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.

Bread and Other Awesomeness

This was an awesome food week!

We started out with some Brown Rice Cereal with Raspberry Coulis. Sounds fance, doesn't it?

It's just leftover short brown rice with some almond milk, agave nectar and pureed fresh raspberries. But it was soooooo good! And a great way to use up leftover rice. Here's a link to a general recipe if you want proportions, etc.

Dinner #1!
I also tackled one of my fears this week - barbecuing pizza. It just always sounded so weird - like why doesn't the dough fall through the cracks?! I just didn't get it. Until I watched this Everyday Dish episode and was shown the light!
We made 2 smallish pizzas - one (pictured) was topped with leftover pesto, leftover grilled portabello mushrooms, sliced tofurkey sausages and fresh garlic. The other was similar but used marinara sauce. They were awesome! I will definitely BBQ pizza again in the future. A great way to enjoy pizza in the summer.

A note on pizza dough: I have been cutting out all the white flour in recipes in a test run of Chile's Discretionary Eating Challenge - and it's been going well so far. Which is why I made this ALL whole wheat flour pizza dough! I basically just replaced the white flour with half bread flour (locally bought when we lived in Michigan!) and some whole wheat pastry flour. I also added a tablespoon or so of vital wheat gluten, but otherwise I just followed a regular old pizza dough recipe with great results. Try it!

And a little dessert...
I also made a batch of Snickerdoodles (from La Dolce Vegan) using all whole-wheat pastry flour. Straight out of the oven they tasted a little wheaty, but the next day I really don't think you could tell a difference at all.

Another dinner - asian style!

Another fabulous stir fry using up bits from our CSA box and farmer's market purchases. This one utilized fresh peas (shelled myself, woo!), piopinno mushrooms, green onions, garlic, ginger, broccoli, fresh noodles and our favorite of all time local Small Planet Garlic & Herb Tofu. A little bragg's and sesame oil and we were good to go.

Dinner #3! Mexican-asian-italian fusion!
So another one of my own challenges to myself is to start utilizing the dry beans we have on hand. They are just so much cheaper than canned, and we are a bean loving family. So I made a batch of adzuki beans, but I seem to always mess them up. I didn't soak them this time (because I read adzuki's don't need to be soaked) but I overcooked them. It was like bean mush; the beans pretty much lost all their integrity. They tasted fine but it annoyed my sense of aesthetics. Grr.

Anyway, I warmed them up later with some sesame oil, braggs, garlic, green onion, and then added julienned chard to wilt at the end. Served over brown basmati rice (which I also kind of messed up. I blame the toddler for this one though!) and topped with chopped fresh cilantro. On the side is a green salad and...

Foccacia! Woo-hoo!!!! I love foccacia and I think I've only made it once before a LONG time ago. It's basically souped-up pizza dough, so I felt pretty comfortable. Again, I used a combo of whole wheat pastry and bread flour with some additional vital wheat gluten and it turned out great. I topped it with fresh rosemary, olive oil and salt, YUM!


Dinner #4: Awesome McAwesome-son!
So I still had the baby fennel problem to deal with. I knew there was a recipe I had made before that called for it (but I had always subbed onions, never being much of a fennel buyer). I found it, switched it up some, and therefore feel ok publishing it here. This recipe is based on one from Entertaining for a Veggie Planet by Didi Emmons.

Isareali Couscous Stew of Joy

2 T EVOO
1 C Israeli couscous (uncooked)
3 baby fennel bulbs, thinly sliced in half moons
6-7 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fennel seeds
3-4 C julienned chard leaves
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, liquid reserved into a measuring cup
Scant 2 cups veggie broth
1 cup boiling water
3-4 T Yumm Sauce (optional but delicious!)
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

In a large sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, fennel, fennel seeds and couscous and sautee for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, see how much tomato juice drained from your tomatoes. It'll be approximately 1/4-1/2 cup. Make up the difference with veggie broth until you have two cups total. Add that and the cup of boiling water and the chard to the pan. Cook, stirring often for about 11-12 minutes.

