I’m cooking under a handicap this week.  Small kitchen.  Not much in the way of conveniences.  1 large pot, 1 small pan, 1 skillet.  No food processor.  No mixer.  No measuring cups.  1 small good knife.  You get the idea.  Nevertheless, it hasn’t deterred me from a mission of stocking Dear Hubby’s freezer and fridge with healthy things to eat after I head back to Texas.  Emphasis on healthy.  Because this is what he eats when I’m not around:

Not exactly the picture of healthy eating.  At least he got the turkey/veggie ones.  Never mind about the carb count or sodium.  Check out the nutritional facts:

Not much nutrition there.  Unless you count high fat, high cholesterol and high carbs as nutrition.  Yikes.

I’ve been on a quinoa kick this trip.  I read the nutritional info online about this great seed, bought some and have been feeding Dear Hubby a diet of quinoa recipes while I’m here.  Thank goodness he’s pretty easy to please and eats just about anything I put on the table.  Maybe if I bump up the nutritional value when I’m here, it will counterbalance when he goes back to pot pies after I leave?  I can always hope.  Besides, I have to feed him a healthy dinner so we can have Timbits for dessert.

So the quinoa recipes I made are these:

Sweet Potato, Black Bean, Quinoa Burgers.  I fried some and I baked some.  We liked them either way.  They were very yummy and he has 6 of them still in the freezer for reheating.

Curried Quinoa Wraps with Avocado Citrus Slaw.  Yum.  I tasted as I made this one yesterday.  And I made quite a few modifications.  Didn’t have or want to use curry, so I subbed chili powder and a little cumin.  I didn’t have tahini (couldn’t find it at the store here and no food processor to make my own) so I just left it out.  Left out optional mint and nutritional yeast too.  I didn’t have cashews so I subbed toasted sunflower seeds.  No rice vinegar so I added a splash of regular white vinegar.  Orange instead of a tangerine.  No liquid smoke so I splashed in a little worcestershire sauce. 

In other words, my recipe is nothing like the one in the internet link.

And this is how I made matchstick carrots.  No food processor, remember? 

And I have no idea why the color in that photo is so bright.  Maybe the bright orange carrots mixed with the nice cyan blue of the dollar store plastic bowl weren’t happy together?  And maybe the fact that I had the camera set on vivid?

Like my measuring cup?  Hey, it’s worked pretty well for me this week.

Black Bean Mango Quinoa Salad – you saw that one on this blog before.  The weekend that Susan’s emails had me locked in the kitchen.

We even had quinoa for breakfast one day with a recipe I found on this site: www.quinoia.net.  It was very yummy.  I added raisins, too.  Well, actually they were currants unless you read the French on the bag.  And a bit of Vermont maple syrup.  I did not add apples.  Only because I didn’t have any.  I’m sure they’d be good too.

Then yesterday afternoon while chopping, my knife slipped and I sliced my finger.  No bandaids here!  So I fashioned a tight wrap with a paper towel and a rubber band.  Pretty ingenious, I thought.

I think the finger will live to chop another day.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon chopping up a big humungous amount of veggies and made a pot of soup.  I made it up.  And I know some of you will ask me what was in it so here goes. 

All ingredients were chopped into bite-sized pieces or smaller.  Even though I was handicapped with a sliced finger.  I was on a mission. 

I started by sautéing onions in a little olive oil.  Added celery, carrots and then threw in about 4 cloves of garlic.  Added zucchini, sweet potato and some vegetable broth (probably about 3 or 4 cups.  I wanted to fill the pot.)  Added a couple of handfuls of frozen corn and frozen peas.  Then I threw in a large can of diced tomatoes.  To bump up the nutritional value I added about a cup of red lentils.  Spices?  A palmful of cumin, a smaller palmful of red pepper flakes, sea salt and pepper.  Remember, no fancy measuring devices here.  I’m camp-style cooking.  And I also sprinkled in a few dashes of worcestershire sauce.  Just because I wanted to.  Simmered the whole pot for about an hour.  Because it was really, really full.  Dear Hubby tasted it and declared it very good!  After it cooled I put it all into single serving containers that we got at Dollarama.

Aren’t they cute?  Dollarama is my new favorite shopping place.

I also made this soup earlier in my visit. 

And yes, those are chunks of garlic on the toast alongside.  We love our garlic!  There were leftovers of this soup too.  It was mucho yummy.  I made it with kale instead of collard greens, but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely.  Except for the pressure cooker.  I’m camping, you know.

So here’s Dear Hubby’s freezer now.  Salmon, tilapia, veggie burgers, frozen peas and corn and 9 containers of soup.  It was empty when I arrived.  Well, except for the pot pies.  He told me that he might still have some of these things when I come back the next time.  I just grinned.  That was my goal.

It was over 80° in Montreal yesterday.  At least 10° warmer than at home in Texas.  What’s up with that?  I had the windows wide open all day and I didn’t even bring a short sleeve shirt with me on this trip.  Today though?  The high is supposed to be in the 50’s.  Sounds a lot like Texas, doesn’t it, you Texas blog readers?  Apparently a big cold front came through last night and dropped the temperature nearly 30°.  Tonight?  34° brrrrrr.

One of these days I might have to get back to sewing again!  I really thought I’d do lots on this trip.  Seems I’m on the computer too much.  Emailing and blogging and reading blogs and doing research on quilt shops and how far it is to this thing or that thing.  Oh!  And cooking.  And eating Timbits.  I wouldn’t want my sewing to get all sticky, now would I?

And yes, I had Timbits for dessert last night after dinner.  Why do you ask?  But I’m going to have to brush up on my French.  I asked for strawberry, chocolate and powdered sugar Timbits yesterday.  And ended up with glazed, chocolate and powdered sugar.  I might not have gotten the powdered sugar ones either if I hadn’t specifically pointed.  Does strawberry and glazed really sound the same in French?  Oh, my.  Tomorrow I’m just going to have to point.

Hugs,
Barb