Mini Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

I have never made a lemon meringue pie.  I thought I'd give it a try last weekend at the request of my brother.  But we had a lot of people coming over for a barbecue.  It's not easy to serve a lemon meringue pie, and I didn't think one pie would be enough for that many people.

Cupcakes?  Self serve.  Mini cupcakes?  The perfect sized bite.

Mini Lemon Meringue Cupcakes
from How Does She?

Adjustments I made from the original recipe:

• I did not use cupcake liners.  There weren't any mini ones at the grocery store, and I really don't like to use excess paper products.  I borrowed a seriously non-stick mini cupcake pan from my mom and they popped right out, no problem.  
• I did not use a food processor to pulse the lemon peel and sugar together.  Instead I zested the lemons completely and just mixed it with the sugar.  The filling turned out just fine this way.  
• I only baked the cupcakes for 15 minutes.  My oven is always quicker than what recipes say.  Check on your cupcakes after 10 and 15 minutes to see if they are done.  
• I put holes in the center of the cupcakes after they cooled to pipe in the lemon filling.  To do this I used the long end of one of those pour tops they put on liquor (or olive oil) bottles.  It's the best option I had.  
• If you choose to put your finished cupcakes under the broiler, do not leave the oven and check every 30 seconds to avoid burning the tops.  I left mine in for one minute and any longer would have been too much.  

Stepping Away

The blog has been pretty quiet since the beginning of 2013 and here's my attempt to try and explain why:

1. My priorities need rerouting- This year has been a tough one.  My schedule and focus changes every 6 weeks as I change rotations.  A little part of me gets knocked down every Sunday when I have to drive away from my boyfriend or put a mug of coffee in his hand and wave goodbye as he drives off.  Those two things, though the most important parts of my life, have put more stress on me than I would have imagined.  I can't change where we live, and I can't change the medical school curriculum, but I can simplify other parts of my life, including the planning and time that goes into the parts of this blog.

Costa Rica, Sunset

2. I am rethinking how much information I'd like out there about myself- Watching the news surrounding Boston has opened my eyes to how much information can be gained about a person just from looking at their various social media profiles.  I've made snarky, sarcastic comments about how pointless it is for people to update so often on Facebook, or post every thought and feeling that pops into their mind on Twitter for the world to see, but sometimes I find myself doing these exact things that I complain about.  Going forward I want to ask myself each time I formulate an update "Does this serve a real social purpose?" including sharing stories or personal information on the blog.

Summit Lake

3. I need less screen time- Waiting in line?  Check Facebook.  Bored at work?  Browse Pinterest.  Friend went to the bathroom while you're at lunch?  See if there's anything new on Instagram.  Yes, that is me, more often than I'd like to admit.  Part of the whole simplify-parts-of-my-life goal is to also detach from the social media apps on my phone and computer, because if the screen is in front of my face I'm usually doing something non-productive too frequently for my liking.

Outer Banks, NC

4. The vision is on hold- I started the blog to share veggie recipes, discuss food ecology, and point out where and how I was getting locally sourced food.  There hasn't been a whole lot of time to blog and even less time to seek out local food at this point in my life.  I have found myself shying away from those goals just to get some kind of recipe on the page to keep up with it, forgoing the original purpose of The Veggie Doc.

Ellacoya Beach, NH

It might sound like I'm being really critical of myself or making excuses, but if I've gained any wisdom (outside of medicine) from medical school, it's that stepping back and taking time for yourself is really important to be able to do.  I want to simplify life a little bit right now, before I get tremendously overwhelmed.  The Veggie Doc isn't over; I'm just stepping away for a while.  When I have the chance to reconnect with the locavore world and cook the way I want to, I'll pick right back up.

Until then!

Jersey Shore

It was only until this last photo that I realized all of my favorite, peaceful places are on the water.

"The waves of the sea help me get back to me."

Crock Pot Buffalo Chicken

There are a lot of food disagreements in this couple.

I love cheese.  Ryan only likes melted cheese and he's lactose intolerant so I avoid using it when I feel like it can.

I would be happy to eat vegetarian for the rest of my life.  Ryan would not.

I have suffered from IBS for going on 3 years and have to monitor what I eat and how much of it to avoid a painful crisis.  Ryan has a stomach of steel and can eat anything in any quantity and feel fine.  Except that one time he went into a pancake coma.  Oh and that dairy problem again.

Most of the time we work around all of these different factors.  Sometimes I sneak goat cheese into cajun fettucini alfredo and it's so good he doesn't notice.  Sometimes I make "ricotta" out of tofu and spices to make veggie lasagna and he still doesn't notice.

