Fifteen Days Down!

I sure hope one of my goals for the year wasn't to blog more! We may be only 15 days into the new year, but so far I have been sticking to my goal of working out more and doing P90X. That's 15 straight days of working out for at least an hour. That's insane (for me anyway). Now technically you are allowed one "rest" day per week, but it's either rest or do the stretching dvd - and trust me, after 6 days of the other workouts I need the stretching. Even still, that's an hours worth of stretching to still make time for.

I printed out a calendar for us (same one I used last year - you can find it here) and wrote in all of our workouts so we can mark them off each day. I know neither of us wants to see a day without a cross through it so it's working pretty well so far! There was a brief moment eariler this week when I couldn't take the lack of being able to come home and cook dinner and really wanted to just skip it - instead we rearranged slightly and did the stretching routine that day and I was able to make a (pretty) healthy pizza!

Speaking of cooking - it's been tough not being able to do that as much. I really enjoy thinking of new meals and putting together a nice dinner. There really isn't time to cook after coming home from work and doing these workouts though. The freezing meals thing is going ok so far - I've made several batches of soup and yesterday I made an enchilada pie with roasted butternut squash, onions, black beans, corn, and tomatoes. We had the regular enchiladas for dinner and had enough leftover for the pie so hopefully that's at least one dinner and one lunch!

In an effort to have different dinner options I tried a new soup recipe today (if it were up to Jonathan I think we'd only ever eat that Italian Sausage Soup but I need a little more variety). I searched Allrecipes for their top rated soups and found this one for a Brazilian Black Bean Stew. It was well rated and I liked a lot of the ingredients so I decided to give it a shot, and of course make it vegetarian. I use Gimme Lean veggie sausage in place of the chorizo and added some cayenne to it for spice. I also used a little liquid smoke to replicate the ham flavor - not sure that really worked, but who doesn't like a little extra smokiness? There aren't any seasonings listed on the recipe - I threw in some cumin, red pepper flakes, and of course salt and pepper.

The soup was pretty good - maybe not quite as good as that Italian Sausage Soup, but at least there is something to strive for!  ;)

Hope everyone else is doing well with their New Year's resolutions or goals! It's not easy, but I guess if it was we'd have been doing it all along!

-C

Sunday Dinner: Spicy Italian Sausage Soup and Apple Pie

I missed writing about Sunday dinner last week - I was actually in San Diego (or really San Marcos) visiting a friend but we did make a nice dinner! She'd never had a delicata squash before so we made the stuffed squash I've posted on the blog before (veggie sausage, onions, mushrooms, apple, hazelnuts, etc) and it was a hit! I love making things that people have never tried and having them love it!

This weekend I knew I wanted to make soup since we had celery from the harvest box, still about a million carrots, and onions. Jonathan asked for sausage soup, which I had never actually considered as a soup ingredient. We did some searching and settled on a recipe for a spicy Italian sausage soup (I used the Field Roast version of Italian sausage of course). It turned out really good - I eliminated about half of the liquid from the original recipe to make it a bit more stew like and I think that was a good call, there would have been far too much broth otherwise. You can find the recipe as I used it below, or click the link to get the original recipe!

Spicy Sausage Soup (adapted from here)
1 package Field Roast Italian Sausage (4 links, ~3/4lbs)
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 stalks celery, diced
2-3 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp tomato paste
32 ounces vegetable stock (I actually used a vegan chicken flavored Better Than Bouillon)
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
4 medium potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
salt and pepper to taste

*Dice up the sausage and cook with a bit of olive oil until lightly browned - set aside.
*Saute the onion, carrots, and celery in olive oil for about 5 minutes - add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for another few minutes.
*Add the stock, seasoning, and potatoes and cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
*Add the diced sausage and test for seasoning - enjoy!

 I also finally got around to making that apple pie that I have been meaning to for quite some time. We have almost as many apples as we have carrots to use up (18 lbs from the Harvest Box alone - plus the apples we got at the Portland Cider Festival!). Luckily Jonathan doesn't mind peeling and chopping apples - that's my least favorite part - so he did that while I made the crust. You can find the crust recipe in my post about blackberry pie - it didn't turn out quite as good as that one, but it was ok. Pie crust takes lots of practice I suppose! I think mainly I just needed to roll it thinner - there's always more apples I suppose!

-C

Officially Autumn

The changing of the seasons is my favorite time - it all seems so new and exciting again! I've had a bit of a cold for the past few days, but that hasn't stopped me from jumping into Autumn food mode (and hey - colds are kind of part of the season too, aren't they?).

Here's a few photos from the weekend. Stuffed delicata squash on Saturday - this time the filling consisted of a vegan Italian sausage, onions, wheat berries, kale, and hazelnuts.

 More stuffed squash! <3

Sunday breakfast was round two of the tri-colored quinoa - this time combined with wild pears, dried cherries, and pecans.

Speaking of wild pears - Jonathan has gotten really into searching out edibles around where we live. This weekend he make himself a fruit picker (basically a pole with a hook and basket on the end) and came back with this bowl full of pears, apples, and plums! The pears are amazing.

Sunday Night Dinner: One of my favorite soups - Sweet Potato, Carrot, and Apple Soup (recipe below), with homemade French bread, spinach salad, and apple cider.

 

 By the way - the apple cider was totally homemade too! Jonathan's coworker has an apple press and a bunch of apple trees and was kind enough to let us try it out. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the process because Jonathan though that 9:30pm was a really good time to try this out, so we gathered apples and pressed all of the cider by the light of a headlamp. :)  The cider is amazing though - we only got about 2/3 of a gallon but I really hope we can go back (preferably in the daylight) and try it again!

Sweet Potato, Carrot, and Apple Soup

(Adapted from here)

2 Tbs Butter

2 Tbs Olive Oil

3 medium Sweet Potatoes, peeled and diced

3 large Carrots, peeled and diced

1 large Onion, diced

1 (or 2!) Apples, peeled, cored, and diced

1/2 cup Red Lentils

4 cups Vegetable Broth

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp: ginger, cinnamon, chili powder, black pepper, cumin

1/4tsp cayenne 

1. In a large pot, combine butter and olive oil - saute sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, and apples until onions are translucent.

2. Add lentils, spices, and vegetable broth. Simmer until potatoes are tender - about 30 minutes.

3. At this point you can either leave the soup chunky, blend a little of it using an immersion blender, or blend the whole thing in batches for a smooth soup.

Tastes like Autumn! Enjoy!

-C