About the College Veggie...

Hey all! I love food! I love to cook nutritious food and bake for my friends - on a college budget. This blog chronicles the best (and worst) of my kitchen adventures. I just completed a BS in Kinesiology and am working on a Masters in Public Health and dietetics, so expect these posts to be full of healthful foods and great information. Most of the info from this blog comes from a combination of internships I've done with RDs and reputable websites, as well as information I've picked up other ways over the years.

I believe that food should be real, and most ingredients you use every day should look like the foods picked out of the ground or off a tree. Food should also taste good. Not like a salt-lick or a grease-fryer. Finally, food is meant to fuel you. It's amazing how many chronic diseases (type 2 diabetes, cancers, even alzheimers) have been linked to lifestyle and diet. By giving our bodies what they need, we can live long, healthy, active lives.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” -Hippocrates

Aug 31, 2011

Fried Eggplant and Tomato Basil Veggie Pasta

I have a basil plant that has too many leaves and gets too little water (oops). I really wanted to make pesto, but our food processor doesn't work, so I made tomato basil pasta and added the pine nuts and parmesean cheese to the pasta. I also fried some eggplant, because it sounded amaaaaazing.

You will need:

2 cloves garlic
4 TBS olive oil
4 roma tomatoes
1 large head broccoli
1/2 c parmesean cheese
1/2 Tbs paprika
salt, pepper
6-7 leaves basil
1/4c pine nuts

1 eggplant
1 egg
1/2 c milk
1TBS paprika
salt, pepper,
1 cup flour
1/2c canola oil

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add minced garlic and pine nuts and cook 1-2 minutes.
2. Add diced roma tomatoes and bite-size broccoli pieces cover, and turn down heat to low. Stir in basil cut into 1/4 inch strips (like confetti).
3. In a separate frying pan, heat 1/4 c canola oil. Add more oil as needed while frying.
4. In one bowl, mix the egg and milk. In a second bowl, mix paprika, salt pepper, and flour.
5. Cut the eggplant into 3/4 inch disks.
6. Dip the disks in the egg, then the flour mixture, then into the frying pan. Cook for ~2 minutes on each side, then cool on a plate lined with paper towels.
7. Once all the eggplant disks are fried, coat a baking dish with oil. Line the bottom with the fried eggplant disks, and pour the tomato-broccoli-basil mixture over the top. Cover with Parmesean cheese and bake for 15 minutes.
8. Cook 4 servings' worth of pasta according to the directions. I like whole wheat pasta.
9. Drain the pasta, and serve pasta with the eggplant-basil-tomato sauce on top.

Om nom nom!

Aug 28, 2011

Blackberry Protein Pancakes

Let's face it, regular pancakes may be fluffy and delicious... but there is very little nutritional value to be found. I give you my solution to the fluffy and filling but nutritionally floundering pancake: protein pancakes!

These are made with oatmeal and cottage cheese and I PROMISE you can't tell the cottage cheese is there!

1. Combine 1 cup regular (whole wheat if you can find it!) pancake mix, 1 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1 egg, 1/2 cup fat free cow or soy milk, and 1 Tsp each of cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Carefully fold in 1 cup of blackberries.
2. The batter will be a little thicker and chunkier than regular pancake batter, but should still be pourable. Add more milk if it's too thick.
3. Use a non-stick skillet heated on medium heat. Any hotter, and the pancakes will burn on the outside, but still be goopy on the inside. Pour 1/2 cup of batter per pancake. Keep these guys small, or they'll fall apart.
4. Cook until one side is brown, and the edges are dry, then flip and cook until the pancake is cooked all the way through.

This recipe makes about 8 smallish pancakes, or 4 mondo pancakes - about enough for 3 people. Oatmeal, fat-free cottage cheese, eggs, and milk/soy are great sources of protein. Unlike regular pancakes that contain minimal protein, these pancakes will fill you up sooner, and won't cause quite so large spikes in blood sugar. The protein is harder to break down than the simple carbohydrate in traditional pancakes, and causes these to digest more slowly. The more slowly something digests, the more time your body has to pump out insulin to process the incoming glucose.

