Acorn Squash with Mexican Braised Chicken & Orzo Salad

roasted ACORN SQUASH // MEXICAN braised chicken & ORZO salad

I had a really poignant post in the works about the commercialization of fall and pumpkin spice lattes, etc., but I just deleted it all.  I mean, it was good stuff about objectification that occurs in market-oriented capitalism, the state of "basic" white women, the substitution of things for nuanced emotions, and all that, but figured you probably just wanted the quick stuff about the food.  It's been way over a year that I've been blogging recipes, and still haven't figured out what the hell to write in these little blurbs. 

There's no real inspiration here besides, just, fall.  I had an acorn squash around, because you see them in the store and you just have to buy one.  You're not going to not put that in your cart.  So I had one, I baked it, and I filled it with something hearty.  It was tasty.  It looks pretty, too.  Enjoy.

Mediterranean Arugula Salad with Green Olives, Farro, and Crispy Baked Chicken Strips

With a bunch of leftover olives after last week's tapenade, I ended up tossing together a salad mid-week that was worthy of recreating for the blog.  I love salty, briny olives, but discovered that these mild green olives were great for bulking up a salad without a salt overload.  Between the olives, farro, and chicken, the salad is hefty enough for a winter meal without feeling like a brick in your stomach.  

Another thing I really like about this salad is that it keeps well overnight.  Even after being dressed and tossed, it won't seem limp and soggy the next day.  So, it's great for premade lunches.  I even warmed it up in the microwave for just a bit and it tasted great transformed into a warm winter arugula salad.

I'll leave you with that, considering I have a final paper due Tuesday that I haven't even started.  Good luck to me. 

Roasted Garlic and Shallot Olive Tapenade

I knew telling myself that this weekend would be a good time to kick start a pre-winter health reformation would wind up a huge joke.  Who even tells them that before Thanksgiving?  Idiots do.  I'm an idiot.

So, while I stood in front of a rack of vegetables for a long while in the grocery store today hoping I'd be inclined to roast some leeks or do something new with cauliflower, none of it looked good.  I resorted to flipping through numbers of cooking magazines looking for something inspirational, but came up with nothing.  It didn't help that I wasn't hungry in the least.  I ate half a large pizza for dinner last night.

I mustered up enough motivation to act on the idea that I could make something out of the usual stash of olives I keep around for snacking.  Tapenade would definitely help wean me off bready, rich holiday food (and pizza).  It was also a very low-maintenance option, which is key for finding enough time to break away from the hundreds of pages of Thucydides I'm trying to speed through to catch up in grad school.

This tapenade is going to be much smoother and richer than other recipes thanks to the addition of a heavy dose of roasted garlic and shallots.  It would be great on a sandwich which some of your leftover turkey, or on pizza... I went the simple route with some crusty bread smeared with fresh tomato and topped with arugula. 

Chicken Fajita Salad

CHICKEN FAJITA 

SALAD

Well, folks, it is time for a check up.  I visited my favorite health consultant (myself) in her office (my head) recently, and the diagnosis wasn't good.  Since I set a weight-loss goal of ten pounds back in March, I've done nothing but eat donuts.  Or, at least that's how my body feels.   And really, its not that much of an exaggeration.  Worse than the uncomfortable feeling of wearing slightly-too-tight pants all the time is the psychological trauma of watching myself slowly loose control and motivation when it comes to my health.  I think I need an intervention.

Let me back up, because this isn't really about  weight.  About two years ago I did work my tail off to lose lots of weight, but I sort of found a new identity in health and running along the way.  No doubt, I became addicted to running.  If you have a truly addictive personality, like me, you know what it means to become dependent on the high of any activity as a way of coping and feeling in control.  Luckily, I've always taken to sort of ridiculous and "healthy" addictions - studying, pottery, or in this case, running - which have paid off greatly in full-ride scholarships to fancy schools, lots and lots of glazed mugs taking over my apartment (please, take them for free), and a big drop in my cholesterol score.  Yessss.

But an addiction is an addiction, nonetheless.  Anyone with an addictive personality can tell you that these addictions are an all or nothing deal.   You go from one addiction (or "hobby," as I like to call them) to the next, each one all-consuming, and you try to avoid the really terrible ones (i.e. drugs or cat collecting). 

I suppose in the pendulum swing between all or nothing, I wound up with nothing.  So, I'm taking matters into my own hands by 1) going to the doctor (the real one) to find out what's wrong with my hip so I can start running again instead of looking at cat memes on BuzzFeed (too close to cat collecting for comfort), and 2) eating more salad until I can start burning more calories.  Take this Chicken Fajita Salad, for example.  It's super healthy and tastes good.

three grain salad

Let me start by saying this: I'm not a doctor.  Or a dietician.  But as a casual observer, it would seem that carbs are the enemy of man.  I see more and more students needing gluten-free diets every year for serious health reasons, and I also note that many a friend has had lots of success loosing weight on the paleo diet.  In the case of the former, I hope medical science soon explains the cause of rising gluten intolerance, but I have a bone to pick with the latter (pun intended!).  Not with the paleo diet, per se, but with the (mis)use of the terms "paleo" and "caveman."

