Easy Vegetarian Lunch

 It can be eaten any meal, any time... You can also choose different vegetables...

I never made this before, but I had an "assignment." What's the story? The Health/Sick Fund I'm in has some free programs for the 65+ crowd. One of them is a Weight Loss Group via Zoom. We had our second meeting this morning, and she assigned us to make a balanced non-meat meal. This is mine. 

Ingredients

onion

sweet potato 

          eggplant 

squash 

          orange lentils 

carrot

Instructions

cut the vegetables bite-size

put in baking pan

add water and oil

cover

Bake at 160 C until lentils and vegetables are soft.

I added a bit of soy sauce when I ate it. I never measure exactly, but it was perfect.

Endives, Recipes Raw and Cooked

I recently blogged that I had volunteered packing mushrooms and cauliflower for sale at Chavat Tekoa, the Tekoa Farm. As a thank you gift, we had been given a bag of endives. Now, to be completely honest, I hadn't a clue as to what endives are or how to serve/prepare them.

From the photo you can't see the size, so I must tell you they're relatively small, about the size of a skinny hand. While working with them, it occurred to me that they're similar to Chinese cabbage, which I haven't seen for decades. There's even a similar texture and taste.

Back to business...

I googled endives and found a variety of recipes, cooked and raw, plus some warnings. I even asked friends, who also warned... that they're bitter. Honestly, I didn't find them bitter at all. 

I used the recipes I saw as "inspiration." I almost never follow recipes exactly. 

Ingredients:

sliced onion

cut the endives lengthwise

apple sliced

olive oil and dehydrated dill

Bake 150c until it "looks cooked."

Our guests all enjoyed eating the endives, so I consider it a success. The reason for the apple was that I thought it would be nice contrast to the sharp/bitter endives.

You can use the same ingredients raw with less onion, or just add it to a salad. Actually, that's what I did. It was delicious.

"One Pot" Meal, Fish and Vegetables

There was a time when I planned on writing a cookbook. I thought of calling it "The Lazy Cook Cookbook," because I don't like complicated food preparation. This "One Pot" Meal of Fish and Vegetables served over simple cooked salad is so typical of the my sort of cooking.

This "One Pot" Meal of Fish and Vegetables can actually look quite impressive if you bake it in a nice dish. The colors can be stunning. Use any of the following ingredients or others. There's no real "right or wrong." Not all the ingredients are included in this version. Please let me know how your version came out, thanks.

Ingredients: 
fish, filet or whole fish
onion
sweet potato
squash
pumpkin
eggplant
potato
fresh garlic
cabbage
beets
zucchini
lemon or just some juice

Layer in your baking dish. To keep the fish moist, cover with onion or squash. Dribble a bit of vegetable oil before baking 190 Centigrade/380 Fahrenheit. 

Check that vegetables are soft and fish fully cooked before taking it out of the oven. Enjoy

Attractive, Easy to Make Healthy Shabbat or Anytime Food

Bake and serve dishes are favorites for my Shabbat Menu. Here are a couple of Attractive, Easy to Make Healthy Shabbat dishes you may like. I'm vague about quantities and ingredients, because I don't measure, and I also don't obsess about having specific ingredients. That's my approach to cooking:

• be flexible, spontaneous
• don't obsess

When I have an oven, not something I take them for granted*, baked vegetables are on the menu. I have a variety of bake and serve oven pans, so that even the simplest of baked vegetables can look very fancy.

The photo on the right shows "orange vegetables," baked with just a bit of cinnamon and oil. On a "bed" of onion slices, no need to cut exact anything, I placed carrots, sweet potatoes and pumpkin in that order. I bake them in a medium oven, heat from the bottom, until they look baked and are soft.

Tonight's main course is pretty much a "one pot meal," besides being "bake and serve." It doesn't include any carbohydrates, so if you eat carbs, have them on the side with salad.

I layered onion and squash, maybe eggplant, too, on the bottom of the baking pan. I used chopped/minced turkey (500 gram, just over a pound) with onion and a small 100 gram container of tomato paste, plus garlic.

Spread the turnkey on top, with a large spoon and then, as you can see, top with fresh tomatoes. I then added just a spoon or so of vegetable oil and then baked it in a medium oven, heat on top, until it drew from the sides of the pan.

You can substitute ground meat, beef, chicken or a combination. Consider it a version of a meatloaf or musaka.

Cooking should be enjoyable and creative.

