If Necessary!

Oh, major housewife faux pas! I served corn with corn last night!!! How could this happen?!?
And, for the sake of this blog, I should have 1. made rice 2. make the sauce 3. skipped the corn in the rice and then served it so- bed of rice, sauce with tvp in it over the top. Perhaps more attractive, I don't know. BUT that would defeat the whole 'one pot meal' and 'easy' aspect of this meal. Anyway, it was good. And the sweet corn was scrumptious- this has been a banner year for corn.

sauce;
1 can pinto beans, undrained (3)
2 C water
1/4 C + 2 T nutritional yeast
1/4 C pimentos
1 T ketchup
2 t Dijon mustard
2 t chicken flavor boullion
1 t onion powder
1 t lemon juice
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t salt

1 C Minute Rice (12)
1/2 C TVP (2)
1 can corn, undrained (3)
1 T oil (4)
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced

Blend all sauce ingredients together.
Saute onion and garlic, then add rice, corn and tvp.
Add sauce and bring to boil, covered, on med high heat.
Lower heat and simmer, covered, until rice and tvp are tender, approx 20m, stirring often.
Heat on low, uncovered, until thick.

Makes approx. 5 cups, 5 points per cup.

Still reading "Where Angels Fear To Tread" v. good.

Cast on 80 sts provisionally for lace baby blanket. In a shockingly loud color of pink. Finished my trial swatch, looked okay, did not block but probably should have- crossing fingers that I'll be able to make it work. If it puckers, then it puckers. I will call it a design feature, like, 'it's thermal!'. Must must must cast on and off loosely! Planning to take out provisional cast on if necessary and use Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind off if necessary. If necessary.

Po-Ta-Toes!

Aren't they beautiful? We enjoyed them Thursday night as we feasted on leftovers before we left for Grandma and Grandpa's. These were courtesy of our CSA! I truly love a beautiful bouquet of flowers and have rearranged them again, now that we are home.

We had lots of fun and E. got to try out her new bike with training wheels- she did very well.
We even got to go to some beautiful waterfalls. We went to Twelve Foot and Eight Foot Falls. Really quite astoundingly beautiful!
Here is some lovely purple basil that I whirred up with some olive oil right away and put into small containers to freeze for the winter. We shall feast on pesto come winter!
We also got some lovely red onions...
A bunch of tomatoes (which I plan to blanch, remove the skins, dice and freeze).
Next is a lonely green pepper that I took a picture of before I found his brethren... but my pictures of them turned out blurry...
Some yellow and green (aka zucchini) squash
Some potatoes......and supper last night- pesto! With some splendid spring greens salad and cucumber and green peppers. We also got garlic, cucumber and wax beans!

Read "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham. Thought it was good, really resonated with parts of it, liked the little connecting details between the different stories, makes me want to read Woolf. Have started "Where Angels Fear to Tread" by E.M. Forster and am enjoying it.

Tried to fix the wavyness of the edging on the blanket, but no go. So, slapping on a garter border, ho! Tried it with just one repeat and it seems fine, will have to block the s@!# out of it, though.

Undulating Waves

Lentil Casserole

This was a melding of Lachesis' Alfredo Stroganoff sauce (scroll down and down for recipe) and Honey Baked Lentils (of course, veganized with maple syrup in place of honey- yum!). I once had some leftover Baked Lentils and some leftover Alfredo sauce and I mixed them together and lo! it was good. So I thought I'd do it on purpose. Things were a bit hectic so it got left in the oven a little too long, so it was dry, and I'm not convinced that just making each component on it's own wouldn't be better, but you can't beat it for easy. And it was tasty. Much better than some bland rice and lentil dishes I've made.

1 C moong dal (or other lentil), rinsed (12)
1 C rice, rinsed (12)
1/4 C Earth Balance margarine, softened (12)
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 C water
1/2 pkg soft silken tofu (2)
1/4 C soysauce
1/4 C maple syrup (4)
1 T cornstarch
1 T onion powder
2 t garlic powder
2 t white cooking wine
1 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/2 t ginger paste or powder
pinch nutmeg

Blend everything except the rice, lentils, onion and garlic.
Saute the onion and garlic, rinse the lentils and add them to the pot, then add the blender mixture and mix well, then pour into your 5qt casserole/ 9x9" casserole (enough to hold 6 C).
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 45m (or until rice is tender), stirring once.
7 points per cup.

