Sliced-Veggie Lentil Soup

Make an easy, robust soup that contains four veggies (1/2 pound each of carrots, celery, zucchini, and yellow squash), a 1-pound bag of lentils, and ~8 cups of water and seasonings (or broth). This recipe is a process that's a cross between making my veggie pasta and my short-cut, convenient veggie lentil soup.

• The veggie pasta uses four kinds of fresh vegetables and other ingredients (pasta, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese).
• The convenient veggie lentil soup uses a vegetable dry-soup packet and lentils.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients (veggies, lentils, fajita seasoning) laid out
3. Washed, trimmed, and sliced veggies
4. Sliced veggies in soup pot
5. Boiling pot of veggies in front, saucepan of lentils in back
6. Soup, ready to ladle out

Implements

• Soup pot and lid
• Ladle
• Kitchen cooking spoon
• Strainer
• Saucepan
• Plate for veggie handling
• Paring knife
• Peeler for carrots
• Temporary bowls for sliced veggies if you want (not shown)

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound each of the following vegetables: carrots, celery, zucchini, yellow squash—washed, trimmed, and sliced
• 1 pound of dry lentils, rinsed and drained
• Seasoning (Fajita seasoning works well. Also ok to refer to lentil package recipe for info.)
• 8 cups water for soup—YMMV for the amount you eventually use.

Instructions

1. Wash, trim, and slice the veggies. (My own favorite slicing device is my Presto Salad Shooter, which I've had since the early 90s.)
2. Pour the veggies and water into the soup pot.
3. Wash and drain the lentils, pour into saucepan with enough water to cover them. (OK, I'm squishy about the total amount of water.)
4. Bring both pots to boil. If appropriate, watch to ensure contents don't boil over. Skim froth as necessary. Pour lentils into the soup pot; turn down heat to simmer. Season to taste.

Note: The heating process can take about an hour. The lentil bag instructions say bring to boil, reduce heat to low, cover the pot, and simmer for 35 minutes until lentils are tender.

Post-recipe Thoughts
The veggie preparation (wash, trim, slice) can take longer than anticipated—maybe an hour in addition to another hour for soup boil and simmer. Natural stages to break up the recipe process:

1. Preparing the veggies, lentils
2. Combining, heating, seasoning

As holidays are coming around, omnivores can easily incorporate use of leftover turkey or ham—

• Use broth that you make instead of just water (adjustment for salt as appropriate).
• Add leftover meat (2 cups or more of leftover turkey or ham pieces—you know, mostly oddball sizes that you chop into consistent bites or nibble sizes).

Suggestion: Freeze excess soup in suitable serving size containers so you don't feel compelled to consume it in consecutive days till done.

Crustless Quiche Mini-Loaves

This recipe is flourless, thus, gluten-free. The filling ingredients are—besides evaporated milk and eggs—coarse-cut ham pieces, cut-up sliced Swiss cheese, and thawed and drained, previously frozen zucchini. Because has so much sodium, I decided Swiss cheese would contribute less additional sodium than cheddar or other saltier cheese.

I had spotted an intriguing recipe for crustless mini-quiche that used cupcake cups. I started poking around for additional crustless quiches, which I list some links at the bottom of this article.

My inclination to modify kicked in. Why not make the quiche totally gluten-free? With my crusted quiches, I was always adding one or two tablespoons of flour. How about, instead of using cupcake pans, I finally use my mini-loaf pan that I've had for years and not yet used? The one ingredient that nudged me to make the recipe items all come together? Zucchini! More zucchini from the co-worker who had already given me lots of!

My pixstrip shows eight image areas:

1. Implements
2. separate bowls of zucchini, cheese, ham
3. zucchini, cheese, ham combined in a larger glass bowl
4. eggs, evaporated milk, spray oil
5. mini-loaf pan, prepped with the spray oil
6. Combo pic:
   1. mini-loaf pan with the filling mixture parceled out into the pan wells
   2. evaporated milk and eggs whisked together in the measuring cup pitcher
   3. closer-in pic of pitcher showing the total amount of fluid
7. baked mini-loaf quiches
8. baked mini-loaf quiches, one dished onto a plate (yum!)

