Quickie for lunch

Now that I have your attention, let's talk lunch!

I usually talk about the 100 mile diet dinners I make so I thought I’d talk about lunch today. I work from home and most folks assume that would mean I have all this extra time to make lunch. Well, some days I do but even so, I don’t really want to be messing about in the kitchen for an hour making a lunch everyday. Unlike the Barefoot Contessa, I don’t have a wonderful country estate with lovely country estate friends that visit me for lunch so it is a solo affair. It is one that I delight in. Just because I don't want to spend much time making it, doesn't mean I can't spend time enjoying it. It's often the only chance I get to take a break during the day. I hate eating lunch on the run. I need to sit and enjoy. Even if I'm out and about I will chill out and enjoy a packed lunch. I have found that if I do spend 20-30 minutes mindfully lunching that I don't have all those crazy snack urges a few hours later.

Lunch is dinner leftovers most days. Sometimes I only have leftovers of a side dish like roasted veggies or sautéed greens. These can easily be turned into a quick meal by tossing in some diced tofu or bits of leftover meat, reheating it and topping it all off with some nuts and a few drops of flavor powerhouse like a good balsamic vinegar, a squeeze of lime, a hit of ponzu sauce or fish sauce and a few drops of sesame seed oil or some grated hard cheese. A piece of bread or other starch rounds off the meal.

If I have leftover stir fry I’ll usually use that as a base for a noodle soup. Nothing more than heating up some stock, dropping in some a package of udon noodles and the leftover stirfry. A bit of soy sauce, oyster sauce, black bean sauce, miso or fish sauce will punch it up.

I always make extra portions of dinner for lunch the next day. Of course, the best laid plans get eaten up by unannounced dinner guests or my own never-ending appetite at the end of a day of play. But with a few BC mushrooms, a scrap of salami or smoked bacon, a bit of cheese and couple of local free-ranged eggs, I can have a yummy frittata or a really fancy scrambled eggs.

At times I make a big batch of soup that carries me through my lunches for most of the week. That’s what I did this week.

After returning from my top secret super hero business, I have not been in the mood for spending much time cooking since I was resident cook in the super hero clubhouse. Let me tell you, super heroes can be super picky eaters. I wanted to putter in the garden, knit and read in my corner, take walks around the lake, hang out with my DH and generally enjoying having my own space again. After building a fortress of solitude around the house to keep the riff raff at bay, I managed to get around to all those wonderful activities. Though some tried to knock down my fortress of solitude, I managed to keep it pretty intact. Heck, a girl’s gotta be able to put her feet up and relax in peace ‘n quiet between super hero gigs.

Most of our meals have been pulled out of the freezer and the garden this week since I didn’t feel like dealing with the grocery store. Looking for something for lunch this past Tuesday, I excavated down through the strata of frozen homemade dinners and found a couple of packages of frozen roasted pumpkin that I put away last fall. It was like finding treasure!

After a quick thaw in the microwave, I dumped the contents (6 cups of roasted pumpkin in total) into a pot with a cup of water, a couple tablespoons organic peanut butter, a ½ teaspoon of sambal oelek and some roasted garlic leftover from the night before. With my trusty hand blender, I whizzed the whole concoction into a creamy soup and brought to a slow boil while stirring regularly.
















A drizzle of Auld Alliance farm’s pear balsamic vinegar, a sprinkle of local hazelnuts and we have a great lunch soup. If you don’t like vinegar and nuts, a dollop of yogurt or crème fraiche would also be great. Along with it, I’ve been nibbling my way through some smoked local salmon (also excavated from the freezer) and slices of English cucumber, BC grown of course. Lunch ends usually with a either a square of good, dark chocolate or a sliver of local cheese depending on my mood. A civilized and thoroughly satisfying way to end any meal!

You could just whip up a big batch of plain pumpkin soup and dress it a bit differently each day. A spoonful of pesto for Monday, shaving of parma and some torn proscuitto and a drizzle of walnut or hazelnut oil for Tuesday , a drizzle of Thai It Up sauce for Wednesday, a dollop of tapendade on Thursday and for Friday, a sprinkle of curry powder and some chutney. Roasted veggies and even bits of meat also work well in this soup base. Treat it as you would a butternut squash soup. There are so many possibilities

Tonight I’m cracking open the fortress and have invited a few friends over for dinner. In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day I’m planning an Irish stew with local lamb and Irish soda bread. Not quite sure what dessert will be. Perhaps a fruit galette or simply a fruit crisp.

