CSA veggies

Snap peas!
Garlic scapes!
Turnips.
Lettuce.
Sweet William.

Plus more bok choy.

The flowers were great, but alas, we could only enjoy them fleetingly because we were headed out of town and running around like chickens with our heads cut off...
I think I broke a filling eating the lettuce because there was some sand I'd failed to rinse thoroughly and CRUNCH ow ow ow. I've been chewing on my left side. Time to call the dentist (hold me- I'm scared!).
The snap peas were marvelous, so sweet and good and they were very well enjoyed on our camping trip.
I made the turnips into pizza !voila! tonight, so sneaky am I. Plus, I put some away for perhaps a turnip soup or something. More on that tomorrow.
The scapes await their doom as pesto. Mmmm-mmm good. We had it last year and while I'm tempted by pics of grilled scapes/roasted scapes, I will probably default to the pesto 'cause I'm just that crazy.

I got the 'rejected by Knitty' email tonight- feel my pain. Maybe I'll put the pattern up in the fall when the disappointment is not too fresh.

In other news, I hacked my Method foam soap dispenser.
Here's how;
1. Fill your method foaming soap dispenser with about 1/4 of liquid soap. I used method's regular liquid soap.
2. Pour in about 1 oz of liquid glycerin.
3. Fill the rest of the way with water.
4. Mix it up and it makes a real thick foam.
5. Realize that one ounce of glycerin is about one dollar. Google how to hack foam dispensers and discover that lots of people have used regular liquid soap and then diluted it a lot. Dump it all into a sealed container and refill the bottle to about one inch with the mixture you just made and then add water to fill. Realize it works even better. Convince yourself the glycerin makes it even better than it would have been with just water diluting it. Congratulate self on having more solution close at hand, at the ready for when you need to refill again. The end.

Sassy Raven

Do you know what the best thing about vacation (especially camping vacations) is? Well, I think it's the fresh perspective it gives, right? The whole shift in what's really important. Getting down to the basics. I leave home thinking "I need to have exactly 2 cups of coffee with this much milk and sugar to be happy." and I come home pooh-pooing such anal retentive thinking. Really, sometimes I just get so stuck in a rut and my thinking gets small, but then you get out in the wild and it really makes everything seem so much bigger.

We had a great time up in Ely, made out ok against the bugs and heat and sun... E. went in the water twice with our friends (I forgot my suit)! We also went up to the Bear Center and that was interesting. I'm not sure I'm completely down with using captive animals to educate... but we gave them our money and there was lots of information. That (guy? girl?) raven up there was strutting around all sassy-like and bold. A random shot seems to have captured it.

On to the food. Whee! It was so decadent bringing a !can! of peaches and tupperwares of pre-prepared food. I think we really have entered a new epoch of camping on the land for our family with the purchase of a boat. And while I still grieve the hard core canoeing in and pitching our tent and making it work, I also really appreciate having the (motor)boat and the large screen tent to make it so much easier. Cabin, ho!

Here's what we ate;

Friday night when we got in (after a frantic race to beat the mosquitos as dusk drew down meanwhile corralling 3 past-their-bedtime-kids)-

speedvegan's felafel with lettuce, tomato, tahini sauce and pitas

Felafel

3/4 C water
1/2 C bulghur wheat
1 can chickpeas, drained
1/3 C breadcrumbs
1 T olive oil
1/2 onion, minced fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T lemon juice
1 t salt
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1 t cilantro
1 t parsley
1/4 t turmeric

Nuke water until it boils (3-4m). Mix in bulghur, let stand in microwave while you prep the other ingredients.

In food processor, lightly process chickpeas, lemon juice, breadcrumbs and salt, scraping down sides to ensure even processing.

Nuke bulghur 2m or until water is absorbed.

In a medium bowl, combine ingredients from food processor with bulghur. Set aside.

Saute onion, then garlic. Add cumin, coriander, turmeric, cilantro and parsley. Mix in bulghur mixture, adding water a scant 1/4 C at a time until it is mixed together and sticks in a spoon shape when you remove the spoon. Refrigerate while you make sauce (see below).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake small balls of felafel (16 - 20) on greased baking sheet. Bake 30m.

tahini sauce;
1/4 C tahini
1/2 C water or more as needed
1 T lemon juice
1/2 t salt
1 clove garlic

Blend. This kept well in the cooler and made everything taste better.