Add the Yumm Sauce, vinegar and s&p and stir. Taste, adjust seasonings as necessary. Serve hot with crusty bread!

I also made a batch of Parsley-Tahini Vinaigrette that I learned about from the Vegan Brunch class I took a while back at the Detroit Evolution Laboratory (miss them!). It is soooooo awesome. They are cool with publishing their recipes as long as I attribute credit to them. This recipe is under creative commons by Angela Kasmala.

1 c. oil (olive, sunflower, or grapeseed are all good choices)

Juice of 1 lemon

3-6 cloves garlic

½ c. fresh parsley

2-3 tbs. raw or toasted tahini

2 tbs. brown rice vinegar

1 tsp. each salt and pepper, or to taste

Add garlic to bottom of blender and blend. Add remaining ingredients and pulse a few times to combine.

That's all for now! Right now I've got Fresh Dill and Caraway Seed Rye Bread (longest. name. ever) cooling on the rack, and some chickpeas soaking for our upcoming meals. Stay tuned!

Up up update

He Caught Like Three Feet of Air That Time


Sorry for the lack of posting and food-related photos....Silas and I are still in Portland (well, actually 40 minutes outside of Portland in between the towns of Scappoose and St. Helens, OR for anyone familiar with the area). I've been cooking up a storm, but in the heat of the moment I've been very, very bad about taking my food porn fotos. But we've been making great stuff, rest assured. And visiting Farmer's Markets. I want to go like twice a week here, they are soooo awesome! Greens, strawberries, fresh herbs, breads, mushrooms...so much good stuff. Oh, and spam me with your best recipes that use Shiitake mushrooms. I bought some fresh ones, and I don't think I've ever cooked with them before! Weird, I know.

Today I made a Tofu Cutlet Parmesan that was really awesome. I used the Compassionate Cook's recipe for the Tofu Cutlets (it's a recipe you can buy as part of the BBQ, Burgers and Backyard Bites packet), and they were great. Then I layered them with marinara and topped it all off with Vcon's Pine Nut Cream Sauce, except that I substituted cashews for the pine nuts since my mom didn't have any. It was great! I'm super happy we have leftovers. You could totally cheat if you were in a hurry and use a vegan Chick'n patty instead of making your own cutlets.

Did I mention that I bought a copy of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton? I did! So please, everyone out there that uses it, spam me with the awesome recipes to try. There are so many, I need some recommendations to focus my energy!

Yesterday morning I made the Tempeh Hashbrown Casserole for breakfast. YUM! I cheated and microwaved the potatoes instead of baking them, which cut down on the prep time by an hour so I don't really feel bad. I used a mix of red potatoes and a big baker russet instead of the yukon golds called for, and I thought it was great. Oh yeah, and spanish onion filled in for green onion. Anyway, it was hearty and delicious, and if my recommendation doesn't carry enough weight let me just say that my psychotically carnivorous father ate it without complaint. Yeah, seriously! I will say that I felt like it needed something, like a tofu scramble or something, pared with it. Today I had leftovers of the has with sliced avocado on top, and this helped ameliorate the "missing" feeling. But what can't a ripe avocado fix?

I also made the lemon pesto from ED&BV and used it for a homemade pizza last night. It was great. My mom does some awesome stuff with pizza crust, very nicely cooked. It was also topped with rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes and some browned Morningstar Chick'n strips and some fresh minced garlic. YUM.

Chad and I used to live a few blocks from this hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant on Burnside in Portland. He used to order so much take out from them that they recognized his voice. Yeah, it was like that. Anyway, they make THE BEST Massaman curry in the entire universe, and we are always always disappointed when we order it from anywhere else. I've always wanted to try to make it myself to see if I could replicate it, but do you know how hard it is to find massaman curry paste?!? Damn near impossible. But I found some! At this tiny little grocery/cafe in St. John's in Portland called Proper Eats. (Which, by the way, has AWESOME food. Go there and order the special, whatever it is.) So I made my mom and I (and Silas) some homemade Massaman curry the other night. It was really good! But it wasn't THE curry. It was missing some pungency...extra lemongrass? Galangal? I'm going to have to experiment, but I'm glad that I have the curry paste to get me started, anyway. Long live massaman.

