Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Cast iron pan = Stone pot Bibimbap is one of my favorite foods, and it's also one of my favorite ways to use up whatever vegetables I have on hand.  I used to make it just in a bowl, and then I'd pay $17 at a restaurant for the luxury of having bibimbap in a stone pot. But THEN I watched this video of my current favorite YouTuber  Maangchi  make bibimbap, and I saw how easy the stone-pot part of the process was, and then I confirmed via google that you can make stone pot bibimbap in a cast iron pan! I just happened to have a new-to-me small cast iron pan, so I couldn't wait to make this happen. This is what I used to make, pre-cast-iron. Not anymore. The Maangchi video gives a good overview of the different ways to prepare vegetables. I generally improvise these days, but I've taken lots of cues from her. The one thing I do that I don't think is traditional is that I like to lightly pickle any carrots and cucumbers that I have, and then I add them cold at the

Celery, not mold. I used to not understand the attraction to deviled eggs, until I started putting crunchy additions into them: celery, raw onion, bacon, etc. Then they became one of my favorite things. The downside of adding crunch is that it makes them more addictive to eat, and I want to stand in front of the platter and down several of them at once and ruin my appetite for dinner. But I guess that's an ok problem to have. I used to improvise something involving crunchy things, mustard, and sometimes pickles or capers. Sometimes it would turn out great and sometimes it wouldn't. So for this Thanksgiving, I looked for a recipe that sounded similar to mine and found  this one on Food.com . And now I'm documenting it so I can replicate it in the future, because they were delicious. My changes from the original recipe: I omitted celery seed and added celery. I used white onion instead of scallions. I used caper juice instead of pickle juice, because it's w

Imagine kimchi in that blank spot of white rice. I forgot it this time. Ever since our favorite Korean restaurant closed, and we got another favorite that was even better, and then that one closed, I've been meaning to try making Korean food at home. I've looked at recipes on several different occasions and been intimidated by the fact that there is usually more than one ingredient that is unfamiliar to me. Cooking them didn't scare me, but I wasn't up for meandering through the Asian supermarket with an impatient toddler while trying to find them. Then I found this recipe from Connoisseurus Veg  on Pinterest, and it only had ONE unfamiliar ingredient, gochujang. And when I looked up what gochujang was, I learned that A) It should be easy enough to find in a regular grocery store and B) It's a fermented chili paste, and that sounds amazing. Sure enough, there was more than one variety in the easy-to-peruse Asian section of Market of Choice, and it is deli

If all of his smoothies are green, he won't rebel against the greenness, right? Miles loves his smoothies ("moomies"). I love that I can get spinach, avocado, and ground flax seeds into him with zero fuss. He's been eating things like this since he started having purees by spoon, but he was a little picky when I started adding non-fruit ingredients. Once he started drinking from pouches, I've been able to get more vegetables and other add-ins into the mix and he either doesn't notice or doesn't care. I invested in the (super cheap)  Squooshi Filling Station  and it makes the whole process super easy. I make a huge batch of smoothie, use the filling station to fill all of my available pouches, and if there are leftovers, I freeze it in large mason jars. I also freeze the pouches, just keeping 1-2 in the fridge at a time. Layers of ingredients, pre-mixing For the pouches to work, it's important that the smoothies are well-blended wit

The goodness of wings without the chicken. This post is brought to you by my obsession with the tempeh "wings" at  Hot Mama's Wings . Ever since discovering them, they are a constant craving. They are delicious, and it makes me so happy to get the buffalo taste and the blue cheese and the celery (they even serve it in a basket, like REAL WINGS) without the actual chicken.  The problems with their wings are that they require going to a restaurant, and also this is a restaurant where I will be tempted to eat fried pickles or tots or garlic fries. Plus the wings themselves are fried under the sauce, I assume.  Problems solved. I followed the same super-easy method as my beloved  BBQ Tempeh , lightly browning each side of the tempeh in a pan before covering it in sauce. And in this case, since I don't have to make the sauce (because Frank's Wing Sauce is perfect already), it's my new easiest recipe ever. The hardest part is rinsing and trimming a fe

A fried egg on top would be good too. I am updating this post with a brand new kimchi fried rice recipe. The one that was previously in this post was pretty tasty, but it was more complicated and way more calorie-dense. This one is something I could enjoy making on a regular basis. It comes from my favorite place,  Pinch of Yum . It's a pretty straightforward recipe, open to variation. And it's very forgiving of me never measuring anything. As long as I don't overdo the soy sauce, it would be hard to mess this one up. I followed the recipe pretty much as written, except I added a little bit of celery and onion because I had them, and I beat the eggs in a separate pan because I've never succeeded with the beat-the-eggs-in-the-middle-of-the-rice method. I also cooked the veggies all at once, not bothering to do the aromatics first, because I had prepped my ingredients the day before and dumped them all into one tupperware. It worked fine. It would be