Nom on!

Blackberry Pie


My roommate, our cat and I picked blackberries last night (yes... our cat comes out with us, on a leash). We came home with several pounds of blackberries and did the only possible rational thing:PIE!!

I use my grandmother's pie recipe, with a few substitutions. It makes two 9" pies' worth of dough, but freezes really well for months.

Pie Dough:
1. Combine 2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups all-purpose flour, and 2 cups sofened (not melted!) butter in a large bowl. Use two forks to break up the butter and combine it with the flour. Usually I get frustrated with the forks and just dive in with my hands.
2. Add 1 TBS apple cider vinegar, 1 TBS salt, 1 egg, 1TBS sugar, 2 Tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 cup water. Combine until it just comes together, otherwise your dough will be chewy.
3. Refrigerate the dough for at least 15 minutes, and up to 3 days.

Filling:
1. Combine 2c blackberries, 1/4c sugar, 1/4c flour, 2 Tsp cinnamon, 1TBS lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, and 1 Tsp salt in a large bowl GENTLY. Don't squash your berries!

Assembling the pie:
1. On a well-floured surface, roll out 1/2 the dough into a circle about 4" in diameter greater than the diameter of your pie dish, and about 1/4 inch thick. Don't forget to flour your rolling pin, too!
2. Spray your pie dish with vegetable oil and lightly (!) coat the dish with flour. This will help the pie not stick, especially if berry goodness leaks out.
3. Carefully transfer the pie circle to the pie dish, using your rolling pin to start at one side and unroll it across the dish.
4. Slide the dough carefully down the sides of the dish. Leave any extra dough hanging off the sides.
5. Pour the pie filling into the crust.
6. Cut off any extra dough by running a knife around the outside edge of the pie dish. save this extra dough to make the lattice top.
7. Roll out your dough again into a square-ish shape. I would have a hard time telling you how to create the lattice-top, but this link does a pretty good job. Thanks, YouTube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jv8BGw31Cg

8. Bake your pie at 350F for 40 -45 minutes. Because of the whole wheat flour, it may be hard to tell when your pie is "golden brown." If you poke a section of crust and it pops back up, it's probably done.

That's it! Easy as..well.. Pie!

Any leftover pie crust can be rolled thin and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, then baked for 15-20 minutes. Hellooooo elephant ear!

Om Nom Nom!


Aug 24, 2011

Very Verde Purple Power Pasta

I LOVE SUMMER!! There are SO many vegetables that are locally grown in my Fred Meyer right now. I went on a bit of a veggie shopping spree tonight. Yum :) I was, however, too excited about all the local produce to actually PLAN what I was going to make with all of it. So yet again, I present to you a completely experimental pasta dish featuring the green and purple veggies I picked out.

I picked up some kale at a local farm this weekend. Kale is like spinach on roids - full of beta carotene (one of those phytochemicals), vitamins A, C, and K, lutein and calcium. It's a cousin to broccoli and collard greens, and contains the compound indole-3-carbinol which helps DNA to repair itself and may thereby inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

I don't know that I'd ever eat it raw in a salad. It's a pretty thick leaf. However, I've put it in soups and pasta sauces before, and it's delicious. I've also heard of people making it into chips. Hmmm... sounds like something I'll have to try.

Here's the recipe:

1. In a large pot, saute' 2 cloves minced garlic with 3 TBS olive oil on medium heat.
2. Cut one eggplant into bite-ish sized pieces and add to pot. Cook the eggplant in oil until it turns a darker color and appears soggy.
3. Add one can of no salt-added tomato sauce and 1c water. I like the no salt added sauce because then I can add other seasonings and my pasta tastes more like the ingredients and less like a salt block you'd give a hamster.
4. Add 2tsp salt, 3tsp pepper, 2tsp rosemary, and a few dashes of some mysterious paprika that appeared in our cabinet that belongs to neither my roomie or I. Awesome.
5. Wash and drain 4-5 large leaves of kale. I use kitchen scissors to cut the leave in half lengthwise and then into bite-size pieces. These along with 4c spinach leaves are added to the pot. It seems like A LOT of green leafies, but they cook down really quickly. I also threw in about a cup of chopped red cabbage I had left over from the Husky quinoa.
6. Add a lid to the pot, and in 3-4 minutes the kale and spinach will cook down into the tomato sauce.
7. Add 2c kidney beans (I had a can and a half I needed to use). Here's the protein part of the dish. Remember how combining legumes with a grain makes a complete protein? Here I'm combining kidney beans (the legume) with the grain (whole wheat pasta).
8. Let the green & purple tomato mixture simmer, and bring another pot of water to a boil. Cook and drain 4 servings (2 cups cooked...) of whole wheat pasta per the directions on the box.
9. Put the tomato sauce on the pasta and NOM NOM NOM!

