Omnomicon

You guys, you guys. Have you ever been to a music festival? In addition to beats, good company, crappy camping and hippies, they also feature food vendors. And this is how I discovered The Skinny Pancake, a Burlington VT original. I haven’t yet made a pilgrimage to their restaurant (Vermont is kind of a hike from Massachusetts), but they have some incredible crepes that you can recreate at home without tie-dye bedecked strangers eyeing your breakfast.

First, we have The Heartbreaker.

I think you can see where we’re going with this. My crepes are not like those served by the Skinny Pancake, but they still benefit from nutella, strawberries and bananas. And apples too . . .

. . . but we’re getting to that. Now mix up your favourite crepe batter.

And let it stand, covered with plastic wrap, for 30 mins before go time. On a side note, I fucking hate whisks, but crepes are the one food item they serve well instead of becoming a clumpy hard-to-clean nuisance. When the time is right, heat up 1/2 tsp of butter in your largest skillet, and pour enough batter to cover the bottom without the batter on top being runny.

Do a little swishy swishy with your pan, and pour back to the bowl whatever isn’t stuck to the pan. When your crepe starts to bubble and the bottom of it is browned, give it a flip. This will happen a minute or two after liftoff.

Now immediately, I reiterate, immediately get about half a tablespoon of Nutella on there. You want this to get melty, and the longer it’s on your crepe, the meltier it’ll get.

And then toss on your strawberries and banana. You don’t want a lot of these, and you’ll see why, looks like I used about 2 strawberries and one third of a banana.

Now give that side a minute or two to cook, then begin the folding process.

You want a tri-cornered hat looking thing reminiscent of colonial America. And this is the reason you want to go light on your fruits, it won’t fold up right if you aren’t conservative. Now flip that monster over for about thirty seconds to let the oozy coat the other side of the crepe.

Serve to your favourite breakfast guests.

We’re almost done! The Green Mountain crepe was a big hit festivalwise as well, so I did that one too.

Your story starts out the same, and, as with the Nutella, you wanna get your sharp cheddar slices on there immediately after flipping and for the same melty reasons.

Now the apples.

Do your foldy bit.

And you know the rest.

Do you put anything cool in your crepes? Do you have an excellent crepe recipe to share? Please do! I have a feeling these are going to be a Saturday morning tradition for some time to come, and will try anything that sounds reasonably delicious.

This is the next recipe in my Family Cookbook series. This one comes from my little sister Sarah, but is actually one of my all-time favourites. When I got my first apartment in college, I also got my very first cookbook from UNH Health Services, and what do you know, it’s now online. Get the entire thing here: Good Eats! Quick & Easy Food for Busy College Students.

I love this cookbook because it’s very health-conscious in addition to focusing on budget. I would recommend it to anyone who has never really cooked for themselves, and I myself use recipes from it regularly. I’d have to say it’s the only cookbook from which I’ve made most of the recipes.

This one in particular is just wonderful. I’m still amazed at how such a simple concoction can bring joy into my life over and over again without making me fat (and oh my god it has so much fiber in it). And it only takes about 20 minutes to make. It is also extremely amendable: you can add chicken, leave out the feta, leave out the pasta, throw in other veggies you have. But really, all you need is a can of tomatoes, a can of cannellini beans, garlic, 10 oz of fresh spinach and some pasta.

Sautee your garlic on low then throw in your canned stuff. The tomatoes ought not be drained, but the cannellini need to be rinsed.

And if you didn’t use the Italian seasoned tomatoes, generously empty your spice cabinet in there (basil, oregano, kosher salt, pepper). Even if you did use the Italian stuff, you’re going to want some salt in there.

While that’s simmering, you have plenty of time to break the stems off your spinach and rinse it. And unless you used baby spinach, you really want to break off those stems, you’ll thank yourself later on.

Now it’s been about ten minutes, and you want to throw your spinach in there.

Stir that up just until the spinach wilts. In fact, the less cooked the spinach is, the better this is going to taste, so leave it on low while you stir that in. It should only take a minute or so to be done.

You *were* cooking your pasta all the while, correct? I also include this shot as a measure of what 2 oz of penne (1 serving) looks like cooked. As a frame of reference, that bowl is exactly a cup. Needless to say, it will not be 2 oz once it’s cooked.

Now top with feta, if you’re doing that, and voila! A twenty-minute dinner that’s incredible in every way. I usually leave out the feta, but since B’Garah loves her cheese, I had to include it for the picture. It also makes the shot a little more attractive.

And that’s all she wrote.

Mediterranean Pasta
Adapted from the UNH Good Eats! Cookbook

1 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced or finely chopped
1-28 oz can diced tomatoes (use whole peeled if you’re leaving out the pasta)
1-14 oz can cannellini (also called white kidney beans and similar to Navy or Great Northern Beans)
1 tbsp dried basil leaves
1 tbsp dried oregano leaves
1 tbsp kosher salt
black pepper to taste
10 oz fresh spinach, stems removed
4-8 oz cooked penne (I like the Smart Taste brand best)

First, set your water to boil, and cook pasta when it’s there (which will be at some point in the middle of all this).

Sautee the garlic in the oil in a nice big pot on low for about a minute. Enter tomatoes, beans and spices. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer, uncovered, for ten minutes while you de-stem your spinach. Now throw in the spinach and stir until it’s just wilted.

Serve atop pasta (this is a very small amount of pasta called for, there will be considerably more sauce than pasta), with feta if so desired.

