Fruit of the Sea

A mixed package of frozen seafood is almost always in my freezer. Whether for soup or "frutti de mare" as I prepared today. Really simple: fry one chopped onion then throw in a package of mixed seafood then chop tomatoes and cilantro. Once cooked I added some soy cuisine or in the States something like a soy half-n-half. Then mix in dinkel (spelt) spaghetti and top off grated parmesan & some chopped fresh basil. Nothing more to say really..., as it's that easy and that quick to make. Salt & season to taste of course. 

Fry then Stir

One of my husband's favorite dishes, as he loves rice and preferably dry rice. Not only my husband's but my 12-year old loves it just as much. It makes for great left overs. This might be called the lazy man's or woman's meal as it's so easy to cook and often with ingredients we often have in the fridge: carrots, frozen peas (hard to come by fresh); onions, zucchini, fried eggs and shrimps.

Just fry one chopped onion in a bit of olive oil and add a couple splashes of soy sauce and oyster sauce (okay...not in every household but good to have) then add carrots first and add shrimps. Zucchini does not need long so don't cook too long...thereafter throw in bio jasmine rice, stir and then a thin cooked scrambled egg (cook thinly in an egg pan and slice in strips). Also add peas at the end as not to over cook. I prefer not to overcook the vegetables. In fact, to retain the most health benefits it would be wiser to steam them first and throw them into the mix at the end...but again...being lazy and making this dish in less than a half hour...it's just a simple stir fry of a fridge raid. If available some fresh mushrooms also goes well in this dish. Add salt, seasoning to one's own taste.

Overboard

Egg plant or as we call them here in Austria, Melanzani, is one of my favorite. It's just beautiful vegetable that is nearly perfect when bought. It seems whenever I buy them they're never bruised, under or over ripe or too hard or too soft.  There are so many ways to cook melanzani: whether adding it to the ingredients or simply stuffing them with the ingredients. In this case, you might say I went overboard by stuffing them with what I could find.  Looking back on this pic it's hard to recall exactly what I used, but nonetheless it was with without meet & with soya granulate, tomato, zucchini and seemingly chopped pumpkin seeds on top... Next time I'll be sure to remember the ingredients and especially herbs & spices. It's just often I cook with passion and love to experiment with taste & texture and use the ingredients I have in my kitchen. It's not always necessary to run out with a shopping list to buy the necessary ingredients when most of us have them in the refrigerator or closet.

Nutrition Fact: Eggplant is a very good source of dietary fiber, vitamin B1 and copper. It is a good source of manganese, vitamin B6, niacin, potassium, folate and vitamin K. Eggplant also contains phytonutrients such as nasunin and chlorogenic acid. 

Seasonal vegan

While I've made other vegan dishes this is the first I've posted to my blog. The ingredients are primarily seasonal and as well local. I try to buy local and cook according to the seasons. While I've posted other asparagus recipes now the time for pumpkin, squash and various cabbages.

In the recipe above I've added salt, pepper and soya cuisine, as well as tomato juice from jarred tomatoes from our garden. If you have any questions about amounts, or how-to just post your comments below and I'll get back to you. I never really measure or weigh any of the ingredients and cook from the heart & stomach.

Simplicity

I love salads and just about every meal is served with a simple salad. However, sometimes dinner calls for simplicity, i.e. a salad and nothing more. Nothing more than avocado, cherry tomatoes, sprouts, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame, ... (just your typical bird seed mix) and underneath it all a bit of green leaf lettuce. 

Nutrition Fact: It's all here https://www.avocadocentral.com/sites/default/files/Nutrition-Facts-Chart.pdf

Green Timber

Quick and easy this dish takes about 25 minutes to cook. Basmati rice with shrimps & broccoli in a coconut & curry sauce topped off with cilantro & chopped cashews.

Nutrition Fact: Broccoli is related to cabbage, kale, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.

These vegetables are known for their beneficial health effects, and are sometimes referred to as the “super veggies.”

Broccoli is high in many nutrients, including fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, iron and potassium. Broccoli also contains more protein than most other vegetables. (source)

Fall Fruit

Fall is here and time for the pumpkin & squash season. Seasonal food and buying local keeps me focused on seasonal recipes and local food. 

