Cheese Potatoes

I know I haven't updated in a while, but I felt now was the time to pick things up and move forward with my blog. Lots has happened but no point in rehashing the last few months (or however long its really been). So I'm just going to jump right in for now and update past events as needed. On the update note, my laptop keyboard is broken and the J, K and L keys don't work so there has been one big reason for now wanting to type. Having a bluetooth keyboard helps but didn't encourage me to do updates. I am just sucking it up right now until I can get a new laptop.

I made cheese potatoes the other night. These are one of my husband's favorite dishes from his family. In fact, I am pretty sure they can't do a Sunday night meal without them. Although he didn't really ask me to make them he did mention missing them but felt they were too much work to ask for. Actually they aren't that much work, but require a long baking time. So I did learn several things in making these for the first time (having watched his mother make them several times). One, non-stick spray is your best friend. Spray the pan, spray the foil and spray under the foil. Two, do not over fill the pan. I thought I had room for one more layer, but once I made the layer I realized I didn't have room but there was no going back. Three, spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray, cover with foil and spray the foil. Because I was too full in my pan, yes I boiled over but luckily I learned from watching his mom to have a catch pan and foil covered at that. Four, this takes a lot longer to cook then I thought it did. I thought two hours on 350F would be fine, but no, three hours would have been better and four would probably have been perfect. We are really looking for a nice crisp bottom and sides and everything to cook down a bit. Five, this takes a lot of milk. I made a small 9 inch pan and it took a lot of milk to cover everything in the pan. Six, sharp cheddar at the least and extra sharp would have made it better. Don't use medium, it just doesn't have enough kick to it. At least I can say I used enough cheese though. The potatoes were just dripping in it, more so than his mom's version. So while I have a few things to correct next time, I feel confident I can make these taste closer to the real thing. But then she has had years perfecting the recipe and I am just starting. Plus my husband will likely always be biased about this dish.

15 days

15 days until we fly out to the east coast, 16 until we are on the trail, but then who is counting. Okay we are!! Sunday and some of Monday were taken up by food and gear prep. Sunday was a beautiful day and while we should have been off hiking and trying to get in shape again, we were instead seam sealing our new tent. We are going to be using the Gossamer Gear Squall Classic tent. This is a 2 person tent made of spinnaker cloth (read very noisy). The tent will require a trekking pole to stay up but we will have plenty of those with us. The tent seems a bit tight but considering how many shelters there are along the AT, I don't think a tight tent will be a problem. I'm not sure how many shelters we will stay at but having a tent along for just in cases, or if we decide to push on a few more miles will be nice.

We also spent much of the day getting ready and prepping food. We should probably be buying stock in freezer bags. We must have bought about 300 bags. We prepared a few meals from freeze dried meat, potatoes and corn or peas. We plan on mostly resupplying in towns along the way, but there are a few towns where the resupply is very slim to nil so we will supplement with a few well placed mail drops. I spend some time measuring out meals, and fruit. We then spent the rest of the evening laying out the food in piles and trying to determine where we had short falls. We are definitely short on breakfast meals, and a few suppers. Lunches we can either survive on the protein and energy chews or whatever we can find at gas stations for resupply. Our living room looks like a hiker invasion with hiker food all over the place. At least we have paths through the maze of food.

I'm normal, w00t!

At least that is what the doctor's are saying. Guess that is a good thing, but it doesn't explain what is wrong with me. They do want me to go back for another procedure to verify but I suspect it will not show much more. But since I am clean as a whistle it is time to switch over to the new diet plan. I have opted to go onto a raw foods diet for a while as I have heard good things about it. I am hoping that by restricting my diet to unprocessed foods that whatever was wrong will heal or work itself out and I can slowly start reintroducing stuff once again. I am going to try to be faithful to the new diet and follow it as closely as possible for a least a few months then start phasing things back in. I hope it isn't too hard as this is a basically vegan diet plan ( I guess I can technically eat non-rich based sushi and steak tartar). I have, over the last two months been eating a few of the recipes to test drive them and now have a few dishes I can prepare that I know taste good. I have already been making some really god and wholesome granola bars which I have been eating for breakfast and as power bars while hiking. I really love these bars but find they still need a bit of work. Sometimes they hold together fine and other times they are loose. I definitely have to keep them cold so they stay together. I will have to work on them a bit more and hopefully I can post a final recipe. These really do make great trail bars when they hold together. They have lots of nuts, seeds, oats and crasins in them. Like trail mix in a bar form and all raw.

