Red Cabbage Delight

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #rawvegan

Red cabbage often is listed as one of the most potent vegetables for cancers and aging. While it was one of the vegetables I absolutely hated as a kid, I fell in love with red cabbage but only in a raw or lightly steemed forms.

Here is one simple creation that I made from few ingredients I always have in the house.

Ingredients:

0.5 head of medium red cabbage

1 Apple 

1 medium carrot

4 tbsp dried cranberries

4 tbsp pumpkin seeds

Dressing:

3 tbsp lemon juice

3 tbsp olive oil

1. Finely chop cabbage, grate Apple and carrot.

2. Add cranberries and pumpkin seeds. Mix everything together. 

3. Mix lemon juice with olive oil and add to the other ingredients; mix everything together.

4. Enjoy!

Dining Vegan: Okra Curry

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating

One of my favourite vegetables is okra. I fell in love with this little green seedy veggie years ago when I stumbled across it in the supermarket. Being me, I had to buy it and explore it from all angles.
I discovered that it is works wonders in curries. In curries, okra sliminess that might put some people off, works extremely well as a source thickener. What can I say, I have yet another recipe to offer to my gluten free followers! My son unexpectedly devoured the whole bowl so it might be kids friendly too.

Ingredients:

200gr okra

0.5 large onion

2 garlic cloves

4 medium tomatoes

1 inch fresh ginger

1 red chilli

1 tbsp Garam masala

1 tsp fenugreek 

1 tsp turmeric

2 tbsp grape seed oil (or any other oil or fat you want)

1. Chop the onion very finely, press garlic cloves, finely chopped chilli (you can deseed it if you want) and grate ginger.

2. Heat the oil in the pan (gas mark 3), add spices and onion, garlic, ginger mix.

3. Chop the tomatoes into very small pieces (or you can peel them), add to the pan. Add a pinch of salt.

4. Cut okra,  cut off the ends. I find that cutting it across under an angle speeds up cooking.

Add it to the pan, add 0.25 cup water. Cook for about 25 minutes on gas mark 2.8.

5. Serve hot.

6. Enjoy!

Colorfull world: Red slaw / bean cakes

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #healthyeyes #vegan

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating

Many of us struggle with adding more cabbage to our diet even though we know its health benefits. In Poland, red cabbage is very popular however, usually it is cooked and I feel it does not have the colour, taste or texture that appeals to me in that form. I found that I really enjoy its bright colour, crunchiness, and sweetness in the raw form much more.

Here are two recipes in one - bean cakes and red slaw.

Red slaw Ingredients:

0.5 head of small red cabbage, grated

1 Apple, grated

4 tbsp pumpkin seeds

3 tbsp dried cranberries

Dressing:

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

5 tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper

2 tbsp dried thyme

Bean cakes ingredients:

1 can black beans, drained and washed

1 c broccoli, blanched 

1.5 c Scottish oats

6 tbsp ground flax

2 tbsp olive oil

1 cup of fresh herbs (basil, mint, dill, parsley, cilantro)

Salt and pepper

1. Prepare red slaw by mixing all ingredients.
2. Blend beans, broccoli, olive oil and herbs and spices, with flax mixed with 6 tbsp of water. Add oats and mix well.
3. Fry bean cakes on a medium heat for a few minutes on each side.
4. Enjoy!

Dining on the budget: Lima beans cakes

#healthyeating #easyfoodcreations #onthebudget

I hear over and over again that you have to spend a fortune if you want to eat healthy. It is a myth!

You have to smart about your grocery shopping, get deals where you can. Also, I use the practice of one luxury item each weak (except holidays), which I call everything that cost over $8 per kg. 

Although I am not great with coupons, as I tend to forget about them, I see more of them for fresh produce in the supermarkets. I am trying hard to change my habits and start using them.

I make frequent visits to the bulk stores - Bulk Barn in Canada is the place where I get all my dry food - beans, lentils, grains, spices, even some tea. Again, each week they have specials so I time my visits accordingly. Two or three times a year they have coupons (they keep them in the store!), so that brings additional savings.

Canned food, I only buy when it is on sale - tuna, corn, tomatoes, tomato paste or at Costco if it turns out to be cheaper. Right now I have a good understanding how many cans I need until the next discount period, but I had to experiment for a little bit. 

I find a lot of pleasure in finding deals, having those luxury items each week, and keeping holidays extra special with food that I try to reserve just for these days. 

