Bibimbap!

I'm going to share with you one of my favorite recipes. As you may or may not have deduced, my husband is Korean. Therefore, many Korean recipes have crept into my cooking repertoire, and for that I am glad. However, my love for bibimbap started even before dating my husband. I lived with a Korean pastor and his Caucasian wife for a summer and she was the best Korean cook! Even our other Korean friends agreed. She introduced me to this delicious bowl of rice, marinated meat, veggies, and fried egg to top it all off which I soon learned was called bibimbap (which basically means "mixed rice").

I've made this recipe many times since and I don't really measure much anymore. So sorry that these instructions are somewhat vague. But the great thing about this recipe is that it's so flexible. If you are having more people over for dinner, just add an extra cucumber and zucchini and make a bit more meat. No problem!

Bibimbap
Adapted from Dok Suni
Serves 2-3

2 cups rice
8 oz. tender beef
1 cucumber
3-4 carrots
1 zucchini
1 bunch spinach
a few leafs of Romaine lettuce
2 or 3 eggs
2-3 cloves of garlic ( I usually just press a few into a little bowl to use throughout the process)

Seasoning:
rice vinegar
soy sauce
saki
brown sugar
sesame oil
course sea salt
sesame salt (optional)
black pepper
gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)

Cook 2 cups of rice (sometimes I forget this until I'm about to make up the bowls and, boy, is that frustrating!)

Thinly slice the beef and marinate in 2 T. soy sauce, 1 T. saki, 1 t. brown sugar, 1 t. sesame oil, a pinch of minced garlic, and a few grinds of black pepper while you prepare other ingredients.

Cucumber: Cut cucumber into 2" long match sticks and season with rice vinegar, salt, and minced garlic.

Carrots: Julienne carrots. Bring an inch of water to a boil. Boil carrots in the water for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.

Zucchini: Thinly slice the zucchini with a mandolin slicer. Heat some vegetable oil in a pan over medium heat. Saute the zucchini with some salt and a little sesame oil until somewhat transparent (about 3 minutes).

Spinach: Wash spinach well and boil until wilted (about 1 minute). Rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Squeeze dry and chop if necessary. Add a splash of soy sauce, some minced garlic, some sesame salt, and a bit of sesame oil. Mix well and season to taste.

Lettuce: Wash and chop roughly.

Okay, all your veggies are good to go! Now just cook the meat in a little oil until browned and fry one egg per person.

To each bowl (use big, shallow bowls if possible), add a scoop of rice and a pile of each veggie and the meat. Top with an egg.

Now for the super important part. The "special sauce".

Spicy Sauce
2 T. gochujang (can be found at any Korean store and most Asian markets)
1 t. rice vinegar
1 t. sesame oil
1 t. water
pinch of minced garlic

Mix all of the ingredients together and plop some on top of your bowl of goodness.

Now mix, mix, mix! Cling that spoon all around and make a jolly racket. This is the fun part. Add more spice to taste. Mmm, enjoy! (Sorry, no pictures of the mixed bibimbap. It doesn't look as pretty.)

Lentil Burgers: Why I love my husband

There are, of course, many reasons why I love my husband, but here's one close to the top of the list...He almost never complains about what I set before him for dinner. Definitely, there are things that are not at the top of his food-love list, but if I spend time making him dinner, he's always appreciative. There is only one time that comes to mind when I felt I really disappointed him and that's when, in a rush, I basically made him a plate of dry noodles. Little irks him more than dry, bland food. After all, he was raised on his mama's Korean home cooking, full of spice and drunk with flavor.

That being said, lentils, quinoa, and couscous are not high on his favorites list. He tolerates them well and sometimes even likes them, but he would definitely take a good hunk of meat over any of my vegetarian dishes. Fair enough. But when I stumbled upon Heidi's lentil burgers featured on her health-guru blog, 101 Cookbooks, I thought I'd give them a try.