Rainbow Fruit

Some of you are familiar with the acronym or abbreviation WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get. This is precisely what you get in this fruit bowl: Vitamin C. As we approach the cooler months it's important to keep on top of our Vitamin C levels. Most of us know that citrus fruit like, oranges, mandarins, limes, lemons and grapefruit have high levels of vitamin c, but some say the pomegranate has the highest amounts of vitamin C.

Health Fact: The health benefits of pomegranate are innumerable. Apart from being healthy, pomegranates are delicious as well. Pomegranates also have antioxidant, antiviral and antitumor properties. They are said to be good sources of vitamins, since it includes vitamin A,vitamin C, and vitamin E, as well as folic acid.

Let's Dance

Home made salsa is one of our favorites and while there are many recipes for salsa my key ingredient is cilantro: no cilantro, no salsa. I've made this for many occasions and our family and friends have been astoned from the taste. As healthy as onions may be it's one of the few dishes where I use raw onions. Let's just say my husband has a sensitive nose to onion breath.

Ingredients:

• 6 large tomatoes
• 1 large onion or the equivalent amount of charlotten
• 1 bunch of cilantro
• 1 tsp salt...but more importantly add to taste
• 1 jar of skinned red peppers or make your own as I have.
• 3 pressed heads of garlic & add jalapenos to 

Health Fact: Onions are a very good source of biotin. They are also a good source of manganese, vitamin B6, copper, vitamin C, dietary fiber, phosphorus, potassium, folate and vitamin B1. (source)

Appealing Looks

Green salad is always a side dish with our evening meals. I often use olive oil & vinegar and herbal salt. Tropaeolum flowers or as we call them in Austria, "Kapuzinerkressen" are always growing in our garden during the entire summer.

Nutrition Fact: All parts of Tropaeolum majus are edible. The flower has most often been consumed, making for an especially ornamental salad ingredient; it has a slightly peppery taste reminiscent of watercress, and is also used in stir fry. The flowers contain about 130 mg vitamin C per 100 grams (3.5 oz), about the same amount as is contained in parsley. Moreover, they contain up to 45 mg of lutein per 100 g,which is the highest amount found in any edible plant. The unripe seed pods can be harvested and dropped into spiced vinegar to produce a condiment and garnish, sometimes used in place of capers. (Source)

Take a Pick

Garden fresh tomatoes! By far better tasting than your convenient store.  Each year we plant our own tomatoes and experiment with different sorts and visit Arche Noah on May 1 each year to buy different varieties. Tomatoes are almost always an ingredient of my dishes primarily for the taste and giving a sweet sour taste. I simply love tomatoes. My son's favorite salad is mixed goat cheese and tomatoes.

Nutrition Fact: Tomatoes are also an excellent source vitamin C, biotin, molybdenum and vitamin K. They are also a very good source of copper, potassium, manganese, dietary fiber, vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), vitamin B6, folate, niacin, vitamin E and phosphorus. (source)

Antioxidant

Fruit salad is always an easy way to start your day.

Nutrition Fact: a handful of blueberries is enough antioxidants for a day.

See Food

Shrimps & Scallops Risotto topped off with parmesan and rucola.  Seafood is often on our menu especially since my husband stopped eating meat 10 months ago.

Health Fact: Scallops are actually an excellent source of a very important nutrient for cardiovascular health, vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 is needed by the body to convert homocysteine, a chemical that can directly damage blood vessel walls, into other benign chemicals. In addition to their B12, scallops are a good source of magnesium and potassium, two other nutrients that provide significant benefits for the cardiovascular system. Magnesium helps out by causing blood vessels to relax, thus helping to lower blood pressure while improving blood flow. Potassium helps to maintain normal blood pressure levels. (source)

Roses are Red

A very very simply apple pie or apple strudel recipe that requires no added sugar, but rather uses apricot jam as a sweetener and cinamon. Powder sugar on top while not needed is simply decoration. Red shelled crisp apples add to the color. It's important that the apple slices are soaked in warm water so that they can bend when rolling them in a strudel dough.

