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At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Bananas:

“I’m thankful for Auntie K.”

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There is no one better to introduce you to New York than Auntie K.

At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Honey:

“I’m grateful for my students, who aspire to serve others through what they learn in my classes.”

At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Mr. Prickles:

“I’m grateful for access to the things I need.”

46% of Americans’ food-based emissions are produced by 20% of the US population. Why? They eat more meat.

If you’re not ready to give up meat but want to reduce your contribution to global warming,* one way is to aim to make 1/3 of your diet vegetarian and 1/3 vegan. If you want to eat meat during the other 1/3, you’ve at least removed some animal products from your diet.

Here’s a vegan dish that works well for us. It’s a good reason to make mango chutney a pantry staple.

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 c vegetable broth
• 2 cans of drained and mashed garbanzo beans
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 jar mango chutney
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• cooked rice or naan

Directions:

1. Sauté onions in broth.
2. Add beans, spice, and chutney.
3. Mix in tomatoes.
4. Serve over rice or with naan.

*This is no way should draw your attention away from the fact that corporations are the major polluters of our world.

At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Lamb:

“I’m thankful for our church because it is a support network of people who care about and love us.”

Our church’s logo, reminding us of 2 Corinthians 5:17

At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Bananas:

“I’m thankful for family.”

 

At least some of the days this month, we’re sharing things we’re thankful for. Today, from Lamb:

“I’m thankful that no problem is permanent.”

I didn’t expect to hate Spirit Week at my kids’ schools, because I like school spirit and the opportunity to dress funny. However, my oldest child was born before Pinterest, and my youngest one was born after, and everything has changed. Motherhood feels WAY more competitive than it was in the past, and that includes Wacky Hair Day. As a working mom, I want to participate, but I don’t want my kiddos to be embarrassed by the fact my effort compared to other parents. (If you are an overachieving parent, that’s great–just don’t make it the standard.)

So I was really delighted by a recent activity at my younger son’s elementary school. For Choose Peace week, students were encouraged to wear clothes that expressed a key school value–like kindness, peace, unity, and appreciation of differences. AND they did it by wearing things they probably already own and are likely to be clean (though we own no sports teams gear).

I’d love to see more of this!

Time: 40-50 minutes, 10 minutes active

Americans waste one pound of food per person per day. While much of it is lost in production, some of it is also lost in our refrigerators, especially fruits and vegetables.

We fight to keep our waste down through COTR night and recipes that are flexible enough to allow me to easily sub in ingredients that are near their expiration point. One of these is spinach dip. Apparently, I regularly think I’m going to start a green smoothie habit or something, because I seem to perpetually have a bale of spinach in my refrigerator that I’m not eating. On COTR night, I pull it out and pick out any yellow or wilting pieces, then stuff the rest into a freezer bag for a future recipe.

Spinach dip is my typical choice. This is a never-the-same-way twice food because you’ll be using whatever you have in the refrigerator. It requires spinach and at least one bar of cream cheese, but everything else depends on what ingredients you want to use up. For that reason, it’s also a good use of cheese about to expire (though cheese never stays around long enough at our house to near this point), especially if you have a little bit of cheese left from some other recipe or a slightly dried out end piece.

 

Above, leftover spinach dip makes a great spread on sandwiches. This recipe used 1 lb of spinach, 2 bars of cream cheese, a large container of plain Greek yogurt, shredded cheddar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and Worchester sauce, baked in a 9×13 pan.

Required:

• As much spinach as you have (You probably can’t stuff much more than 1 1/2 lb into a spinach dip, but let me know if you do and it works!)
• Bar of cream cheese, softened if you’ve thought of it

Choose one or more additional ingredient to soften the dip:

• additional bar of cream cheese
• mayonnaise
• mascarpone
• sour cream
• plain Greek yogurt

Choose one or more additional cheese:

• Anything already shredded
• parmesan
• Muenster
• gruyere
• Swiss
• feta
• blue
• goat cheese

Choose one or more squirt of something:

• lemon juice
• Sriracha
• Mexican-style hot sauce
• Dijon mustard
• Worceste
• r sauce
• chipotle puree

