I learned a new way to make garlic bread although I didn’t follow all of the instructions from the recipe but adjusted it to the ingredients I had at home.
It was quick, easy, delicious and the recipe can be adjusted to your own palette preferences without much effort.
Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup gorgonzola cheese, at room temperature
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 loaf of French bread, sliced
Directions
Cream the butter
Add the gorgonzola and the garlic to the butter and mix together
Spread this mixture on top of the slices of bread
Broil until golden brown
I adjusted the original recipe because it had too much cheese and I didn’t have the parsley that it called for. It still came out great!
This is another wonderful dish from the 1000 Vegan Recipes cookbook that I’m hoping to try many recipes from. It is very tasteful but you do have to like olives — which I do! Even as leftovers the next day, it warmed up very well. The olives gave my palette a burst of flavor in my mouth.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon (or less if you don’t like it too spicy) crushed red pepper flakes
1 (14.5 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
Salt and pepper (to your taste)
3/4 cup kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/4 cup green olives, pitted and halved
3 tablespoons capers
2 tablespoons minced fresh or dried parsley
1 pound linguine
Directions
 In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat
Add the garlic and crushed red pepper flakes then cook through for about 30 seconds
Stir in both cans of the tomatoes, the oregano and basil
Add salt and pepper (to your taste)
Bring the sauce to a boil then reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes stirring occasionally
Add the olives, capers and parsley then cover and keep warm
In a large pot, boil salted water and cook the linguine according to package instructions
Once the linguine is cooked, put it in a bowl, pour the sauce over it and toss it gently to combine it all
Quinoa? What is quinoa? After buying a large bag of it (I like to try new things) I had better find out, eh?
Quinoa
Quinoa is sometimes considered a grain but it is actually a seed. It has a slightly nutty flavor and can be prepared like rice or barley. The texture is soft — almost like couscous. A nutritionist I know called it “the perfect food” and says it is filled with vitamins, proteins, amino acids, minerals, and fiber. It also contains the essential omega-3 fatty acids which provides benefits to the heart. Sounds pretty close to a perfect food, eh?
I like the texture of quinoa — it feels soft in my mouth and doesn’t taste heavy in my belly.
Ingredients
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups quinoa, well rinsed
Salt
1 1/2 cups cooked or 1 (15.5 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
4 ripe plum tomatoes, chopped but not too small
1/2 cup minced red onion
1/2 cup basil
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Add the water to a large saucepan and bring it to a boil over high heat
Add the quinoa, salt the water and return to a boil
When it’s simmering, reduce the heat, cover the saucepan and allow the quinoa to cook through (until the water is absorbed) for about 20 minutes
Once cooked, transfer the quinoa to a large bowl
Add the black beans, tomatoes, onion, basil then stir it all together
In a small bowl, combine the olive oil, vinegar, salt (to your taste) and pepper — this will be the dressing
Pour 1/2 of the dressing over the salad and toss to combine. Taste and see if the flavor is right for you
Continue adding the dressing until you feel comfortable with the taste and the consistency, ie, not too oily tasting
Serves approximately 10 as a side dish.
The recipe is from the cookbook I received as a gift, 1000 Vegan Recipes.
I made the following changes to the original recipe:
Used basil instead of parsley
Use red wine vinegar instead of sherry vinegar
The recipe says it feeds 4 but you have to eat a LOT of this salad for it to feed four. I used it as a side dish so had lots left over. I covered the leftovers with plastic and the next day the salad still tasted fine. However, like other salads I’ve made that have a dressing, my preference would be make the salad and add the dressing a few minutes before you’re ready to serve it. I find it tastes fresher that way.
At first glance, the name of this recipe sounded a little odd to me but since I have lots of red lentils (that I bought very inexpensively, by the way) I decided to try it. One of my goals this year is to try more vegan recipes from the cookbook, 1000 Vegan Recipes, that I was given for Christmas.
