Recipe for hot weather #3

Gazpacho!

Just the name sounds like summer, doesn’t it? It’s super-easy to make (or as Brüno, who I just saw at the movies would say: uber-easy), vegetarian, healthy, simple and cheap. Let’s go!

Ingredients (for 4 servings):

• 125 g toast (approximately 5 slices)
• 50 ml vegetable stock
• 240 g canned / strained tomatoes
• 25 ml olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 cucumber
• 1 bell pepper
• 1/2 onion
• red wine vinegar
• Tabasco

Preparation:

Rip up the toast and let soak in the vegetable stock for a while.

Chop up the cucumber, bell pepper and onion. Toss them in a blender. Add garlic, strained tomatoes and olive oil. Blend them all to a frothy pulpy mix, not too liquid. Spice up with mixed crushed pepper, red wine vinegar and Tabasco (careful with this one – it seeps in more than you think at first!). Set the mix in the fridge to cool.

Heat some oil in a pan, then roast the toast (hihi) till it’s crispy and golden-brown.

Fill the “soup” in soup bowls, sprinkle with roasted toast, serve, enjoy.

Little note on the side: you might want to roast the onions beforehand as well, or at least make sure the person in bed with you that night eats this as well. Because the raw onion breath in the morning – phew!

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty… Man, can I not stand this heat. I apologize in advance for all you people out there who have just been waiting for this weather and love the sun and whatnot – but for someone like me, who was born in a freakin’ blizzard, for chrissake, this is unbearable. I can’t concentrate, everything is greasy, bugs everywhere and I have to think of skin cancer every time I’m in a stray of that burning furnace of a planet (wait – is the sun even a planet? or is it a star? see – I can’t think straight!).

Another byproduct of the humidity, besides not being able to move, is not being able to eat. Or not wanting to. Not that I don’t get hungry, it’s just that the appetite goes away when I think of any food that could match the temperatures. And I’m not about to cook and create more heat. So this past week-end I decided I’d try some salad instead. The problem here is that thanks to a childhood trauma, I’m not a big fan of the leafy green stuff. Enter: two recipes for salads, without salad!

Recipe 1: Mom’s mix

This is a salad “created” by my mom, one of those evenings when she didn’t feel like cooking but still had to eat something. Traditionally, things were just pretty much piled together. But: it’s tasty and filling!

Ingredients:

• tomatoes
• mozzarella
• beetroot
• lentils

Preparation:

I usually use cherry tomatoes (‘cuz they’re cuter) and just cut them in half, then chop up the mozzarella in uneven chunks (important for the taste!), buy pre-sliced beetroot (with a little juice) and mix them all in a bowl. Cook the lentils (red ones need about 10 minutes, green ones need 30), let them cool down and add to the bowl. Douse with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, toss everything up, and voila! Thanks to the proteins in the lentils, this is a pretty satiable dish, yet light, and very low-carb! Also suited for vegetarians.

Recipe 2: Greek mix

Last Thursday, The BF and I finally booked our post-diploma vacation: two weeks on the isle of Crete! Sea, beach and sun – here we come! As a next step, I bought a travel guide, to get to know the island a little. In there were also typical local dishes, including this (rather known) salad mix. Appropriate, since the Greek weather is also hot and Mediterranean food is known to be healthy. Sadly, I just read yesterday that there was an earthquake (5,9 on the Richter Scale) on Crete, although no damage has been reported. Can’t wait!

Ingredients:

• tomatoes
• feta
• cucumber

Preparation:

Cut all three constituents into nice, clean cut, even squares (a feast for the eyes!). Mix everything in a big bowl, sprinkle with a mix of green, red and black pepper, add chopped or dried basil and thyme. Douse with olive oil and red vine vinegar, toss up. Serve with a side of Indian naan (mine was with garlic and cilantro) for filling and saucing. Not as fun or strong as the first one, but it gets the job done and is made very quickly. Enjoy!

Ads against reality

I came across a project of a team called “Pundo3000″, and I’m not sure what their purpose is, because their projects go in every direction, but this one I found interesting. They photographed different food packages and compared the product to what was depicted. See for yourself:

If you want to check out the whole project, go here. You can see all 100 pictures. Some come fairly close, but others are downright disgusting. Especially those ready-made, microwave meals – those are plain nasty. Whichever way they go, it sure makes you think about all the junk that we put into our systems. And how media (especially commercials) distort our image of reality.