Never Fear Lunch Again!

Ok, so I didn't have a main/cover photo for this post. Forgive me, please. That was my bunch of hair to donate. 12 inches of hair.

Lunch, you know that meal that you scramble to get together before running out the door at 8am? Or you have simply given up getting it together and now resort to something like Subway. This is the meal that a lot of people neglect. They go with the same old sandwich, or cheese and crackers, or in my case... shove a few pieces of fruit in my backpack and that would be my lunch. But with very small amount of effort and a few essentials from your pantry, you can make some really really good lunches.

The idea of having a post on 5 days of lunches came from a comment that a friend made while we were studying. I pulled out my sandwich, you can smell the peanut butter, then she asked "what is that red thing in your sandwich?". It was apple slices. She then went on saying that she is so tired of the lunches that she packs and it's just so much easier to buy something on campus or just suck it up and eat the same old boring thing again. So came this idea: 5 days worth of lunches with pantry materials. 

To be honest, I'm kind of a hippocrate. I enjoyed myself very thoroughly this past week while I was eating delectable lunches. Now, the chances are very high that I will return to my same old stare at my fridge to see what I can bring, then leave the house with a frozen muffin and some pieces of fruit. 

Enough of the blabbering, let's get to the main ingredient. Literally.

These are simple ingredients, easily substituted. Things you SHOULD have in your pantry, or easy essentials to get from the store.

Spinach

Lemon

Peanut Butter--> can be other nut butters as well

Olive oil (or any type of vegetable oil)

Tuna--> for my vegetarian friends: chickpeas. I know you have cans of that stuff.

Bread

Quinoa--> or any type of pasta, depending on what you're doing with it

Garlic

With the quinoa, you can cook up a batch of it and leave it in the fridge for the week. And when you're mixing up things with quinoa, it is so versatile, you can practically add anything. 

Now I made a spinach pesto, another kind of spinach pesto. No nuts, no cheese. Just spinach, garlic and lemon.

Spinch Pesto

2 cups spinach (packed)

1/4 olive oil

2 cloves garlic

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp salt

pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients in a blender. Tip: don't add all the spinach at once, otherwise it's too dry to blend. Let it blend up and puree with some of the liquid first then go on and add the rest.

Makes 1/2- 3/4 cup.

Day 1- Quinoa with Spinach pesto

Quinoa

Spinach pesto

Add spinach pesto to quinoa to your taste-liking. I also added some strawberries and walnuts. Feel free to throw in anything from your kitchen!

Day 2- Peanut Buttered-Tuna Sandwich

Tuna

Peanut butter

Spinach

Bread

1. Melt 1 1/2 tbsp of peanut butter in the microwave

2. Mix the peanut butter with 1/4 cup of tuna

I also added some curry powder, ground ginger and pepper to the mix. 

Now put the sandwich together!

Day 3- PB and Pesto Sandwich

Peanut butter

Pesto

Bread

Simple enough. Spread each on a slice of bread. Put them together. Voila! You have yourself a gourmet peanut butter sandwich. I know it sounds like an odd mixture but trust me, it was really tasty. Added to my version of this was apple slices!

Day 4- Tuna and Spinach Quinoa Salad

Tuna

Spinach

Quinoa

1. Chop your spinach into thinner slices

2. Mix the ingredients together.

I also added the spinach pesto to this since I had tons of it left still. Then I also added dried cranberries and later on some kiwi as well. Throw in whatever you like! Let your creativity flow!

Day 5- GRAND FINALE- Tuna-Quinoa-Pesto on Peanut Buttered Bread

When I say throw everything together, I mean throw everything together.

Tuna

Quinoa

Spinach pesto

Peanut butter

Spinach

Bread

1. Mix together some tuna, quinoa and pesto. Make sure it binds together well. More tuna, less quinoa.

2. Spread peanut butter on your bread.

3. Lay on those beautiful spinach leaves

4. Put the tuna mixture on top 

5. Lay on the other slice of bread

There you have it. 5 days of innovative lunches. You can say they're borderline gourmet, or gourmet. Pesto makes everything gourmet, or so I'd like to think. Surely, there're so many other variety of things you can do with those simple ingredients. Experiment with it a little. Have fun with it. And I guarantee you will look forward to eating lunch again.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi is Simple... Right?

Butternut Squash Gnocchi tossed with Succulent Goodness

Today was productive. In terms of cooking anyway. School work? That went nowhere. In the past 2 days, I've only read 50 pages. I'm half way through. This is for abnormal psychology. Love the course, not so much the readings.

