Meal Planning: Wicked Awesome

So I have stuck to the meal plan all week, and I have to say that it pretty much rocks! Here are some (subpar) photos to chronicle our culinary delights this week:

Rustic Black-Eyed Peas and Mushrooms over (Leftover) Biscuits, with Simple Sauteed Kale

This was adapted from Rustic White Beans and Mushrooms from Vcon. I had planned to make it and then when I went to soak my white beans the night before I came to find that I had none. But I did have B-E Peas, so I figured, why not? I always leave the carrots in this dish, because we are big fans of cooked carrots. I had planned on serving this over the leftover Coconut Rice, but biscuits from Sunday were glaring at me from their place on the counter, so I dutifully heeded their call.

Silas had his beans earlier, and enjoyed some apple slices on the side.
Nearly Instant Thai Coconut Corn Soup
This is from Vegan Express, which I checked out the library recently, and it was AWESOME. I was kind of freaked by how much coconut milk was in it, but then I just got over it and enjoyed it. Plus it makes a lot - we froze 3 cups. Oh, and heres a mama tip: I knew Silas would turn his nose up at this because of the sliced scallions and red pepper, so I broke out my favorite kitchen utensil: the immersion blender. I blended his portion up and it was so pretty and orangey pink. He thoroughly enojoyed his "chowder."

Two Grilled Pizzas

I officially love my bread machine. It's so easy to dump in the ingredients for dough and come back an hour and a half later to make it into something delicious. In this case, I divided the dough in what I thought was half but turned out to be more like 1/3 & 2/3rds. I threw the dough on the hot grill while I prepped the toppings. One was leftover pesto (taken out of the freezer earlier this week), local sun-dried tomatoes and sliced kalamata olives. The other was jarred marinara, with sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms, kale and a touch of white wine. OMGYUM! They were both sooooo good.

Silas kept saying, "'Hank you mama, for the dewishus food!" You're welcome, little buddy.
In other news, I took a Thai cooking class last night with Pranee at PCC - so fun! The food was so good - grilled shiitakes, homemade red curry paste made into Phanang Portabello Curry which was served over Grilled Eggplant, Stir-Fried Lemongrass Rice with Tofu and Edamame, some delicious Prik See Ew (a spicy soy sauce condiment - my new love!), and a delicious Pineapple-Lemongrass punch. Pranee was a really fun instructor with lots of good stories. She kept saying, "See? It's so easy," while we looked on in total bewilderment. I mean, it was great to demystify techniques (like how to deal with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves!) but it also looked pretty complicated to the Thai cooking novice. So I had to giggle every time she said that. But I'm sure, like everything, that with practice it will become easy. Just not quite yet. I predict that these recipes will appear on a menu plan soon!

Mindful Home Goals: Update!

So this week I've been really successful at sticking to some new goals. Here's what I decided to officially concentrate on this past week:

1. Keep the kitchen sink empty and shiny - this means dealing with dishes immediately. What a great one this is. It's so simple, and yet so profoundly affects my mood. It's so wonderful to go into the kitchen and have no guilt-inducing dirty dishes staring back at me. It's amazing to have every tool I could need to prepare the next meal ready and clean and waiting. It's just plain groovy to have a clean kitchen. And, like anything, it's easy to do if you stay on top of it. A few times I've wanted to leave a dish or pot in there to deal with later, but I forced myself to just deal with it now. And it only takes a few minutes! Really! Cleaning as you go is so much faster - 2 or 3 minutes here and there over the day instead of 30 minutes at once, where I stand feeling resentful and grumbly. I really thing that this goal (combined with meal planning) can save me a ton of money, because when I have a sinkful of dirty dishes, many times my mind has screamed "GET TAKE OUT!" instead of dealing with them.

2. Make the Beds Daily - another weird one, but like the clean sink, it greatly improves the overall feel of the house. It just feels more peaceful and streamlined to have made beds. And it takes like 2 minutes. It's a good psychic investment.

