Kale is more than a garnish!

One of my current fav TV shows, Modern Family, had a character argue that kale was totally a garnish and shouldn’t be use as food; I beg to differ.  Kale is a great vegetable.  Like other cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage), kale contains several antioxidants (ex. Lutein).  It’s rich in vitamin A (eye health), K (important in cellular metabolism) and C (cell growth and repair).  It’s also rich in calcium.  So essentially, kale is a super food, and if you’ve thrown it to the side of your plate, reconsider it’s vast potential as an excellent vegetable to add to your diet.

The other night, I made lentil and kale soup.  Lentils are great soup beans, and compared to other beans, they don’t take very long to cook.  They’re packed with so much nutritional value in one small bean!  Like most beans, they have a fiber, but unique to lentils is that they have a significant amount of folate and magnesium, which are important in heart health.

To start this recipe, I chopped up my mirepoix (3 large carrots, 3 celery stalks, ½ onion) and added ¼ tsp of salt and pepper, which I sautéed in 3 tbsp of olive oil until the onion became translucent.  Then, I added a chorizo-like sausage (1/4 lb) and cooked the sausage through.  If you would like to keep this soup vegetarian, you can skip this step.  

Next, add your lentil beans (1/2 lb, rinsed), 4 cups of water, a bullion cube, and two bayleaves.  I cooked the beans for 15 minutes before I added the kale, because they do take longer to cook.  Rinse, clean, and chop a bushel of kale and add to the soup.  Cook for another 15 minutes.  Serve! 

So I had hoped for a really good post...

Tonight, I wanted to write about this wonderful pizza I made from a recipe I found on http://www.food52.com, but now after 1/2 bottle of wine, I'm having difficulty thinking about it.  Instead, I'm feeling sleepy, and I'm definitely exhausted after all the pots/pans/dishes I just finished cleaning! Pictures to come, but the pizza was worth it.

On a side note, I feel that everyone's getting into this food business.  Even Charlie Sheen is trying to take my style!

Check out this video from Fun or Die. It's somewhat funny, but it's kinda lame too, since he uses most of his recently infamous taglines he made during his 20/20 interview. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/bfb12aea47/charlie-sheen-s-winning-recipes?playlist=featured_videos

Stay tuned for my pizza review :)

embracing the foodie nation

“A person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation.  A foodie is not necessarily a food snob, only enjoying delicacies and/or food items difficult to obtain and/or expensive foods; though, that is a variety of foodie.”  - Urban Dictionary

I thought I’d start off with a basic definition of a foodie, since I claim to be one.   I wanted to do this blog for my friends, so I’m going share some anecdotes with you, as I explore everything food related. 

It’s a fun time to be a foodie, and there are so many outlets for us to turn to. I find myself appreciating food more and more each day.  My subscription to Netflix (courtesy of Stephanie) has truly expanded my knowledge on food; where it comes from, how it’s grown and its future.  There are cable channels that are totally devoted to food; not all the programming is great, but each show does appreciate food in some manner.  I even stumbled upon this fun new webseries http://freefoodies.com/. It started yesterday, so check it out; I think it’s pretty funny!

So I thought as a foodie, I’d tell you about my first food memory, but for some reason, I’m not sure what it was!  Yeah, I have pictures documenting many food-important events of my life, like my second grade birthday party at King’s Cooking Studios in Short Hills.  What eight year old tells her mom she wanted to have her birthday party at a cooking studio??  Ummm me! We made pizza and cookies, and it was a fantastic time!  From then on, at every book fair, I was buying cooking books with my allowance money! 

But even before this were those trips to Corrado's in Clifton, NJ; http://www.corradosmarket.com/home/store-clifton.html. Back then, it was a little bit more bare-bones kind of store, with open 3 story ceilings and a vast array of international foods  Mom would spend hours in each aisle (not that it's much different than today), and she’d whisk my sisters and me away to shell sweet peas to make our Corrado Day "fun." What she didn't realize the fun part was when she wasn’t looking; we were too busy poking at the snails on the crates!  But it’s sad that I can’t distinguish my first memories. It’s hard to imagine my life without good food, and I’ve been very fortunate. What were your first food memories, maybe it could jog my memory!

How to make sauce: lessons from my mom’s recipe.

For my inaugural post, I dedicate this to my friends. 

Tomato sauce “from scratch” is not a very hard process.  Yes, it is more work than pouring from your preferred commercially brand jar, but within a half hour, you too can have a delicious homemade sauce.   

It’s all in the ingredients.  Garlic, onion, tomatoes., and a few spices and herbs.  Chop 2-3 cloves of garlic.  If you don’t like garlic in your final sauce, you can crack each clove, and then fish them out of your sauce.  Dice 1/3 to 1/2 of a medium sweet onion.    Saute in 3 tbsp olive oil or enough to coat the bottom of the pot.  

Add black pepper, red pepper, and salt.  Add the spices to your preference, starting at 1/4 tsp to whatever spiciness desired.  I like to add the spices at this step.  Their oils begin to open up when heated.  Also, I add salt here to sweat the onions and garlic, and cook until yellow/ light caramel (not brown) in color.  

After about 5 minutes (depends on how hot your flame is) add your tomotoes.  In the summer months, it is always best to have fresh tomatoes, but as a staple, I always keep in a can of organic Muir Glen tomatoes (28 oz) in my cupboard.  I like these because they aren’t very acidic and have a nice aroma.  Traditional American-Italians swear by that “yellow” can; but my mom uses these, and my mom is the best cook I know!  (She also recommends Trader Joe’s organic tomatoes too).  Diced and crush tomatoes are great to use, because  of the consistency they provide, but if you want a smoother sauce you can puree your final sauce with a hand blender.  Stir and add 2-3 leaves of basil.  Again, fresh is best, but in the summer, my parents will freeze all our basil, and I’ll take 2-3 frozen leaves. 

My secret ingredient: carrot. Yes, my mother showed this trick a long time ago, and even then, I too was thinking, “whaaaa?”

Bring to a boil, and then cook on medium heat for about 25 minutes.  After your sauce can coat the back of a spoon, it’s done.

Enjoy!