This past week I also had the distinct pleasure of testing a recipe for Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's new cookbook. It was a peanut sauce pasta dish with green beans and it was awesome! I don't think I've seen Silas clean his plate so fast and ask for more in a long, long time. That kid was a BIG fan, especially of the green beans. I can't wait until it's published so everyone can make it! We had it with oven-roasted kale, which my mom freaked out over.

Oh, and last weekend I made a batch of VCTOTW Peanut Butter Heavencakes: chocolate cupcakes filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with chocolate ganache. Holy flurking snit. They were soooooo good, and my dad was obsessed with them! Go vegan food winning over the toughest critics.

Speaking of which, my mom is very open minded, but I am still so happy that I think I've convinced her to start using unsweetened almond milk instead of cow's and soymilk creamer instead of Coffeemate non-dairy creamer!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!!!! She's had breast cancer twice, and I'm just so glad to get her to cut back on dairy, especially after what I've been reading about IGF-I (or watch a video about it here) and it's effects on cancerous cells. And coffeemate is LOADED with chemicals and hydrogenated oils, so, yay!!! Again, yayayayay!

I'm also excited, because my dad, the aforementioned food-wimp, was telling us that he was talking to his co-workers about how he'd been trying all this vegetarian food lately, and it was all pretty good. *sniff* *tear* Who was it that said we just have to win them over with delicious food?! So, so true.

News on the Move
Chad will start driving from Detroit on Tuesday and should make it here by Friday or so. We'll be in Seattle the following Wednesday (6/4) to meet our ABF truck and start moving in. Yay!!!!!

Vacation and lots o' food!

So we went out of town for 5 days and before that? Sick. Oh yes.



So I'm going to go backwards and start with vacation! Because it's fresh in my mind and really, who doesn't want to relive vacation?! We went to Phoenix from Wednesday-Sunday because Chad had a second job interview, so we decided to turn it into family vacation time. We were actually in the western suburbs of Phoenix, which was basically all strip malls, all the time. But it was beautiful, the desert, and it was 86 degrees the whole time. And sunny. Did I mention sunny? And 86? In MARCH? I was loving it UP. It smelled like sage and everything just had a crisp spring edge to it. Lovely.

So I was a little worried about being in the land of Mexican food and being vegan, because for all the ethnic cuisines that are vegan friendly, Mexican food is really not one of them. So no little taquerias for us unfortunately. Luckily, we weren't all that tempted because we were mostly surrounded by chains, which can be very helpful to the traveling vegan who has access to the internet! Let me just say that this was the best vegan traveling I have ever done. We had a couple great lunches at Chipotle (fajita burrito bowls with the black beans), and a great dinner at Macaroni Grill (pasta with garlic olive oil, bruschetta with no cheese, garden salads sans cheese and crutons - and a dirty martini!), and some decent bagles with hummus for me and pb&j for Chad for breakfast. We also bought some cereal and almond milk for brekkie to have at the motel, but we didn't have a fridge, so there was a lot of putting the almond milk in the ice bucket in front of the a/c, so after day 2 we decided not to risk it. ;) We also had some of the BEST vegan food EVER at Green restaurant, in Scottsdale. We had the edamame (for Silas) and Spicy Buffalo Wings (OMG!!! Must try to recreate this recipe!), then Chad had the No-Harm Chicken Parm and I had the Texas "moo-shroom" po boy, with unbelievably thin crispy and delicious thyme fries. Then, as IF that wasn't good enough, they also have their own homemade vegan soft-serve "ice cream"!!!!! That they make blizzards with!!! Called tsoynamis!!! Seriously! I had the rocky road with chocolate chips, vegan marshmellows, almonds and chocolate syrup, and Chad just had strawberry, cuz that's the kind of guy he is. It was bliss, pure bliss. I can't get over how wonderful it is to be eating at a restaurant where I can order ANYTHING off the menu and still be true to my ethics! It's amazing.

