Last Monday, Kitchen Impromptu turned one, which means I’ve been blogging for one year. Unbelievable! I was planning to celebrate my blog’s birthday with a fancy cake that writes “1” on it. But no, I didn’t have time for that.  Besides, it may seem funny to you to celebrate the blog’s birthday like it’s a hugely-read blog, since only like ten people follow the blog, and all of them are the friends & family. But, I don’t really care how many people read it. I write it for myself, and I feel good to share my recipes, even if nobody cares. And yes, I’ll still make some carrot cupcakes with “1” decorations, don’t worry. I started the blog with my famous carrot cake, and I’ll celebrate its first year with some more carrot cakes.

I also made some decisions on my first year. First of all, I’ll start my blog also in Turkish, under a Turkish name (“Oh well, now all your family and friends will start to follow the Turkish one, and nobody will follow your dear Kitchen Impromptu”). But it will have a slightly different purpose. It will be more focused on healthy eating and healthier alternatives to that greasy comfort food.

The other news is, I’ll start putting up guest posts every month. I asked my friends, and they accepted to share their gastronomical experiences all around the world.

I also made some decisions about my life, my eating habits. I decided to eat only cruelty-free and free-range meat and dairy products. I call them “happy animals’ happy products”. This is because I recently discovered that I feel uncomfortable when I eat some meat and found myself telling: “God knows how this cow lived in a dark, uncomfortable barn, fed with unhealthy food, injected with hormones and died in agony and fear.” Luckily, we can buy all these products from some farms we know, and therefore I can eat meat and dairy products at home. However, I know that 99.9% of the foods I consume outside are “guilty” products, so I decided not to eat them.

Being a vegetarian outside is not hard, since you can always eat some pizza margherita, Mediterranean salad, grilled vegetables, or pasta. However, being a vegan outside is the hardest thing. In fact, there’s simply nothing for you to eat, because everything has cheese or eggs in it. You can only eat grilled vegetables, but eating a dish without proteins is not healthy. So, it was easy for me to be a vegetarian outside, but I couldn’t manage to be a vegan outside yet. Maybe I can bring my own cheese to the restaurants and manage to eat them quickly before the waiter notices and stares at me like I’m mad (Because it’s something mad! I’ve seen many vegetarians in Turkey, including my mom, but I’ve never seen a vegan!).

And lastly, I want to give a quick vegetable and chicken pot recipe that uses leftover free-range chicken. It has a cream cheese mix that I like to use both in baked vegetables and in salads.

First I made that sauce by mixing one tablespoon low fat Turkish cream cheese called “labne” (you can use half tablespoon yogurt + half tablespoon cream cheese instead), ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard, drop of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Then I mixed the sauce with some sliced vegetables (onion, eggplant and zucchini) and the leftover chicken and put them into four small pots. I cooked them for 30 minutes in the oven. Before taking the pots out of the oven, sprinkle with any cheese that can melt. And that’s it! As I said, that sauce goes well with salads too (but with only ¼ teaspoon mustard).

So, that’s it for today, and I’ll post the pictures of my celebration cupcakes ASAP.

Happy Birthday Kitchen Impromptu!!!!

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/kitchen-impromptu-turns-1-a-quick-vegetable-pot-recipe/feed/ 2 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/baked-zucchini-eggplants-with-mustard-cream/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/baked-zucchini-eggplants-with-mustard-cream/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:13:00 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=519

Da-da-da-daaa! Here is a recipe that I made up. I was actually going to bake some vegetables, and decided to make the dish more fun by adding some cream in it. And then I told myself “Why don’t you add a little bit of mustard?”.  And guess what! It was super-delicious and it was really easy to prepare, so I think I’ll put this recipe to “Ulya’s favorites”.

Baked Zucchini & Eggplants with Mustard Cream

Ingredients:

• 3 eggplants
• 3 zucchinis
• 1 onion
• 1 cup cream
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 2 cloves of garlic
• extra-virgin olive oil
• pepper
• salt
• some cheese to sprinkle on top (like mozzarella)

Directions:

Slice the eggplants and zucchinis to thin stripes. Put them in a mid-sized tray, and sprinkle with sliced onions, and some mashed garlic. Add some salt and pepper.

In another bowl, mix cream and mustard. Pour this on the vegetables.

Bake the vegetables for about 20 minutes in the oven preheated to 200 degrees C (390 degrees F). After 20 minutes, sprinkle the tops with some grated cheese, and bake for another 10 minutes.

With the leftover vegetables, I made some pasta. I simply baked one diced eggplant and one diced zucchini along with some diced potatoes. Then I sautéed them with little oil and added to my pasta. Yum!