You may remember that I asked for ideas of camping meals, a couple weeks ago.  I had some strict conditions: we were flying to our destination and bringing our camping gear, so it had to be easy to prepare with the simplest cooking implements, and composed entirely of things we could buy piecemeal at the grocery store upon our arrival.  Most of the advice I got was the same as we were thinking: that sounds hard. We made some allowances for things we couldn’t live without (we bought a little bottle of cooking oil and tossed half of it), and we had some mishaps, but overall I think we did pretty well.  We certainly felt well-fed.  The key was keeping it very, very simple.

The other key is this: when you’ve spent the day camping, anything will taste like the best meal you’ve ever had.

The biggest food-related “mishap” was the mouse that broke into our car the first night and chewed holes in several of our bags of food. The little varmint didn’t ruin everything, and left some things surprisingly untouched, but that mouse cost us at least a meal out of our plans.

This is not the mouse, but it is one of his shameless, fearless cousins who would happily have done the same:

Here’s what we planned, and what we ended up with.

Breakfast:

• Pancakes (from a just-add-water mix) with dried blueberries
• Scrambled eggs, with pan-fried potatoes and veggies sausage
• Oatmeal with dried blueberries (the oats were an early victim of the mouse – fortunately, we had enough eggs and potatoes for an extra meal)

Dinner:

• Baked beans (from a can) and veggie hot dogs
• Annie’s Mac & Cheese with veggie hot dogs
• “Stew” consisting of a can of tomatoes, a can of beans, some chopped potatoes, and cheese.  Cornbread on the side. (The cornbread mix was another mouse victim – and just as well, because it would have been far too much food.)

All this we cooked on a rented, two-burner Coleman stove with an inexpensive two-person mess kit and a Leatherman.  We used no spices, no odds and ends. It was not the best cooking experience of my life, though it made me feel very resourceful.  The macaroni and cheese very nearly overflowed its pot, and was the lumpiest I’ve ever made. We might replace the mess kit with something sturdier and more practical, before our next camping trip.  But everything came out utterly delicious, because that’s how things work when you’re camping.

But the best part about camping is, you get to watch this while you make breakfast:

And when you’re done, you can go see things like these:

The fun foodie part of the trip was in Seattle.  It rained, but we consoled ourselves with good food. We spent less time there than I would have liked, and I was singularly unprepared to know where to eat. Usually when I travel, I’ve got a handful of restaurants in mind, but here, we just wandered, and stumbled upon some good stuff.

I’d never been to Seattle before, and the one foodie destination on my list was Pike Place Market.  This was like no other market that I’ve been to: part European city market, part Neverwhere-style Floating Market. The descriptions I read didn’t do it justice. It was a maze, spread across several buildings and many floors, with windy corridors and usually no way to get from here to there.  We got very turned around. But most of the food stands, fortunately, spread along one long hallway, and restaurants lined the street just outside, so once we found that, we were fine.

The only thing that prevented me from filling up my suitcase with treasure from Pike Place Market was the knowledge that it was already basically full. And a lot of the best things wouldn’t travel well, anyhow.  But I couldn’t help but bring home a few things.

One stand, Papardelle’s, sold handmade pasta in a rainbow of flavors, most of which you wouldn’t find anywhere else.  If I lived in Seattle, I would stop there in the afternoon to pick up just the right one to go with dinner that night. Picking one or two just to have?  That was hard. I picked some “orzo supreme”, a three-flavored orzo that included porcini, saffron, and roasted pepper.

I also got a bag of chocolate raspberry gemelli.  That’s right, chocolate-raspberry flavored pasta.  How could I not?  Nathan asked me what I plan to do with it, and I admit that I don’t know.  Something excellent.  (Suggestions are welcome!)

We also sampled some incredible vinegars, like an aged blackberry balsalmic. But I’d have been scared to take those on the plane.

Down the hall, tucked in a corner behind a crowd of tourists (who were watching some guys throw fish around, for reasons that escape me), was my favorite store: Market Spice.  Imagine a candy store for grown-ups who like to cook. That’s what it’s like, down to the rows of bulk storage containers on the walls, and the man behind the counter who would fetch your candy… errr, your spices for you. One wall was entirely lined with spices, including quite a few rarities, and many of their own blends. A second wall was all coffee and tea. The shelves held boxed tea, containers, teapots, and various other wonderful things. I restrained myself here, and only got a handful of things: a bag of their signature cinnamon-orange tea (both sweet and spicy, it may be my new favorite incarnation of this flavor of tea), some huckleberry tea, a small bag of dried orange zest, and another small bag of local applewood smoked salt, which smells just like a campfire. All of these seemed unique enough to be worth carting home, and I’m already regretting that I didn’t splurge more, because there’s just nothing comparable here in DC.