This meal was so great because I made everything at home and so we didn't have to break out the pans and it was all ready to go. We kind of ate in stages as people were freed up from setting up camp/getting kids down for the night. Really good.

Saturday morning this Peach Blueberry Campout Crumble

3/4 C rolled oats
1/4 C sliced almonds
1 can sliced peaches in juice
1 heaping T cornstarch
1/2 t nutmeg
1 oz dried blueberries

Before going;
Put blueberries and nutmeg in a container.
Put oats and almonds in another container.
Put nutmeg and cornstarch in container.

At camp;
Toast almonds and oats. Set aside.
Dump juice into pan and warm. In it's container mix a little water into the cornstarch so that it's pourable. Pour into juice while whisking constantly. Add blueberries and bring up heat until thickened and blueberries are plump. Stir in peaches and mix until warm. Divide mixture into bowls and top with oats and almonds.

This made a nice change from our usual oatmeal. It was hearty, too. The cornstarch was a little lumpy but when you're camping things like that don't phase you.

Saturday lunch pitas (I froze half of the pitas in foil in a Ziploc and they thawed in the cooler by then), hummus, flax meal crackers, carrots and snap peas from our csa. The crackers were a hit! We'll hope that baking them didn't kill all the good juju from the flax meal.

Saturday night
bean bulghur burgers from D. our friend. They were a little crumbly, but that always seems to be an issue.
These were really good! She froze them and they had thawed by that night. We had them with tomato and avacado on bread and they tasted great and were really filling! Then we had Fruit Cobbler, which was less exciting than I had hoped. But it was still good and a fun dessert for camping. Perhaps with a little less bread topping, a different dough (there's got to be a vegan bisquick recipe, right? I used the low fat Bisquick which is vegan.). The top stayed doughy and so we cooked it a long time, but then the fruit burned to the bottom. Oh noes.

2 C dried fruit (I used organic dried cherries and blueberries)
1 T sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 C walnuts, chopped

2 C low fat Bisquick
1/3 C soymilk powder
1/3 C brown sugar
1 1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t allspice
1/4 C Earth Balance

Bag each group seperately.
At camp;
cover fruit with water, bring to a boil and cook until just tender (4-6m)
Add a little water to dough and mix in bag.
Squeeze dough over fruit and cover. Cook 8m.

Then Sunday morning we had D.'s bars, which were great. Again, I will have to get the recipe- they were made with local honey, oats, cranberries, peanut butter and chocolate chips. Great tasting and great fuel. Also great for kids.

Then we ate lunch leftover crackers and hummus at a rest area on the way home.

That's it for now, csa pics later.

Scooters Are Emasculating

Just a quick post here...
Getting ready for our big trip up to the land near Ely, MN!! So excited! Must pack!
I made crackers!! Woot! And healthy, too!

Flax Meal Crackers inspired by Olive Oil Crackers Recipe

1 C flax meal
2 1/4 - 2 1/2 C AP flour
1 t salt
1 C warm water
1/3 C olive oil

to top;
2 t salt
3 t garlic granules

Mix in mixer. Switch to dough hook and mix on med-high for 5m. Dough should be neither too dry or too sticky to work with (how's THAT for vague!). Add more flour if needed. I added flour until the dough started coming away from the bowl.

Shape into a ball and cut into 12. Shape these into small balls and set aside under a wet towel for 30 - 60m.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees with pizza stone in it.

Use a 13" long piece of parchment paper, folded in half, to roll out dough (place dough between the two layers of parchment you have created by folding). Start by shaping the dough by hand into an oval, then place between layers of parchment and press by hand flatter. Finally, begin rolling out with a rolling pin, flipping over and lifting the parchment paper and straightening it as needed. Roll out to roughly 6 x 10".

Remove to a cornmeal dusted baking sheet, prick holes into it all over with a fork and dust with garlic and salt mixture (or whatever floats your boat).

Slide onto pizza stone and bake 5m or until edges are turning brown.

Makes 12 biiiiig crackers. Yum!

