Tiny Tables Expansion Pack

I recently added the line to my header... "and living on a smaller scale." I felt it was time to share more about my philosophy on life, not because I have anything great to say about it - but because it's something in my life that I am constantly working to make better.  I am actually in a place where I feel I have my feet on a solid path (in terms of small scale living - I wish I was so secure in other areas!), it's now about taking the steps forward. So this should be fun! It should be more like tips and tricks rather than preaching. At least that's the goal.

I actually started cooking because I was trying to reconnect with my food. I should say "connect", because reconnect implies that I was once connected. I only got a smidge of it from my granny. I can remember snapping green beans into big buckets of water and her making muscadine jelly. That woman really knew how to pinch pennies and is my personal example of small scale living. So as an adult who was looking to really take a leap into something that might really impact my life, I chose food. So over the last year I have met all the seasons bounty and can appreciate each season. This eventually lead to Tiny Tables, a blog that's supposed to be sharing with people how to enjoy fresh seasonal foods when it's just one or two people.

Future Topics: Bicycling, sustainable farming, community, non-consumerism, livable cities, gardening, and frugality.

Are any of you making steps to living on a smaller scale? Is it because of the economy, environment, or maybe some of both? Or are you like me and just a country girl trying to merge your past into this here city life?

This is me and the Pink Lady.

Pizza Night

I am not sure if some of you realize this, but I sometimes find it a pain to take pictures of the cooking process. But since I know (as a blog reader) everyone likes to see the process, I do it. It's all for you! Though sometimes I don't take pictures. And pizza is certainly one of those times that if you need me to explain how it's made - then there isn't much hope for your future as a cook. It's okay... I'm single. ;) (Statement for men only, sorry girls!)

You know whats also great about homemade pizza? I don't ever mind making more than two servings of it, because cold pizza is one of by absolute favorite leftovers.

This week: The sauce was just some simply garlic and chili infused olive oil. The pie was topped with Cherokee Purple tomatoes, grilled chicken, feta, and red onions.

Next up... a variation on the butternut squash pizza my girls Summer and Jen made!

What was on your pizza this week? Homemade or not, please share in the comments!




Does anyone else see the LOL cat hiding in my tomato?

Diet Coke and Artificial Sweetners

So.... for those of you who don't know me, I am in love with Diet Coke. I am not just saying that's the soda I prefer, it's just about the only soda I will drink. I'll occasionally dabble around, but I always come back. I am the person who immediately judges a restaurant that carries Pepsi products. I am also not satisfied with Coke Zero. If I wanted a soda that tasted like real Coke, I'd drink real Coke. Just ask my ex about my melt down at Break n Bread when there was only Coke Zero... you would have thought the world was ending by the way I was talking. Hmmm, I wonder if my relationship with Diet Coke had anything to do... um, let's not go there!

But then as all bad relationships go, I became addicted to the evil love that is Diet Coke. I mean really... why should I like - no love - this weird fake sweet brown chemical liquid? There is absolutely nothing natural about it. Wouldn't evolution teach us that murky brown water probably isn't a good idea to drink? And let's not even consider the environmental impact that my addiction has had on the planet (though... one saving grace, I am mostly a canned soda kind of girl).

This blog is all about eating in a more natural way, and most of the time I am washing this delicious food down with this horrible unnatural drink. I've even tried the Crystal Lite road, and there is just something about those drinks that turn me off.

I have tried many times to give up Diet Coke, and usually I can only agree to some severe moderation. However, this has got to stop. It's not just Diet Coke, but it's also all the other artificial sweeteners in my life - it's the diet foods I sometimes eat and all the fake sweeteners I put in drinks and food.

It's just not good! So... I am going to try to give it up for good. Maybe not cold turkey, but a slow phasing out if you will. I am hoping that just in the way that I can no longer enjoy snack cakes (they taste like plastic), that I'll eventually take a swig of Diet Coke and my taste buds will scream to spit out the sweet toxic bliss.

Have any of you fought the artificial sweetener battle? Did you come out on top or have you slipped back into it's sweet seduction?

Sausage & Lentil Casserole

Don't shoot me... this is another recipe from Eating Well Serves Two. I can't resist the perfectly portioned healthy recipes they offer in this collection.

I was looking up spinach recipes in the index to see if any recipes would allow me to easily sneak in collard greens. My roommate had said she had a thing for lentils and she is trying hard to try new foods. She doesn't like cooked greens, so I was worried this wouldn't work out for her. However, I cut the collards up into smaller pieces and I feel that the texture of the greens was somehow hidden by the rice and lentils. She and I both tasted it and agreed it was pretty good.