When my husband sat at the table, I probably should have told him right off that these weren't beef burgers, or my more typical bison burgers, but I just let him take a bite.

Hey, this isn't meat!

That was his first response. But after the first disappointing/confusing bite, he warmed up to them. He finished up his vegetarian burger by saying that this was a particularly nice way to prepare lentils. So I think that's the green light to make more in the future. Hooray! I also really enjoyed them and was surprised at how good and flavorful these burgers were. The texture is definitely different, but perhaps similar to a falafel. Topped with some fresh basil and spinach from my garden, a few slices of avocado and a dollop of lemony goat cheese, these little burgers really hit the spot on this very hot summer day.

Lentil Burgers
Source: 101 Cookbooks
makes 10-12 burgers

3 cups cooked black or French lentils (this is probably 1-1.5 cups dry lentils)
1/2 t. fine sea salt
4 eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup bread crumbs
1 T. olive oil

Pulse the lentils, salt and eggs in a food processor until mixed, but still somewhat chunky. Move the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Mix in the onion and bread crumbs. Begin to heat your pan over medium low heat while the bread crumbs absorb some moisture.

Add the oil to your preheated pans and then form burgers about 1 inch thick. Cook on one side for about 7 minutes and check to make sure you don't burn them (I did the first time). Once browned, flip and cook the other side for 7-10 minutes until cooked through. Top them with whatever you have around. I used spinach, basil, avocado, and softened goat cheese mixed with some lemon juice.

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to tell your husband before he takes his first bite. But it does look like meat. Maybe he won't notice?

Sweet, Creamy Oats

I don’t have a sweet tooth. I have a whole mouth full of sweet teeth. This one loves doughnuts, that one loves rich chocolate cake (with black coffee), all of the front ones constantly crave mint chocolate chip ice cream, and this little one has a weakness for crème puffs. These guys get me into a lot of trouble and often tell me how to run my life. Well, I’m fighting back. I’m laying off sugar for awhile (or trying my best to, though I’ve cheated a few times) in hopes that they will change their minds and start craving quinoa and green beans instead.

I’m not an unhealthy eater in general. My food choices have matured and long gone are the days of two cones of frozen yogurt a day in the college cafeteria. Good riddance. I admittedly love Brussels sprouts, I try to put beets into everything (Chocolate beet cupcakes anyone? Really, they’re good!), I eat plain yogurt, and steel cut oats make up my weekday breakfasts. But there are always doughnuts and cakes lying around the office, not to mention high-sugar granola bars posing as healthy snacks, and other such tempters. I give in more often than I’m able to resist.

Carrot cake with cheesecake frosting? Yes, please.

A big piece? Oh, if you insist!

I have good genes. I’m thin though I can easily keep up with the guys when it comes to putting away food. People try to fatten me up by giving me big pieces of cake. I rarely turn them down.

This no-sugar thing (fruits not included) has been hard. I’ve had to pass on cakes and pies. Everything in my body screams, “What are you doing?! That looks amazing! You need to put that in your mouth right now!” But I just remember that my body doesn’t always know best. It’s sick and addicted. Plus, I know my poor body doesn’t really know what to do with all that refined sugar. It might make me feel happy and comforted for a bit, but then I’ll end up feeling tired, apathetic, and sick. I’ve noticed, since cutting back on sugar, that I have more energy during the day and in the evenings. And when I do cheat, and have some sweet satisfying thing, I often feel kind of gross afterward – too full, lazy, and sick to my stomach. I’m glad for these little confirmations.

But while it’s been hard to go sugar-free, there have been a few good discoveries. My usual breakfasts consisted of steel cut oats with a sprinkling of Craisens and some dark buckwheat honey. I don’t think of this breakfast as unhealthy, but right now sugar-sweetened cranberries and honey are out. So I experimented and I stumbled upon a very simple oatmeal recipe that might just replace my honey and cranberries permenantly because it’s so delicious! It’s creamy, light, sweet, and would even be a satisfying dessert.