Serves 4.

NOTES:
* Use a big pot because the spinach starts out really fluffy and this will give you space to stir without getting the spinach all over your stove.
* Don’t start heating your oil until the garlic is minced/chopped and ready to go, or you’ll end up with nasty bitter burnt garlic.
* Consider serving sans pasta. In this case, use the whole peeled tomatoes.
* It really doesn’t need the feta and it doesn’t need much pasta either. Honest. The spinach gets this buttery texture to it that eliminates the need for extra fat/flavour.

Excited about winter squash, I wanted to make a pumpkin soup. I couldn’t find any recipes, so I tried to adapt a mishmash of recipes online for butternut squash soup. So uh, here’s a little documentation of the process.

I started off with more ingredients than I ended with.

I mean, look how beautiful!

The pumpkin gave me a hard time, and was much more difficult to make photogenic. The guts, however, are just so darn pretty.

I then prepared these to roast for an hour.

Post-roast, we make a squash smoothie that looks here suspiciously like a mango smoothie of some kind.

I couldn’t get a good shot of both brands of soup, but I promise, they look the same and the butternut was way better. It didn’t even need the maple syrup I thought might give a nice layer of flavour.

In addition to being a bit time-consuming, this recipe will also leave your kitchen a total mess. But Dano ate it until he couldn’t any more and ranted and raved and, I assure you, has no problems being harsh when he doesn’t like something. So maybe it’s just not for everyone? It is super healthy and flavourful and I don’t think there’s any fat in this. So there are certainly redeeming qualities here!

Here’s the recipe I ended up with after all my experimentation. Thanks, Epicurious!

When I was a kid we visited my Uncle Doug with some frequency, and he only owned two movies from what I can remember. The first was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which didn’t appeal to me for more than five minutes at a time, and the second was Fried Green Tomatoes. Yes, it is a chick flick, but it’s also a dark period film, and at the time that shit was directly up my alley. Oh, who are we kidding, it’s still up my alley.

In college, I took a food lit class and this was also on the required reading. Turns out in the book there’s a little bit more of a lesbian bent. Who knew? Whatever the case, I digress. It all comes down to I saw green tomatoes at work, and decided to try something new. In addition to the food itself, check out the results of my fancy little light box!

Look at these babies. Just beautiful, the color.

Green being my favourite colour, this was practically a religious experience visually.

This isn’t sandart, it’s just the underwhelming breading for these things.

And here they are, fried green tomatoes!

These were really just okay, which surprises me in a way, considering how much oil went into them, but not in other ways, like it’s a southern dish. I could see these being excellent with seasoned breadcrumbs, but I’m not a big fan of cornmeal without something punching it up a bit, and needless to say, the tsp of paprika really didn’t cut it. That said, I made an attempt to salvage this experiment.

Yep, you can make anything into a pretty good sammich. This one features arugula, cheddar, red onion, and mayo. My research tells me that green tomatoes are indeed just red tomatoes that haven’t had a chance to ripen yet. I thought maybe they were some kind of varietal. Maybe I’ll try fried heirloom tomatoes one of these days.

If you are interested in making your own, here’s a recipe from Epicurious.

Bonjour amies et amis!

Guess what I’m making today!

Why yes, we shall be making le French Onion Soup! Hohoho!

We start with sweet white onions. Oh, Vidalia, why do you always bring me to tears? I just want to love you!

In the pot you go!

Hokay, lookit what I found!

Organic Purple Green Beans! Cool! Perfect! Let’s make my awesome No-Can Green Bean Casserole.

First, we rinse ’em.

Gather our other ingredients.

Oh check this out, they’re green on the inside!

Now we chop the mushrooms.

Oux! A roux to get this party started.

Aww . . . I guess they turn green when you cook them. A good way of telling when they’re cooked, though!

My my, what a sexy casserole!

Fancy casserole shot.

Recipe
The thought of mushroom soup in a green bean casserole is enough to make me want to gag. Couple that with canned green beans and I am a nauseous cook. However, there is hope! Nook and Pantry found this recipe and it is fantastic (and low calorie–a serving has 129 calories, 5.2g fiber and 5g of fat). I’ll eat half a batch as a dinner rather than a side. YUM!

The Foodie’s Green Bean Casserole
Adapted from Nook and Pantry
Serves 4

1 lb green beans, ends trimmed and broken in half
8 oz button mushrooms, chopped
3 tbsp Land O’Lakes Light Butter
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
1/2 c chicken stock (chicken broth and Better Than Bouillon also work)
1/4 c Land O’Lakes Fat Free Half and Half
1 sauteed chopped onion

Preheat the oven to 400o F.

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Add the mushroom, garlic, some salt and pepper, and cook until the mushrooms are starting to release their liquid. When the liquid is starting to reduce, add the beans and cook until they are bright green and still a bit crunchy, about 5 minutes. You will only bake the casserole for a few minutes in the oven so cook the beans a little less than your desired tenderness.

While the beans are cooking, melt the remaining 2 tablespoon of butter over medium heat in a saucepan. Add the flour, whisk and cook until the roux is slightly golden. Slowly pour in the chicken stock, while continually whisking. Simmer the mixture for about a minute. Season with salt and pepper. Whisk in the half and half, and add the green bean and mushroom pieces; toss to coat.

Pour the mixture into an 8 x 8 Pyrex or a 9″ diameter pie dish. Sprinkle with sauteed onions. Bake about 10 minutes.