Shabbat Shalom UMevorach

Have a Peaceful and Blessed Shabbat

*During the year before our kitchen was renovated, we didn't have a functioning oven.

Impressive, Easy Stuffed Vegetables

 One of the best and easiest dishes to prepare, if you want something "impressive," healthy and even limited in serving size is Stuffed Vegetables.

There was some chopped meat (about half a kilo, or over a pound) in the freezer I wanted to use, and I saw that some of the peppers in the fridge were getting soft, so I made a "shidduch."

I mixed the thawed meat with chopped onion, an egg, the "inside" of a couple of round squashes, about a half a cup of canned diced tomatoes and some garlic.

Then I filled/stuffed the waiting vegetables. I dabbed more diced tomatoes on top, added a bit of water and oil, covered it with foil and baked it in a hot oven. I considered it "ready" when the top looked cooked and there was liquid boiling on the bottom.

It was a great success and popular with everyone at the table.

Yummy Cauliflower Casserole/Kugel

Last week at our Book Bliss/Book Club meeting, one of my friends brought a totally irresistible Cauliflower Casserole/Kugel for our potluck dinner. I asked her for the recipe. She told me that she makes two versions, one dairy and the other parve, which is lactose free and good for vegetarians who eat eggs. The photos here are of the parve (lactose free) version, which she made a couple of days later.

She very kindly sent me her recipe. It is like many of mine; you don't have to be exact over every quantity.

Parve Cauliflower Casserole

1 800 gram bag frozen cauliflower, defrosted or lightly steamed, (I would use fresh)

1 medium onion, chopped

2 Tbl. flour

2 Tbl. oil

1/2 Tbl. salt

some pepper

1/2 cup mayonaise

3-4 eggs

Mix all together. Place in baking pan. Can sprinkle garlic powder or granules on top. Bake at 180 degrees C for around 45 minutes.

FOR DAIRY VERSION:

Double amount of flour and oil, use between 500 to 750 grams cottage cheese instead of mayonnaise. Can add a handful of grated yellow cheese to filling and sprinkled on top.

Eggplant Accordion

I served this all baked, of course, Friday night, and my guests were very impressed. It really is easy to make. As you can see I sliced an eggplant (on aluminum foil) not quite through. And then between the slices I placed thin slices of tomato, onion and garlic. Then I dribbled a bit of oil, and after that I wrapped it up well in foil and baked until soft.

Honestly, that was it. It was that simple.

Quick Shabbat Cooking with Minimal Water

This was not quite what I had been expecting... there have been major water problems in the Shiloh and Shomron areas, as far as we've been told. While I had been in New York, my neighbors had suffered from total lack of water due to shoddy infrastructure in the Mekorot Water System. Also, usually, when I return home, especially when it's late in the week, we get invited out for a Shabbat meal, but not this time.

OK, I'm an experienced and creative housewife. I found a way to prepare delicious Shabbat meals.

One thing that helps is disposables. I did the cooking, all the cooking in the oven in aluminum pans, and I made sure that we have enough disposable dishes and cutlery if needed. I even bought more disposable gloves and "wipes." And the kettle was full hours before "Shabbat.  And there are bottles of water all over the place.

Menu:

Baked Potatoes: unlike pasta and rice, you don't need any water for baked potatoes. I just slice them up a bit for quicker cooking and then wrap in foil and bake.You can't get easier than that.

Chicken: I cheated. I didn't do my usual soaking and pouring boiling water over it before baking. I just quickly rinsed the thawed (bought fresh) chicken under running water, and since we did have some water at the time I used my poultry shears to cut it into serving-size pieces. I squeezed fresh lemon juice over the chicken and added my usual paprika, black pepper and granulated garlic.

Baked in a hot oven, it was delicious as usual. Maybe I don't really need to do all that soaking etc...

Chicken Breast Plus: Since my poultry shears were out and chicken-dirty, I decided to use them to cut up the thawed chicken breast.

Over that I layered eggplant, mushroom, onion, tomato paste, fresh garlic and some oil in a disposable aluminum pan. I covered it with foil to be baked in a medium-hot oven. It tasted fine. I think it would have been even better if I had mixed up the tomato paste with oil, spices and water to make it more of a sauce.

Vegetable-Side Dishes: Yes, these too were baked in aluminum pans to save on washing, since we had no idea if there would be water. And considering that in the summer, dirty dishes and pots are a magnet for ants and other undesirables.