Ingredients:

3 cups, cooked Lima beans (I soak and cook them myself, but you can use canned)

3-5 tbs Scottish oats

Salt, pepper

2-3 tbsp dried herbs (I used czubryca which I got in Poland, but any mix of herbs will work)

1 onion, chopped

3-5 garlic cloves, pressed

6 tbsp breadcrumbs

Water, as needed

Little bit butter

Oil for frying 

 1.  Melt the butter and sauté onion and garlic for a few minutes.

 2. Use a blender to blend Lima beans with onion. You may need to add some water to help it blend.

 3. Mix in the bowl blended beans with onions, add remaining ingredients except breadcrumbs. Mix everything well with a spoon. You should have a fairly dense consistency so you can form patties with your hands. 

 4. Roll patties in breadcrumbs.

 5. Fry for a few minutes on each side. 

 6. Enjoy!

Polish Pierogi

#easyfoodcreations #PolishChristmas #pierogi

Pierogi, one of the most famous Polish dishes. They can be stuffed with vegetables, meat, fish, fruits, or any combination of these. Polish pierogi dough is quite a bit different than Ukrainian dough, it resembles more Chinese dumplings dough. 

Traditional Polish Christmas pierogi are stuffed with either cabbage and mushrooms, or just mushrooms. This year I made three stuffings - cabbage and mushroom, salmon dill, and spinach and feta.

Ingredients:

Dough:

All purpose flour

Hot water

proportions are 2:1 (flour to water)

Filling 1:

0.5kg  of sauerkraut
650 g of fresh mushrooms
100 g dried mushrooms
Cook all finally chopped ingredients for about 4 hours.

1. Make the dough in the food processor. It goes really fast as you can use boiling water; doing the same by hand takes more time as your water is much colder. The dough is fairly hard to work with by hand; even rolling it I find to be quite a workout.

2. Divide the dough into manageable sections, keeping the remaining dough covered so it does not dry out. Roll the dough into thin sheet (about 2 mm), then cut into round shapes with a cookie cutter. You an use pierogi making gadgets that would take the whole sheet at once.
3. Stuff each round sheet with about 2/3 teaspoon of filling.
4. Boil a large pot of water. Cook pierogi in a boiling water for about 5 minutes until start floating on top.
5. In Poland, generally we do not fry them. We serve them with a little bit of fried onion with butter or just butter or olive oil.
6. Enjoy!

Polish Christmas: Pasta with poppy seeds, dried fruits and nuts

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #polishchristmas #kluskizmakiem

For me there is no Christmas without this dish! The dish is quite specific as it is not very sweet in comparison to typical western desserts so I know not everyone will like it. Even Polish people who did not grew up eating it at Christmas may not appreciate its taste.

As a kid, I remember waiting impatiently the whole year, especially Christmas Eve for this dish. Since it is a dessert it always came last after we ate almost all 12 dishes. If I had to choose pasta with poppy seeds or gifts as a kid, I am not sure what would I pick...

Ingredients:

1c poppy seeds

0.5c honey

0.25c Dried fruits: apricots, dates, figs

0.25c nuts and almonds

2tbsp whipping cream (optional)

0.5 lemon or orange - juice and peel 

2c pasta (I used home made pasta, see my recipe for pasta)

1. Run boiling water through poppy seeds 3-4 times. I find poppy seeds in Canada quite bitter so it is an important step. Then pour 1c of  boiling water into a bowl, add poppy seeds and let it sit for an hour or so.

2. Remove excess water. Place poppy seeds in a blender, add honey. Process for a few minutes; you should see milky liquid. 

3. Chop dried fruits and nuts into small pieces.

4. Mix all ingredients together.

5. Serve warm or at room temperature. If it becomes dry after a couple of days you can stir in more cream, honey, and/or orange or lemon juice. It keeps well in the fridge for a week.

6. Enjoy!

Home made pasta

Pasta is one of the food ingredients that we do not consume often. I find it almost impossible to find any kind of pasta that taste good and truly complements the other ingredients. 

In Poland for years we used to make pasta at home and since it takes more time to make it, it's not an ingredient often featured in the Polish cuisine. At Christmas it used to me by dad's job to make pasta dough, roll it, cut it. I remember it as a very labour intensive activity. However, with today's kitchen gadgets the whole process is a lot less labour intensive and amazing pasta can be produced in just a fraction of the time.

To make pasta I use my Cuisineart food processor with a dough insert. Mixing takes about 5 minutes. Within this time I have a pretty elastic dough with well developed gluten. 

