Something To Hang On To.

Greetings, fellow creatures!

Above we have a yummy, scrumptious dinner, just perfect for having on a beautiful Spring day.

Crockpot Dump Taco Soup

1/2 C TVP
1 can corn, undrained*
2 large cans black beans (or 3-4 regular cans) black beans, undrained*
1 can kidney beans, undrained*
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained*
1 T chili powder
1 t onion powder
1 t garlic powder
1 t cumin
1 t oregano, crumbled
1 t salt
1 T veg broth powder or bouillon (geez, I cannot spell that word! Spellcheck recommends boil lion when I check it) cube
2 T oil

Dump it all into your crockpot (I have the hugest size, I believe). Set on high for 5 hours (or even less, I imagine- just so the TVP has a chance to rehydrate and the flavors to 'meld'). Yah- it's that fancy.

Serve with cornbread. This one.

I thought I would make a more savory (read; one eigth the sugar), somewhat less oil version. It was not worth it. Now I know.

*I guess you could rinse and drain all the beans and just drain the tomatoes and then add back in roughly 6-8 C water if you felt like it, but I feel that goes against the laissez-faire attitude a dump soup should have.

Read ANOTHER mystery, what is going on?!? Actually, I just had to give up. "Glamorama" must reflect the ennui and uncertainty of our time through it's confusing, apathetic/psychotic hero and I'm sure I'm meant to realize all this pertinent stuff about our modern day life, but no. No thank you. I could not 'bond' with the protagonist and realizing SPOILER halfway through that he is crazy or something (still not sure) did not even help, even though it was interesting. Give me something to hang onto, dude.

So now I have started "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and although it is ANOTHER MYSTERY I find it engaging and interesting so far.

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!

Were I Ever To.

WWHFDLN

Another iteration of sloppy joes...
This time I used the fake meat (as we like to call it around these parts) from Morningstar.
Found the recipe by googling sloppy joe recipe vegetarian or somesuch. It was a combo of this recipe and this one.
I think that if I make this again (and oh, I will) I'll use red lentils and probably double the spices or something. And maybe try using tomato paste instead of ketchup. Maybe if I deconstructed ketchup to it's parts then I could just add said parts to the recipe. Anyways. Really, it's kind of silly to make sloppy joes from scratch and then use the packaged fake meat, ketchup and BBQ sauce. Ah well.

Sloppy Joes

1 pkg Morningstar Farms ground 'beef'/2pkts Boca ground 'beef' (next time try TVP or red lentils)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 C green or red pepper, chopped (again, bad me, I used red peppers from a jar)
1 T oil
1 T brown sugar (yes Virginia, 3 t = 1 T)
1 T prepared yellow mustard
1 T soy sauce
3/4 C ketchup
1/4 C BBQ sauce
1 t apple cider vinegar
1/2 t garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste (I just used a dash of pepper)

Saute onion, then garlic, then the ground 'beef'.
Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until thick.


And here is some risotto I made... wait for it... in the crockpot! Wow! I know you're just blown away. I've had this arborio rice like, forever, and I kept not having time to stir a pot for 17m straight or whatever and then I came across this recipe at A Year of CrockPotting.
Of course I veganized it. It was really good, sort of a light main dish.

Crockpot Corn Risotto

1 T oil
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 C arborio rice
4 C water, divided
1/4 C vegan chick'n flavor broth powder
1 can corn, undrained
1/2 t onion powder
1/4 t garlic powder
1 T Earth Balance
1 t salt

Saute onion and garlic in oil.
Scrape into crockpot, stir and rice and mix to coat in oil.
Boil 2 C water, carefully stirring in the 1/4 C chick'n powder (mine started boiling over).
Add corn, broth water, 2 C water, salt and Earth Balance.
Mix well and cook on high for 2 hours.

