Our Favorite Filler

One of my favorite things about James is that he gets me to eat my vegetables. When I was growing up, meals consisted of a main dish (primarily meat and grain/pasta) with vegetables or fruit on the side. When I left home, it was all too easy to make similar meals but leave out the vegetable side dish. James, on the other hand, makes vegetables a part of the meal. Frequently vegetables are the main attraction, such as in his stir fries and soups. Other times he incorporates vegetables as a nutritious filler. 

To my surprise, carrot is the vegetable we use most frequently. I don't like raw carrot at all, and I want my cooked carrot to be completely soft. That means cooking it a long time, or so I thought. James introduced me to the idea of using grated carrot. Grated carrot doesn't take nearly as long to cook as carrot slices do. Now I happily eat carrot in nearly every meal.

I think James eats them to keep his hair red.

Grated carrot makes a nutritious, unobtrusive filler. Its applications are diverse: omelettes, spaghetti, lasagna, pizza, pot-stickers, tacos... we've even stirred them into refried beans! I find that the carrots hide best in tomato sauce, but if you don't mind a hint of carrot flavor they can go in just about anything. They will blend in better if you season them to match the meal your putting them in (chili powder, Italian seasoning, soy sauce, etc). 

If you use a standard sized grater, I recommend softening the carrots by cooking them a few minutes in a skillet until they become translucent. If you use a fine grater, the carrots will be thin enough that they won't be crunchy at all, so you can add them to your dish raw. Give it a try! Eating your vegetables may be easier than you thought.

Easy Applesauce

In our quest for snack materials to keep James fed between meals, apples are a great pick. You can eat them as they are, spread peanut butter on them, put them in pancakes or muffins, or make apple chips! James especially likes applesauce, and since apples are in season now, we picked a few pounds for the purpose.

We adapted this recipe for making applesauce in the crockpot. It's super easy and low maintenance. I recommend doubling the recipe, since the apples cook down to less than half the original volume. That does mean more time spent cutting up the apples, but the cooking time changes very little. 

We've given the amount of sugar and the cooking time as a range. We used Mantet apples, which are sweet and soft. You may want to add more sugar if you use a tart variety, or if you simply prefer a sweeter applesauce. A crisp variety may need a longer cooking time. 

We didn't peel our apples, since the skin adds fiber. If you use red apples, the skins will dye your applesauce to a rosy color. If you want light-colored applesauce, peel your apples or stick to green/golden varieties. 

Ingredients

6 cups finely chopped apples
¼ cup water
¼ to ½ cup sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon

Place water, apples, and ¼ cup sugar in a slow cooker. Stir together. Cook until apples are soft, about 2-3 hours on high (or 4-6 hours on low). If cooking on high, stir once each hour. When apples are soft, beat with a whisk to desired consistency (the volume will decrease considerably as you do this). Add the cinnamon. Taste the applesauce and add more sugar if desired. If you add more sugar, cook for another 30 minutes on low to be sure it dissolves in. Makes about 2 ½ cups of applesauce.

Optional: add 1 Tbsp lemon juice to prevent oxidation (this will help keep the applesauce from turning brown).

Versatile Dill

Dill is a misunderstood herb.

When people think of dill, they think of pickles. While dill adds to the flavor, vinegar is the real cause of a pickle’s distinctive taste. It is a common but erroneous assumption that all foods flavored with dill must taste like pickles.

The reality is, dill’s range of flavors is quite diverse. This versatility makes dill my favorite herb (along with its misunderstood nature, which naturally pulls at my heartstings).

Dill flowers in the produce section. I prefer to buy ground dill leaves.

One use for dill is with fish. Sprinkled on a fillet or stirred into tuna salad, dill enhances the fish flavor quite nicely. So dill tastes fishy then? Not at all! On its own, dill has a scent and flavor no more pungent than that of other herbs like basil or sage. It’s a savory herb, but slightly sweet.

