Linguine with Fresh Summer Veggies & Feta

Day 286

Linguine with Fresh Summer Veggies & Feta

Fresh Summer Veggies

There is no shortage of veggies around here this time of year, and usually the only question is how to use them. I have enjoyed other variations of this meal in the past couple of months, so I grabbed some linguine and feta and a few more veggies from Sobey's and whipped this up in an hour and a half flat. Ugh. I was not expecting it to take that long.

Summer vegetables

The washing and chopping took about half the time and the cooking took about 40 more minutes, just to get the carrots to a desirable softness.

Garden Ingredients (Organic)

Carrots
Broccoli
Snow peas
Snap (shelled) peas
Kale (about 1 1/2 cups chopped)
1 bulb garlic
Oregano
Basil

Carrots & kale

Store Ingredients

Feta
Package of linguine (I used 3/4 of the package)
Grape tomatoes
Red pepper
8 oz fresh organic white mushrooms

Some of the veggies beginning to cook

Directions

I am not always the best cook, despite having some of the best ingredients to work with. Booo. I threw the carrots, broccoli, peas, tomatoes, mushrooms, red peppers and garlic into the pot with a bit of peanut oil and began to saute them. Before long, I could see that the peas and broccoli were much farther along than the carrots. I removed the broccoli and peas from the pan and continued cooking the rest, but the garlic cooked away, unfortunately.

When the carrots were finally getting soft, I added the chopped kale.

Adding chopped kale

Meanwhile, I cooked the pasta then mixed in with the vegetables. Next, I crumbled the feta into it and stirred everything in.

Adding the pasta & feta

Finally, I added the broccoli, peas and fresh herbs, let it cook about 2 more minutes and served it. The broccoli was still a bit crunchy, but that's not the worst thing.

Linguine with Fresh Summer Veggies & Feta

Tip: When using fresh herbs, always add them at the end, to retain their flavor. Same goes for garlic. Cook just until aromatic.

Reviews/Comments

I loved this so much. I rated it a 10, because there were so many awesome flavors and it was pretty nutritious and not difficult to make. Laura rated it an 8, and thought regular tomatoes, chopped fine, would have made it a better meal because it would have made a saucier cheese sauce. Filing that away for next time.

Chinese Stir-fry & Cheese Rangoons

Day 270

Leftovers rock.

Chinese Stir-fry & Cheese Rangoons

Chinese Stir-fry

We added more veggies to this to freshen it up and also because there was too much sauce. I ran out and picked more snow peas, then chopped more carrots and another onion. I also threw in some garlic scapes and spinach that was in the fridge.

More fresh veggies for yesterday's stir-fry

Before & After

In the before and after pics below, you can see in the first pic that there is a lot of sauce for the amount of veggies in the top pic. 

Before

After

Cheese Rangoons

We had more wonton wrappers left so I picked up a new package of cream cheese and Laura grabbed more green onions outside and I made 15 cheese rangoons to have with the stir-fry tonight. Because we ate all the ones I made last night, since we had this meal for lunch today, too.

Cheese rangoons & veggie stir-fry

Reviews/Comments

The rangoons weren't as good as last night's bok choi rangoons, but the stir-fry was even better. Gets a 10 from me again.

Chinese Stir-fry & Vegetable Rangoons

Day 269

Chinese Stir-fry & Vegetable Rangoons

Chinese Stir-fry

Fresh, homegrown snow peas were the inspiration for this whole meal. The more you pick the more they grow so we're trying to use them as much as possible.

Snow peas & green onions

Stir-fry Ingredients

1/3 lb snow peas

4 carrots

1 lb mushrooms

2 onions

1 red pepper

1/2 lb bean sprouts

1/2 lb fresh pasta, cooked

Stir-fry ingredients

Stirfry Sauce

Original recipe (the Basic Stir-Fry Sauce one)

2/3 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup veggie broth

1/3 cup rice vinegar

3 1/2 tbsp white sugar

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp minced ginger

Directions

This dish requires a bit of prep and a few steps. All veggies need to be washed and chopped. The pasta has to be cooked then set aside and the sauce needs to be made. The veggies need to be stir-fried, then mixed with the sauce and noodles.

