Soyrizo Taco Salad

Since it's been the season for salads there is another one I've made frequently because it's been popular with the whole family. Trader Joe's now carries their own version of soyrizo and I've used it to make this taco salad. It goes together very quickly - you can have dinner on the table in a matter of minutes, especially if you have shredded cheese on hand.

Soyrizo Taco Salad

1 large head green leaf lettuce, cut into thin ribbons
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 can corn, rinsed and drained (I've been using Westbrae organic sweet white corn - it's really good)
1 avocado, diced
1 small can sliced black olives
shredded cheese (I like the Mexican cheese blend from Costco)
1 package soyrizo, crumbled and browned
crushed tortilla chips (it's a great way to use up the bottom of the chip bag)
diced red onion (optional)

Dressing: equal parts pico de gallo and ranch dressing mixed together

While the soyrizo browns I wash, cut and spin dry the lettuce. Toss everything except the dressing into the bowl - once the soyrizo is ready mix everthing together with the dressing. Fast, simple and very good. For a vegan version use Follow Your Heart cheddar or omit the cheese and add more avocado. If you use a gluten free ranch dressing the recipe is GF.

Tonight is the first home game for the high school football team and I'm signed up to work the concession stand (senior class fundraiser). Hot dogs, nachos and instant hot cocoa - such fun.

Arugula salad with manchego, walnuts and dates

It has happened again. Life getting in the way of cooking. No one is home anymore - dinners have been haphazard (quesadillas at 9 pm) or takeout. It is our last year with a kid in school (K-12 anyway...) so I've volunteered for a ridiculous amount of stuff - sort of the last hurrah. Hubby has sort of given up on his gluten free eating - he was at it for a few months but didn't notice any difference other than some extra pounds (presumably from all my attempts at gluten free baking???). Since he was doing it for personal reasons and not medical reasons it wasn't a big deal to stop - but it certainly gave us an even greater respect and admiration for our friends who deal with multiple food allergies and sensitivities who can't just make that choice!

One thing I've made several times in the past weeks has been this salad. It is my take on the compressed manchego salad we had at Uva Bar in downtown Disney. It goes together quickly and it's a great combination of flavors. All of these amounts are flexible - use as much or as little as you like -

Arugula Salad with Manchego, Walnuts and Dates

1 bag prewashed arugula (I get it from Trader Joe's)
5 large dates, pitted and cut into small pieces
1/3 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
1 large apple (I like pink lady apples) cut into thin matchsticks
Coarsely grated manchego cheese - as much as you like
I toss this all together and drizzle with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and season with salt and pepper.

Smoked Gouda Risotto with Spinach and Mushrooms

We are back from a week in Southern California. We spent a couple of days at Disneyland and a couple of days in La Jolla. The weather was perfect, the crowds not so bad and we even had really good food! At Disneyland we opted to eat in Downtown Disney which has much better (in my opinion) offerings than within the park. At Tortilla Jo's they even have their gluten free items marked. My favorite meal was at Uva Bar where they had a tapas menu - everything we had was delicious but my favorite was a compressed salad with manchego, arugula, apples, walnut and dates. I ordered a second one ;-) Sadly I didn't get any pictures because the plates were beautiful - but we were starving.

I've been slowly getting back into the kitchen and last night I made Smoked Gouda Risotto with Spinach and Mushrooms from Cooking Light. This was a delicious mix of flavors with the smoky cheese (I used smoked mozzarella because I had some on hand) and the mushrooms. I will definitely make this again but I think next time I will buy presliced cremini mushrooms rather than using the mix of four different mushrooms - it was a lot of cleaning and slicing. For company I'd do that again but for us - I'll go for convenience next time!

School started back up for Ana yesterday and Hallie starts next week - even hubby is taking a night class (Italian - heaven help me). I think this school year will pose the biggest challenge to our family dinners - it's hard to do when no one is home!

Farm Sanctuary

On Saturday, my daughter, her boyfriend and I took the long drive up to Orland to visit Farm Sanctuary. We've been wanting to go for a long time and with his impending departure for college we were running out of time. So we left a little after noon for a 2.5 hour drive knowing the last tour was at 3. Anyone who has ever driven in the Bay Area knows that this could be a dicey proposition. I kept picturing us arriving there with no one around to give us a tour. Luck and the traffic gods were on our side and we arrived around 2:20 and they took us on a tour right then. There isn't much to say that the pictures can't tell on their own so I'll let them tell the story.