Again, I'm not a doctor or a dietician,  but I know as a historian that our paleolithic, pre-agricultural, "caveman" ancestors ate tons of carbs.  Any anthropologist can tell you that hunting alone isn't a reliable and efficient enough source of energy to support human groups.  Perhaps we forget that gathering of grains has always been central to human survival because we imagine grain growing in perfect rows of industrially fertilized farmland, but grains are wild and can be gathered as plentifully (if not more so) than fruits and vegetables.  Grains and carbs aren't the enemy of human genetics: in and of themselves they don't make you plump (although carbs in the form of twinkies, do).  Eating grains and carbs and not burning off the complex carbohydrates that provide you with really efficient little packages of energy will make you plump.  We're programmed to store this energy that is meant to eventually be expended.  So if you were more plump eating carbs than on your paleo diet, it just meant that your body was working exactly the way it was programmed to work: saving your padded ass in the case of drought or famine.  It's just our lifestyles that have changed (decline in drought, famine, and general energy expenditure). 
Really, I'm not trying to bash my paleo friends at all.  Your fit, post-industrial bodies are getting all the energy and simple carbs needed for your lean physique.  Chances are, you're in better shape than me.  All I'm saying is that this salad full of three unrefined, whole grains is just as "paleo" as steak.  (Maybe more).

So go eat like a caveman and make this three grain salad recipe.  It's perfect for finding yourself with random and smallish amounts of barley, farro, wheatberries, quinoa, millet, or whatever whole grains you might have around.  Special thanks to Mandy over there at Lady & Pups (my favorite food blog of many months now) for her arugula pesto inspiration.

Turkey Vegetable Loaf

TURKEY & VEGETABLE LOAF 

W/ ROASTED DILL POTATOES 

& PEARL ONIONS

So much for seasonal.  At the beginning of the month the Chopped Salad post announced the first  spring craving, and today we had yet another snow in Chicago.  Now I'm actually worried about another snow day since I have a flight to New York booked for the day after final exams.

Thus, we'll retreat back to meatloaf and potatoes for what is hopefully the last stint of cold weather.  Well, its actually a meat & vegetable loaf and the potatoes are those petite fingerling type so there's nothing really heavy about this meal.  Mostly, I had ground turkey that needed to be made and the potatoes were too cute to pass up at the grocery store. 

I may have been predisposed to snatching up miniature versions of potatoes and onions after lots of delectable finger foods served up at the Peninsula Hotel's high tea.  That reminds me, if I ever get around to acquiring some truffle oil I'll need to try and recreate their truffled egg salad.

Greek Meatballs

GREEK MEATBALLS & WHEATBERRY ARUGULA SALAD

What a fast week...with a snow day Tuesday, dinner in the burbs with family on Thursday, and a professional development conference in the city on Friday, I barely had any time with my students or, less importantly, the vegetables in my fridge.  To top it off, this weekend Garrett and I are in Detroit for a wedding, so we needed to make quick use of the foodstuffs lying around.

So here's a recipe for a few typical situations:

1. You have hearty vegetables that need to get used up.
2. You or your significant other don't like vegetables all that much.
3. You want to stretch that buck you spent on meat in your diet by adding some healthy filler. 
4. You want to minimize your portion size when eating meat.

All of the above situations applied in my case, except #2.  Any time I make burgers, meatballs, or meatloaf, I throw whatever vegetables I can into a food processor that won't dramatically change the texture or flavor.  In this case, I managed to sneak in two whole zucchini, probably getting another entire serving from the recipe (yes, lunch is made) and making the meal a lot less heavy.  

The wheatberry salad in itself is a delicious and hearty meal if you want to skip the meat part all together. 

Katie's Salad Dressing & Simple Salad Rules

After a weekend of learning HTML (or is it CSS?) as a new blogger it's time to return to the original intent of this blog: my daily dinner habits offered up to the bride and groom to be, Bree and Brad.  But alas, blogs and the Constitution are living documents, and this project has evolved into much more than that.  I'm no strict constructionist, so if you aren't Bree or Brad, read on...

Once Garrett lovingly observed that when it came to holiday dinners and family meals my aunts only cooked "brown things."  Granted, those brown things are traditional and delicious, but he had a point.

Then, my sister Katie began getting the "salad assignment" and changed everything.

My family raves about her dressing.  Now, the kinishes, kishke, and kugel are complimented by the fresh acidity of red wine vinegar and lemon on top of green things.  But I think it's the garlic that wins their hearts.  Cultural syncretism at its finest.   Ahhhmerica.