Beautiful butteriness I've been craving seafood etouffee since leaving Bloomington, and my access to  Yats , in 2005. A few weeks ago, I made  this seafood creole  in an attempt to fulfill my craving with less butter and time, but it didn't do the trick. So on a long weekend with husband around to watch baby, I finally made some etouffee. Emeril's recipe  was the obvious choice, and I pretty much followed it exactly. My only changes were SLIGHTLY less butter (like a tablespoon less, because just that little bit made me feel better), a fresh tomato instead of canned, and veggie stock instead of shrimp stock, just because I already had some ready to go. Oh, and I used Chachere's seasoning instead of making Emeril's essence, because again, it was already ready. So delicious. I love the amount of spice, and the amount of richness in the sauce was just right. If every day could be a Yats meal, I would have served it with garlic bread on the side, but I deci

Maybe I should own two cooling racks. I think I originally started making these muffins as a way to use up leftover flaked coconut, since I don't make a lot of coconut things and I get antsy when I notice that there's a half a bag sitting in the freezer for months with no plan. Now, when I make these, it's only 50% to use up leftover coconut, and the other 50% is because they're really good.  I started with  this recipe , which is delicious, but has too much sugar and oil for my liking. I have slowly mucked with the recipe to get it to its current healthier state. It is presently healthy enough that I enjoy eating them without guilt, but they also still taste good enough to make them for other people. I loved these at all hours of the day post-baby, so I like to make these for people who are home with new babies. If I go too much further with the healthification (taking away more sugar and adding flaxseed and bran and oats), I'm not sure they will be suit

I really need to plant more parsley. This one time, my mom visited and made mushroom barley soup. I'd never had it before (which is weird), and I loved it. And when I tried to recreated it later, with the help of her memory, it just wasn't good. So I hunted down some recipes that didn't take too many ingredients or too much time, but they were bland. Then I found this one , which calls for Marsala or cream sherry. Which made me think of my favorite  mushroom gravy , which has red wine in it, and since I don't have Marsala or cream sherry, I decided red wine would do. It's delicious. It tastes kind of like the soup equivalent of mushroom gravy, especially when I have parsley to add. My modifications from the original recipe, aside from subbing red wine: I increase the amount of barley from the original recipe, because that's my favorite part. To compensate, I increase the amount of stock and also the amount of wine. I use beef stock instead of

Pretty oats. I found these on Pinterest while searching for ways to use up zucchini puree, since the baby now LOVES steamed zucchini and I saw no reason to spoon-feed him the zucchini puree that was sitting in our freezer. When I read the super-healthy ingredient list, it sounded like something I would concoct myself, except that if I had concocted it myself it might have been disgusting for a few trial runs, and I trusted that this was a somewhat tested recipe. Sure enough, it turned out exactly how I like it. Not very sweet, but sweet enough to not be disgusting. Not fluffy, but fluffiness is overrated. And it's FULL of healthy stuff. My hope was that the almost-toddler would also like it, since he's sometimes weird about baked goods but he loves oatmeal and banana and zucchini. And indeed, it's a hit! He devoured half of one with his breakfast this morning. They take a teeny bit more effort than I like to put into things these days, but I think it'

Unphotogenic steamy picture of an actually delicious and beautiful meal. I set out to make some kind of seafood etouffee ( Yats  style), but every time I look up etouffee recipes, I am discouraged by the amount of time and butter they require. But then I found  this recipe for seafood creole , and it sounded worth trying. I followed the recipe fairly exactly, except for a few simplifications. It's very similar to  cioppino , except requires more ordinary ingredients (no clam juice or red wine required, though red wine is great to drink with it) and it tastes good over rice, as an alternative to dipping crusty bread into the broth. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And it's spicier, or at least spicy in a different way. I like it. I made it with pacific snapper and shrimp, and it was great. Scallops would also be good, and crawfish would be perfect if I could find good crawfish here. The Recipe: 3/4 tsp oregano 1/2 tsp salt 1 tsp pepper

Melty spinach <3 On the winding road toward the perfect Indian lentil recipe, I'm not willing to say that this is "the one," but it's a good one. I intend to make this one for at least a while, until I'm inspired to find a new one. This recipe comes from the lovely  Aarti Sequeira , and I followed it exactly except: I doubled the spices upon recommendation from reviews on the foodnetwork site, I used powdered cumin instead of cumin seeds because that's what I had, I used chili-garlic sauce instead of serrano chile, and I added spinach. This recipe does take a few steps to make, but they're all fairly easy and the timing between them is flexible. Nothing gets ruined if the lentils soak too long or cook too long. I recommend eating it over rice with plain yogurt and Indian pickle. The Recipe:  1c red lentils 2c water 1 onion, diced 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 tb ginger root, grated 1 pint crushed tomatoes 1 tb chili-garlic sauce s