Loving Leftovers

I love making meals that are easy and that I know the entire family will eat.  With Easter weekend coming to an end I thought I would make something for dinner tomorrow night with the Easter dinner leftovers in the fridge.

We had a leg of lamb for Easter dinner, so I still had quite a bit of meat, plus the leg bone.  Hmmmm...what to make? Leftover Lamb stoup of course! What is that you ask? Well I took out my trusty slow cooker and added the following:

- leftover lamb meat, cut into small pieces (approximately 2 cups).
- the leftover lamb bone.
- a package of white mushrooms, sliced.
- 1 white onion, chopped.
- 3 stalks of celery chopped.
- 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped.
- 1 large parsnip, peeled and chopped.
- 4 cloves of garlic, peeled.
- 3 potatoes peeled and cubed.
- 1/2 cup barley.
- 1 tetra pack of low sodium chicken broth, approximately 4 cups.
- 1 tetra pack of low sodium beef broth, approximately 4 cups.
- freshly ground pepper, to taste.

I literally throw everything in the slow cooker at once, set it to low and let it cook for approximately 8 hours, and voila, dinner is ready.

The best thing about this stoup (thicker than a soup, but not as thick as a stew) is that there really are no set rules as to what you can add.  I just open up my fridge and pantry, take a look and throw what I think will taste good into the slow cooker.  I only added pepper to this stoup, because the lamb had a
lot of seasoning on it already, but again, you can add in any seasoning you would like.  Mix
up the veggies and meat as well, I have used leftover beef roast and added in rutabaga as a veggie,
with yummy results.

An easy and healthy dinner that the whole family will love. Yummy!

Beans, beans, the magical fruit!

Strangely, from what I hear about most other kids, my boys LOVE beans!  I am not talking about green beans, although they love those too, but rather kidney beans and black beans and even chick peas (I am not even sure a chickpea is a bean, but anyhow I digress).

One of our family's favorite bean recipes is pasta and bean soup and because it is still so cold and miserable outside  I thought I would have the boys help me out and make some for our dinner.  This recipe originally came from a cookbook we have by Rose Reisman, I really like a number of her recipes, and the rest of the family does too.  I have made a couple of tweaks but it is still pretty true to the original.

I thought to make everything a little easier I would prep some on the ingredients.    

The boys found their aprons to put on, quickly found a spot and then promptly started fighting over who was closer to the soup pot, seriously?!

We carefully sautéed the onions, celery, carrots and garlic.

At this point the boys gave up and decided they were going to watch Transformers...leaving me to finish the soup.  One thing I have to say is that this soup is so easy to make.  It has ingredients we almost always have on hand in our house and from start to finish this soup only takes about 45 minutes.  Best of all this soup, like many things, tastes even better the next day!

So my little helpers abandoned me, but I finished the soup off.

Yummy dinner for a chilly spring night.  My boys each finished their entire bowl, and so did I!

Here is the recipe if you would like to try making it at home.  I have substituted rice pasta in on several occasions with great success.

Pasta and Bean Soup (Fagioli)

Ingredients:

2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/3 cup chopped celery
2 tsp. minced garlic
4 cups chicken stock
1 can diced tomatoes (28 oz.)
2 tsp. granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
Dash salt and freshly ground pepper
3 cups canned kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup small shell pasta

Directions:

Add olive oil to large non-stick saucepan and place over medium heat.  Saute the onions, carrots, celery and garlic for five minutes.

Stir in the stock, tomatoes, sugar, dried basil, dried oregano, salt, pepper and 2 cups of the kidney beans.  Mash the remaining 1 cup of kidney beans and stir into mixture.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook covered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in the pasta.  Cook for 5 to 8 minutes, until the pasta is tender but firm.  Ladle into individual bowls and serve with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese on top.

Enjoy!

It's been a long time...

I must admit that we completely fell off the blogging bandwagon long ago, but as spring approaches we are feeling a wee bit nostalgic and thought we would resurrect 4 Peas in a Pod.

It's still too cold to plant anything in our garden and frankly last years garden was a bit of a lost cause, but we are committed to starting again and the boys are definitely excited about this!

