How do I know it was delicious?  The Young One not only ate both of his pork chops, he finished off mine.

It’s super simple to make, too.  When I finally found a brand of canned chipotle peppers that had no wheat or MSG (don’t ask me what it is, because I can’t remember), I pureed the entire can, seeds and all, and portioned it out into a couple of ice cube trays.  Once it froze, I bagged it up and stuck it back in the freezer.  Now when I want to make something that calls for a canned chipotle pepper or two, instead of opening a new can and taking a small part of it (and likely letting the rest go bad in the back of the fridge), I just take a cube or two of the frozen puree and use that instead.

I thawed two cubes for this dish, which came out to about 3 tablespoons so if you just want to use the adobo sauce from a can, you can do that (they’ll probably be a bit milder if you’re feeding someone with a very tender palate).  After whisking it together with an equal amount of local honey, I just seasoned the chops and pan-fried them, glazing them with the chipotle-honey mixture.  It took less than 30 minutes, start to finish, and was just a huge hit.  We didn’t find these too terribly spicy, either, which kind of surprised me.

I served this with some of our home-canned green beans and roasted sweet potatoes.  Winner, winner, quick and easy pork chops dinner.

Note:  These could also be grilled quite easily.  Don’t do pork?  Try it with boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

Not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

Where was I?  Oh, yes – crustless quiche.  Love ‘em.  Not only are they easy (well, for the most part), they’re incredibly versatile – you can throw just about anything in them.  Now, having said that, this is a pretty classic combination:  mushrooms and spinach.  And caramelized onions.  And bacon.

Tasty, tasty bacon.

This recipe is a little more involved than your average “throw-it-in-a-pie-plate-and-cover-it-with-beaten-eggs” crustless quiche, but it’s not difficult by any stretch of the imagination.  It is also stupidly delicious; I’m not the world’s biggest mushroom fan – I used them because I had them in the fridge – but in combination with the caramelized Vidalia onion and bacon, they just made this dish.  I can’t even begin to describe how good it is.

I also have to admit that when I ran the ingredients through my recipe software, I was really surprised at the calorie content, considering all the bacon fat, to say nothing of the coconut milk, that the recipe contains: just over 300 calories per serving.  It’s also low carb, too – 9 grams of carbohydrate, with 2 grams of fiber.  Not too shabby at all.

Why, yes – I did weigh myself this morning.  Why do you ask?

You may also note the absence of any dairy in the dish.  I’ve been pretty lax lately about my dairy consumption and my sinus problems are back in full force, so I’m backing off of it for awhile.  I kind of like breathing through my nose without a Breath-Right Strip, and sleeping in a more-or-less prone position.  Just sayin’.   If you don’t have a problem with dairy, this would be dynamite with a nice feta.  Or even a mellow Swiss.  Add about a cup, crumbled or shredded, on top of the spinach if you decide to use it (and let me know how it comes out).

Since my bacon is cured without nitrates or added sugars, this is most definitely Whole30 compliant.  To make it vegetarian-friendly, or if you just don’t eat pork, omit the bacon and cook the onions and mushrooms in a generous amount of olive oil.  Also, while the recipe calls for a Vidalia onion – they were on sale this week and it was a good choice for this dish – any sweet onion will work.

Ramps are a variety of wild onion with a distinct garlic flavor.  I’d never seen them before I’d moved to Ohio because they only grow in the eastern United States and Canada, and while they can be cultivated, the ones we purchased were foraged.  They have a very short growing season, so I was quite pleased to find them.  I’m tempted to throw caution to the wind and make a risotto with one of the bunches and some of the Camembert, but one bunch went into this incredibly delicious salad.

I mean, I had all this fresh lettuce and radishes and while ramps are delicious cooked (and pickled), they are mild enough to eat raw – the greens are also edible, and they went into the salad as well.  I had some organic red seedless grapes and pecans that needed to be used, so they were tossed in, too.

But the best thing about this dish is the vinaigrette.  The season for citrus fruit is winding down, but I can still get really nice lemons at our local natural foods market so I used one that I had on my counter, along with some finely chopped ramps, a touch of raw honey and some lovely, unadulterated extra virgin olive oil from California – oh, my gawd, it was just delicious.  Light and tangy with a nice, mild garlic flavor from the ramps, it complemented the salad mix perfectly.