Whoo. Anyway. We also had some fabulous Thai food, but I have to confess that I'm a bad vegan. I never ask about fish sauce. The first time we had the thai I didn't taste fishiness at all, but the second time I caught a vague whiff of it. I'm going to stop being a lazy vegan and just start asking. Geez! What's my problem anyway? I guess I'm just worried about language barriers and being denied my favorite ethnic cuisine. But I'm gonna do it!

There were also several soy lattes at Starbucks. Good stuff all around. And we even survived the flight home with only access to a regular old grocery store (Fry's) - we found fresh berries, soy yogurt, Odwalla protein shakes and bagels and hummus for breakfast, and made Yves salami and hummus sandwiches on kaiser rolls for lunch. I was pretty proud of our success with vegan traveling.

We also did 3 hikes, visited 2 communities, walked around a couple downtowns, browsed an awesome used bookstore (Bookman's) and generally had a great time.

On to the food!


We had some fronch toast revisted here (with the additions of some vanilla and cinnamon to the VwaV recipe - a vast improvement!), with a side of almond butter sweet mashed sweet potatoes (inspired by Vegan Lunch Box), and some sliced bananas. Good stuff! I love having the sweet potatoes in the morning, it's a great way to get some orange veggies in first thing! The basic recipe is :

Breakfast Sweet Potatoes
1-2 sweet potatoes
1-2 T almond butter
1 T maple syrup (or to taste)
.5-1 T earth balance
salt to taste
cinnamon if you want (I skip it)

I microwaved the sweet potatoes for about 4 minutes , turned them over, and microwaved them another 4 minutes. Let them sit for a minute and then pulled the peels right off. Mashed in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and serve!

Blueberry Coffee Cake from The Joy of Vegan BakingTo DIE for! I made this when we had some omni friends over after dinner out and it was a smash hit! This is a dangerous cake to have around because it is soooo tasty. We finished it for breakfast the next day!

Vegan Pizza Night!

Crust from TJ's, sauteed portabellos, a wee bit of leftover pesto and sliced tomatoes. Oh and just a bit of Follow Your Heart Mozzarella. The cheese was ok - it didn't melt much and didn't taste like much either, but it gave the appearance of cheese, which was fine. Now that I have the cheese in the house, I'll use it, but when we use it up I'm not sure if I'll replace it or not. I'm all about flavor, baby, and not so much for just appearances.

Loafcakes/Loaffins
Do you know the magic that is the Magical Loaf Studio? Created by the author of the blog and cookbook, Vegan Lunch Box, this handy little tool can pretty much make a vegan loaf out of anything you have in your kitchen. Ok, that might not be entirely true, but it's pretty close.

My loaf consisted of pumpkin and sesame seeds, lentils, breadcrumbs, onion, garlic, carrot, and celery, veggie broth, thyme basil, sage, nooch, veggie Worcestershire, ketchup, flax meal, Braggs, and olive oil. I cooked them in muffin tins, and before baking them I brushed on a combo of ~ equal amounts of ketchup and brown sugar with a dollop or two of more veggie Worcestershire sauce. Yum!

We had these with garlicky southern greens (from Vcon - can't get enough of these!) and baked potato with earth balance and s&p.

We had them a couple times, each time with the greens (they sell giant 1 lb bags of greens already washed and stemmed at TJ's! Awesome).