Rosemary Infused Olive Oil

I made a lot of things today. Well, I felt like I did. Here is a list:
1. Rosemary infused olive oil
2. Roasted yellow pepper
3. Roasted grape tomatoes
4. Roasted butternut squash (I guess this is part of the gnocchi)
5. Spinach pesto
6. Butternut squash gnocchi
7. Ginger apple butter (currently in progress)

Not everything turned out the way it was supposed to. The rosemary infused olive oil didn't. It is lacking in rosemary flavours. I'll try it again another time. Everything else turned out pretty good. Well, the apple butter is still in progress. But it smells lovely in here right now. Technically I am triple-tasking right now. Writing the blog, skyping my mom, and making apple butter. Props right? Right?

In today's blog, I will feature the roasting and the gnocchi. The spinach pesto is for Valentine's day. I got myself a valentine, not that valentine's day is really a big deal.

ROASTED YELLOW PEPPER

Smells good, looks good, tastes good.

Oven temp: 425F
Total Time: 30 min

Yellow peppers
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat the oven!
2. Slice the yellow peppers into big wedges
3. Place yellow peppers onto lined baking sheet, be sure they don't overlap
4. Drizzle olive oil over. Just a drizzle.
5. Salt and pepper them peppers.
6. Bake at 425F for 25 min. I put my oven on convection and put it on the top shelf because I was also roasting the butternut squash. This gave the peppers a nice colour too.


ROASTED GRAPE TOMATOES

They're good not roasted... they''re amazing after roastage

Oven temp: 425F
Total time: 20 min

Grape tomatoes
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper


1. Preheat the oven!
2. Slice the grape tomatoes in half
3. Place the grape tomatoes on a baking pan, or lined baking sheet, be sure they don't overlap
4. Drizzle olive oil over. Just a drizzle.
5. Salt and pepper. Don't be light on this, it really brings out the flavour a lot!
6. Bake at 425F for 15 min.


BUTTERNUT SQUASH GNOCCHI
Inspired by Jerry James Stone on http://www.treehugger.com/easy-vegetarian-recipes/butternut-squash-gnocchi.html

Pre-cooked gnocchi

Total time: it's a half day project, but not working on it all the time
Total working time: 40 min (plus clean up... making it 90 min for me)
Serves: 6 (I think, I have a bunch left over because I'm eating solo)

Ingredients
1 small butternut squash --> use total 2 cups in the gnocchi
1 1/2 cup GF flour (or just normal flour) + 1/2 cup for dusting
1 egg
1 cup finely grated parmesan
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Roasting the Squash

4 quadrants. Don't worry about the liquid in there, it went away after it cooled.

1. Preheat oven to 425F
2. Slice squash into 4 quadrants: widthwise by the bulb part then length wise. Scrape out the seeds inside
3. Put in a baking dish with 1/8 inch of water on the bottom
4. Over with foil and bake at 425 in middle rack for 1 hour.
5. COMPLETELY COOL THE SQUASH! (or you end up cooking the egg)

Making the Gnocchi

Dough- pre-mixing

Dough- done-mixing

1. Take 2 cups of the roasted butternut squash, mash well.
2. Combine butternut squash, grated parmesan, egg, nutmeg, salt and 1/2 cup flour.
3. As you work the mixture, gradually add in the rest of the flour. You may not need to add all of the flour, depending on how wet your squash was.
4. Once the mixture is still wet to touch but can start to form individual ball forms and hold, try one in a pot of bubbling water (don't want it to be boiling boiling, but bubbling and hot). If it doesn't fall apart, you're good. If it does, add more flour.
5. Flour your working surface really well. Flour a plate or something to hold the uncooked gnocchi
6. Take a portion of the dough (it will be really wet) and roll into log shape in flour like so:

Take one: dirty hands on camera

Take two: clean hands on camera... roll with spatula

7. Use a fork, or just your fingers, to form evenly sized balls of dough. They do expand quite a bit so probably grape tomato size is good. Set aside on floured plate.
8. Carefully, one at a time, place in a pot of bubbling water.
9. Gnocchi is ready when it floats to the top!

Wait for them to float!

10. Carefully scoop out and let strain on a strainer.
11. Toss with your choice of light sauce. I used rosemary infused olive oil and also tossed it with some of the roasted pepper and grape tomatoes.

Other possibilities:
- melted butter lemon sauce
- olive oil with anything else you want in it
- light cream sauce

Basically anything that's on the light side. The gnocchi is quite sweet of butternut squash flavours on their own and it's important to still allow that flavour (and the nutmeg too) to shine through.

A good gnocchi should have a bit of a bite to it, not squishy or hard:)

If you want to freeze any left overs... Freeze before you cook it! Also make sure you freeze them individually first, not touching each other before putting them in a bag like me I did=)

Frozen left overs!

And just to answer the question from the post title. Yes, butternut squash gnocchi is simple. It's elegant and oh so tastey. Enjoy!