Optional: An add-in or two

• diced, sautéed onions
• pressed, sliced, or crushed garlic
• Sliced baby button or white mushrooms
• lemon zest
• artichoke hearts, drained
• sun dried tomatoes
• small can of jalapenos, drained
• small can of green chilis, drained
• roasted poblano peppers
• chopped, parboiled, kale, squeeze-dried (not rainbow, which turns brown when cooked)
• chopped green or black olives
• sliced almonds**

Optional topping:

• Parmesan
• shredded Gruyere
• panko bread crumbs, mixed with melted butter and cheese
• additional shredded cheese
• sliced almonds**

Steps (They look long, but they’re easy. You’ll spend most of your time searching through the refrigerator and watching the mixer.):

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. DO NOT prepare a pan yet.
2.  Place a bar of cream cheese in stand mixer and mix while you gather your other ingredients. As long as one of them is spinach, you’ll be fine.
3. When cream cheese has softened, add spinach.* Spinach is your limiting factor, so how much of the remaining ingredients you add is dependent upon how much spinach you’re using. Continue mixing.
4. Choose your remaining ingredients. One or two of them should be sharp, biting, tanging, or bitter (sour cream, Greek yogurt, blue cheese, Swiss cheese, feta, Dijon mustard) OR smoky (chipotle, poblanos) OR spicy (Sriracha, hot sauce, jalapenos). They key is not to get to make something that has elements that cross these lines. Some solid combos: Greek yogurt, feta, and drained, chopped Kalamata olives. Sour cream, swiss cheese, and Dijon mustard. Mascarpone, goat cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest.
5.  If you are adding an add-in, like artichoke hearts or green olives, make the decision about how much of them to add now. If adding kale, artichoke hearts, or another liquid-y ingredient, add now.
6.  Assuming you didn’t parboil the spinach,* it will give off water when you cook it. To account for that, mix in a softening ingredient until the dip reaches a consistently slightly stiffer than dip. This might be an entire second bar of cream cheese or a cup or more of mayonnaise, sour cream, or plain yogurt.
7. Add your additional cheese. Mixing them up is fine, provided doing so makes sense. Pepperjack and cotija?  Yes. Swiss and blue? No.
8.  Add a squirt of one or more a seasoning ingredient as aligns with your flavor profile.
9.  Add your add-in, if using.
10.  Mix, mix, mix. Be aggressive.
11.  If in a hurry, transfer to a pot and heat through on stovetop.
12.  Spread into a casserole dish, pie plate, or baking dish.
13.  If topping, add topping now.
14.  Bake until warmed through, 20 minutes (for a pie plate or 8×8 baking dish) to 40 minutes (for a larger casserole dish or 9×13 baking dish), checking to make sure that topping is not browning too fast; if it is, cover. If you already heated this on a stovetop, simple broil for 1-2 minutes to brown top.
15. Serve! If you didn’t add Panko bread crumbs and were sure to use gluten-free Worcester sauce, you have a gluten-free, low-carb dip. Don’t ruin it for guests now by putting it in a bread bowl or serving it with only crackers or bread.

*Should you parboil the spinach? I don’t.

**Nuts are an uncommon addition to spinach dip, so be sure that you add a label warning guests that this contains almonds.

 

 

We love ramen. In restaurants, we love the delicate broth, fantastical mushrooms, and tender chashu pork. But, at home, we love the versatility. If you can get everyone to agree on broth and noodles, you can easily set up a toppings bar that meets the desires of both the adventurous and timid.

Like most recipes I share here, there are easy ways and hard ways to get to where you want to go with ramen.

The easiest way is to open a box of chicken broth. If it’s 6 pm and you’re only feeding your picky elementary school children, do it. If I’m not using broth I’ve made myself, I use Better than Bouillon’s chicken base, which Cook’s Illustrated rates as the best bouillon. Or I use broth that I’ve made myself. I often keep a simple chicken stock in the freezer, something neutral enough that I can turn it into chicken soup, chicken pot pie (Pennsylvania style, which means it’s not in a pie crust), chicken and noodles, chicken and vegetable soup, or ramen.

