I have a scary Friday ahead, as my sweet Jakers needs to have surgery. He needs to have his teeth cleaned, which means they put him under anesthesia, AND they need to remove a "diseased" tooth and a small growth next to that tooth. My poor Boo Bear! I'll be dropping him off Friday morning, and picking him up that afternoon. I'm hoping to be busy at work, as a distraction, but it is going to be a scary day for this single mom.
So with that coming up, I wanted to cook something this week that would last me through my busy week and right into my weekend, since I won't be leaving Jakers' side while he's healing to cook or get take out.
Enter Rachael Ray. Now, I can't say I'm a fan. However, I ended up on one of her dozens of series on one of the cooking channels (I think it was THE Cooking Channel, actually) this weekend while I was cleaning my apartment. She happened to make this vegan stew (well, she had to ruin it with chicken broth, but that was an easy swap), so I DVR'ed the episode and later went back and jotted down the ingredients/recipe. It's a spicy zucchini potato stew. The problem was that when I went to chop ingredients, I discovered the 2 zucchinis I bought last week were soft and covered in white, fuzzy spots. Hmm. So I swapped in yellow squash and it seemed to work well. I honestly think you could do a lot of swapping to use up whatever you have on hand! This stew is hearty, has SO MUCH flavor, and could not possibly be healthier. It's literally a pot of delicious vegetables.
I happened to have some leftover biscuits that I made this weekend, so those made a great pairing. Oh, and I spent last weekend hanging out with my ADORABLE Little Sister from my sorority - who just happened to be in Baltimore with her hubby for Memorial Day - and she turned me on to a delicious red wine called Malbec (I'm not much of a wine connoisseur). I had a glass of that with dinner, which tasted great and helped mellow me out after a long day.
Hanging at the Baltimore Harbor with my Little and her hubby (Karen & Jason).
2 pots o' goodnessSpicy Zucchini Potato Stew
- 1-2 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 med zucchinis, thinly sliced
- 2 Fresno (I could only find Anaheim) chili peppers, thinly sliced
- 2 cubanelle peppers, thinly sliced
- 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
- 5-6 baby potatoes, thinly sliced
- 2-3 garlic cloves, sliced
- 2 sprigs of rosemary (I did a couple dashes of dried)
- 2 sprigs of thyme (I did a couple dashes of dried)
- salt & pepper
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 28 oz can Italian style tomatoes
- 2 cups veggie broth
Pour an even coating of olive oil in the bottom of a (very) large pot, heat over medium heat. Add all the veggies and spices from zucchini through salt & pepper. Stir and cover, allow to simmer and wilt down.
Roast the red bell pepper over open flames. If you never done this before, it's actually really easy - turn gas stove on to low/med heat and set pepper on the burner, turning every few minutes until it's charred. (If you have an electric stove, use the broiler in your oven.)
Chop the roasted red pepper and add to mix, along with veg broth and tomatoes. (I added some, but not all, of the juice in the tomatoes.) Continue cooking, uncovered until the sauce thickens and veggies all soften. But don't cook so long that things end up mushy - you want the veggies intact.
I sprinkled a little nutritional yeast (you can use Parmesan cheese if you hate animals -- I kid, I kid!!) and dried parsley. Serves many ...like, I'll be eating this for a week+.
