Vegetarian Lumpia

My mom traveled a lot as a kid (and is now a travel agent) and lived some pretty incredible places. I'm sure you know by now means that i grew up eating some rather non-traditional dishes for an American kid. One of my favorites growing up was Lumpia- a phillippino springroll filled with beef, bacon, potato, onion, carrot, and cabbage. I made this recently, but without the proper wrappers had some trouble rolling and frying them, so we ended up just eating the filling out the bowl. Tonight I needed a quick sidedish, so i omitted the meat and ended up with tasty pan fried vegetables.

Vegetarian Lumpia Sidedish

Time: 10-15 minutes
Serves: 2

• 1 Large Potato, peeled and diced
• 1/2 Small Onion, diced
• 1 Carrot, julienned, minced, or in peels (however you like)
• ~1/4 head of Cabbage, sliced thin.
• ~1 tsp Black Pepper

Place all the vegetables in a hot pan with about 1 Tbs of oil. Cover with a lid and cook until potatoes are done, about 10 minutes. Coat liberally in cracked black pepper, stir, and salt to taste. Serve alongside protein of choice.

I always have these vegetables in my house so it's a quick and tasty choice

*For the full version, add 6 strips of bacon, diced and 1lb of ground beef. Let the filling cool before you roll it into eggrolls. Lumpia wrappers are a special kind of wrapper- wheat and rice and super thin. Look for them in an Asian grocery store!

Scratch Waffles

With a soy allergy, there are a lot of conveniences I simply can't have. One of those conveniences is instant pancake batter. I prefer waffles (i like all the little crevices), but we use the same batter for pancakes and waffles so to each their own. Click here for my GAPS/Paleo version.

Dry:

• 1 c flour (this recipe adapted to cup4cup GF flour like a champ!)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 Tbs sugar

Wet:

• 1 Egg
• 3/4 c Warm Milk
• 1/4 c  Melted Butter
• 1 Tbs Vanilla

Mix Wet ingredients in a separate bowl from dry ingredients. Add wet to dry. Makes ~5 Waffles (cuz we cook for 2). There is no reason you can't premix the dry ingredients (mix them well so they are evenly distributed) and store them in a cannister to make this process easier, using 1 cup of mix to the wet ingredients.

Lemon Garlic Chicken

We've been taking a sort of winter lazy holiday this week since we work all major holidays. It's cold, and we don't heat the kitchen beyond the open doorway to the rest of the house so i am loathe to spend much time NOT being lazy on my lazy holiday. So when I decided I was hungry, I wanted something fast but tasty. I made this with frozen chicken and my Lemony Cabbage Recipe and was still done in under 20 minutes.

• 1-2 TBS olive oil (i use lemon - obviously i cook with it a lot. great salad dressing too!)
• Zest of 1/2 lemon
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 Chicken Breast per person, cubed
• 2 Garlic Cloves (i use the paste from a tube)
• 1/4 tsp Turmeric
• 1 tsp Ginger Honey (or 1 tsp Honey w/ 1/4 tsp Ginger)

In a pan on medium-medium high heat, Add 1-2 Tbs of lemon olive, the juice of half a lemon (I made 1/4 head of cabbage for 2 sides and used the other half lemon in that recipe), and the zest of half a lemon (i used the zest from 1.5 lemons on the cabbage), 2 minced garlic cloves, and 1/4 tsp turmeric to the hot pan. Add chicken and stir to coat. Cook through, turning once. When the chicken is cooked, stir in 1 tsp Honey and Stir to coat. Let simmer ~1minute. Serve over lemony cabbage.

*I added a dash of cayenne to my lemony cabbage to pair well with the asian flavors of the chicken.

Chili and Corn Muffins

Chili

Serves ~10-12?

This is, admittedly, one of the most stuff-from-cans things that i make, but most of the stuff-from-cans is organic/beans so ::shrug::. We generally buy organic everything, but non-organic is still going to taste fine.

