Needless to say I did not cook like his mom. I needed to find a way to get the vegetables I loved into our diets without setting off his anti-vegetable meter. What was the answer?

Stir fry! You can chop up nearly anything and put it in a stir fry. So very slowly I introduced things like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus and brussels sprouts. I chopped them very tiny at first and then increasingly bigger hunks. Eventually Marc was eating all kinds of veggies. He will even eat Brussels Spouts once in awhile…although they are not his favorite. He admitted that he likes spinach the way I fix it…

This sorta stir fry is one of the dishes that has no real recipe and I have been making it for 30 years. You can stretch a little bit of meat and add nearly any vegetable you want.

Marye’s Sorta Stir Fry

• 1-2 lbs of meat: hamburger, sliced beef, chicken, pork, etc.
• 2 onions, thinly sliced
• 4 oz dried maitake mushrooms, reconstituted
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 4 stalks of celery
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated
• 2 cloves garlic thinly sliced
• 1/2 lb spinach
• 1/2 lb snap peas
• Any other vegetables you have that need using up
• 1/4 cup organic tamari
• 1/4 cup white wine
• soaking water from mushrooms
• 2 tbs to 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tablespoon fennel pollen or 1 teaspoon dried fennel
• 2 tbs balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbs organic cornstarch to thicken (you may want a little more)

1. Mix the sauce ingredients together and set aside.
2. Heat the wok or pan with a tablespoon of oil. Saute the vegetables until crisp-tender. Remove from pan.
3. Add the meat and cook until done.
4. Add the vegetables and the sauce and simmer until sauce is thickened and vegetables are as tender as you like. Serve with rice.

Serves 8

images:marye audet

Post from: Baking Delights

This is my entry for this week’s presto pasta.  It’s kind of embarrassing because it is so simple that there isn’t even really a recipe.

A few weeks ago I was given a large amount of on-the-edge tomatoes.  I tossed them in the crockpot with garlic, basil, oregeno, onion, and various other sauce ingredients, let them simmer for several hours, and then pureed them and canned them in quart jars.  It was alot of work but I was so glad to have created 8 quarts of free spagetti sauce base!

Things have been nuts around here with the last quarter of the cookbook (sprint, Marye, sprint!) and Matt starting college and totally messing up my schedule…again.. I miss the days when the kids were small and life was predictible.  Anyway..for the first time in memory I have things like leftovers in the fridge. I know, I know..it is so WEIRD!

Yesterday we had a little of this and a little of that…some zucchini but not enough for a meal, part of an onion, a couple of green peppers…..I immediately thought of a fresh pasta sauce with all of those great vegetables tossed in.  There is almost no way I can give you a recipe for this because I used homemade sauce, and then leftovers…but you can do the same thing.  The best way to put this together is to use the crockpot on low for about 4 to 6 hours.

Lots of great vegetables do well in a pasta sauce, so when you have one limp carrot, for example, chop it, grate it, or slice it and toss it in to the sauce. Vegetables that I have used are:

• zucchini
• yellow squash
• carrots
• celery
• spinach
• onion
• shallots
• leeks
• mushrooms
• okra
• peppers of all sorts
• eggplant
• tomatoes
• chopped green beans

Add whatever you like to the sauce and toss in some basil, oregeno, salt, pepper, garlic, a stem of rosemary, about 2 tablespoons good olive oil…cooked leftover meat..shrimp…whatever …(told you this was easy)…

After it has filled the house with an incredible aroma for several hours,  cook enough pasta a la dente for your family and spoon the sauce over the pasta and serve…

This doesn’t even feel like a real recipe..LOL!

It is a great way to get rid of all the leftovers and have an easy meal that everyone will love!

Image:Marye Audet

Post from: Baking Delights