Vegetable Broth

I have been working on some recipes but between being sick and then my mother-in-law being in town, not a lot of cooking was happening around here.

So, I figured I'd talk about making your own vegetable broth. Because I love it. And it's so easy and so superior to anything you can buy pre-packaged. And I feel so environmentally friendly when I make it myself.

All you have to do is save all of your leftover bits of veggies as you're cutting them up. Ends of carrots, skins of onions, leaves from celery, leek tops, ribs of kale, mushrooms stems, herbs, almost anything (except broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, asparagus, artichokes). I collect all of these scraps in a plastic bag in the fridge. After about a week I have enough to make some stock.

Dump the scraps into a big stock pot and add water. I usually add about 2 quarts. Then, just simmer for a couple hours. I simmered mine today for too long without watching it and I lost about 1/2 of a quart of water (oops).

Then, strain the now-stock into jars and either refrigerate for a few days or store in plastic containers and freeze for a month or so.

I love using something that is usually regarded as "garbage" and making something amazing (it'd be even better if I had a compost pile that I could toss the veggies in after making stock). I also love not having to buy something from the store that I can make myself, and not having packaging to throw away. It's a win-win-win situation!

I'll be back with some incred soup recipes you can make using this vegetable stock.

Quinoa With Roasted Veg

Now this is an especially bad photo, but it's of something incredibly delicious, so I'm going to pretend that makes up for it.

I had tons of root vegetables on hand one night and had to come up with something to do with them. And so I made this. And it was so tasty. It's a very loose recipe, you can do almost anything, but this is what I did:

Quinoa, cooked in salted water (follow package's directions)

Carrots
Turnips
Parsnips
Butternut squash
Red onion
Garlic
(You could also do potatoes or rutabaga. Basically anything you want to roast, I would think.)

Chop the veg into uniform pieces so they cook evenly. Toss to coat with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary or thyme or whatever your favorite herbs are. Roast for 30-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Add a sprinkle of good parmesan and a tad bit of lemon juice to the quinoa and serve with the veggies. It is SO GOOD. And quinoa is a good source of protein, so bonus! You should probably serve this with a green salad with maybe a little cheese (feta would go great I think), but I was lazy that night and we just had this one dish. It's a favorite.

And a Happy Valentine's Day, if you celebrate that kind of thing. :)