One of my favorite uses for dill is to put it in quickbread rolls. The result is a mild herb bread which is good as a snack or side dish. And they taste nothing like fish or pickles.

Dill Bread

2 cups white or whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon dill weed

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup oil

¾ cup milk

1 egg

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, dill, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Pour in liquid ingredients; stir just enough to incorporate.  Dough will be thick and sticky.  Drop by spoonfuls into a greased muffin tin. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 15 minutes.  

Enjoy!

 ~ Snickerdoodle

Chocolate Cookie Remix

The best chocolate cookie recipe I’ve ever found was printed on the back of a bag of Reese’s peanut butter chips. The cookies it makes are rich, soft, and fudgy. I’ve made them many times in the past, to the delight of my family or roommates. 

However, when I introduced the recipe to my husband he balked at the amount of fat and sugar it calls for. Part of that perception was due to it being a large recipe; it makes about four dozen cookies. But there’s also no denying that it’s a high-fat recipe. That’s what gives it the wonderful texture! Cookies are unhealthy anyway, so if I’m going to indulge it might as well taste as great as possible, right?

Nevertheless, when we ran out of shortening a few weeks ago, we decided not to buy more. Why spend money on something that unhealthful? But we weren’t ready to give up cookies. So I looked online for some cookie recipes that called for liquid vegetable oil instead.

There were recipes aplenty calling for coconut oil, but that’s way too expensive (dare I say overpriced?). Coconut oil might be somewhat better for you than other solid fats, but from what I know of chemistry, liquid oils are definitely better. And canola oil doesn’t break the bank.

Fortunately there are cookie recipes out there using liquid oil. I found a couple likely-looking recipes for chocolate cookies, from which we adapted our own reduced- cocoa, reduced- sugar version.

How did our low-fat, low-sugar concoction turn out? Quite well! Reducing the cocoa didn’t make them any less chocolaty. In fact, the cookie dough tastes remarkably similar to those packaged “Cosmic Brownies” with the rainbow-colored sprinkles. Strange, but true. That distinctive flavor does fade a bit after baking. I like my cookies soft, so I was pleased when they came out soft in the middle despite being firm around the edges.

I’ll be honest. Our oil-based cookies don’t have quite the texture of the shortening-based ones, so I like them slightly less. But only slightly. Our new cookies are legitimately good, not merely decent.  And health-wise? I have no delusions: they’re still composed of empty calories. They just have fewer calories than the other version. I’ll share both recipes with you, and you can decide which you’d rather bake!

James’ Chocolate cookies

⅓ cup oil

¾ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¼ cup cocoa powder

1 ¼ cup flour

¼ cup powdered sugar (for decoration)

Cream oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix well.

Preheat oven to 325. Roll dough into tablespoon-sized balls. Place on a greased cookie sheet at least 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes. When done, the cookies will be cracked on top but will still look soft. Remember it’s better to overbake than to underbake. Let the cookies cool on the sheet for a few minutes (they will firm up) before removing them with a spatula. Makes 2 dozen.

Variations: add ½ cup peanut butter chips, mint chips, or white chocolate chips.

Reese’s Chewy Chocolate cookies

1 ¼ cup shortening (or 2 ½ sticks butter)

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups flour

¾ cup cocoa

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 bag peanut butter chips

Beat butter and sugar with a mixer until fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Gradually add dry ingredients, mixing well. Stir in peanut butter chips.

Bake at 350 for 5-8 minutes. Don’t overbake!

Makes about 4 dozen.

The Pink Vacuum

A few weeks back my husband and I went shopping for some home appliances we needed. One thing on our list was a vacuum, but new vacuums are expensive, so we went to the local thrift store. We figured that we could find a used vacuum that works well enough.

We didn't want a bag vacuum, so that narrowed things down a lot. There were only three bagless to choose from, and one of them was hot pink. Seriously, the things you find in thrift stores...

