The Foodie Files: Making The Coach Eat Vegetables

So, I’m sitting here in my office, eating stale doughnuts left over from the weekend, trying to avoid work. Last night was a late night for me because I had a night class and by the time I get home from a night class, I am so wound up that I can’t sleep. I ended up finishing two books: Charles de Lint’s new YA novel Little (Grrl) Lost and Bohjalian’s Skeletons at the Feast. The first was just brain candy (and really not de Lint’s best effort), but the second was powerfully disturbing in its portrayal of a rural German family trying to escape the Russian invasion during WWII. As you can tell, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. Maybe that gives me a pass on being super productive this morning?

But what does this have to do with food?” you might be wondering to yourself.

Well, part of the reason that I can’t sleep after a night class is that I eat dinner way too late in the day. Last night, I ended up eating a couple slices of cheese pizza with my grad students, even though I had a stew going in the crockpot at home. I’ve been trying to cook more food for The Coach because I’m afraid that he ate fast food the entire time I was in Peru. I’ve also been sneaking veggies into all of his meals on the sly. (wink, wink)

So, here are some of things I’ve been sneaking past him:

Beef stew with herbes de provence:

Pull down the slow cooker. Load it with the following:

• 1 pound beef tips
• 1 chopped up purple onion (big)
• 1 bag of rough chopped fingerling potatoes
• 1 bunch of organic carrots, peeled and rough chopped
• 1 half bag of organic celery, rough chopped (including leaves)
• 1 cup of barley
• 1 1/2 “boxes” of College Inn Beef Sirloin Bold Stock
• 2 small cans of tomato sauce (the big ones make it too “tomatoey”)
• Ground pepper (to taste)
• Handful of herbes de provence (to taste & smell, re: lavender)

I turned the slow cooker on high for two hours to get it started (around 9 a.m.). I turned it to low when I left for work at 11 a.m. The Coach added 1 can of tomato paste (to thicken it up) at around 8 p.m. Easy peasy, eh?

Beef with Jalapeño:

I had a bunch of beef tips (we buy in bulk at Sam’s Club, what can I say?) and I wanted something that resembled Mexican food. So here’s what I did:

• Add olive oil (not that EVOO crap) to a pan. Warm it up.
• Add 1 large chopped purple onion and “sweat” it with a little salt.
• When the onions become translucent, add 1 pound beef tips.
• Thrown in a handful of jalapeño peppers.
  I used 2 peppers. I removed the seeds from one of them.
• Brown the beef tips on the outside.
• Add 1/2 “box” of College Inn Beef Sirloin Bold Stock.
• Reduce the liquid until the beef is coated with a gravy-like paste.

I plated this in the following way. First, I made a cheese quesadilla and chopped it into quarters. Each quarter went onto a corner of my square plate. I then placed a heaping handful of spring lettuce mix (baby lettuces, greens, endive, radicchio) in the center of the plate and put the beef tips on top to wilt the lettuce. I topped the whole thing with a pretty green salsa.

NOTE: This made my nose run, but damn – it tasted pretty good! I probably should have seeded both peppers.

Chicken a la Disenchanted:

My wine cooler died the other day, so I am using up all of the white wine that we had in stock. This included a bottle of honey mead which The Coach likes as a dessert wine. So, here’s what I did:

Pan 1:

• Chop up 2 boneless chicken breasts into thumb-sized pieces.
• Coat the bottom of the pan 2 with olive oil. Warm it up.
• Toss in the chicken and brown the outside.
• Add 1/2 “box” of College Inn Rotisserie Chicken Bold Stock.
• Turn on low and reduce the stock. You’ll get nice, moist chicken.

Pan 2:

• Coat pan with olive oil and warm it up.
• Chop up 1 large purple onion (I know, I know)
• Add onion to the pan and “sweat” it for about 5 minutes.
• Chop up a quart-sized box of baby portobello mushrooms.
  I tend to quarter each mushroom because I like big chunks!
• Add the mushrooms to the pan, tossing them around in the onions.
• Add 1 drained can of artichoke hearts (I used Reese brand).
• Add the honey mead wine, making sure everything is in the liquid.
• Let the wine reduce. This took about 20-25 minutes on low heat.

Consolidation:

• Take a look at Pan 1.
• When the broth gets really low, add a little honey. Not too much!
• Mix the honey into the broth until it thickens up.
• Take a look at Pan 2.
• When the wine is nice and reduced, add the stuff from Pan 1.
• Mix it up and add just a tad more wine.
• Let that reduce.

Eat up! This was a complete experiment, but OMG, it ended up being so good! And my stepmother still thinks I can’t cook because I melted plastic onto a frozen pizza when I was 12. LOL!

P.S. — This was inspired by R. who showed me how to cook onions and mushrooms in red wine.

Okay, now here’s the last one for the day. This one was pretty risky because it included all sorts of things that The Coach never, ever lets cross his lips. I mean, he does advertise himself as a “meatatarian.”

Gnocchi with Smoked Sausage, Onions, and Squash

I made this the other night because I saw some nice squash at our local grocery chain — and trust me, the place always has crappy produce. I knew I had some gnocchi left from my last Sam’s Club trip, so I thought that I could make some kind of veggie-heavy sauce to go with it. For the record, the next time I do this, I will probably use fettuccine or egg noodles because the Sam’s Club gnocchi is too salty for me.

Supplies for the Sauce:

• 2 small yellow squash, cut into thin slices.
• 2 small zucchini, cut into thin slices.
• 1 red onion, cut into long, thin slices.
• 1 to 1 1/2 pound of smoked sausage, cut into thin slices.
  I always make a lot so The Coach has leftovers for lunch!!!
• Pasta sauce – whatever you have on hand.
• 1-2 tbsp butter
• Olive oil (to coat pan and keep butter from smoking)
• Salt and Pepper

Basically, I coated the pan with olive oil and warmed it up. I added the onions and (you guessed it) sweated them with a little salt for about five minutes. Then I added the butter and let it melt. Then I added the squash and the zucchini and poured on the pepper.  I cooked them until they were slightly limp and translucent, then I added the smoked sausage. I let the sausage warm up (remember – it’s pre-cooked!), then I drained the grease out of the pan. At that point, I added just enough pasta sauce (I had the Prego Heart Healthy kind) to coat the vegetables.

In the meantime, I cooked the gnocchi on another burner. I drained it and added it to the sauce. Ta-Da! Dinner!