3. Meal Plan - This has been great. It's so nice not to have to worry what I'm going to make every day, because it's all planned out. It's a great way to use up the stores of frozen food and pantry staples that I have in the house instead of buying more. And I'm tracking my grocery budget really closely to see if we're saving money. I don't see how we won't, since nothing is wasted.

4. Keep the Dining Room Table Clear - we're REALLY bad at cluttering up every surface in the house. To cut down on this, I've implemented a new Inbox for incoming mail - now Chad and I both know where to go to deal with it. I also have to watch my piles of cookbooks and meal planning notecards (more on that another day). But I've been really good about keeping it clear and clean. Another psychic boost.

5. Get on Top of Laundry - sure I do laundry. But I almost always have a backlog. This week I've reduced the backlog significantly. I only do full loads, but this week, I've probably done 8 loads of laundry. I KNOW, right? But the plan is to get on top of it, and stay on top. Take the dirty clothes down every morning, assess to see if there is enough for a full load of anything, and do it. Fold and put away the same day, no excuses. We have been known to dress out of laundry baskets for weeks, so again, this might seem like a no-brainer, but not so much in our case. By next week I predict that we'll be down to laundry 2-4 times a week. And THEN I want to get my clothesline up! Bwahaahahaa!

At first I felt really boring and lame posting all this stuff, but then I reminded myself, "Hey! This is YOUR blog! You can put whatever you want on it!" And it's true, it's not like I'm trying to make money from this thing! So I hope I didn't bore you to tears.

Stay tuned to see if my dedication to a clean house flags! And what will be on the menu for next week! Hugs to all.

Pizza Night

Why oh why did I forget to take a picture of our lovely pizza?!?

I know why: we were starving and stuffing our faces.

Last night we had Magical Leftover Pizza - I made whole wheat pizza dough with the aid of the bread machine, and topped it with leftover arugula pesto and chopped veggies from this weekend's oven-roasted ratatouille, and then some more TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend. Delicious! I love when I can transform leftovers into something totally new and delicious. And I was worried about using up the pesto, and this did the trick.

Now I can turn last week's arugula into pesto, and we can eat the arugula coming in our CSA box today in our salads. Until next week when we get more. Although I'm really going to miss our CSA shares, I've had my fill of arugula for the year.

Speaking of CSA shares, here's what is arriving in ours today:
Acorn Winter Squash
Pie Pumpkin
Green & Red Colored Peppers (sweet)
Arugula (!!!)
Bunch of mixed Asian greens-chinese cabbage, Osaka purple mustard green, red Russian kale, minuza, tatsoi- enjoy as a salad or great to cook with.
Onion
Garlic
Apples-from Brozowski Farms Jonagolds or Empire-both a good eating apple
Ancho Pablano Hot pepper (mild heat)
Brussel Sprouts
Cabbage
Eggplant

So if anyone has any ideas for recipes for any of the above, let me know. I am super excited/scared about the pie pumpkin! I know there is a recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance that uses a pumpkin, so I may have to check that out. I've never cooked with fresh pumpkin before. I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

Whoa, and we're back

Next time we have out of town guests in, remind me that I DO NOT cook for them. No matter what I think/want/wish I will do, I just don't. Unless it's breakfast and/or sandwiches. Geez. My Father-in-law doesn't eat any non-breakfast meal without a beef product of some kind, so that was out when they were visiting. I don't care if you make your own beef product at my house, but I'm not cooking it for you, dig? Then there were just so many places we wanted to take my parents, that I barely cooked at all. Plus, I didn't want to "stick" anyone with the baby while I cooked. I felt odd about that, but there it is.

So after three weeks of mostly eating out, we were only too happy to get back to local food and cooking for ourselves!

Some recipes I've tried lately...