Navy Bean Cutlets with Mushroom Sauce and Roasted Carrots
Can't go wrong with the chickpea cutlets! I made a double batch this time with navy beans instead of chickpeas, and baked them for the first time (wow, easy and awesome!). This meal was a make-up-on-the-fly kind of thing, which is not my usual thing. I sliced up carrots and tossed them with some olive oil and maple syrup and salt and roasted them while I baked the cutlets. While that stuff was cooking I chopped up a portabello mushroom and sauteed it in olive oil with salt and white wine, then added in some flour and soy milk creamer to make it creamy and a little saucy. Oh and salt and pepper. It was really tasty over the cutlets, not really a gravy, but savory and delicious.

Other Stuff I Don't Have Pictures Of

I also baked up a big batch of cornbread from The Joy of Vegan Baking which was deLICIOUS! Like cornbread you'd get at The Cracker Barrel or something, it was really tender and sweet and awesome. Very different from the usual southern style skillet cornbread I make.
I also made a really great impromptu curry loosely following a recipe from Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet. It was coconut milk, red curry paste, chickpeas, green peas, and a can of diced tomatoes, sauteed sliced onion, carrots, and garlic all over whole wheat spaghetti. Next time I would add a tablespoon or two of Braggs, because it needed saltiness, but otherwise it was really tasty and made a LOT of food, AND the toddler was a huge fan.

Yesterday for a toddler playgroup I made a batch of Cornbread Blueberry Muffins from The Joy of Vegan Baking. These were ok - I was really expecting the tenderness of the cornbread, and these were much heavier/breadier. I was out of yellow cornmeal, so I used white, and I used all whole wheat white flour instead of half-white, half-wheat, so that might have been the culprit. I would make them again using less whole wheat flour because the flavor was good otherwise.

And finally, yesterday I made a batch of the Backyard BBQ Sauce from Vcon. OMG, yum! I slathered in on tempeh and fried it up for sandwiches for dinner last night (and lunch today) on whole wheat buns with a little veganaise and bread & butter pickles. Awesome combo! We had salad on the side.

Pizza and some other things

Pizza night! I cheated a little and used a Trader Joe's regular refrigerated crust, and it was dang tasty. I topped it with leftover pesto (VwaV), sundried tomatoes, sauteed portabello mushrooms, leftover pine nut cream sauce (Vcon) and, obviously, sliced tomatoes. It was a really awesome combo. The pesto was nice and fatty and kept it from seeming dry, and the pine nut cream sauce dolloped on was just the touch of creaminess that was needed to imitate some cheese factor. I would most certainly make this combo again, it was deeeeelicious.

Power Lunch
I thought my lunch today was kind of impressive looking, so I decided to photograph it. The funny thing is, it took about 2 minutes to put together since it was leftovers. This is Quinoa Black Bean Salad that I got from Jenny at Vegetarian Adventure over romaine and baby spinach, with a whole wheat pita stuffed with tofu salad and sliced cucumbers. Oh, and some baby carrots. Cuz you can never have enough carrots. I looooooooove tofu salad, and I don't really follow a recipe any more, just add veganaise, relish, mustard, salt and turmeric to taste. I like it super creamy in these pitas, it's the perfect comb. The quinoa salad was a tasty surprise and used up a bunch of stuff that needed using up. And come on, it just looks beautiful and healthy, right? I felt healthier having just looked at it.

Of course, I had to sabotage that all by finishing the last 4 chocolate chip cookies from the other day. They had become really crispy and required dunking, and unsweetened almond milk is THE ticket for that. I can actually drink that stuff by the glass! I've never really been able to get into soymilk by the glass, it always set my stomach off just a little. Not so with my new love, almond milk - that stuff is smooth and fabulous and just the right consistency.

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.

