Updates

I have many exciting things to post: caramelized onion pasta, samosas… but I also have a lot of work to finish up. Don’t give up on me, I swear I’m just finishing my last week of graduate school! I’ll be back tomorrow or Friday with a long overdue post, pictures and just plain exciting new things.

Cauliflower, cheese, potato, onion…

With an amazing warm breeze blowing through the house yesterday, I finally made the cauliflower-cheese pie with grated potato crust. I cooked the crust first, which was simply grated potato & onion, salt and egg white. It never fully cooked and was still a bit soggy on the bottom, yet brown and crunchy around the edges. It was good anyway, though! I sauteed an entire head of cauliflower with some herbs, garlic and onion while the crust baked, filled the crust up with the veggies and some cheese, poured some egg over the top, sprinkled some paprika on it and there you go. It took an hour, but was pretty low maintenance.  I think this would be equally good with anything that you have laying around, really. Broccoli, asparagus, mushroom… but it was great as is. It would also be great for brunch! Oh yeah, it may seem like we have garlic bread and salad with everything, and that’s okay because I guess we do. We’re still eating off of the giant broccoli mushroom casserole from Monday and along with leftover pie from last night I think I’m going to make a little pasta with caramelized onion sauce after class tonight. It sounded good to me.
Have I mentioned how amazing we feel since we’ve stopped eating meat?

Broccoli Mushroom (+ onion & garlic!) Noodle Casserole

I was bad and ate too much, but I can still blame Easter for making my stomach blow up like a ham that had just eaten a turkey that had a stomachache. Anyway, luckily we’re back to normal, I’m back in the kitchen and I’ve got a fresh batch of veggies to work with this week.
Last time I was here I said I was going to make a cauliflower pie. Well, turns out I’m going to make it tonight, if the cauliflower is still good. Instead, on Friday we went out to Johnny Mango for some Caribbean french fries (fried plantains!), veggie pad thai and margaritas. It was amazing, and a nice break, too. But then Easter came, it was Monday and we felt disgusting.
Ryan decided to help me make a broccoli mushroom noodle casserole!
I have no problem starting off this post saying that I’ve never made anything like this and it sounded disgusting. Last time I checked, I hated cottage cheese and this recipe called for a whole load of it mixed in with some eggs, bread crumbs and sour cream, then the noodles and sauteed veggies with some onions and garlic mixed in, too.
It was delicious.
Ryan did the chopping.
I did the mixing.

And it got a little intense.
We had an amazing salad, watched the Pens lose and ate a ton of this stuff, then I remembered that there was an optional bit of white wine that I forgot to add to the sauteed veggies! I even spent time in the wine aisle yesterday picking out something perfect! Oh well, I’ll save it for next time. I’m sure it would have made it even better, though.
The best thing after eating this casserole is that I felt great. I’ve realized that there’s no reason you should feel bloated, greasy and gassy after you eat. Ever. And you shouldn’t have to eat some weird yogurt to make your system “regular” as if it was irregular to begin with? It’s unnatural, and yet people just accept these things! One of my favorite things about the Moosewood recipes so far is that they are all so good, tasty and filling and yet by eating them you feel revitalized and reenergized, not like you just want to plop down on the couch and spend the rest of the night in a food coma. So long meat, it was nice knowing you.
A quick last thought: I spent the same amount of money this week at the grocery store as I usually do, which I’m still shocked over. Once again I had a cart full of stuff, and as I watched each veggie getting weighed I didn’t regret it, instead I knew it would turn into something delicious!
Off to make the cauliflower pie now, blog tomorrow.

