Creativity with Leftovers

As I clean the kitchen on Saturdays, one of my tasks is to check the refrigerator to see what leftovers are still lingering from the week’s meals. This weekend I found three items that looked like they would work well together—meatballs, pizza dough and roasted vegetables.

I’ve been making olive oil pizza dough from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day for several years. I often add whole wheat flour to dough but other than that, I stick with their recipe. I’ve long wanted to try making my own calzone, so this looked like the perfect opportunity.

My first calzone experience was at the Festival of San Gennaro in New York’s Little Italy when I lived in the city. The calzone is a great walking sandwich for a festival since it’s a substantial, Italian turnover which typically has cheese or meat inside. I remember the turnover dough being so hearty that I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it.

I wanted to roll my dough thinner than what I had eaten so it wouldn’t be so carb-heavy. I rolled it out to approximately 8” by 10”.

Next, I spread a thin layer of tomato paste on the dough and topped it with thinly sliced garlic and a healthy sprinkling of shredded Swiss cheese. Then I cut the three leftover meatballs in two and placed them in the center of half of the dough. The roasted butternut squash and beets came next. I placed them on both sides of the meatballs. Don’t over stuff the calzone.

 You’re almost finished. Top the meatballs and vegetables with lots more shredded cheese.

The final step is to lightly moisten the edges of the dough. Fold one half over the meatball filling and lightly pinched the edges together. I finished mine with a ravioli roller then brushed on a little olive oil.

At this point, I sprinkled cornmeal onto a pizza peel, put the calzone on top of the cornmeal and put the pizza peel on top of the oven. As the oven and pizza stone inside warmed to 450 degrees, it gave the dough time to rest and rise a little. Note: if you don’t have a pizza peel, try using the bottom side of a cookie sheet.

As the oven was ready, I slid the calzone onto the pizza stone and cooked for 12 minutes. When it was browned, I removed it.

I cut into it and could see it would be delicious. I was right!

How are you being creative with leftovers this week?

Scavenging during orange season

Every time I go into the garden these days I feel like a scavenger. I’m pushing aside the fallen leaves and parting the still-growing weeds to find the faithful growers who remain. I’ve gathered Swiss chard, kale, radishes and today, one green pepper and a handful of raspberries. They each seem precious in these waning days of the growing season. I still have turnips and beets to harvest when they’re a little bigger.

It’s especially nice to find these gems since so much of the other fresh produce we have right now is orange. When I told Jim the other day that it’s “orange season,” he asked if that was an official designation. It’s just my term for these days when we have freshly harvested pumpkins, carrots, butternut squash and sweet potatoes. What fun vegetables to cook with! Yet the winter squashes are often a mystery to folks, so here’s an easy recipe for the novice to try. You’ll feel like you’re eating candy when you taste it.

Baked Winter Squash

3 cups of cubed winter squash (Cushaw or butternut squash are good)
2 TBSP butter cut into 8 or so pieces
1/8 – 1/4 cup brown sugar
2TBSP maple syrup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place squash in small casserole dish that has a lid. Add other ingredients and mix together. Put on top and bake 30 minutes. Stir. Bake another 20 - 30 minutes until you can easily pierce the squash with a fork. Enjoy!

Vegetarian night makes for colorful plates

Everyone who pays attention to food these days is talking about the new food guidelines in the U.S. that trade in the visual image of a pyramid for a plate with proper proportions of each food group. When I look at a plate I’m less likely to see food groups and more likely to see colors. Eating a rainbow of foods means you’re getting an array of nutrients that your body needs.

My eye was quite pleased when we had vegetarian night, thanks to the bounty from the garden. On the menu: Roasted Vegetables with Penne and Spinach Crostata.

I had been wanting to try the Spinach Crostata recipe since I watched Lidia make it on Lidia’s Italy a few weeks ago. She makes cooking look so effortless! When I read the recipe it didn’t appear as quick and easy as it had seemed on television, but it still wasn’t difficult.
For the Roasted Vegetables with Penne I adapted a recipe from Giada de Laurentis. I tend to add more vegetables than some more traditional pasta recipes call for and since I’m cooking for only two of us, I almost always have to cut down the amounts. With credit to Giada for starting me off on this idea, here’s what I did.

