Veggie Crazy!

I went to the grocery store this morning and came home with two new vegetables to try: fresh beets, and kale.  I'll post when I use them.  I'm thinking I'll roast the beets with some parsnips and sweet potatoes; ever since the Winter Vegetable Extravaganza, parsnips have become a staple in my house, right after carrots on the grocery list.  And I'm planning to make kale chips, where you toss them with olive oil and seasonings and bake them.  Or maybe add the kale to a bean dip, with garbanzo beans or cannolini.  Kale's supposed to be good in soup, too, but I have not been the soup-making-freak this winter that I usually am in cold weather.

Here are the two new produce experiments.  The paper towell is to keep the beets, on the right, from staining the counter.

Check this site out: 365 Days of Kale.  I found it on Green Lite Bites in a post Roni wrote about kale.  Lots of info about my new veggie!

I also bought cabbage, celery, carrot chips and cilantro.  And some things that didn't start with "C", too.

Homemade Veggie Broth

I have a habit of keeping vegetable scraps in the freezer. Every once in a while I justify the habit by throwing it all in a pot and making homemade veggie broth. It’s not hard, and it’s a great way to use up all those scraps that don’t make it into your dinners: potato and carrot peelings, the tops and bottoms of onions and celery, the vegetables that I thought I would use but didn’t and they are going to go bad in a day or two. All of that makes its way into the freezer and eventually, the broth. Or as I call it, Mystery Soup. Either way, I made it so I know it’s low in sodium and high in nutrition.

It’s easy to start. Throw that handful of green beans no one put on their plate into a bag or container and put it in the freezer. Add to it when you have scraps from cooking. Soon enough you’ll have enough to cook.

Throw it in a pot with a few cups of water. I added some fresh baby carrots and celery  this time because my Mystery Soup bags tend to be heavy on the onion.

I don’t season the broth because there is no telling what I will use it for: to make soup, to flavor mashed potatoes, to cook rice, for the liquid in homemade bread, or as a low-fat medium for sautéing chicken and vegetables.

Bring to a boil, turn down the heat until its just simmering, cover and let it do its thing.

Once the veggies are mushy and look like all the goodness has been cooked out of them, drain them over a bowl.

(Ignore the flour in the corner of that photo; I was making bread while the broth simmered.)  Dispose of the cooked vegetable scraps, and think of ways to use your homemade broth!

I used this batch to make salmon chowder.