Kale Chips!

Last of the Kale Chips

There weren't many left by the time I took the picture, and now they're all gone! If you've never tried them, you'll be surprised and amazed. They basically taste like potato chips... just better. My former roommate was making these one day and I never tried them since I was on my way out the door at the time. But I have been meaning to get around to making them ever since.

Ingredients and Directions:

Toss kale leaves in oil & salt and bake.
Or, see the full instructions here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Kale-Chips/Detail.aspx

Notes:

• I used some green chili sea salt that we happened to buy recently at Sous Chef, but I'm sure just plain old salt would make tasty chips too.
• The only complaint I have is that it took a while to separate the leaves from their stalks... but it was important because in the few smaller ones where I left the stalks in, the result was not quite as satisfying - the stalk part is just too tough and chewy.

The Verdict:

Katie's rating: Delightful!
Johnny's rating: Yum+

Easiness: Super easy
Speed: Pretty quick

Pita Pizzas!

pita pizzas!

First off, let me mention that while looking for some tips on roasting peppers, given that I had never done it before, I came across the awesome Vegan Dad blog with tonnes of great recipe ideas. By the way, if you want a truly vegetarian pizza, skip this and instead take a look at his Roasted Red Pepper Pizza recipe - looks delish!


So that brings us to tonight: pita pizzas. Well, again I can't quite say these are vegetarian, but they could easily be. Before I realized that we could roast some peppers to expand on our apparently limited topping options, we decided to pull some of Johnny's coworker's fabulous venison sausage out of the freezer. While they were cooking, I roasted my first peppers - it was fun!

Ingredients:

5 pitas
1 can tomato paste
seasonings for tomato paste (minced garlic, herbs, salt, pepper) basil leaves, chopped
1/2 can of pineapple tidbits, drained
1/2 each: roasted green, red, and yellow pepper1 block mozzarella, grated
1 homemade moose/venison sausage, boiled and fried (you know, if you just happen to have this on hand)
a touch of olive oil
a sprinkle of garlic powder
grated parmesan/asiago (for garnish)

Directions:

Well, it's a pizza. You know what to do.

A few things that Johnny did to make these ones extra special:
- heat up the tomato paste and mix in garlic and other seasonings before spreading it on the pita shells
- put some toppings under the cheese and others on top (the peppers and sausage were on top and I think it was better that way)
- drizzle the edge of the crusts with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic powder before baking
- sprinkle the finished pizzas with grated asiago before eating

The Verdict:

Katie's rating: Yum+
Johnny's rating: Yum+

Easiness: Easy
Speediness: Slowish

Vegetarian Pot Pie

This recipe comes straight from The Weekday Vegetarian blog.  Speaking of weekday vegetarianism, that's roughly what we have become.  There is a TED Talk about it that you can check out here: http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html.  Anyhow, the recipe looked pretty tasty, so we decided to try it out.

Vegetable Pot Pie

Ingredients and Directions:

Here's the link: http://theweekdayvegetarian.blogspot.com/2009/03/vegetable-pot-pies.html

The only things we did slightly differently are:

1. No shallots, just used onion.

2. Generous portions on the veggies, particularly the peas.

3. The beer we used is called "Hobgoblin", since that's about the only dark beer I could buy individually at the liquor store and I was too afraid to try buying Stout.

4. As for the roux, we used roughly 3-4tbs of both butter and flour... oh but we used whole wheat flour.

5. Oh right, speaking of whole wheat flour we cheated on the crust and just bought Tenderflake.  I think this contributed to the fact that it didn't take so long to brown.

6. Given that we didn't have ramekins, we used large pie plates - this made assembly easy, but serving prettily a little more difficult! (This recipe made 2 large pie plates full of tastiness!)

The Verdict:

Katie's rating: Yum
Johnny's rating: Yum

Easiness: Easy

Speed: Slow

Good ol' Beans and Taters

A lazy, rainy Monday - what could be better than some boiled potatoes with baked beans?  I credit my brother with the idea of putting cheese on top.  In this particular case, the meal doesn't quite fit our mostly-vegetarian paradigm since the beans have lard in them, but I've come to accept that it's just as good with the deep-browned beans in tomato sauce.

Good Ol' Beans and Taters

Ingredients:

• any sort of potatoes
• your favourite canned baked beans (or maybe you make them yourself, in which case tell me how!)
• some grated cheese if you like
• butter (optional)
• salt and pepper

Directions:

Boil the potatoes.  Heat up the beans.  Put some potatoes in a bowl and chop them into bite-sized pieces.  Slather with some butter, salt, and pepper, if you wish.  Dump some beans on top.  Top with grated cheese if you like.

The Verdict:

Katie's rating: Yum
Johnny's rating: So-so

Easiness: Super-duper easy
Speed: Super-duper speedy