Gotta go pack! Have a great 4th!

Potluck, ho!

This past weekend I had two potlucks to attend and one 'bring a treat'.
The potluck is a curious creature, much dependent upon the canniness of the attendee.
Her outward appearance is ever changing, but her soul remains the same...
Huh? (wipes drool from mouth) Oh, what was I saying?
Yes, so I brought casseroles! My favorite!!
One was based on Lachesis' Alfredo Stroganoff sauce, I've blogged it before, (no pic), I used CSA broccoli (I kinda felt bad smothering them in this casserole, but it was for the greater good). Everyone said they liked it (for goodness sake- a whole stick of Earth Balance!).

Then I made the baked lentils doubled everything, with maple syrup this time for the sweetener and 1 T onion soup mix, no other spices. Served over rice. That was pretty good too, just a tidge sweet, though, so I thought it was kinda strange. Next attempt, molasses.

And I made this go anywhere rhubarb bars recipe which was ok, but nothing too fantastic. Dropped out the eggs (in the filling- gack!) of course, but when I was pressing the crust into the pan I was thinking, "Shouldn't there be some, say, soymilk, in here? This is pretty strange.". I 'prebaked' the bottom crust, but didn't really need to because in an attempt to get the top to brown, the bottom got a leeetle burned. I thought about blanching the rhubarb, but I just sliced them really thin (like wooden yardstick thin) and woo! it worked.

Going camping, prepping food.

No reading, no knitting.

Kiefer Sutherland?!?

This...















becomes this:















I was pretty skeptical about these at first. Actually, I was really geekily excited about these at first because I felt so wholesome buying the whole wheat berries at the coop, but then when I actually got the berries in the blender and then added the milk and started actually blending them I was totally freaked out. And then after that when I started pouring them into the pan, I was skeptical. I was like, "I have ruined supper and all it was was pancakes! I am such a dork!". We have run the gamut of emotions on these pancakes. What a fun way to spend a beautiful Sunday early evening, huh? But I really liked them, on one condition- SERVE WITH SOME KIND OF FANCY SAUCE AND CHOCOLATE CHIPS! Then they are perfect.
Recipe from here, I changed the amount of oil and of course soymilk.

Whole Wheat Blender Pancakes with Rhubarb Strawberry Sauce

1 C whole wheat berries
2 T sugar
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 T oil
1 1/2 C soymilk

Blend berries and milk (start with 1 1/4 C milk and add more if needed to make pourable batter). Blend slowly and then more and more. Blend a lot. Blend more than you might expect. Blend until you fear for your blender. Then say, "Oh, what the heck!" and blend some more.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Set batter aside for 5 - 10m to 'develop' (sounds menacing, don't it?).

Meanwhile, start your sauce. Boil some water to blanch the rhubarb in. Once it's boiling, dump the rhubarb in and cover and wait for it to boil again. Then take it off the heat and dump it into a colander/strainer and run cold water over it to stop it's cooking. Continue with sauce preparation...

Sauce;
2 C rhubarb
1 C strawberries
1/4 C maple syrup

Combine all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl, mix and nuke for 2m, let rest and nuke again for 2m (should be bubbling). Tada! Sauce!

Get out your trusty old cast iron skillet. Or non-stick pan* -shudder- (just kidding there, haha). Grease it up with oil (I just pour some in and then use a paper towel to drag it around and cover the whole surface- is that bad?). Heat it up. Pour out two small pancakes, wait until edges bubble and center does not shine and flip! and cook for a little less time than you did the first side. If they start smoking, you should flip them (ask me how I know). Repeat 3 more times for a grand total of 8 pancakes.

Serve with yummy rhubarb strawberry sauce and chocolate chips.

*actually, a nonstick pan might work better because these things are pretty sticky- to be completely frank, I practically fried these- I mean, it wasn't an inch of oil in the pan or anything, but it was sure a lot more oil than I'm used to using. Maybe I am oil phobic.

Hey, I read "Ethan Frome" by Edith Wharton. I thought it was boring at first, but then I got all dragged into it and couldn't put it down. It's just a simple story, but boy do you want to know what REALLY happened. So then the book it was in is this compilation of 3 of her earlier novels so I'm reading another one something something country it's called. Huh.

