mushroom and spinach frittata with tempeh bacon!

our recipe tonight is a favorite of mine - it comes from the 'moosewood lowfat favorites' cookbook. i can't find the recipe online, but i think i can give basic instructions here.

to begin with, you play the fun game of 'watch the spinach shrink.' rinse off around 10 ounces, and put in a pot and cover with a teensy bit of water. in just a few short minutes you go from this:

to this...magical!

in the meantime, chop up a bit of onion and some garlic and saute for five minutes. you may notice that the picture below looks suspiciously as though it contains a nice sized shallot, and not onion. this is because i had no onion, but i had a shallot. sometimes, in life, one must compromise.

here we have some mushrooms and thyme. add them to the mix and let everything shrink a bit and brown up...

in the meantime, we move on to the eggs. i think this is 3 eggs and five egg whites. usually one less whole egg, but the veggies were a little less in amount than what i usually have, so there we go. add the spinach, the mushroom/onion mix, some fresh dill, and a bit of feta cheese (i used low-fat)...

then, back in the pan we go.

while everything is cooking (around 8 minutes), i thought i'd break this baby out:

i'm a big fan of both tempeh and bacon, but i don't really eat the former anymore, so i thought this might be fun. into the pan with a bit of oil they go...

or, in my case, you put it in two pans, because they biggest one you've got now contains frittata. but don't let the smaller bunch burn, like i did. boo.

in the meantime, check the bottom of the frittata using a rubber spatula. when it looks well browned, put a large platter on top of the frying pan and flip the frittata onto the platter, and then slide it back in the pan so the other side can cook. here is a lovely picture of the flip onto the platter. you will look awkward doing this, but you will feel proud and accomplished when it is done.

and here we are. lovely. its good with potatoes, toast, or fruit. even tempeh bacon, this ease of which was quite nice, although i think i prefer the taste of tempeh that i've marinated.

p.s. this works great as leftovers.

chocolate jay robb smoothie!

i think i'm officially on the jay robb protein powder bandwagon. i've tried the whey protein powder in vanilla, and the egg white protein powder in chocolate. i'd prefer to be trying the brown rice protein powder in anything, but my supermarket doesn't have any and the jay robb website is OUT OF STOCK of all things brown rice. side note: how does this happen?

either way, i can officially say that, so far, jay robb rocks. breakfast was the chocolate powder alongside a banana, a few organic frozen berries, a handful of organic baby spinach, some light vanilla soy milk, and a few ice cubes:

i wouldn't go so far as to call this "dessert-like," but its definitely true that you can't taste the spinach. even though no one believes me. yum!

p.s. happy birthday to my aunt! you're awesome and i love you - cheers!

spinach and mushroom lasagna!

i made spinach and mushroom lasagna tonight.

it was going to be my first, full on, vegan spinach mushroom lasagna. as in, the kind with cheeze. because, i do pasta dishes that are naturally vegan all the time, but never any that have, you know, vegan type 'products' in them. but i was going to try an actual recipe that included tofutti and vegan shredded cheeze. i wrote down the ingredients i needed and went to the supermarket.

and guess what? they didn't have tofutti or shredded vegan cheeze. and, for various reasons, it just wasn't feasible tonight to trek on over to try the other supermarket. so, i decided i'd just improvise and buy what i thought would be the ingredients for a related vegetarian spinach mushroom lasagna. as it turns out, i did pretty well. only bought one thing that wasn't in the recipe.

and the first recipe i clicked on was one that i liked, which almost never happens. and, interestingly enough, the winner is some kind of hybrid in a green planet series that was developed by emeril but is owned by martha stewart. i don't make these combinations up. (click here to link to the original recipe).

i'm wondering if there's a dinner recipe on this blog that doesn't start out with onions and garlic. i don't think so. i'm certainly not breaking that chain now:

add some mushrooms...

and then the spinach...

and then tomato sauce (i also added some tomato paste), veggie broth, and spices. and there you have it - lasagna sauce!

mix low-fat ricotta with a touch of nutmeg. and there you have it - lasagna cheese filling!

assembly is easy: first layer no-boil noodles...

for the record, its hard to spread ricotta on noodles. not a TOP CHEF moment.

follow that with a layer of sauce...

and a layer of shredded mozzarella. repeat assembly 3x's.