I made this for lunch and served it with some leftover chicken (that I must make again and post the recipe), and between the two of us, there wasn’t a scrap of salad or a drop of the vinaigrette left.  I was just that good.

You can, of course, use any combination of greens and ingredients you like; this is simply what I had on hand (although it did go together beautifully). If you don’t have access to ramps, use scallions in the salad and fresh, minced garlic in the vinaigrette; it will still be delicious.

This week’s Spin Cycle is about pets.  If you’ve been reading here any time at all, you know I have an 11-year-old dachshund mix named Scooter.  He’s been a frequent subject here, but most recently because when we changed our diet, we changed his, too.  I wrote about it last year, and thought I’d rerun it again, with a brief update.

About a year ago, I wrote about Scooter – our little beagle/dachshund mix – and the autoimmune disease centered in his anal glands that he developed after years of eating commercial dog food (Kibble and Bits Beefy Bits, to be exact).  The ingredients are horrible:

Corn, soybean meal, beef and bone meal, ground wheat flour, animal fat (bha used as preservative), corn syrup, wheat middlings, beef, water sufficient for processing, animal digest, propylene glycol, salt, hydrochloric acid, caramel color, potassium chloride, sorbic acid (used as a preservative), sodium carbonate, minerals (ferrous sulfate, zinc oxide, manganous oxide, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), vitamins (vitamin E supplement, vitamin A supplement, niacin supplement, D-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement), choline chloride, titanium dioxide, calcium sulfate, red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, BHA (used as a preservative), potassium sorbate, dl methionine.

You have no idea the guilt I feel because I let my sweet little dog eat that garbage for so many years.

When Scooter began having his problems, they were accompanied by terrible inflammation and infections.  I was pretty sure that much of this could be mitigated by diet, but when I spoke to the vet about it, he said I should keep him on commercial dog food, because if I fed him anything else he would run the risk of nutritional deficiencies.  In fact, his only solution to the problem was to put Scooter on steroids for the inflammation and give him antibiotics for the infections.  So we did, and the minute his course of steroids ended the inflammation returned, and eventually the infection did as well.  This happened three time before the vet decided that he was just going to have to be on steroids permanently – he could even end up on low levels of the antibiotic for the rest of his life, as well.

In the meantime, Scooter was miserable.  The inflammation was somewhat better, but he was still constantly licking his backside and dragging it across the carpet.  Because of the steroids, he was constantly, ravenously hungry and even though I wasn’t feeding him any more than usual, he was still gaining weight – at his heaviest, he was 24 pounds.  That may not seem like a lot, but for a dog that’s only supposed to weigh 16 or 17 pounds, that’s a lot of weight gain, especially in a very short period of time.  He also lost all of his spunk; he’s always been a happy, active dog – even at 10 years old, he’s more than happy to play fetch, or zoom around the house if he can get you to chase him, or run around the yard or take a walk.  But no longer; all he wanted to do was eat and lay on the sofa.  It was breaking my heart.

Now, as soon as he became ill and the vet told us to keep him on commercial food (and tried to sell us a brand that cost almost as much per week as we spent on groceries for the three of us), I began  to make Scooter’s food myself.  After doing a little research on what was in most home-prepared pet foods, he went on a mixture of cooked beef, rice and vegetables, mostly peas, carrots and green beans.  He loved it at first – he’d always preferred “people food” over kibble – but when those initial courses of steroids were over, he began to lose his appetite and often refused it, which worried me a great deal – Scooter NEVER left food in his bowl.  By the time the vet said he needed to be on steroids permanently, I decided it was time to get drastic – so I put him on a raw food diet.

When I told the vet this, he said that was unsafe; it was simply not a “balanced diet” for a dog.  But the more I thought about it, the sillier that statement seemed and when I began researching raw food diets for dogs, it became even sillier.  So Scooter began eating raw meat – mostly beef and pork, with some chicken thrown in every now and then and liver or other organ meats about once a week.  (We do give him bones from time to time, but even before he became ill bones messed with his digestive system – when we give him one, we have to confine him to areas of the house that are tiled because there will be a mess.)

