Basic Italian Sausage Soup: A Template

So here's a new idea: a recipe template. I'm going to list ingredients as categories and give acceptable ranges of volume. Then you can freely adapt the template to work with whatever you have on hand, and vary it to make it interesting.

Ingredients:

1 package hot or sweet Italian chicken sausage

1 or 2 onions, white or yellow (red doesn't always work unless you add olives)

Garlic. Use ONE of the following:

- If fresh, 4 or more cloves. 

- If powdered, 2 or more teaspoons. 

- If paste, 1 or more teaspoons.

(OPTIONAL) 1/4 cup cooking wine or sherry

Dried Herbs. Use any or all of the following:

- 1/2 tsp oregano

- 1 tsp parsley

- 1/4 tsp powdered rosemary OR 1/2 tsp whole rosemary

- 1/2 tsp thyme leaves

Tomatoes. Use ONE of the following:

- 1 can diced

- 4 fresh plum tomatoes, chopped and seeded

- 2 tbsp Tomato Paste

(OPTIONAL) Additional Vegetables. Use any or all of the following:

- 1 cup chopped zucchini

- 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

- 1/4 cup black olives, or to taste

- 1 summer squash, chopped

- 3 carrots, sliced

- 2 celery stalks, sliced 

8 ounces greens: spinach, chard, kale, etc. Frozen works well. Avoid delicate greens like arugula.

1 or 2 cans of beans, rinsed and drained. Use any of the following, or a combination:

- kidney beans

- cannellini beans

- navy beans

- lima beans (frozen, not canned, the canned ones are gross)

- butterbeans

(OPTIONAL) Squeeze of lemon, recommended only if you omitted the wine

(OPTIONAL) Cooked pasta

Preparation:

Slice the sausage and sautee in a large soup pot with a little olive oil until browned. Remove to a plate.

Sautee the onion and, if you're using fresh garlic, the garlic too until beginning to soften. Add the wine, if you're using it, and scrape the pot to get any browned bits. 

Add any other chopped vegetables you're using EXCEPT greens. Add the broth, tomatoes, and the herbs.

Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the vegetables are almost done. 3 or 4 minutes for delicate vegetables, 8 minutes if you've got carrots. Stir often to check progress.

Add the greens. Return to a boil and cook until greens are tender, about 2 minutes, but maybe a little longer for kale.

Add the beans. If you're using pasta, add that too. If you're using lemon, now's the time--don't go overboard though!

Serve. If you can eat cheese, this is great topped with parmesan, romano, provelone, manchego, or most Greek cheeses.

This soup stores well. Freeze leftovers or keep in the fridge. It gets better the next day.

Awesome Pancakes - gluten-free, lower-carb, high-fiber, DELICIOUS

I have been seriously remiss in not posting my recent grain-hipster experiments on this blog.

In case you're wondering, NO, I did NOT name these "awesome pancakes" myself. This is, however, what Ariel calls them. Like so:
Me: "What do you want for breakfast?"
Ariel: "I want those awesome pancakes again."

This recipe makes one serving. Just multiply it out to make enough for more people.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Almond flour
2 tbsp ground flaxseed (I like Bob's Red Mill golden flaxseed)
3 tbsp oat flour (be sure to buy Gluten Free oat flour if you need gluten free)
1 packet of Stevia or equivalent sweetener
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg (optional)
Milk or milk substitute
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp vanilla

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Add wet ingredients. Note that, if you do not use an egg, you will need more milk. Basically, just add liquid until it is a slightly runny pancake batter. It is important to make the batter a tad thinner than you usually do! The flaxseed will make it thicken up.

Let the batter sit on the countertop and thicken while the griddle heats. You don't need it to be quite as hot as usual for pancakes.

Grease the griddle and pour out into four little pancakes. Cook until the edges loosen from the pan and look a bit golden. You want the edges to be a little crispy. Yummmm....

These are delicious with the usual butter and syrup, but they are very flavorful on their own, so you can also top them with peanut butter (or other almond butter) for a more savory breakfast, or even eat them plain! They're moist and tender and make a good snack, too.

MATH:
Here, I will do some math for you to make larger volumes of batter.

FOR 2 PEOPLE:
1/4 cup almond flour
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
6 tbsp oat flour (that's 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 packets Stevia or equivalent
1 or 2 eggs, or none if you're leaving them out (you might have guessed that the egg quotient is flexible)
Milk or whatever
1/2 tsp vanilla

FOR 4 PEOPLE:
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
3/4 cup oat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
4 packets Stevia or equivalent
2 or 3 eggs, or none if you're leaving them out (you might have guessed that the egg quotient is flexible)
Milk or whatever
1 tsp vanilla

Grain Hipster Muffins - high protein, gluten-free

This is mostly lifted off the back of the Bob's Red Mill soy flour bag, where it is called "Outrageous Muffins", for very good reason. I made some changes:
1. Left out the wheat flour (entirely by accident)
2. Substituted half the sugar with stevia
3. Used diced prunes instead of raisins, since I hate raisins, and used less of them
4. Reduced the salt
5. Used orange oil instead of orange zest, because I didn't have any oranges and anyway zesting is annoying.

They are amazing. I'm eating one THIS VERY MINUTE.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup soy flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup wheat germ (leave this out, or substitute oat flour, if you need gluten-free)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar OR 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup Splenda OR equivalent sweeteners
1 cup almond flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup plain yogurt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
Zest of 1 orange OR equivalent orange flavoring OR orange oil
3/4 cup diced prunes OR your favorite dried fruit OR blueberries

Oven 350

Combine dry ingredients and whisk. Add wet ingredients and mix with a big spoon; the batter will be thick. Stir in the fruit.

Spoon into 12 muffin cups. I firmly advocate aluminum muffin cup liners, instead of paper, because they never stick. I hate peeling soggy paper off of my muffin or cupcake!

Bake for 22 - 25 minutes, or until the tops are golden.

Notes:

- These are far lower in carbs than regular muffins, but much higher in fat, due to the almond flour. Therefore they are higher in calories. While the fiber and nutrients make these muffins still a MUCH healthier choice than conventional muffins, don't go crazy and eat ten of them.

- The recipe also called for baking soda; I used baking powder by accident. I just realized that. Oops? Apparently I still have my brain wrapped up in my book. However, I recommend the baking powder. It came out great and baking soda is very salty.

- You could probably substitute all the sugar for non-nutritive sweetener with no ill effect, since the almond flour will keep it moist. But you might want to add a spoonful of molasses for flavor.