No reading.

I did knit, though! I hacked away at my lace blanket pattern. Okay, reversing the pattern stopped the biasing and started the pattern undulating- yay! But now the sides are too wavy, so I'm going to try and add a half repeat of the pattern to the beginning of the row and subtract one from the end and vice versa on the next four rows (I'm reversing every four rows) and see if that takes care of it. If not, I'll just slap a garter stitch border on there and call it good. Can't wait to see if it works!

Paprikash with Dumplings

Paprikash with Dumplings

This was heavily modified from this recipe. I left out the mushrooms and subbed in garbazo beans because of the resident mushroom hater, ditto on the sour cream but we love stuff with paprika enough to give it a try and was I glad I did! We eat Tofu Paprikash and this is another paprika dish that will feature heavily in our rotation. I have tried and failed in the past to make dumplings, but with a stern warning not to take the cover off for 10m I was lifted into the realm of accomplished dumpling makers! Hooray!

I also added 1 T of sugar because the paprika paste I have is not quite what I'm after and it needed a little help. So if'n youse just use sweet Hungarian paprika powder, you'll be fine.

Paprikash

2 T oil (8)
1 onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 T sugar (1)
2 T paprika paste (or 1 T paprika powder)
1 can garbanzo beans (6)

Dumplings

2 C flour (16)
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
3 T Earth Balance (9)
1/4 C soymilk/water

For the paprikash, saute the onion, then garlic. Add paprika and sugar, mix well. Add garbanzos, undrained, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered 20m.

Meanwhile, get a big pot, I mean the biggest, of water to the boil. We used the big pot we use to boil up a whole dozen ears of corn. It's a pot my father claims he got when Johnson Wax stopped making their own paste for labels and got rid of the glue pots. So it's a glue pot, basically.

Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in Earth Balance until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in soymilk/water and keep adding a little water until you have a dough that holds together. Knead, then roll out to 2 finger width snake and divide into 12. Cover with flour, place on plate and slide into pot of boiling water. Cover and lower heat a bit (keep it boiling, you just don't want it to boil over) and boil for 10m without taking the lid off. Remove with slotted spoon and add to paprika mixture. Mix gently and serve.

Notes;
yum! and very filling.
will try to do smaller dumplings next time (thumb width snake and divide into 24).

Scored big time at the thrift store yesterday! Anxiously awaiting the dryer to be done. Also got these massive muffin tins that look like they served someone really well. Plus two nice mixing bowls, from an old Hamilton Beach mixer, sans mixer. I had to get them because they said, Made in Racine, Wisconsin, and that's my hometown.

Stopped reading "The Medusa Frequency" by Russell Hoban. Okay, I kept thinking, this can't be the same author as "Bread and Jam for Frances", but it is. That is hilarious. One of my favorite children's authors writes science fiction! I'll have to look into Pilgermann or one of his others when I have a chance. Right now my head is just not in the right place for this. Good writing, though. I just need something a little more straightforward, that's all. Right now the main character is talking to a rotting head.

So I started "The Way of All Flesh" by Samuel Butler, which is pretty interesting.

No knitting. Oh wait, I did sit down and decide that the fabric is definately biasing. So I'm going to reverse the pattern every four rows to get it to wave. Hope that works.

I'm not biased, I just lean.

Heeeeyyy...
So I made this Quick Whole Wheat and Molasses Bread and it is really good! I don't recall that that's actually where I stumbled across it, the picture on my saved Word document doesn't match...
I didn't have enough soymilk to make a full 1 1/2 C so I subbed in some apple juice because that's what we had. And I used apple cider vinegar. Next time I'm going to use flax seed meal instead of the corn meal. Now, THAT would make it better, in my opinion.
I was stumped as to what to serve it with, but I think it would be good with chili. Like, that kind of chili that has black beans as the base, and adobo chili and chocolate chips...
Roasted zucchini- covered in garlic salt and olive oil, roasted for an hour while the bread baked.
Some leftover soup doctored up with diced onion and garlic and some coriander seeds I didn't grind up enough in the blender so there were these odd bits of crunchiness...