Day 3/4: Sweet potatoes & peas & nuts & dates…

I realized yesterday that by posting ingredient lists for recipes in Moosewood, I am probably going to be sued for copyright infringement. Correct me if I’m wrong, but until then I’m going to post everything about each recipe in my own words like I have been, but no exact copy of the text. If you want any other details, you can always contact me via this blog, or buy your own copy of The New Moosewood Cookbook! Mollie Katzen has her own store here. I’m sure the library has a hold of it too.
I was too busy baking today to blog earlier, but I’ll get to that later. Yesterday I made two tasty dishes: marinated sweet potatoes & broccoli and pasta primavera! Kind of a random combination, but they both sounded good and like we could eat off of them for a few days, so it was a go. My dear friend Mary Cassidy came over and got to try some too!
The sweet potatoes were awesome, though Ryan typically doesn’t go for them. Just by steaming some sweet potatoes, broccoli (separately because they cook faster, and I plopped in a few mushrooms), and quickly throwing them hot into a mix of olive oil, mustard powder, honey, red wine vin, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper… they were awesome. The recipe says to wait at least 2 hours for them to marinate, so I threw them together early in the day and left them covered on the counter to do their work for dinnertime. An optional garnish is toasted pecans, but I just mixed in some chopped walnuts at the end because I had them leftover from some cookies.
Next was the primavera, which was mostly a whole pound of snap peas that were a pain to de-string after I had sat through a long class until 8:00. I added in the (optional) greens, garlic, fresh basil, scallions, salt and pepper and the thing was a go. Questions: What’s the difference between snow and snap peas? I used snap. If a recipe reads 6 scallions does this mean 6 scallion stalks or 6 whole scallion plants? I used the whole things. Well, it turned out good anyway.
Today was a new day. I headed out to my grandmas and we hit up the grocery store and got to baking. It was nice to have some help because there are a few things I hate about baking:
1. Exact measurements/ingredients and easiness to mess up. Ask Ryan about the time I made cookies with something like 5 cups of oil, or ask Jeremy who ate them anyway.
2. It’s usually so time consuming just for something that tends to sit on my counter and go bad, rather than a fulfilling meal. Why would I make a cake that looks like a bowl of pasta when I can just eat the pasta? And yes, I think that cake idea was in the Food Network magazine last month.
3. MESS. One time a cracked an egg for a cake and it landed on my foot. Seriously, ask my mom. Another time I bought some expensive thing of almond extract, measured it and knocked it over. Today the first thing I did was open a container of walnuts and dump about 20 on the floor. No different.
 But with my grandmas help we made some date-nut cake…
 and pound cake!
 The recipe for the date-nut cake was discouraging. No butter? Only 1/4 cup sugar? We tried it anyway, and the random mixture of odd amounts of chopped walnuts, dates, vanilla, sugar, etc. turned into something sooo good. We made the homemade whipped topping too, which was just some heavy cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. But. So. Good. It would be amazing with some earl grey tea or coffee, or just alone.
These are obviously staged photos, but we had some time to kill while the mixer was beating away at the topping.
We didn’t have as much luck with the pound cake. Did I mention yet that it has 1 lb/4 sticks of butter in it? We compared it to an old family recipe that my grandma has been making ever since I can remember, and it only has 2! (and it’s way better, but shh…) Not to mention, it had a lot less of the other ingredients. We mixed this thing up and it kept getting bigger and bigger. We changed bowls, then it filled the big bundt pan nearly to the top. During baking about a cup of the cake ended up on the bottom of the oven. We had to keep it in an extra ten minutes and it still is a little pudding-y in places. Hmph. The perils of baking… It kind of stuck, too…
After a long day of baking and snacking on hummus, leftovers and field roast sausages I didn’t eat dinner tonight, but I did make a mean version of a Happy Dog with some leftover greens. I’m not sure how it was though. I’m still too stuffed to even think about it and it’s just about midnight.
Tomorrow I’m going to try and tackle a cauliflower pie with a grated potato crust, then bam! It’s Easter. Cut up the ham and slice the t(of)urkey… Well, I guess we’ll see what happens, but so far a meatless life sounds pretty good.

Day 2: Asparagus!

This looks appetizing, huh?
Well it was, eventually. Yesterday I made some cream of asparagus soup, which is the very first recipe in Moosewood! I also ate some Oreos and left over birthday cake, but that’s beside the point. After eating some leftover greens for lunch I made a huge mess in the kitchen via this soup. It was good though, and I would definitely consider making it again if I had an immersion blender. Transferring hot flour water with chunks of asparagus and onion in it from a giant pan into a blender and then back into a saucepan wasn’t very efficient.