However... let me tell you this was not an easy one for me to make. First of all, I love how recipes call for canned lentils. I am certain I have never seen a can of lentils. I thought they all came in bags. So I looked up the conversion chart for dried lentils. I was told 1/2 cup dried lentils makes one cup. Since one can roughly equals two cups, I made a whole cup of lentils. Suddenly I had four cups of cooked lentils. That's okay! Because half of the lentils went into the freezer for another day.

Now I also I had to prep the collards. I had to soak the grit off, slice them up, and cook them. I also didn't have any instant rice, so I decided I would just half way cook some regular rice. And this is where things got out of proportion. I measured out the rice called for in the recipe, and it cooked out a lot of rice. So perhaps if you also do not have instant rice, you should reduce your rice from 3/4 to about 1/4 to 1/2 cup. I decided at the time I didn't give a crap and just dumped everything into the casserole dish and baked it.

This is way more than two servings, honestly it's more like 3 or 4. But that's okay... cause it tastes pretty good and I am never going to complain about large servings of healthy casseroles. However, I am sure next time when I reduce the amount of rice it will actually be two servings. FYI, the picture does not do it justice. It tastes a lot better than it looks.

Do you have any healthy(ish) casseroles that you'll be making this winter? Are you sneaking greens into dishes and hoping no one will notice? Please share in the comments section.




Sausage & Lentil Casserole
(Serves Two)

1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 link hot Italian sausage, casing removed
1 small onion, chopped
1 14-ounce can lentils, rinsed
1 cup frozen or fresh spinach
3/4 cup reduce-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3/4 cup instant brown rice
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup shredded extra-sharp Cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Coat a 1-quart casserole or loaf pan with cooking spray.

2. Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add sausage and onion; cooking, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Add lentils, spinach, broth and oregano. Increase heat to medium-high and cook stirring often, until heated through, about 3 minutes. Stir in rice and pepper. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish and cover with foil. Bake until the rice is tender, 30-35 minutes. Top with cheese and bake, uncovered, until the cheese melts, about 2 minutes more.

Curried Squash & Chicken Soup

I just call it Thai Butternut Squash soup.

This soup is s(o)uper simple to serve up! So... I think I am just cooking my way through the Eating Well Serves Two cookbook. I actually have come to realize I kind of prefer Eating Well to Weight Watchers cookbooks (previously my all time favorite), because Eating Well seems to realize that there are seasons. Not always, but most of the time I can find recipes that work perfectly with what I have on hand.

The recipe calls for frozen winter squash, but I had pounds of fresh butternut squash sitting in a bowl. So I simply cut them in half (with my very good kitchen knives) and roasted them in a olive oil coated pan. If you buy winter squash at the grocery store, they claim that you can ask the produce guy to cut in half for you. My friend Summer once told me she got Publix to cut her squash. So... I feel confident you can pry into your fresh squash with some effort. Of course, you can take the easy route and buy the frozen stuff.

After I roasted it I scooped it out (yes... I kind of burned my fingers) and then pureed the flesh with my immersion blender. I love that thing! It's as old as me and I can distinctly remember calling it the milkshake maker when I was little. Granny made some awesome blueberry milkshakes. Back to the soup... because the flesh was already hot... I didn't really have to heat it or cook it much. I kind of just dumped the seasonings in, let it simmer for a couple of minutes and then served it.

The recipes says you can leave out the chicken and spinach if you want a simple first-course soup. Or maybe you're like me and just don't have any chicken and spinach around. The recipe also doesn't talk about cooking the chicken, but if you are using raw chicken please cut it very thinly and then cook it until it's done. I bet you could throw it some precooked chicken and it would be fine. I had most everything on hand, and luckily I live next to an Indian-owned convenient store... so finding coconut milk is not a hard task. I forgot to buy limes at the store, so I just used lemon juice from my fridge. I ate this with some simple water crackers and found it quite comforting on these cool nights we've been having.

I actually trippled this recipe and put some of the soup in the freezer. If I remember correctly, I stopped getting winter squash in my box last year around December. I love the taste so much that I wanted to be sure to enjoy it a little longer this time around.

How are you using winter squash this season?