Skipping reading that Sara-whatever guy's book, Saramago? "All the Names"- it didn't pass the 'I went away for the weekend and now am I interested enough to pick this back up?' test. Sorry, guy, I really wanted to like you, I did. Maybe when I don't have the attention span of a gnat (read; not a parent of 2 kids under age 4).

Started some book about a kraken- seems promising!

Got some knitting done too! Finally getting somewhere with this pattern. Sort of biases. Will put a border on it and see if that is okay. Not really biasing, just leans. Whatever.

Ciao.

Waving In and Out

No food pics today... camping food is uh-guh-lee! No, really, it's usually so crazy I'm just glad to get the food out there, much less photograph it!! But I did find some good recipes and for sure, one hit!

First off, an apology and an admittance of wrongdoing on my part! I did not include the 1 1/3 C brown sugar when I posted the Morning Glory Muffins post!!! I made it for this camping trip and was like, hmmm, that's wierd, where's the sugar? and then I tasted it and thought, well, I'll add 1/4 C molasses (which was good, but not enough, sadly). Och ach, so please, please forgive me if you tried this one, I am a bad blogger!!!! I did go back and edit that post to reflect reality.

Onward.

I tried this peach crumble again, this time with 2 T brown sugar added and 1/4 C chocolate chips, both definitely good additions. I really like that this can become, suddenly, Breakfast! if you were too lazy to make it have been dessert the night before. Or vise versa... I think the next time we go camping (just a few weeks!) I'll use a can of apple pie filling with cinnamon and the oats and chocolate chips... drool. Sorry Shmooed Food, I know this is, like, the antithesis of what you were going for...

Okay, so the hit of the trip as far as food wise was a red lentil curry I devised all on my own. Eating vegan is very conducive to camping, actually, so a lot of what we eat is similar, with one caveat, however- we eat pretty healthy at home (well, I guess you can be the judge of that), but when we're camping it's no holds barred calorie wise. For example, I was not shy with the brown sugar and the whole can of full fat coconut milk in this one. Plus oil. Whoah. Be forewarned.

Red Lentil Curry

2 C red lentils
1/4 C TVP
1/4 C dried apricots/golden raisins
1/4 C chopped roasted salted cashews
2 T brown sugar
2 T curry powder
1 t salt
1 can coconut milk
2 T olive oil (optional)
small onion (optional)
small carrot (optional)
garlic clove (optional)

Put all the dry ingredients into a Ziploc bag. At camp, if you brought any fresh veggies, saute them in the oil, then dump in the red lentil bag and mix well, then add the can of coconut milk and another can's worth of water. Cover and bring to a boil. Stir and cover alternately, adding water as necessary.

I also made Veganomicon's black bean burgers with a Vegenaise based cilantro mayo which were good and traveled well...
Made Kalamata Olive Tapenade, White Bean and Garlic Scape Dip and hummus for eating for lunch with carrots and pitas and my flax meal crackers (btw I oopsed and added 1/2 C olive oil instead of 1/3 C and so I upped the flour by a cup and got more crackers, plus I used tin foil instead of the pizza stone- still good, but not as good as the original way)...

Kalamata Olive Tapenade

1 C pitted kalamata olives
1/4 C chopped walnuts
1/4 C drained capers
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 t Dijon mustard
black pepper to taste
1/4 C fresh parsley (optional) or 2 t dried parsley or
2 t thyme (optional)

Process all ingredients. Serve at room temperature with crackers, pitas or on toasted bread.
Notes;
can leave out walnuts
can double recipe and use a can of regular black olives (or sub 1 C with black olives in place of kalamata).

Oh, and I tried parsley pesto, it was good. Pesto is great for camping with especially if you use angel hair pasta because it cooks up quick. I just used my standard recipe but with parsley in place of basil.

Ideas I did not try;
making sweet dumplings for dessert in coconut milk and making ice cream in a bag.

A chipmunk ate our chocolate! We heard loons! We saw an eagle! We swam to 'the rock' (well, D. and E. did, my husband and 3 year old)(well, he swam, she was along for the ride). We got a picnic table! It was all very fun.

I read "Farewell Summer" by Ray Bradbury and I have to say, I was so nervous about reading this and I was so pleased by it when I did! I loved it! I am a huge Bradbury fan, he was one of the first I found on my own when I started reading as a young kid and I just devoured all of what he wrote and then reread and reread it over the years, I mean, I REALLY like Ray Bradbury, so I was a little nervous to read a new book, but it was great and perfect and a fast read and fun and so forth. Even a little philosophical.

