the leftover sweet potato water to steep about a cup of red lentils. I love that "chicken-y" smell and rich taste. Mixed everything together and I'll add it to some cubed toasted bread, mound it on top like a snowball and then pack the panko on top of that.

I'm going to make a "creamy" mushroom red wine reduction to go over top. Garnish will be slivers of green onion.

This entire dinner contains more than 15 different types of fruits and vegetables, beans, three kinds of nuts, and relies on plant based fats like avocado, cashew cream and olive oil for richness. It will be vibrant and colourful, will match well with Champagne to start (pairing with the richness of the dips and avocado)a rich Chardonnay for the soup, and then a BIG Red for the main. Dessert will be spectacular with a beautiful Niagara Icewine, which we can afford because of how inexpensive the rest of the menu will be.

Four Corners Meal vs. Holiday Superfood Entertaining

Tonight was a "four corners" night. Once every few weeks, I have just had enough shopping, eating out, and planning. There are times when it seems like there is "nothing in the fridge" and yet, I don't have the energy go shop, or order in.

Four Corners Dinners are those that I can pull together with the ingredients from the four corners of my fridge, my freezer and my pantry - as well as the back corners of my mind.

Tonight was a whirlwind tour of Asia, Thailand, Italy, New Orleans and just Canadian Sunday dinner. A combination of veggies, leftover cans of coconut milk, and a tomato, and half a head of garlic, some peanut butter, some soup stock - everything but the partridge in a pear tree. Speaking of which...

Holiday entertaining is HERE and aren't we all stressing just a little over some of our rituals we all claim to "love" about the holidays? Family dinners? Entertaining friends? Eating at the once-a-year holiday party with the people we work with? And what's often on the menu is really H E A V Y fare.

I am stressing about doing a dinner party next Sunday for friends. I want to make the dinner completely satisfying and delectable, and for it also to be one of the healthiest meals of the month. I also have to (always) resist against my own temptation to push myself to overdoing it, and remember the point of all this visiting is to actually visit.

I love a beautiful sparkling wine to greet guests with when opening a party. Nothing says "celebrate" like it! What is classic with champagne are gougieres, cheesy puff pastry bites that are just so rich, that they cut through the acidity of the champagne. Not so much healthy... but maybe I can find something with a similarly gorgeous richness?

Avocados are a gorgeous, buttery alternative to any rich mouthful, and would probably be great on a miltigrain cracker with a sliver of orange on top, and sprinkled with lime salt on top of that.

Crisp things at a party can not be beaten, but instead of something deep fried, what about a great platter of properly prepared crudites? The trick for things like asparagus, broccoli and cauliflower is to blanch them first. Then they get an explotive green colour, and some of the raw bitterness is edged out.

Bowl of Ice Water standing by. Salted boiling water. Drop veggies in for 30 seconds. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and plunge into ice water. Done.

SKIP the ranch dressing and get creative!

Olive oil, dijon mustard and lemon juice is a gorgeous combo.

What about soy sauce, hot sauce, toasted sesame oil?

Coconut milk, curry, peanut?

Honey, grainy mustard, garlic?

Imagine the last holiday dinner you sat down to where you weren't already feeling guilty before you started dinner?

A heartwarming soup is a spectacular starting course when first sitting down. Soups are great because they can be made well ahead of time and just reheated. If you make two complimentary soups, and pour them into two gravy boats, you can pour them into each bowl simultaneously for a beautiful colour contrast. Don't underestimate garnishes on soups... some chopped green onion, a drizzle of olive oil, some fennel fronds, or a crisp crouton can elevate any soup to a restaurant style presentation.

Bill's been asking for some root veggies lately - sweet potatoes, carrots, yams, turnips. Underneath my main course I want to try for something like a potato gratin, without the cream and cheese. I love a great sauteed spinach with garlic, and will borrow a presentation style from my beloved Teka, and add long thin swirls of carrot for colour.

I can't help but lean on a portobello when looking to replicate that satiating feeling of meat. I did a cauliflower steak that was absolutely gorgeous last week, and can probably just as easily crisp that panko coating onto a portobello. With a rich mushroom gravy, it could really have that wow factor.

What if I sandwich two portobellos with something in the middle? Roasted garlic is great with 'shrooms.. I need to get a grip, because I'm already getting carried away here.

What if I use the smooth mushy roasted garlic to coat the portobello, and for the steak-spiced panko to stick to that? It would be delicious, crisp outside, and tender inside.

The meal would easily stand up to a rich red wine, with a bit reduced into the sauce for flavor.

Dessert is going to be easy. Fresh fruit from everywhere is worth the splurge. Pick a theme. Berries? Tropical Fruits? Poached pears are classic right now. A cascade of colours, with a beautiful icewine?

Test menu can happen as early as tomorrow, photos to follow.

