Mung Bean Hash

Vegetarian dish, and a great way to use up that bag of dried mung beans I know you have sitting in the back of your cupboard.

1 Cup dry mung beans
2 cups diced potatoes
2 carrots, diced
4 stalks of celery, diced
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
6-8 mushrooms, sliced

Seasonings to taste:
Balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper
season salt
olive oil


Cook 1 cup of dry mung beans according to package directions. (Usually boil them in twice the amount of water for 10 minutes and simmer for an hour)
Add olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar


Saute' the rest of the ingredients in olive oil in one big pot.
Add one ingredient at a time according to how long it takes to cook.
Like, potatoes first, then celery, carrots, onion, bell pepper, mushroom in that order.

Season it to taste.

Normally, I would be tempted to throw this all into a crock pot. However, the vegetables are so much better when they're not over-cooked and still crunchy.
Also, I liked to dice everything, so every ingredient is the same size. It seems more appealing that way.

French Onion Soup

It's surprising how many things you can come up with for dinner when you're running out of groceries. I had a few small potatoes left, some onions that were going to go bad soon, and a bunch of Herbalife soup mix samples. So I made the above.

Slice up potatoes and throw in crock pot
Season to taste (s&p, garlic, dried onions)
Slice up onions and add to pot
Since I had them, I mixed up about 8 packs of soup mix (each contains about 12g protein) with hot water (about 32 oz) You can use regular chicken broth.
Pour it in the pot and stir.

After an hour of cooking on high (depending on how hard the potatoes) it's ready to serve.
Shred up some romano or other kind of cheese and put a thick layer of it on top.

Since I used protein soup mix for mine, it's like a meatless dinner that will fill you up.

Salmon and Potatoes

You'll have to use your own cooking experience for the details on this one. In parenthesis is what I personally did, and it turned out pretty good.

Preheat oven to (350)
Slice potatoes and add to bottom of 9x9 pan
Season to taste (salt, pepper, garlic)
Chop up onions and cover potatoes
Splash it with Braggs Liquid Aminos
Drizzle with olive oil
Cover with a handful of chopped fresh parsley
Place salmon filets on top
Season to taste (mine was preseasoned from TJ's)
Bake for 20-30 minutes

Lamb Stew/Roast

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb lamb stew meat (or roast)
1 lb sliced potatoes
1 large onion
1 lb baby carrots (or sliced adults)
1-2 beers
Fresh Thyme (handful)
Salt & Pepper
Garlic powder
Balsamic vinegar

Directions:
Brown lamb meat and season. Throw in crock pot.
Add potatoes, sliced onion, carrots and beers (2 beers for it to be more 'stewy')
Season everything to taste.
Slow cook 8-10 hours.
Add fresh thyme in the last hour as well.

Pot Roast

It was cold and rainy today. I thought it was a perfect day to make pot roast. Even though I would have made pot roast no matter what the weather was.

I always use my crock pot. I throw in potatoes on the bottom, then the veggies, then the meat. Usually, I use carrots and celery, but I had other stuff in my fridge.

Here's what I did:

Brown 1 lb beef cut into quarters. Salt, pepper and garlic powder. Set aside.
Fry sliced potatoes (2 potatoes) Throw in crock pot
Fry eggplant slices. Throw in crock pot
Fry one onion, sliced. Throw in crock pot.
Put meat on top. Close the lid. Cook on high 4-5 hours.

Make sure you season every thing you add to taste.

Also, with a crock pot, try not to open the lid and peek. Each time you open it adds 15 more minutes of cook time. Plus, opening the lid helps the juices and flavor escape. You wouldn't want that.

If you don't like how your pot roast turned out, you can save it. Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar to each serving and mix it up. That will fix anything. Or ketchup, but that's a little too obvious.

Potato Moussaka

Moussaka is the dish in the back.

If you can score yourself a pound of ground lamb, and an eggplant, you're likely to have all the other ingredients in the kitchen already.

I always order Moussaka at the Greek restaurant. Mine tasted a little more American, because I used potatoes instead of bread crumbs to line the bottom of the pan.

1 small eggplant
1 lb ground lamb
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
olive oil
1/4 tsp garlic powder, or one clove of fresh
1/2 cup red wine
1 small can tomato paste
1 large potato (or 3 slices of bread, crumbled)
1/4 cup white cheese (I used Chihuahua cheese, even though it's Mexican)
White Sauce (recipe follows)
Parmesian cheese

Brown mean in oil
add onion, green pepper, salt & pepper
Add wine, tomato paste 1/2 of cheese

Cut eggplant in 1/4 inch slices, quarter slices, brown in oil
Bread crumbs on bottom of 9 inch pan (or thinly sliced potatoes)
Eggplant goes next, then put the meat mixture on top.

White Sauce:
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cup milk
salt, pepper & nutmeg
remaining cheese
2 beaten eggs

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add each ingrediant, one by one after the previous ingredient is mixed well.
Stir until thick.
Pour half of the sauce over your eggplant and potatoes. Then add the meat. Pour the rest of the sauce on top.