Creamy Broccoli Tahini Pasta Bake from Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. It was pretty good the first night all by itself, but it improved a lot when we had it as leftovers and added homemade marinara! It was kind of like super-protein baked ziti. With broccoli. Not particularly local, except for the broccoli and breadcrumbs. But it made a ton and was good for lunch the whole week.

Another night I made sauteed veggies in TJ's spinach simmer sauce over jasmine rice. I used local red pepper, red onion, broccoli, parsnip. I also made asian baked tofu (local tofu!), using a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. And let me just say that marinating tofu is for suckers. I didn't marinate it at all, just tossed the marinating ingredients into the pan with the tofu, covered with foil and baked it for 15 minutes. Then I removed the foil, baked for another 10 minutes, then broiled it for 3 minutes. The marinade totally bakes into the tofu. No need to press or waste your time marinating.

Another day I made Pasta with Arugula Pesto. It was good! I was surprised. I've made it in the past and thought it was pretty "eh." But this recipe I found substituted garbanzo beans for nuts, which made it really creamy and bonus, the baby could it eat. I also used TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend instead of straight parmesan, which couldn't have hurt. We had it tossed with red pepper, mushrooms, garlic and onion (all local, plus the arugula was local). The recipe made a ton of pesto, so I think I'll have it on pizza this weekend.

We also have a bumper crop of apples, so I made an apple crisp the other day, which is SO good. We had it with local vanilla ice cream. yum!

And of course we've been enjoying green salads with fresh local lettuces and tomatoes from our garden.

I can't believe how much of the frozen marinara we've blasted through already! Two quarts and one pint, so far. Holy crap.

Food related stuff we need to do:

Dry our italian plums in the dehydrator.
Make applesauce with the apples.
Bake bread (check! Rye Caraway bread is in the breadmaker as we speak!)
Harvest all the backyard basil; make pesto or dry it
Harvest/transplant the thyme
Harvest/transplant the oregano
Harvest the mint
Use up our:

• eggplant
• beet greens
• arugula
• peppers
• mushrooms
• broccoli

If anyone has any great recipes they'd recommend that utilize any/all of the above (especially the greens!!!), puh-leeze pass them on.

ELC 9/07, Day 3

I really love this challenge so far. I know, I know, this is probably what Sharon Salzberg describes as "bright faith": falling in love with something in the very beginning. But I love learning about where my food comes from and thinking all of my food choices through a little more fully. Do we eat 100% locally? Hell no! Not yet anyway. But every time I make food now, I'm thinking about the origin of eat ingredient, which, in a way, makes me appreciate each one so much more.

Day 3 Eats

Breakfast:
Berry Smoothie Pancakes with local eggs, raspberries, blueberries and butter (non-local flours, baking soda, salt, yogurt and banana).

These pancakes were delicious! Super fluffy and subtle. We had them with honey but maple syrup would be good, too. Silas pretty much stuck strictly to berries and a few pieces of tomato.

Lunch:
Scrambled local eggs (non-local s&p) - OMG Silas was in love with these today!
Rotini pasta with partially cooked slow-cooker tomato sauce with local heirloom tomatoes, onions, green peppers and garlic (non-local pasta, EVOO, sugar, salt and spices and parmesan)

The pasta sauce is cooking up nicely. I think the tomato paste is really going to thicken it up a bit, which is good, because right now it's pretty watery. But tasty!

Dinner
We had a friend over for dinner (Magnifico!) so we made homemade pizza, yum! I made whole wheat pizza crust (with the help of my trusty bread machine), and marinated sliced local tomato wedges in olive oil, garlic (CSA), 3 kinds of chopped basil (backyard) and s&p. Then we spooned this over the partially cooked crust and topped it with TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend (the BEST cheese blend in the world for pizza, I swear!).

We also had fresh watermelon slices from our CSA, and some local bread for an appetizer, dipped in the remaining tomato marinade. YUM!

Oh, and locally made Peppermint Ice Cream for dessert. OMG.

Food, Glorious Food!