Did barely a few rows of knitting on the way home in the van and just enough to realize that the fabric is NOT biasing, it's just how it waves in and out along the sides so I should end the row by repeating the first repeat. No complicated alternating of stitches every other row necessary. I WILL conquer this pattern!

Gotta go do some laundry...

Are They Always Like This?

Well, here's what we had for supper last night. It's pretty weird, but it was really good. In order to not have pasta again, I put pesto over rice. The tofu was the other half I had frozen and then thawed. I cubed it up and let it marinate in the romaine pesto. In fact, this time when I made the romaine pesto, I skipped the nutritional yeast and it was fine! I just threw all the romaine we had into the big bowl of the food processor, a few cloves of garlic, chopped, 1/4 C walnuts and then blended. Then I scraped down the sides and added 1 T of olive oil. Mmmm. I don't know why I'm so taken with this romaine pesto, but I guess it's just the child in me, "Teehee, I made pesto from lettuce!".

I've been running around like crazy getting ready for this camping trip, yesterday I made a big batch of hummus, some olive tapenade, and some bean dip. Then I mixed up my flax crackers and made some pitas, and I made the batter for the Morning Glory muffins. This time with dried apricot. Last night around 10pm found me in the kitchen, bent over the hot, hot (425?) stove makin' crackers. This time was much more efficient- I tried using tin foil instead of baking them one at a time on the baking stone (can you imagine, opening and closing the oven 12 times?!?) and so this time only had to do three batches. It worked just fine, but you've really got to poke those holes in them with the fork or the steam builds up.

Today I bake the muffins (why did I make such a big batch?) and I need to get our suppers figured out and prepped. Gonna make the black bean burgers from Veganomicon. Gotta pick up some more muffin tins and some hamburger buns.

No reading, well, very minimal. Enough to realize that Saramago doesn't use quotation marks to show who's talking and his paragraphs are insanely long. Is it like this for all his books? Three of his other books are on the 1,001 books to read before you die list...

No knitting (ha!).

This post brought to you by the letter C

I have been lax in posting these pics of our latest CSA bounty! We got a lot, I haven't pictured the veg we have gotten before, just the new stuff, but we also got squash and my long awaited for zucchini (lost that pic, too lazy to repost, you can use your imagination), some cherry tomatoes that got eaten on the way home (just like candy!), more onions (hooray!) and lettuce (more romaine pesto here we come!). Here we have some new potatoes, which I made into a potato salad (no recipe as it was kind of weird).
And the first tomato, which E. and I and the baby shared for lunch one day!

Then the green beans which were so sweet and good, I froze a bunch and we'll be so happy to eat these come winter.
And finally, parsley and dill. I did use the parsley for supper last night and will hope to use up the rest this weekend.
Oh, and can't forget the cukes, I put one in the potato salad in lieu of celery, and then just ate the others straight up, skin and all 'cause I'm crazy like that.
Here is our meal last night. I had hoped to make some sort of pocket with that mixture, but then I forgot we were out of flour. So I made chickpea pizza and had it with that! Hooray! D. liked the chickpea flour pizza, and I was glad, because I like them too! They have lots of protein in them.
There is a can of lentils (cheater!) and some paprika and some frozen and then thawed tofu crumbled in and some sauteed onion and garlic and chopped up parsley and some other herbs from our herb garden courtesy of Ironwood Farm and some veg broth powder. Kind of a mish mash, but it served the purpose and was good.

Enjoying "All the Names", I asked my husband last night, is Portugal near Italy? Because I think this author reminds me of Italo Calvino. He's lighthearted and funny.

No knitting, won't be any, we're going up to our land Thursday so I am in the midst of preparing for the trip, getting stuff organized and planning the menu- today I hope to actually get to preparing some of said food. After a trip to the park for the kids, of course. And watering a friend's plants who are on vacation. Hopefully I'll have some good camping recipes for you come Monday. This trip will be brought to you by coconut milk.

