Meatless Monday Menu Week 7: Creamy Garlic Dressing

Buy local vegetables, dress up your salad, and shrink your carbon footprint.  During this time of year, there are many varieties of vegetables that are in season.  Head out to your local farmers' market and choose your salad ingredients.

If you are looking to give your salad a dressing, try making your own.

Creamy Garlic Dressing:

Ingredients

3 Tbs plain yogurt or sour cream
2 tsps garlic powder.  Minced garlic works well also.
1 1/2 tsps Italian seasoning or herbs
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Directions

1.  Place all the ingredients in a bowl.  Mix with a fork and it is ready to serve.

2.  Adjust ingredients according to taste.  We are garlic lovers so we tend to add extra garlic.

Skip the meat, eat the salad, reduce the CO2.

Meatless Monday Menu: Week 6

Our Meatless Monday Menu dinner for this week is a delicious vegetable lasagna.  You can build this dish around local, in-season vegetables.  While not consuming meat will lower your carbon footprint, using locally grown vegetables will further minimize your carbon footprint.  Here's how we did it.

Ingredients: 1/2 box of no boil lasagna noodles
Your favorite pasta sauce. The amount varies depending on the amount and type of vegetables you use.
2 cups of cottage cheese
1 egg
2 tbs of olive oil
2-3 tsps of dried Italian herbs
8 ounces of shredded mozzarella cheese
Olive oil for greasing the casserole dish
Salt
Pepper
Parmesan cheese

Vegetables: We used the following but feel free to try different vegetables or combinations.
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red onion, cut into roughly 1 square inch pieces
2 sweet peppers, cut into strips
10 baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1 eggplant, sliced

Directions:
1. Wash and cut vegetables.  Place the olive oil in a large a skillet and heat until hot but not smoking. Add garlic and onion and cook until tender stirring occasionally.  While it is cooking, grease a large casserole dish and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. When the garlic and onion is tender, add your other vegetables to the skillet, stirring frequently.  Season with salt and pepper. While the vegetables are cooking, place the Italian seasoning, egg, and cottage cheese in a bowl and stir.

3.  Once all of the vegetables are tender, its time to add your favorite sauce.  Ideally, you want the vegetables to be well coated with sauce, but not drowning in a skillet size swimming pool.  Simmer the sauce and vegetables for a few minutes.

4. Now for the fun part, assembly.  If you use no boil noodles like I did, do not, under any circumstances, not even as part of a five dollar bet, put the noodles on the bottom of the casserole dish.  (They will just be very hard and you will have an odd lasagna like pie with a hard crust.)
Place some of the vegetable mixture on the bottom, then cover the mixture with noodles.  Then cover the noodles with the cottage cheese mixture.  Repeat the pattern until you run out of the vegetable mixture.  The final (top) layer will be covered in mozzarella cheese.  We like to sprinkle some parmesan cheese in with mozzarella on the top layer.


5.  Then bake for around 35 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown.  Don't burn your tongue, let the lasagna cool for about ten to fifteen minutes before serving.

Meatless Monday Menu: Week 5

As promised, this week we have a meatless breakfast option, homemade honey peanut granola, which we found on Allrecipes.com.  This by far, is one of the favorite breakfast choices for my family.  When I make it, I double or triple the recipe so that we better utilize the oven.  Plus, I have a fear that the granola will be completely devoured in one sitting so having extra alleviates that concern.

This recipe is best made the day before you plan to eat it since it bakes for an hour and needs to cool as well.  Like many recipes, I treat them as suggestions and often tinker with the ingredients or directions.  I have never peanuts but added sunflower seeds this time.  In the past, I've also added flax seeds and pecans, which are my favorites.

Ingredients:
3 cups quick oatmeal
1/2 cup nuts or seeds
1/4 wheat germ
1/3 cup honey: We like to purchase honey from our farmers' market.  You can buy local and select the type of honey.
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoon warm water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
We prefer to omit the salt from the recipe.

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.  Lightly grease a large casserole dish. Tip: I save the wax paper wrappers for butter when I have used up a stick of butter.  Then when I need to grease a pan, I rub the inside of the wrapper onto the pan.  Because of this, I really don't use the vegetable spray cans, cutting down on waste.

2. In a large bowl, combine the liquids and brown sugar.  Then add the oats, nuts, and wheat germ, stirring with each addition.

3. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly coated, spread the mixture out on the greeased casserole dish.

4. Bake for one hour, stirring every fifteen minutes.  I use a metal spatula to scrape the bottom of the casserole dish when stirring.  You want to avoid having the granola stick to the pan.

5.  After the granola is finished baking, set it out to cool.  Stir it occassionally as it cools.  Store in an air tight container.

What do you like to serve with granola?  We add dried fruit or fresh, seasonal berries.

Meatless Monday Menu Week 4

It's time to shrink our carbon footprint a bit and have a great meatless meal.  Tonight we had noodles and tofu in a peanut butter ginger sauce.

