Savoury Eats

I was googling recipes for non-gluten eating a few days ago. While I didn't find quite what I was looking for, I did find a tasty looking vegetable dish. Here is my version of it.

Ingredients:

half a red pepper sliced

half a yellow pepper sliced

handful of broccoli chopped in large pieces

handful of cauliflower chopped in large pieces

two small yams washed and sliced lengthwise like fries

half a zucchini chopped in larger pieces

two medium carrots, peeled and sliced in long pieces

olive oil

cracked pepper

tuscan seasoning

After washing and chopping all the vegetables, toss them with olive oil cracked pepper and tuscan seasoning (recipe here).  You can eyeball the amounts. You  just need enough seasoning to taste and enough oil to coat the vegetables.

When done, place the veggies in a nice casserole dish and bake until the vegetables have enough crunch. I think I left mine for about 202-5 minutes in a 350ºF oven but you can experiment on this as I find that no ovens are created equal in terms of heat distribution.

The vegetables were very good and very filling. I didn't make a salad or any dessert that day. I just had my vegetables with two small hamburger patties (minus the bun) and was very full.

I was reminded yesterday that today is Earth Hour. This is a global call to action for business and individuals alike. During this hour one turns of all electricity from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time. Just think how much energy we can save around the globe when we all stop and turn off our power supply for one hour. At the same time, we can use this time to pray for others, meditate on God's Word and give thanks for all that we have.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in 

Christ Jesus concerning you.

2 Thessalonians 5:18

A Slow Dinner

Today was a day for a slow food dinner. I made Oatmeal Bread, Pork Roast with Tuscan Salt Rub and Baked Beans. For greens, I had the left over spinach salad from last night.

Cinnamon buns were made later for another day.  Photos above are of the buns before they went into the oven.  First photo has the butter and brown sugar sprinkled on the dough after it is rolled out to size. The middle photo is after the cinnamon spice and raisins have been added and the pieces cut for the pan. The third photo is after the dough has risen a bit and the last of course is the buns right out of the oven.

RECIPES

Oatmeal Bread

This was made in the bread machine and so is simple because all you do is throw all the ingredients into the machine, set it and away it goes until the bread is nice and done.

In case you do not have the recipe here is the one I used.

Ingredients:

9-11 ounces of water
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons sugar or honey 

2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
  3 3/4 cups bread flour

2 tablespoons powdered milk
  2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order listed. Select White Bread setting, and Start.

This recipe yields a 2 pound loaf.

Roast Pork with Tuscan Salt Rub

This again was easy. I put the roast pork into a small roaster, sprinkled some tuscan seasoning rub on it and cooked it for about 4 hours, first on low heat of 250 F. oven for an hour and then on 350 F. for the balance of time. I have a pre-mixed rub from Suzanne Somers company. If you don't have such a rub readily available or you like to make your own, you can try this recipe from the blog Eating Well.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon fennel seeds

6 tablespoons dried basil

3 tablespoons garlic powder

3 tablespoons coarse salt

2 tablespoons dried rosemary

2 tablespoons dried oregano

Boston Baked Beans

I soaked the beans last night and boiled them for about one hour today. When I was ready to make dinner I put them in a glass baking dish along with a recipe I adapted from www.allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 cups navy beans

1/2 pound bacon

1 onion, finely diced

3 tablespoons molasses

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 cup ketchup

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup brown sugar


In my version, I omitted the bacon and Worcestershire sauce which I did not have on hand. I added some Louisiana hot sauce in place of Worcestershire. If you would like to use hot sauce, any hot sauce will do. I added the diced onion to the sauce mixture.

Basically you place the beans in a baking dish and pour the sauce over top. You can add a bit of liquid (from the boiled beans or water) and cover. The recipe says to cook the beans for 3-4 hours on 325 F. oven. I cooked mine for 4 hours and the first hour was at 250F along with the pork roast after which I turned the heat on to 375F for the remaining time. I  had about 3 times the beans so I tripled the other ingredients to taste.

Cinnamon Buns

For easy cinnamon buns I made the dough in the bread machine. I then rolled it out to size, placed margarine, brown sugar, cinnamon spice and raisins and then rolled the dough into a log, pinching it together where needed so it didn't fall apart. Once I had a log, I cut the roll into evenly spaced pieces about 1 inch each in width. I set the cut pieces on a baking sheet, covered with a tea towel and let it rise before baking at 350F oven for approximately 30 minutes. You can make a cream cheese frosting, a confectioner's sugar glaze or leave them plain.

 

Enjoy!