Ingredients:

3 cups of all purpose flour (about 450 g)

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tbsp whipping cream

150 ml warm water

1 tsp salt

Dried herbs (optional)

1. Mix all ingredients in the food processor for about 5 minutes. You will see them all coming together, if they don't you may need to add a little bit more water.

2. On a board sprinkle some flour and roll sections of the dough at a time. With this quantity I do it in 5 batches. Rolled dough should not be thicker than 1 millimetre. 

3. Cut rolled dough into strips of your preference.

4. Sprinkle with more flour, separate each pasta string and let them dry. Once they are dried they can be stored in containers. Fresh soft pasta can be cooked.

5. Cook for about 5 minutes to you liking.

6. Enjoy!

Polish Christmas Eve: Traditional Vegetable Salad (Saladka Jarzynowa)

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #leftovers #PolishChristmas

This is a Polish traditional salad that we eat for Chistmas. It is made of vegetables used in the cooking of the vegetable broth used in the Christmas Barszcz. Quantities of ingredients are quite flexible and each household might have a slight variation. I usually make a big batch so you can easily cut it in half or even quarter. 

Celery root can be quite bitter to some people so you may want to adjust the quantity to your taste.

Ingredients:

Cooked carrots, I had 7 on hand

Cooked celery root, I used 0.25 of large one 

Cooked parsnip, I used 2

0.5 kg of potatoes, cooked

4 medium dill pickles

3 hard boiled eggs

2 apples peeled, core removed

1 small can of peas (you can cook frozen peas and use that instead)

4 tbsp mayonnaise (you an also make a lighter version using greek yoghurt)

2 tsp yellow mustard

Salt, pepper

1. Chop all vegetables and fruits into small pieces.

2. Mix mayonnaise with mustard and salt and pepper. Add to the salad, mix everything carefully so all pieces are covered in the mayonnaise sauce. 

3. Serve as an appetizer or for breakfast.

4. Enjoy!

Note: the salad has to be stored in the fridge; it stays good for up to 7 days.

Christmas: Caramelized Beets

Beets are a very common ingredient during Christmas time in many countries around the world. In Poland we eat a lot of beets in form of soups, salads, juices, and even main dishes.

In this dish we are using leftover beets from barszcz/borscht/beet soup or whatever else you might call it.

Food waste has always been on my mind as I grew up during communism time and back then food was very valuable, many ingredients were scarce which contributed to our economical living.  We used almost as much as possible of each ingredient throwing out very little. This type of economical cooking is quite evident in our Traditional Christmas dishes. We use leftovers from one dish in another - vegetable salad is a great example of it.  

Important note: when cooking beets do not cover them as they will become brown. Even though I knew that I put them in the oven to reheat - the result were delicious beets but they did not look too appetizing so no photo this time.

Ingredients:

0.5 large onion, sliced very thinly

2 pressed garlic cloves

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

3 tbsp brown sugar

1 glass red wine

around 300 g of beets left over from Barszcz/Borsch

2 tbsp butter

1. Sauté onion and garlic with butter for about 3-4 minutes.

2. Add vinegar, sugar. Cook for another 2 minutes, then add wine. Cook on a low heat, gas mark 2.2 for 20-30 minutes.

3. Add beets, glaze them in the onion and wine reduction. Cook on gas mark 2.2 for 15 minutes.

4. Serve warm.

5. Enjoy!

6. If you made this recipe share it and tag it @healthywithjoanna

Breakfast Dessert: Rice Apple Cake

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #leftovers

This recipe is inspired by one of my childhood favourite dishes and probably most Polish kids  favourite dish - rice baked with cinnamon apples.  I put my own spin on it and it ended up being a great success. 

Typically we eat it as a dessert or a last evening meal; I like serving it for breakfast.

Ingredients:

1.5 c leftover rice (it is an estimated quantity), you can use whatever you have left

0.5 c milk

4 tbsp butter

2 ripe bananas

3 apples

1 tsp cinnamon

0.5 tsp vanilla powder

2 tbsp ground flax 

Grated nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 180c

2. Grate apples on a large eye grater

3. Mix flax with 2 tbsp of water, let it sit for a couple of minutes (you can substitute with 1-2 eggs)

4. Melt half of the butter

5. Mix all ingredients together

6. Spread butter in the baking form 

7. Put mixture in the baking form, level it by pressing firmly

8. On top place few slices of butter

9. Place in the oven for 45-50 minutes

10. Serve warm or at room temperature

11. Typically we serve it with fruits, jams, yoghurt, cream, or whipping cream

Have a break: Oatmeal banana pumpkin seed muffins

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #muffins

Banana muffins are probably the most popular muffins, yet I find most recipes are using regular flour and tons of sugar which is not necessary when cooking with already very sweet bananas. I decided to make the oatmeal variety with pumpkin seeds. I chose pumpkin seeds as they go so well with honey and oatmeal, which we often add to our morning oatmeal. 