Scooter loved the raw food diet – he ate it enthusiastically, and it wasn’t long until we began to see some improvements.  He continued to gain weight, because that’s just the nature of the Prednisone beast, but he regained some of his spunk and began acting more like the dog we all love so much.  And after much deliberation, we decided that when it was time to get the steroid prescription refilled, we’d wait a bit and see what happened.

What happened was astounding…or maybe not.  The inflammation not only didn’t return, it became better.  Not entirely better – it may never go fully into remission – but remarkably better.  The lingering infection, which the vet said might not ever entirely go away, even with long term antibiotic use, cleared up almost immediately.  He immediately began to lose weight and is now back down to 17 pounds.  More importantly, he is his old self again – active and happy and feeling pretty good for a 10-year-old dog with what amounts to nagging case of hemorrhoids.

Update:  Scooter is still on a raw food diet, and is still happy and thriving.  I’ve begun adding small amounts of pulverized egg shells and sea salt to his food once a week, since he no longer gets any edible bone.

However, recently he became quite ill as the result of a rawhide chew stick.  I’d had people tell me that dogs shouldn’t have them, but I’d been giving them to Scooter occasionally for years without anything bad happening to him.  I wish I’d listened, because it was truly awful; we thought we were going to lose the little guy.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can give him to satisfy his need to chew?  Bone is out of the question, since it gives him diarrhea.

Alex has spent the last year being super-busy (her busyness included traveling to Greece!) and hasn’t had too much time for recipes, which is sad because she’s a wonderful – and creative – cook.  But she’s ready to jump back into the saddle and asked if I’d be interested in doing another swap.  Interested?  I’ve been waiting for a year to do it again!  I also had NO trouble deciding which of her beautifully illustrated recipes I was going to make; from the minute I saw her Grain-free Chocolate Raspberry Banana Pancakes I knew that would be the recipe I’d do for our next swap.

Oh, good heavens, I’m glad I did – these are just delicious.  Of course they are – how can you go wrong with bananas, chocolate and raspberries?

As per our previous exchange, we have both put our unique spin on each other’s recipe, but it’s basically the same.  Alex’s recipe says it serves “1 very hungry person, or possibly 2 normal people.”  Since I had three people to feed, I tripled her recipe and appropriately scaled some of the ingredients.  I will say that the original recipe does serve 1 person if they are very hungry, but if you’re serving it as part of a breakfast, like I did (we had it with cold smoked ham steaks and over-easy eggs) it serves 2; with that in mind, my version serves 6.

This recipe is full-on paleo; if it weren’t forbidden to make paleo versions of “treats” these would be Whole30 compliant (well, except maybe for the vanilla extract).  And while one serving, which consists of two pancakes, contains 33.5 grams of carbohydrates, it also contains a whopping 12.4 grams of fiber.  So just trot out this recipe the next time someone asks you where you get your fiber now that you’ve given up grains.

Don’t judge; it’s what I wanted to be doing.

At any rate, this was not one of the things I cooked; this is what we had for dinner Saturday night.  I had shrimp in the freezer leftover from the Bang Bang Shrimp a couple of weeks ago, and had been thinking about how to use it.  It’s been pretty cool in this part of the country for the last few days, so something warm and comforting seemed to be in order.  Combine that with the fact that our local natural food store carries Applegate Farms Andouille Sausage (yeah, it’s made with chicken and turkey but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste great), and Jambalaya seemed like a wonderful idea.

And it was.  Even The Young One wolfed this down, and I have a feeling there’s going to be a battle for the leftovers today at lunch.  It was simply delicious, as well as easy – you see the list of ingredients is a bit long, but don’t let that deter you; the actual directions are pretty short.  And it all comes together quickly – once the ingredients are prepped, which is simply some dicing and chopping – the whole thing comes together in about half an hour.  Not bad for one of Louisiana’s most famous dishes.

Now, this has rice in it, but that’s simply because I think Jambalaya really needs it.  I’ve made this in the past with grated cauliflower and the flavors are there, but it’s just not the same – cauliflower doesn’t soak up the liquid, or the taste, the way rice does, and the texture simply isn’t right.  And since white rice is pretty inoffensive as grains go, I don’t see any harm in indulging in it occasionally (which we do once or twice a month).