Finished "Lord Byron's Novel"- not as good as "Little, Big". It started out reminding me of that Patrick O'Brian stuff, but the switcharoos between the modern story and the older one just got tedious and there was a red herring. Boo.

Reading a few non fiction books, plus a collection of short stories by Angela Carter called "Burning Your Boats" which I am enjoying greatly and which are the kind of short stories I would love to write were I ever to do such a thing.

Don't Look Down

WWHFDLN

Bulghur Burritos Crockpot

a highly variated version of this recipe which was given to me with all the fixin's when my second was born as a 'help mom out' gift. And we have enjoyed it ever since!!

1 can black beans, undrained
1 can corn, undrained
1-2 C salsa
2 T oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t cumin
1/2 t onion granules
1/2 t garlic granules
1 C bulghur, uncooked
2-4 C water
2 T veg broth powder

Saute the onion, then garlic in the oil. Dump that into the crockpot, along with all the other ingredients and cook on low for 4-5 hours. I've also cooked it on high for a little less than that, but you have to keep and eye on the water!

I served this with some (prepackaged) corn tortillas that I cooked up on the skillet. Yum!

And here is another go round of the Baked Veggie Stew with Biscuits on top (woo, do I get a prize for referencing my own blog twice in a row? whaa... you say I'm just repetitive, that's all?).

I had high hopes of making this, doubling the gravy, using tofu instead of Boca 'ground beef', and using my dumplings from my paprikash recipe instead of baking them on top, but alas, the fates conspired against me, and so here you see it, as it's written, except I used 1/2 C TVP instead of the Boca. The gravy was not as tasty as I am used to... a fluke? or was it because I didn't add the wine?!? I'd better go run to the liquor store, then.

So I finished "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and enjoyed it- some interesting stuff about faith (either you have it or you don't) and marriage ('don't look down' being the main maxim) in there. I can't quite put my finger on why I liked it more than kav and clay... kav and clay was all over the place as it followed it's main character, but I felt like there were ?too many stories in there? and I had my hopes set on really knowing the journey of the golem, which, alas, did not happen.

Started "Veronica" which is kind of crazy so far.

Got "Little, Big" which comes highly recommended and I'm excited for, looking at a few reviews...

Apples Yah Der Hey

What We Had For Dinner Last Night

Crockpot Cabbage and Kielbasa

2 savoy cabbage, shredded
2 apples, chopped
6 small Viking purple potatoes
1 t caraway seeds
2 T vegetable broth
1 package Tofurky kielbasa sausage, cut into 1" rounds
1 onion, chopped
2 T brown sugar
1 t apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 C water

Chop your cabbage, apples, potatoes, onion and Tofurky. Put it all into your large crockpot, sprinkle with caraway seeds, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar and veggie broth powder, pour in water and cover.
Cook on low for 4 hours, high for the last 2, stirring occasionally.

This was very good! It had a nice spicy sweet tart thing going on...
And, it was not mushy- when I started making this it was to the tippy top of the cooker and I was all like, no way will 1 1/2 C water do it. But I was patient and as the cabbage cooked down and released it's juices it was fine. Even though the potatoes themselves were not covered with water, I think they cooked by being steamed.

I found the idea for apples in a recipe called Milwaukee Kielbasa Supper- how could I resist?!? (I used to live in Milwaukee). The one thing that would have made this better would have been the addition of wine. Mmmm, wine.

I served this up with some of that Easy Vegan Wheat Bread- I halved the recipe due to lack of ww flour existence in my home and it was good! Whee!

Finished "Maps and Legends", first essays were the best. Reading "The Pilot's Wife", another Oprah book club book, oh no! what can I say, I grabbed a title that sounded like I'd heard it before. Anyway, I'm almost done, it's pretty fluffy, like, her description of what it feels like after someone you love has died was pretty ?heavy handed? heavy with the brush? how do I say it? She was obviously REALLY trying to make sure you knew the person was grief stricken. But it's gripping, and it's what I have to read right now. The end.