Implements

• mini-loaf pan
• wide-mouth mixing bowl
• measuring cup pitcher or similar
• wire whisk
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons

Ingredients

• Solid fillings, listed in the order that the 2nd pic shows
• thin-sliced zucchini, previously frozen, then thawed and drained to weigh 10 oz. (YMMV if you use fresh zucchini.)
• 8 oz shredded Swiss cheese (I used thin-sliced Swiss cheese that I cut into smaller pieces.)
• 8 oz cubed ham or similar (I cut ham pieces into small-cube size.)
• Wet
• 4 eggs
• 12 oz evaporated milk

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Spray oil into the pan wells. You can do this step any time before you add the solid fillings or fluids into the pan.
3. Prepare the bowls of zucchini, Swiss cheese, and ham. Stir together in a bigger bowl.
4. Divvy up the fillings into the mini-loaf pan wells.
5. Beat eggs and evaporated milk together in a separate bowl. (I used a large, plastic measuring cup.) If desired, beat the eggs first, then blend in the milk.
6. Pour the egg-and-milk mixture into the pan wells, being careful not to overfill.
7. Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick.
8. Use a cooky spatula or similar to press a mini-quiche's sides away from pan walls, then lift it onto a plate.
9. Repeat extraction for each quiche. You can store the rest of them by wrapping each individually in food wrap and freezing them.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
When I tried extracting a mini-loaf quiche (gingerly using a cooky spatula and plastic knife), I noticed some fluid at the bottom of the pan well. It's a good thing I had drained the zucchini before I mixed and baked.

Each wrapped mini-quiche weighed about 4 ounces. Hmmm, snack size!

On occasion, I've thawed one a few hours or overnight in the fridge, then microwave it for about a minute, using a nearly ancient, low-power, 700-watt oven). I'd still get fluid, which I concluded came from the ham. (I've reheated ham slices from the same ham and wound up with fluid.)

One friend, more patient than I, reheated one mini-loaf quiche that I gave her. She placed hers inside a dish and lid set, and heated it in a regular oven. Hers came out fine, without extra fluid.

What did I do with the fluid? Sipped it like it was a broth. Tasty!

My recipe is versatile enough for using different ingredients, different baking shapes. You could even try pouring the ingredients into a pie shell for a regular quiche. For that matter, try the cupcake-sized wells as several recipes say to use.

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The following webpages attracted my attention while I searched for ideas for crustless, mini, and quiche:

Crustless Veggie Mini Quiches
This recipe uses Egg Beaters pourable eggs. Yields cupcake-sized quiches. Some good advice about ingredients:

Use your favorite vegetables in these mini quiches. Firm vegetables such as carrots, broccoli or asparagus will need to be cooked in the microwave a few minutes and then chopped finely so they will be tender at the end of the baking time.

Mini Loaf Pan Quiche Lorraine
This recipe calls for loads of ingredients, including flour. (This recipe makes crusted mini-loaves in individual pans.)

Crustless Quiche Lorraine
In contrast to the previous recipe I listed, this one makes a full-size quiche that calls for a pound of bacon, a whole onion, and six eggs. The author does mention using a 12" ceramic quiche pan. She suggests cutting the ingredients by about a third if using a pie pan.

Crustless Quiche for One
This crustless mini-quiche is flour-free and free of cow dairy products, using soy milk and soy creamer. Even though using vegan and soy cheese, the author suggests alternatives of mozzarella or cheddar.

Mini Crustless Quiches
The recipe looks heavy on the eggs (5) and light on the milk (1/4 cup). The yield is six muffin-size mini-quiches, but I can't tell the muffin well size. The author makes a statement about about types of veggies to use (similar to another sentiment):

you can add whatever veggies you like {or tolerate} or happen to have on hand in your home

Mini Quiche Recipe
This recipe is light on both the eggs (1) and milk (1/2 cup). She uses a mini-muffin pan for 15 crusted quiches.

Update, as of 9/10/2014

• Original zucchini amount: 2 cups prviously frozen zucchini, thawed to measure 2 cups
• Original baking time: about 30 minutes, then test for doneness

Zucchini Overflow?

Good harvest of zucchini lately? Gotten a bunch from people who have been harvesting them? An explanation for the overflow might be from wiseGEEK's "What is zucchini?" site. "Many markets carry this squash in the summer, and it is also a snap to grow at home, although some caution is advised, as the plants can produce way more fruit than one would think is physically possible."