I enjoy cooking (actually eating) but one of my weaknesses is with making sauces.  Most of my expeience with cooking and sauces has been opening up a jar of something.  The sauce tonight was quite easy to make.

Ingredients
Sauce
3 cloves garlic minced
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tsps ground ginger
8 green onions sliced
1 cup peanuts
1 tbs of honey

Pasta
1 pound of pasta
1 package of tofu, rinsed and cut into 1 inch cubes.  We used organic since soybeans can be heavily treated with pesticides.

2-3 tbs of olive oil

Directions
1. Peel and mince the garlic and set aside.  Then wash and slice the green onions.  Set aside.
Tip: I used scissors for the green onions.  My knives tend to shred the delicate green onions.

2. Prepare the tofu.  Then heat the olive oil in a skillet until it is hot but not smoking.  Add the tofu cubes and use a spatula to toss the tofu periodically.  Begin boiling the water for your pasta as well.  Add the pasta when the water boils.

3.  While the tofu is cooking and the pasta is hopefully not boiling over, it's time to make the sauce. In a good size bowl, scoop out the peanut butter and honey.  Then add the hot water and stir using a fork.  It might not look too appealing at this point.  Then add the soy sauce, and stir.  You may want to use a spoon since the peanut butter can settle or stick to the bottom of the bowl.  Finally, add the ginger and garlic and stir some more.  Don't forget to check on the pasta and tofu.

4.  When the pasta is ready, drain the pasta and place it into a large bowl.  Add the cooked tofu and sauce and mix everything together.  The sauce can be somewhat runny so pull some of it up from the bottom of the bowl to help mix.  Finally add the green onions and peanuts.  If you wish, you can stir these in with the pasta.

Enjoy this protein rich, meatless meal and way to go cutting your carbon emissions.



Next week, we'll profile a meatless breakfast recipe.

Meatless Monday Menu: Week 3

Today's meatless feature is a homemade basil, red onion, and mushroom pizza.  And let me tell you, it was delicious.

Quite a few years ago, I used to subscribe to Time magazine.  The April 9, 2007 Global Warming Survival Guide edition really caught my attention.  We had recently had a winter which was the warmest in my lifetime and I thought, "this is real and something needs to be done."  Fortunately, there are many practical suggestions that I have tried to incorporate into my own life.

Number 22 is the reason why I am doing the Meatless Monday Menu.  When I was younger, almost all of my lunches and dinners would have meat, lots of meat.  Knowing the impact that eating meat has on our planet, I eat less, less meat.  My goal in with these posts is to provide meatless meal ideas that taste good and are nutritional as well.

Tonight's meatless meal can be as simple or fancy as you like so feel free to modify the recipe.


Ingredients:
Pizza dough from a store or homemade pizza dough.  We used Jay's Signature Pizza Crust Recipe.
Olive oil for greasing your pizza pan or stone
Your favorite pizza sauce.  We used sauce from Trader Joe's
Mozzarella cheese

Toppings:
Dried oregano
Parmesan cheese
5 baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1/4 of a red onion, cut into larger pieces
1/2 cup of fresh basil, rinsed and cut into strips

Directions: Make the dough or follow the directions for the premade dough.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  If you are using a pizza stone, be sure to keep it in the oven until the baking temperature is reached.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to your desired thickness and shape.  This is a good time to add flavors to the dough like garlic or oregano if you so desire.  Then pour a small amount of olive oil on your pizza pan or stone.   Using a brush, coat the pan or stone so that the pizza dough won't stick.

Transfer the dough to the pan or stone.

Then spread the sauce onto the dough, leaving the perimeter of the dough sauce-free.  Next add the cheese, covering all of the sauce.  I prefer to sprinkle the oregano and parmesan before I add any other toppings.  Once you have the oregano and parmesan cheese sprinkled onto the pizza, it's time for your main toppings.  I like a lot of toppings so the amount I used may be too heavy for your taste.  If so, adjust accordingly.  If you are feeling adventurous, try adding the sauce, toppings, and cheese in a different sequence.

Finally, bake your pizza for about 15-18 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown.  If the pizza dough has stuck to the pan, use a spatulla to seperate the pizza from the pan before cutting.

Enjoy your pizza while lowering your carbon footprint.

For more meatless meal ideas, check out the Meatless Monday website.

Meatless Monday Menu Week 2

Today we our having vegetarian fajitas.  The beauty of vegetarian fajitas, well any fajitas, is that you can pick and choose what ingredients you place in the tortilla. Here is what we used.

 Ingredients:

1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper

I'm always overfilling my tortilla.

1 red onion
4 romaine lettuce leaves, washed and cut into bite size pieces
1 30 ounce can of black beans, drained and rinsed.
5 baby bella or button mushrooms
1 avocado
1 jalapeno pepper
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
cheddar, mozzarella, Monterrey Jack, or colby cheese.  We used colby since that was in the fridge.  Shred if necessary.
tortillas
fresh cilantro
salsa
plain yogurt or sour cream
your favorite hot sauce

Suggested spices: garlic, cumin, cayenne pepper, and cajun seasoning.