Chipotle Split Pea Soup


I made this soup for the first time last week on Wednesay - it's a great recipe to start hours before you want to eat it, but basically just start it and forget about it until you're hungry. I got this from PETA's 2 Week Sample Menu. I served this with some Corn-Rye Muffins from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. They were pretty good, too! Very hearty; the only sweetener is molasses.

Chipotle Split-Pea Soup
Chipotle is a smoked jalapeño that adds a smoky flavor without the ham hock.

2 cups dried split peas
8 cups boiling water
1 medium-size onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 carrots, sliced diagonally
1⁄2 cup chopped parsley (didn't have any, was fine without)
1 tsp. finely cut chipotle
1 Tbsp. low-sodium soy sauce (used Braggs)
(I also added a few drops of Liquid Smoke for extra hammy-smokiness.)

Simmer the split peas in the boiling water for approximately 1 hour, until soft.

Add the remaining ingredients and continue boiling until the vegetables are tender, adding more water as needed.

Makes 10 servings - Maybe in some other universe, but not ours! I think maybe 6 is more reasonable.

This Week's Vegan Pizza


This week's vegan pizza consists of a whole wheat crust, organic tomato sauce, sundried-tomatoes, roasted red peppers, roasted garlic and corn with one packet of Mozarella style Chreese. So good!

Winter PeachBerry Crisp

I've been following (aka lurking) on the Frugal Meal Planning 101 thread over at MDC. Someone on there asked what to do with canned fruit, like peaches. Another smarty-pants mom replied that she used them to make crisps and cobblers. It was like a lead anvil fell on my head. DUH! Of course! Why hadn't I ever thought of this before!?! We have like 10 mason jars of peaches in our pantry (long story) and we've been trying to make our way through them, but seriously there are only so many peaches you can eat for breakfast. So I'm sooooo glad I found this idea!

This crisp contains peaches, part of a bag of frozen blackberries and like 1/4 cup of a bag of mixed frozen berries. I added some flour to the fruit, and put it in the pie pan. Covered it up with the Crisp Topping from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone - and there you have it, bliss in a pie pan. So delicious! Does this count as one of my daily servings of fruit?

Chili Transformed with a side of Food Poisoning?

We had an overly exciting weekend here. Chad fell down the stairs Thursday night and dislocated his shoulder. Then this weekend, he got pretty violently ill all day Sunday (started Saturday night). Silas also got sick - he puked all over the bed Saturday night and has had some unusual baby business out the other end as well (for him). Anyway, tmi, but what's weird is that both of them would be sick and yet I had NO SYMPTOMS whatsoever. Silas is only breastfeeding, so he had to have gotten it through me, right? Chad and I ate exactly the same things on Saturday, only I ate some additional stuff that he didn't have. It's so strange.

Anyway, one of the things we both ate was this chili that I made from leftover Pintos from last weekend, celery, carrots, green bell pepper, onion and spices. We ate it with Tortilla chips instead of spoons, mmmm. But now we're afraid to eat it because of The Illness. Oh well.

Flax and Sunflower Seed Bread (bread machine)

We made this fantastic recipe for the second time this weekend. Let me tell you, coming home to your house filled with the smells of baking bread after a long morning of errands - heavenly! I'm really loving the bread machine lately - we haven't bought bread in well over a month.

Recipe (from Allrecipes.com)

• 1 1/3 cups water
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 1/3 cups whole wheat bread flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup flax seeds
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Place all ingredients (except sunflower seeds) in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select basic white cycle; press start. Add the sunflower seeds when the alert sounds during the knead cycle. (Note: I use the "Sweet Cycle" on my bread machine and add the sunflower seeds when it beeps. I also use the Allrecipe feature to reduce the serving size from 15 to 9, because our bread machine is a little smaller than most.)