I worked another wedge on my scarf you guys are probably all like, gads! woman, just show us a picture already or something. It's not done. Maybe I'll rework it in the OmegaCrys I got. Maybe I'll design a baby sweater next from the OmegaCrys, actually. I've got a few ideas knocking around I'd like to try out.

In other news I must relate a conversation I had recently with a girlfriend;

Her; "Have you heard of Keffir?"
Me; "The Keeper? (facial expression- bur?) Yes, I've read about it on a few forums."
Her; "The Keeper, what's that?"
Me; "Ah, (insert awkward explanation here)."
Her; "...not something you'd really want to try for the first time at your high school gym class, huh?"
Me; "Ah ha ha, no. Talk about a tragedy you'd never live down."
Her; "No, I said 'Keffir'."
Me; (still reeling from that last part of the conversation) (jokingly) "Kiefer Sutherland, yah, he's hot!"
Her; "NO, Keffir- you know, it's like this yogurt drink!"
Me; (finally getting it) "Oooh, ah ya I've seen it at the coop."

Now that's comedy gold right there, folks.

You pansy!

Look what I found on our front stoop yesterday!! Isn't he beautiful (maybe it's a she)? Did you know that the eardrum of a toad is bigger than it's eye if it's a boy and smaller if it's a girl? Don't say I never share with you...

Well, I keep thinking that I want to show you the yarn I got at the Mexican grocery, but I didn't want to keep calling it that, 'cause that sounds bad and I should be more accurate. So I thought, okay, I'll go online and figure out the name of this place (I did look last time, but then it flew right out of my head!). So I google, mexican grocery sparta wi and this is what I come up with! Scandal! It's dated '05 and I don't really have any way to verify any of it, so take it with a grain of salt. Anyway, they're there now, so I guess it blew over?/was resolved somehow.

So I went to La Tienda Mexicana a few weekends ago and got some yarn!!! It's OmegaCrys and it's a acrylic poly blend. And it's pink!!






















It's laceweight, so heaven knows why I got it, oh yea, that's right, it's yarn. I envision a baby blanket of some kind?

Also we got our CSA veggies, week 2! I'm most excited about rhubarb, in fact, I'm fantasizing about making more microwave jam using rhubarb and strawberries... I'm guessing I'd have to cook the rhubarb a little first somehow. I love rhubarb- I used to run around outside in the summer in our back yard as a kid sucking on a big stick of it. Weird.


spring onions!















some unidentifiable herbs because I forgot my sheet!















arugula which I had to eat all by myself because my husband hates it!













lettuce! I think it's ?butter? lettuce!












more broccoli! we have to eat this tonight, probably with tempeh!












the rhubarb I'm so excited about- I even forgot to get one more stalk in there!!!!














the few radishes that were left (we snacked on these on the way home- yum!)













the pansies I forgot to show you last time...












That's it folks. Maybe I will go start reading Wharton.

Saucy Garbanzos and Rice

Oh, man, we had the best supper tonight! I got ahold of some sumac earlier, and decided it would be good in some sauce, and oooohhh boy was I right! I can't wait to use this in mac 'n cheeze!!

Saucy Garbanzos and Rice

1 C rice, uncooked

1 can garbanzos, drained

sauce;
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T Earth Balance

1/4 C nutritional yeast
1 C plain soymilk
2 T flour
1 t sumac
1/4 t turmeric
1/4 t salt
dash pepper

Cook your rice.

Saute garlic in Earth Balance, remove from heat. Meanwhile, whizz together the rest of the sauce ingredients (in blender or just shake up in a jar/tupperware/lidded whatever) and add to garlic and butter. Cook on high, whisking constantly, until thick, remove from heat, dump in garbanzos and cover. Serve over rice. Channel the voice of Homer when he sees a donut (ahglaglahhhh).

We also got our CSA veggies- pics of those tomorrow... but we used the arugula to make a yummy salad! Here's the dressing I used for a large bowlful of arugula;

Easy dressing

2 T water
1 T olive oil
1 t maple syrup
1 t red cooking wine
1/4 t Dijon mustard
1 tiny clove garlic, minced

Whizz in blender, et voila! The sweetness was just the right thing to have with the fresh bite of the arugula!