Chinese Stir-fry

Vegetable Rangoons

I've posted a rangoon recipe before but this one is slightly different. In addition to the cream cheese, green onions and soy sauce, I also added minced snow peas, diced red pepper and finely chopped bok choi, which changed the flavor and texture. 

Ingredients

1 package cream cheese

2 tsp soy sauce

5 green onion stalks, chopped

1 bunch of baby bok choi, chopped fine

6 snow peas, finely diced

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh red pepper

1 package wonton wrappers

Water for sealing

Rangoon ingredients

Directions

Clean your counter-top really well. Mix first 5 ingredients in a medium bowl. Arrange wonton wraps on the counter in a grid and wet 2 adjacent edges on each. Drop 1 tsp filling in the center of each wrap and fold opposite edges together to seal.

Making rangoons

Fry in 1" sunflower oil and drain on paper towels. Serve with Compliments Sweet Chili Heat sauce.

Vegetable Rangoons

Reviews/Comments

This was amazing and gets a 10 from me.

Laura thought the bok choi rangoons were perfect and delicious and she loved them. Gets a 10 from her too.

Summer Vegetable Fettuccine

Day 250

I realize I skipped three days. Laura made a fantastic veggie stew with dumplings which she ate over the weekend and I had some last night. I was away on a trip over the weekend and ate egg salad sandwiches, mainly.

Summer Vegetable Fettuccine

Garlic Scapes!

This was our first year growing garlic and the first scapes we've ever tasted. They're so amazing!

Garlic scapes

Chopped scapes

Summer Vegetable Fettuccine

Ingredients
1 package of fettuccine
Homegrown baby kale
Zucchini
Organic red pepper
Organic tomatoes
Homegrown shallots (last year's)
Homegrown scapes
Fresh mushrooms
Feta
Pinch of red chili peppers
3 cubes of basil/olive oil

Cook pasta in:
3 litres water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Summer veggies & feta

Directions
Wash and chop veggies and sauté everything together for 10 minutes. Add the cooked fettuccine and feta. Stir for a few minutes until cheese mostly melts. Serve.

Fettuccine cooking

Altogether this meal took 35 minutes from start to finish. The chopping took 20.

Summer Vegetable Fettuccine

Reviews/Comments

Laura found it to be a little on the spicy side, and it kind of was, but we both still gave it a 10. Also, there are leftovers so supper tomorrow will be a breeze.

Peanut Satay Stir-fry with Whole Grains & Crab Rangoons

Day 215

Criteria for tonight's meal:

1. It had to be cheap
2. It had to be quick
3. It had to be vegetarian
4. It had to contain adequate protein

Peanut Satay Stir-fry with Whole Grains & Crab Rangoons

Do you know how many choices that eliminates? Vegetarians can find plenty of delicious meals, but the cheap ones don't tend to be quick and the quick ones don't tend to be cheap. Cheap and quick often means processed food or sacrificing nutrition in favor of flavor. Not all processed food is garbage though. I was lucky tonight and found some sales, too. Not that everything on our plates was the epitome of health food, but we got some nutrition at least. And flavor. For cheap. Fast.

Crab Rangoons

I was not in the mood to cook at all. I had some errands to run after work and came home feeling hungry so I was in no mood to shop or cook.

We needed to use some things that have been in the fridge awhile, like wonton wrappers and cream cheese, plus we already had peanut oil, so I knew I would be making cheese rangoons, which was about the extent of the effort I felt like putting in. All I needed was a bunch of scallions, which I found for $1.49.

Rangoon filling

Raw & fried ragoons

Cheese rangoons

Peanut Satay Stir-fry with Whole Grains

As for the rest of the meal, the sales at Sobeys dictated what it would be. They had mixed veggies on sale for $1.49. Best deal ever. And they had this Seeds of Change organic Seven Whole Grains stuff for $2.99. I grabbed a bottle of peanut satay ($2.99) and that was it. What's better than that?