-4, 15oz cans of Kidney beans (I like 2 light and 2 dark because i enjoy the color contrast)
*I use 4, 15.5oz cans instead of 2, 33oz cans because it just fits in my crockpot better. 2 large cans works fine too, it just fits a little less comfortably.
-1, 18oz Can of Tomato Paste
-2 lbs ground beef.
-1 Onion, minced (i stick this in a personal blender because my husband has a thing about onions)
-2 Tbs Chili Powder
-2 Tbs Cumin Powder
-1 Tbs Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
-1 tsp Garlic Powder
-1 tsp Cayenne Powder (Optional, we like it spicy)

Mix the beans, tomato paste, and spices in your crock and set to low. Cook beef on the stove and drain off the fat.  Add onions to the pan and cook for ~5 minutes so the meat is super flavorful. Add to the crock and turn to low or high depending on desired cook time.

Corn Muffins

Bake at: 350*F for 10-15 minutes
Makes: 4 dozen minis

I use Ina Garten's Corn Muffin Recipe. and, because we're a family of 2, I do a couple of things different from her recipe: Firstly, I make minis and secondly, there is enough butter in these, you don't need paper liners. I either make a half batch (~24 minis) while my chili is cooking OR I make a whole batch (which is about 4 dozen minis) and freeze them, keeping the bag of frozen muffins next to the containers of frozen leftover chili. They DO reheat well.

This is a wet/dry deal so use 2 bowls, dry ingredients in 1 and wet ingredients in the other
-3 cups Flour
-1 cup Corn Meal
-1 cup sugar
-2 Tbs Baking Powder
-1 1/2 tsp Salt

-1 1/2 cups Whole Milk
-2 Large Eggs
-2 Sticks Unsalted Butter, Melted

Add Wet to dry and combine until just mixed. You don't want to overmix. I pour this (and all batters i do) into a large ziplock and cut the tip off so i can squeeze it into the muffin tins. Bake at 350* for ~12 minutes

Curry

Asian food is a favorite for us and over the years I've tried my hand at making different dishes. For 2 years, I've been telling my husband I could make curry if i tried and today I did it. The important thing in this recipe is making the sauce, and you can put whatever vegetables you want in it.

Time: ~30minutes
Serves: 2-4 depending on how soupy you like it

Step 1: Begin making rice- my husband HAS to have rice with a curry dish
Step 2: The Sauce

-2 cans of coconut milk (i buy this in bulk from back in my GAPS days)
~12inches of lemongrass (since it's january, we just bought the two stalk pack at the grocery store), sliced and separated
-1 Shallot minced
-2-3 garlic cloves minced
-1/4 tsp ginger powder or a thumbnail piece of ginger
-2 Tbs Red Curry Powder
*Extra Cayenne to taste
-1/2 tsp fish sauce
-2 Tbs Brown Sugar (or Honey for GAPS/paleo)
-Juice of half lime

Bring coconut milk to a simmer. Add lemongrass stalks and shallots. Simmer ~5 minutes before adding remaining ingredients.

Step 3: At this point i also added my vegetables (we did sliced carrots and cabbage with cashews, but bell peppers, water chestnuts, stewed tomatoes, snow peas, broccoli, and bok choy are good too) Simmer for 5-10 minutes before adding a cooked protein. We bought our shrimp pre-steamed so they just needed heated through. Curry can simmer for quite sometime so if your protein is raw, just add it and cook it through (or cook it separately and add to the pan). Serve over rice. Optional: Top with crushed peanuts and fresh cilantro. Turned out yum! just like the Thai restaurant. I won't say I'd try to compete with anyone who makes curry as a staple part of their diet, but as an avid consumer of Thai food, this was delicious!

Bonus: You can also cut out 1 can of coconut milk and thicken this recipe with 2-3 TBS of peanut butter for a great curried peanut sauce to dip shrimp or chicken in!