I've been interning at a nutrition and diabetes clinic this summer. The RDs there teach clients to only choose 3-4 servings (1 servings = 15g carbohydrate) per meal, and 1 serving per snack. One serving of pasta is 1/3 c cooked... that fits in the palm of my hand. I challenged myself to make this dish both veggie and diabetic-friendly, and I think I succeeded. 1/2 cup cooked pasta is about a serving and a half, and the kidney beans also count as a serving of carbohydrate (CHO). I didn't really miss the pasta (let's be honest, most of us eat more than 1/2 c pasta at a time) because of all the veggies. I think I'll add some scrambled egg to the leftovers to add more protein.


Aug 18, 2011

"Husky" Quinoa & Phytochemicals

Quinoa! The only perfect plant protein! ...but more on this super grain another post.

To make dinner tonight, I pulled the most colorful things I could find out of my refrigerator: red cabbage, a corn cob, and a green pepper. Color is one of the best indicators of healthy foods. Think of some of the healthiest foods you know of: fruits, vegetables, grains, salmon. Now think of more unhealthy foods - anything you'd pull out of a bag from McDonalds. Pretty brown and dull, yeah?

When plants are growing in the dirt, they need to protect themselves from insects, fungi, bacteria, and animals. To do so, they produce chemicals called "phytochemicals" (plant chemicals). There are estimated to be more than 5,000-10,000 phytochemicals, most of which we haven't discovered yet. Phytochemicals are the reason for plants' colors and odors. When we eat phytochemicals, our cells benefit from the same antioxidant protection they offer the plants! Moral of the story: follow your nose and eyes to bright, smelly foods!


Sooooo here it is... Husky quinoa. So named for it's purple-and-gold color. This recipe isn't anything especially pretty, but it is quite tasty. Especially for an experiment!

1. Boil 1c of rinsed and drained quinoa in 2c water until all the water is absorbed, much like rice. At the same time, boil one stalk of corn in a large pot of water. Once the water has been boiling for 1-2 minutes, turn off the stove and let the corn sit in the hot water.
2. Mince 1-2 cloves garlic and 1/2 an onion, and saute' in olive oil.
3. Add bite-sized pieces of 1 green pepper.
4. Cut the cooked corn off the cob into the green pepper mixture.
5. Add 3/4 of a head of red cabbage (that's all that fit in my pan), 1/4 cup water, and cover the pan until the cabbage softens.
6. Add salt and pepper to both the quinoa and the veggie mixture. Add an additional ~1 tsp ginger to the quinoa.
7. Once the cabbage/pepper/corn mixture is soft, mix 1/2 cup with 1/2 cup of the quinoa.

Om Nom Nom!

Aug 17, 2011

Let's Talk Lentils

Poor lentils... I don't think they'll ever get the respect they deserve. These green or red, humble little members of the legume family may look, well, as appetizing as lentils, but they are a veggie-on-a-budget's best friend. I've used them as a replacement for meat in spaghetti sauce, tacos, and chili. They're a lot like tofu - they taste like whatever you season them with. Taco seasoning or Montreal Steak Seasoning are two of my favorites.

A 1/4 cup serving (dry, makes ~1/2 cup cooked) packs a whopping 13g of protein, 15g of fiber, and 20% of the RDA for iron, all for 180 calories. Of course, because it is a plant-based protein (and therefore an incomplete protein... we'll talk quinoa in a later blog post), it's best paired with a whole-grain.