We had lunch nearby at Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, where you could perch on a stool (if you were lucky enough to get one at the small counter) and watch them make cheese in tubs the size of three bathtubs, while eating their self-proclaimed “world’s best” macaroni and cheese. I’ve always claimed that I make the best mac and cheese in the world (with the exception of the lumpy boxed stuff from our camping trip), but theirs was so good that I won’t begrudge them the title.

Of course, all these stores do online sales. There’s no reason I couldn’t order anything I like, with no worries about fitting it in a suitcase.  But… isn’t that cheating?

My perspective on food and cooking changes when it’s this hot out. My idea of an elaborate meal these days is a bowl of blueberries, or some cheese and crackers. Anything to avoid turning on the stove.  Part of my heat-addled brain would like to post recipes for these brilliant creations I’ve made. But somehow I doubt you’ll be impressed.

Some other thoughts for no-cook, no-effort meals:

• Smoothies
• Tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and bread
• Blueberry salad with goat cheese
• Cottage cheese with chopped fruit
• Hummus and pita bread
• Sandwiches

Has it been this hot where you are? What have you been eating?

“We need dinner,” I told him.  “We have two options. We can have spaghetti with the veggie meatballs -”

“Did I mention those meatballs were really, really good?” he interrupts.  (They are good.  I’ll be sharing that recipe in a few days, just as soon as I get some pictures.)

“- or sweet potato quesadillas,” I finish.

He does not hesitate for a second.  “The quesadillas.”  There was no competition.

Sweet potatoes are good for many, many things, and I don’t use them often enough, or creatively enough.  I’ll usually just bake them and mash them, to eat as a side dish.  But in this dinner, they’re the stars.  They’re quite literally the secret ingredient.  I will confess that I’ve started keeping already-baked sweet potatoes in the fridge just so I can make this recipe. It’s rapidly becoming one of our favorite dishes.

If you have baked sweet potato on hand, it only takes about 15 minutes to make.  If not, then what were you thinking? But it’s not the end of the world, because it only takes about an hour to bake them at 425, and you can speed the process by microwaving them for about 5 minutes, then finishing them in the oven.  (Or just cook them in the microwave until they’re soft, but I don’t think they taste as good.)

You can season these however you want, but I think they’re great with just a few spoonfuls of salsa mixed in. You could go crazy and add spices, maybe a little cumin or cinnamon, dice some onions, chop some garlic, maybe sauté some peppers… but if you just want to stir in some salsa from a jar, it’ll be just fine.

Sweet Potato Quesadillas

• Some baked, mashed sweet potato (about 1 medium potato for every 2 people)
• Some cheese (I like sharp cheddar)
• Some salsa (pretty much any kind)
• Some tortillas

Mix the salsa (or other seasonings of your choice) into the sweet potato.

Spread the sweet potato about 1/4 inch thick over a tortilla.  Cover with shredded cheese. Then cover with another tortilla.

Fry the whole thing in a large frying pan (no oil needed) over medium heat for a couple minutes.  When the cheese is just beginning to get melty, flip it over (carefully! but it should hold together fine) and cook it on the other side for a couple minutes more. The tortillas should develop some pleasing black spots, but should not burn.

Serve piping hot and try not to burn your fingers as you gobble it up.

New Year’s is rarely a big holiday for me.  I never make resolutions, in part because I know I won’t keep them.  You won’t see any 2009 recaps or 2010 resolutions on this blog.  I hope 2010 will bring us all more happiness and less stress, which seems very promising.  That’s about all I have to say about that.

However, I do have to tell you about the dip I just made for a New Year’s Eve party.  I like a good party, and if you do too, you should add this dip to your repertoire because it is amazing.  If you love garlic, you’ll love this.  And if you think garlic is just all right (though I can’t imagine how anyone could feel that way), you’ll probably still like it a lot.

Here’s the back story: last week, I had dinner with my parents at Bocado, a tapas restaurant in Massachusetts.  We had a lot of great food that night (I love small plate restaurants, because you get to try so many things), but the standout of the evening was “Ajillo azotado con espinacas y queso”: a roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta.  Note that it’s a garlic dip with spinach, not a spinach dip with garlic.  It was very garlicky and very good, and we drove our waitress crazy because we kept asking for more bread until we had literally cleaned out the bowl.

But its brilliance was in its simplicity, and even before we left the restaurant, Nathan and I were plotting to make our own version. New Year’s Eve seemed like the perfect occasion to try.  And it turns out, it was really easy.  So easy that I felt like a culinary Dr Frankenstein, standing in my kitchen giving life to a food that came from somewhere else.  (If you ever hear me cackling in the kitchen and talking to “my creation,” you have my permission to intervene… or run away.)