You can donate to Farm Sanctuary here.

On Saturday we had a large "catch up" family birthday party. We typically try to get together for everyone's birthday on hubby's side of the family - which means January - August . It's been a busy year for everyone and we were way behind - so Saturday we celebrated birthdays going back to April. So that was six family members plus our exchange student whose birthday is in three days. It looked like Christmas!

Because the weather has been so hot I knew I wanted to serve a dinner that was ready to go and wouldn't require anyone (read - me) being in the kitchen at the last minute. We decided we would do some grilling but that is something the guys always take over which works well for me!

On the menu was the following:

Red Quinoa Salad


















1 box red quinoa, cooked according to package instructions
2 large tomatoes, diced
1 English cucumber, diced
1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
Olive oil
Fresh lemon juice (I used at least 3 lemons)
salt and pepper to taste

Grilled Eggplant in Saffron Yogurt Sauce



















This really didn't photograph well (I was in a bit of a hurry!) but tasted delicious. It was simply japanese eggplant cut in half and grilled until well browned and soft (this was done early in the day) and topped with a simple sauce of plain fat free yogurt combined with saffron infused hot water, cayenne and salt. It was topped with smoked paprika.

We also had dolmeh (store bought) that was dipped in the extra yogurt sauce, grilled corn, portobello mushrooms and red peppers. That afternoon I made a batch of gluten free bread and it was very popular with everyone.

One last popular item of the afternoon was a large pitcher of sangria. I've been making this recipe for several years and it really is the closest thing to what we had in Spain.

















I had an extremely painful reminder to wear gloves when handling peppers. I bought both red bell peppers and some poblano peppers for the barbecue. I've never had a hot poblano so I didn't bother to wear gloves. Well whatever it was I cut up it was HOT and burned my hand. I think my skin was already irritated from the acid in the tomatoes and lemons I cut and when the pepper oil sunk in my hand felt like it was burning in hot acid. It was VERY painful and made it really difficult to get anything done! I looked online for remedies (typing with one hand) and tried the following; soaking my hand in yogurt, soaking it in ice cold vodka, rubbing it with a cut onion and so on. I finally popped some ibuprofen and between that and all the other things the burning eventually died down. We didn't end up grilling those peppers because I was afraid we would asphyxiate the neighborhood! Definitely a lesson learned.

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Today we said goodbye to our exchange student from Spain. She has been with us for only one month but what a month it was! Several of Hallie's friends were hosting students as well and it was four weeks of parties and sleepovers, bonfires and beach trips and shopping - lots of shopping.

I have lots of food to blog about - we had two parties over the weekend. But right now I am very tired and really missing our extra girl :-)

I'll be back in a bit...

Last of the teenage years...

Today is Ana's 19th birthday - one more year and she will no longer be a teenager. How the hell did that happen? I feel very lucky to be her mom :-)

















It has been a busy few days. We only have our exchange student for another week or so. I'm really going to miss her - she has been a delightful addition to our family. We spent the entire day in San Francisco on Saturday - started at the Ferry Building Marketplace at 10 in the morning and didn't get home until 9:30 that night. Our student is from the Basque area so I thought it would be fun to have dinner at Iluna Basque in North Beach. It turned out to be an excellent place for vegetarian, gluten free dining! We had:

eggplant and fresh tomatoes with goat cheese
selection of Basque cheeses with membrillo
crisp shaved potatoes flash fried with herbs and vinegar
spanish tortilla with caramelized onions
roasted red bell pepper with mushrooms and manchego cheese (this was my favorite)
batter fried spanish white asparagus (the only non GF food we ordered)

We even got a picture with the executive chef and owner Mattin Nobilia













The low point of the evening was realizing I'd lost my ticket for the parking garage which was bad enough. But instead of just taking my $26 the guy had to see my driver's license, fill out a form, step out of the booth to write down my license plate, see my driver's license again while the line of cars built up behind me and so on. It was the third parking garage of the day and I'd kept track of five teenage girls without losing any of them so I guess it could have been worse! A great San Francisco day overall!