refrigerator clean-out

I've never been a fan of leftovers.  So much so that I once had an agreement with a friend that lived down the street:  I would leave my leftovers from the night before at his doorstep as I passed by on my commute most mornings.  In return, he would come over at least once a week for dinner for which he bought the ingredients (and brought the wine - it's important to mention that!).  This agreement worked out pretty well for awhile.  But then I moved.  Sorry, leftover buddy!

 

In the time since,  I have become pretty proficient at cooking for just one or two people, buying and cooking just enough for the one meal.  I have rare need for a leftover buddy down the street, nowadays.

However, every now and again I have some leftovers, bits and pieces from meals the week before.  This week I found myself with some stewed tomatoes, cooked cannellini beans, a few meatballs.  Combine that with the random vegetable assortment from the days-ago trip to the grocery and a glass of wine from that bottle opened 2 days ago, and I have an easy Sunday night dinner.  And I was able to clean out the refrigerator in the meantime (I do love duel-purposed activities!).

Sunday dinners don't need to be fancy; they are a sort of cozy segue into the week ahead.  The more home-style, the better, in my opinion.  Luckily, casseroles, quick sautes, and other foods that are best eaten in a bowl are easily made from leftovers.  And the refrigerator is empty and ready for Monday's inspiration.

Tricks and Tips: 

Consider this a bit of a mystery basket challenge.  See what inventive things you can create with your leftovers.

Don't just re-heat leftovers; try to incorporate them into a completely new meal.  Leftover take-out Indian food?  Saute some vegetables and combine with the flavorful sauces.

If you have veggies on their last days, add them to an omelet or risotto. 

Be creative in your flavor combinations.  You may think "this" doesn't go with "that," but give it a try.  You may surprise yourself and create your new favorite meal!

it's fig season!

A handful of years ago, after probably too many drinks in a Seattle bar, I had a realization: "Damn!  It's fig season!" I exclaimed, much to the amusement of my friends.  Never-mind the snickers at my enthusiastic blurting, I was making a mental note to get to the Farmer's Market the next morning.

Each summer since, at first sight of figs in the grocery or Farmer's Market, I often think "Damn! It's fig season!" -  accompanied by a little giggle.  Then I promptly buy up a basket or three and take them home for snacking, baking, or experimenting.

Fig milkshakes, fig appetizers, fig preserves, fig cake, fig salads... it is all delicious.  I think my fascination with figs stems from that fact that they are only seasonally available.  We live in a time when apples, tomatoes, brussels sprouts, and green beans can be found in the grocery year-round;  It is hard to remember what season each item of produce is at it's peak.  Figs, however, have amazingly remained seasonal (and more local) in the grocery.  With the limited window of availability, I must maximize my time with them when summer rolls around. 

While in high school I ate Fig Newtons like crazy.  I justified them as breakfast (they are fruit and cereal based, after all!), snacked on them before track practice, and ate them with vanilla ice cream for dessert (Have you ever had an ice cream sandwich made of Newtons?  No?  Do it.  Trust me.).  During this time, I was also very interested in baking and trying to reverse engineer products in the marketplace; surely my start as a food scientist.  Fig Newtons were one of the items I created, quite successfully.  However, I haven't made them since.

But when I was at the grocery the other day and spotted those awesome first figs, I was instantly inspired to make figgy newtons.  If you are like me, though, you have been eating your figs with your granola in the morning and with blue cheese at happy hour, so you don't have many left.   Not to worry, this recipe has a combination of fresh (if you can spare!) and dried figs leftover from the winter's ration.

Figgy Newtons

makes approximately 30 cookies 

Dough:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 tsp. salt

1 whole egg 

1 egg white 

1/2 tsp. vanilla 

21/2 cups oat flour

Cream together butter and sugar and salt.  

Add eggs and vanilla.  Mix until blended. 

Add oat flour and mix until combined.  

Form dough into a disc and wrap in plastic wrap.  

Place in the refrigerator 2 hours, or until chilled.  

If you are impatient, like me, put it in the freezer for 30 minutes or so.

Filling:

1 cup dried figs, quartered and stems removed

1 cup water 

zest and juice of half a lemon

1 cup fresh figs, quartered and stems removed

In a small sauce pan, combine the dried figs and water.  

Let simmer until figs are soft and water is gone.  Add more water if needed to further soften the figs.

Add fresh figs, lemon juice and zest.

Puree in a blender or use an immersion blender if you have one.  

Let chill before using. 

Assembly:

Dust your work surface with flour.

(I found it helpful to work on a piece of parchment for easy transfer to a sheet pan for chilling).

Roll dough out into a 1/4" thick rectangle, at least 9" wide.

Cut rectangle into strips that are about 3 inches wide.

Place fig paste down the center of the dough strips. 

Chill dough. 

Bring sides of dough up around fig paste and seal at the seam, pinching together any cracks.

Chill dough. 

Flip the strips over, seam side down, and cut into cookies about 11/2 - 2 inches in length. 

Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. 

Bake at 350'F for about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned and doesn't give when touched.

Store airtight.

Tricks and Tips:

While they seem complicated, the figgy newtons are quite easy to make.

This dough is super soft.  It helps to work with lots of dusting flour and continually chilling the dough.

