Tag: Tablespoon

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consulting insights

Vegetable soup with barley and lentils (recipe).

Vegetable soup with barley and lentils (recipe) by lemasney
Vegetable soup with barley and lentils (recipe) by lemasney
Vegetable soup with barley and lentils (recipe) by lemasney
Vegetable soup with barley and lentils (recipe) by lemasney

It’s getting cold here, and I always love soup in the winter. I’ve made a few soups recently, and I figured I’d share this one. It features carrots, cabbage, onions, potato, some great grains and a vegetable broth.

Prep:

  • 1 Tbsp oil
  • 1 medium onion chopped
  • 2 carrots diced
  • 1 small potato, diced
  • 5 inner cabbage leaves, chiffonade or ribbon style.
  • 1/8 cup pearl barley
  • 1/8 cup  red lentil
  • 1 tsp each of salt, pepper, paprika, parsley, and powdered garlic
  • 1 large can/box of broth.

Cook

  1. put oil in medium sauce pan over medium high heat
  2. throw in onions, carrots and potato and sauté until onions are translucent.
  3. add cabbage leaves, barley, lentils and spices and mix well.
  4. add broth until pot is nearly full and bring to a boil.
  5. When pot boils, reduce heat to a simmer for 1 hour.
  6. Taste and season as needed.

 

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consulting

Spinach soup with Acini di Pepe [recipe].

spinach soup by lemasney
spinach soup by lemasney

via Instagram

Spinach Soup with Acini di Pepe

It’s getting cold here in Central New Jersey, and I was looking for something warm for lunch. I looked around and saw all of the ingredients for one of my favorite soups to have in the fall. It takes about an hour from start to finish, or possibly less if you want to babysit the pot. Spinach soup is an easy soup to throw together, completely vegetarian, and is extensible in many ways.

Mise en place

  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • 28 ounces vegetable broth
  • 1 large carrot, diced
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 2 cups fresh spinach leaves, chopped
  • 1 clove fresh garlic, chopped
  • 1/4 cup acini di pepe or orzo
  • paprika, salt, pepper, parsley and cumin to taste

You can be quite creative here, adding celery, apple, vinegar, or other ingredients that you feel might round out the flavor.

Cooking

  1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil for a minute over medium heat then add your diced onion, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until onion is translucent.
  2. Add your carrot and stir five minutes.
  3. Add your spinach, garlic, and pasta and mix, then fill your pot with the broth, leaving room for the boil. Season to taste, and taste occasionally to adjust.
  4. Increase heat to bring the soup to a boil, and then reduce to minimal heat, just to keep the roll going.
  5. Simmer over low heat, but keep the roiling broth going until the pasta is plump, about 30 minutes.

Enjoy with crackers or rustic bread.

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Recipe: A well-balanced, whole food, delicious meal in 5 minutes or less.

Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney
Basic granola template by lemasney

I have tried to find an especially easy meal to get about 500 calories in a good balance of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. It should accomplish the following:

  • local food
  • variable and extensible according to seasonality and availability
  • whole food
  • organic
  • delicious
  • well-balanced nutrition
  • raw food

I think I found it.

Fruit with granola and nut butter:

In a 2 cup bowl, combine granola and peanut butter into a paste, dice and add apple, add raisins and mix.

It is addictive. It’s so delicious that I crave it, and have had it every day since I first made it. The fruit adds a bright sweetness, the raisins add a chewy licorice depth, the granola brings a crunchy texture, and the peanut butter holds everything together. At 8 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, and 87 grams of carbohydrate, it is very close to my nutritional percentages that I try to get for the day. The sugar is all fructose, and it has no refined sugars. The ingredients are local and organic. I could make the raisins myself, and have a plan to start drying fruit this season. It’s raw food, whole food, good food. 440 calories for the whole bowl.

Apple, granola, peanut butter, and raisins, by John LeMasney via Diary of Calories
Apple, granola, peanut butter, and raisins, by John LeMasney via Diary of Calories
Categories
insights photography

A very simple bread

Baking your own bread

As I have said here before, I really love bread. I am beginning to actually practice my recent preach of baking over buying, and the result has been wonderful, full of surprises, and fun with tasty experiments. I still have a 100 calorie flat round or two that I’m making my way through, but my freezer is empty of half-price day-old kaiser rolls and 6 packs of garlic naan, so the time has finally come to get into the practice of making bread twice a week or so. In preparation for this, I’ve gathered a few things: A large bag of whole wheat flour, a small jar of rapid rise yeast, some sea salt, and a water purifier.

Many benefits exist for baking over buying. I know exactly what is going into my food. I am gaining a useful skill. I enjoy the process of making, waiting, watching, and revealing that is inherent in baking, and stolen with buying. I like the science of it. I like the sensory aspects of it, the sights smells, tastes, and feel that are mostly absent from purchasing. The cost of a loaf at home is about $1.50, all said, and the cost of the average loaf at the store, with all of its flaws mentioned here, not to mention the extra ingredients, like preservatives and chemicals, is around $2.50 or more. Artisan loaves are expensive at the store, more reasonable at home. A very good article on this particular aspect is here.