Finished the book, some parts were good, especially the emotional parts, but some of the technical details of how to bring the story along were awkward. There, I said it. Next up, some Edith Wharton. Woo.

I got yarn today!!!!! And it's pretty cool yarn, too! She found it at goodwill for pete's sake! Stashed away. Otherwise, no knitting. It's hot!

Burro Pockets

Burro Pockets

1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
1/4 C TVP
1 can black beans, drained

sauce;
1 can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 10 oz can enchilada sauce
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1 t cumin
1 t oregano

dough;
2 1/2 C AP flour
1 C water
2 T yeast
2 t salt
1/4 C oil

Mix all dough ingredients in mixer (or by hand, you Luddite). Knead a little. Allow to rise, covered with a towel, for 30m in a turned off low oven.

Meanwhile, blend all sauce ingredients in blender or food processor.

Saute onion and garlic in oil, then add black beans, TVP and sauce and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until TVP is cooked and sauce is thickened.

Oil 2 baking sheets and pour a small bowl of water.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Remove dough from oven and punch down. Knead a little. Shape into a ball and divide into 8. Cover with a towel or proceed with filling the pockets.

Roll out your 8th of a ball into an oval. Lay it on your baking sheet and place 1/8th of your filling onto half of the oval. Lightly wet the 'bottom' half of the oval all around the edge and bring the 'top' over the filling to meet the bottom edge and press the edges together with your fingertips.

Bake for 15m or until golden brown.

Yummmm.
These were a riff off of my Camel Pockets. Pretty good, I wasn't in love with the sauce for some reason, but in the end they tasted good. I'll probably keep tinkering around with different fillings. Wrap anything in that bread and it would taste good!

Making progress in the book- it sort of is contrived, like, suddenly when we need backstory we meet a convenient character for her to dump her past history on, plus I was just getting into the real time story and was wrenched back into the past and I'd stopped caring about that...

No knitting progress.

By the way, donkeys are really interesting.

Jam on bread and jam on toast!

This represents the strawberry jelly we made yesterday... it was really good!
Whee! It was really easy and we got to have jam for dessert, jam on bread and jam on toast, jam is the thing I love the most, J - A - M spells JAM! (Thank you, Frances).
We didn't have any pectin, but we did have lots of strawberries we needed to use, and quick! Maybe you do, too!

Microwave Jam

2 C crushed strawberries (approximately 3 1/3 C fresh)
1 1/4 C sugar
1 1/2 T lemon juice
1/2 t Earth Balance, softened

Place berries in a microwave safe bowl and mix in rest of ingredients. If the strawberries have not released their juices (naughty!) then crush them some more and wait up to 30m.

Cook on high, uncovered, until mixture begins to boil (approximately 7m, depending on your microwave). Stir.

Cook in 2m increments 3 more times, stirring after each 2m until you have cooked the mixture 13m total.

Put a spoonful into a small dish and place into the freezer to cool, then check for consistency- if you want it thicker, bring to boiling again, boil 2m and test again.

Makes 2 C.

Only 12 more wedges on my scarf to go!! We'll see if it stretches out into a reasonable length for a scarf once I wash it!!!! Eeeee!!!!

Started reading a book I started waaaay back and put down as 'too frivolous', but now frivolity is the order of the day, 'I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone' by Stephanie Kuehnert. I don't know if it's out yet, it was on the advance reader bookshelf at my local bookstore. So far, so fun. Okay, I just checked, it's out right now. She even has a playlist for the book at her website.

Summer Fun!

Whee! We have some friends in from out of town and we've been having fun!! These kinds of things are what really make summer great!

We went strawberry picking and last night we had Strawberry Rhubarb Pie and we used this recipe, substituting 1 C sugar for 1 C honey. We also skipped the arrowroot and just used 1/4 C flour and 1 T cornstarch. And we used this recipe for the crust! Thanks Kittee! It turned out soooo super nice, although we used regular wheat flour instead of pastry so it was hard to handle without cracking... BUT it did not get soggy (even when we forgot to prebake it) and it was so tasty and good! Oh, and we doubled it to make a lattice top- so pretty! My friend did such a great job with it, I'm afraid she got stuck with the tricky dough while I made Tofu Paprikash. She also whipped up a great warm vinagrette type dressing with some spring onions from her garden for the spinach and it was so yummy! Did I luck out or what?

