Cupcakes Friday! That's Quinoa Cupcakes for you...

Went on a long run this morning and started feeling hot and tired all at once. This week Reno is having yet another heat wave and as we train for our first half marathon, we agreed to wake up early enough to run while its cool and nice out.....well we slept in - I'm smiling because when I say slept in I mean we were up and about at 8am not too bad - and off we went on our run. I felt hot and tired half way through.. a good technique to get back in to the groove and into running stronger is take your mind off from what it is that's bothering you. Easier said then done, but really, we feel that running is a mental challenge as much as it is a physical one. And once your mind quits on you, running past that point is almost impossible.

So back to our run, it is much easier to run with a partner and much easier when you have a goal in front of you - like an up coming race - but sometimes that is not enough and you need to take your mind off the heat and the time that's left to your run - I think about food. planning meals, inventing now recipes, trying new way to dress up a salad, usually healthy breakfast (we are morning runners) so eggs play a good part in my running motivation.
Today we were in a pickle - we had only two eggs at home - two eggs, two of us, not so promising... the reason for this debacle is the more we learn about animal farming and the more we study about the effect of animal products on humans we choose to not eat them. When we do buy eggs, we buy it from a girl that started a chicken farm and she treats the chickens almost as pets, the chickens are free and happy and the eggs taste beautiful. I didn't buy new ones last week, and so we had only two.

No problem! We can make Quinoa cupcakes with 2 eggs! Ok - running just made easier - starting to change an old recipe to things we have in the fridge. This is what I got:

Quinoa Cupcakes:

2/3 cup of dry quinoa - cooked with 1 1/2 cups of water. (boil and reduce heat for about 20 min)
1 1/2 cups of zucchini squash
2 eggs
2 celery stalks chopped
1 cup cilantro chopped
1/2 hot pepper chopped
1 tbsp. Rogan Josh (seasoning mix we got from Ali and Andrew :) - it's paprika, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, and some hot peppers. Next time I would use 2 tbsp. of Rogan Josh - it is so good you can't go wrong.

Mix it all, fill your lightly oiled cupcake molds and put in the over. 350F for 20 - 25 min. If you wait for them to slightly cool down they will come out perfectly!

Sprinkle cores salt when they are ready and serve with a nice salad, this is a good brunch or potluck item. If you have leftovers - they are good cold or warm the next day.

 This is our herb and flower garden - can you think of a better way to start your day?! Well this is all for now - Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend and be kind to one another.

Bob & Yifat

Veggie Burger Delight!

 

Every once in awhile, we will get in the mode of eating a burger. Is it only me?! or do you get happy memories of having one, and you get excited when you know eating a burger is in your near future!?
For me it works even as my significant other is cooking one of his special veggie burgers, I think I get even happier because they are so good and they are healthy - keeping my conscience clean!

last night he informed me "we are having a burger" and as I grew happy and worried free, he started to get irritated, "we don't have half of the things the recipe calls for" and "how can you find anything in this mess?!?!?" that would directed to my pantry - which I have to admit got a bit out of control. my glass jar collection of nuts, seeds, dried beans, teas and other goodies gave birth to some more jars - otherwise I cant really explain what is going on there...  but that's a side note, back to our burger dilemma - trying this recipe or not, for me there was no going back, my stomach was thinking about this yummy burger and so helped switching flax meal with a mix of chia seeds and hemp seeds (hey - they are all super foods and get sticky with water - how can we go wrong?!) and Bob was ready to do the best he could with what we had. 20 min later we ate a delicious burger and no, no fries, but a wonderful summer salad in front of the T.V - hey we are humans after all ;)

Bob's burger is based on this veggie burger recipe, but we replace the following: Dulse for Mushrooms, Flax meal with a mix of Chia and Hemp seeds horseradish-flavored mustard with horseradish and surprisingly we had TVP (textured vegetable protein)! While he was working on that I found 2 (lucky for us) frozen sprouted whole wheat buns and had time to experiment with left over beet salad and an avocado. It was a short experiment - you chop and mix all the ingredients (I used our vita-mix) plus a lemon and a bit of salt and the results are an amazing spread to use on your bun or as a dip for your veggies. The color ,rich purple, makes it so much more fun and special.

I think last night's burger had an all together different taste from the original - but now that we actually bought Dulse and Flex meal I'm ready to give this receipt another try!

Have a wonderful worth sharing testing in your kitchen,
Bob and Yifat

Do you love your farmers market?

Here's to being in-love!
I'm in-love with the city we live in, with my husband, with the weather and with the farmer's market. 

Reno is such a cool place. Around town we have so many farmer's markets and our community embraces them. Every Saturday morning we are going to the closest one, within 2 miles, usually with some vague plan that is ready to be changed based on what is available, looks, tastes and smells good to us.  Many times I will see something new and unfamiliar and I will ask the farmer what it is and how to cook/eat it. Bob will shake his head and look at the watch. Saturdays are not to be spent in conversation with strangers :)

We try to eat fresh ,local grown, sometimes organic vegetables and fruit throughout the year and fresh fruit is something I really miss during the winter! Now I'm finding myself waiting for the weekend to see what else we can find.