You can make this with the cauliflower if you like:  omit the water, reduce the chicken stock to 3 cups and add 1 1/2 cups of grated cauliflower to the stew when you add the proteins, and just cook it for the 10 minutes specified.  It’s even quicker this way, and comes in at about 15 grams of carbohydrates – it will be Whole30, too.

Note:  Jambalaya should be made with Creole seasoning, but I cannot find it anywhere in my area so I use Cajun seasoning instead.  Use whichever you like, although it won’t be “authentic” with the Cajun stuff.

Yes, we tend to be obsessive, which is probably why Beloved and I are so well suited.  Three years ago when I began to obsess about the kind of food we eat and where it comes from, Beloved was right there with me.  In fact, he’s become more obsessive about it all than I have. (Not surprising, since my loving husband is an “A type” if there ever was one. As for me, I’m not sure I even qualify as a “B type” – I’m probably somewhere down the line at…M).

At any rate, last year we weren’t exactly excited about the offerings from our CSA.  Not that they were bad or anything, just nothing too terribly out of the ordinary – lots of lettuce and green beans and zucchini and tomatoes and peppers, but no kohlrabi or bitter melon or dragon tongue beans or anything like that.  Now, there is a farmer we know who grows things like that (and much, much more) and offers CSA memberships, but his farm is considerably further away.  He’ll bring our share to the farmers market, but that means driving out to Peninsula every Saturday morning, something we elected not to do last year; we attended that particular farmer’s market once or twice a month.

So, Beloved decided we’d grow our own vegetables, hopefully being able to ditch the CSA all together eventually.

Now, we’ve been growing our own food for at least six years; I have a wonderful herb garden on the east side of the house, and we have two 8′ x 4′ plots in our back yard where we’ve grown everything from tomatoes to okra to peppers to broccoli over the years.  But once he decided we’d expand on that, those two plots became home to perennials – rhubarb, asparagus and strawberries to be exact (the asparagus crop has been disappointing to say the least, but the rhubarb is huge and we’re going to have a ton of strawberries, much to The G Man’s delight).  I should also pause here and mention that we have a huge blackberry bush that is going to drown us in that beautiful fruit as well, and a raspberry bush that we hope will eventually be just as prolific.

Once he decided to expand our backyard garden, I began finding sketches all over the house with various layouts of raised beds and positions for water barrels (don’t even get me started on The Search For The Perfect Water Barrels).  Fortunately, he decided to “start small” and built 3 raised beds:

Well, until recently, anyway – I think he’s decided to build 3 more before Spring is over.  At any rate, we have squash and peas so far – the peas are what the lines of twine are for, and you can see they’re off to a good start.  (Remind me to tell you the compost squash story another day.)  Here are the “old beds” we’ve been growing things in for several years (I forgot to take a photo of the herb garden):

If you look closely, you can see the three sad, lonely asparagus spears next to the huge rhubarb.  The strawberries are in the bed in the foreground.  You can’t really tell, but there are dozens of flowers in there, each with a tiny strawberry in the center.  That big bush to the right along the fence is the blackberry bush; the small plant to the left of it is the raspberry bush we put in last year.

Of course, I’ve already shown you the compost bins and told you about our weekly jaunts to pick up eggs and 25 gallons of cow manure (I swear I have the only blog where you can do a legitimate search for “seriously good shit”), but then the man just went off the deep end and decided we weren’t going to purchase “starter plants” any longer because we had no idea where the seeds came from (“Monsanto” is a four-letter word in our home).  So he got a seed catalog that sells organic, heirlooms seeds and the next thing I knew we had this behind the loveseat in our living room:

That long trailing plant is the squash I’ll tell you about at a later date.  The green pot contains a live basil plant we purchased at the grocery store, the plastic up is The G Man’s geranium he started from seeds at preschool, and the two small plants in the foreground are red bell pepper starters we got from a guy in the neighborhood who is also an organic gardening enthusiast.  Everything else are plants Beloved started from seeds – I can’t tell you everything off the top of my head, but I know there’s butter lettuce, Brussels sprouts and purple carrots in there.