A Few Meals A Few Books and a little knitting

Here we have some basic comfort food, Golden Cheaze Sauce with fried onion, a packet of Boca crumbles all simmered together with 5 C of pasta. And our yellow beans that were so sweet and good, I just served them plain. Blanched them (froze the rest) and then nuked them the rest of the way before supper (like, 3m). I used kidney beans in the sauce, with only 1/4 C nutritional yeast and 1 t yellow prepared mustard.

Golden Cheaze Sauce ala me

1 can kidney beans, undrained (4)
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1/4 C pimento pieces (half of a small jar)
1 t lemon juice (I just used the bottled kind)
1 t onion powder
1 t yellow mustard
1/2 t salt

Blend until smooth.

And this was another supper from this weekend, and we found a winner!! Grandma's Cornbread Made Vegan. Soooo super good. I forgot the ener-g egg replacer (which I find ridiculous anyway) and it was totally fine. Next to it you see refried beans and a seitan taco thingy- I took my ribz I made and sliced them thin in the food processor and added taco seasonings and sauteed onion. Kinda wierd.

Grandma's Cornbread Made Vegan

1 C cornmeal (4)
1 C flour (8)
1 C soymilk (2) (I used silk vanilla, this was fine)
1/2 C sugar (8)
1/3 C canola oil (18)
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 T oil (for oiling skillet) (4)

44 points total, divided into 8ths, 5 points a slice


Preheat oven 375 degrees, placing cast iron skillet oiled with 1 T canola oil on center rack.
In large bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Pour in soymilk and oil and mix until just combined.
Carefully remove skillet with potholders from oven and pour in batter. Tilt so batter is evenly spread. Bake 25m or until it tests done.

Seriously, if you have a cast iron skillet, go make this now. Surely you will find an accompaniment to go with it.

Well, I have been on a reading rampage.
Read "Cell" by Stephen King- I found this forum topic on amazon about post-apocalypse book recommendations and I think someone recommended this. Anyway, I liked it. I wanted to get "The Stand" but the library didn't have it. Surely my father-in-law owns it.
I found King's stance on guns and SUV's to be interestingly paired with his protaganists prayers. I think I can see King's popularity- he writes clearly (unlike the next book I read) and he appeals to our better natures. Anyway, Cell is about zombies so !WIN!. A totally fun read. Plus if you look at the cover it's like, there's blood cells, plus the zombies who SPOILER work as a cell in a larger organism and a cell phone!! It's like a pun on the cover!! Hee hee!

Okay, and then I read "The Pesthouse", again another post-apocalyptic book (why do I have such a hard time writing that word?!) and it really reminded my of "Ethan Frome". Love story, man-child dude, them against the world... anyway, I found the writing style hard to get into. When the reviews praise the author as 'original' and so forth, you know you're in trouble, am I right? I totally understand the desire to write a post-apocalypse book in a new way, so kudos for that, but he never really gets into what happened or why, which are, like, big questions. We want to see our excesses villlified so we can cathartically purge them from our systems and slough off some of our guilt!! That's why we read post-apocolyptic books, folks!! At least there's SPOILER a happy ending, so there's that. If it would have been otherwise I'd be really trashing this book.

Next up "All the Names".

Tried a new way of working the old classic baby blanket/afghan knitting pattern 'Feather and Fan' and it biased. Duh. Will try to remedy that and then see if it looks cool enough to work it with the resulting extra rows.

A Symphony of Flavor

Last night's supper was like a taste explosion in my mouth! After a spate of meh suppers, this was an exciting change! Let me explain...

I saw this post over at What the hell does a pinkhaired girl eat, and then I googled it and found this post at Smitten Kitchen and was even more intrigued, and after realizing that I did indeed have romaine lettuce, I decided to go for it!

Originally I was going to make pizza, and try out a new pizza dough, but then I ran out of time. I was peeling my beets (naughty!) for Susan's Beet Chocolate Cake and decided to chop up the bigger ones and roast them, and then I threw in a few carrots and the last two fennel bulbs and some onion and a whole head of garlic to roast. Sprinkled them with oil and a leeetle bit of balsamic and threw those in the oven for 30m at 350 degrees. So it was to be pizza with pesto sauce and roasted veg, which sounds great, doesn't it? But pasta with pesto and roasted veg was great!

And we tried that new Barilla omega three juju magic pasta and it didn't taste too weird, so that's good! Weight watcher me was pleased to note that it's only 2 points a cup instead of 4.
And those beets! Wow!! So sweet and good! The puree for the cake was so tasty! I don't think I've ever had a beet that tasted so good.