These are my usual variety of baked vegetables, as you can easily see. Basic ingredients, (not all in each dish,) are onion, squash, mushroom, eggplant, sweet potatoes and oil. I find that they cook more quickly in aluminum than in my ceramic or Pyrex baking pans. I suggest a medium heat.

For those of you who want specific temperatures and times, I'm sorry. Each oven is different. Also the smaller the pieces, the more quickly they cook. Just keep checking for smell and crispiness. I do not add salt.

Creative Vegetable Cooking

There are many people who have complained about my recipes, because I just can't give exact ingredients, temperatures, times etc. Sorry, for those of you who are too terrified of making "cooking mistakes." I guess that my cooking style would never work in a restaurant, because I pretty much never reproduce any food/dish exactly.

Maybe I'm exaggerating in this, but not by much. In recent years, not even my cakes are measured exactly, and cakes are more like a "chemistry formula" than vegetables. But I've discovered that after decades, pretty close to half a century of cooking, I've developed a "feel" for even my cakes and cookies. And since even the famous 1, 2, 3 cookies my kids adore, are really best and easiest produced with a food scale, I so rarely make them that I haven't replaced my broken scale for years, and I have still managed to make an irresistible version of them sans scale.

Back to my "Creative Vegetable" dishes. They don't need a scale, and you don't have to count, measure etc. All you need is a good covered pan/pot or an oven. I don't have a microwave, but I have no doubt, and would love your reports, that my creative vegetable dishes can just as easily be made in a microwave. 

Recently I've been on a fresh ginger kick. I even slice it into my quick oatmeal. I keep some root in the freezer and slice off a bit with a sharp knife when I want to cook with it. Leave it out for a few minutes to make it easier to slice.

The other day I "sauteed"* it up with onion, carrot, apple, mushroom and cabbage, plus some cooking oil.

When I bake my vegetables, I spread the same ingredients on a baking dish, bake 'n serve ones are fantastic, dribble some oil on top and then bake in a hot oven until seems ready. You may have to lower the oven's temperature, depending on your oven. Ditto about turning off before fully cooked, unless you're cooking more things afterwards.

I'd love to hear your reports of how your versions of my recipes are. So please don't be shy. Comment with reports and questions.

* my concept of "sauteing" is to put the cut vegetables in a good pot or pan, add some oil, cover and cook on low heat until softish. Turn off the stove when almost ready, because the pan's heat will continue the cooking for another few minutes.

Easy, Tasty and Impressive Eggplant Recipe

This past Shabbat we had a guest who is on a "no nightshades diet," so I had to separate the nightshade vegetables from the others in cooking and also in the salad. I have a number of friends who find their lives better sans nightshades. One of them wrote a bit of it up for me awhile ago:

A Jewish Grandmother : Here it is! The First Person Anti-Arthritis By Not Eating Nightshade Vegetables Report

Since I did have eggplant and other nightshades to cook, and my husband expected to eat them, I cooked them separately. As you can see here, I took the eggplant, sliced it and placed slices of tomato and fresh garlic. Then I poured a bit of oil on top, wrapped them well in foil and baked them until soft, in a pan, so the juices wouldn't drip all over.

It was very easy to make, impressive to serve and delicious, too. Also Kosher for Passover!!

Creative Vegetable Cooking

I don't cook by following recipes, and I don't shop to suit recipes either. I'm very flexible and creative. I try to buy the most reasonably priced and healthy and fun to cook produce, and then when the time comes to cook it, I just wing it, as the saying goes.

Usually I slice and layer the vegetables, onions on the bottom, eggplant next, then sweet potatoes and the more fun things like pumpkin and mushrooms. Of course it depends on what I have in stock and the mood I'm in. Carrots are always towards the bottom, because they take ages to cook and need the oil.

I'm not one for using salt and pepper in my veggies, just onion and fresh garlic. And I dribble some oil on top and bake uncovered until the vegetables are soft. Take a look!

#1 Before

#1 After

#2 Viewed from the side

#2 Viewed from above

#2 after being baked

They were both delicious and brought to our Shabbat hosts for two different meals. Both vegetable dishes are creative and healthy additions to any meal.