Roasted Vegetables with Penne
4 cups seasonal vegetables
1 chopped and sautéed Portobello mushroom
½ pound whole wheat penne pasta
½ cup olive oil
1 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/3 cup rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes
1/3 cup chopped almonds

Cut the vegetables to bite-size, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on salt. Roast in 400 degree oven until tender. I used butternut squash (left from last season) and asparagus and they were ready in about 20 minutes. Be sure to stir them a couple of times so one side doesn’t burn. In the meantime, toast the chopped almonds, sautée the mushroom and re-hydrate the tomatoes.

Cook pasta in salted water. Remove pasta with large pasta dipper and place in warm bowl. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and mix. Mix in olive oil to coat the pasta with oil and crumbs. Toss in vegetables and almonds. Salt and pepper if needed. Enjoy!

The gift of gardening

Yesterday I lost an earring and found a pair of glasses. It reminded me of the balance of life—things come to us and go away. Sometimes what comes to us is totally unanticipated. It might be something we never would have put on an “I need” list yet when it arrives we discover joy in the richness it has added to our lives. We realize it’s a true gift from God.

Gardening is like that for me. It wasn’t something I had written on my “To do before I die” list. I hadn’t thought that much about how I had become a gardener until recently when I was asked to give a talk to a group of high school students about how I, as a writer, brought green spaces into my life. I called it “Writing as a gardener . . . gardening as a writer.”

As I prepared the talk, I remembered the disillusionment I felt after a few years in the work world—going into a building to work before 8:30 every morning and not leaving until 5:00 or later. It seemed so unnatural to be that disconnected with nature when God had given us so much beauty and goodness. Writing requires substantial time sitting at a desk and putting down the words, but it seemed there should be a better way than doing this in an office cubbyhole every day.

Yet there were also times when, as a journalist working on an assignment, I learned about the benefit of planting beans with corn in Central America. I later interviewed Fr. Al Fritsch at Appalachia Science the Public Interest about living simply and making organic gardening and edible landscaping part of that lifestyle. I toured farms in Appalachia, met with farmers in Honduras and began to ask questions about the food I ate. Over the course of several years, my work as a journalist unearthed my desire to integrate gardening and more outdoor time into my life.

So I am blessed with the lifestyle I now have that allows me to write, most days from my home, and get up from my desk for a walk around the yard, a weeding break or time for harvesting the vegetables. Tonight I’ll eat chili made with our own tomatoes and roasted vegetable—all from the back yard garden. I’ll also be thankful, once again, that God dropped this wonderful gift into my life.

Fall Roasted Vegetables

Peel and cut into uniform pieces butternut squash, onions, peppers and potatoes. Cut beets into slightly smaller pieces because they take longer to roast. If you have okra to add, cut off the ends and leave this in slightly larger pieces. Experiment with the vegetable mixture you like.

Toss everything with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Put on a baking sheet in a single layer. Roast in 400 degree oven for 30 – 45 minutes, stirring every 10 – 15 minutes. The length of time the vegetables take to cook will depend on the size you cut them. Enjoy vegetables alone or mixed with rice.

Reminders for the change of season

It’s seasonal acupuncture treatment time which means I got a “tune up” yesterday to deal with fall allergies along with a pep talk about diet from Doug McLaren, the acupuncturist. Although I eat a healthy diet I can always use a reminder from a professional about what I should and shouldn’t be putting into my body.

Today’s topic: caffeine and sugar. I’m not a huge consumer of caffeine. I like a cup of black or green tea when the mornings are chilly, as they’ve been recently. Sometimes I go for a second, or a glass of iced tea, in the afternoon for a little boost. Doug reminded me that caffeine can have a negative influence on the body. Allergies go along with inflammation. Caffeine, because it stresses the body, can exacerbate that inflammation.

Then there’s sugar. I learned a number of years ago that refined sugar can suppress the immune system, which also isn’t good if you’re fighting inflammation. Of course, knowing that and acting on it are not the same thing! I don’t have chocolate growing in my garden (if only!) but my chat with Doug reminded me that I do have butternut squash, which is wonderfully sweet, and it’s time to get to the orchard for some good apples.

The other reminder I heard today—it’s time to begin to slow down. Summer is a time of long, light-filled days and lots of energy. When fall begins to re-introduce itself, that’s a signal that we should be shifting our energies along with the season. All I need to do is look at my garden to see a reminder of that. Not much is growing anymore—tomatoes, peppers and greens. There are a few scraggly potato plants and the raspberries will continue until frost if we get some rain. That means I don’t have to spend as much time harvesting or preserving. What will I do instead? I think I’ll cut some herbs from the garden, make them into a nice cup of caffeine-free tea and, if I must have a sweet treat, I’ll try to make an apple my first choice.

