Spinach Cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day

Once again, I have resorted to hiding vegetables in my kids' food. I'm not proud of it.


But the cool thing is that on St. Patrick's Day, my children would never think that there is anything amiss with green food. They are all about leprechauns and rainbows and not at all about what veggies I am cajoling them into eating.

Actually, I saw these cupcakes and thought that they were super cute and a fabulous shade of green... prefect for St. Paddy's Day... before I read the part about the green coming from spinach.


It just seemed like a fun snack to make the kids, and has the bonus of a wee little bit more nutrition from the applesauce and spinach than they would get from oil and food coloring.


This recipe comes from Amy at A Little Nosh. They were super easy to make... just puree raw spinach into the applesauce, mix it with some basic dry ingredients, and bake.


The kids were completely fooled. The cupcakes are a little dense, as I have found cakes are when applesauce is substituted for oil. Other than that, though, you would have no idea there was anything different about them. As long as you're color-blind.

And one more thing before I go... a friend from Ireland asks that you not write St. Patty's Day. Patty would be a lass. Paddy is the proper abbreviation for Patrick. (And we don't want to offend the auld bloke). There is a very funny explanation of the dear St. Pádraig's name here, if you're interested. 


Enjoy St. Paddy's Day, folks! I'll be looking for people I can pinch.


Green Spinach Cupcakes
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup nonfat dried milk
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 cups baby spinach


Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with 18 cupcake liners.
Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Puree the applesauce and spinach in a blender.  You may need to add the spinach in batches. Add the spinach mixture and the vanilla to the flour mixture and mix thoroughly.  Divide evenly into the muffin pan.


Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.


Cool completely before frosting.


(I make my buttercream frosting by softening a stick of butter, and then adding powdered sugar and tiny amounts of milk until I have a consistency and an amount that I like. Just keep stirring in more milk and more sugar until you have enough. One of life's great miracles is how one stick of butter can become enough loaves and fish for the masses frost anywhere from 12 to 50 cupcakes.)

chicken, spinach and noodle casserole

One of my readers told me that she was getting a little tired of looking at my recipe for vegetable scraps pasta sauce for 8 days straight.

Since I didn't feel it was polite to say "What, are you new? Read my blog in a reader, and you won't have to check the website 8 times to find out if there is anything new," instead I said, "Sorry Mom. I just haven't made anything interesting lately."

And that is how I am justifying giving you this recipe, straight out of Real Simple magazine, for a very plain, very ordinary chicken and spinach casserole.

Don't get me wrong. It's good. It's hearty and filling and easy and can be made ahead, and it is a lovely, comforting, crowd-pleasing, kid-friendly, casserole. I plan to make it again, and I know the family will appreciate it.

I had chicken an spinach salad for dinner on Tuesday evening, so I went ahead and cooked extra chicken and washed extra spinach while I was at it. That made everything very easy Wednesday evening, when I made this casserole.

The coarse bred crumbs are made by pulsing a few slices of bread in a food processor a few times I used a combination... the heels of one loaf of white bread, one heel of a loaf of wheat bread, and one whole-wheat pita that was on the verge of heading south.

The rest of it is very simple... make a white sauce, add sour cream, and stir that with the cooked chicken and chopped spinach. Add some cooked noodles, put it in a casserole pan and top with the bread crumbs and melted butter, and bake.

Voila! Meat and grains and dairy and veggies, all in one dish. I served it with (another) spinach salad, and called it a weeknight.

Here is the recipe, straight out of Real Simple Magazine:

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 cups whole milk
• 1 cup sour cream
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 12 ounces egg noodles
• 4 slices sandwich bread
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken or rotisserie chicken
• 5 ounces baby spinach, chopped
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F. Melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, until foamy, 1 to 2 minutes (do not let the mixture darken). Slowly whisk in the milk. Bring to a simmer and cook, whisking often, until thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in the sour cream, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
2. Meanwhile, cook the noodles according to the package directions; drain and return them to the pot. Pulse the bread in a food processor until coarse crumbs form. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in a microwave-safe bowl.
3. Add the milk mixture, chicken, spinach, and thyme to the noodles and toss to combine. Transfer to a 9-by-13-inch or some other 3-quart baking dish, sprinkle with the bread crumbs, and drizzle with the melted butter.
4. Bake until the bread crumbs are golden and the filling is bubbling, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

keeping my nose above water

After my little panic session about our calendar yesterday, and having an unexpected three hours alone this morning, I decided to try to get ahead on some cooking. And catch up on some vegetable consuming. I managed to make a batch of scones, a pan of granola bars, some roast cauliflower, and two lasagnas. I may enter an exhaustion-induced coma and end up missing all of the activities we have coming up, but at least my family will eat.

