Archive | December, 2014

Blueberry Muffins

16 Dec

When Ken and I first started dating, we took a trip to a blueberry farm in Illinois. We spent hours picking (and mostly eating) berries, until I got tired and lost our group. I ended up trying to call him multiple times from a stranger’s cell phone and surprisingly there’s very little cell reception on a blueberry farm in the middle of nowhere. After waiting awkwardly on a bench for an hour, we finally found each other, and we left that farm with a cooler full of blueberries. Most were frozen and eventually made their way into loaves of banana bread, but some turned into these excellent muffins.

I made a huge batch of these  to freeze before having my baby, so feel free to do the same. You can even substitute chocolate chips for the blueberries and pretend like it’s a healthy breakfast. I promise not to tell.

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Mushroom and Onion Risotto

13 Dec

A while ago I challenged The Friendly Fig to face her fear of making risotto, and I would do the same. It’s been over a month now, and I finally figured it was time to attempt a recipe. I’m so glad I did!

This was delicious and creamy and wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I discovered the trick to making risotto is not leaving the stove for very long, but it didn’t require the constant stirring that I had been previously afraid of. I added a little almond milk and nutritional yeast to give it a flavor boost that dairy would normally give. I served this with a batch of chickpea cutlets, another Post Punk Kitchen recipe.

Mushroom and Onion Risotto

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Spanakorizo

6 Dec

When we visit my husband’s family, we often go out to dinner at a restaurant called Greek Islands. One of my favorite sides there is the spanakorizo, which translates to spinach rice. This can be made with or without the tomatoes, either way is delicious.

This dish is much better with fresh dill; use it if you have it. My dill plant didn’t last the summer, unfortunately. We like to serve this with a squeeze of lemon,  a little olive oil, and some fresh pita bread.

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Dukbokki with Vegetables

1 Dec

One day while doing our biweekly grocery shopping, my husband came across rice cakes in the freezer section at one of our stops. He made a comment about how he remembered eating them after school at a friend’s house growing up. He said they were in an orange sauce and I remembered seeing a recipe on I Eat Food for something similar.

Fortunately it wasn’t hard to find gochujang, however I’ve had difficulty locating vegetarian fish sauce. Normally dukbokki has fish cakes added, although I think it’s delicious without them, I originally tried cooking dashi in the water for a fishy taste. It didn’t add enough flavor for me to do regularly, but if you need to get that fishy flavor, try using dashi stock.

Dukbokki with Vegetables

I’ve discovered that this is best if the rice cakes are just slightly undercooked, so be careful with your cooking times. Gochujang can be found in most stores with a decent ethnic aisle, but it might be labeled “sweet and spicy korean sauce.” It’s seriously good stuff, it’s tasty on a lot of different foods, so if you end up with a giant container of it, it doesn’t have to go to waste. Use it in place of ketchup for dipping or in recipes.

Dukbokki

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