Pie crust;
1 C flour
1 C ww pastry flour
2/3 C vegetable shortening
1 t salt
up to 1/2 C water

Filling;
4 C rhubarb cut into 3/4" pieces
1 C sugar
2 C strawberries
1/4 C flour
1 T cornstarch
1/2 t cinnamon

Make dough, cutting shortening into flour, then adding water SLOWLY until dough sticks together and handles well. Roll out half of the dough and fit into pie dish. Cut 2nd half into strips.
Meanwhile, mix all filling ingredients together.
Pour into pie crust, cover with lattice, weaving strips over and under each other and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.
Mmmm.





























My friend also brought some hummus she'd made from some garbanzo beans she ordered- she had had them at an Indian restaurant when they lived in Japan and the translation from Japanese is 'black garbanzo'. It makes a really good hummus! You can see the color is kind of caramel-y and the texture is more texture-y.

Hope you're enjoying the summer too! It's finally here!

Dunno.

Hey guess what? I read a book this weekend, and my, it was dark.
I read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. Yes, another post-apocalyptic novel. This time, no speculation/allusions are made as to why it happened, or what really caused it.
It was good.
I actually read Cormac McCarthy in college, maybe sophomore year, out loud on a long trip across America.
At first his writing style grated on me- it's very sparse etc. etc. And I always catch myself asking "Why does everybody love this guy?" BUT there is a SPOILER happy ending so I guess that I can forgive all. Plus he ends it so well. Lots of hope. Kind of a perspective shift.
He really is excellent at communicating a lot with just a few words. There are many times in the story where he just alludes to one thing and it gives off this whiff of a whole world of things.
I think it hit home because I have kids now and some of the story is sort of how a parent's baggage can impact how you raise your child. Also, zombies. No, wait, no zombies, just Eaters, no wait, he doesn't call them that...























These pictures are of mock orange blossoms. Apparently they smell very good, I couldn't tell you because I have horrible allergies. Ah well. I thought they were pretty. No, that's not my table, we were at Grandma and Grandpa's this weekend.

More knitting but then all of a sudden I realized that I knit a wedge backwards and had to rip back- arrrrrrrgh!

I totally made it!

I totally made the Lentil Salad from Veganomicon! I used all four of the radishes (wow- were they ever sweet and good!) and left out the carrots and tomatoes (didn't have any). Actually, I didn't have balsamic so I subbed apple cider vinegar, didn't have red onion so subbed yellow. I also added a wee bit of sugar. Oh yeah, and I used brown lentils instead of French. And it turned out well, a nice change of pace. A great start to summer!

Lentil Salad (as made by me)

4 C water
heaping T veg broth powder
1/2 t thyme
3-4 leaves Indian bay
1/2 t tarragon
1/4 t salt
1 C lentils, uncooked
1/4 onion, finely chopped
4 small radishes, grated

Bring broth, thyme, bay leaves, tarragon and salt to a boil in large pot. Add lentils and bring to a low boil, cover, leaving a gap, and cook 20m.
Make dressing meanwhile.
Drain lentils in mesh colander and pick out bay leaves.
Toss with dressing in a large bowl and chill until ready to serve.
Serve over lettuce.

dressing
2 T olive oil
1 T cider vinegar
1/4 t sugar
1 T dijon mustard
1 t bottled lemon juice
1 T water
1 clove garlic

pulse in blender until garlic is gone.

Stay cool!

CSA!

Woo! We got our CSA veggies in!!! It's all so gorgeous!
top to bottom, left to right;
broccoli, tatsoi
bok choi, spinach
radishes, lettuce!

I am particularly psyched about the spinach!! It looks so good.
I googled tatsoi, and I guess mostly you eat it raw, but you can saute it, too!
We will be gone this weekend, so we're taking it on the road... sharing the bounty, as it were.
Most of this we'll just eat raw, I'm thinking. Seems like the right thing to do. Maybe a light saute/stir fry of the bok choi. We had some of the lettuce for supper last night and it was so good!!

Hope your weekend it great!

