rice with added benefits

Towards the end of the week, the theme of my meals tends to be 'how many things can I use up in one dish before they go bad'. Last night I found: 2 zucchini, 1 onion, and some andouille sausage just begging to be to chopped and eaten. I also increased the health factor by using the leftover broth from my 'sick stew'. Zucchini is high in many vitamins including vitamin A. Vitamin A is important in vision and bone growth, and deficiency can lead to night blindness. I like to think that eating extra zucchini will help me to increase my night vision and enhance my cat-like reflexes.

Rice with Added Benefits
2 zucchini
1 onion
2 andouille sausages
2 cups rice
1/2 cup tomato sauce
4 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste

Chop and saute zucchini, onion, and sausages. I prefer to saute the sausages first, then use the leftover grease from these to enhance the flavor of the veggies while they saute. Remove from pan, then saute the rice in remaining sausage grease (or add butter if there's none left), until it starts to turn brown and smell nutty. Add back the veggies and sausage to the pan, then stir in the tomato sauce and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and allow to steam, covered, until the rice is soft (20 minutes).

sick stew

For those days when you just want to crawl back under the covers and keep a full box of tissues at the ready, i give you: sick stew. When you're sick and have no taste buds, you don't even have to add salt (there's enough already injected into most chicken anyway).

2 pounds chicken parts
3 carrots, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion (also chopped)
various herbs (i prefer rosemary and oregano, because I have them growing fresh in my kitchen)
water to cover (around 6 cups)
1.5 Cups egg noodles

Place everything in a stockpot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce to simmer for an hour or so, until the whole house smells like chicken and and the meat falls off the bones. Add the egg noodles and simmer until they are soft. After slurping some sick stew, crawl back under those covers...you deserve a day off.

afternoon snack

Home from school, and famished, not much of my snack remained to photograph (sorry). A great way to wake up and cook dinner is a light snack when getting home from school. Today for me it contained toast with goats cheese (on wheat bread i made a few days ago), ceylon tea, and a few dates. According to an article from the orlando sentinal entitled 'for nutrition, make a date with dates', dates "have a high sugar content, making them a good source of energy, and they provide some fiber, protein and vitamin A, and a good bit of potassium. An ounce, or about 3 large dates, is 86 calories." Sounds like a winner in my snack book!

Simple Salad

The last installment of our summer farmers alliance drop off a few weeks ago, brought delicious salad greens and a variety of colorful baby tomatoes. The virtues of the tomato can often be found listed in various websites (such as vitamin C, thiamine, and riboflavin), but the phenomenon of lycopene is rarely explained, which is a shame. Lycopene is a potent carotenoid antioxidant which, astonishingly, is not broken down, but in fact increases it's bioavailability (your bodies ability to use it) during processing (unlike it's weakling cousin vitamin C, which can't take the heat...and therefore should get out of the kitchen!). So fill up on those tomatoes (if there's any left) and don't feel guilty about cooking them down because the lycopene levels will go up and up!

Simple Salad
salad greens
baby tomatoes
goat cheese crumbles
balsamic vinegar

Mix and enjoy!