But it doesn’t stop there, oh no.  He’s talking about digging up the part of the front lawn that runs beside the walk leading from our driveway to the front door with a decorative raised bed and planting sweet potatoes there because the flowers are supposed to be so pretty.

And he’s taken the lawn organic so we can harvest our own dandelion greens and the purselane that grows there wild.

I’ll let you know when he buys me a large, iron kettle and some lye and begins to refer to me as “Ma.”

Yesterday was one of those days, but I didn’t feel like tuna salad.  I felt like crab cakes, but I had no crab.  There was the tuna, though – and some curry powder, a mango, a red bell pepper and some cilantro.

This delicious recipe, based on my Gluten-Free Crab Cake recipe, was the result.  Between the two of us, we ate the entire batch – they were that good.

Just a couple of notes:  I didn’t have time to refrigerate the cakes before frying, so they were a little fragile and tended to fall apart when flipped.  Just keep that in mind if you don’t have time to refrigerate them beforehand.  For the same reason, don’t cook them over a heat that is more than medium, especially if you don’t refrigerate them – they will stay together much better and won’t over-brown.

Other than that, these went really well with a squeeze of lime, guacamole and some spicy sriracha mayo.  And they’re Whole30 complaint, too.

]]> http://www.janssushibar.com/curried-mango-tuna-cakes/feed/ 14 http://www.janssushibar.com/ginger-carrot-puree/ http://www.janssushibar.com/ginger-carrot-puree/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 13:01:36 +0000 Jan http://www.janssushibar.com/?p=17316 This recipe came about because I wanted a side dish that wasn’t a starch, but sorta was starch-like.  And while you can get creative with carrots – you can steam them, butter them, glaze them, stir-fry them, roast them or bake them into a cake – they don’t really fall into the “comfort food” realm (well, unless you’re talking about the cake option).  So, I decided to puree them.

With ginger.  And orange zest. And coconut oil.

And topped them with chopped Maple Roasted Cashews.

And they were wonderful served with grilled venison rib chops and asparagus.  Beloved ate ALL of the leftovers before I could get anywhere near them, he loved them so much.

Omit the cashews (or use just the plain, salted ones), and this is Whole30.

And it’s vegan, and reasonably low carb.

Goodness all around, y’all.

Beloved:  Hey, G – what are you going to give Mommy for Mother’s Day?

The G Man:  A headache.

(When asked to repeat this to his mother, he changed his answer to “A box.”  He’s either very smart or a coward.)

~~~~~~

Speaking of The G Man, while he was here Sunday, one of The Young One’s friends came over to visit.  When he knocked, nothing happened for several seconds, so G ran over to the front door and began hopping up and down, going “Bark! Bark! Bark!”

Just like his Mom – always willing to take up the slack when someone else is falling down on the job.

~~~~~~

Where was the dog, you ask?  I have no idea, but probably napping on the sofa.

With his special blankie.

That has Lightening McQueen on it.

~~~~~~

Via Instant Message:

Beloved:  What’s the best roasting pan on the market?

Me:  All-Clad, I guess – they made our sauté pans.  But the roaster runs around $200.  Why?

Beloved:  Just curious – was thinking Mother’s Day until I saw your price.

Me:  Both Cuisinart and KitchenAid have nice, stainless steel roasting pans for about $50.

Beloved:  That was more what I had in mind.

A couple of things, here:  it took me all of about 30 seconds to Google “roasting pans” and get that information.  Nor am I sure how I feel about not being worthy of a $200 roasting pan.

Then again, I’m not HIS mother, so I suppose I should be grateful for what I get.

~~~~~~

Pthththth…whoever drew this OBVIOUSLY never saw me during a “Chopped” marathon…

~~~~~~

Usually after watching a “Chopped” marathon…

~~~~~~

If you been reading here for any length of time, you know that I am both a huge George Takei fan and a fervent supporter of marriage equality.  So I couldn’t have been more delighted to see this:

Absolutely. Hysterical.  (I about feel out of my chair at “pole smoker.”)  Ah, George, I do believe I love you.

~~~~~~

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got.  Go, visit Stacy; see what other Random you can get yourself in to.