You’ll also need noodles. I’m not above a package of Maruchan instant ramen noodles on a rare occasion (minus the seasoning pack, which has way more sodium than is healthy), but you probably have better options than that. A variety of noodles–fresh, frozen, or dried–will work. Ramen, its lovely yellow color a result of the alkaline (baked baking soda if you are making ramen noodles from scratch), is probably most familiar. Fresh or frozen ramen noodles are delish, but fresh chow mein (AKA Chinese egg) noodles also work well. Soba, which is made from buckwheat or a buckwheat-whole wheat blend, which makes the noodles a little easier to handle, is another great choice, especially if you like very smooth noodles. Udon, similarly smooth but even thicker, is great if you are looking for something hearty. These are the most common noodles available in US grocery stores, but, of course, if you head to an Asian market, you’ll have even more choices. Spiralized zucchini noodles work well, too, if you want to cut wheat from the recipe and up the veggies even further.

The last requirement is a jammy egg. Think that eggs with runny yolks are yucky? Stop that sad thought by eating one exactly 6 minutes and 15 seconds from now. They’re delicious, and when broken open into a bowl of hot soup, they create a cloud of richness.

Everything else is optional, and I like lots of options. That’s why this meal is a great choice for COTR night. Knowing that ramen night is coming up can also make it easier to find motivation to box up leftovers (or not eat the last bit of kimchi from the jar when you’ve opened the fridge for the 10th time today, bored and looking to snack). A few tablespoons of leftover edamame are worth keeping. A stalk of celery starting to look a little sad is easy to transform into something tasty. Set out in salsa bowls, even a small amount of something special is beautiful.

Above, weeknight ramen–homemade chicken broth, roasted chicken, kimchi, and a jammy egg. Start to finish, under 20 minutes because the broth and chicken were leftovers.

So, for me, ramen almost always captures produce at the end of its life or leftovers. The three ingredients I buy especially for it are toasted sesame oil, white sesame seeds, and black sesame seeds. You might want to add kombu (sheets of dried seaweed) and bonito flakes (dried fish). 

Otherwise, I take my ingredients and divide them into half, thirds, or fourths depending on how many ingredients I have and how many people I’m serving. One portion of them, I cook very plainly so that people who want a simple soup have it. This almost always includes chicken (which is typically just leftover from a roasted chicken or chicken I cooked plainly the day before while also making barbecue chicken). Other good choices include edamame, spinach, mushrooms, sweet corn, scallions, and celery, all of which I cook enough to soften. Jalapenos, bean sprouts, and cilantro are add-ins that you don’t have to do anything to other than wash and slice.

The other items, I use one of these approaches:

1. Ginger, ginger, ginger. I love it. I slather a paste of raw ginger (Go ahead–buy a tube of it. Depending on your grocery store, it’s going to be better than the ginger root that’s been sitting in produce for far too long.) on carrot coins, matchstick sweet potatoes, matchstick daikon, sliced onions, and slices of bok choy or halved baby bok choy. Roast in the oven. (I also tend to roast scallion, but without ginger.)
2. Miso. Made from fermented soy beans and, depending on the recipe, rice, wheat, and barley, miso comes in a variety of colors: white, yellow, red, and brown. In general, the darker the color, the more pronounced the flavor. Cook turnips, brussel sprouts, or carrots in a combination of miso and butter. Or put a small amount of it directly into your broth.
3. Gochujang. A Korean pantry staple, this spicy paste is made from chili peppers, fermented soybeans, rice, and salt. If you don’t love the first brand you try, try another. I use it on tofu.

I’m a kimchi lover, though its flavor is so powerful that I often add it to a very simple chicken-and-jammy-egg ramen.

While it’s fun to host a ramen bar with a few different kinds of broth (including at least one vegetarian one) and a mile of add-ins, what makes ramen a family favorite for us is that 1) we can prepare for a bit at a time all week, either by saving leftovers or by cooking a bit more of another ingredient for a different recipe and setting it aside for ramen and 2) you can put out just four items–broth, noodles, chicken, and egg–and you’ve got a solid, soothing meal.