Homemade Veggie Stock


Yep, another side project of the weekend was transforming our odds and ends of vegetables into stock. This included a piece of onion, greens from leeks, some "mature" cilantro, some wrinkled grape tomatoes, some shrivelly parsnips, a carrot, and some older red potatoes. Oh and some odd tops/ends of carrots and onions, too. I love making stock! It's so awesome to make something useful and delicious with stuff that normal people might throw in the trash. I want to try to make some either weekly or bi-weekly, depending on how much stocking veggies I generate.

That's all for now!

Rhapsodizing Burger Buns

Meowee's Veggie Burgers + Homemade Vegan Burger Buns + Sweet Potato Fries= YAY!

Seriously. Dinner last night was awesome! I made Meowee's Veggie Burgers, Honey Wheat Sandwich Rolls (veganized using soymilk, En-R-Gee Egg Replacer and Earth Balance Margerine), and sweet potato fries! It was a delicous feast.

Meowee's Vegan Veggie Burgers

I found this recipe on MDC.

1 cup lentils, dried
1 cup brown rice, raw
5 cloves garlic
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 inch ginger, peeled
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne
olive oil for browning

Prepare rice and lentils according to package instructions; drain lentils well. Place cooked rice, lentils, and remaining ingredients except for olive oil in a food processor and blend until smooth. Allow to rest in the fridge for at least four hours.

Heat olive oil (enough to coat the pan) in a cast iron skillet. Shape "meat" into patties and fry a few minutes on both sides, until well browned.

Serve as hamburgers!
--------------------------------

Also, I just have to say how freaking excited I am that my burger buns turned out! I tried another recipe a week ago and they were FLAT as a pancake. Still tasted good, but looked pretty silly and they were obviously very dense. But not these bad boys!!!!! Witness their lightness! Their rise-itude! Their glorious wheaty color!

*cue angels singing*
They rose! They rose! They rose!
< /angels>

And they were deeeee-licious.

Back with a Vengeance

After 3 or so weeks of being away from home and rarely eating vegan, we are home now and committed to it more than ever. We felt so gross from eating too much take out (although I will miss my black bean gardenburgers and milkshakes from Burgerville, and bean and cheese burritos from Cha Cha Cha). We're also on a budgeting kick, and we've already burned through our allotted budget for eating out, like 5 days into the month. This is mainly due to meeting friends for food in Portland and since we bought their food I don't know if I should count half as "eating out" and half as "gifts given" but for right now it's all in the eating out category, so we are eating at home for as long as we can hold out this month.

Never fear! I have been bitten soundly by the meal planning bug and have really been keeping on with it so far.

Homemade Vegan Pizza!!!

First I made whole wheat pizza dough with the aid of our bread machine. This was the first time I tried making dough in there, and I have to say it worked AWESOME! It took an hour and a half to do its thang, and then it was ready to be rolled out onto the pan. I used the recipe for whole wheat crust that came with my bread machine, but I added 2 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten to make it fluffier. Awesome.

Then I made Tempeh Sausage Crumbles from Vegan with a Vengeance. I love this stuff. Then I sauteed mushrooms with garlic in some olive oil. Rolled out the dough, spread on some organic tomato sauce, then the sausage crumbles and mushrooms. Then I stirred up a packet of Road's End Oranics Mozzarella Chreese sauce and poured it over the whole pie. Baked for 15 minutes and voila! Vegan pizza extraordinaire!!! It was so good, I can't wait to make this again.

A close-up of how the Chreese sauce set up

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

We didn't use up all the sausage crumbles in for the pizza, and I also had some leftover vegan cornbread from a few nights ago, so I whipped up an improvised stuffing out of the crumbled cornbread, sausage crumbles, dried tart cherries, and sauteed onion and savoy cabbage. Oh and some veggie broth and sage. Then I microwaved the acorn squash (first time cooking it that way...although it was quick as hell I still think I like them baked more). It was pretty good! The stuffing stuff was really yummy. I think next time I would salt the squash or something, because it was kind of bland. But overall a good time.