But we both agreed on this one and I didn't even have to sneak:

Crock Pot Buffalo Chicken [sandwiches]
you'll need:

• 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 bottle of Frank's Red Hot- Buffalo 
• Homemade ranch spice blend (see below)
• 2 T butter
• Whole wheat hamburger buns

Homemade Ranch Spice Blend

• 1 T dried parsley
• 1 t dried dill
• 1/2 t garlic powder
• 1/2 t onion powder
• 1/4 t black pepper
• 1/4 t dried chives
• pinch of salt

A moment on my ranch spice blend.  I love ranch dressing on salads, wings, veggies, I've even dunked my pizza in it thanks to spending four years learning ridiculous eating habits from the native penn staters.  This recipe called for a packet of ranch seasoning.  I picked it up at the store and the first ingredient was "malodextrin."  I don't even know what that is, so I put it back and decided to spend a few extra dollars on buying the spices to make my own.  (FYI, malodextrin is some weird derivative of corn or cornstarch-- oh hey corn subsidy, just another way to make mass quantities of cheap crap).

So anyway, I made my own ranch.  It's totally worth it and I won't buy the bottle of dressing again either, I'll just mix this with greek yogurt or mayo.

Place chicken, bottle of hot sauce, and spice blend into the crock pot.  Cook on low for 4 hours (if chicken defrosted) or 6 hours (if chicken frozen).

After above specified amount of time, take 2 forks and shred the chicken.  Add 2 T of butter to crock pot, stir, and cook on low for another hour.

Serve on whole wheat buns!

I added some caramelized onions on top and made a size of zucchini ribbon salad.

We inhaled this.  I will absolutely make it again.  It would be perfect as a buffalo chicken wrap as well with some lettuce and tomato and extra ranch dressing.

Again, I highly recommend making that ranch blend!

Veg out!
~Mere

Test Kitchen: Veggie Burger

Oh hey there!  I've resurfaced from all the pediatric illnesses that I managed to catch.

I must admit I'm not much of an original recipe creator.  I'm more of a recipe tweaker.  I enjoy trying and altering recipes that I find on other blogs, cookbooks, and cooking magazines using what I have in my kitchen and making substitutes for ingredients I don't like.

The recipe I most recently "tweaked" was a veggie burger I've been hoping to make from Feast on the Cheap (original recipe here).  I've made veggie burgers in the past-- maybe it's my crappy food processor or lack of a good recipe, but they never turn out as wonderful as I hope-- usually crumbly and dry.  I usually turn to Trader Joe's or Dr. Praeger's brands for my veggie burger fix and always have them in the freezer.

Despite my previous failures, I had faith in the recipe above based on the fact that it includes all of my favorite foods: sweet potatoes, quinoa, black beans, peppers, onions, and garlic.  How could it turn out badly?  It didn't.  It turned out wonderfully.

Sweet Potato Black Bean Quinoa Burgers 
adapted from Feast on the Cheap

• 1/2 cup quinoa
• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 red onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded, minced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 small sweet potato, peeled and diced into quarter inch cubes
• 1 15 oz can of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 1/2 T of tomato paste
• 1/2 cup frozen corn kernels
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of Creole Seasoning Blend (from the Savory Spice Shop)
• Sprinkle of salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup oat bran

Begin by bringing the quinoa and 1 cup of water to a boil, then turn to low, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.  At the same time, cover sweet potato cubes with water in a pot and boil also for 10 minutes.  

While cooking your sweet potatoes and quinoa, heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add onions and jalapeno.  Cook for 5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  

Scrape onion/pepper/garlic mixture into a small bowl and set aside.  Then add the sweet potato and black beans to the skillet.  Mash with a potato masher until they create a paste.  

From here on, start adding the rest of the ingredients, mixing well after each addition until thoroughly combined.  

Let mixture cool until it is safe to handle without burning your hands.  It makes about 8 large burgers.  Place burgers on a baking sheet, cover with saran, and refrigerate overnight or for 4-6 hours.  

You can cook these burgers one of two ways.  The original recipe recommends cooking in a pan for 6-7 minutes on each side.  I tried this, with just a mist of olive oil in the pan, and it got a little burnt in the center (damn electric stove).  So my personal recommendation is to bake the burgers in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through.  I did this for the remaining 7 burgers that did not burn.  

After the burgers cooled completely, I stashed three in the fridge for dinner this week and put the rest away in the freezer.  I ate two the first night and I've been microwaving them for a minute for dinner every night this week.  Love 'em.

Here's one wrapped in a corn tortilla with avocado, hot sauce, and a side of asparagus.

Here's another topped with avocado with a side of broccoli and sweet potato fries (Alexia brand, loving those too!)

Please let me know how these turn out if you decide to try and make them!  If you make any substitutes that work out well, tell me!  If you have another great veggie burger recipe I'd love for you to share the link in the comments section.  

Veg out! 

~ Mere

Update: March 2013

I've been majorly absent from this blog for the past few weeks.  I blame the pediatrics rotation.

First I caught a really bad stomach bug that had me out of commission for 3 days, subsisting on a diet of crackers, applesauce, toast, and bananas.