Begin by slicing the onions and peppers into thin strips.  Slice the mushrooms.  Add the olive oil to a skillet and heat it on a medium setting.  Then saute the onions for a few minutes until tender.  Be sure to flip the onions occasionally so they do not burn on one side.

What a colorful meal!

Then add the the mushrooms and pepper to the skillet and stir occasionally.  After a few minutes, add the beans and continue to stir occasionally.  This is a great time to add what ever spices you are using.  While the vegetables are cooking, peel and slice the avocado.

After the beans have softened, you are ready to eat.  We like to set our counter up like a buffet so that each person can easily personalize their fajitas. 

Enjoy.

Meatless Monday Menu: Week 1

I'm starting a weekly feature called the Meatless Monday Menu. I grew up eating a lot of meat and potato meals. It has only been in the past few years where I have really made a concerted effort to eat a balanced diet. Now I look forward to the delicious vegetarian recipes that we have found and prepared.

One of my reasons for having a Meatless Monday is to shrink my carbon footprint. Cows and other animals produce methane as a byproduct of digestion. Methane which over time, is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. According to the EPA, methane can trap 20 times more heat than carbon dioxied. If the demand for beef decreases, farmers and ranchers will shift what they grow and raise away from cattle. By skipping meat, your carbon footprint is reduced.

Tonight's menu will be: Homemade bean burgers, rice pilaf, and grapes. Drinks will be organic milk and water.

Here is our recipe for the bean burgers.

1 30 ounce can of black beans rinsed and drained.
2 teaspoons of ground cumin
10 tablespoons of bread crumbs.  These can be made easily in a food processor.
2-4 mushrooms, minced.
8 hamburger buns or lettuce for wraps.
4 tablespoon olive oil
Optional: 1 tablespoon of minced jalapeno pepper

1. Mash the beans in a bowl until they are smooth.  I use a metal reusable water bottle to mash the beans.  Stir in cumin, breadcrumbs, and jalapeno.

2. Then use floured hands and make the burgers.

3. Next, you will be cooking the burgers on either a large skillet or electric grill.  If you use a skillet, you will have to cook the burgers in two skillets or two batches.  Heat the oil on medium heat until hot but not smoking. Place the burgers in the skillet or on the grill.  Cook until they are golden brown.  Flip them once.

Instead of using buns, we are going to use lettuce leaves to hold the burgers.  I prefer cheddar cheese and red onions as a toppings. Avocado slices and sautéed mushrooms are a welcome addition as well.  

Making Muffins and Reducing Waste with Silicone Muffin Liners

As a child, my favorite breakfast food was blueberry muffins.  As an adult, I bake muffins anywhere from two to four times a month.  Originnally, I did not use any muffin tin liners since I thought it would be less wasteful to just grease the muffin pan.  Too often though, the muffins stuck to the pan.

It was one Saturday morning that I found silicone muffin liners at a garage sale.  I've never looked back.  The muffins come out of the pan with ease.  Most muffins come out of the liner cleanly, especially if you let them cool.  Waiting though, can be nearly impossible in my home.

Due to the fact that the silicone muffin liners can be reused, they can help reduce the waste generated by our homes.  Through repeated use, they can save you money as well since you are buying disposable liners. As for muffin recipes, I find Better Homes and Gardens has a great standard recipe.

You can also make your own chocolate peanut butter cups.  This is an improvised recipe so there are no exact measurements. I melted chocolate chips and a smaller amount of butter in a sauce pan, stirring frequently over low heat.  A small amount of powdered sugar was added as well.  Once the chocolate and butter was mixed, I filled silicone muffin liners about third full with the mixture.  Be sure to save some of the mixture.  While the mixture was still warm, I dropped a spoonful of peanut butter into each partially filled liner.  To cover the peanut butter, pour the remaining chocolate mixture on top.  Then chill the peanut butter cups in the fridge or freezer.  After the chocolate has solidified, enjoy!

Farmers Markets

Are you looking for additional ways to lower your carbon footprint?  Try going to your local farmers market.  Generally, the food is grown closer than the majority of supermarket produce.  That means less fuel is consumed bringing the food to your kitchen table.  Additionally, the food is more likely to be harvested when it is fully ripened and not picked prematurely.

It has been my experience that produce from the farmers market is often more expensive than the grocery store.  I remind myself that these tend to be small oprations and that by shopping locally, I am keeping money in my local and regional economies.  I'm helping my neighbors.

If you don't have a farmers market in your area, petition your local government to start one.

What is the most unique food you have purchased from a farmers market?  I recently purchased kohlrabi which I had never had before.

Authentic Foods

This morning I heard a news report on NPR about authentic foods.  It sounds as if authentic foods are organic and artisan foods.  Personally I think it is great that there is a movement away from processed foods.  The next time you are in the market, try purchasing an authentic food.  While they may be more costly than a similar processed food, authentic foods will most likely have a smaller impact on the environment, be better for you, and have a natural taste.

What authentic foods do you recommend?