Simple is Better

Well last night I made red lentil soup, which is always an exercise in restraint, because sometimes simple is better!

Red Lentil Soup

3 C red lentils
8 C water
1/4 C olive oil
1-2 onions, roughly chopped
3-4 cloves garlic*, sliced
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1 t salt
1/2 t lemon

In a large, heavy bottomed pot, saute the garlic and onions until the onions are browning and carmelized.
Meanwhile, rinse lentils until water runs clear.
Add spices and salt to onions, mix well, add lentils, mix well, add water, stir, bring up heat to a boil, lower heat and simmer until lentils are soft.
Remove in batches to blender, adding water if necessary to get a consistency you like.
Stir in lemon juice and serve with bread.

*depends on the strength of the garlic-- some garlic is stronger than others!!

No reading, no knitting. Lots of tea parties and birthdays were celebrated yesterday (yes, I live with a 3 year old).

I leave you with this.

Great Caper Bake

This, I thought, was reaally good!! It's Isa's Cesar Salad Dressing from Veganomicon, baked.

I have these capers I bought a long time ago for some reason I can't quite remember (pizza was involved somehow?) and so I've been wanting to use them in something. Well, I looked and looked and found cesar salad dressing recipes. But I didn't have any tofu. So I made this and it was great!!

This is Isa's recipe halved without the tofu. Am I weird that I just took dressing and made it a sauce? And I find it humorous that I look for a recipe to 'use up my capers' but it really only uses 1 t of capers. Next time I'll double it and make a 9 x 13" casserole, plus it was so good, I'm glad I've got lots of capers now!

Great Caper Bake

2T whole, slivered or sliced almonds or 1 T almond butter
2 cloves garlic
2 T olive oil
1 t capers
1 T caper brine
1/2 t sugar
1/2 t prepared dijon
1/4 t pepper
1/2 t salt
1/2 C water

1/2 pkg. Morningstar Farms chick'n strips
1/2 16 oz box or 3 C uncooked pasta

Blend sauce ingredients. Place chick'n strips in a large bowl and pour sauce over to marinate while you prepare the pasta.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Boil water and then pasta.
Drain pasta and add to sauce and chick'n, mixing well.
Pour into oiled 9 x 9" casserole.
Bake, covered, at 350 degrees for 30-35m (sauce should be thick on the bottom or mostly absorbed).
Enjoy! (8 points per fourth).

SOON! Soon! we will have our CSA delivery!!!! I cannot wait! Veggies, ho!

Minimal knitting. A few 'wedges'. No reading, sorry folks.

I was recently introduced to the work of Swedish artist, Carl Larsson, and I particularly liked this picture- it looks like someone has just left their knitting.

Eating Rajmah

Last night we had... yes, I know I need a new opening line!
Hmm, how about, 'After a rousing bout of Uno...' (we did not play Uno) we ate Rajmah. Kinda sounds like we ate some poor hapless guy, don't it? But no cannibals are we. Rajmah is an Indian dish made with kidney beans. Susan already did it. But I found a recipe that uses canned kidney beans, of which I had many. I doubled everything except the spices, didn't add salt because the canned kidney beans had salt and I added 1 T sugar because it was pretty tangy, I don't know why. It was pretty good and after eating it for a while, I really liked it (?it had to grow on me?).

Rajmah

2 cans kidney beans, drained
1 can tomatoes, drained
2 T oil
1 onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t Trader Joe's ginger jarred (was this the tangy culprit?!)
2 t coriander
2 t cumin
1 t tumeric
1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t garam masala
bay leaf
pinch cardamom
pinch cloves
pinch cinnamon
1/4 t pepper
1 C water

Saute onion and garlic, add ginger and spices. Add tomato and beans, cover with water and simmer until thick.

I called one of my favorite yarn shops yesterday to see if they had more of the yarn I'm using and they did, so I asked them to hold it for a week. I wasn't sure if I'd have enough to make this short rows scarf I'm working on. So I told myself that if I knit like the wind for one week, then I'll use up the skein I have and know whether or not to get the second.