Then I had a pretty normal week but I traveled an hour each way to get to the peds office I was working at... no time or energy for adequate food prep.

Then I got slammed with some kind of illness in my last week of peds that turned into pneumonia.  That left me with no desire to eat and even though I'm all finished with my antibiotics, I'm still hardly eating let alone cooking anything blog worthy.

We have also been traveling through New Hampshire and Vermont to ski and visit friends and there hasn't been much time on the weekends to cook.

But today is the first day of spring (despite the fact that I dug my car out of a foot of snow this morning) and for the next few weekends I will be at home, hopefully hungry, and ready to cook with whatever early spring veggies I can find.  Get ready!  The Veggie Doc will return...

Root Vegetable Pie

This was written in February of 2012, and I never got around to posting it.  It is the perfect recipe for winter vegetables, though, so I am sharing it now a year later!

Last week I got a giant CSA delivery: carrots, beets, rutabaga, winter greens, eggs, oats, apple cider vinegar, potatoes... and then I went snowboarding for 3 days and didn't even think about developing any new recipes.  So this week I'm pulling recipes from a few of my favorite bloggers to use up all of my vegetable loot.

Tuesday night I made Emily's Harvest Root Vegetable Pie I did make adjustment's to her original recipe, and here they are:

• 1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 3/4 cup Earth Balance (vegan butter)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 5-6 tbsp cold water (as needed)
• 5 cups of diced root vegetables (your choice!)- I used carrots, beets, white potatoes, and parsnips.
• olive oil (as needed)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced- I used two cloves because I did not use as many mushrooms.
• 2 shallots, minced- I used a very small red onion because it's all I had.  And I love onions. 
• 4 cups diced mushrooms- I used 2 cups, it was all I had.  It didn't affect the recipe at all. 
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock- I used about 1/4 cup of red wine to cook the mushrooms instead. 
• 4 cups cubed sweet potatoes- I used 2 cups.  My pie dish didn't look large enough to handle 4 cups. 
• 1/2 cup almond milk- Decreased to 1/4 cup since I cut the amount of sweet potatoes in half.
• 1 tbsp Earth Balance
• salt and pepper (to taste)

I tried to capture each of the four steps to making this pie:

The mushrooms (smelled so good I almost ate them straight out of the pan)...  

The roasted vegetables... 

The sweet potatoes...

...The finished product!

I'm hoping to make this again in the near future and update the pictures since these seem a little blurry and I'd like to take some photos of putting the pie together.

Vegetable Strudel

It's been a while since this veggie doc posted anything about veggies lately.  I've been in sort of a rut with cooking.  Veggie are expensive in the winter, I'm definitely craving heavy comfort foods, and my time has been limited.  Then of course I celebrated Valentine's Day this weekend with Ryan, and that involved exchanging candy, homemade nutella, and blondies, among a few other pretty things:

So for the sake of our health and the sugar overload we endured, I decided a veggie heavy recipe was in order this weekend.

Vegetable Strudel

you'll need:

• 1 box of phyllo dough sheets
• 1 large eggplant
• 2 zucchini
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 can artichoke hearts, drained
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
• Parmesan cheese

First, read your box of phyllo dough to plan on taking it out a few hours before you start cooking.  If you don't, you'll end up slightly frustrated and on the verge of tears as you attempt to defrost it in the microwave but end up with sheets that stick together in some spots, forcing you to piece together sheets as you go with the scraps you can save while your boyfriend stands along side of you trying to keep you from actually crying over something as silly as dinner.... he's really a saint sometimes.  

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. 

Chop all of your veggies into a small dice.  Put in large bowl, drizzle with olive oil, mix, and spread on a large (or 2 small) baking sheets.

Roast for about 20 minutes until veggies are starting to soften.  

When your phyllo has reached room temp and veggies are done roasting, you can begin prepping.  You'll need 6 sheets per strudel.  

As you are working, keep unused phyllo dough covered with damp rag or paper towel.

Lay one sheet down and brush or spray with a little bit of olive oil.  Sprinkle some parmesan on top.  Then add next layer of phyllo.  Repeat the olive oil/parmesan with each layer until you have used 6 layers of phyllo.

Spoon some of the vegetable mix into the center of your phyllo stack, leaving about 1-2 inches border around the edges.  

Fold the short edges up on each end and dab with some olive oil at the edges to help it stay put. 

Then begin rolling your strudel together from the longer side.

Place seam side down in a baking dish.  Repeat to make a second veggie strudel.  Brush top with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake for 20 minutes, then let cool for 5.

Cut into pieces and serve with tomato sauce for dipping.

I made this a few months ago as an appetizer for a party and it was gobbled up in minutes.  I've been waiting to have the time to make it again.  It was great for dinner and we ate the second strudel for lunch the next day.  Ryan said he loved the flavor and the crunchiness on top from the salt and pepper.

Stay tuned for a dish made with winter vegetables later in the week!