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Roasting up some peppers…

I’ve decided that we’re going to have our vegetarian meal tonight…lentil soup and stuffed red peppers. The pepper recipe calls for roasting the peppers. If I had an outdoor grill, that would really be the easiest way to do it. The idea is to place the peppers over a fire, keep turning them until all sides are black and charred. Then you place them in a paper bag roll the top down to close it, and let steam, and then cool. Then you can just rub the charred skin off the peppers, remove the seeds from the inside, and the peppers are ready to use.

Now if I had an outdoor grill, and it were a bit warmer outside, I’d love to do it that way…bring out a cooler of beer, sit on my nice outdoor furniture, and chill out. But since I don’t have any of those things, and it’s a bit too cold out anyway, indoor cooking it is.

The indoor way to roast peppers, ideally, is over a gas stove burner. But that’s another thing I don’t have, so I’m doing them in the toaster oven instead. It takes a little longer, but it works better than using the regular oven. I just have to keep checking and turning the peppers as needed.

I was looking on the Christina Cooks website, and she has a pretty large recipe archive. If you want to try any of her recipes before deciding whehter or not to buy any of her books, this is a good way to do so. Here is the Stuffed Roasted Red Peppers recipe that I’ll be making. And here is the Spicy Lentil Soup that we’re having with it.
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Today I saw a similar recipe for the peppers on Chef Hubert Keller’s cooking show.  Here is the .pdf file of the recipe that I got from his site.  He doesn’t roast and peel the peppers, he just cuts them in half lengthwise, stuff them with the filling, and braises them in a pan with some vegetable broth.  He also uses a few other veggies in his filling.  But you can add what you want…I have some fresh asparagus that I really should use up…I might put that in my pepper filling.

If you don’t want to deal with the extra work of roasting and peeling the peppers, Chef Keller’s recipe is a good one to try.  Just know that you won’t get the smoky flavor of the roasted peppers.

Gotta go check on my peppers now…oh, do they ever smell yummie!

Cookbook: “Christina Cooks”

Christina Cooks by Christina Pirello

This isn’t a complete review of this book, mainly because I have yet to try any of the recipes. I just got it yesterday and spent a good deal of time looking through it, and I do like what I’ve seen.

If you’ve seen Christina’s TV show on PBS, “Christina Cooks”, you know what to expect from this book. She follows a vegan diet, which means that she consumes no animal products at all, not even dairy or eggs.

I don’t really want to convert to veganism, or even vegetarianism. But after having watched several episodes of the show, I thought that the recipes looked good enough to try…nothing like the bland, boring “health food” that you may be used to. Christina really wants to see people get back into the kitchen and do some serious cooking…and to do that, the food has to look and taste good.

My goal here is to start eating meatless meals at least once or twice a week. Mike is a die-hard carnivore, though, claims he can’t live without his meat. But Christina offers some useful tips for getting your family to eat meatless…at least some of the time. She says that she’d love nothing more than for everyone to go vegan, but she is also a realist, knows that some of us will continue to consume meat, fish, and dairy products. All she asks is that we try to at least take some steps in that direction. And the advice she gives is good, very informative, yet without being preachy.

The first step, she says, is to start slow when trying to introduce meatless meals. Don’t go to your local health food store and go crazy buying all sorts of “weird” foods, such as tofu, tempeh, miso, etc. Start by picking recipes that contain ingredients that your family already knows and likes.

So, before we went shopping today, I looked through the book and selected a couple of recipes for our first meatless meal….a spicy lentil soup, and roasted red bell peppers stuffed with brown rice, corn, and other savory ingredients. Mike likes lentil soup, and he also likes stuffed peppers…even though he’s always had them stuffed with a mixture of ground meat and rice. I thought that since the peppers contain no meat, that I needed to add some kind of bean dish, to make the meal more substantial. I want to make it so that he won’t miss the meat.

Some of the recipes do call for “weird” ingredients”, that you may not find in a regular supermarket. For this first attempte, I avoided any of those recipes, and chose ones with common, familiar, easy-to-find ingredients. The only unusual thing on my list was miso, which I thought would be easier to find than it was. They didn’t have any at Shaw’s, even though they have a decent enough health food section. I did find some at Stop & Shop, though…they have a larger selection of Asian foods than Shaw’s does. I’ve never had this before, it’s supposed to be there to add an interesting flavor to the lentil soup. And many recipes in this book call for it, so it’s good to have it on hand.

Just a heads-up, though…this is NOT a low-fat, low-carb diet book. She does use a lot of carbohydrates, such as pasta and rice. And, although she doesn’t use butter, she does cook with a lot of olive and other good oils. But you really do need all of that stuff for flavor, and yes, you DO need carbs as well for nutritional purposes. So, if you’re looking to lose weight, you might be better off looking for another book, as well as checking out some of the top diet pills that are available. Yeah, you may lose some weight if you give up eating meat, but that is not the primary goal of this book.

Once I cook the recipes that i selected and Mike and I have tried them, I’ll post back here as to how they turned out.

Recipe review: yummie meatballs

I got this recipe from Kat; you can see her post about this HERE.  This is  a wicked easy slow cooker recipe that is mega-tasty.

I had asked Mike to stop at the store on his way home for the three ingredients needed.  Finding a 12 ounce jar of grape jelly and an 18 ounce bottle of plain BBQ sauce was no problem for him.  Finding an 80-count bag of plain frozen meatballs, however, was a problem.  He came home with a 2-pound, 62-count bag of Italian-style meatballs.

