Catching Up

I would like to post more often to this blog. I read other blogs (see links at the bottom of my blog) and many of those bloggers post quite regularly like every week. Sometimes the posts are short and simple, sometimes they include a detailed recipe with pictures, they are about food, health, fitness or a combination, sometimes the post is just a thought that the blogger wanted to share. I wonder if some of these bloggers have a job outside of blogging. I’ve been pretty busy over the past year with university classes, travelling, working, hanging out with family, and regular attention to this blog has not been something I could dedicate myself to. Now that my university classes are over (yay), I think I can be a little more blog-focused. Not sure about weekly postings, but monthly should be quite doable. In fact, I’ve got a few recipes and ideas all ready to go today, but I’m only going to include one recipe in this post. The others I’ll dole out gradually as I get myself into the discipline and routine of regular blogging. Here’s the first one:

 

Green Thai Tofu

I invented this in the early summer when I wanted to do something Thai-ish with tofu and also wanted to use some asparagus I’d bought at the farmer’s market. Here’s what I came up with:

1 block of tofu

2 tbsps tamari

2 tbsps water

1 tsp green curry paste

1 tsp garlic red chili sauce

1 tsp garlic powder

1 can coconut milk

1/4 spicy peanut butter (see picture on the right)

1 tsp green curry paste

1 tsp minced ginger

2 tbsps brown sugar

1 red pepper, diced or sliced

1 small onion, diced or sliced

about 1/2 a bunch of asparagus, chopped in bite sized pieces

a couple of large handfuls of spinach

chopped green onion

Press the tofu, then cut into cubes of triangles or slices. (See here for how to press tofu).

Mix together the tamari, water, green curry paste, garlic red chili sauce and garlic powder in a zip-lock plastic bag. Add the tofu pieces to the marinade. Let marinade for several hours. (I like to marinade over night or all day, but a couple of hours should be sufficient).

Lightly oil a baking pan and spread the marinated tofu pieces out evenly on the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Mix together the coconut milk, the spicy peanut butter, green curry paste, minced ginger and brown sugar to make a sauce.

Cook the onion in a dry pan over medium heat for a couple of minutes. Add a tbsp of water if necessary to prevent sticking. Add the minced garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the red pepper and cook for a couple more minutes. Stir in the sauce, the asparagus and the baked tofu and let simmer for a few minutes. Add the spinach and cook until wilted. Serve with green onion and cilantro sprinkled on top.

Community Garden Borscht

“Tom” and I have a garden plot in a nearby community garden. Today we went to the plot to do some harvesting and some tidying up. We dug up the rest of the potatoes:

some carrots:

some beets:

and some kale:

So if you had a large amount of potatoes, beets, carrots and kale, what would you make?

Borscht of course!

4 medium beets *

1 medium to large onion, diced **

2 stalks celery, diced

l large carrot, grated *

l large or 2 medium cloves garlic, pressed **

2 cups chopped Russian kale *

4 to 6 medium red potatoes, peeled and diced *

8 cups broth (I used 2 vegetarian beef bullion cubes and 2 veg cubes)

2 bay leaves

1 tbsp. dry dill

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

4 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped **

freshly ground black pepper

fresh dill, finely chopped **

Wrap the beets in foil and roast in oven at 400 degrees for about an hour. Unwrap the foil and slip the peels off the beets, then dice the beets. Meanwhile …

Cook the onion in a large pot over med heat. Add celery and carrot and garlic and continue cooking. Add a bit of water if necessary to prevent the vegetables from sticking while cooking. Add the chopped kale and the potatoes and continue cooking and stirring. When the vegetables soften up a bit, add the broth and the bay leaves and the dry dill and bring to a simmer. Stir in the vinegar and the tomatoes and simmer. Stir in the roasted beets and the black pepper and let simmer for a bit to let flavours develop and to cut the edge off the black pepper. Just before serving, stir some fresh dill into the pot, and then sprinkle some on the bowls of soup when it is served.

* from our own garden

** from the local farmers market

Ta-dah! Beautiful rosy, healthy borscht!