Well, I then proceeded to rewind it into a smaller centrepullball than the centrepullball I'd already wound, checking to see if the repeats of color made enough for another length of scarf, which they did. Hey, why are you backing away like that and shaking your head? Hey, where are you going? Come on, now, don't you wind into a centrepullball skeins of yarn that are already made to pull from the center? What? No?

Anyway, it turns out that I have enough yarn for a whole 'nother repeat plus a little more. So I should have enough. But I'll still try to knit like the wind this week and see where I end up. So no reading, probably.

Everytime I make rice lately I end up pondering something while I stir and stir the rice with my fingers under the faucet in the wire strainer- I read somewhere that if you rinse the rice, you rinse off all the vitamins and stuff they spray onto the rice, but if I don't rinse my rice, it makes a terrible mess in my rice cooker*. This conundrum is completely representative of so many things in my life I can't even tell you. Next time I think of one I'll tell you and call it 'the white rice conundrum'.

*Not to mention the fact that I SHOULD be using brown rice anyway!! And the fact that I'm wasting water as I wash the rice under running water!! Agh!

More, more, more!

Well, this weekend I made lentil walnut dip and pancakes (amongst other things*).

First the pancakes. I used my standard go to recipe for the pancakes from vegweb- Easy Pancakes. Except, this time I really broke with tradition and *gasp* didn't wait the recommended 5-10 minutes between mixings, hey! I didn't even mix it twice, really, just folded the chips in after blending everything in the blender.

Seriously, it takes 2m or so on one side to cook, then 1m or so on the other, twelve pancakes, do the math, starving kid and husband... not gonna happen.

And guess what? The world did not collapse around me! Ha ha, no, really they turned out fine. The first few pancakes are always kind of strange anyway, right? Right?!?

Easy (Blender or not) Pancakes

2 1/2 C AP flour
2 T sugar
2 T baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
2 1/2 C soymilk
1 T veg oil
1/4 C chocolate chips

Dry, then wet. Or just dump everything (not the chips!!!) in the blender and mix, stopping to scrape sides.
Do not overmix or they will be rubbery.
Fold in chips.
Cook on med high (I start at 6, then 4 then 3 as the skillet get hotter).

One time I reserved 1/4 C of the batter and added 1/4 C applesauce and 2 t cinnamon and then used it to pour swirl patterns into the freshly poured pancake. Fancy.

Lentil Walnut Dip

















The dip was gooood! I had this veggie soup I'd frozen that I thawed out and then added some teeny tiny stars pasta to it that I had gotten at the Mexican grocery. But it was a pretty light soup, so the dip and crackers made for a really nice lunch.

Then I turned the dip into casserole, but I blogged that yesterday.

This weekend we worked on the garage and I had a chance to organize my stash a little. Still needs work, but I'm one step closer.

No reading. You guys are going to think I'm some sort of book dilettante or something. Must. finish. Distraction.

Must get more yarn! Must get fun new spice to try experiments with! More later!

*we tried these smoked apple sage sausages and were they ever good and juicy!!

I Can Has Drape?

Well, last night we had casserole. Yes, my favorite thing to do with leftover sauce is make casserole, you got a problem with that?
I had made Lentil Walnut Dip, which, by the way, was great, it just made a lot, so...

















Lentil Walnut Broccoli Casserole

11/2 C lentil walnut dip
1 C plain soymilk
2 C rice, uncooked
1 T oil
1 onion, diced
1 t salt
1 package frozen broccoli, thawed and stems removed
1/2 package fake chicken, cut into small pieces

Saute onion, chicken. Cook rice. Mix dip with milk, salt, onions and broccoli. Mix rice in when done. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 30m and 10m uncovered.

This was kind of bland. Hearty, yes. Filling, yes. Wholesome, yes, pretty much. But bland. So next time I'd add !more oil!, more salt?, garlic and some spices. Now, what spices go with lentils and walnut? I imagine things like sage and thyme. But really, this was mostly a way to use up that dip and get a supper out of it- mission accomplished.

I stopped reading Distraction with much excitement when SPOILER the author let slip that the protagonist was going to screw over his love interest.

In the world of short row scarves there is excitement! I finally have knit enough to determine that the scarf will have nice drape!!!! Isn't that cool?!? And the prognosis for "Does she have enough yarn to actually pull this off?" looks good.

See ya!