Canada: A Total Bust

That pretty much says it all. After a horrible night of sleep (thank you, teething baby and humid weather!), we still made it out the door and under the river to Windsor, ON by about 10:30 a.m. on a search for local cheese that we thought only Canada could provide, what with its relaxed dairy laws (as compared with the U.S. anyway - there's no poutine here after all). After getting a little lost, we found our way to the farmer's market I had located online, only to find it empty except for some frozen pasta and meat. Ugh! Not one vegetable, not one loaf of bread, and certainly no dairy products. So disappointed. Apparently they had been busted by the food inspector semi-recently for lack of the requisite number of handwashing sinks and other bizarre rules. So very, very bummed were we. I also find this a little questionable since this market was supposedly an endeavor backed by the Downtown Development authority - don't they know their local laws on such matters? Perhaps the disorganization that plagues Detroit extends across the river as well.

We found our way to a used bookstore on Oullette St. and picked up a couple of books and chatted with the very friendly clerk about baby related things, which was the highlight of the whole trip (according to me, anyway. Silas would probably tell you [if he in fact talked] that the best part was watching the bulldozer and crane kick the crap out of part of Oullette St, which they are ripping up to turn into a pedestrian zone. It was baby boy heaven!).

This landed us about lunchtime driving to "little Italy" on Erie St. to forage some grub (thus partially breaking our rules about eating out, since we drove ourselves there. But seriously, we were just trying to salvage a wasted trip over the border, and the fact that we had to pay about $4 each way to cross over). We ended up in a dark pizzeria/trattoria called Spago's, and as soon as my iced tea arrived courtesy of a soda fountain, I knew we had made a mistake, but my sleep-deprived brain and crabby child kept me from suggesting that we leave. When our pesto pizza arrived with anemic looking tomatoes and no sign of fresh basil in sight, I thought I would burst into tears. Bland cheese sealed the deal. I don't know if it's weird that food is one of the things that can send me into a pit of despair quicker than just about anything else (I'm recalling a Christmas dinner in Tuscon where we were served rice and beans and tortillas and I could barely believe that this represented respectable holiday fare to anyone, but I digress). The fact remains: I was despondent. This was not helped by the fact that my darling husband was announcing that this constituted a "good pie" to him. About the only good thing about it was the crust, which had a nice crispiness to it courtesy of the woodfired oven.

Has eating local ruined me? Will I ever be able to peacefully consume restaurant food without tears threatening? All I know is that I could have made a pizza that kicked the sauceless ass of the pathetic excuse for a pie that we were served.

I don't think we'll be braving the bridge or tunnel again to grand old Canadia anytime soon. Although we had considered taking my parents over to a restaurant called The Cook's Shop when they visit later this month. I've heard nothing but rave reviews about that one. Hopefully my pizza wounds will have healed by that point.

ELC 9/07, Day 4

Breakfast
Ok, not so local, but we're using stuff up!
Organic Yogurt (from TJ's - package says MA)
Organic Banana
Local blueberries (purchased at RO Farmer's Market)
Homemade granola (local sunflower seeds; everything else non-local that we know of)

BUT! I now have oats, sunflower seeds and honey to make more granola, now that we used up that last batch. I think I'll still add the non-local pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, although I'm not 100% on this yet; it would be really cool to have 100% local granola....except for the cinnamon anyway.

Lunch
I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now (so good!) and I was reading the tomato chapter while nursing the baby down for his nap and starting to think about lunch. We had 3 plum tomatoes left from our Farmer's Market bargain box purchase, so I made the same marinated deal as the pizza last night (local garlic and basil, non local EVOO, S&P). We cut a baguette in half (from 11 miles away) and spooned this over the baguette and topped it with the TJ's cheese again. AAAGH! It was the most delicious thing ever. And even though my husband did set off the smoke alarm while broiling (something to do with a bamboo skewer being used to prop the bread up), it didn't wake the sleeping child, so all was right with the world.

Dinner
I braved a new recipe from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, Chicken Fried Tofu. It was a big hit! We served with "Good Gravy" from the same book, and it was delicious. Super simple ingredients (local tofu, plus a little flour, baking powder, oil, and s&p), the trick was freezing the tofu, thawing it, and then refreezing the whole mixture for another 1/2 hour before you can fry it. So just a little planning.