Curried Veggies and Seitan over Brown Basmati Rice

Tonight I made this curry explosion using a jar of sauce we got at Cost Plus - Spicy Tomato and Cardamom sauce I belive. Vegan. Rock. Anyway, I sauteed some onion then added these crazy purple carrots and some quarterd red potatoes and steamed that in some veggie broth until the potatoes were good to go. Then I added sliced mushrooms, garlic and the rest of that savoy cabbage (which we got for free from the farmer's market, btw!). Then I added the sauce and some slightly thawed chopped spinach and the seitan and let it sit on warm for a while, until the baby was done eating. It was also pretty good - not the best thing I've ever eaten, but good nonetheless. The sauce had some kick and had a kind of tamirind taste, too.

Later this week I hope to do some more baking in the bread machine, especially since I have my trusty magical vital wheat gluten! Yay!

Some catch-up

Well, the baby's been keeping me busy lately and I haven't had time to post. But I've still been cooking up a storm! Some highlights from the past few weeks:

From Vegan with a Vengeance:

-Breakfast Potatoes - sooo good! The onion in the recipe turns caramalized and in some cases black which looks scary but is so tasty. Chad was avoiding them until I clued him in on the delicious factor. Takes some forethought because they take about an hour in the oven, but worth the effort.

-Maple Walnut Cookies - OMG OMG OMG I think I peed a little these are so good! Will definitely make these again. And again. And again! The only oddball ingredient you need is maple extract, which we luckily had on had for the pumpkin "cheesecake".

-Tofu Scramble - So I make tofu scramble all the time, but I decided, what the hay, I'll give this "recipe" a try. Really glad I did, because yumm-o! It seems to take a teensy bit longer than I would normally take with a scramble, but the flavor was fab.

-Baking Powder Biscuits with White Bean Tempeh Sausage Gravy - YUM. YUM. YUM. I make these biscuits all the time, they are so easy and so tender and delicious. The gravy has such amazing flavor, with fennel and sage and basil and marjoram - and a little red pepper flake for a kick in the pants! This recipe takes a little longer than my normal get-food-ready-before-baby-freaks-out time limit (about 45 mins-1 hr) but so worth it.

-Coconut Heaven Cupcakes - Holy crap, so tender and light and fluffy! I want to eat these everyday. Easy to make, too.

Other stuff we've been eating:

-Tempeh Avocado Ruebens - we can't get enough of these things! I even made homemade (well, bread machine) Rye Bread for them. I love fresh bread! Serve these babies with bread and butter pickles and some Tings.

-Slow Cooker Navy Beans - Yes! I finally made beans in the crock pot and it was not such a long tedious process as I previously thought. I soaked the beans all day the day before, cooked them overnight and they were ready for a recipe the next morning! Yee-friggin'-haw! These beans so far have been transformed into the white bean gravy and:

-Maple Baked Beans - From Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. Pretty good overall! We had these with veggie hotdogs cut-up (Polka-Dot Beans) and it was good, but the hot dogs had a stale taste to me. Maybe we'll try different dogs next time.



-A new incarnation of the Magical Loaf Studio loaves we've made in the past. Tasty, as always!

In other news, we tried some of the Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourment "cheese" - cheddar style. EWWWWW. So wrong. I took a tiny taste, gagged and spit that gunk out. I had previously read really good things about it, but alas it was not to be.

This week I acquired a new toy: The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender/Chopper. I've had my eye on one of these things for a while. I've always wanted to be able to "cream" soups without getting the blender (and usually my kitchen floor) dirty. Also, it's going to come in verrrry handy when I make my own baby food - just blend right in the cooking pan instead of getting the food processor dirty! Way easier to clean than the respective blender or processor. Yay! I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll report back after testing.

Some goals for the future week:

• Make more fresh bread
• Make more slow cooker beans
• Make pizza dough in the bread machine
• Make split pea soup (mostly so I can try my hand blender!)