All Rileyed Up

I bought a few yams at South Coast Farms and didn’t know what to do with them. We had a bit of a cold front sweep in last weekend, so I made some soup to warm everyone up. Both of the kids enjoyed it too (with some prodding for the initial tasting). Wish I’d thought to take a picture, but really, it’s liquid. How exciting a photo would that be?

You’ll Need This:

1 big yam or two small ones, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cups broth (veggie or chicken as you prefer)

You’ll Do This:

Heat oil and sauté onions and garlic until transparent.
Add carrot and potatoes, cook for another five minutes.
Add brother and bring to a boil.
Cover and set to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blend contents of saucepan.

Optional steps:
Add to blender two tablespoons of honey or agave nectar.
Serve with dollop of sour cream/tofutti.
Garnish with parsley and toasted walnuts.

Enjoy.

I tried to recreate this recipe with pumpkin in place of yam, and it didn’t turn out quite so good. I guess pumpkins aren’t quite as va-va-va-voom on the taste front as a yam. I am going to try it again with two apples added to the mix. I think that’ll do the trick.

Here’s an easy vegan, gluten-free, casein-free treat that the kids really enjoyed making.

Ingredients:
1 banana per two people
3 oz. vegan chocolate (not as hard to get as you might think)
Dessert topping of your choice, eg: cookie crumbs, chopped nuts, crushed cereal. As for amount, I just pour out enough to cover a plate:

Step One: Cut a banana in half, impale (stronger word than ’stick’, no?) on a popsicle stick, then freeze:

Step Two: Melt chocolate on the stove top (note my snazzy double boiler). I added a little bit of almond milk because I found the chocolate melted quicker and more smoothly than when I tried it with just chocolate alone. I might have been imagining such things, but that’s nothing new.

Step Three: Dip the bananas in the chocolate until coated on all sides

Step Four: Roll the bananas around in the topping of your choice. I attempted a batch of snowball cookies the other day with corn flour that came out too crumbly, so I crushed them up and used them as the topping (the way I see it, the cookies were telling me they wanted to be crumbs anyway).

(Just know: If you let the kids do it, the bananas come out unattractive, but they have more fun. )

Step Five: Freeze for at least five minutes so the chocolate can harden; ward the kids off from eating the leftover topping; you can continue to freeze the treat as long as you want. We stored ours for a couple days because the kids found they were so rich they only needed a few bites to get full.

Step Six: Enjoy.

I have several fresh herbs in my fridge right now: basil, oregano, thyme, Italian parsley, and rosemary. I bought them all for dinner last night (as mentioned in my previous post). The fresh herbs made all the difference in the meal.

I love mincing fresh herbs because they are so aromatic, especially rosemary. I just read Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman and she wrote such evocative descriptions of the herbs, I might have salivated while reading. Or maybe I just have a drooling problem. Possibly both. Have you ever had your mouth numb from Novocain and discovered that you were drooling and no one bothered to point it out to you because they liked seeing you make ass of yourself? Not that I have any personal experience with such a thing. How did I wind up talking about this? Back to the herbs.

When I was younger, I did not cook with many herbs. The recipes I used generally had an inexpensive grocery list but the herbs to season them seemed to double the cost. And that was money I was not willing to part with. I realize that if I had just coughed up the money on the first recipe, I’d have had the herbs for all future recipes, but I just didn’t want to do it. Instead, I seasoned everything with Tony Chachere. I love Tony. He was, and is, good to me.

When I moved to California, my brother in law had never heard of Tony and fell in love with him over a burger at a Labor Day BBQ. Years later, for one of his birthday gifts, I gave him a canister, an empty shaker, and the ingredients for Tony Chachere’s All Purpose Creole Seasoning, which was given to me by a church friend who hailed from Lafayette. For my wedding gift, she gave me a recipe box with a variety of Creole recipes. This one is by far my favorite:

Tony Chachere’s All Purpose Creole Seasoning

26 oz free flowing salt, like Morton’s
1 1/2 oz ground black pepper
2 oz ground red pepper
1 oz pure garlic powder
1 oz chili powder

Mix well. Enjoy.

To season seafood:
Take half the mixture above and add the following:
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sweet basil
1 tsp bay leaf

Mix well. Enjoy.