And I will start to see some space in my refrigerator. Somehow this week we haven't done that great of a job of using up all the vegetables we got in the box. It wasn't the variety itself... there wasn't anything weird or that I don't like. It was partly that the veggies are starting to become summer vegetables that don't take much cooking (lettuces, tomatoes, green onions). The kids are really tough to sell on raw vegetables. It was partly that I have been running on fumes this week. When I am exhausted and trying to play catch up on things like laundry, housecleaning, and the kids' endless piles of papers from school, I am not feeling very creative or very ambitious. I just didn't look at the box as a fun challenge this week. Rather, I unpacked it in a rush (since it came about half an hour before we were due to have 25 family members over for brunch and Easter Egg hunting). It all got shoved wherever it could fit in a refrigerator that was overly full of party foods. Then, we had two days of Easter celebrating. Which meant that we were eating everything except the veggies.  On top of all that, we ended up with tons of extra food left over from the Easter brunch and dinner we hosted.

Regardless, the veggies are here and I need to find ways for us to eat them, or live forever with the guilt of letting them rot.

Somehow, I ended up with two large heads of lettuce, and a huge bag of spinach in my refrigerator.  After eating salads with every lunch and dinner for the past few days, I still have a ton of the greens.

Before the spinach could go bad, I decided to cook it up, and put it into a couple of lasagnas.

Here is how I make my very un-authentically Italian lasagna. I made two small lasagnas (one to freeze), but this recipe works equally well for one larger lasagna.

First, boil 12 lasagna noodles. There are several varieties of no-boil lasagna noodles available, but I haven't had much luck with them. I find that they often leave crunchy patches. If there is one thing lasagna shouldn't be, it's crunchy. When the noodles are done cooking, rinse them in cold water.

While that boils, wash and remove stems from the spinach. Then, steam it until it is wilty but not soggy. I went ahead and did this in the microwave.

Drain the spinach, and mix it together with two cups of ricotta cheese, two cups of shredded mozzarella cheese, and a cup of grated parmesan cheese.

You can make your own sauce, or you can use your favorite jar. Today, uninspired me used a jar. I am hoping that between my garden and my CSA box, I will get enough tomatoes this summer to make some sauce to keep on hand for the rest of the year. For now, though, a jar of Classico did the trick.

Once you have your cooked noodles, your cheese-spinach mixture and your sauce, you are ready to layer.

Begin by spreading a small amount of sauce in the bottom of the pans. This will prevent any of it from sticking.

Next, layer on the noodles.

On top of the noodles, spread about 1/3 of the cheese/spinach mixture.

Spread sauce on top of this, and continue layering in the same order two more times (for a total of 3 layers): sauce, noodles, cheese. Top it all with one last layer of sauce, and sprinkle on some more parmesan cheese.

That's it! Now you are ready to bake it, freeze it (this really long post has my tips for freezing dinners), or give it to a friend.

To bake it, preheat the oven to 350. Bake it, covered, for 20 minutes. Then uncover it and bake another 10 minutes.

I put one in my freezer, and the other is a little gift for a friend of mine. I hope she enjoys a night off of cooking dinner!

Italian Potato Soup

Although it has been warm and sunny, here in southern California we have been forewarned that it may rain later this week. In preparation, let's take this pile of fresh-from-the-farm, good-for-you, chock-full-of-vitamins vegetables and make a soup that no one can resist.

Look at all that nutrition on our cutting boards. Don't you just feel so healthy already? 

Shall we begin? (this recipe is modified from the Italian Potato Soup recipe from Abundant Harvest Organics).  Once we're done cooking, we can refrigerate it for a couple of days before serving, if we wish. Soup often tastes better after a day or two, I believe. Of course, there is no need to wait, either. Enjoy it straight from the stove if you prefer!

First, dice an onion and saute it with a 3-4 cloves of diced garlic in a big soup pot, until it is soft.

Take it out of the pot, and set it aside for now. Next, break up a pound of Italian sausage into little pieces, and cook it in the soup pot until it is browned. Drain the fat from the sausage.

Cut 5-6 potatoes up into small pieces, and add them to the sausage.

