Eat Like a Rabbit

While Nora and I were outside enjoying the spring weather a couple days ago, I looked around sadly at our herb garden. I took a picture and decided I would share my desires and plans to improve our little urban garden. Mind you, this is not all of our garden, and I'm sorry to say, isn't the worst either. (The rocket is more depressing.) Fortunately, the rosemary on the front porch is considerably happier, which makes me not feel as bad.

We have some small pots and a bucket that someone gave me as a gift-basket. I'm going to fill each of them with dirt and plant some wild flower seeds that were sent to us as gifts. We're big on fresh flowers, and I think the extra color will make us very happy.

Next, I read somewhere that toddler swimming pools make great urban garden planters. I would love to fill one up with spinach and other greens. Seems like a good investment--this year a garden, next year fun for Nora. However, what would really make this work would be if I found a really cheap (a.k.a. free) pool. I would be extra happy to only have to invest in soil and seeds.

For a belated Christmas present, my darling aunt and uncle sent us 3 pounds of cheese curds. I spent all this morning searching online for recipes in which to use the young white and yellow cheddar pieces. Finally, it was lunch time and I hadn't been very successful. Cheese curds are most popular as Fried Cheese Curds, which there are tons of recipes for. However, after a eating too late last night, my stomach wasn't up for fried foods at lunch. Instead, I remembered a cheddar cheese soup recipe in my Moosewood Cooks at Home cookbook. However, since It's been weeks since my visit to the grocery store aside from the purchase of bananas, milk, and tortilla chips (which do me little good as I'm out of salsa), I had to adapt the recipe to what I had on hand. And you know what? I really surprised my self. I was quite proud how the soup turned out. I will say, the cheese flavor is rich in the vegetable soup. Although it was quite good, it was a bit heavy on the stomach--although that's a good idea when it's cold out. I don't expect it to be a regular soup in my collection, but that's OK because we live in Florida and rarely get the opportunity for it to be cold enough to warrant eating so much soup.

Cheddar Vegetable Soup

Inspired by Moosewood Cooks at Home

• 1/2 large onion, sliced
• 1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1-2 small celery stalks, diced
• 1 small-medium sweet potato, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 2 Tablespoons McKay's Chicken-style Seasoning (vegetarian boullion)
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup cheese curds, diced small

Saute onions in soup pot or sauce pan about 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add sweet potatoes, carrots and celery. Stir. Mix seasoning in water and pour into pot. Cover pot and cook about 10 minutes or until sweet potatoes are soft. (The original recipe called for white potatoes. I think they sometimes take longer to cook. Sweet potatoes seem to cook faster to me.) When vegetables are soft, add milk then cheese. The key is to have small cubes of cheese and to add them gradually so they don't clump.

Ladle the soup into a blender. (Be really careful because the blender may splatter when you turn it on. I have a silicone trivet that I cover the blender with so the soup won't splatter and burn my fingers. A towel could work, too.) Reheat soup and serve garnished with fresh herbs as desired. I bet green onions or chives would have been yummy if we had had any. Also, ground red pepper seemed to be a nice addition, too.

Some of these jars of dehydrated rosemary are actually part of Christmas gifts. So, I'd better share a few ideas for using them. At first, I wondered how anyone could ever use up so much, but now I realize I had too limited of an imagination. However, first, I'd better tell you how I dried them.

How to Dehydrate Rosemary

Rosemary can be very sticky. Line the trays of your dehydrator with saran wrap or other plastic wrap. This will save lots of work cleaning the trays later. It will also keep the little leaves from wrapping around the grates while drying, which makes removal much messier.

Two articles in December editions of parenting magazines I was lucky enough to acquire free subscriptions for have me very excited. One is geared more toward parents, but the other applies to anyone.

Parents magazine had a great article on page 42 sharing a new statement from the American Dietetic Association. A well-planned vegetarian diet can be healthy for infants and toddlers. This thrills me because I was nervous we would have difficulties finding a pediatrician that supported our vegetarian eating style. The article also shares vegetarian sources for iron, protein, B-12, and zinc, nutrients generally sought from meat products. I could not locate the article on the website, but if you are interested in reading more, pop over to your local library and read up on it.

So much of this post should be about focusing on the great pictures. And it's not just about giving Paul all the credit for the fabulous photography. The last time we were at Seasons 52 would have been my birthday, and the restaurant still had roughly the same fall/winter menu with a few changes. In fact, the items from February's post were still available. I'm not complaining. As long as the quality is consistent, there are no issues for me. I suppose we don't visit Seasons 52 during the summer because there are so many options available for cooking at home.

Speaking of cooking at home, the butternut squash on the big vegetable plate is the inspiration for our choice of dish for PumpkinFest this Saturday night. Stay tuned for how it turns out.

Here is the spinach pesto I made to serve on pizza with fresh tomatoes instead of a marinara sauce. The rosemary bread at $5 for two loaves from Costco makes the pizza easy and tasty because it adds lots of flavor leaving only a need for a little salt and pepper on the tomatoes.

You can find the recipe for my spinach pesto from my post last year. Plus, you can search for other recipes I use the spinach pesto with, like spaghetti squash or butternut squash lasagna, which will be made again this year. I will tell you I passed on the Parmesan and sprinkled a little olive oil in the food processor as I was stirring up and dishing out the pesto. Also, be careful with the garlic. All I had were large cloves left, and it was very potent for the amount I made! Unfortunately, my basil needs more care than I have been giving it; so, I didn't have as many leaves as I am used to or wish for. That's the beauty of the spinach in the pesto. It eliminates the need for so much basil, but still allows for fantastic and healthy flavor.

