Strawberry Oatmeal

I like to mindlessly read health and fitness articles, and last night I came across a "program" with a "menu" of healthy meals and snacks.  Half of them were boring or contained things I won't so much as look at (canned tuna makes me want to throw up) but I got a few little points of inspiration.  The article also made me want to eat yogurt, which I will go out and get today.

Right now, I'm eating breakfast.  I have resolved (sort of "end-of-year resolutions") to eat more oatmeal and to eat bigger breakfasts in general.  I'm also trying to eat more fruits and vegetables.  I took some inspiration from the article I read last night for this oatmeal recipe (really just the strawberry part) and from an old Cooking Light recipe that had you add wheat germ to oatmeal (I do it all my own way now).


Strawberry Oatmeal
Makes 1 serving

1. In a small saucepan/pot, put 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup vanilla soymilk.
2. Take out a 1/2 cup dry measuring cup.  Spoon in 1 tablespoon wheat germ.  Fill the rest of the cup with old-fashioned rolled oats.  Add this to the saucepan when it starts to simmer, plus a pinch of salt.
3. Put 8 frozen strawberries in a small microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute.  Drain as much liquid as possible (careful, I lost 2 strawberries in the process) and squish them up.
4. When your oatmeal is cooked to your desired consistency, mix in your strawberry smoosh.  Transfer the contents to a small bowl.
5. Take out the spoon you will use to eat with - you should be eating with a small "teaspoon" silverware (regular spoons).  "Measure" one spoonful of sliced almonds and top your bowl with it before digging in.

Optional: add a small spoonful of ground flaxseed.  This is another resolution of mine that I always forget about until the bowl is empty :(

Classic Grilled Cheese with Marinated Onions and Whole-Grain Mustard

This "classic" grilled cheese recipe comes from Nancy Silverton's sandwich book.  I know her name from mentions in Kim Boyce's book, Good to the Grain, which has not made an appearance here in a while but is a huge inspiration to me.  I asked for this book for my birthday because I like sandwiches.  I like going to a cafe and having some delicious panini-pressed goodness oozing with flavor.  I wanted to try some at home, but it's always easier when you have a bit of guidance.

This wasn't the first recipe I intended to make, but it was actually kind of spontaneous.  I had everything on hand except the bread.  I stopped at Panera for something crusty, since it was on the way, and took home a "country loaf."  This was not only delicious but ended up being perfect for what we were making.

I didn't actually make this myself, which always makes things taste better.  The sandwich has four main elements: the thick, crusty bread is smeared with whole-grain mustard and layered with slices of Gruyere and marinated onions.  Then you spread some butter on the outside and clamp down your grill press for some tasty crunchy brown grill marks, which also melts all the cheese and softens the onions up a bit.

My one criticism of this sandwich is the salt factor - I would at least halve the salt in the marinated onions.  I suppose they were sort of quick-pickled, but it's worth a shot as I was super thirsty eating this sandwich and the salt was just at that point where it starts to detract from the flavor.

We had this soup with a tiny bit of Smoked Tomato Bisque, a perfect accompaniment to grilled cheese.  The soup seemed to have lost a bit of its salt content in the freezer, but with the saltiness of the sandwich, it was good.  This also helped me to discover something interesting/important about frozen soup.  I had read that you can refreeze something you defrost in the refrigerator, so I put the soup in the fridge this morning to thaw with the intention of serving some and re-freezing the rest.  When I took it out of the fridge, I was disappointed to find that it was still frozen.  However, I decided to try to scrape a bit out with a spoon, at which point I discovered that although still frozen, I could scoop large flaky chunks out.  So I did that and put the rest of the soup back in the freezer.  Now I know I can have small portions of my soups with just a bit of advance planning.

Rustic Cabbage Soup

I must be making up for my dislike of soup all these years.  The parade of soup continues with a Rustic Cabbage Soup.  After a few weeks in the fridge I brought out a cabbage and it was cut into bite-size pieces.  A pound of Great Northern beans, thanks to my pressure cooker, split perfectly between this soup and the next day's batch of Ribollita.  I used the recommended 1/2 cube of Rapunzel w/ herbs, which is growing on me (I usually use the plain veg one).  A few very old but viable potatoes were made into matchsticks and tossed in.  Of course, there's always an onion, and garlic too.  As I'm looking at the original recipe again I'm noticing that I missed the grated cheese on top, but oh well, less calories right?

While I'm loving the soups I do occasionally crave solid food, so this week we revisited those delicious scallops we had a few weeks ago, and I'm counting on some lemon pepper shrimp soon too :)

As of right now I'm all caught up on my posting.  I'll be eating from the freezer a lot this month thanks to school/finals, but expect some fun things soon: my cookie exchange pick (still trying to decide between several whole-grain options), a few health-food experiments, probably some holiday-themed nonsense, and (surprise!) more soup.