Cream of Asparagus Soup

1. Break off and compost tough bottoms of asparagus. Cut asparagus into one inch chunks and save the very tippy tops for later.
2. Melt the butter in a big skillet, add onion, asparagus stalks and salt. Saute for 10 minutes, add 2 Tbs flour, lower heat and stir for 5 more minutes.
3. Add water, stir, and heat to a boil. Bring down to a simmer, add the remaining tablespoon of flour and cook for 10 more minutes.
4. Puree the soup with the hot milk in a blender, then put it in a saucepan with the herbs and as much pepper as you please.
5. Steam the asparagus tips, add to warm soup and eat eat eat. The recipe says 4-5 servings, but after Ryan and I demolished it, there’s about 1 bowl left.

So my first Moosewood cooking disaster was with these little asparagus tips. Somehow on my journey from the sink to the stove, most of them flew onto the floor. Don’t ask. I don’t even have an answer, but this is what remained:
It was enough to do the job, and the soup was delicious. I made a little salad with some leftover mushrooms from the greens and some more of those good cherry tomatoes I’m trying to get rid of. I made some garlic bread too, of course.
Ryan said this morning that he feels great since he’s stopped eating meat! I feel the same, but it’s only day 3. Today I’m making some penne spring primavera with some leftover greens, basil picked off my thriving plant and a whole pound of snap peas!

Day 1: Greens!

After four hours of Gone With The Wind on Sunday at the Capitol, I sat down to figure out what I was going to make for this first week of vegetarianism. I paged through Moosewood and found a few things that sounded good, then tried to figure out how I could use some leftover ingredients for other recipes so things didn’t go to waste. I also kept the season in mind. I could be wrong (and correct me if I am), but I imagine that greens, potatoes, onions and mushrooms are a little better off right now than tomatoes, grapes and cucumbers. They also may not be from Argentina, Morocco or China. Plus, luck permitting we will have most of the ingredients to make something like gazpacho fresh from our own garden this summer, not to mention the bounty we hope to receive from our Blue Pike Farm CSA. Anyway, I made my grocery list and found obvious holes (lunch meat, chicken breasts), as well as other things I was certain I had never even seen before (mustard greens, escarole). I decided that the first thing I would tackle would be Warm Salad! But it didn’t sound like enough for dinner.

I headed to Nature’s Bin in Lakewood and felt like a freak with a cart-full of greens, but my bill was only $50?! Sure I made a trip to Heinen’s and spent a bit more on things like mustard seed, dill, tarragon and white pepper for later this week, but I was pretty shocked. Did I mention the person in front of me in line spent $190? Ouch.

Ryan called me on his lunch as I was washing greens and chop-chop-chopping away. He then told me that he was eating a Spicy Italian sub from Subway! I said, uh, aren’t we going vegetarian today? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that I didn’t remind him, but regardless I think his stomach ache after lunch gave him a good place to legitimately start.

Warm Salad

Pretty intimidating, huh? The prep time reads 45-50 minutes, but it took a good hour of washing, chopping, mincing and grating cheese for me to get to the final product. There are only two steps to the recipe, and I’ll summarize and simplify them to how I did it.

1. Heat half the oil in a large wok and add escarole, chard, cabbage and mustard greens. If you can’t fit them all, wait until they cook down a bit and add more. Add some salt while they cook, use a decent amount of heat and stir. Add the garlic when the greens are tender and cook them a minute or two more. Remove everything to a large bowl.

2. Add the remaining oil to the wok and add leeks, onion, mushrooms, celery and cauliflower. Lightly salt and stir-fry quickly over medium heat until they’re tender. Remove and mix with the bowl of greens, add vinegar and parmesean while still hot. Grind pepper over the top. (and I sauteed and added some little assorted cherry tomatoes to the top because I had them)

I served the greens with some homemade garlic bread on some Stone Oven pugliese and voila! dinner. It was enough. It was way too much, actually. It was lunch for the rest of the week! We ate quietly, savoring every bite with eyes glued on the Pens game. Ryan was hooked, too. It was awesomely good. Then the Pens won.

My Mom participated and made the greens last night too. She thought they were just as good, but had to sub some of the greens for others because of not having the luxury of shopping at Nature’s Bin. I’m sure I’ll make these greens again and again, but they could easily be made with any combination of anything and would probably still be good. They would be good on a sandwich, with rice… It seemed pretty foolproof.

