Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

The potatoes are hiding. The chard in my garden has grown like crazy this summer. Previously my only chard recipe was  this pizza , which is delicious, but it was time to branch out. After some Pinterest searching, I came across  this recipe from Food.com  for saag using chard. This kills two birds with one stone - it uses up some chard, and it also continues my quest for a good saag recipe.  And it succeeded! This will be my go-to saag recipe for now, and I hope it works just as well with spinach when I don't have chard sitting around. In addition to the fresh chard, I used potatoes that I grew, garlic that I grew, and onion that I got at a farm stand. With all of this freshness abounding, I felt a little weird using curry paste from a jar. But the flavor turned out to be really delicious. Some of my Indian recipes fail from either my unwillingness to measure spices or from not having fresh enough spices, so I might start using  this curry paste ...

There would be more nori if the 2-year-old nori monster hadn't eaten most of it. Pre-parenthood, I used to make sushi a lot. Now I just throw a bunch of sushi ingredients in a bowl and call it good. It tastes almost the same. I vary the ingredients a lot based on what I have available. But with the  Oregon Lox Company  down the street, I almost always use their ridiculously delicious garlic-pepper smoked salmon as the protein. The Recipe: cooked rice (sushi rice and/or black rice), mixed with a splash of rice vinegar protein (smoked salmon or other) vegetables (I like avocado, cucumber, and green onions) sesame seeds or rice seasoning toasted nori soy sauce or sesame ginger dressing (below) Dump everything into a bowl and eat. Sesame Ginger Dressing: (adapted from  Spend With Pennies ): 2 tb soy sauce 1.5 tb avocado oil 3 tb rice vinegar 1.5 tb sesame oil 1 tb lime juice 1 clove garlic, minced 3 tb honey 1 tb ginger, grated 1 ...

If you put the feta under the veggies, it hits your tongue when you bite into the sandwich This is one of those meals I turn to after a stretch of eating poorly. It's light and healthy and has lots of veggies, but if also has bread and cheese, so I don't feel deprived. It's perfect on a hot day, too. I have varied ingredients depending on what I have and what's in season. This time, I had good lettuce in the garden, so I went with pretty typical salad ingredients. Other times, I've roasted vegetables and used that as the base of the salad. I would have added banana peppers if I'd had any, and I imagine that other people would enjoy olives in this. It's worth home-making the  hummus , especially if you have fresh parsley in the garden that can be blended into it. (See the green specks? So good.) And I recommend buying whole feta and cutting it into slices. It's less messy than crumbled feta, it tastes stronger, and it's usually ch...

Toddler's First Crunchy Taco For a long time, I've put  beans in my taco meat  to make it less meaty. But I'm in a phase of just really not liking meat at all right now, and I was missing the flavor and texture of a good old crunchy taco with ground meat. Beans alone wouldn't cut it. So it was time to figure out how to make tempeh taste good in taco form. I found  this recipe , which I didn't follow too closely, but it gave me the idea that ended up being the answer to flavorful tempeh taco filling. You toss the crumbled tempeh with taco seasoning and a few tablespoons of water, and let it marinate. That did the trick - all of the taco flavor I was craving. When I set out, I wasn't planning to deglaze the pan with pickled jalapeno juice, but it was really dry and the tempeh was starting to stick to the pan. It was the perfect solution, balanced out by the sweetness in ketchup and some extra tomato for flavor and moisture. It tastes better th...

Spring! This recipe comes from  Joyful Healthy Eats , found via Pinterest. It's simple, delicious, healthy, and easy to make. It's good warm, cold, or at room temperature, so it's perfect for potlucks. This is a keeper! My only changes from the original recipe are that I used walnuts instead of pecans (because I had leftover walnuts from making charoses), I grated a clove of garlic into the mix instead of using garlic powder (I highly recommend this), and I used more goat cheese (because goat cheese).  This is such a versatile recipe; it could be made with many combinations of vegetables and other ingredients. I should eat more quinoa salads. With goat cheese. The Recipe: 1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and chopped into 1" pieces olive oil and salt for roasting asparagus 1/2 c quinoa 1 c water 1/3 c walnuts, chopped 4 oz goat cheese 1 garlic clove 1 tsp red wine vinegar 1 tsp olive oil salt, to taste Coat asparagus in olive oil a...

It was actively bubbling... I should have taken video instead. Several months ago, someone posted on the "Eugene Foodies" Facebook group that they made pizza with a base of Toby's Feta Dip and sriracha sauce. And there was bacon on the pizza, along with some other stuff that didn't interest me as much. This sounded amazing, and I love Toby's Feta Dip, so I made a mental note to try it the next time I had the dip on hand. On this first effort, I used too much dip - I applied as much dip as I would tomato sauce. I knew this wouldn't be health food, but I didn't anticipate just how creamy and oily the pizza would be. It was delicious, but next time I'll cut the amount of dip in half. I did the dip to sriracha ratio by slowly adding more sriracha and tasting along the way. I stopped when there was just a subtle kick. I think next time I'll try it spicier, but this was good. For people who like roasted red peppers, I feel like that wo...

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...