Sweet Potato Galette

Mom asked me to make either a sweet potato or squash side dish for Thanksgiving dinner. For the past several years, I've made butternut squash with baby spinach, but now spinach and cranberries have been added to the ever-rowing lists of foods that someone in the family can't eat. We also try to avoid dairy (two severe allergies plus sporadic lactose intolerance) and gluten (one severe allergy).  And the thought of marshmallows on sweet potatoes makes my teeth ache.

Luckily, I like to cook. I like to look at recipes. I decided to make a sweet potato galette. I made a galette once in the past, and I remember it as labor intensive. I surfed the web looking for recipes, but most sweet potato versions included cheese or sweet stuff. Time to just make it up as I go, using online guidelines for the process, but not the ingredients.

Step 1 - Mend my apron.


I love my apron. The pocket came unstitched in one corner. Yes, I mended it with purple thread because X-Chromo used up my black thread. Yesterday.





Step 2 - Scrub and peel sweet potatoes.

Please note that I bought long skinny sweet potatoes to make the slicing process easier.

Step 3 - Slice the sweet potatoes into 1/8" thick rounds with a mandoline.

Step 4 - Mutilate an onion.

The only time I miss wearing contact lenses when I'm chopping onions.

Step 5 - pour Wegmans Basting Oil into a large cast iron skillet.

If you don't have a Wegmans near you, perhaps your supermarket sells seasoned oils. If not, you should move some place where there is a Wegmans. Just not near me, because there are already too many people at my Wegmans. The parking lot is a nightmare.

Step 6 - layer the rounds of sweet potatoes, slightly over lapping, into the skillet. Top with some onion, drizzle with some basting oil.

Step 7 - Repeat step 6 until all sweet potatoes & onions are used.

Step 8 - Cover the sweet potato mixture with a round of aluminum foil. Non Stick. And make sure the non-stick side is down. Trust me.

Step 9 - Weight the foil with another cast iron skillet (slightly smaller than the first skillet)

Step 10 - Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Then put into a pre-heated 425 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Ignore my dirty oven. I do.

Step 11 - Remove top skillet and foil. Bake for another 25 minutes.

Step 12 - Remove from oven. Let sit for 5 minutes. Loosen edges with spatula. Flip onto a platter.

It's supposed to look like a large pancake, but with texture.  

Nope. But it tastes good. I put it in a shallow baking dish with a cover and will transport to Mom & Dad's, reheat in the microwave. I just wanted it to look pretty, you know?

Snow and Cooking

Yesterday, amid rumors of a winter storm hitting my neck of the woods, I took the check book and hit the supermarket. I loaded up on winter comfort food -- or rather, the ingredients for winter comfort foods. There is something about snow storms that makes me want to cook.

Sure enough, the storm hit. This photo is the view from my back door at about 9:30PM tonight.Those big white circles are actually snowflakes. X-Chromo had her first snow day of the year. I went to work, but came home bitten by an urge to cook. Fortunately, I work less than 2 miles from where I live, so getting home tonight wasn't bad. And I had a fridge, a freezer, a pantry cupboard full of ingredients. (Except for the chili, but that's another story.)

I decided to make lasagne. My lasagne. One of my Italian-American friends insists that what I make isn't real lasagne, because it contains veggies, but she's wrong.

I use (Molly-fy) a vegetarian recipe for stuffed shells as the filling for my lasagne. Unfortunately, my grocer has stopped carrying my favorite sauce-in-a-jar for making lasagne, soI had to use the sauce we generally eat on spaghetti. TV commented the lasagne wasn't as 'flavorful' as it usually was. The sauce is why.

I put on the water to boil the noodles, then opened a bottle of merlot to breathe. Yes, it took a long time to cook dinner tonight, but TV usually works late (and he wants to get out early tomorrow so we can see my niece in EDWARD SCISSORHANDS at a nearby theater, weather permitting), so between the weather and my mellow mood, it was the perfect night for lasagne.

The house smelled heavenly. Dinner was scrumptious. It was the perfect night for dinner from the oven.

I have lots of interesting meals planned over the next few days: Meatloaf with beets & sweets (sweet potatoes); a chicken and avocado crock pot recipe; chili.


I need to hit the supermarket again, because TV took all the chili stuff and worked with me to make chili at 10PM last night for his workplace chili cookoff.
He (we) came in second. After what I did at 10PM last night, I deserved first place if for no other reason than being "a good wife".

Right?

Saturday Soup

I'm still here! Really. Life just gets busy around the holidays, but I'll bet you didn't know that. HAH!
Plus I've had some computer issues. My wonderful nephew EJ has been helping me a lot. More than a lot. I owe that young man. Now if only I could find all my music, but that's another story.

