Cookies & Cocktails Plus Catching Up

It's been awhile again. I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately I guess. It's an overwhelming time of year - work is busy wrapping up for our holiday shutdown, busy trying to think of presents for everyone (and realizing Christmas is in less than two weeks!!), busy cooking, and busy spending time with friends. Those aren't bad things it's just sometimes it all gets piled on at once and stresses me out a little.

But enough of that - there are a few exciting recipes I have been wanting to share from the past few weeks! The first is for this salad - it pretty much has everything that is great in it: kale, pineapple, avocado, black beans, and peanuts. You can find the recipe here. I more or less just followed it.

I made the salad to go along with a West African Peanut Stew. My coworker sent me the recipe for this one and I'm not sure where they got it from, so I will share it with you here!

West African Peanut Stew
2 c. onion, chopped
1 T. vegetable oil
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1 t. powdered ginger
1 c. carrots, chopped
2 c. winter squash or sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
5 c. vegetable stock
3/4 c. smooth peanut butter (I used chunky and omitted the chopped peanuts)
1 T. sugar
1/2 c. diced green onion
1 T. chopped peanuts

Sauté the onions over medium heat for 3 minutes.  Add the cayenne and ginger.  Add the carrots and squash.  Add the stock, cover and simmer about 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.  Puree with a hand blender if desired - I did only slightly, not until it was anywhere near smooth.  Add the peanut butter and sugar.  Season with salt and pepper.  Stir until blended.  Serve topped with green onions and chopped peanuts.

The next recipe doesn't have a great photo to go along with it - sorry, I was hungry after this pre-P90X workout! More on that later. I had some leftover pumpkin from making cookies that I needed to use up, and I'd been curious about these pumpkin and squash mac and "cheese" recipes I'd been seeing lately. I loosely followed this recipe here, except I cheated a little and added ~1/2 cup of smoked Gouda since I had it leftover. I didn't have any sage (or at least I didn't want to go out in the dark and rain to pick some) so I used some thyme to season it. The sauce was a bit thick so I thinned it a little with some pasta water - I think I could have actually used a little more since it was still pretty thick. I thought this was delicious though - super creamy and flavorful and a bit healthier alternative to regular mac & cheese with all of the comfort.

I've been doing a lot of holiday baking and candy making recently too. Here's a few things I've tried out so far:

Spritz cookies (fun with the cookie press!)

 Homemade Peppermint Patties (first time I attempted tempering my own chocolate - mixed results but better than I feared!)

 Caramel Pecan Bars (I have about a million of these since I used the recipe from the large batch cookbook!)

 This past weekend we had out annual Cookies & Cocktails party - I love entertaining and this party is pretty simple since you're asking people to all contribute a holiday treat. We always have a ton of food and end up with not enough table space to even display everything! It's a nice chance to get all of our friends together to hang out and surprisingly I think almost everyone actually likes the dressing up part - it certainly makes it more festive! Check out how nice everyone looked! I think the guys win this year - they all looked very fancy.

We had a smaller turnout this year - December is a tough time to schedule events! It was great fun though and luckily my coworkers willingly ate every single leftover that I brought in today!

Hope you're all getting ready for the holidays without too much stress - if so, let me know how you're doing it please!

-C

Sunday Dinner: Warm Sweet Potato and Kale Salad (plus my take on Chex Mix!)

We've received quite a few sweet potatoes in our CSA box in the past couple of weeks. I was thrilled because I absolutely love sweet potatoes, but for some reason they have sat on our window sill ever since we got them, entirely unused.