We also had some garlic toast with local sundried tomato bread, and a simple tomato salad that I read about at cooking vintage. Delicious!

Silas stuck with dried apricots, local apple, local cheese and some tomatoes. He's a good eater, that kid.

Preserving the Harvest
So we finished up the homemade tomato sauce yesterday, and it is sooooo good! After letting the sauce simmer for most of the day, I added 3 6-oz cans of tomato paste to thicken it up and blended it alllll together with my handy dandy immersion blender (how I love that thing!!!!). Oh, wow. The sauce is a light orange-y color, almost like vodka sauce, creamy and beautiful. After letting it cool down for several more hours, I bagged 2 quarts for the freezer, jarred another quart for the fridge and jarred another 3 or so cups to send home with Magnifico. Yay!

I can't tell you how wonderful it was to look lovingly on my beautiful crockpot of tomato sauce last night. My husband and I were positively mooning over it. We did some rough calculations and figured that although the tomatoes themselves were a deal, with all the other ingredients and electricity that went into it, it wasn't "cheap" sauce. But hey, that fancy Rao tomato sauce is like $10 per jar, so I think the effort, time and money are worth it. To see gorgeous heirloom tomatoes that are about to be chucked into the compost bin magically transform into a ton of delicious sauce that will feed my family (and our friends) for several meals? Priceless.

Random Musings
I'm on the desperate hunt for local dairy items. I have a source for (non-organic) butter, milk (which we don't drink), and ice cream, but not so much for cheese, yogurt and kefir. After having read A, V, M and about how easy it is to make homemade mozzerella and other soft cheeses, we defnintely want to give this a try. I know one can make their own yogurt and kefir, but I have no idea how complicated this is, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. But it would be pretty cool to make all this stuff myself. After the high of making tomato sauce, I'm anxious to find my next fix...

Garden Notes
We're growing 4 different types of tomatoes this year (Yellow Pear, one called Sunbeam, a Beefsteak variety, and a patio variety). They are all doing really well. The Yellow Pear is absolutely crazy! We're growing everything in containers, because we weren't sure about the trustworthiness of our soil (we rent, and we heard that it has a high mercury content). The pear is in a small garbage can, like the kind you'd use in the bathroom (with holes cut in the bottom for drainage). The sunbeam and beefsteak are in half of a barrel, and the patio is in a 12 " planter. There are 10 or so tomatoes on the patio plant, one is just starting to get ripe. There is one red tomato on the beefsteak plant, with about 3 green ones still growing. Nothing's turning on the sunbeam plant, but there must be 6 or 7 good sized green tomatoes ready to ripen. And I can't even tell you how many cute little pear tomatoes there are! About 4-5 that are just about ready to pick, and about a gazillion green ones (ok, maybe like 30?)

We've also got 5 basil plants (2 genovese, 1 opal, 1 ruffly opal, and 1 pesto - little green leaves with white edges). The ruffly opal almost died earlier in the season because it was too shaded by the tomato plant, but I transplanted it and now it's trying its darndest to make a comeback. The other varieties are all delicious and doing well, as long as I remember to water enough. ;)

We are also growing thyme, oregano and rosemary successfully. Cilantro was not such a success. That thing bolted straightaway and then just stopped. Lame!

We're also growing 4 types of mint: Peppermint and chocolate mint are growing well in a bucket together, 2 pineapple mint plants are growing successfully in another bucket, and the orange mint is in a cheap plastic planter off in the shade by itself (it's the only variety that wants more shade than sun).

It has been so fun to have a garden this summer. We also had several sugar snap pea plants that we grew from seed, and they produced really well for the first half of the summer. We planted them in a half barrel with petunias, and holy moly, the petunias were out of control crazy about them! I think they add nitrogen back to the soil and the flowers were diggin' it.

Other than the peas, nothing else was grown from seed, but next year, that's going to change! Watch out, seed catalogs. I'm comin' for ya.

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!

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!