Last week we bought 3 lemon cucumbers to try in a salad, and a herb name Lovage to grow in my herb garden.


Lemon Cucumber and Dill

What is really cool is how the veggies themselves change. Garlic is the best example, several weeks ago green garlic was really green, we used it all the time in salads and egg dishes. It was really mellow. Each week the green garlic has gotten closer to its mature state with distinct cloves. Until then it is tender with very little of the parchment type skin it gets when more mature.
  

On a typical Saturday we'll get home and start planning our lunch which will usually involve one or two salads, a veggie dish and maybe some fruit.
 

This weekend we had great finds, and we BBQ'd; corn on the cob, turnips, interesting looking squash and fresh garlic - all turned out wonderful and we made a soy-garlic sauce to sprinkle on top.



Corn, Garlic and Squash BBQ!

 

Our Table

My plate half way

To pair with it, from with last week craziness (we bought this silly amount of beets), I chopped all of them and made a fresh beet salad with a third and bagged the rest for a quick add-in to salads and shakes. 

you can see a similar beet salad we have done before here.

It turned out to be the perfect Saturday with friends dropping by and having a watermelon on our newly cleaned deck.

Have a wonderful week and eat veggies!
Bob and Yifat
 

 

 

 

First BBQ, parties and other reflections

 Spring is here. Time to start dragging out porch furniture, cleaning our deck and dusting off the BBQ. This is exactly what we did with warmer than normal temperatures over the last few weekends. And when I say BBQ - I mean BBQ and dinner parties (too many parties -one of the reasons we are late on posting)

One BBQ menu was eggplant and corn on the grill while smoky veggie chili was cooking on the stove, and a side of spring green salad with apple. The weather was so beautiful I forgot to take pictures of our meal, except maybe the best part of the day - the dessert! after our meal we played Mexican train - which if you are not familiar is a domino game that is a blast. A few rounds later we served espresso in some glasses we bought during our last trip to Israel and a raw carrot cake. The recipe for this cake comes from a raw food blog that I'm enjoying reading and was totally fantastic. The cashew butter was to die for and I had to remind my self how much this cake is rich in calories to get me to stop from eating the whole thing in 3 min.
 

 Since we are trying to cover here the three weeks we didn't write I'm going to share more dinners with you - ahi tuna salad and baked cauliflower. Both really simple to cook, but requires some tricks. The first one is for your ahi tuna, we prefer rare which means warm in the center. This is harder for tuna than for meat. My technique is a very hot pan to sear the tuna than remove from heat and cover. This allows the tuna to continue cooking but makes it easier to prevent over cooking. The times vary based on how thick the fillet is. for up to 2" searing should be only a few minutes and covered cooking another 4 or 5. You can check with a sharp knife before slicing.  The second tip is your cauliflower - this is from my mom - to save time in the oven first put it in boiling water for about 10-15 min, until it's half done, then remove it and place on cooking sheet with some oil and seasoning and bake if at 400F for 25 min or until it's done. (soft and sweet)

 

 

 That's it for now - Remember - It's not what you have in life, It's who you are sharing it with!

Yifat and Bob.

Bright Eggs and Beets

We went shopping at the local Food Co-op this week, we were nearby and had read an article in the newspaper about local eggs. The article talked about organic, pastured eggs. A little more research piqued our interest as these eggs are supposedly more nutritious and tasty. A little more creativity and we had a very delicious breakfast; a combination of kale salad, eggs and fresh mushrooms from our Co-op, a perfect combination.

If you are interested here is what we learned:

The typical grocery story egg ("conventional" in the egg business jargon)- chickens are caged and do not have access to grass, bugs and sunshine. Pastured eggs are the most expensive and the birds get sunshine and bugs if they can find them (that's a good thing!).

A visit to the American Egg Board’s website turned up nothing about pastured eggs but did have definitions of cage free, free range etc. They did have a nice jingle Press here for Jingle website.
A visit to the American Pastured Poultry Association (APPA) didn’t turn up anything controversial. The most interesting thing we found was in the local Co-op’s newsletter which quoted from a 2007 Mother Earth News article about egg testing that stated that pastured eggs can have:

• 1/3 less cholesterol;
• 1/4 less saturated fat;
• 2/3 more vitamin A;
• 5 times more vitamin D;
• 3 times more omega-3 fatty acids;
• 7 times more beta carotene;

than a conventional egg (http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-10-01/Tests-Reveal-Healthier-Eggs.aspx#ixzz2IGhoQ0HM).