I like recipes that you can remember. I tend to remember those that use whole measures, an example of which is Mark Bittman’s pancake recipe that uses one egg, one cup of flour, one cup of milk, 1 Tbsp of honey, and so on. They are nice when you can find them. I adore simplicity.

Most bread recipes I’ve found do not do this. I decided to make one that does. It could not be simpler, and uses only four ingredients, which I’ve mentioned above.

Basic 4 ingredient bread recipe

  • 4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp active dry yeast
  • 2 cup filtered water

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, add each ingredient in turn as listed above, mixing as you go.
  2. Mix with a large spoon until dough forms a ball incorporating all or most of the mixture.
  3.  Turn out into an oiled iron skillet, and let rise between 5 and 24 hours in a warm space.
  4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

One cup of whole wheat flour is 400 calories, so this loaf will be 1600 calories in all. I will likely eat a quarter of it each day.

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photography

Playing with pancakes: A traditional recipe and a no-flour recipe

In this post I’ll talk about two pancake recipes. One has seven ingredients, and one has only two, but they both have merit.

So I love pancakes. I really enjoy the fluffy texture, sweet flavor, and crisp edges of a well-done pancake. I always choose to avoid mixes for the task because the from-scratch (I mean, I’m not stone grinding wheat or anything) recipe is so simple and easy to remember:

Traditional Pancake Recipe

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 egg, whisked
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 Tbsp oil

Mix the ingredients in a medium bowl, cook a quarter cup of batter per cake in a lightly greased nonstick skillet over medium high heat until bubbles form, flip and cook through for another minute or until lightly browned on bottom. Ignore first batch’s sadness and failure.

Keep hot in a 200 degree Fahrenheit toaster oven while cooking rest of batch. Serve with real maple syrup.

Simple, right? (about 800 calories for the batch) Well, it’s also delicious, but me being lazy, I decided to try the no-flour alternative I had seen in a couple of places, where a ‘pancake’ is made with two ingredients.

Two ingredient no-flour pancakes

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 banana, sliced

Mix by hand if you dare, but a small food processor will make this far easier. Place into a 8-10 inch buttered skillet on medium heat. Cook until firm, flip and finish cooking. Serve with honey, peanut butter or fresh strawberries.

Although I do not have celiac disease, and don’t subscribe to a gluten-free nutritional lifestyle myself, this is gluten-free.

The 2 ingredient version is more of a sweet dessert tortilla than a pancake, but the texture, sweetness, and flavor are not far off. Maybe the best part is the 240 calories for the batch!

Related articles
  • Oat Bran Pancakes (kennybakes.com)
  • German Pancakes (tuffmotherondarun.com)
  • Whole Wheat Pancakes (thefauxmartha.com)
  • Banana Oatmeal Pancakes (thefitlifejournal.wordpress.com)

 

Categories
insights photography

On baking over buying: Simple cornbread recipe

bread by lemasney
bread by lemasney

Fresh baked bread on a Sunday morning by lemasney
Fresh baked bread on a Sunday morning by lemasney

Baking cornbread rather than buying it

I have decided recently to stop buying baked goods like cornbread and start making my own. Flour, sugar and other raw ingredients are far cheaper than the packaged, processed breads, crusts, and other baked goods. The act of cooking gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. The fact that I know exactly precisely what is going into my baked goods means that I have control and agency with it. I have been doing a lot of stove-top cooking lately, and I decided that it was time to begin learning more deeply about the baking side. I’ve made plenty of breads in the past, and so I knew how easy it was to do and what great rewards came from it.

I was looking for a reasonable idea for dessert for my boys, who I visit with a few times a week, and cornbread seemed like just the  thing. I recently told them that we were going to stop getting donuts and pretzels at Wawa for snacks, and start making most of our own food during our visits. Not only did they understand the financial reasoning behind it, they genuinely love to help me cook, and seem to enjoy the food that they helped to make far more than the processed foods we used to purchase. This may have started as a temporary fix to help pinch some pennies, but it is making more nutritional, philosophical, and emotional sense now too.

Simple Cornbread

This recipe has some great nutritional value: it’s vegetarian, low in fat, low in sugar, has whole grains, good oil, and is a great vehicle for nuts, fruit, or greens, like sauteed spinach.

  • 1 cup stone ground corn meal
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/4 cup raw sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp baking powder
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 egg

In two bowls, combine the dry ingredients separately from the wet ingredients. Then slowly mix in the wet into the dry. Do not over-mix  but mix until smooth. Pour into a oiled loaf pan and bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes.

Enjoy with tea, coffee, or as part of a meal.