In the interim we have decided to start posting some of our family's attempts at healthy snacks and meals.  Less processed junk and more whole, natural foods.  We are not silly enough to think that we are going to abandon processed food altogether, but we sure are going to give it a try!

The GoGo Girls take Toronto!

So totally not garden related, but I am super excited to be participating in the 2011 Mitsubishi City Chase in Toronto this Saturday, August 13th. 

http://www.mitsubishicitychase.com/en_site.asp

I have teamed up with my colleague Tina Baldwin and our official team name is "The GoGo Girls"!  And no this does not reference any risque type of dancing (get your minds out of the gutter) but rather that we both commute to Downtown Toronto every day on the GO Train from Burlington.  We have been readying ourselves by looking over maps, familiarizing ourselves with the TTC and talking about which challenges we are for sure avoiding (ie. sketching your partner in the nude).

We are super excited, not only to be participating in the race but also to raise money for a fantastic organization, Right to Play.  So if you have a moment and would like to support a great cause, please go to the following link and help support a great team (we are currently the #1 fundraising team and would love to stay in this position).

http://righttoplay.akaraisin.com/Toronto2CityChase/86d658ead6844aa9833d57b4094df49b

Z is for Zucchini

So we are finally at the point where we can harvest and eat some of the veggies in our garden.  This week my hubby noticed that some of the zucchini's looked ready to be picked and suggested we get out there before the dogs beat us to it.

This afternoon Liam, Ewan and I headed out to find the perfect zucchini so that we could make some yummy zucchini bread.  Not only did we find zucchini's but we also picked a jalapeno pepper, a cucumber and some cherry and yellow pear tomatoes.



What to do with the zucchini? Make zucchini bread of course! Liam and Ewan, my two little helpers were more than happy to help with this.

Here is the recipe we used.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup water

2 cups grated zucchini

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.  In a seperate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice.  Mix wet ingredients into dry, add nuts and chocolate chips and fold in.  Bake in 2 standard loaf pans, sprayed with nonstick spray, for 1 hour, or until a tester comes out clean. 

And the final product...Can't wait to try some tonight.



What exactly is this corn I am eating?!

So I popped into a locally owned fine food store, Wills & Co. this afternoon to pick up a few things and when I walked through the door an interesting sign caught my eye.  It made reference to local organic corn being in, and that it was not Monsanto.  What on earth is Monsanto I thought?!  And why isn't it good?  So after buying some of this organic, local, non Monsanto corn I headed home and googled what exactly Monsanto is.

So thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that Monsanto is an multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation and the leading producer of genetically modified seed.  What on earth does that mean?  So again, thanks to Wikipedia:

"Genetically modified foods (or GM foods) are foods derived from genetically modified organisms. Genetically modified organisms have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. These techniques are much more precise^[1] than mutagenesis (mutation breeding) where an organism is exposed to radiation or chemicals to create a non-specific but stable change. Other techniques by which humans modify food organisms include selective breeding; plant breeding, and animal breeding, and somaclonal variation."

Who knew?! I certainly didn't.  So does this mean that all the corn I have been buying in my regular grocery store is all genetically modified?  There doesn't really seem to be a clear answer to this.  In the process of my Internet search I did come across an interesting pamphlet produced by Greenpeace, "How to Avoid Genetically Engineered Food - A Greenpeace Shoppers Guide", http://gmoguide.greenpeace.ca/shoppers_guide.pdf
Turns out that a lot of the processed foods I purchase for my family on a regular basis contain genetically engineered ingredients.  Even baby formula is on the list!
Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying I will never purchase any of the products on the list, but it would be nice to know that these products contained genetically engineered ingredients.  Looks like I have a little reading to do to make myself and informed consumer.

So why am I posting this here, in a blog about my family's garden?  Well we did plant corn in our garden...I would like to think it is organic, non Monsanto corn...but who knows...guess I should have checked the plants I bought.

As promised...

Some pics of the garden.

 A wee little melon.

 Corn! And it looks edible...

 Cucumber thief?...pretty good chance I'd say!

 Zucchini bread anyone?