From my little plot of cyber earth here, I like to explore ways to live well with more joy and meaning each day. Sometimes this involves big serious questions, like When should you quit your job?, and other times it involves lighter questions, like How do you like to travel?.

My posts over the last couple of months have been kind of heavy…  So I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for coming along on the serious ride! Today, we’re exploring a much lighter, more practical question:

What should you cook for dinner?

What could be better than something healthy and simple to make, easy to freeze, and completely versatile? Don’t overlook brown rice as an easy staple to help you put a meal together fast. It’s basically the blank canvas of foods, soaking up any flavor you care to pair it with.

Brown rice can be somewhat temperamental to cook, but it’s healthy benefits make it worthwhile to learn. Most cooking methods involve using the stove top, but I’ve scorched a batch or two of rice that way.  Then (thanks to my mother) I found this recipe.

I almost always prefer a hands off method over more labor intensive ones, and this method of baking brown rice couldn’t be more hands off. It takes a little longer, but I haven’t burned a batch this way yet!

Baked (“Perfectly Every Time”) Brown Rice

1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 1/2 cups fat free broth (chicken, veggie, etc.)
1 tbsp olive oil (original recipe called for a butter substitute, but you could also use butter)
1 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place rice in an 8″ square glass baking dish. Bring the broth, olive oil, and salt just to a boil in a kettle or covered saucepan. Once the mixture is boiling pour it over the rice. Stir to combine, and cover the dish tightly with a lid or heavy duty aluminum foil. Bake on the middle rack of the over for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove the rice from the oven, and take care of steam when removing the foil. Fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately or reheat later with leftovers. It also freezes very well!

Using Your Brown Rice

There are limitless ways to use your brown rice – as the base for dinner or as a side dish. It pairs well with anything from roasted vegetables to curry.

Below are ways  I like to use it, but please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments!

• Stir herbs into the rice to use as a side dish
• With roasted vegetables and topped with caramelized onions and parmesan
• With scrambled eggs, green onions, and shrimp or chicken to make a mock-fried rice
• With black beans, salsa, avocado, and tortilla chips  (a knock off of the Global Dinner at The Dream Cafe in Dallas)
• With stir fry (or sauté) any mix of meat and vegetables to serve over the rice

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A quick note…

I recently discovered The Minimalist Cook and the Minimalist Cooking ebook both by Meg Wolfe for $4.95. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone who is looking to make cooking more simple, but still wholesome and healthy. Meg’s goal is to kick the marketer out of the kitchen and to remind us of cooking as a “simple, uncomplicated, intuitive and relaxing process, producing simple uncomplicated wholesome food for your friends and family.”

Not surprisingly I started with dessert and have made her Simple Rustic Apple Sauce and her Gluten-Free Fast and Easy Peanut Butter Cookie, which I made with almond butter instead of peanut butter, and both have been great.

I found Meg’s ebook as a part of the online 3 day Minimalist Book Sale (summary here), which I purchased, so you may hear a little more about this as I make my way through all the content.

“Budino is the Italian word for pudding;  budini, the plural, are individual servings. This is an easy and luscious hot dessert.” – Alice Medrich, Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate

Since it’s Valentine’s day, I’ll let you in on a little secret…  This budini is one of my favorite desserts, and one of the simplest recipes I’ve made. I love simple cooking. If you keep baking chocolate on hand, it can be whipped up in no time flat after the arrival of an unexpected visitor or for a spur of the moment craving after dinner! Enjoy, and have a happy Valentine’s Day!

Budini, From Serves 6
Alice Medrich, Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate

Ingredients:

• 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tbsp brandy or rum (optional)
• 3 tbsp semolina flour (optional)
• 3 large eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Whipped cream  or ice cream to serve
• Six 8 to 16 oz ramekins or ovenproof bowls

If you are going to bake the budini immediately, position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the chocolate and butter in a medium heatproof bowl set in a wide skillet or barely simmering water, and stir frequently until completed melted and smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in the liquor and semolina flour, if using.

in a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and salt with an electric mixer at high speed until light and fluffy and the consistency of softly whipped cream. Use a large rubber spatula to fold one-third of the eggs into the chocolate mixture, the scrape the chocolate batter over the remaining eggs and fold until blended. Divide the batter among the ramekins or bowls. You can bake the budini now or later in the day. Simply refrigerate, covered, until about 30 minutes before you want to serve them.

To bake the budini: Place them on a cookie sheet. Bake until puffed, crusted, and deeply cracked but still gooey inside when tested with a toothpick, about 20 minutes, or 25 minutes if they have been refrigerated. Serve hot or let cool, cover, and set aside at room temperature for up to 1 day. The budini will sink as they cool, but they will puff up again when reheated in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

*I watch them closely, and if your oven runs hot, bake them in a water bath to make sure they don’t dry out.