Cook the potatoes and sausage together for another 5 minutes. 

Add the onions and garlic back in, along with a quart of chicken stock, and 2 1/2 cups of water. (If you have saved any water from steaming or blanching or boiling veggies, now is the time to use it. If not, plain water will do.) It's now time to give our potatoes and sausage some flavor. Chop a bunch of parsley and a bulb of fennel, and add them also.

Let this all come to a simmer, for about 10 minutes. Now that it is looking like bona fide soup, let's make it even more nutritious. Add in a bunch of spinach, loosely torn.  Since spinach is so darn sandy, it works well to rinse each leaf, tear it, and throw it in the pot still dripping wet. There is no need to pat dry or relegate it to a salad spinner.

Let the soup simmer with the spinach added for another 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drizzle a couple of teaspoons of half and half into each bowl of soup before serving, and top with shredded parmesan cheese.

Mangiamo!

Italian Potato Soup:

olive oil for sautéing
1 large onion, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, diced
5-6 potatoes, scrubbed and diced
1 lb. Italian sausage, broken into bite-sized pieces
1 quart chicken stock
2 1/2 cups water
1 fennel bulb, diced
1 bunch parsley, chopped finely
1 bunch spinach
salt and pepper to taste
half and half
parmesan cheese for garnish

Saute onion and garlic in soup pot until soft. Remove and set aside. Brown sausage in soup pot, drain fat. Add potatoes and saute for 5 minutes. Add onions and garlic back into soup pot. Add chicken stock and water, parsley and fennel. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add rinsed spinach and simmer another 10 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Ladle into bowls, drizzle a teaspoon or two of half and half, and garnish with parmesan.

Beeting around the bush

I like to think that I stay on top of the things that need to be done. I don't let dirty laundry pile up beyond a load or two, I have permission slips filled out and returned the day after they come home (so I don't lose them), and I empty the dishwasher as soon as it finishes. However, I have to admit to myself that I procrastinate on some things, as well. I often renew my library books online again and again so I won't have to make a trip to the library to return them. I'm great about reading and returning emails, but calling to make an appointment? I can find about a million other things to do first.

I am learning that I also procrastinate with certain veggies.

Take beets.

I got them in my box two weeks ago. I used up everything else in that box (even the beet greens!). Then I got the next box, and used up just about everything in that box too. When my crisper drawer was left with a couple of carrots, couple of potatoes, and a bunch of beets nearing their 2 week birthday, I had to act. It was time.

I have only cooked beets a couple of times. While I don't dislike them, I am not really sure that I like them. They are a little bit sweet. A little bit earthy. A little bit ...

I just don't know what they are. I think that's the problem. I am not really sure they have a flavor. They just don't add much to a meal.

So anyway, being as I haven't cooked them often, I didn't have a great idea of what I wanted to do.

I ended up, as usual, googling a recipe, changing it to fit what I have in the house, and voila!

This orange and beet salad was fantastic! I can't say the beets were super flavorful or that I am dying to eat more tomorrow, but they balanced very nicely with the oranges and onions. I was very happy to eat this salad. Without delay.

I love to have recipes that allow me to do a lot of the work ahead of time, so that at dinner time, I can finish everything more quickly. We have a busy schedule, and this worked perfectly... I could boiled the beets, and let them cool while I went to karate class with my son. Then I peeled and sliced them, and let them marinate while I took the bigger kids to piano lessons and went for a bike ride with the little one. All I had left to do right before dinner was assemble the plates. 

Orange Beet Salad

4 or 5 medium-sized beets

4 cups spinach

2 navel oranges

1/2 red onion

dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup white whine vinegar

1/4 tsp. dried mustard

salt and pepper, to taste

Scrub the beets, and pace them in a pot, with enough cold water to cover. Bring them to a boil, and simmer for thirty minutes, until you can pierce them with a fork. Let this cool down. 

Meanwhile, mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

When the beets have cooled, peel and slice them into 1/4 inch slices. If you have time, marinate them in about half of the dressing for up to a couple of hours.

On four or five plates, lay out a bed of washed spinach leaves. Layer orange slices, beets, and red onion. Drizzle dressing over each plate, and serve.

So what is this stuff?

This is the water that was left from boiling the beets. All that beautiful red color means that it is chock full of vitamins and nutrients. You should save it and use it as a base for soup or a sauce. I wish I could say I did. I watered the garden with it. We'll get our vitamins back eventually, in the next veggie.