I was determined to change that today, and I had intended to make some sweet potato and black bean enchiladas - turns out we had neither black beans nor enchilada sauce and I was not about to go out in the cold and face the pre-Thanksgiving crowds at the grocery stores. Instead I started browsing foodgawker for sweet potato recipes trying to find something that used ingredients I already had at home. I came across a recipe for a grilled sweet potato and zucchini salad that looked very pretty, but I only had some of the ingredients so I started improvising. Here is what I came up with:

Warm Sweet Potato and Kale Salad (adapted from here)
1 large or 2 small sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
1 small onion, sliced thinly (about 1/2 cup)
1 cup frozen corn
1 link Field Roast Apple-Sage Sausage, diced
5-6 leaves of kale, stems removed and cut into thin strips
1.5 T  balsamic vinegar
3 T extra-virgin olive oil (plus extra for sauteing and roasting)
1 T fresh chopped rosemary
1 T chopped fresh oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh Parmesan cheese (shavings or shredded)

1) Preheat oven to 425 - toss the thin slices of sweet potato with olive oil, salt and pepper and arrange on a baking sheet in a thin layer (my baking sheet was too small to do a single layer so I stacked them into two layers and it worked fine). Roast for ~10minutes, turning once or twice, or until sweet potatoes are soft and some are slightly crispy on the edges.
2) Saute the onions over medium-high heat until soft, add the diced sausage and cook for another few minutes. Add in the corn and cook until heated through.
3) Combine the oil, vinegar, herbs, salt and pepper in a large bowl - add in the warm sweet potatoes and the onion, sausage, corn mixture and toss to coat. Pour over the chopped kale and toss - let sit for a few minutes until the kale is slightly wilted. Top with the shaved parmesan.

I really enjoyed the end result - Jonathan said it was interesting, which is usually code for not something he is crazy about, but then he ate about three servings of it and continued to eat out of the severing bowl after he was done. I think that means it was pretty good.

Now on to Chex Mix. This is another food item that I have strong opinions about, it is not something that is to be bought pre-made from the store, or even made in the microwave (I don't even know how that is possible or why they would advertise that). Like pie crust, Chex Mix is something my Grandma has always made and she passed that love on to me. It's really super simple, but so so so much more delicious than the store bought kind.

Every time I make Chex Mix I think about the first time I helped my Grandma make it - I wasn't a young child, I was 15 and my boyfriend at the time had recently gone vegan. He had always really like my Grandma's Chex Mix though so I decided that I would make a vegan version of it for him and his sister who was also vegan. I got some Earth Balance to replace the butter and went to work. I was pretty proud of my vegan Chex Mix, until I brought it to their house and his mom - looking amazed - asked me where I found Worcestershire sauce without anchovies.  And that was one of many lessons in reading labels for ingredients, because it had absolutely never occurred to me that this sauce we were adding to the mixture might possibly have some component that wasn't vegan, let alone vegetarian!

Well good news for me - there really is a vegan version of Worcestershire sauce! I may not have used it that first time, but at least I learned. There aren't many ingredients involved in making Chex Mix, and I narrowed my own version down even more so it has just the things I like in it. You see, if you used mix nuts then I would spend the whole time searching for just the cashews, so that's all I use.

You'll need: wheat, corn, and rice Chex cereal, cashews, pretzels, butter, Worcestershire sauce (vegan!), garlic powder, and seasoning salt.

1) Preheat the oven to 250 - while the oven is heating I use this time to melt the butter, just throw the whole stick (yep - all 8 Tbs.) into a large pan - and I mean large - and place in the oven to melt.
2) Mix 2 Tbs. of Worcestershire sauce with 1.5 tsp of seasoning salt and 1 tsp of garlic powder. When the butter is melted, pour the seasoning mixture into the pan and whisk together until combined.
3) Pour in 1-1.5 cups of cashews, 1 cup pretzels, 2 cups wheat Chex, 3-4 cups each of corn and rice Chex. Mix well to combine with the butter/seasoning mixture.
4) Bake for 1hr 15 minutes, stirring well every 15 minutes. Pour onto paper towels to cool - and really wait for it to cool, for whatever reason warm Chex Mix does not taste very good.
5) Try not to eat the whole batch in one sitting. It's tough.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoy some time with family and friends! Next weekend we can look forward to Christmas trees and watching Christmas Vacation - yes!

-C