Hat in the making

I always ensure that we have plenty of fruit at home. Fruit is important not only for their richness in vitamins, but as well antioxidants, micronutrients and trace elements. Trace minerals are elements that are needed is smaller amounts, 1-100mg/day by adults and are less than .01 percent of total body weight. These include Copper, Chromium, Fluoride, Iodine, Iron, Molybdenum, Manganese, Selenium, and Zinc.

Anything Everything

No Lost Pasta

A mixed tortellini with tomato sauce. None of my tomato sauce(s) come from the typical sugo jars in a convenience store. I often bottle our own cook tomatoes with some herbs & spaces and plan to post this as well in my blog. Aside from having my own sugos, its simply too easy to cook fresh tomatoes and make my own sugo yet not drown pasta in boring processed sugar loaded tasteless sugo. By not overdoing it on the sugo, adding fresh parmesan, rosemary, and olives creates a intriguing taste. So don't lose your pasta in the sugo.

Picky Produce

As much as I love cooking, I love shopping for produce at open air market or as we call them here, farmer markets. The variety of fruits and vegetables often out number the sortiments I find at our local convenient stores. As well, the come without unnecessary plastic packaging. The taste is by far more intensive than convenient stores and closer to home grown vegetables.  

Smoking Salmon

Smoked salmon on a cedar planks has to be one of the best tasting salmon I've cooked. I marinate the salmon overnight in olive oil, lemon, salt, maple syrup, french herbal mix (inc. dill). The salmon filets are cut in strips before hand as cutting after does not permit nice clean cuts. 

Tip: Leave the skin on the salmon as it will likely stick to the cedar planks. When removing the salmon gently turn it on it's side and remove the dark brown fat, as it spoils the taste of the fish.

Nutrition Fact:

• Vitamin B12 (236% daily recommended value)
• Vitamin D (127%)
• Selenium (78.3%)
• Vitamin B3 (56.3%)
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids (55%)
• Protein (53.1%)
• Phosphorus (52.1%)
• Vitamin B6 (37.6%)
• Iodine (21.3%
• Choline (19.2%)
• Vitamin B5 (18.4%)
• Biotin (15.1%)
• Potassium (14%) 

Energy Bars

Oats, goji berries, dates, figs, dried cranberries, honey, almond flakes, flax seeds, coconut

Top Hats

Stuffed zucchini

Sasha & Marco

    

Layered Love

Zucchini lasagne 

Sandy Beach

Quinoa salad with cucumbers, tofu, tomatoes, cilantro pinch of lemon juice

Mississippi Slices

Grilled Eggplant with olive oil, garlic and parsley

Fake Christmas

Cold salad: asparagus, tomatoes and chanterelles (cooked but served cold)

  

Wedded Eggplant

If you could be a matchmaker for eggplant what would be? As I mentioned in my "Take a Pick" post, I love tomatoes, therefore, it is undoubtedly the perfect match for eggplant. That being said, mozzarella slices adds to that creamy texture while complementing the flavor.

Beaver damn

#couscous #spargel #smokedsalmon #avacado #asparagus #sprouts ...and self made

Blueberry Chia Pudding

A handful of blueberries a day is enough antioxidants day.

Salvia hispanica, commonly known as chia (/ˈtʃiːə/), is a species of flowering plant in the mint family,Lamiaceae, native to central and southern Mexico and Guatemala.^[2] The sixteenth-century Codex Mendoza provides evidence that it was cultivated by the Aztec in pre-Columbian times; economic historians have suggested it was as important as maize as a food crop. It was given as an annual tribute by the people to the rulers in 21 of the 38 Aztec provincial states.^[3] Ground or whole chia seeds still are used in Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, and Guatemala for nutritious drinks and as a food source.^[4][5] 

Oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities in biological samples in vitro.^[1][2]

A wide variety of foods have been tested using this method, with certain spices, berries and legumes rated highly in extensive tables once published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), but withdrawn in 2012 since no correlation between test results and biological activity could be determined,^[3] stating that no physiological proof in vivo existed in support of the free-radical theory.

With nearly all vegetables, conventional boiling can reduce the ORAC value by up to 90%, while steaming retains more of the antioxidants