Holiday Time and Budget Accellerator (for Cathy)

It is getting BUSY through the holidays... Everyone is beginning to sc-HURRY through their day, and there never seem to be enough hours to do what we need to do. Cathy asked for some recipes that were easy and healthy so here are a few quick ideas which go a LONG way during a busy week... You can add some time to your meal prep, and some cash back in your wallet for presents:)

My Favourite Pizza Dough
Grab a BIG BOWL and add 1 and 1/3 warm water. Add 2 tablespoons instant yeast (use a measuring spoon, because regular spoons are often not the right measure and you do want your dough to rise with the yeast...). Dissolve the yeast and watch it get cloudy. Add 1 tablespoon of salt.

Add 2 1/2 cups of flour. We use an organic whole wheat flour. Throw the dough onto a large cutting board or a CLEAN countertop. (ie: if you wash the countertop, you should also wipe it with plain water so you're not adding soap to your dough)...

Knead the dough for 5 minutes. This is the best part because you really feel like you are doing something healthy, and traditional for your family. I like to push down with the heel of my hand forward (like a smearing motion) and then pull it back with my fingers, and curl it slightly to smear a different part of the dough the next time. Don't skip the kneading, because it helps for a smooth, developed dough.

Add some olive oil to the bowl and swish it around. Put a clean tea towel over the bowl, and let it rest in your microwave (dark, warm) for 30 minutes while you get toppings ready.

Top your pizza with whatever is in your fridge. Sky's the limit on what a good pizza dough can become - it is like a blank canvas.

It's easier than you think to skip the animal products, even if cheese and pepperoni are the first things that come to your mind.

Try these variations offering a rainbow of colours...

Puttanesca: Sauce, olives, capers, tomatoes, garlic?

Bruschetta: Sauce, Tomatoes, Red Onion, garlic, add salted-cold-chopped tomatoes, garlic and olive oil on top with fresh basil.

Mushroom: Olive oil or sauce or dijon mustard and a chopped mix of mushrooms, and some balsamic vinegar

Sweet or Hot Peppers: Sauce, and Yellow, Red, Orange, Green - there are even chocolate brown peppers!

Thai / Asian Green: Broccoli, Broccolini, Asparagus, Zucchini, even snow peas are awesome if you change the pizza sauce to a peanut sauce! (Mix some peanut butter, soy sauce, hot sauce, and sesame oil in a jar and shake) Spectacular! Garnish with toasted sesame seeds.

Indian / Tandoori Red: Cauliflower and chick peas are surprisingly delicious on pizza. They also feel very substantial. Grab some store-bought indian sauces, and sprinkle some cashews on top.

Purple Pizza Eater: Eggplant (especialy when roasted) is gorgeous. Grab some store-bought baba ganouj, top with eggplant and garlic. Or some roasted radicchio (put in a pan with some olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar) adds a sweet, bitter flavour that is delicious.

Honey Yellow: Add some roasted butternut squash and fresh sage leaves, drizzle with olive oil. Top with toasted, honeyed pecans.

ROASTING FALL VEGETABLES

At this time of year, roasting squash and root vegetables can be like having an extra friend in the kitchen.

Get familiar with the easy technique, because you can make one vegetable into three different meals. One as a side dish, one as a pizza topper, and blend the leftovers into a soup.

Cut up what you are roasting (Squash, Carrots, Parsnips, Beets, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, etc..) into bite size pieces. Put them on a cookie sheet (I like alumninum foil for easier clean-up). Drizzle the bites with olive oil and lightly salt and pepper them. Toss together so they all get coated. Roast at 375, shake every so often, until they slowly start to brown, probably 1 hour.

Bayley's Carrot Soup

Always make more veggies than you need for one meal. Leftovers can top pizza, and become a nice soup. Adding soup stock to any vegetable in a blender and hitting the liquefy button can result in a tasty and easy and delicious soup.

Once at a family dinner I watched in horror as Jill almost tossed the last few carrots and mashed potatoes into the garbage, after a family feast. I grabbed her blender, added a can of stock, the potatoes and the carrots and some salt to taste. Her son, Bayley, thought it was the best soup and ate two bowls of it the next day!

Cauliflower Steak and final lessons learned...

On the last day of our 30 day challenge, I wanted to put together a specacular meal for the guys. Two of the cookbooks I have been loving, Tal Ronnen's "The Conscious Cook" and Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet" both had some truly inspirational ideas, as well as great recipes. Both had a caesar salad that sounded creamy, and satisfying. When made from my own mix of olive oil, garlic, lemon, capers, dijon and Vegenaise (as well as the addition of my new "nutritional yeast" which smells like the bottom of a hamster cage, but tasted great)we were blown away. With some toasted croutons, it was absolutely delicious.

We also tried a delicious Rice parmesan cheese, which I was initially impressed with, but since its main ingredient is CASEIN (the offending dairy protein linked to cancer) it won't be invited back. I can't believe I missed that in the grocery store - usually I read the ingredients pretty well.

