From My Mother’s Recipe Box: Rice and Cheese Casserole

Anyone who grew up when processed food was all the rage has most certainly eaten a casserole. They vary from lasagna to macaroni & cheese to tuna casserole, with the main ingredients ranging from some form of carbohydrate plus a meat or dairy component, and some vegetables thrown in. From the French word for saucepan, it’s basically a meal in a pot or pan.

For some, casseroles are comfort food. For others, it’s a reminder of the harried lifestyle they lived, running from school to sports events to theater practice. To me, moms and casseroles go hand-in-hand. So this year for Mother’s Day, I’m featuring one from My Mother’s Recipe Box: Rice and Cheese Casserole.

What Can You Do to Fight Hunger?

Consider this: 1 in 4 U.S. kids don’t know where their next meal will come from. In our country, we subsidize the wrong products. Millions of Americans live in food deserts without access to healthy ingredients. The foods we should be eating—fruits and vegetables—are more expensive than the chips, sodas, and processed foods that are available. We currently spend a mere $1 per week per child in school meal programs. Food stamp participants are only allocated $4 a day to survive.

Last year, in response to a local hunger challenge, I did a series of blog posts on How to Eat Healthy on $5 a Day. My goal was to demonstrate that $5 a day (close to the allotment provided by the SNAP food stamp program) can go a long way towards healthy food (as opposed to cheap processed food). And that even takes into account Bill’s food allergies and our preference for happy food (local, organic, sustainable, humane). The experiment lasted five days.

I’m one of more than a hundred bloggers donating today’s post to raise awareness about hunger. It’s all in support of an initiative called Food Bloggers Against Hunger, which was created in response to the new documentary A Place at the Table. It’s also in partnership with Share Our Strength‘s efforts in Washington to protect SNAP funding and make anti-hunger legislation a priority.

When the government subsidizes products like soy beans, wheat, and corn instead of fresh produce, the most affordable food is often the unhealthiest. One thing I learned by Day 5 of my experiment last year was that legumes are cheap. And, of course they’re healthy!

So today I’m sharing some of my favorite cheap and easy recipes that could easily take the place of processed and fast food to help keep Americans fed and healthy.

Split-Pea Soup in a Crockpot

Cuban Black Beans and Brown Rice

Nutty Rice Porridge

Use leftover brown rice to make this next recipe for breakfast. Buy apples from the farmers’ market when in season.

Kale Chips

Kale is fairly ubiquitous and seems to be available much of the year. Kale chips are a great alternative to potato chips. Much healthier, and easy to make!

Red Lentil Soup

I recently watched A Place at the Table. And one thing I learned is that hunger in America cannot be eliminated by creating bigger food banks. The only way to stop hunger is by changing policies, so it’s important we make our voices heard. If you’re inspired by the trailer for A Place at the Table, go see it. (You can also watch it on demand through iTunes and Amazon.)

If you’re moved to action, please consider sending a letter to Congress to support anti-hunger legislation.

Let’s obliterate hunger in America!

From My Mother’s Recipe Box: Bible Cake

I like what Auntie Bowman wrote on the back of this recipe card to my mother: “Have fun figuring this out some stormy day.” Perhaps it’s a good exercise for family gatherings over Easter weekend, too (storm or no storm!). If you look closely, my mother wrote the answer for each ingredient riddle in red pencil, but there are a few I can’t even read on the original version. If you own a Bible, it’s time to get it out and solve the riddles from My Mother’s Recipe Box!

Chez Marcita Presents: St. Paddy’s Lamb Stew

I’m not Irish, but I love lamb. What could be better for St. Patrick’s Day than lamb stew? Join Bill and me in the kitchen as we create this wheat-free, dairy-free, corn-free one-pot meal. Find the recipe on page 40 of my cookbook, Nothing to Sneeze At: Main Dishes for People with Allergies.

Chez Marcita Presents: Bill’s Fab Meatloaf

I already posted Bill’s meatloaf recipe a few years ago on Life Is Fare, but now you can see the chef in action as he prepares this cozy comfort food. It’s wheat-free, corn-free, and dairy-free, and made with grassfed beef and pastured pork. Happy food heaven!

Winter Tomato Soup by Martha Rose Shulman

Photo via The New York Times

One of my favorite writers for The New York Times is Martha Rose Shulman, who always seems to come up with something yummy in her column Recipes for Health. Check out this week’s recipe called Winter Tomato Soup with Bulgur, a simple, Mediterranean vegetarian soup that’s quick to make. Martha tells us that you can make this a day ahead and reheat.

And I suggest—if you have a wheat allergy—try substituting quinoa for bulgur. I would add it at the same point in which the bulgur would go in, and then cook the soup for about 12 minutes, which is about how long it takes to cook quinoa.