We would also like to mention two tasty salads we ate this week, the first is a beet salad - low in calories and highly nutritious: rich source of B-complex vitamins, minerals such as iron, manganese, copper, and magnesium. Beets are also known as “cardiovascular health friendly" root vegetables -certain unique pigment antioxidants in the root as well as in its top greens have found to offer protection against coronary artery disease and stroke, to lower cholesterol levels within the body, and to have anti-aging effects. With all that said beets also have a wonderful sweet taste when cooked. The red juice can and will be messy and will paint everything in a beautiful red color including your insides ;)
This wonderful salad can be made in advance as the flavor strengthens with time (hours to one day).
For this salad combine 4-8 small beets, fresh cilantro and parsley leaves, one stalk of celery chopped, 2- 3 green onions and 1/2 hot green pepper or to individual taste, lemon juice, olive oil and salt.

Our second salad is fresh colorful garden salad with sauerkraut and olive oil for dressing!



That is all worth sharing now, off we go to enjoy the rest of this beautiful spring sunny Sunday. We would love to hear back from you - so leave a comment if you like.
Bob and Yifat

Cravings

Winter Sky

The winter is dragging on and we are hoping that spring is around the corner, at least we have convinced ourselves that it is. It is the time that a little bit of laziness creeps in, not enough sunshine, too much cold and dark. It is the perfect time for comfort food. At least this is what you tell yourself. My all-time favorite comfort food is potato chips, I think Yifat's is chocolate, but it isn't fair since chocolate is good for you. I can't say the same for potato chips. I think next to potato chips it is a hamburger and I know this is high on Yifat's list. Cravings are centered somewhere deep in our DNA telling us to eat more fat and protein. There are better people than me that probably can ignore them, I can't all the time; but there is hope. This difficulty we have staying away from fats is backed up of course in scientific studies and general knowledge of ourselves.

There was a study released in February entitled Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303#t=abstract. The study finds an inverse relationship between a Mediterranean Diet and the cardiovascular risk. The Mediterranean diet is defined by Wikipedia as” inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of southern Italy, Greece, and Spain The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and low consumption of meat and meat products.” The study has been criticized because (read the comments) lack of control on the “low fat group”, funding by “food companies” and general weak statistical significance.
We think a more interesting take is that it is difficult to stay on a low fat diet for a long time and there is a growing body of evidence that consumption of fats are important to overall health. For example a good summary article about Omega 3 fatty acids (http://www.ecmaj.ca/content/178/2/177.full) explains that “Consumption of recommended intakes of omega-3 fatty acids may lead to a general increase in the overall health and well-being of the population.” Ok why all the science? In the end it is about making decisions everyday about what to eat and knowing that in a world in which you are surrounded by bad choices you will occasionally make a bad choice. I have found a substitute for my beloved hamburgers, which is so good I barely miss the real thing. The Portobello burger which I have been eating for years and generally curbs my desire for a meat burger.

 

The way to cook this burger is simple - heat a pan with olive oil until hot- add Portobello and sear on both sides. Reduce heat and cover. In the meantime tart toasting the bun with olive oil. The Portobello should be done in 5 minutes after searing. We chose goat cheese, sundried tomatoes and red onion for our toppings.

That's all for today! Bob and Yifat  

What's for Dinner? Whole Fish in a Salt shell



Easy Meal 

"..I feel like whole fish for dinner, but I don't feel like cooking or doing anything to the fish... oh man, we should just go out..." Does this sound familiar? Does cooking whole fish sound too challenging? Well, we have news for you! This is actually how we started our week craving a nice whole fish (like we had in Jaffa, Israel by the sea) and we did not feel like spending a huge amount of time on it. We decided on a simple technique that resulted in a great meal.

All you need is a fresh fish or two, depending on your hunger level (or how big your eyes are..), sea salt - one pound for every pound of fish and egg white (I used an egg substitute and it worked fine). make a mixture from salt and egg white, place  1/3 in a baking pan, place the fish in center, if you have more then one fish you should create good spacing between them, than cover the fish with the rest of salt mixture and bake at 420 F for 25 min for a 2-3 lb fish. If you have a large dinner party a bigger fish would do the trick, just remember to think in advance if you have that much salt and a good size baking pan. Remember a bigger fish would require a longer time, a general role would be to add ~ 10 min for every pound. For example a 5 lb fish would require 45 -50 min in the oven.
After the oven let the fish rest for about 5 min, than use a knife to break the crust. The fish will be moist, creamy and just absolutely wonderful! Enjoy and watch for bones.

 

Break the hard salt shell and dig in while it's hot!

 

We selected Brazini (AKA European Seabass) and had it descaled and gutted at the market.If you are into sustainability then you should review the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch when shopping for fish or selecting fish in a restaurant. They even have an app for a smart phone. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_recommendations.aspx?c=ln. We got the Brazini at Whole Foods which does well by another guide or better described as a scorecard http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/oceans/seafood/. Whole Foods does ok forget about Trader Joes.

Leave you with these beautiful flowers we enjoy around the house.
Happy Purim and have a great rest of your weekend, Bob and Yifat.