Curried Squash & Chicken Soup
(Serves Two)

1 10-ounce package frozen pureed winter squash
1/2 cup "lite" coconut milk
1/2 cup water
8 ounces boneless, skinless, chicken breast, thinly sliced
1 6-ounce bag baby spinach
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/2 to 1 teaspoon Thai red curry paste
1/4 teaspoon salt

Heat squash, coconut milk and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the squash defrosts, about 10 minutes. Add chicken, reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes. Stir in spinach, lime juice, sugar, curry paste to taste and salt and continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through, about 3 minutes longer.

Making recipes work for you!

Today I am revisiting a recipe I made several months ago, Spicy Potato and Kale Soup. I really loved the soup and encouraged everyone to give kale a try. Kale was still relatively new to me then and honestly I've only eaten it two or three times in my whole life.

When I started receiving collards in the box, I was having a really hard time finding a recipe that didn't use them with a ham hock. Collards are a very Southern vegetable. And I became really curious about where they came from, because I had this vision of Indians walking around in the woods and finding this ultra lush leafy bush and somehow thinking "Hey... why don't we eat this with cornbread?". That's assuming the Indians were just really tan red necks. So after some mild research, apparently no one knows where the heck collards came from, but we do know that Jesus probably ate them. However, you ask any American what are Southern foods and collards is the first thing that comes to mind.

For me, when someone says soul food I immediately imagine a big pot of collards with hunks of bacon and onions floating in the water. And sadly, the food world likes to lump collards into that category. I found several recipes using collards with black eyed peas or grits (and always with bacon), but I wanted something a bit different.

So I decided that I could just substitute collards for recipes using kale. I tasted collards and they had no real distinct flavor... other than leafy. So why not? How much different could it be. Plus, for whatever reason kale has become one of those vegetables that all the chefs are ranting about. The recipes for kale seemed to be a little more universally accepted in all cuisines, instead of just Dixie Cooking. So I made Indian Spiced Collards and Chickpeas and then I remade the Spicy Potato Soup using collards, and it turned out great! In fact, it was pretty damn good.

So my point is... you can look at traditional Southern vegetables, take them outside of the box (haha... get it?), and make some really exciting dishes. It probably might be cheaper if you are a grocery store shopper as well. Kale has a certain popularity right now that collards don't. (If you know the pricing, it would be cool to share in the comments section).

But don't think I am not gonna make that grits and greens casserole to go with my ham steak! Yummy yummy!








What about you? Have you tried using a vegetable in a way that isn't the norm? Please share your cooking trials with me, I would love to hear them. Also, I like to know that people are actually reading the blog.

Indian Spiced Collards and Chickpeas

My weekly vegetable box is truly a magical experience. Now that I've had the box for over a year I've almost become fully acquainted with the South's bounty. However, there was one category I kind of stayed away from last year. Greens. I would always call and say to leave them out of my box. Especially after a really bad run in with Indian spiced mustard green pizza (don't do it!).

But this year I decided I would face my greens and really try to enjoy them. I did decide that perhaps mustards weren't my green of choice, but when I got collards I didn't conveniently ignore them until they were a wilted slimy mess.

First up is another recipe for two from Eating Well Serves Two. If you haven't noticed, I am mildly obsessed with it's waist line friendly recipes. The recipe this week was actually called Indian-Spiced Kale and Chickpeas, but kale is pretty rare in the box so collards it is!

I also get really nervous about any recipe described as "Indian spiced". I don't know what it is, but sometimes those flavors don't translate to my taste buds. However, there was no curry powder in this recipe, just garam masala (which I made myself from spices in my cabinet... save that money honey). I actually loved the way it smelled and knew that this recipe might not be so bad!

Another inconvenient thing was having to prep the collards. Greens often have soil on them and require being washed. I did remember reading somewhere to fill a sink up with water and to swish the greens around and let the grit fall to the bottom. This is what I did and worked quite well.

I served it over brown basamati rice and it was very filling. I wouldn't make this all the time, but I enjoyed it. In short, I think that I am okay with collard greens. I've decided to try using collards in recipes that call for kale or spinach and see how that goes. I have a lot of collards in my fridge right now! I am really excited about a casserole from Eating Well Serves two that I plan to use collards in. Stay tuned!

Have you discovered the greatness of greens yet? How do you prepare them at home?






Indian-Spiced Collards & Chickpeas
(Serves Two)

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 1 1/2 pounds collards, ribs removed, coarsely chopped
1 cup vegetable broth or reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon garam masala
1/8 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed

Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium-heat. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add collards and cook, tossing with two large spoons until bright green, about 1 minute. Add brother, coriander, cumin, garam masala, and salt. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the collards are tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in chickpeas; cover and cook until the chickpeas are heated through, 1 to 2 minutes.