A few times this month, a co-worker brought some gargantuan ones, and I've gleefully partaken of them, and passed on buying any in the store for awhile. I've grated or sliced these homegrown ones for recipes, or bagging and freezing after shredding and slicing, As of a week ago, I've baked two half batches of zucchini mini-muffins, varied by well shapes, and one batch of crustless ham-swiss-zucchini quiche.

For the next few articles, I'll publish three recipes for zucchini mini-muffins and one for the quiche.
The two half-batches of mini-muffins I baked last week had the same ingredients and baking time. The pans differed—aluminum round vs. silicone square—because I wanted to test my theory that one type of pan would yield moister results than the other pan.

My third batch of mini-muffins will again use the same ingredients, but the amount will be a 3/4-recipe batch, using both types of pans. I'll be using zucchini that I grated, froze, bagged, then let thaw. I'll not squeeze, as thawed zucchini is watery when squeezed.

I consider mini-muffin sizes to be a bit more appealing than regular cupcake size—more units that are available for distributing in a social environment. The amount of batter for making one cupcake-sized goodie is the same amount as for three mini-muffins. (At a potluck event, people can more easily pick up a small, self-contained morsel than commit to a larger item or something that requires slicing, particularly a pie.)

The Betty Crocker recipe has lots of details, including baking times for various pans. The Paula Deen recipe includes nutmeg, a spice I'd like to use in more recipes than I do. The most appealing reason I like these two 2-loaf recipes, besides relative ease of the process, is the even number of eggs. Making half-recipes is a lot easier when dividing four eggs than three eggs.

Some additional zucchini links:

• Zucchini History
• Vegetable Dictionary - Zucchini
• Zucchini nutrition facts
• My veggie pasta recipe, which calls for zucchini as one of the four veggies. (Other veggies are celery, carrots, and yellow squash--all 1/2-pounds each, and Salad-Shooter sliced.)

Whatever's-In-Your-Kitchen Ham Sauce Recipe

Recently, I looked for an easy ham glaze recipe for my almost 11-pound fully cooked ham. This ham contrasts with the one I prepared and blogged about early last year—"New Year Ham Day". That ham was not quite 9 pounds, spiral-sliced, and included a packet of ham glaze, which amounted to a pound.

In my quest for a reasonably uncomplicated recipe for a ham glaze, my eyes glazed over so many recipes that called for ingredients that sometimes overlapped. The biggest commonality was sweet stuff—brown sugar, honey, syrup, juice, …. Non-sweet ingredients included soy sauce and mustard. Instead of coming up with a glaze, I wound up with ham sauce. More on that further down.

Just prepping the ham with pineapple slices and cherries was a much bigger hassle than with the spiral ham. I kept breaking toothpicks because so many wouldn't go into the ham gracefully.

I speared all the pineapple slices and cherries, and foil-covered the decorated ham. The foil was not easy to handle. It kept easily breaking between the toothpicks piercing it and my trying to gingerly wrap the open sides. I decided to skip the step of needing to open the foil, pour glaze, and rewrap a half-hour before finish time.

I looked for prospective ingred8ients for making some sort of sauce. It was like a treasure hunt in my fridge. Behold, the following list!

• Honey-flavored sauce from a fast-food place that used to provide real honey (two squeeze packets)
• Pancake syrup from yet another fast-food place (one 2-oz container)
• BBQ sauce from another fast-food place (one double-size squeeze packet)
• Bottled BBQ sauce (yes, about 1 oz, poured into the pan without measuring)
• Bottled yellow mustard (two squirts into the pan without measuring)
• Juice from jar cherries (from the 10-oz jar—labeled as 4.1 drained weight)
• Juice from canned pineapple rings (from the 20-oz can, no info on drained weight)

Note: I skipped using soy sauce, as ham is plenty sodium-loaded as is. I also passed on using additional honey that I had on hand.

I gently boiled the sweet stuff, BBQ sauces, and the mustard together in a small saucepan to reduce the liquid to about half its original volume, occasionally stirring and mixing with a wire whip. In a glass cup, I stirred together about a third cup each of cornstarch and water. With the liquid at a reasonably rolling boil, I wirewhipped in the cornstarch mixture until the sauce thickened. (I tossed the excess cornstarch mixture.)