Black-eyed peas symbolize good luck and prosperity. Some believe that the black-eyed peas represent the “coins,” while the winter greens they’re often served with represent the “dollars.” Eating them together on New Year’s Day is supposed to guarantee many of both in the year to come. From cookthink.

My family has followed this tradition for as long as I can remember. We do it more out of an abundance of caution to protect and ensure our luck in the new year, than any real belief in the lore behind the tradition. As you might expect, we’re defintiely not purists who only eat the peas with greens and only after they’re cooked with a hamhock.

Our family tradition involves a steaming pot of the soup below served with warm cornbread smothered with butter and honey. I’ve also included a new edition to our tradition, which is unlikely to ever replace the soup, but may supplement our black-eyed pea intake on years where we fill we need an extra boost of good luck.  It goes well with tortilla chips and a day of lingering on the couch watching football!

You can substitute dried beans in any of the recipes below, but I’m assuming that you’ve been busy over the holidays and that you may still be in an after-holiday-haze when preparing these recipes so I’ve only provided canned and frozen black-eyed pea options. Here’s some additional information about the tradition from Texas A&M university, but apparently this tradition isn’t just limited to the south…

What will you be doing on the first day of 2010?  Do you have any special family traditions to ring in the new year?

Black-Eyed Pea Soup

1 (28 oz) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 (10 oz) packages frozen black-eyed peas
1 cup chopped onion
2 quarts chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried whole oregano
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon dried whole thyme
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup sliced celery
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1/4 cup fresh parsley
2 cups chopped, cooked turkey breast (smoked turkey can be used too)

Combine first 11 ingredients in a large Dutch oven. Bring ot a boil.  Reduce heat, and simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes. Stir in carrots, celery, green pepper, and parsley; simmer 30 minutes. Add turkey; simmer 30 minutes or until vegetable are tender. Ladle into serving bowls. Yield: 3 quarts (131 calories per 1 cup serving). Source unknown.

Spicy Black-Eye Pea Dip

1 (10 oz) can or frozen black-eyed peas
1/2 cup diced onion
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 (4 oz) can of spicy green chilies (or the equivlanet of 1 roasted poblano pepper coarsley chopped)
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 (8 oz) container of reduced fat sour-cream
1/3 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Combine first 5 ingredients in a food processor; process until smooth.  Add sour cream; process until blended. Stir in green onions. Sppon mixture into a 9-inch pie plate or shallow 1-quart baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 15 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Spinkle with cilantro. Yield: 12 servings (89 calories per 1/3 cup serving). From Cooking Light, December 2007.

I began learning to grow some of my own food last year when I first moved into my new house and had a backyard in which to experiment.  I had early success at growing vegetables from transplants (a young plant from a nursery), especially arugula. Its short growing time, frequency of harvest, and versatility as an ingredient made arugula my new runaway favorite during that first season.

Growing From Seed

Excited by my success, I decided to branch out and save some money by growing from seed instead of from a transplant. But my attempts at growing anything from seed have ended in miserable failure, until recently.

Growing from seed is significantly cheaper than purchasing the plants in the transplant stage, and I definitely wasn’t going to give on learning how to do this without a fight. So I spent some time reading about it and learned that the biggest problem most people have with growing plants from seed is not providing the plant enough light.

Aha. That was definitely my problem!  After a trip to Lowe’s where I purchased an inexpensive light fixture with a special grow bulb, my seeds now germinated within 2 days!

The Metaphor

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about this site and working on refining its message. I’m even more convinced than now of the importance of cultivated living, rolling up your sleeves and digging into the things that keep you most engaged and most fulfilled.

I hope that the site inspires you and that you learn something when you visit – something that you can put to use in your life. The real value of learning comes from applying an idea or a process you’ve learned, thinking about what it means in your life, and determining if it works for you.  Knowledge is worthless if not applied.

My goal is not to over think it, as I often do, but to let it come about organically.

Leave me a comment, and let me know your thoughts! I’d love to hear from you.

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For good measure, here’s a book, The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, and a recipe, Arugula Pesto Wheat Berries, that I’ve been eyeing and that fit with today’s arugula theme… Enjoy.

Pleasure is a sin, but sinning is a pleasure.

We know the least about those we love the most.

Given the right chance, women are capable of anything.

The quotes above are from the little love notes included in my Baci chocolates, but you won’t see any candy in the picture above because I ate them!

Chocolate and hazelnuts is one of my favorite combinations. I loved Baci chocolates from the first taste and was very pleasantly surprised to find out that visitors can tour the Perugina factory in Umbria while watching Giada’s Italian Holiday on the Food Network.  Here’s a review of the The Sweetest Tour in Italy post from the Slow Travel Italy website.

You can buy Baci chocolates online at Ditalia: The Essences for Your Italian Kitchen.  Check out all the great Italian things you can get from them! They’re also available in many gourmet grocery stores, including World Market, and online at Amazon.