I aimed to make 6 large muffins as more than that is too many for the 3 of us. With the quantities below I produced 7 large muffins.

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

1-2 tbsp raw sugar (optional) depends how ripe are the bananas you are using

2 tbsp honey

3-5 tbsp raw pumpkin seeds

1.5 cup traditional oats

1 tsp baking powder

0.5 tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt

Pinch of cinnamon

Pinch of vanilla powder

1 egg

1 tbsp butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 177c.

2. Put all ingredients except pumpkin seeds in a blender. Blend for a few minutes until smooth.

3. Mix in pumpkin seeds with a spoon.

4. Scoop muffin dough into muffin forms filling them to about 2/3. 

5. Bake at 177c for 17 minutes.

6. Let them cool.

7. Enjoy!

Fishes Friends: Fresh Hake with Garlic Lemon Butter Fennel

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #hake

I discovered that the best days to find fresh local fish in the local market are Wednesdays and Fridays. Yes, I live in the port city yet it is not that easy to find a fresh local fish if you don't have an insider information. Putting flavour and freshened aside; I support local food as I want local businesses to thrive, local food is more economically sustainable, and also local fish is usually much cheaper than any kind of "travelling" fish. Cost of today's dinner for 3 people came to about $7 total; that includes everything you see on the plate times three.

Serves: 3

Ingredients:

1 large fillet of fresh hake, cut into 3 pieces

1 small fennel

Juice from 0.5 lemon

5 tbsp butter

5 garlic cloves

Salt and pepper

1. Melt 4 tbsp butter with pressed garlic on a gas mark 2.8, cook for 1-2 minutes.

2. Add fennel cut into thinner stripes, cook for 5 minutes.

3. Add lemon juice and cook for further 15 minutes.

4. In the other pan melt butter and place hake pieces. Add salt and pepper as desired. Cover and cook on a gas mark 2.8 for 10 minutes or until fish looks done. There is no need to turn.

5. Serve hake pieces with fennel garlic lemon butter on top.

6. Enjoy!

Lazanki with cabbage

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #PolishCooking

Today I made a Polish village food -lazanki. Cabbage is everywhere and is one of the cheapest food items you can find in Polish markets. My grand mother learnt how to make lazanki during the war when she was staying with one of the Polish village families. During the war they used just cabbage and pig fat but I made a more luxurious version by adding a local sausage, dried mushrooms, and onion.

Pasta lazanki is so quick and easy to make that I would never be able to justify buying it.

Ingredients:

1 small head of local green cabbage 

0.5 large local onion

2 sausages (I used chili, garlic and rosemary sausage made by our local butcher)

1 tsp whole caraway seeds

2 tbsp butter

For lazanki pasta:

2 cup all purpose or bread flour

2 eggs (you can go anywhere between 1 to 3 eggs depending on your preference, or you can use egg substitute of your choice)

4-6 tbsp water

1.  Chop onion and sausage and fry them with caraway seeds for a few minutes.

2. Chop cabbage and cook with butter on gas mark 3.

3. Add fried sausage and onion to the cabbage pot, stirr every 10 minutes. Turn heat to gas mark 2.8.

4. Set pot of water with salt to boil for lazanki.

5. Mix flour with eggs and slowly keep adding water to make a dough. The dough should be fairly smooth - it takes about 5 minutes of kneeding by hand.

6. Split into 2-3 parts and flatten it. If you have a pasta making machine you can use it or you can use rolling pin. Cut flat dough into squares or any other shape and size you like. To cut dough I use pizza cutter, but you can use pasta knife or regular knife, even cookie cutter.

6. Place cut lazanki in a boiling water and cook only to the point when they float up, it is almost instatenious. They should be still slightly hard when taken out. You don't want to overlook ithem as we will be cooking them for additional few minutes with cabbage. You don't have to cook them right away, you can store them for later. Just let them dry and then place them in the air tight container.

7. Add cooked lazanki pasta to the cabbage mix and let cook for another 3-5 minutes. Serve warm.

8. Enjoy!