This morning, this sunny, wonderful Saturday morning, I decided to make soup. I was sitting on the living room sofa, laptop in lap, enjoying my solitude while everyone else was still abed, and decided to make soup.

There was a small container of leftover chicken broth in the freezer and two chicken sausage links leftover from last night's dinner. I had the starters. I chopped up a small onion and minced a couple of cloves of garlic, which I sauteed in the chicken broth. I chopped up the sausage links, too, then tossed those into the pot. I found some ancient parsley in the produce drawer. Some of the leaves weren't at all slimy, so I chopped up some that, too. Then I raided my food cupboard and found a can of black beans and a large can of crushed tomatoes with basil.

It smells wonderful.

I really want to get back into cooking again, a beloved pastime I abandoned while my children were younger. Fussy eaters added to working all day followed by after-school events just wore me out. But now only X-Chromo is home on a regular basis, and she isn't at all afraid to try most 'new' foods. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I made a recipe I found on the back of a can of chicken broth which contained sweet potatoes. X tried them and loved them, then ate the meal and asked me to make it again. I like that kind of attitude.

One of my friends mentioned Sweets & Beets the other day. I'm familiar with the Terra Chips by that name, but that isn't what she meant. She'd cut sweet potatoes and beets into small pieces, along with an onion, drizzled them with olive oil and roasted them in the oven. I decided I want to try it (although other than Terra Chips, I've never eaten a beet in my life). Just thinking about the juxtaposition of the colors boggles the mind.

Food, Glorious Food!

I started a new eating plan last week, one I've been planning for several months. Julia Cameron, of THE ARTIST'S WAY fame, also wrote a book about weight loss, called THE WRITING DIET. The book uses a combination of devices from several sources (THE ARTIST'S WAY, Alcoholics Anonymous, Clean Eating) to make participants understand why they overeat and/or make poor food choices. THE WRITING DIET can be used in conjunction with any of the popular weight loss programs, like Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins or whatever. There are seven 'tools', 4 questions, and a lot of introspection and time invested. One is supposed to write Morning Pages (from THE ARTIST'S WAY) every morning. Three pages. Long hand. One is supposed to walk for 20 minutes every day. One is supposed to go on a 'Culinary Artist Date' once a week (another TAW concept). I've been writing down a list of possible desintaitons for the dates.

One of the most important 'tools' is keeping a food journal: writing down every thing you eat and drink, all day, every day. This is very similar to the Weight Watchers program I used with great success several years ago.  But not only are you supposed to write down what you eat, but also what triggers your need to eat. Why do you want to eat that, now?

So far, my answers have been pretty much, "Because I really want a cigarette, but I've quit smoking."

A month or so ago, someone in my local RWA chapter brought in leftover promotional samples  to give away (her husband sells promotional items). Among the pens, chip bag clips, etc. was a lone notebook. Chipboard covers. Information about how the notebook can be personalized for your business is printed on the cover. There's an elastic loop and a very nice pen attached. I grabbed it, thinking I could find some cool stickers to cover the promotional spiel. But yesterday, during another meeting of my local RWA chapter, I was given a sheet of way cool stickers as my BIAW prize. The first thing I did when I got home from the meeting was fix up my notebook. Isn't it pretty? All the stickers are positive reinforcement: WOW! GREAT! YOU DID IT! They couldn't be more perfect.

My initial complaint about the eating plan, which has become secondary, but only to the time-involved element, is the author's constant and continual suggestion to use Splenda. "Slice some strawberries and sprinkle them with Splenda," or  "Diet Jell-O with Splenda," or "whipped riccotta and Splenda". My first reaction was, she must be getting product placement money. I guess Splenda doesn't 'disagree' with everyone, but it's absolute poison to my system. Nasty, nasty stuff. And one of the keys to this eating plan is "Clean eating": lots of water; fresh fruits and vegetables; whole grains. Then you add an artificial sweetner? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Besides, why would you ruin perfectly perfect strawberries with anything?

Reclaiming a Bit of Myself

This week, I broke down and ordered used copies of three cookbooks that I loaned to someone and never got back. I love this trio by Mollie Katzen. Finding the versions I previously owned -- the originals, before the author 'lightened' the recipes -- was a bit of a challenge, but I managed.

For several years, I tried looking for tried-and-true favorite recipes on-line, but I suspect many aren't the same. People base their versions on the original, but the changes they make aren't necessarily something TV or I would like. Example: cucumber salad with red onion, red wine vinegar, and honey. I found something very close on-line, but it called for dill and radishes. The radishes never played into the recipe I used to make, and I can't imagine using dill, because TV is seriously not a fan of dill.

And there was a mashed potato pie crust I used for a spinach-ricotta pie . . . Tuscan bean soup . . . lime marinated roasted red peppers . . . zucchini & tomato sandwiches . . .

I'll be haunting my mailbox this week, that's for sure!