One of my greatest issues is cooking for my five year old son. He is Mr. Picky Picky. He refuses to eat anything good for him and sticks to his daily regiment of tofurky, pastas, tofu pups, soy cheeze, cracker, chip, peanut butter, jelly, juice, cookie, and cereal. I try to make him eat new things, and occasionally he will oblige me, but he usually starts whining and immediately spits it into the nearest garbage can. *sigh* Do any other moms have this problem?
My oldest is a pretty good eater. She needs to be because she's a gymnast.
My youngest eats whatever my hubby eats. She likes to eat a lot of raw stuff. So does my husband. His ventures into the raw world send me into a tizzy and make me realize there's much more to food than meets the eye.
So it has been frigid. Like two-hour delay frigid here in PA and I was really jones-en for some kind of bean stew. You know, not the kind of bean stew that you empty the can of beans into the pot...... I wanted to actually cook the beans and do it right.
So I bought a bag of white beans from Giant Eagle not knowing if the beans would even be fresh because hey, who actually buys beans in a bag when you can get them in a can? Around 2AM last night I realized that I forgot to soak the beans *GASP* so I drug my butt downstairs and put them in a pot and covered them with water.
I came downstairs today and my beans were somewhat soft (good sign) so now all I needed to decide was what to do with them. My hubby introduced me to kale in his raw-adventures; but usually the kale went right into his smoothie which totally turned me off of the idea of this foreign green. So a couple of weeks ago after a trip to Trader Joes I came home with their soy chorizo. It was delicious. I cooked it with onions, white beans and kale and ate it off of a tortilla. I was really surprised how much I liked the kale so I've started to purchase it on our bi-weekly shopping trips.
Now the thing about kale is it is forgiving. This last bunch of kale has probably been in the crisper for at least two weeks. I decided to use it in the bean stew I was making along with the Gimme Lean Sausage-style crumbles I had. I made a soup base with the beans and this awesome soup base (which I use for almost all of my soups)
I added onions and LOTS of garlic (maybe five or so cloves) and sauteed them in olive oil. I add the sausage style crumbles and lots of seasonings. I guess I was going for the soy chorizo flavor (I was out of it) so I added smoked paprika, cumin, turmeric, some curry seasoning (okay so maybe I was going for more of an Indian flavor) salt, fresh parsley. I let that come together and then added the chopped up kale. I added the liquid I reserved that I cooked the beans in and finally the beans. I covered everything in water and added more spice.
Simmer, simmer, simmer, little soup.
Now I read somewhere to thicken up the soup, reserve some of the beans and smash them up, so that's what I did. I let the spices meld together in the pot on low for a little while and served myself up a bowl.
I must say it was a pretty good lunch. I really wish I had some crusty bread with it though. I would make that too, but I have a sink full of dishes to do. :-(
Oh the work of a mom is never done.
No comments:
Post a Comment