The Seeds of Change organic Seven Whole Grains include:

• Whole grain brown rice
• Rye
• Barley
• Millet
• Red wheat
• Red quinoa
• Wild rice

Seven Whole Grains packet

The veggies were your basic Compliments bag of mixed fresh vegetables. I also tossed in the rest of the scallions left over from making the rangoons. Sautéed on fairly high heat in peanut oil until tender enough to fork through them. Then I added the sauce, but forgot to take a pic. Except for the final plated meal pic.

Stir-fried vegetables

Peanut satay stir-fry with whole grains & crab rangoons

Reviews/Comments

I got lots of favorable comments from Laura as we were eating, but that was a long time ago and I don't remember them specifically. But, she gave the meal a 9 as a whole and so did I.

The organic whole grains were pre-cooked and had a creamy texture and sort of a nutty flavor. Laura thought they were bland as hell and used it as a base for her stir-fry. She did like it, but thought it lacked flavor. It was supposed to have a tamari flavor, but that's basically just soy, isn't it? Anyway, it had a mildly nutty and grainy flavor - go figure, eh? I loved it. Since it's on sale from like 5 bucks to 2, Imma go back and get some more.

Szechuan Vegetable Noodles

Day 164

This meal was created based on a recipe Laura found last night but couldn't find again. So, based on what we remembered of it, I just winged it. Wung it?

Szechuan Vegetable Noodles

Ingredients

1 lb broccoli
1 lb mushrooms
2 good-sized onions
1/4 cup almonds
4 tbsp olive oil

Stir-fry veggies

Chop the veggies into coarse pieces. Stir-fry on medium-high heat in the olive oil.

Sauce

I'm sorry, but these amounts are only estimates. I failed to measure so if you try making this, just make it to taste.

Garlic & ginger

1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup Hoisin sauce
Pinch of crushed red chilies
3 cloves garlic, minced
Piece of ginger, twice the size of a big, fat thumb, grated
(ugh! Made me visualize grating my thumb)
2 tbsp corn starch
1/4 cup cold water

Mix all ingredients into a bowl except the starch and water. Mix those into a separate bowl until smooth, then add the mixture to the rest of the sauce.

Szechuan sauce

Pour the sauce over the stir-fried vegetables and cook another 5 or 20 minutes until thickened.

Szechuan vegetables

Serve over fettuccine noodles. You won't regret it.

Noodles

4 liters water
1 package fettuccine
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Fettuccine

Bring water and salt to a boil. Add the oil, then the noodles. Cook about 10 minutes. Finito.

Garnish

Toasted sesame seeds
Chopped scallions

Szechuan Vegetable Noodles

Reviews/Comments

Laura: This gets a 10.
Missy: I'll give it a 9.
Me: I'll take a 9. I give it a 10.

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Page 138

The egg rolls in the freezer were the inspiration for this meal. We decided to make a stir-fry and had most of the ingredients for one.

Stir-Fried Vegetables & Egg Rolls

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Broccoli
Onion
Mushrooms
Red pepper
Cashews
Sesame seeds
Stir-fry sauce (recipe below)
2 tbsp peanut oil

Chop them chunky and fry on medium-high for 7 or 8 minutes in the peanut oil, stirring very frequently. Mix in the seeds and sauce.

Vegetables being stir-fried

Stir-Fry Sauce

Well...I wish I could share the stir-fry sauce recipe with you, but I didn't write it down, and didn't pay a lot of attention to the amounts I was using. Sorry! The vegetables had to be tended to so they wouldn't burn so I was just throwing stuff in the bowl willynilly. I can tell you that it was super good and I wish I had paid more attention.

My Best Guess Recipe

Brown sugar (about 1/3 cup)
Rice vinegar (about 1/4 cup)
Soy Sauce (between 1/8 - 1/4 cup)
Sesame oil (probably 1 tbsp)
Sesame seeds (maybe 3 tbsps?)
Corn starch (I'm thinking about 2 tbsp)

Mix it all up with a fork until smooth and pour it in with the vegetables. It will thicken within a minute or two.

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Homemade Plum Sauce

Original recipe here
While I ran out for broccoli and a red pecker, Laura cracked open a new jar of plum jam and made  a batch of plum sauce to have with the egg rolls.