Spring will actually arrive!

We had beautiful spring-like weather here yesterday. I think it hit 64 degrees. Even though it’s too early and wet to do anything in the garden, I wandered around the yard picking up limbs and sticks. Then I gathered up dried leaves to mulch the daffodils that have broken through the soil. They don’t know it’s going to get cold again this week!

I also found the first flowers of spring – snowbells (see photo). The plant is the height of my index finger. A friend gave me some of her snowbells a few years ago to plant in my flower garden and they are a delightful sign that winter is ending. Unfortunately, I’ve pulled some of them up during my weeding frenzy of warmer days (they look like long grass when not blooming) but there are a few, including these in my Marian garden, that survived. Now I need to mark them so I don’t pull them up, also!

The sun also inspired me to plant my first seeds for my “indoor greenhouse,” which is the window in my office. Every year I like to try something new so this year it’s leeks, which need to sprout and grow inside for several weeks before they are ready for transplanting. It was so nice to see dirt under my fingernails.

Before I knew it was going to be so warm, I made a pot of butternut squash chili with one of final two squashes from last season. I love the recipe not only because it tastes so good, but I can also use our canned tomatoes in it. So we have a good pot of soup to carry us into this week.

Rating the butternut squash cupcake muffins

I teach a creative writing class at the local elementary school and at the end of each grading period, we have an American Idol-like writing celebration. When I asked my most recent class how they wanted to celebrate, they suggested cupcakes and popcorn. Being the softie that I am, I said yes. Then I was faced with the fact that I had agreed to feed them sugar, something I was pretty sure they didn’t need more of in their diet.

So I decided a compromise was in order. I had printed out a Jamie Oliver recipe for butternut squash muffins that he said were similar to carrot cake. I decided to try them and top them with a light, cream cheese icing. (I didn’t think the kids would go for his “frosty top” suggestion. I also left out the nuts since I was trying to pass these off as cupcakes.) Keeping in mind Oliver’s recent work in West Virginia where he’s trying to help people learn to cook and eat with good health in mind, I cut down on the amount of sugar in the muffin recipe by nearly half. I probably made up the amount of sugar in the icing I used.

The result? I liked them, although they definitely were a muffin texture rather than that of a cupcake. My husband, Jim, isn’t a huge dessert fan, but I asked him for a rating.

Jim’s rating: 9
Beth’s rating: 9
Fifth-grader rating:???

I took the experiments into school this morning for our writing celebration. After hearing the students read several exceptional stories for our guest judges, I uncovered the snacks for the day. I must admit that I cannot claim a roaring success with the muffin cupcakes. Only two students even picked up one to eat. (I was right about the nuts; they didn’t choose the ones with nuts on top.) They did eat the whole thing, but I didn’t hear any rave reviews except from the adults who assisted me with the celebration.

Would I do it again? I would definitely make this recipe again. But before I tried to pass it off as a cupcake, I would like to learn more about the different between creating a cake-like texture and a bread-like texture. In the meantime, I still have a couple of leftovers to enjoy!

Using the last tomatoes

Yes, it’s December, far too late to be using fresh tomatoes, yet I am. Our weather this fall was a little bit different than usual and I picked my final red tomatoes from the vine last week. Today it’s snowing.

I’ll be using those final tomatoes this evening, with some onion, garlic and parsley, as a topping for baked salmon. I’m also experimenting today with butternut squash cupcakes. Just don’t tell my students, who asked for cupcakes for their writing celebration, what the secret ingredient is. I’ll let you know tomorrow if they pass the fifth-grader taste test.

The hard frost arrives

I picked my final four raspberries yesterday morning with icicle fingers. A month later than usual, we got our first hard frost. I plucked a few ripening tomatoes from the now brown vines and cut some beautifully sturdy Swiss chard and arugula, then welcomed the warmth of my house when I brought it all inside. A cup of tea does wonders to warm the fingers!

So does a bowl of soup. I tried an experiment over the weekend and admired the unexpectedly pretty results. I made soup stock from our leftover turkey bones and plucked then shredded the meat from it. I sautéed onions, celery and carrots in olive oil then added the stock, meat, white beans and chunks of butternut squash. The squash added a pleasant yellow-orange tint to the broth. I cooked until the beans and squash were soft then seasoned with cumin, oregano, red pepper, black pepper and salt. We’re still savoring the results.

As the weather gets colder this week, I’m sure I’ll continue to look for foods that bring welcome warmth.