The centerpiece of this dip is the roasted garlic.  You could do it with fresh garlic and get something that tasted okay, but it wouldn’t be the same at all, because roasted garlic is a whole different kind of tasty.

Roasting garlic, while intimidating, isn’t all that hard; it just requires planning ahead.  When I roasted my garlic for this recipe, I made far more than I needed, so now I’ve got a little dish of roasted garlic sitting in the fridge and it’s oh-so-exciting that I’d suggest you do the same.  It’s messy enough to make that it’s worth making in bulk.  (It’s messy enough that I don’t do it as often as I should.)  You only need one head of roasted garlic for this recipe, but I made four, and I’m saving the rest for later.

There are a few ways to roast garlic, but this is my current favorite:

1. Heat the oven (I use a toaster oven) to 350.
2. Take several heads of garlic.  With a sharp knife, cut about 1/4 inch off the top of each head so the tops of some of the cloves are exposed. (I’m not sure of the reasoning behind this, but it’s standard practice, and it does let you see how it’s coming along.)
3. Put the garlic cut-side up on a piece of aluminum foil, and drizzle it with olive oil – this will help it not to burn.  Wrap the foil into a packet around the garlic so that it’s tightly sealed.
4. Put the foil packet in the oven for at least an hour, up to an hour and a half.  The ideal is to have all the garlic a deep brown color, with the top just starting to turn black.  It’s okay if it starts to burn, because you can remove the burned parts.
5. Let the garlic cool, then remove the tasty cloves from the skin.  This is the messy part.  I find it easiest to work methodically through the cloves, freeing each one from its skin and popping it loose.  Put the cloves into a little bowl, and discard the leftover skin.  If the garlic has gotten really mushy, you can squeeze it out.  Removing the cloves intact gets you the most yield, and makes the least mess.  (At least in my experience -if you have a better way, please share in the comments!)  But however careful you are, be prepared to get your hands covered in garlic mush and little bits of skin.

Once you have your roasted garlic, you can make the dip.

Roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta

• 1 head of roasted garlic, removed from skin
• 1 lb frozen, chopped spinach
• 8 oz feta cheese
• olive oil
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice

In a large saucepan (or in the microwave), heat the spinach over medium heat until it is thoroughly defrosted and just cooked – it should soften and turn a bright green color.  Remove from heat and let it cool.

In a food processor, add most of the spinach and crumbled feta, along with the roasted garlic and a tablespoon or two of olive oil.  Chop on medium speed until well blended, then taste.  Add more spinach and/or feta until you have a nice balance – you may want all of both.

Add the lemon juice, plus more olive oil if desired. Depending on how salty your feta is, you may also want to add a little salt.  Puree on high speed until the spinach is very finely minced.  I couldn’t get the texture quite as smooth as I wanted in my old food processor, but your mileage may vary.

Toasted pita bread is a great accompaniment to this dip, but you could eat it on just about anything.  Be careful lest you find yourself eating it with a spoon, straight out of the bowl!

Brussels sprouts with quinoa - better than I would have expected

I’ve never met a brussels sprout I liked.  I have always found them to be bitter, without redeeming flavor, and too tough to chew.  But, I think it’s healthy to try things from time to time even if I think I won’t like them, and ideally trying a really good example of that thing so I can be sure it’s the food and not the preparation that I object to.  In this case, it paid off.

I saw brussels sprouts at the farmer’s market last weekend, and thought I’d give them a whirl, because they’d been on my mind.  I’d heard from a couple different sources recently, just offhand, that these veggies get an undeservedly bad rep, and that in fact most of the ones we see in supermarkets matured too long to cook well.  It was enough to pique my curiosity, and the sprouts I found looked small and young – tender young brussels sprouts are less tough and more tasty.

While I won’t call them my favorite vegetables, these brussels sprouts weren’t bad!  Most importantly, they softened up nicely upon cooking, making them easy to eat.  They also had a better flavor – a little bitter, but also crunchy and vegetal – than others I’ve had.  I would even go so far as to call them pleasant!

My preparation was simple, concocted after reading a few books’ theories on the best ways to eat them.  The one piece of advise I found everywhere: do not overcook.  I’m not sure if I followed this to the letter – even when I’m careful, I’m prone to walk away for the 30 seconds it takes a veggie to go from crunchy to soggy.  But, they came out fine nevertheless.  It was an easy and free-form dish, and the hardest part was rinsing and slicing all those brussels sprouts.  Here’s what I made:

These brussels sprouts were especially good alongside yogurt

• Cook up some quinoa.
• Rinse the brussels sprouts, remove any bad-looking outer leaves and tough stems.  Cut in half and boil them for 6 minutes or so.  Do not overcook!  They’re done when they’re just tender when you poke them with a fork.
• Drain them, and toss with the quinoa, along with olive oil, dill, and lemon juice.
• Garnish with salt, pepper, and maybe some mint, and serve with yogurt.