Kale?!?

We have some rabbits at work that receive kale for dietary enrichment. I don't ever remember having kale as a kid. I have been reading some cooking blogs lately and they do tend to be seasonal with their recipes. This is nice as it is easy to find good apples when they are in season and they will have a sudden influx of apple recipes. So I wasn't too surprised to see a few kale recipes going by recently as kale was in season. It wasn't until a particular recipe went by with chorizo that I decided to give kale a try. I love chorizo, there is something about it that is delicious. It might be the smoked paprika but it could be something else. This was a recipe for chorizo and kale soup. Since I saw kale at the store and it was cheap I decided to take a chance on it.

So I guess I have one thing to say, "why haven't I discovered kale sooner!" I loved the kale in the soup. I had no idea what it tasted like before I made the soup but it has an almost buttery texture and the flavour is very mild but almost cabbage like. It takes a little longer to cook but it is great. And it worked really well with the chorizo, chickpeas and white beans. I noticed that celery was quite expensive so I bought a couple of leeks to replace the celery in the soup and that was a great replacement. I think I might swap out the white beans for black beans or another larger white bean, but other then that, this was a great soup. This was actually an amalgam of two different recipes and I think this turned out great, so much so, that I don't think I will try either of the base recipes. I didn't have a cheese rind, but maybe next time. I also used regular curly leafed kale rather then the cavolo nero called for.

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Hearty Kale and Chorizo Soup
Serves 4-6

2 teaspoons olive oil
12 ounces chorizo sausage
1 large white onion, chopped and thinly sliced
4 stalks of celery, chopped (I used 3 leeks)
1 large sweet potato, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch (about 1 lb) kale, preferably cavolo nero, halved and chopped into thin ribbons
4 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine
1 Tablespoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
1 rind Parmesan or Pecorino cheese (optional, but so good!)
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 can white beans, like navy, cannellini, or Great Northern, drained and rinsed (I used black and a can of corn)

Chop or crumble the chorizo into bite-size pieces. Film a heavy pan lightly with olive oil and put over medium-high heat. Cook the chorizo for about five minutes or until it starts browning and and smoking. Lift out to a bowl for later.

Pour a little more olive oil into the pan and turn the heat to medium. Add the onions and celery (leek), and cook for about ten minutes, or until soft. Add the garlic, and cook for another couple minutes, or until golden and fragrant.

Add 1/4 cup of chicken broth and the kale to the pot. Stir to coat everything with chicken broth and then cover the pot with a lid. Stir the kale every three minutes until it is barely tender, adding more broth as needed if the pot becomes dry, about 12 minutes total. Add sweet potato after 6 minutes.

Add the chorizo back in, cook all together for a minute, stirring. Add the rest of the broth, white wine, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, cheese rind, and 2 teaspoons of salt. If the veggies aren't quite covered, add extra broth or water. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium and simmer until the kale is completely tender and the potatoes are cooked through. Add the chickpeas and white beans. Remove bay leaf and cheese rind.

Eggs, Its what's for supper

I find I have been eating a lot of eggs recently. I am not really an egg person, not sure why but most of the time I just avoid eggs. If I do eat eggs, it is normally as an omelette with cheese and salsa. So lately I have been eating eggs in stirfries and with spicy ramen type noodles. The main reason is laziness. I keep forgetting to thaw meat and when I get home I just want to eat. Don't get me wrong, I love meat, I just forget to deal with it then don't want to have to take the time to thaw and cook it. Eggs are already thawed and come packaged in nice, neat servings. The other nice things about eggs is that they are relatively cheap compared to meat. Although I shop at the Asian market, meat is still pricey. On the other hand, I just bought two 18 packs of eggs for under 3$. It was a buy one, get one free event. You don't see that much unprocessed meat on special like that. So eggs it is. I am still not not an egg person, but I am getting my protein without having to deal with forgetting to thaw meat.