Today I’m making cream of asparagus soup, aka the first recipe in The New Moosewood Cookbook! I wish I had an immersion blender. Wish me luck.

The Idea

Our Story

The Moosewood Cookbook was originally published in 1977 and is one of the top ten bestselling cookbooks of all time. The entire Moosewood Cookbook is handwritten, hand illustrated and (wait for it…) vegetarian!

On April 12, 2011 I received a copy of The New Moosewood Cookbook in the mail (It’s been slightly updated since the 70s). I spent the day flipping through the pages and thinking to myself, “There’s no way I’m going to make any of this!” A lot of the recipes are long, involved, and require so many pantry ingredients that I would spend hundreds of dollars at the grocery store just to come home, cook for three hours and burn something. Not to mention, I would never use that bulgar wheat, sesame oil, dry sherry or cider vinegar ever again. Why not just walk down the street and get some cheap Indian food? Plus, have you seen the price of produce lately? I consider going vegetarian until I’m watching the veggies being weighed at the cash register quickly adding up. Heaven forbid I buy organic–there goes a whole paycheck. And then they rot in the bottom of my fridge because I mindlessly munch on chips instead of grapes. Not to mention, I’ve went vegetarian for days, even for a week, but then I go to the Parkview and swoon over a big juicy Shoreway burger covered in four lanes of bacon. It’s like I’m a druggie that needs my meat fix.

The next morning Ryan and I were sitting around pondering breakfast and I mentioned the idea of tackling The Moosewood Cookbook Julie & Julia style, except Alex & Mollie style. Surprisingly, he said to go for it. Then I thought, not only will I be documenting mine and Ryan’s journey through this cookbook like Julie did with The Art of French Cooking, but I will also be following our ups & downs of going veg. Or maybe I should just say downs. Along with this, we’ll closely keep track of our weight and our grocery bills. I want to see if it really IS possible to be fit on a vegetarian diet because I currently believe that we’ll be snacking on ice cream and french fries half the time because we’ll never get that awesomely full feeling we get from meat, especially after working out. Anyway, we both want to lose a few pounds along with exercising more, so this is a great way to start a hardcore lifestyle change. As for the grocery bills, I will be going to the same grocery store (Heinen’s) once a week to buy ingredients for that weeks dishes. This way, I’ll be able to find out if these vegetarian recipes are really affordable and realistic for the everyday couple. Maybe I’ll even find some ways to save at the store.

I know you’re probably saying, aren’t Alex & Ryan going to have a garden this year too? Well, another plan for the future is seeing if the produce we grow at the Edgewater Hill Victory Garden will be of much use and substance to our diets. Whether or not it will heavily contribute to this project and save us money at the store too, I haven’t a clue. I guess it depends on how great we are at gardening, and since this is our first year it will be interesting to document this too!

I counted the recipes in the book and got 240. This is comprised of 35 soups, 42 salads & dressings, 52 sauces & dips, 19 baked things & sandwiches, 53 entrees and 39 desserts (I really hate baking, so this will be interesting).  I figured I would be realistic (even though this entire thing is completely unrealistic) and give us one full year for this project–April 18, 2011 through April 18, 2012. Even though this deadline gives us 125 days of free reign within the year, these will add up quickly with vacations, weekends, holidays, etc. If all goes well, this deadline gives us the opportunity to finish early, although with our history we will be cramming multiple recipes into the final days.

The Impact

Not only will this project give an excellent, never before seen look into the minor details of the bestselling Moosewood Cookbook complete with creating a much needed photo and review of each recipe, but it will also strive to educate and inform those who are looking to go vegetarian, grow their own food, lose weight, cut their grocery bills, or all of the above. Is it going to be worth it to cut meat out of our diets? I’m excited to find out.

I also plan for this project to give some new ideas to those who are already vegetarian, and even more specifically those who have trouble eating vegetarian because I imagine we’ll have our fair share of issues. Currently I have nothing in my fridge more amazing to eat after a long run than a big ham and cheese sandwich. I can’t imagine a vegetable doing the job, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

The Beginning

This Sunday, April 17 I will make my first trip to the grocery store after I plan which Moosewood recipes to make for the week. Next Monday the blogging will begin!

If you have any questions/comments/thoughts/better ideas for this than I do, leave them here and I’d love to read them!