Another serving? Yes, please!  

Sweet Creamy Morning Oats

Serves 2

½ cup uncooked steel cut oats

1 banana, mashed
½ cup plain yogurt

½ t. cinnamon

Before going to bed, put ½ cup uncooked oats in a small sauce pan with 2 cups of water. Put on the lid and let the oats soak overnight.

In the morning, turn on the pot to high to bring it to a boil. Make sure you hang around because these oats can foam up and boil over quickly. Once the oats begin to boil and froth, stir and turn the heat down to medium. Let the oats cook for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until all of the water is absorbed. You can experiment here. You might prefer your oats a little more wet or little more dry. See what you like.

Divide the oats into two bowls (I always take the one with a smidgen more. I know, I’m selfish!)

Mash a banana with a fork and divide the banana among the two bowls.

Add half of the yogurt and cinnamon to each bowl and stir everything together.

Now take a bite and fall in love!

I guess now that I’ve written this out that you could just mix all the ingredients into the oatmeal pot and then split, but I never do that. Habit, I guess. I used to like buckwheat honey and my husband liked wildflower. I think that’s where it all started.

I’m telling you, the thought of these sweet, creamy oats gets me out of bed in the morning.

Homemade Yogurt

When I first heard about making yogurt at home, it sounded frightening. All of the heating to a certain temperature, and then cooling, and the ovens (or oven lights) and thermometers -- no thanks! But I was eating a quart of Trader Joe's yogurt per week and it's my philosophy that if you eat something that much, you should learn to make it at home. So I set out on my quest to find a simple and easy yogurt recipe that I could make frequently enough to fulfill my yogurt obsession. Then I came across the blog, A Year of Slow Cooking, and, lo and behold, a recipe for crock pot yogurt.

I've been making yogurt in a crock pot probably every two or three weeks for over a year now. Well, I don't really remember when I started doing it, but it's been long enough to forget. I've tried several varieties of milk and have played with the amounts and I've finally landed on what I think is a pretty good yogurt. And it's so easy!

All you need are three simple ingredients to start:

A half-gallon of 2% or whole milk (I actually prefer whole)
1/4 cup non-fat dry milk
4 T. plain yogurt with active cultures

You don't have to use organic ingredients, but I try to when I can afford them. This weekend I stumbled upon this organic milk at 50% off since it was nearing its expiration date. After reading Jonathan Bloom's new book, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), I was excited to see that my local store is making an attempt at reducing food waste. The store reduces waste; I get cheap grass-fed milk. Win, win!

Now on to the good stuff -- proving to you that making yogurt at home is much easier than it sounds.

Homemade Yogurt
Adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking

Set the crock pot to low. Pour the 1/2 gallon of milk into the crock pot. Whisk the dried milk into the milk. Make sure there aren't any clumps.

Cover and let the milk heat for 2 1/2 hours.

Unplug the crock pot or turn it off.  Let the milk cool for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, gently whisk in the yogurt. Replace the lid. Fully cover the crock pot with two layers of bath towels so it's nice and cozy.

Let it sit for 7-8 hours.

Take the pot part out and put it in the fridge. Let the yogurt cool for at least 8 hours.

Take 4 tablespoons of the new yogurt out and put them into individual 1 T. servings in an ice cube tray and freeze. This will be your yogurt starter for your next batch.

Now you're ready for a delicious snack!

I store the homemade yogurt in old yogurt containers from the good old days of buying yogurt. Now two quarts of yogurt just cost me whatever I spend on the milk (in this case $2.48, instead of the $6 I would have spent at Trader Joe's). You may notice that eventually your yogurt batches get runny and thin (maybe after 10 batches or so). When that happens, you just need to buy a plain yogurt to use as your fresh starter. It's probably about time I made that investment.

This yogurt is about as thick as store-bought non-fat yogurt, but if you want, you can always strain it a bit through a coffee filter. I like it just the way it is. Especially when topped with some granola cereal.