Fish and Vegetable Recipe, The True Story

I had this really good idea for dinner last night and optimistically placed all of the ingredients on the baking tray.

enough food for me and my husband
salad was separate of course

I figured that since I covered the salmon with thick slices of onion, it would be protected, and I also cut up the potato, squash, carrot and pumpkin. Yes, in theory I got it right, but the truth is that I should have cut all the vegetables, with the exception of the onion, much, much smaller. I was starving and nothing was ready, even though I had the oven on high and had turned it on before getting the tray ready.

So I took emergency measures. I removed the potatoes and squash from the tray and placed them in my large frying pan, cut it all into much smaller pieces, added some oil, covered and cooked it. Then after a reasonable amount of time I served us dinner.

Next time I must remember to cut everything very small!

Yes, it was delicious!! How could it not be?

Nine 9 Days Menu Ideas?

What do you serve during the "Nine 9 Days?"

Just before my husband left for work this morning, he asked what to make for himself tonight. Usually, he takes leftover cooked chicken, or whatever other fleishig, is in the fridge from Shabbat, soup too, with leftover vegetables and carbohydrates. He cuts a fresh salad and has a full meal when I'm working night shift.

Yes, that's my cooking routine. When I cook for Shabbat I made enough food for the week. It works for us. It's more complicated during the Nine 9 Days when fish a dairy are the protein. And this year it begins tonight, Thursday. I also have to calculate exactly how much to cook for Shabbat without being stuck with food we can't finish during the week or can't freeze. I'll make all of the side dishes in parve pots so they can be served all week long.

Easy "One Pot" Salmon and Veggies

I picked up more salmon, which I'll cook up as "one pot" baked meals, or use the same ingredients in a large covered frying pan.

Of course I'll make lots of vegetables, but I've stopped using much dairy. There are a few reasons for that:

1. Dairy food can end up very expensive.
2. Dairy food isn't as healthy as it's cracked up to be. Read the ingredients even in the simplest dairy product.
3. Dairy food isn't as filling as a piece of chicken, beef or fish.

Since both my husband and I are trying hard to keep the extra weight off, so I won't make carbohydrate based vegetarian meals. I was a strict vegetarian for twenty-five years, and I know how hard it is to keep weight off when not eating a satisfying animal protein.

I'd appreciate your input in the comments, thanks.

Baked Cheese and Vegetables

This was as simple to make as it looks. 

I layered sliced onions, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, some garlic and cheese in a baking dish. I added a bit of oil and...

I had a delicious "one pot meal."

There's no real recipe. Be creative.

Easy "One Pot" Salmon and Veggies

This is all it is, just salmon and vegetables to be baked:

Along with the salmon steaks there are potatoes, and onions and pumpkin and squash and whatever else you want. To keep the delicate salmon from overcooking I covered it:

Add a bit of oil, and then bake until vegetables are soft.

Simply Vegetables

I consider vegetables easy and fun to make. You can be so creative. Just keep a supply. Baking is my favorite method of cooking vegetables.

In this I have carrots, pumpkin, onions, potato, sweet potato and squash. All I added was some oil on top, just a few drops.

Try something similar and tell me how it came out.

Holiday Cooking, No Need to Gorge on Unhealthy Food!

In the Jewish world it's Holiday Time. We're in the midst of a three plus weeks of Jewish Holidays, from Rosh Hashannah to Simchat Torah.

My husband and I both lost a bit of weight a few years ago, and we don't want it to return. One of our tricks is to eat lots of cooked vegetables. They fill the plates, our stomachs but don't contain a lot of calories.  I've developed a few basic recipes which are very easy to prepare and impressive to serve. Some are almost, or can be entire meals. They are all healthy and diet friendly.

This is as simple as it looks and tasty, too. In a baking dish, bake and serve, I placed a squash, carrots, eggplant, pumpkin, a potato, onion and a tomato on the eggplant. All I added besides those ingrediants were granulated garlic and some oil on top.  I baked it in a hot oven until I could see that it was ready. Yes, it's that simple. When you cook like this, the flavor stays in.

Here's another dish made with the same technique but a different selection of vegetables. We brought it to the family who hosted us for a meal. It was a popular success.

I layered onions, eggplant, sweet potato, pumpkin and mushrooms. Because of the delicate mushrooms, it's recommended to cover with foil for some of the baking.

There's a limit to the amount of meat and poultry I'm willing to eat over six large meals in just three days or barely 72 hours, One meal that I prepared for just me and my husband was this salmon and vegetable bake.