What a wonderful surprise this soup turned out to be! It was delicious. I had my doubts in the beginning because when I added the can of crushed tomatoes the soup looked red and tasted too much like tomatoes. But the longer it cooked, the more the sweet butternut flavors came through.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon mild curry powder
1 (14.5 ounce) can unsalted crushed tomatoes
1 cup red lentils, picked over, rinsed and drained
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 cups finely chopped stemmed red Swiss chard
Directions
In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium heat.
Add the onion, squash and garlic then cover and cook until the vegetables are softened, 10-15 minutes.
Stir in the ginger and curry powder.
Add the tomatoes, lentils, broth, water, and the salt and pepper to taste.
Bring the soup to a boil then reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, until the lentils and vegetables are tender, about 45 minutes.
Stir occasionally.
About 15 minutes before serving, stir in the chard.
Adjust the seasonings if necessary and then serve.
I made the following changes to this recipe to suit my family’s taste:
First, instead of chopping the onion (which means they’d be larger) I diced it since one of my son’s doesn’t like onions. This helps the onion to cook more thoroughly so the soup doesn’t taste too much like onion.
Second,I used 2 cloves of garlic instead of one.
Third, I used only 1/2 teaspoon curry powder instead of the 1 tablespoon that the original recipe calls for. The original recipe also says you can use hot curry powder but since we don’t like a strong curry flavor I toned it down.
Fourth, I used 4 cups of broth and one cup of water instead of 5 cups of broth. In the past, I have found that when I use too much broth the soup tastes more like the broth than anything else. I wanted to make sure that the other flavors were enhanced.
Really and truly, this was a great tasting soup. I served it with a pear, pecan, blue cheese salad and Naan bread. I wasn’t trying to have a vegan meal — just try a new vegan recipe. I hardly noticed that this soup had red lentils in it.
Ingredients
Dice the Onions
Peel the Butternut Squash
Dice the Butternut Squash
Clean the Red Lentils
Rinse the Red Lentils
Red Swiss Chard
Add the Garlic, Onion and the Butternut Squash
Add the Canned Tomatoes, Ginger, and Curry
Curried Butternut and Red Lentil Soup with Red Swiss Chard
Curried Butternut and Red Lentil Soup with Chard
This soup is now on my favorites list. If you try it, please let me know how you like it and what other variations you try.
I grew up with achiote and never really knew what it was except that I saw my mother put the tiny seeds in a small amount of hot oil until the oil turned orange red. Then she would drain the seeds from the oil and use the oil for giving color to rice or other food.
When I visited my cousin in Puerto Rico recently, she had the achiote plant sitting on her kitchen counter.
Achiote Plant
The plant looks quite interesting and bears no resemblance to the seeds I had seen as a child. We opened the pod up and the seeds came tumbling out.
Achiote Seeds
Achiote is also called annatto. The seeds give color to cheese, popcorn, drinks and even bread. (click here for the Wikipedia article). According to the article, people use it to flavor foods instead of using the more expensive saffron.
The plant has the nickname “lipstick paint” as American Indians have been known to use it for body paint. I would have never thought to use it in that manner though.
I have a large plastic container of achiote in my cupboards. It’s a LOT of achiote and I have yet to use it but … one day … one day soon it will start getting used.
Food on a cruise ship normally borders on above average to excellent — even better than your above average restaurant in the United States. I looked forward to the variety of food and expected local food to also be served, especially my favorite which is platanos maduros (fried yellow plantains) which I had had on a previous cruise in the Caribbean.
The food on the Caribbean Princess was average for the most part but not excellent. I liked that the portions were enough to make me feel full without making me feel stuffed. I was disappointed though that Caribbean food was not served. Although there was plenty of fruit, it was not ripe most of the time.
The service was also lacking. For the first three days our waiter seemed to be distracted even to the point of giving me other people’s food which I had to return. Sometimes both he and the busboy stood around doing nothing even though the area they were responsible for was not that large (2 tables). Instead of re-filling the bread baskets or drinks they stood waiting for us to be finished with our meal. This is unheard of in the cruise world. The waiters/busboys are trained to wait on you hand and foot and replenish things immediately.
