Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Vegies and "Meatball" Casserole

This is a quick and easy recipe if there are leftover patties or "meatballs" in the freezer. From my Black Bean Burger Ball recipe, I had made 10 patties to experiment with some kind of casserole. Well, tonight I concocted something that's much like meatloaf but is well balanced with lightly-cooked-but-still-crisp vegies. The "meat" patties soaked up the vegie juices and some of the gravy flavors and the dish came out pretty good, although different than I expected. I expected the white sauce gravy to soak down and around the vegies and make something like a vegie-primavera casserole with "meat" patties, but instead the white sauce sealed in the vegie juices and made a great egg-like battery topping. Unique!

White Sauce

1/3 cup cashews (soaked 1 hr and soak water tossed)
1/3 zucchini
1 big chunk ginger
1 stick celery
4 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1 1/2 cups water
sea salt

Blend all ingredients in a BlendTec until smooth. Will be a light warm yellow.

Vegie "Patty" Casserole

10 "meat" patties
2/3 zucchini, thinly sliced
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 small firm tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 head broccoli, cut in small pieces
1/3 head cauliflower, cut in small pieces
mixed herbs, for garnishing the top

Prep the vegies and lay vegies in layers with "meat" patties in the middle of the layers. Pour the white sauce over the vegies, allowing sauce to seep into crevices. Sprinkle the white sauce with mixed herbs. Put into oven and bake for 40 minutes on 350F.

I served with a serving of mixed rice (not pictured), cucumber salad with parsley, and guacamole and rosehip sauces for the rice.
Cucumber salad: 3 peeled and sliced cucumbers, several stems of parsley, 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil, 2 cloves garlic minced, sea salt.
Guacamole sauce: 2 avocadoes mashes with the same lemon-olive oil dressing as the cucumber salad.
Rosehip sauce: 1 heaping teaspoon dry cut and de-seeded rosehips soaked in 2 tablespoons water for 8 hours, then add a little lemon and garlic for mildly tangy sauce.




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2 comments:

  1. GoodheartedMay 13, 2016 at 1:31 PM

    Hello Cheryl, the most confusing & conflicting diet is nothing other than candida diet. Most say kefir or sauerkraut are actually good for candida diet. but you are saying anything fermented is not good Same thing with apple cider vinegar. I have been on the candida diet for 3 weeks now & i am planning to stay on it for as long as it takes but i have been eating the 3 items i mentioned . Am i making a mistake?

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    Replies
    1. Cheryl MagnantMay 13, 2016 at 2:47 PM

      Wow, loaded question! I still have not figured out the answer to this. Information all over the web is that apple cider vinegar helps get rid of candida, but then I read that fermentation exacerbates the condition. Argh! I do know that my joints ache when I have too much, or too much kimchi, even lightly fermented kimchi ... so much for "good" bacteria helping me. I got a very good answer (still not 100% satisfied with it) when I went to Hippocrates Health Institute which advocates the raw food diet/lifestyle. Before I could ask very specifically about the ACV was told that it would increase candida overgrowth. Ah-ha! That was what I was reading between the lines. Then why all the misinformation on the internet?

      Maybe you know about Anne Wigmore who started the fore-runner of Hippocrates health institute and the trend for eating lightly fermented foods to boost the immune system. Her fermentation (rejuvelac) which is still all over the Internet and her publicized belief that lightly fermented foods boosted the immune system are now not supported at all by HHI, because they found that rejuvelac doesn't support the immune system but causes complications. They now call it rejuve-rot, but they can't counteract all the years and their own early years of promoting rejuvelac.

      Kefir? Yummy stuff, but it's dairy which means it has lactose which is a sugar, and dairy is also phlegm promoting. I know people say there's another bacteria involved but also look at the core ingredients. Candida thrives on sugars and is very happy to make phlegm. Sauerkraut I'd say is very much like rejuvelac.

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