Cultures have been pairing legumes and grains for centuries to create complete, inexpensive proteins. Meat has not always been so widely available, so people needed another way to get complete proteins from plant foods. A 'complete protein' is one that contains all 8 essential amino acids - building blocks for growth and repair - that our bodies cannot make themselves. In Mexico, rice and beans are paired. Greece - hummus and pita. And one of my personal favorites - peanut butter and whole wheat bread.

But... back to the much-neglected lentil. For those of you reluctant to give up meat in your recipes, you could try substituting half the meat with lentils, and cut the saturated fat content of your recipe in half! They're super inexpensive (less than$2/lb... roughly $0.22 per serving), and are a fabulous source of iron, fiber and protein. Give 'em a try!

Keep Nomming! Om Nom Nom!

Aug 16, 2011

Veggie Chili... Monday's Variation

I make a lot of chili and taco filling. It's pretty easy to throw together with whatever veggies and taco seasoning I happen to have on hand.

I rinsed/drained/cooked 3 palm-fulls (~1 cup for you measuring folk) of lentils according to the directions on the bag... More or less 6 cups of boiling water for 30 mins. While the lentils were cooking, I pulled a couple cloves of garlic, half a yellow onion, one green and one yellow zucchini, half a red pepper, and a green pepper out of the fridge. I washed and cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces, and diced the onion and garlic. Once the lentils had cooked for 30 minutes, I drained the remaining water off of them, and left them in the strainer. Into the still-hot, empty pan I put 2-seconds' worth (2 Tbs?) of olive oil, and the onion and garlic. I added salt, pepper, and chili powder, stirred it around for a minute or so, then added the rest of the vegetables. Once the vegetables were soft-ish, I added the lentils back in with a can of black beans and allowed the mixture to hang out (after I added more chili powder) for as long as it took me to complete my ab workout (15 minutes or so). Upon tasting the "chili," I decided it needed something more... and dug around in my cabinet for a can of condensed tomato soup. I added half the can, stirred it around until it was hot, and ate it. Om nom nom!

I had lots of leftover chili. I added a scrambled egg to a portion of the leftovers. Also delicious. Best enjoyed in a large blue leather chair while playing with Stella, my cat.

Om Nom Nom!

Hi Mom! & Red Pepper Hummus

My mom has been telling me for a while now that I need to write a recipe book. Whenever I go home, I cook something that she and my dad enjoy, and my brother tolerates at best. For my seventeen year old brother, if there are too many vegetables or an obvious lack of meat, it's not a meal.

Long story short - I love food, I'm vegetarian, and I need to entertain my love for baking and veggie cooking on a college-student's budget. This blog will detail the best (and worst) of my cooking and baking adventures and experiments. I'm not one to follow recipes or use measuring utensils... but here goes.

This Red Pepper Hummus Recipe is quite the example of college ingenuity. I don't have a food processor, but I've found that a blender works just as well. Also, tahini (sesame seed paste) is really expensive and doesn't keep well... so I've simply omitted it.

This recipe makes 4 or so cups of hummus.

1. Cut up 1/2 a red pepper into smallish chunks. Put the pieces in a hot pan with 2-3 seconds' worth (2-3 Tbs) of canola or olive oil and 1-2 cloves of garlic. Olive oil has a low smoke-point, and heating it above this point can create cancerous agents... so I tend to use canola oil for cooking the pepper in.
2. Open, drain, and rinse 2 cans of garbanzo beans and throw 'em in a blender with some salt, pepper, and lemon juice. I'm not sure exactly how much of each I usually use, but when you taste it at the end, you will figure out what more it needs.
3. Once the peppers begin to blacken a bit, add them and the garlic into the blender with the beans. I usually add 1/2 cup water and a few tablespoons of olive oil to the mixture, and then blend it until smooth.
4. Here's where you taste it and see if it needs more salt, pepper, or lemon juice.

I serve the hummus with whole wheat pita, carrots, celery, or broccoli. It keeps well in the fridge in an air-tight container for a few days... it never lasts longer than that. The hummus without the red pepper is also tasty!

Om Nom Nom!