Sand + Kitchen

Hello my lovelies!! Here is what we had for breakfast yesterday morn! 'Twas quite yummy and made even more so with some homemade apple butter schmeared across the tops! MMMmmmm... so glad I made a ton of apple butter and then froze some! Just the thing for a bleak February morning!

It's this recipe, but I just used some random fancy white flour I had plus regular white flour instead of the whole wheat pastry flour....

They turned out pretty good, and it was a nice change from our usual weekend breakfast pancakes/muffins/Dutch baby routine...

I'll probably try some other recipes, but this one won because you started the starter the night before and so once you mixed everything up in the morning you only !only! had to wait 90m. The other recipe had a 2 HOUR rise! That's why I've never made english muffins for breakfast, no way am I getting up that early!


Next up is a nice, healthy meal we had the other night, was it Friday?

I don't know what it is (perhaps conditioning from early childhood) but I always feel soooo healthy when I make and serve brown rice! I used my favorite recipe for making brown rice, Foolproof Oven Baked Brown Rice. Sooo easy and good! I love how, if you use long grain rice, the rice comes out all aligned the same way (it's the simple things...).

So, over the rice we have Tempeh with Curried Cashew Sauce. I did not cube the tempeh (rebel!) I just crumbled it. Aaaaand I sort of winged it with the sauce a leeeetle bit. I just used a splash of rice wine vinegar and 1 T sugar instead of the honey and probably more soy sauce than they asked for.

Hey, here's something cool I learned recently- when you buy ginger, scrape all the skin off with the edge of a spoon and freeze it. That way it keeps longer and doesn't get all wrinkly and dried out, which is what always happened to me, at least. So I tried this with this recipe and it worked, although you need a hella sharp knife to mince the ginger up (I did try grating it, but then most of the ginger ended up on the grater). I've also read somewhere that you can put the cut ginger in !sand! and it will keep growing, but this seemed a little urban legendy to me! Plus, sand + kitchen = nogood.

Oh yeah, and I didn't chop the cashews, I blended them in the blender with the other sauce ingredients.

We definately liked this and I'll probably use it again. Tempeh has been my bane and so it's nice to find a recipe we all like the taste of!


Finally, it's spaghetti, my daughter's 'favorite' meal... there's some GimmeLean 'meat' balls on there. I finally figured out how to handle GimmeLean (duh!) USE LOTS OF FLOUR (geez that stuff is sticky!)! Used some fancy organic ?Muir Glen? sauce in a jar, added some onions and garlic to it, simmered it down a little thicker and then kept it in the oven for a bit all mixed up (that's why the noodles are all spaghetti sauce soaked). Yummmm. Comfort food at it's best.

Oh, and I can't forget- I read "Into The Forest" and loved it. If you like post-apocolyptic fiction (and who doesn't?!?), you might like this.
Also finished "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and started "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"- liking this second one better.
Also started "Persepolis" which is pretty interesting, now v. interested in the movie. Have the second one, as well.
Three books at once! Aiyiyiiii! Can you tell I went to the library?