This was a positively amazing salad that really is simple to make, and just as important to serve. Paul's Aunt Marsha is the angel behind this heavenly healthy creation. The greatest accent is that each vegetable is roasted separately but served together, which is good for picky eaters and highlights the great colors of the individual vegetables. Each vegetable is cooked the same way and are combined at the end. Brilliantly, this salad fabulous served hot, warm, or even at room temp, which means it can be made ahead. This was important as the dinner Marsha served was a large buffet for about 15 people. With that much work, a vegetable that can be room temp balances between a cold salad and a hot entree--and that doesn't hog the oven--is perfect. Roasted fresh beets yield a purple dressing that again keeps this dish as natural and simple as possible.

I hope my memory of the recipe is the way Marsha does it by her memory!

Roasted Vegetable Salad

From watching Marsha Bloom

• Select equal portions of fresh sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and beets.
• Cut the brussel sprouts in half, peel the potatoes and cut into bite-sized pieces, cut beets as well.
• Place top rack in oven just above center and the second rack a notch or two below for space to get a second pan in and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Grease jelly roll pans with a light coat of spray. (Marsha had only two pans, and cooked the brussel sprouts first. Again, this is the beauty of a vegetable for a large group that doesn't have to be served hot.)
• Spread each vegetable individually and evenly over pan.
• Sprinkle olive oil semi-generously (although excess will not hurt) over the vegetable.
• Sprinkle fresh ground black pepper and salt evenly over vegetables.
• Top with three cloves each pan of chopped fresh garlic.
• Chop fresh rosemary (about 3 long sprigs per pan) and sprinkle around pan.
• Place pans in oven until bottom of vegetables are golden brown. The time varies depending on the veggie.
• Serve divided, but in the same bowl.

I found the recipe for Johnny Garlic's rosemary mashed potatoes on Food N

Believe it or not, this recipe is the result of a slight misunderstanding between my mother and I. We both like roasted sweet potatoes. She heard on a cooking show one day that if you brush them slightly with olive oil and cook them at 500' for 20 minutes, they get really crispy. I agreed to give it a shot. However, I didn't realize that she had put the potatoes in the middle of the oven with it set on "Bake". I put mine on the top rack set on "Broil" and turned them at 10 minutes when they started to brown too much.

VegCooking has a great selection of vegan recipes with fabulous photographs to make you want to try every recipe they throw at you. The recipes are categorized by I love the thought of adding cranberries to green beans. I found it ironic that the side dish was recommended to go with hazelnut and rosemary encrusted seitan, which was the entree that sounded the most tempting to me.

My father-in-law picked up this squash at the grocery store because it was so cute. It resembles a cucumber with extra yellow stripes. It has two names: Delicata and Bohemian. I sliced the squash thinly and cut the centers out. I brushed both sides of the rings with olive oil, placed them on an aluminum foil lined pan and sprinkled salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary on top. The squash gets roasted on a top rack in a 425' oven. The rings make cute appetizers or a side dish at dinner.

Taste wise, the rings did seem a bit plain. I feel like I can get the same flavor out of roasting sweet potatoes with the same seasonings. But it was a nice experience.

This was a fabulously colored vegan dinner focused on vegetables easily accessible in our local stores. I really enjoyed it, but Paul said that the frozen lime juice I had defrosted to mix with the sugar snap peas. I do caution cooks to follow the recipe closely because the peas did not hold their bright green color.

The recipe for the peas came from foodnetwork.tv called Mint Sugar Snap Peas. I did use frozen peas and would be happier trying the recipe with fresh peas in the future. I used the roasted sweet potato recipe with olive oil, seasoned salt, and fresh rosemary for the red potatoes; and I sliced some very ripe tomatoes.

Previously, I have blogged about the wisdom of using food as a gift. We have taken our own advice and found ways to give food as gifts. We give lovely jars (RECYCLED) filled with dehydrated or fresh herbs depending on who will receive the gift and what we think they may like. We put a homemade label on the jar that connects back to EatLikeARabbit.net for recipes and other suggestions. Generally, herbs are useful to an individual. And even they may not be useful to the original recipient, they know someone who will be thrilled to get it. Therefore, we are sharing our love of the land with others and giving something that won't sit in a closet and collect dust until an appropriate time comes to regift it or take it Goodwill.

I'm quite proud of this recipe. I chopped up baking potatoes, diced up a small onion, minced or chopped a few cloves of garlic and cooked the potatoes on medium with just enough olive oil to keep the potatoes from sticking to the skillet. About 7 seven minutes before the potatoes were done, I harvested three large sprigs of rosemary from our herb garden and chopped the leaves into the skillet.

This is one of our favorite recipes from "The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet". It allows for much creativity and lets Paul and I make differing concoctions according to our tastes.

Do these look fantastic or what? This recipe came from foodnetwork.tv. I don't plan to make mashed potatoes any other way ever again. Even better are the leftovers as potato pancakes or hash browns.

The recipe calls for roughly an entire head of garlic. I love being able to use the rosemary in our herb garden. I am impressed with the modest amount of milk and oil (no butter) added to the dish. Certainly additional milk would be acceptable. Some people may wish to add butter at the table.

The chef recommends an old-fashioned masher over a blender, which I love. I like my potatoes a little chunkier. Also, it's great exercise!