Black Bean Salad

This is one of my new favorite salads. I love dishes that are simple, easy, dairy-free, and wheat free, soy-free, and nut-free so that we all can enjoy them together.

The inspiration for this dish was a salad I had years ago when we lived in Texas, and I decided to finally figure out my own dressing for it - for truly the dressing is what completes this salad!

For the salad:

2 cups black beans, already cooked and drained
2 cups frozen corn kernels, lightly steamed or roasted and cooled
2-4 red peppers, diced (you can use a mix of red/green peppers, too if you like)
4 tomatoes, cut into cubes
(the original dish had raw onions in it, but raw onions are a major source of food poisoning, so they scare me, and my picky family won't eat it anyway)
(You can totally adjust this and use more or less of something as you like - go ahead and make this "your own"! - it's great with acocado, or lettuce, or quinoa, or all, or whatever inspires you!)


For the dressing:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
juice of 1 orange or clementine (I had a clementine in the house)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
Chili pepper flakes (to taste)
Smoked paprika (to taste, I used about 2 tsp)
salt (to taste)
ground black pepper (to taste)

Place all the vegetables in a pretty salad bowl. Mix the dressing together in a jar, bowl, or container. Mix really well. Pour dressing over vegetables and gently toss it all together. Serve cold. 

This salad can actually be a meal in and of itself, or is a great accompaniment to anything at all.
Let me know if you give it a try!

Pretty Salad!

Pretty Salad! 

I made this bright salad to go with our supper tonight.
We had gotten a whole bunch of really well priced, amazing mangoes this week, and they were calling my name!

All I did was slice cucumbers, red peppers, and mango and toss in a pretty bowl.
I'm offering sunflower seeds as a garnish, as well as balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

And that is it, because it's the height of the season and fresh fruits and vegetables taste pretty amazing right now.

Just wondering if my kids will eat this though! Anyone want to guess how many will agree to eat it?


p.s. here are the rolls I made for tonight, using a slightly modified version of my sandwich bread recipe:

Monday Night, Feb. 28, 2011

I'm suffering from another round of cooking burnout. It's a lot to plan and prepare (and clean up after!) 3 healthy meals every day, plus snacks for a family of 6. I admit, most mornings we have hot or cold cereal, maybe some yogurt and fruit, so breakfast is not really so labor-intensive, but I'm kind of ready for someone else to cook (and clean!). Just one night. Please?

My 6 year old  has offered to cook, but I just can't take her up on it. Although now she thinks she is a master chef, since she made a fruit salad that everyone devoured!

That said, I still have to make supper...

On the way to the table on Monday night:

Sloppy Sams in Pitot
Make-your-own Salad  (lettuce, tomatoes, purple and green cabbage, cucumbers, and carrots)
Couscous (cooked in whatever is left of the vegetable soup from Shabbat)
 Roasted Zucchini, Tomato, and Onion

As long as the oven is already on, I will probably bake something else - but I'm not sure yet what. Whatever it is, it will have to be eggless, since I didn't buy any eggs yet this week! (Everybody ate the eggless cookies over Shabbat, so I'm guessing it'll work out ok!) What should I bake? (I'm thinking muffins or a breakfast bread...)

Thursday Night, Feb.3, 2011

I can't believe how fast this week is flying by. Menu Planning is really helping me out - there are fewer foods going to waste and no supper crises, so I'd say it's been a successful food week. Not everything I've done this week has been so successful, but I'll take what I can get...

That said, it looks like it will be another busy Thursday. We usually end up running in the door right before suppertime, and everyone wants to eat "NOW". I may not post every Thursday from now on, because it's just too predictable...

The Menu:


Any leftover soup from the week
Make your own salad 
A variation on pizza

Some notes about this menu:

Make your own salad works wonders in our house! My kids don't always like it when too many flavors are mixed together, but for some reason, it's so much more palatable for them to choose their own combinations. I just put out all the various vegetables (and yes, fruits sometimes too) in individual bowls and everyone takes their own winning combination. This way, the one who loves avocado can have it, and the one who won't touch it avoids it without any fuss...

Our pizza variations usually include toppings like tomatoes, olives, peppers, and mushrooms.

Shabbat Menu

This week's Shabbat menu is built around the produce I got at Kim'at Chinam for 1 NIS/kilo, and the produce I got at Yesh for 1.99 NIS/kilo. Both really great deals! I just have to learn how to figure out how heavy 3 kg is, as the maximum you can usually get when they have these sales is 3 kg per type. Unfortunately, I lowballed all my purchases, and could have easily come home with twice as much produce for these awesome prices...

When we don't have guests, I try to keep my menus simple - that means fewer courses and fewer dishes, but still plenty of good food to fill everyone up! Since we have no guests this week, here's my plan:

Vegetable-Noodle Soup
Pomegranate Chicken
Pan-Fried Tofu Steaks for my favorite vegetarian (my 12 yr old - yes, a boy!)
Carrot Kugel
Oven Roasted Beets
Oven Roasted Cauliflower
Toasted Barley with Mushrooms
Salad - lettuce, purple cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and avocado
Lentil-Barley Stew (in the crock pot, for lunch)


Some notes about these dishes:

When making a vegetarian vegetable soup, I always sautee all the veggies in extra virgin olive oil, then cook, covered, to reduce, for 10-15 min. before adding any liquid. I don't know, I just think it tastes better this way in the end. I use onions, garlic, celery, tons of carrots, zucchini, and other veggies as the mood hits me. It's a really easy soup.
I also save all the trimmings from vegetables (don't use potato peelings or beet trimmings, though!) in gallon-size zipper-close bag in my freezer. when the bag is full, I simmer the trimmings in water for many hours in my huge stock pot, to make vegetable stock. Just make sure you strain it well when it's done. I then use some for the day's cooking, and freeze the rest in pint-size containers for later use.

Carrot Kugel - I usually make 6 of these at a time, and freeze for later. My 3 year old can't get enough of them, so I serve carrot kugel almost every week. I use a modified muffin recipe, bake in loaf pans, wrap well, and freeze.

Oven-Roasted Veggies - what could be easier!

The toasted barley recipe is new for my family, but I have promised them that we'll be trying out new dishes, in order to find some new favorites (this is what I need that vegetable stock for this week)

Thursday Night

I usually cut myself a little slack on Thursday night; I know that I will either be up late cooking for Shabbat or frantically cooking the whole next day (trying to end that bad habit!). We used to order pizza, until we started noticing just how expensive that really was... so in the States we switched over to pre-made pizza crusts, that we topped ourselves. Always yum!

Here, I haven't found premade pizza crusts. So we have a few options:
1) make our own pizza dough (too time consuming for a Thursday, in my opinion).
2) use pizza crust that we made previously and froze (an ambition of mine).
3) use pitot or other flatbread instead of crust.
4) buy french bread or bagels or random other breads and make "french bread pizza" or pizza bagels.
5) buy premade pizzas in the frozen food section of the supermarket (Yesh sells 3-packs for 33.80NIS), and add our own toppings.


So, the menu for Thursday Supper is:

Leftover Minestrone Soup (for those who want it)
A Variation on Pizza
Salad