Dinner was a feast for the eyes too, with steamed purple asparagus, bright green steamed broccolini, and a rich mushroom gravy over top of a caulifower "steak". Cauliflower, when sliced from the top down, and right through the stem, holds onto the florets, creating a hefty steak. Brushed with some olive oil and steak spice on both sides and dipped in panko, it was a crispy crunchy delicious centrepiece on the plate, reminiscent of a fried chicken!

Harrison artfully put together the dessert plate, with berries, rice ice cream, and pecans, with a raspberry sauce from the summer's jams. Yum.

Do you remember the cute little chihuahua from that disney cartoon about the dogs and cats in the 20's where he exclaims in his Mexican accent after being "captured" and then finding out he's in the lap of luxury, "if this is torture, chain me to the wall!"

Its kind of true in our case. We embarked on this challenge towards a healthy way of eating almost as a joke. Bill liked the health aspects, I loved the cooking challenge and we both liked the idea of cutting out fattier things on our plates and replacing them with vegetables. Neither of us had any idea how GOOD eating like this would make us feel, and retrospectively, how good it was for our health to learn to do so. I love the budget aspect to plant-based eating, I LOVE that the food safety concerns (again, spiders notwithstanding) are so minimal, and I especially love the slimming effect it has had on all of us.

People often heard of our challenge, and with a sympathetic look on their faces asked with great concern "How is Harrison handling it?". Ask him. He didn't miss a beat, loved many of the items on his plate (evidenced by his full consumption of them, and often seconds) and even learned a bit.

His school project came home yesterday, where the students had to write a menu for a restaurant of their own. His was called "Healthy Harrison's" and had a full breakfast menu of pancakes "wisked together", breakfast smoothies "strawbearrys and rasberrys bleanded into a creamy smoothie", and a fruit platter that even contained zucchini(!) "cut up in rows and served on a plater". His restaurant's motto was "its good and nutricios and also delicios".

Kids will eat healthily if we give them the chance to. So will adults. Perhaps most startling throughout the challenge is how toxic our food environment is in North America. How surrounded we are as busy people with horribly bad "food-like" food that does nothing but provide a short-term fat-sugar rush, and make us sick. Yes, meat is delicious, but even the low fat stuff (especially since we are now eating MORE of it) still clogs our arteries, slows our digestion, and the significant body of evidence shows that it can accellerate a trip to heart disease (and its precursors of obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol), cancers especially of the breast and prostate, auto-immune diseases like diabetes, and general ill health.

When I was a kid, my dad was forced to quit smoking. I had learned that smoking was bad, and would often go on a hunt to find the packs, and flush them down the toilet. Dad often had to hide out, and sneak them. As he tells the story, one day he was quietly smoking in a locked bathroom, realized he was "hiding out from a 5 year old" and decided it was time to quit. He quit, but his dad (my Jaju)didn't - although his smokes offen suffered the same floaty fate if I could find them. When he died of lung cancer in 1989, I was impossibly saddened. Even a 79 year old wants more time, and more QUALITY time at that. We don't want to spend our lives, especially any part of the end our lives, sick, medicated and yucky.

Let me leave off my preachyness with one last analogy... If before every meal, someone routinely sprayed your meals with a spritz of something known to increase disease in people, but assured you that nothing would really happen right now, and the bad effects would just be some undetermined "LATER" would you keep letting them? Wouldn't you say "no, wait a second, I don't want that!"?

Hold in mind that the messages you receive about your health, and often what we THINK we know about nutrition, IS ACTUALLY A COMMERCIAL! A marketing message from the seller!

Hold in mind WHO is marketing the 3 servings of dairy a day message.
Hold in mind WHO is marketing the salmon / chicken / pork / beef messages.
Hold in mind WHO is marketing the get cracking messages.

Don't take my word for it. Do yourself and your kids a favour and do some reading. We loved "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. I loved Dean Ornish's book 15 years ago on learning of my father-in-law's problems with heart disease (Ornish's theory of reversing it by eating a plant-based diet was quickly dismissed by that side of the family).

My friend Chris says that he gets the vegan thing, but that it's probably just too hard for most people. I think he's right. My friend Cathy echoed the thought, but was intrigued enough to say that she would be motivated to try if she just had a few recipes to work from. My friend Barb didn't miss a beat when at our most recent lunch our pizza came without the cheese. Angela and Carissa both tried the vegan mozzarella, declaring it "good". Greg and Scott (avid meat lovers) ate the tofu chicken strips without complaint. Mom has agreed to skip the cheese when we all make perogies on Saturday for Christmas.... Even my dad has been persuaded to utter "OK - I'LL EAT MORE VEGETABLES if you'll just leave me alone!" when prompted...

So. Enough lectures from me.

Blog, going forward will go back to its original intended purpose....efficient and healthy ideas about food!