Lovely.

Hokay, lets start at the top, shall we?

Here is Arroz non Pollo from "Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker" which is a very good cookbook, btw.

It was a good thing for me to try because it did things I would never do and it uses saffron, which I have but never know how to use! Okay, on the 'did things I would never do' front- well, let's just say it's busy. I mean, green olives, green beans, peas and chickpeas I would never put together in one dish. And to top it all off, some salsa in there too! But it was really good and simple and hearty. Win.

Wheat Berry Stew. This one turned out kinda weird. I was all excited to use my wheat berries, and I had some dried cannellini beans I used as well, so win there, but really, it was just odd. I added some stuff.

1 jar marinara sauce
1 jar's worth of water
1 1/2 C dried cannellini beans
1 C wheat berries
6 small potatoes, cubed
1/4 C nutritional yeast (just 'cuz)
1 T olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 T cumin
2 T soy sauce
1 T brown sugar
1 t onion powder (I was out of onions)
1 t turmeric
1 t paprika (a desperate bid to make it taste better)
1 t salt
dash pepper

The original instructions say to mix together and cook on high 8 - 10 hours. Mine was done sooner and took a LOT more water.

Cupcakes! Using vegweb's super moist chocolate cake recipe, which is my 'go to' recipe for cake. Hard to get out of the muffin tin, but oooh, so worth it! Plus simple chocolate espresso frosting. I just used fine ground coffee and some cocoa our friends brought back from the carribean. Wow.


Manwich using Boca crumbles. Used "Manwich BOLD" it was so exciting. Perhaps a bit more tomatoey. I could not fathom what made them bolder really.

Gnocci from Target. Made a cheez sauce using the cashew butter I got at the coop on sale. Your basic cheez sauce; cashew butter, nutritional yeast, onion and garlic powder, water, salt. I added a bit of citric acid and that tarted it up good! Pretty fun. Going to add citric acid to my cheez sauces from now on. Can't remember why I purchased citric acid- I know I had to go to some special ?brewer's? store and it was ?for a craft project? Hmmmm....

And finally, Cashew Garlic Alfredo Sauce which is so nummy. I upped the olive oil and the nutritional yeast to 1/4 c each and downed the water to just one cup. Also added citric acid, just a wee pinch (in lieu of the lemon juice).

Not much reading, really. Remember when I was all excited about having all these good books to read? Somehow they all evaporated. Like, one I hadn't remembered that I'd already read "The Pacific" by Mark Helprin who I really love. And "No one belongs here more than you" which went really fast and I liked it a lot. And "Everything Is Illuminated" - did I mention that one? Oh yeah, that I was sorta dense abuot what really happened. Watched the movie, which was fine, sorta have an inkling about what happened, but who can tell? The movie was supposed to have been different anyway.

So.

Enjoy the new digs, they are courtesy of my husband's tinkering- it was a lovely 'happy birthday' surprise!