To help make these cookies easier on my tummy, I made the dough with all oat flour.  If you want to use wheat flour, substitute all purpose straight across.  Or use a combination of 1cup whole wheat flour, 11/2 cups all purpose flour.  I haven't tested this with wheat flour, so do so at your own risk.  The oat is really nutty and delicious, I promise! 

The filling is pretty thick and can be challenging to blend.  Don't be discouraged, though.  Just blend a bit, loosen the big pieces with a spoon and blend again.

However, if you find it really too tough to blend and you want to give up: don't!  Just add some more water until you are able to blend, then cook the paste until that water has evaporated and you have a thicker paste again.

I purposely made the filling without added sugar, but if you find you like your cookies a bit sweeter, add a couple of tablespoons of sugar, or to taste.

When cutting the strips into cookies, it helps to cut when the dough has just been chilled.

The cookies are best the next day, once they have been allowed to soften a bit.  But they are also really good straight out of the oven with a little vanilla ice cream!

mountain streams

Three weekends in a row have been spent in the mountains, a place my heart feels most at home.  Chirping birds and cool morning air greets us when we wake.  The smell of pine trees and dirt accompany us on our bike rides and trail runs or even on our trips to the market.  The local barista asks what we are up to with our day and is truly interested (and not at all surprised by our ambitious response).  The stars come out at dusk and sparkle in the black night sky all night long.  The next day, it all repeats.

I know that you are aware of how I feel about city life, with its traffic and lack of trees;   so it probably comes as no surprise to you that the mountains are so special to me.

How did I fall so deeply in love with the mountains?  I wasn't raised in them, per se, but they were always there (5 are visible from my parents' house, when they are "out," anyway).  In fact, my hometown was named for one of those nearby mountains, visible from nearly everywhere in town. 

My family tends to be more water-people, than mountain, though.  Each Wednesday, my parents raced their sailboat on the Columbia River, while my sister and I cheered from our grandparents' river-front deck.  We ventured across the bar and into Canada on "The Pixie" (a small wooden yacht/ fishing vessel my grandpa helped build) and learned to row a small aluminum dingy while out fishing and watching for bears in the sloughs.  Summers were spent picnicking on Sand Island and being pulled around the river in inner-tubes.  Being on the water was a way of life for us.

 

But really, mountains and rivers are not very different at all, especially when you consider the mountain rivers, streams, and lakes available to play among.   They both provide that sense of happiness and freedom, sweet aromas and sounds of nature, and a chance to truly play. 

However, my outdoor activities have evolved from inner-tubing to hiking, sailing to kayaking, fishing to, well, fishing (but now it is with a fly rod in a mountain stream as opposed to a trolling the river in an aluminum boat!)

With any luck, I will be back in the mountains again this weekend. 

goal of the century

When the new year began, I created a list of goals for 2013;  "A year of big ideas," I called it. This list is not long, but it contains things like "practice Spanish" (which I am not so good at remembering to do!) and "ride a century."  The century addition to the list seemed like a good idea at the time: a goal that was likely challenging, but attainable.  Besides, it is something I have always wanted to do.  The problem with ideas like this is that I find myself afraid to actually do it; one of those ideas that pop around in my head for years, but I have a hard time acting upon.

Why was I so scared?   Perhaps it is a little bit of the unknown:  I am not a 'real' cyclist and 100 miles seemed really daunting.  Maybe it was a bit of the known, too.  I had run marathons and suffered; I figured the century was cycling's version of a marathon, so therefore suffering was likely. 

Early this spring, friends were talking about this beautiful bike ride around Lake Tahoe that they were planning to do (America's Most Beautiful, in fact!) and suggested we join them.  I thought, "yeah, that'd be great" but hemmed and hawwed and was afraid to pull the trigger.   Then one day, my sweetheart sent a text saying "you are signed up for the ride in Tahoe!"

Alright!  I needed someone to do that for me; now I had myself committed.  I certainly couldn't waste his registration money and I wanted to minimize the suffering, so I set out to create a little training schedule.  Knowing next-to-nothing about training on a bike, I loosely modeled my schedule after my marathon training: trying to ride at least a couple of times a week while building up in mileage over the weeks.  Continuing to run and do yoga would certainly help round out the fitness, I hoped.

Able to more-or-less stick to my training plan, I learned about what to eat on long rides (NOT a Snickers bar!) and how to manage hours in the saddle.  The day of the ride arrived quickly and I was nervous about the altitude, the hills, and the adequacy of my training.  Luckily, all of those fears quickly dissolved as I pedaled along with the company of 6 friends (and 20,000 others!).  The miles passed quickly with the help of beautiful scenery, ample rest areas, and the energy of race-day enthusiasm.  Soon, I found myself at lunch with only 30 miles to go and feeling great (granted, I didn't push myself as hard as I would, had I been running)!  My sweetie and I finished the ride feeling like we could both do 20 more miles if we needed.  But I didn't really want to - I was looking forward to that post-ride beer!

Now, 3 days later, I am already finding myself excited for the next one.  Could I possibly turn into a cyclist?!  I'm not sure, but I am definitely adding a tick mark next to "ride a century" on that year-of-big-ideas list!