Savory pancakes, packed full of good things, make a great dinner

The other day, I was in the mood for something very hearty and healthy for dinner, but because it was a rainy day, I was also in the mood for comfort food.  Really, I was in the mood for pancakes.  I thought of my own savory pancakes of the past, and remembered some tips from Mark Bittman on some very tasty-looking spinach pancakes.  Then I combined the ideas, went a few steps further, and got something a little more extreme.

As it turns out, you can cram just about anything into pancakes, and end up with a tasty dinner.  If you know how to make pancakes from scratch, it’s easy to improvise and throw in additional fillings or seasonings – just make sure the batter still holds together.  (If you’ve never made pancakes from scratch, grab a book and learn.  It’s an invaluable skill and the results are far better than any boxed mix.  It’s easy and takes hardly any time.  Really!)  These weren’t the very best pancakes I’ve ever had, but then they’re in their own league – they were undoubtedly the healthiest, and more than held their own in the taste department.  I don’t know the exact proportions, because I was improvising, but what went into these pancakes was approximately:

• 1 1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1/4 cup swiss cheese, grated
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 Tb olive oil
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dash of pepper, dill, and nutmeg
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Then you just mix up the wet ingredients, mix up the dry ingredients, mix them all together, and cook them up.  I pre-cooked the veggies, but I’m not sure it was necessary.  This made 6 small (but dense) pancakes, which was slightly more than the two of us could manage.  We ate them with plenty of yogurt.  This is definitely going to be the direction I go next time I want pancakes for dinner – which, to be honest, is pretty often.

Do you like pancakes for dinner?  What’s your favorite way to jazz them up?

It’s a no-brainer if you really think about it: how can organic cookies, made with real sugar and butter by a company that can afford an expensive government certification, be healthier than a tomato grown without pesticides by a small farmer who can’t afford a certification, or even a conventional (non-organic) tomato grown with pesticides?  But the word “organic” has come to signify health in our minds, even as it’s being diluted by companies that practice the letter of the organic certification without the spirit, which would involve a more holistic view of creating healthy food.

I agree with Bittman on the best way to improve your health and the environment: cook more.  Use fresh, unprocessed ingredients.  Get more fruits and vegetables into your diet.  If cooking seems too hard or time-consuming, check out the posts below for some quick and easy, relatively healthy meals.

That’s it.  Really.

I like to use about equal parts of each.  Top it with your choice of cheese (goat cheese or cheddar are my favorites), or just salt and pepper for a vegan version, though I confess that I think everything’s better with cheese.  It’s a pretty quick dinner, even for weeknights; quinoa cooks in about 15 minutes, and you can save time on the sweet potatoes by either baking them the night before, or starting them with a few minutes in the microwave, until they’re halfway done, then baking them at 450 until they’re nice and soft.

As a bonus, it’s super healthy, as quinoa contains tons of protein and vitamins, and sweet potatoes are full of nutrients and vitamins as well.  And both ingredients are native to the Americas, which I think makes it extra fun.

Pasta with spinach sauce and crumbled Roquefort

I was actually planning on making it this week before I read this article, which isn’t surprising considering how often I eat pasta, but it still felt as though they read my mind.  I like this dish because it feels fancy, but takes no more time to prepare than just cooking pasta.  I even bought special cheese for it, because I was feeling adventuresome.  I bought Roquefort, partly because I’ve never had it and partly because it may soon be unavailable in this country, thanks to ex-President Bush and his bizarre last-minute trade laws.  This one does seem ludicrous even by his usual twisted standards.  I understand promoting American products in a bad economy, but how does taxing a cheese that can only be made in one little village in France going to help?  What did that cheese ever do to him?

The cheese was delicious, and well worth the adventure.  This is one of those cases where, for me, paying extra for the good stuff makes a real difference.  It was strong, but creamy and not sharp.  It was very rich!  In its place, you could use any sort of gorgonzola or a mild blue cheese.  Or, you could use a generous helping of parmesan for a different twist on the same.

Pasta with Spinach Sauce

• 1/2 lb pasta (shells are good)
• 1 lb of frozen chopped spinach
• 2 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• Crumbled Roquefort or gorgonzola, or grated parmesan (as much or as little as you like)

1. Start the pasta cooking.
2. While it cooks, mince the garlic and saute in olive oil over low heat until it starts to brown.
3. Add lemon juice and spinach; stir over medium heat until the spinach melts and cooks.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. When the pasta is done, drain and toss with sauce.  Stir in cheese, or sprinkle it over top.