this is what it looks like finished with some locatelli romano, pre-oven

and post-oven. done. i could have taken a pic of this on the plate, but, uh, it wasn't pretty on the plate, although it tasted quite good. but i think it looks pretty here, so here is where i will leave you. thank you and please have a nice day.

neko smoothie!

i have a bit of a cold, and this is sad, because i don't want one. well, i never want one, but i particularly don't want one now, because i have a concert to go to tonight: neko case is playing two hundred feet from my apartment.

this is very exciting for two reasons:

1) its neko case, and i lurve her

2) it two hundred feet from my apartment, and that's part of the appeal.

oh - and there's a third...

3) the club is TINY. there is a real chance my height won't work against me for once and i'll see the "stage" and we'll make eye contact and stuff.

anyhoo, the sicky thing. the sicky thing could, in all likelihood, impair my ability to enjoy myself and sing very loudly. in order to combat this, i've been having smoothies the last few days for breakfast as part of a healthy regimen. here is one of them...

they are comprised of a few ice cubes, a banana, some frozen, organic berries, organic spinach, and light organic soy milk:

did i mention the spinach? lots of it. this was just for me:

i tried to get an action shot of the blending. it sort of worked:

look at the results - you can see sort of see flecks of green amongst the slightly blurry, brown sludge:

drink up!

indian - aloo palaak and coconut rice!

yesterday i was searching the 'vegetarian times' website, and some indian dishes caught my eye. probably because i was in the mood for indian cuisine. i ended up with aloo palaak (spinach and potatoes) and coconut rice.

both were fairly easy recipes to follow. we'll start with the aloo palaak. you may find the recipe by (clicking here).

this is perhaps the only recipe i've ever used that's required me to defrost frozen spinach and then save the liquid. there is no exciting picture of me squeezing spinach liquid...well...because i needed both hands. instead, you get this:

and i took it and added potatoes:

and mixed it with various spices as found in the dizrections, and put it in a casserole dish. this is what is looked like before it was covered and baked for 45 minutes:

and after it came out of the oven - but right before i added the coconut milk:

and, here it is again after the addition of the coconut milk. immediate changes! just like magic!

and, here is it...i give you...light coconut milk!

i have shown you this coconut milk for two reasons. 1) it is in both the aloo palaak and the rice and so it is a bridge for the palatte, and 2) i walked around the supermarket for no less then 10 minutes* trying to find this darn thing, and so i hold this up in triumph. in fact, this post is dedicated to coconut milk.

*those ten minutes may have involved some bad words, and may have involved me actually walking down the aisle that held the coconut milk no less than three times. but don't tell anyone.

but i digress.

the coconut rice recipe can be found by (clicking here).

here is some of the prep work - butter, cinnamon, and garlic (for those of you who looked at the recipe, you'll note that there is supposed to be ginger up in this pot. however, the supermarket was OUT of ginger. i know.):

an incredible action shot of warming rice and various liquids, including the incredible coconut milk:

and look! coconut rice! except, don't tell anyone, it didn't have a very strong coconut flavor. next time will add the extra added optional coconut.

and here, ladies and gentleman, was the lovely finished product:

or was it?

there may have been some mostly-homemade naan that should go in the picture too, but i'm going to save it for tomorrow, because, as we all know, anticipation feeds hunger. that, and this post is already too long :)

smoothie!

green monster smoothie!

that's what all the other blogs call them. except that mine turned out a sort of brownish-sludge type of color, which would negate the 'green monster' title. see exhibit A:

i think the reason that it didn't turn green is because of the strawberries and the bananas. in particular, there were a lot of strawberries this time, as there was 3 pints for 3 dolla, so i loaded up, which you can see here:

the entire list of ingredients included the following: bananas, lots of strawberries, milk of choice, a little soy protein powder, baby spinach, ice. blended. pour into glass. like so:

then, you drink your breakfast. if you are disturbed that you are drinking your breakfast out of a 'grumpy dave's pub' glass, choose another receptacle.

or, if you like, pretend you are doing karaoke at grumpy dave's and sing your favorite song while drinking brown sludgy monster smoothie. i like to work within the 80's catalog. and since i am far from home, i like to represent jersey. might i suggest some bon jovi, or some bruce?

you're welcome.