As you can see, there are two pieces of salmon, sweet potato, onion, pumpkin and carrots. Yes, we polished off every single piece. It was accompanied by more vegetables and a salad, too.

A few months ago, I had bought some giant turkey wings, each packed separately and each large enough to satisfy two hearty appetites. That is especially if they are cooked and served with lots of vegetables. I cooked the last one for a meal my husband and I ate alone.

For a sweet "sauce" I used a small bottle of sweet Purim wine. This dish was our "tzimmis," a traditional sweet vegetable concoction served by many families on Rosh Hashannah. Besides the usual vegetables, carrots, sweet potato, pepper and mushrooms, I also added prunes, raisins and cinnamon. There was also water so it wouldn't burn.

Cook on a low heat in a covered pan until you're sure it's done. A trick to make sure the vegetables don't overcook and "disappear" is to leave them as whole or large as possible. Personally I can't stand overcooked vegetables. They loose their flavor and bulk. You can also add the vegetables later on during the cooking process, but this was very successful and absolutely delicious.

Try these cooking methods, and let me know how the food came out, thanks.

There Can Never be Too Many Vegetables

I cook according to what I have in my house. And when I cut and arrange the vegetables before baking them, it's like I'm doing a sculpture, a piece of art.

Don't you think so? Just dribble some oil and bake. It's just what you see, eggplant, onion, zucchini, sweet potato and pumpkin. Only the garlic hidden in the eggplant isn't easy to see.

Cooking That Gorgeous NS2 Shekel Kilo Zucchini

Last week when I was shopping for fruit in Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem's main open market, I spotted some giant zucchini in my favorite bargain stall for only ns2 shekel a kilo. That's only about 60¢ for 2 lbs 3 oz.

So even though they clearly aren't fruit, I just had to buy one. And of course I should have bought lots more. But stupidly being my usual doubting paranoid self I was sure there had to be "a catch," like maybe they weren't as good, gorgeous and fresh as they seemed. That's why I only bought one.

This is how I cooked/baked it. I layered the baking (bake and serve) pan with onions, then strips of eggplant, zucchini, slices of tomatoes and some fresh garlic, as you can see. I poured a bit of oil on top and then put it in the oven.

With the help of a vegetable-loving guest, my husband and I almost finished it all off on Friday night. And that was just one small part of a large meal which included soup, chicken, salad, rice and two other cooked vegetable dishes.

Stuffed Eggplant, The Ironic and Easy Recipe

If there's one thing you can say about my cooking mode, it's "easy."  You can also use synonyms like "simple."  I have these very vague memories about once making stuffed eggplant many years decades ago, and I never tried it again.  It would require following a cookbook while cooking, which isn't on my multi-tasking menu.  But then I bought these gorgeous gigantic eggplants in the shuk, Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda-Open Market, and they just cried out to be stuffed.

The only problem was that I really didn't know how to stuff eggplants.  So I called out to facebook friends for help, and Risa of Isramom sent me a link to a recipe, davka, based on something I had served her. Ironic isn't it?  I didn't know whether to feel flattered or stupid.  Click on or paste this for her recipe. http://isramom.blogspot.co.il/2010/11/low-carb-recipe-inspired-by-lunch-with.html I made mine a bit differently.  I'll explain with the photos I took.  The moral of this being that there are no real rules to making stuffed eggplant or most other things. Just enjoy and use what you have in the house.

Ingredients I used

• 1 very large eggplant (a few small ones would be perfectly fine, too)
• 1 medium onion, cut small
• a few pieces of fresh garlic; you won't get arrested if you use the powdered stuff
• some cooking oil
• a can of crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce or paste, or cut up a few ripe tomatoes
• 800 grams or a couple of pounds (or less) of chopped meat or poultry

First I sliced the eggplant in half and then cut the "inside" out from the eggplant.  You need a sharp knife and a grapefruit spoon to do it easily.

Place the empty eggplant shells in the baking dish.

Put the cut vegetables in the pot and add the onion, garlic and oil.  Saute a bit and then add the crushed tomatoes and after that the chopped meat.

Cook a few minutes stirring well and then stuff the eggplant.  If you end up with too much of a stuffing mixture, then take out some other vegetables to stuff. I used peppers, but you can use large tomatoes or squash or even just bake the mixture as a meatloaf.

Bake in a hot oven until well cooked. Remember that you've already partially cooked the meat so it shouldn't take call that long.

Enjoy!  We ate one of them on Friday night, and it was delicious!