Have a great day and happy eating!

Jen

100 Mile Diet Nanaimo

Attack of the Monster Mussels

It was only fitting to watch Ang Lee's "HULK" last night since we started the evening with a meal of monster sized food. It started out so innocently...

After a crazy afternoon, I decided to treat myself to a wander down to Departure Bay. I still have not quite accepted that it’s fall and went wandering about in a tank top and a knee-high cotton skirt. The sharp, autumn breeze sanded away any stress I had left from my day and left me smiling, though a bit chilly.

On my way back home, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some local barlett pears and then swung by the fish store, Sea Drift at Terminal Mall to see what local seabeasts I could pick up for dinner. There I found some gorgeous Saltspring Island mussels. They also have local oysters and clams in along with local fishes like salmon and halibut. I picked up a couple pounds of mussels and headed home with my edible treasures.

The mussels were huge. I mean obscenely huge. Look, they’re as big as my palm!!!

For mussels, I like to keep it simple. So I heated up a glug of oil over med-high heat, dropped in some chopped garlic, red onion and 1 small red thai chili (you can use some sambal oelek or 1/8 tsp of dried chili flakes). Then I deglazed with a half a bottle of white wine (Cherry Point Coastal White). Once that came back up to a boil, I dropped in the cleaned mussels and covered the pot with a tight lid. A few shakes and 4-5 mins later, they were done. Along with some monster-sized peas from Dirk, a local organic farmer, and some homemade bread, we had ourselves a monstrously yummy meal.

Look at the beans. They're bigger than a chopstick!!!







Here's the final meal, all put together. The monster sized ingredients were fighting for space in my huge soup bowl. The piece of bread looks so measly but it was a fair sized chunk.

Yes it's as yummy as it looks. I saved the mussels to use as mulch and as a source of calcium for the garden.

I also made a pumpkin pie. Or ‘Bum-skin’ pie as it is known in this house. Yes, we’re one of those annoying couples that butchers and bastardizes the English language to form cutesly little inside jokes.

For less than the cost of 3 cans pumpkin puree, I picked up 4 pie pumpkins that provided me with enough pumpkin pulp to make 12 pies. The pulp is also great as the base for lovely squash soup. Make sure you use the smaller pumpkins marked ‘Pie Pumpkins’. The large jack o’lantern pumpkins have too much water in the flesh to make a good pie with. They’re ok for soups though.

I chop open the pumpkins into quarters. I save the seeds for snacking (more on that later). With a spoon, scoop out the rest of the slimy guts. Cut size down, place them onto a roasting pan with enough water to cover the bottom a half an inch or so. Pop it all into a 325F oven for 30-40 minutes or until it’s soft. Once done, toss them into a large stock pot and let them rest overnight. In this process, a lot of excess water exudes out. The next day, remove the pumpkins out of the pot and save the pumpkin water to use as a liquid for pumpkin soup. With fingers and a large soup spoon, I scoop out the flesh and discard the skin. A few whirls of a hand blender and you have a huge batch of pumpkin mush.

I dump a recipe’s worth of pumpkin puree into a Ziploc baggie and store that in the freezer. Now whenever I want to make a pumpkin pie (or cookies, or ice-cream or ravioli or soup…you get the picture), I simply have to pull a ziploc baggie of pumpkin and let it defrost. A few minutes in the nukebox will do the trick if you’re impatient. Then again, if you’re impatient, you’ve probably already picked up an factory pumpkin pie and a tub of that whipped chemical jizz.

(photo of my homemade pumpkin pie with graham cracker crust. Whipped chemical jizz-free zone.)

For spicy roasted pumpkin seeds, wash the seeds and dry them as best as you can. Toss then in bowl with a glug or two of olive oil, a healthy pinch of salt and a couple pinch of hot red pepper flakes. Mix them well and dump them in a single layer onto a baking sheet and bake at 300F for 20-30 minutes. Stir occasionally. I eat them with the shell on and be warned, these are addictive especially fresh out of the oven. Better to make these when the DH has already gone to bed so you don’t get him hooked and have him come home one day with a dozen pumpkins just so he can get his spicy roasted pumpkin seed fix.

Have a great day!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge