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Gluten-Free Breakfast Options – Miso Soup

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It has been three months since I made the drastic change of switching to a gluten-free diet. When I initially made the switch, I honestly didn’t expect to experience many changes – however, what always seemed like a few extra pounds to me actually turned out to be a lot of inflammation that seemed to go away as the weeks progressed.

So here I am, fortunate enough to not have celiac, but obviously having some sensitivity to wheat/gluten – I’m committed to sticking with this diet for at least a little while longer. One of the things I miss most though is having savoury items for breakfast – I used to have toast with cream cheese or English muffins with butter, but now, it seems like I’m always having sweeter breakfasts – yogurt with fruit and granola, oatmeal with peanut butter and bananas or a smoothie.

Thus, trying out miso soup for breakfast – it is a staple in the Japanese diet, so why not try it myself? Miso is actually a great option to have in the morning, as it is improves your digestion and metabolism for the day. When buying your miso, look for an unpasteurized, organic version to gain all of the probiotic benefits. I picked up a tub of Cold Mountain Red Miso to keep in my refrigerator from Whole Foods a few weeks ago.

This morning’s soup had mushrooms, green pepper, chives and nori (I didn’t have any wakame in the house, so I just cup up pieces of nori). It took under 10 minutes to make (and if I had prepped my veggies the evening before, it would have been even faster).

Ingredients

  • 6 small button mushrooms, chopped
  • 1/2 green bell pepper
  • pinch sea salt
  • pinch black pepper
  • 1-1/2 cups water
  • 2 tbsp chopped chives
  • 1/2 sheet nori, cut into strips
  • 1 tbsp red miso
  1. Saute the veggies, salt and pepper in a tablespoon of water, until softened.
  2. Add the water and bring to a boil.
  3. Once water is boiling, mix in chives and nori.
  4. Turn the heat off, and stir in miso – it is important to do this last to ensure that the excessive heat doesn’t break down the beneficial enzymes in the miso.

At first, I was going to pour my soup into a travel mug and take it to go, but it was a cool, fall morning, and I decided I would enjoy it more if I savoured the steamy goodness in a bowl at home – I’m glad I took the extra few minutes for myself this morning.

CSA Delivery – September 14, 2011

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This week’s delivery had a few new items that I, of course, had to try. Check out the colour of the peppers – these were listed as ‘Chocolate’ Bell Peppers on my order form and I had to try them. They had the heft and thickness of a red pepper, but the flavour was more like a green pepper. I personally prefer green peppers over red any day, especially when cooking, but these were a happy medium.

The greens offered this week were Spigarello, which are supposed to be less bitter than kale and have more of a broccoli flavour. I’m looking forward to trying them out in my dinner.

This week’s delivery also offered a French Charentais Melon – these types of melons are generally only available at farmers markets because they do not ship well. I’ll let you know how it tastes in a future post!

It is definitely fig season around here and there’s a lot of them in my fridge now. I made a fig and goat cheese pizza over the weekend with my last batch, but still have some leftover – I think some fig jam with Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese are in order.

I love that my CSA offers other local products as well – I was running low on my brown rice, so I added my favourite variety to my order – Massa Organics. After all that, there’s the usual staples of baby broccoli and celery. I’m going to miss the baby broccoli once the season is over.

Pizza experiments – Round Two – Creamy Broccoli Rabe and Grilled Portobello

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A few weeks ago, I blogged about my fig and goat cheese pizza and the broccoli rabe one as well.  I ended up buying more broccoli rabe at the farmers market today – one of the first stalls I walk by always has the most unique vegetables, and the broccoli rabe is always so fresh.

Another ingredient I picked up today was portobello mushrooms.  I really need to start writing down the names of the farms I like – the folks at this stand always have the best variety of mushrooms and they are always so fresh and tasty.

Here are the stars of tonight’s pizza.

To make the pizza

  1. Fry 2 shallots, 1/2 white onion and 2 cloves of garlic in some olive oil.
  2. Add in two finely chopped thai chilis (I could have also just used crushed red pepper or omitted the heat entirely).
  3. To the mixture, I add about 1/4 cup whole milk and allow the flavours to mix together – once the milk had an opportunity to heat up, I added 2 tbsp of quark (I had this cheese in the refrigerator – any cream cheese would give you a thicker consistency. Better yet, if you had some cream, you could use it instead of milk and just omit the cheese).
  4. Once the cheese melts, add about 3 tbsp of chopped sun dried tomatoes and about 2 cups of roughly chopped broccoli rabe.
  5. Turn the heat off in the pan, and allowed the greens to soften from the residual heat.
  6. Add about 7 or 8 chopped basil leaves to the mix.
  7. Slice the portobello mushrooms and grill them with a bit of olive oil.

Today’s pizza was made on a sprouted wheat crust I found at Whole Foods today, made by Alvarado Street Bakery.  I should work on mastering my own pizza crust, but sometimes it is so much easier to pick up a ready made crust. To layer the pizza, I started with the creamed broccoli rabe mixture and covered the full crust.  I then sprinkled in a bit of shredded mozzarella (about one handful – just enough to keep the toppings intact).  The crust already has some cheese in it, so I didn’t want to overdo it – with a regular crust, I would have doubled the cheese. I then layered on the grilled mushrooms and topped off the pizza with some feta.  Ten minutes in the oven at 450F completed the pizza.

CSA Delivery – June 15, 2011

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This week’s delivery had the most beautiful radishes I’ve ever seen. Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you through your computer screen – the radishes are a beautiful bright purple.  I added leeks to my list of items for this week, but quite honestly, I can’t remember why I did. With the sudden appearance of summer weather in the Bay Area, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them…any suggestions for summer recipes using leeks?

The carrots will be a great addition to my lunch to have with hummus and cucumbers are always refreshing during warm summer days.  Grapes and raspberries will be my afternoon snack tomorrow!

Green Hummus

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I’ve been buying hummus quite a bit over the last few months and decided that it is now time for me to take control of what is in my hummus. Costco carries Pita Pal hummus which is organic and I am impressed with the ingredients they use (and they only manufacture vegetarian products…bonus!). That being said, I still want to get into the habit of making my own hummus (and adding some extra goodness to it).

This week, I decided that I was going to put that beautiful oregano from my garden to use, along with some raw kale. The kale in my garden is doing beautifully (not that it takes much to grow kale – it grows like a weed). I need to start coming up with new and unique ways to incorporate it into my meals, and why not start with hummus!

Here’s the recipe I used:

2 cups dried garbanzo beans (hey, I’m making sure this batch lasts the week!)
8 to 10 kale leaves with stems removed
10 to 15 fresh oregano leaves
5 small cloves of garlic
2 to 3 lemons, juiced
3 dried chilis (or more if you like living on the edge)
1/2 cup tahini (if you don’t have tahini in the house, use any nut butter you have – I’ve used peanut butter and almond butter in the past with great results)
sea salt to taste

I cooked the garbanzo beans in my handy-dandy pressure cooker and then threw all the ingredients into my food processor. I like my hummus to be quite thick, but you can always add more lemon juice if you’d like to thin it down. This recipe yielded just over 4 cups of hummus.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to indulge in some hummus on toast.

Dirty Dozen and More

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I’m sure everyone has heard of the dirty dozen, but this is a list I tend to refer back to quite often to make sure I’m getting the best bang for my buck. It isn’t necessary to always buy organic products as this list illustrates, but for the following, it is definitely important

  1. Grapes (Imported)
  2. Potatoes
  3. Kale / Collard Greens (we grow our own greens when the season allows for it)
  4. Cherries
  5. Spinach
  6. Sweet Bell Peppers
  7. Nectarines
  8. Blueberries (Domestic)
  9. Apples
  10. Strawberries (I’ll be signing up for the strawberry option in my CSA this year)
  11. Peaches
  12. (Worst) Celery (This is a staple in my CSA delivery)

To see the full list on the Environmental Working Group’s website, check out this link: http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php

Finally…

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Seems odd to mark the beginning of something with a “finally”, but I’ve been thinking of starting a food blog for over a year now.  They say that you are your mother’s daughter, and I’m sure that had this technology been so readily available over 20 years ago, my mom would have been doing something similar.  Food has always played an important role in our lives, and I’m excited to share all things vegetarian with you.

I’m looking forward to all this spring and summer’s growing season has to bring.  Our herb garden is in full swing already (almost accidentally), and we just planted our peas, kale and swiss chard. We’ve learned our lessons from last year’s monster tomato plants, and peppers that always seemed to do so well, but then would succumb to excessive sun exposure before we had a chance to eat them.

Here’s to many more foodie posts throughout the year…I’m really excited about finally taking the leap and look forward to sharing with you :)