It still worked.  I used my 3 1/2 quart CrockPot, it all fit nicely.  You put the BBQ sauce and the jelly in first, mix them together well…I used a wire whisk to make it nice and smooth.  Then the meatballs go in, mixed around in the sauce to coat.

Although this is a slow-cooker recipe, it;s NOT one where you can go out all day and leave it alone to cook.  Due to the high sugar content in both the BBQ sauce and the jelly, this MUST be stirred once an hour.  If not, then it will scorch and burn the bottom of your CrockPot.  I know that most slow-cooker recipes say NOT to open the pot and stir, and for the most part, that is correct.  But for this one, you have to.  And don’t worry about anything being undercooked…the frozen meatballs are already cooked through, so you won’t die from undercooked meat or anything.  Six hours on LOW was enough, even with the hourly stirring.

I made a loaf of French bread and cut it into sub-sized pieces, and served the meatballs that way.  You could also use store-bought hoagie (sub) rolls, if you’d like.

We had leftovers, and today for lunch I just put some in a bowl, zapped them, and ate then with a fork.  When Mike came home, he zapped up a bowl of them as well, but since we ran out of the French bread, he put them on regular hot dog rolls.

This recipe is not only extremely tasty, but very inexpensive as well. Try it!

Thanks again, Kat, for sharing this!

So I ordered some stuph today…

…from Amazon. Since they have free shipping on orders over $25, I made sure I ordered that much. I never have trouble finding stuph I want there.

I ordered the knitting DVD that I talked about earlier. I really think something like this is what I need to help me learn this once and for all.

I already had this Christina Cooks book in my shopping cart. I’ve been watching her TV show ever since we got the digital TV converter boxes, and I find I like it a lot. She’s completely vegetarian, in fact, she’s vegan, which means that she doesn’t use ANY animal products at all, not even cheese or eggs. But still, the recipes she does look very tasty, and seriously, would it kill us to do without meat and other animal products in our diet at least some of the time? I don’t think I could commit to a vegan or even a lacto-ovo veggie diet, but having a few meals like this a week might be good for us. And it’s easy to find the ingredients around here. I think I would enjoy cooking her way, at least a couple times a week.

I still had to add a whopping 12 cents to my order in order to reach $25 and qualify for free shipping. So, since I’m on a mission to learn to both knit and crochet, I found a crochet DVD that looked really good. Both this and the knitting one got lots of great Amazon user reviews, they’re cheap enough, so I don’t think I can go wrong here. I can’t wait to get it all!

Since I’m on a mission to do stuph to improve my health, and well-being in general…I think I mentioned that I’ve been working out every day on my new stepper machine…I am wondering if I should check out one of the several massage therapy schools in the area, and see if they offer discount rates. I mean, beauty schools offer haircuts and such by students at low rates, maybe I can go and get a nice cheap massage, as well. I know I could certainly use one!

Stay tuned for my progress on the knitting and crocheting thing, and for reviews of the DVDs that I get.

Three lousy stitches

Yesterday, I talked about trying to learn how to knit and crochet.  I mentioned that I had bought a couple of books at the bargain bookstore, but had yet to crack them open.

Anyhoo, I was watching that knitting show on CreateTV, the one with Kassie DePaiva, called Knit & Crochet Today.  Today they were making socks, and they made it look so easy.  It made me want to dig out those needles and yarn that I bought a hundred years ago, and attempt knitting yet again.

This time, I consulted Knitting For Dummies…I’m certainly a dummy when it comes to knitting and crocheting, and it does have pictures.  It took me forever just to get the damned slip knot thing down.  After that, I was able to do exactly THREE cast-on stitches.  That’s it…THREE LOUSY STITCHES.  After that, I just couldn’t get it to work.  I haven’t a clue why.

This is very frustrating.  Normally, I don’t have problems teaching myself to do things from books.  Years ago, when I actually used to wear dresses, I sewed many of my own, without a single sewing lesson.  I had just bought a few basic sewing books, started out with some easy store-bought patterns, and I managed to make some pretty nice stuff.  I never got into any really advance sewing, though, because the machine I had at the time was stolen from me by a long-ago boyfriend, may he rot in hell.

I have a new sewing machine now, but I haven’t used it yet.  Maybe I should re-learn sewing, instead of killing myself with this knitting stuff.  It’s certainly easier, at least it was for me back when I was doing it.

Another frustration I had this morning when trying to knit was the cats.  Allegra and junior were nearby, and they kept trying to grab at the yarn.  Well, they ARE cats, and don’t cats like to play with yarn?  Anyhoo, if I do try again, I’ll have to find a cat-free place in which to do so.  That is, if I can FIND any cat-free place around here.

The other day, I almost bought a knitting book that came with an instructional DVD, at Barnes & Noble.  But I was too cheap to spend the $25 on it, I was afraid it would be yet another failure.  But I was just looking on Amazon for instructional knitting DVDs, and I think that this one looks pretty good.  It got lots of great user reviews, it’s only $12, hard to go wrong.  Maybe I need video instruction, it might be easier than trying to use a book.

The only other option might be to find a yarn store that offers classes, but then there’s the issue with transportation, as in, I don’t have any.  I don’t know of any yarn stores on public transit, and I don’t have access to the car during the week.

I think I might be better off with a DVD and privacy.  With my kind of luck, I might get stuck with a knitting teacher who is impatient with beginners, and that would be annoying.

So I guess I will order that DVD, and see how that goes.