Living Green

Summer Pasta

This recipe is fast and simple.  It’s the quickest tomato sauce you’ll ever make…it’s tasty too, don’t worry.

The Line-Up

There are only 5 ingredients–canned tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, extra-virgin olive oil, and sea salt.

Peel and slice the garlic into thin discs.

Garlic

Heat a medium sauce pan on medium heat and add a few glugs of olive oil–about 3 Tablespoons.

Olive Oil In Heated Pan

Add the sliced garlic.  I also added some crushed red pepper this time, which is not necessary and does bring the ingredient list up to 6.

Garlic and Red Pepper Flakes

The garlic and pepper flakes will burn REALLY easily, and no one likes the taste of burnt garlic.  Basically, you just want the garlic to brown a little and infuse into the oil.  It only takes about 1 minute.

Add the can of tomatoes and then stir in the fresh basil.  I used crushed tomatoes, but diced would work fine too.

Wilting In Basil

After the basil, add about 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of sea salt.  Start off with less and add more to taste.  Stir the sauce and let it simmer for about 3 minutes.

That is it.  Take the pan off the heat and use it as you like.  I used this same recipe for lasagna last week, and this week made it for a summer pasta.  While the pasta was cooking I sauteed some onion and zucchini and finished off the dish with fresh goat cheese.

Easy And Good

Ingredients:

1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 large garlic cloves, peeled, sliced
palm full of fresh basil
3-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

Directions:

Peel and slice garlic.  Heat up medium sauce pan on medium heat.  Add a few glugs of olive oil.  Add the garlic and brown for about 1 minute.  Add the tomatoes, basil, and sea salt.  Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the sauce it heated through.  Turn off the heat and let sauce sit for a few minutes so the flavors merry.

Posing Pretty

This recipe was first introduced to me by my roommate from college, Taylor(Holla!).  It’s the most top-secret prized chocolate chip recipe ever known to man.  Her family’s heirloom recipe comes from, wait for it…the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bag.  I know, I know.  Don’t judge.  Believe me when I say, I’ve tried tons of different chocolate chip recipes and my heart keeps coming back to this one.  These cookies are simple and good.

Room Temperature Budda

Make sure all your ingredients come up to room temperature before you start.  Alright, if we are into reminiscing today…I must admit, back in college I was not the most discriminating baker, and no, most of the time my ingredients weren’t to room temperature, and everything still turned out A-okay…sometimes.  Nothing a few seconds in the microwave couldn’t fix.

However, be warned, I’m not vouching for non-room temperature ingredients for this recipe.

Grab two large mixing bowls.  A stand mixer would work great, but I was kickin’ it old school last night.  It was all about the $19 hand-held mixer for me.  Either way, you need a bowl for the mixing and a bowl for the ‘dry’ ingredients.

Bowl And Bowl

Beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes.  Then add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix to combine.

Butter, Sugar, Eggs, Vanilla Extract

Add 1/2 of the dry ingredients–flour, baking soda, and sea salt.

Waiting For A Little Mix

Mix, until the ingredients are just incorporated.  You don’t want to over-mix or the dough can get tough.  Throw in the chocolate chips to the other 1/2 of the flour.  Toss them around a little to coat.  This step isn’t necessary, but it helps the chips to disperse in the batter.

For Some Reason, Yum

For the rest of the time, I use a spatula to mix.

Last Mix

Cookie Dough

Drop the cookie dough onto any kind of ungreased cookie sheet.  Size doesn’t matter; just try to make them uniform so they will have a similar cooking time.

Waiting For The Oven

Bake at 375° for 6-9 minutes.  Always check them after 6 minutes.  After they are removed from the oven, place them on a wire rack to cool.  They do harden a bit after they cool, so don’t worry about them looking too ‘loose’ right out of the oven.

Eat Me

Ingredients:

2 1/4 C All-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, room temperature
3/4 C granulated sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, room temperature
2 C chocolate chips

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 375º.  Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.  In a larger bowl, beat butter and sugar for a few minutes.  Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until just combined.  Mix in 1/2 the flour.  Toss the chocolate chips in the rest of the flour.  Stir in the rest of the flour/chocolate chips to the butter mixture with a spatula.  Don’t over-mix.  Drop cookie dough(about 1-2 Tablespoons) onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 6-9 minutes; check them after 6 minutes.  Remove the cookies out of the oven and cool them on a wire rack.

Green Drink

After this post, you may think I’m a little cuckoo or an extreme health nut, but I assure you I am neither.  I like potato chips too much!

Growing up with alternative parents, I was exposed to fresh veggie juice early in life.  I don’t remember the exact point in time I was introduced to vegetable juice, but I just remember it being around.  Instead of shots of vodka at social gatherings there were shots of wheat grass…imagine the smell of your freshly cut lawn…now imagine drinking that.  Yeah, not too appealing.

The wheat grass didn’t stick, but the veggie juice did.  I re-visit juicing any time I feel like I want to do something really good for my body.  As a nod to the warm weather, let’s get our juice on!

A few years ago, Tom gifted me with a great compact juicer that he had thoroughly researched beforehand.  If you don’t have a juicer and would still like to try vegetable juice, a blender and an extra-fine strainer can work too.

Breville Compact Juicer

This is my variation on a ‘green’ drink.  The ingredients can vary from time to time, depending on what looks fresh at the market; but the central theme is green, literally.

I always include celery…it happens to be made up mostly of water, so it coincidentally produces a lot of juice.  Today I used about 1 1/2 bunches of organic celery.

Trimmed and Washed Celery

I love lemon and ginger, and they happen to make any drink really tasty.  I used 2 lemons today and a few ‘thumbs’ of ginger.  Another great ingredient is apple.  It’s not a vegetable, I know, but it’s green and its flavor works well with the other vegetables.

Apple, Lemon, and Ginger

Next on the list is some sort of leafy green–kale or spinach works great.  Be careful though, they are really potent and too much can ruin the drink.

Washed Kale

The last thing I almost always include is flat leaf parsley, but I didn’t have any on hand.  Normally I use a whole bunch.

So, after all the vegetables are washed, trimmed, and de-seeded, I press them through the juicer.  That’s it!  If you are trying the blender technique, you will have to work the vegetables a bit to get everything blended, and then strain it trough a fine strainer to remove the pulp.  Using a blender will result in a grainier texture.

Juicing In Action

Once everything is pressed through, I pour it into a larger container and make sure all the ingredients are mixed together.

A Little Foam On Top

After all the juice is extracted, there are fibrous leftovers.  Initially, you may think you’re missing out on your fruits and vegetables if you don’t eat all the ruffage.  However, what you miss in insoluble fiber, you make up for with live active enzymes which can be lost when cooking or heating food.  Enzymes are essential for the body’s digestion, cellular function, and absorption of food, to name a few examples.  Not only that, but a lot of the nutrients are stuck in the fiber that we can’t access by chewing alone–juicing removes the hard fiber and gets us a free pass to most of the vital nutrients.

The Wormies Loved Their Snack

Ingredients:

1-2 bunches celery
2 green or golden delicious apples
1-2 lemons, peeled
1-2 thumbs ginger, peeled
1/2 bunch kale or spinach
1 bunch flat leaf parsley

Directions:

In this case, I strongly suggest you use organic ingredients if possible.  Wash and trim all your vegetables.  De-seed and cut the apple into 4 chunks.  Feed the juicer a little at a time until all the ingredients are juiced.  Pour the juice into a larger container and mix together.  Drink with the family and enjoy.  Feel free to experiment with other combinations of fruits or vegetables.