My husband actually asked if I wanted to try the pink vacuum, but I instantly vetoed it. I don’t fit the female stereotype of loving all things pink; in fact, it’s my least favorite color.  And a pink vacuum of all things? It was just too silly. I mean, who owns a hot pink vacuum? Someone trying to make a statement of some kind? Maybe a woman trying to reconcile her feminist ideals with the reality of housework?

So we turned our attention to the two neutral-colored vacuums. My husband, wanting to make sure they worked properly before buying, found a nearby plug in the wall and started trying them out. Naturally the noise of the vacuums made us the two most obtrusive people in the store, and I cringed as I imagined how many shoppers we were annoying.

Still, I was glad we tried the vacuums, because one of them, rather than cleaning, actually spewed out dust and gravel. We tried cleaning up the mess using the other vacuum, but it wouldn't pick up much, and its plastic body was starting to break off.  James looked at me again and pleaded, “Are you sure we can’t try the pink one?”

I relented. Like most college students and newlyweds, we’re not rich.  When the choice became buying a $15 used vacuum or spending over 50 bucks on a brand new one, it would be pretty shallow of me to insist that my color preferences are worth 35 dollars of good grocery money.

Hot pink now graces my closet

So who owns a pink vacuum? Not a feminist or an idealist, but a certain newlywed who doesn't like pink. I guess it's best not to judge.

~ Snickerdoodle

Veggie Pizza

Out of the many types of pizza out there, veggie pizza wouldn’t normally be my first choice. My favorite toppings for store-bought pizza are Hawaiian or Italian sausage, and I've never been that great about eating my vegetables. 

That’s why it’s surprising that my very favorite meal is homemade veggie pizza which my husband and I invented. It’s delicious, and chock full of vegetables.

Veggie pizza, fresh from the oven

For the base we use either pizza crust or slices of French bread. Our chosen toppings are cheese, zucchini and tomato slices, grated carrot, and onion. You could easily add meat or other toppings of your choice.

Ingredients:

Pizza crust dough (storebought or your favorite recipe)

½ cup spaghetti sauce

Vegetable oil

1 medium onion

1 medium carrot, grated

1 medium zucchini

1 large or 2 small tomatoes, sliced

Soy sauce

Italian seasoning

Chili powder

Black pepper

1 cup shredded cheese

Flatten dough into a greased 9x13 pan. Spread spaghetti sauce on the top.

Cut onion into thin wedges and sauté in a small amount of oil. Add grated carrot to the onions. Cut zucchini into very thin coins and add to the onions and carrots. Season with 1-2 tsp soy sauce, ½ -1 tsp Italian seasoning, ¼ - ½ tsp chili powder, and a dash of pepper. Cook until carrot is soft and zucchini is translucent. (While cooking, you may need to add water in increments of 2 tsp if the pan looks dry).

Spread the cooked veggies onto the pizza base. Arrange the sliced tomato on top as well. Coat lightly with shredded cheese. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes (it's hard to wait that long, but worth it!)

Variation: For personal-sized pizzas, use slices of French bread instead of pizza dough. You may want to toast the bread before adding the spaghetti sauce. Add sauce and toppings as usual, and reduce the bake time to 5 minutes. 

Enjoy!

~ Snickerdoodle

Sugar-coated

“Is this a blog about cookies?” you ask. Not exactly, although I do plan to share some baking tips.
The cookies are nicknames that my husband and I have given each other.  My husband, James, is a redhead, but instead of calling him a ginger I call him Gingersnap, since he’s so sweet. He, in turn, started calling me Snickerdoodle since that’s like the blond version of a gingersnap (both are rolled in sugar, lightly spiced, and more tasty than good for you).

We’re newlyweds learning to make a household. This blog is going to chronicle some of our misadventures and successes— and we’ll share tips from those experiences with you! And we won’t sugar-coat it.

~ Becky (aka Snickerdoodle)