If you try it with the quinoa, let me know how it turns out!

Winter Tomato Soup with Bulgur

Serves 4 to 6

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes in juice

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus additional if desired for drizzling

2 medium onions, preferably red onions, finely chopped

Salt to taste

2 to 4 garlic cloves, to taste, minced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup coarse (#3) bulgur

5 cups water (more to taste)

Freshly ground pepper to taste

2 to 4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

2 ounces feta, crumbled (about 1/2 cup)

Pulse the tomatoes to a coarse puree in a food processor. Heat the olive oil in a heavy soup pot over medium heat and add the onion and a generous pinch of salt. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is very soft but not browned, 8 to 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste and sugar and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes have cooked down slightly, about 10 minutes. Add the bulgur, water, and salt to taste and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer 30 to 45 minutes, until the bulgur is soft and the soup thick and fragrant. Add pepper to taste and adjust salt.

Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with mint and feta. Drizzle on a little olive oil if desired. Serve hot.

From My Mother’s Recipe Box: Sweets for the Sweet

Looking for something new to make for Valentine’s Day this year? I found two recipes in My Mother’s Recipe Box that look easy, fun, and delicious. The first, called Yum Yum Gems, is from my great-aunt Lily. These are actually cupcakes that you could eat with or without icing. The second is called Torte Dessert, which you make in a jelly roll pan. Enjoy the sweetness of Valentine’s Day!

Another Way to Cook Turnips

When I got inundated with turnips from my winter produce CSA last week (after trading my beets for more turnips), I started thinking of how to get creative with recipes. The first attempt was Bill’s spontaneous root vegetable melange. The next attempt was something you may have had with Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes and turnip puree.

I had one very large purple turnip and only two Yukon potatoes. Ideally, I would have added a couple more potatoes, but it still turned out pretty tasty. All I did was peel and dice both vegetables, making them uniform size. Then I put them in a big pot of water and cooked the vegetables until tender (about 15-20 minutes). This also turned into a science lesson: I learned that turnips are less dense than potatoes and float to the top!

When they were done I simply mashed them and added a little buttermilk leftover from making butter, along with salt and pepper.

It was a delicious side dish to accompany roast chicken with gravy and oven-roasted carrots.

One Way to Cook Turnips

Remember all the turnips Bill and I got in our CSA share this week? Here’s the first dish we used them in. Bill cooked last night and created a melange of sliced carrots and diced turnips, plus last fall’s chopped leeks from our freezer—all sautéed in olive oil with salt and pepper. Simple and delicious. I like how the leeks balance with the flavor of the turnips.

Grassfed Beef Tenderloin

Since Bill and I have been buying our own local grassfed meat, I’m appalled–even disturbed–by the sizes of meat cuts served in mainstream restaurants. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see our tenderloin portion we received in our mixed quarter of beef from Lubbers Farm this year. The filet mignon (French for “cute filet”) is from the smaller end of the tenderloin, which runs along the spine of the cow.

Known as the most tender cut of meat in beef (as well as pork and venison), it’s also the most expensive part. An “average” steer or heifer (probably the feedlot variety) produces just 4 to 6 pounds of tenderloin, which is why our piece from a mixed quarter yielded just .63 pounds.

One saves a special occasion for preparing such a prime piece of meat. For Bill and me, it was New Year’s Eve. I chose an easy recipe but was very vigilant to make sure the meat wasn’t overcooked, especially since grassfed beef takes less time than feedlot meat. It was called Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Sauce.

What I didn’t expect was for the meat to be cut into two pieces when I opened the package. So I had to be even more watchful since the surface area in the oven was nearly twice as much.

For a recipe like this, it helps to prepare the side dishes in advance as much as possible because the roasting time is fast. After rubbing with fresh garlic and sprinkling the meat with salt and pepper, I preheated the oven and got busy on the sauce. (You’re supposed to do this with the pan drippings after the meat is roasted but I wasn’t anticipating much in the way of drippings so I thought I’d start it and add whatever I could salvage later.)

First I sautéed green onions and garlic in olive oil.

Then I added rice flour instead of wheat flour to accommodate Bill’s allergies, and made a roux.

I added the red wine and some beef stock, omitting the mushrooms because I detest them.

The meat was done in about 25 minutes. I poured the drippings into the sauce and covered the meat with foil to let it rest while we finished the rest of the preparations.

Alongside our tenderloin we had mashed Yukon potatoes with raw milk buttermilk, braised carrots with carmelized onions in balsamic vinegar, and a Caesar salad (plus a wonderful Cabernet Sauvignon and a little bubbly Prosecco to ring in the new year!).