Recipe

3/4 (16 ounce) jar plum jam
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp dried minced onion
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Combine everything, bring to a boil, turn off heat.

Homemade plum sauce

Using Plum Jam

Last fall I had an opportunity to pick some plums from my aunt's neighbor's tree and came home with 21 lbs of them.

Plums

I intended to make a few jars of plum jam and a lot of plum sauce. So, I started looking up recipes for plum sauce...you know, the kind you process like jam, that have a 2 year shelf life. Nearly every recipe I found was like the one above. They call for a bottle of plum jam. So, I made 3 batches of plum jam, and mannnnnn, what a pain in the arse it was. Took me a Sunday afternoon and three evenings, because the pits of 21 lbs of plums had to be removed. Such a mess too. But so worth it! The jam tastes amazing and is really good on a buttered roll or soft homemade bread. And the homemade plum sauce is not even comparable to store-bought stuff; they're like 2 completely different sauces. Might be because of using damsoms instead of red plums? Anyway, if you have plum jam, I recommend you try making this sauce to have on egg rolls or rangoons, or whatever other fried delight you have on the go.

Homemade plum jam

Stir-fried vegetables & egg rolls

Reviews/Comments

Most of the vegetables were perfectly cooked although the bigger pieces of broccoli could have been cooked a bit more. The sauce was really good. Separately I rate the stir-fry a 10, the egg rolls a 4 and the plum sauce a 10. Overall, it's a 9.

Laura gave me her compliments; she really liked the stir-fry a lot.

Moo Shu Vegetables

Day 33

This is a new recipe we tried tonight in an effort to incorporate a healthier meal with some vegetables. The real beauty of it is the very quick prep. This hardly took any time to make, largely because the vegetables were already shredded.

We used a bag of coleslaw, a bag of broccoli slaw, and a bag of bean sprouts. The scallions and ginger had to be chopped/grated, but it's overall pretty low maintenance.          

Moo Shu Vegetables

Grocery List

Sesame oil
Fresh eggs
Fresh ginger
Fresh garlic
Shredded mixed vegetables, such as coleslaw or broccoli slaw mix
Mung bean sprouts
Soy sauce
Rice vinegar
Hoisin sauce

Slaws and sprouts

If you're like us with most of this type of food in your pantry, this is a pretty cheap meal. We had to by broccoli slaw and bean sprouts, and we were also down to our last tablespoon of sesame oil, but slaw mixes and sprouts are super inexpensive as produce goes.

Moo Shu Vegetables Recipe

Actual recipe here
3 tsp sesame oil
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 cups coleslaw mix
1.5 cups broccoli slaw mix
2 cups bean sprouts
1 bunch scallions, sliced, divided
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp Hoisin sauce
1/4 cup sesame seeds

How To Do
Scramble the eggs in a teapoon of oil and set aside.

Eggs

Chop the scallions, mince the garlic and grate the ginger. Wipe out the skillet and add 2 more teaspoons of oil and add the ginger and garlic. Cook about 1 minute.

Chopped ingredients and cooked eggs

Add the sprouts, slaws and half the scallions and combine with the soy sauce and rice vinegar; cook covered about 3 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Add the eggs, sesame seeds and Hoisin to the skillet mixture and cook another minute or two. The veggies should be tender and the eggs broken up well. Add the rest of the scallions and remove from heat.

Serve with a tortilla.

Moo Shu cooking

Serve It Up!

I wrapped mine in the tortilla and Laura had hers on the side, breaking off wedges to make little sandwich bites.

Hers is shown in the picture at the top of the page, mine is below. However you serve it, it is filling and delicious. And...there are lunchovers for tomorrow!

Lunchover: Leftovers intended for next day's lunch.

Moo Shu Vegetables wrapped in a tortilla

Reviews/Comments

Me: I'll give this a 6.5. Not bad, but it's no baked potato, you know what I mean? It's also pretty healthy - I mean, the more cabbage you can eat the better off...

Laura: Satiating and healthy, good way to get some cruciferous vegetables (which is her fancy name for brassicas, which is a fancy name for for farty veggies like broccoli and cabbage and stuff). Rates it a 6.