Don’t Give Up on the Kale

As the end of October nears, I feel like every growing thing I still find in my garden is a gift. Last night we feasted on salmon, roasted vegetables (butternut squash, beets, sweet potatoes, white potatoes and onions) and kale. Since I had neglected it, the kale was surely a gift.
I had planted it in the corner of the garden in the spring. I didn’t realize that corner of the garden was prone to takeover by grass and no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to keep it clear enough for the kale to grow uninhibited. So I gave up on it, assuming I wouldn’t get kale this year.

This summer, I broke my ankle and couldn’t get into my garden for about seven weeks. When I returned, I saw the kale had grown into enormous leaves that actually overshadowed the grass! Knowing that kale so large would likely be bitter, I cut it anyway reasoning I could season it to get rid of the bitterness. That’s exactly what I did last night and it worked. I first caramelized onions then added the chopped kale, layering it with salt. I then put in a little sugar, lemon juice and chicken broth, topped it with toasted pumpkin seeds, and there wasn’t a bit of bitterness in that powerful load of vitamins K, A and C. I’ll never give up on my kale again!

For more information about the powerful nutrition you get from kale, go to http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=38.

The Ravioli Experiment

I had loads of fun over the weekend making pumpkin-filled and butternut squash-filled raviolis. There’s something about mixing up homemade pasta dough and running it through a pasta machine until it’s thin enough for raviolis that is quite satisfying, especially when you realize that the more you run in through the machine (which further kneads it) the more tender the dough gets.

Unfortunately, I’m not yet a ravioli maker supreme. My early raviolis are likely to fall apart when boiled because I didn’t get the dough wide enough so a little filling is poking out here and there. My later raviolis, however, look good enough to serve for company. I’ll have to try another batch soon to see if I can move a step closer to perfecting that art.

In the meantime, I had roasted pumpkin left over that I didn’t use in the filling, so I made pumpkin dip with it. Yum! It’s great for dipping fruit or cookies into. The recipe, along with the two others I tried recently, came from “Simply in Season” by Mary Beth Lind. Besides the good recipes, the beginning of the book also lists fruits and vegetables by seasonal availability with storage, preparation and serving suggestions, plus nutrient information. Plus, they post some of their recipes online.

Two successes equal a first

I grew small, sugar pumpkins for the first time this year, intending to use them for a variety of things. The truth is I don’t even know if I’ll like eating them; I’ve never been a pumpkin pie fan. My guess, however, is that the only pumpkin pie I’ve tasted was made with canned pumpkin. Since pumpkins provide so much beta-carotene, as well as other nutrients and fiber, I decided to give them another try.

I also had great success with butternut squash this year, which I know I like quite well. I have more than a dozen of them stored so I can afford to be creative in experimenting with them.

For me, pumpkin success plus butternut squash success is leading to a day of making pumpkin ravioli and butternut squash ravioli to store in the freezer for winter. Jim gave me a pasta maker a few years ago and I initially enjoyed it, then lost my fascination. That was partially because I could never get my pasta to be as silky and tender as the good homemade pasta I ate when I lived in New York. So this week I’ve been reading up on pasta making in hopes that with more practice, I can have more success.

Preparing for a week of creativity

I’ve learned that when I channel my creativity into cooking, I direct it less toward my writing. Since this will be a week of finishing revisions on one novel and making progress on revisions of a second, I won’t be able to spare creativity for cooking. In preparation to be able to easily nourish my body, mind and soul, I spent yesterday cooking.

Our kitchen did smell good! First, I baked bread and raspberry muffins, using more raspberries from the garden. Next, I tried a new recipe for pasta and salmon with two garden vegetables—butternut squash and Swiss chard. Finally, Jim made a big pot of chili using our canned tomatoes.

Butternut squash is one of my favorite vegetables. It’s relatively easy to grown and tastes almost like dessert while delivering important nutrients. It’s also easy to preserve. If you cut it from the vine with a small stem still intact, or buy it from the farmer’s market in that way, then you can store it in a cool corner of your house that doesn’t get a lot of light and it will stay good until spring. My winter squash vines gave generously this year so I look forward to eating it throughout the winter.

Swiss chard is also one of the easiest greens to grow and has a fabulous nutritional profile. Check it out at World’s Healthiest Foods, a site my holistic nurse recommended to me for good nutritional profiles of food.

I’ll check in this week with short updates about how our Sunday preparations fared for the taste buds throughout the week. For now, I’m off to let those nutrients that are feeding my brain and energizing my fingers show off their ability to also inspire my creativity.