After the third day, I spoke to the maitre’d before heading to our table to see if we could come to dinner at a later time. Once we got to our seats the service immediately changed. We started getting the service that we had come to know when cruising. One of my son’s told me that the waiter had seen me speaking to the maitre’d. I wonder if he thought I was complaining as his demeanor changed. The waiter became more friendly and the service we expected came to fruition.
Below are some of the pictures I took of some of the meals our family ordered:
Cruise Dinner Table
Appetizer – Watermelon with Feta Cheese
Breakfast
Soup with Chicken Wonton
Mango Soup
Classic Veal Scaloppine in Marsala Sauce
Deep Dish Apple Pie
Dessert
Dinner
I received a survey from Princess Cruise and told them about our experience. They had someone call me and I reiterated what I had put down on the survey. Their response? “We’ll pass the information along.”
I hope the food and service comes up to industry standard — or perhaps the industry standard has come down. That would be really disappointing.
This year, when asked what I wanted for Christmas, I decided I’d like to try recipes that did not include meat or dairy. So it was no surprise to people when I asked for Carol Gelles cookbook called 1000 Vegan Recipes.
1000 Vegan Recipes
I don’t think I’ll be like Julia Powell who decided to try one recipe a day from Julia Child’s first cookbook but I would like to have at least 2-3 meals a week that are vegan. And I’m hoping to get the majority of my recipes from this book.
Think that’s too ambitious? Well, I won’t know until I try. My target start date is February. I’ll post them and perhaps you all can let me know what you think of them.
Okay so — the title should read “Chocolate Covered Macaroons” but they didn’t quite turn out the way I expected them to so I left out the chocolate.
I followed the recipe to a “t” and left the cookies in for the minimum time of 20 minutes instead of the 25 minutes. It was still too long. The second batch was left in for 15 minutes but those came out too mushy. So — I’m guessing 18 minutes might have been the perfect number.
I also halved the recipe but I don’t think that should have made much difference.
In any case, they came out moist on the inside and crispy on the outside. Not too bad for a first try. Macaroons are one of my favorite cookies.
Ingredients
1 -14-ounce bag shredded coconut (I used sweetened but the original recipe doesn’t differentiate)
1/2 can (7 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon sour cream
1/2 tablespoon heavy cream
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
In a large bowl, mix the sweetened condensed milk, sour cream, heavy cream, and vanilla together.
Add the shredded coconut.
Mix all of this together making sure that all of the coconut is covered with the milk mixture.
Using an ice cream scoop place mounds of the mixture on parchment lined baking sheets.
Bake at 325 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until the coconut is nicely browned.
Cool on a cooling rack.
They turned out just fine. But — when it comes to macaroons and coconut, I like it all.
Macaroons
Mix the liquid with the coconut and coat thoroughly.
Bake on parchment paper so it’s not sticky.
Enjoy! (You can buy parchment paper online — click on below to check it out.)
I haven’t had very many posts recently with new recipes because we’ve had a guest who has been cooking for us almost every day. The food is varied — Indian, Kenyan, Greek, etc.
Here are some pictures of some of what we’ve had recently:
Turkish Winter Stew with Tyropsomo Bread
(This soup and bread was delicious!)
Vegetarian Pastichio, Peas and Potatoes, Greek Salad
The vegetarian pastichio is a baked pasta dish. It was very good as was the peas with potatoes (although it could have had a little less oil). I am partial to Greek salads so I have to say it was great.
Vegetarian Spinach Lasagne with Garlic Snow Peas
The lasagne was perfect. Crusty on the edges just like I like it. The snow peas were not overcooked but crisp.
These recipes may eventually make their way to our guest’s website, www.travelthesenses.com
One of my favorite appetizers is called Inari. We normally serve it during the Christmas holidays so it’s a real treat.
I thought it would be a little hard to find it in the St. Paul area but I was surprised that there are actually 2 places we can find them. One is the sushi deli at Cub Foods in Woodbury and the other is a restaurant called Sushi Tango, also in Woodbury.
Inari is made with an outer fried bean curd “skin” pouch that is soft and is filled with sticky rice. It is very delicious and can be made at home (if you can find the pouches – see below to order).
Inari
A very filling appetizer that can be served with other “hand” foods.
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