Mmmm, the sauce came out tasty for pouring onto ham slices. Takeaways from my quest for ham glaze/sauce recipes:

1. Google the topic (ham glaze).
2. Note the kinds of ingredients (sweeteners, mustard, etc.).
3. Gently boil the fluid down to concentrate the flavors.
4. If necessary to attain thickening, mix up some cornstarch-and-water paste, and mix it into the gently boiling liquid.

For would-be ham preparers: Spiral-sliced hams are a lot easier to serve up than unsliced ones. If unfamiliar with ham-and-bone anatomy, it can be a bit of a hassle navigating the knife around fat, bone, and gristle to get the meat. One other difference between this ham and the spiral-sliced ham: This one had the skin, and trimming it off added some unexpected extra time meeded for meal preparation.

New Year Ham Day

About the time I bought the turkey that I roasted a couple of weeks ago, I spied the supermarket coupon offering $10 off for purchasing a spiral half or whole ham. Hmmm, I hadn't baked a ham in maybe a few years, and the discount looked reasonable if I could find a ham that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Soooo, a couple of days before the coupon expired, I managed to find a ham priced $26.37.

The price per pound wasn't that bad—$2.99. My ham weighed 8.82 pounds. After the coupon discount, the price per pound came to $1.86. Woohoo!

On the day I prepped the ham for baking, I unwrapped it and found two packets—brown sugar and glaze. Hmmm, so how much of my $1.86/pound went for the sugar and glaze? It depends on how much you trust the alleged weight on the packets? OK, I did not weigh the ham in the store, trusting the marked weight on the pricing label.

I weighed the sugar on my kitchen scale. The scale's weight reasonably matched the label, with some flexibility for possible parallax and slop because the scale being analog instead of digital. (It's old!)

The glaze was another story! It was marked as 7 ounces. It weighed 12 ounces! I decided to weigh the sweeteners together and also toss in the prep instructions for good measure. Holy moley—a pound of non-ham stuff! Soooo, recalculating my purchase, my ham cost $2.09 a pound, although buying glaze and brown sugar separately might have been just as costly. Still a good deal.

I did not consider the bone as non-ham weight. Intact hams include the bone anyway. Eh, I should have weighed the bone and fat that I cut after I portioned slices and pieces afterward, for curiosity's sake. Maybe next time. Anyway, "Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham" is a good resource for reading up on hams, and it has a handy pig diagram.

On the day the coupon was to expire, I told some lunch buddies about the deal. One friend told me later that after luch was over, she went to her neighborhood supermarket, but did not find any coupons. She said a cashier told her that they tend to pull coupons a few days before the expiration. The next day when I went to the supermarket near me, I saw coupons, even though expiered. Looks like different stores might have different policies for removing coupons.

As in my turkey preparation from last month, I looked up oven time. On Google, I encountered advice that ranged from an hour to several for the same approximate weight. The ham recipe on the tag specified an hour after oven preheating. I was amazed that the ham did take only about an hour to heat.

My pixstrip shows the empty pan, a pixstrip of the items on the scale that shows the non-ham weight, and progression of the ham preparation.

Note: Not shown—For lessening fluid evaporation, I put in foil before putting on the ritzy ham. :-) I had narrow foil, so I used two sheets, one overlapping the other one.

1. I laid out pineapple slices to see how they'd take up space, poking a toothpick at the core's hole about 2/3 way into the ham to keep the slices somewhat in place.
2. I speared a cherry onto each of the exposed toothpicks, nudging pineapple slices as needed.
3. I tore off an additional, smaller piece of foil, placed it on the ham, and wrapped the other two sheets over it and the ham.
4. After the hour of baking time, I pulled the ham out of the oven and opened up the foils. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!

I heated the glaze and sugar as directed. It seemed a better idea than fussing with more complicated recipes that I found on the web. I especially decided I didn't want to try recipes that included having to score the ham and jam in cloves.

The next day, the glaze was so thick that when I dipped a spoon in and pulled it out, it resembled caramel-colored warm taffy. I poured in the leftover pineapple and cherry juice, microwaving and stirring until the glaze was manageable. Good enough to smear on leftover turkey also! (I'm talking abut the turkey from last month that I parceled into serving sizes and froze.)

I was amazed that the ham yielded as much meat as it did. The fact that it was spiral-cut helped the parceling-out process a lot. Now I have packets of ham in the freezer to keep packets of turkey company.