And when I was making the pesto, I only had to use 1/2 t salt and 1 T of olive oil. So it's kind of light, but really tasty, and the sweetness of the roasted veg and the garlicky spicyness of the pesto really married well.

Romaine Pesto

1 1/2 C romaine lettuce, packed
1/4 C walnuts (5)
1 clove garlic
1/2 t salt
1 T olive oil (4)
2 T nutritional yeast

Blend everything except oil in food processor, scrape sides and drizzle in oil while running processor.
Yum!
And this cake! It is a light cake that you can eat everyday! But it's not the 'light' that leaves you like, 'Ah, I just ate a light cake.' Very moist and satisfying. I have to admit, I did not use any fancy-dancy cocoa, just Nestle's, but that worked well. The only change I made was to use 1 T of oil in it and not the 2 T of water she calls for to add to the beet puree. I think I used more than the 1/4 C water in the blender to get the beets to puree, anyway. I used 4-5 (can't remember) small beets and that gave me roughly 1 C of puree. Oh, and I didn't use whole wheat flour 'cause I was out. Heck, I should just give you the recipe...

4-5 small beets
1/4 C water
1 C sweetened applesauce
1 T oil (4)
1 t vanilla
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 C all purpose flour (12)
1/2 C cocoa (2)
1 C sugar (16)
1 T cornstarch
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon

36 points total divided by 18 = 2 points per slice

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Oil a 9 x 13" pan.
Peel, chop and boil your beets until tender.
Puree beets with 1/4 C water, pour into 2 C measure and fill to 2 C mark with applesauce. Whisk together the rest of the wet ingredients.
Whisk together the dry ingredients in another bowl and then pour the puree mixture in and mix until just combined.
Bake at 325 for 40m or until it tests done.

Sorry about the rant yesterday about the book. I'm still reading it, because, truth be told, all I have left from the library is a non-fiction book that I should be reading, but don' wanna. Probably someday you'll even see me read the next one (I'm betting there is one) if our library has it. Or maybe I'm wrong! Looks like this is the last one! Now I have to eat crow.

Fiddled a little with the baby blanket pattern, got to the point where I figured out something else to try and set it down, will try and pick it up today. Maybe not stripes every other row, but then that means a wealth of ends to weave in...

Don't Put a Damper on Things!

I made beer bread!! Pretty cool. Thanks to S. who brought Sprecher's Special Amber (not a sessionable beer, although maybe it is, what do I know)(I learned a new word yesterday!)(I think I saw it on "Yeah, That Vegan Shit", but now I can't find the post) I had beer on hand and I've been wanting to try this for a while. It was pretty good, I didn't opt for the 1/2! C of butter (read: Earth Balance) over the top, call me crazy, but it was still good. Fun for a quick bread to go with soup. I could definately see this with a pea soup in the future. The recipe I followed was here, but I decided to go with a reversal on the whole wheat/regular flour ratio. Oh, and I nuked the beer for 45 seconds (as per I read somewhere on the internet) because I didn't have time to wait for it to get to room temperature- the beer should be at room temperature, something about interfering with the yeast and the baking soda, schmana-nana.

I read of a possible variation using coconut milk and shredded coconut, here, and found out about damper, which sounds intriguing for camping...

Whole Wheat Beer Bread

2 C all purpose flour (16)
1 C whole wheat flour (4)
1 T sugar (1)
1 t salt
1 T baking powder
12 oz beer, room temperature

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease a loaf pan.
Sift together dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
Stir in beer and mix until just combined.
Pour into pan and bake 45m or until it tests done.
Cool in pan 10m, then out of pan 10m.
24 points total, 16 slices = 1.5 points a slice

The soup was okay, pretty quick and easy and used up some of that cilantro. It could have been worse. Of course, later I read this quote; "anything with too much ground cumin in it is just gross." from here and immediately got paranoid.

Black Bean Soup

2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained (7) (reserve 1/4 C)
1 can light coconut milk (7)
1 T cumin
1 T soy sauce
1/2 C coriander leaves, packed
1 clove garlic
few drops of liquid smoke

Blend everything except the 1/4 C beans.
Heat on low.
Garnish with cilantro.
Makes approximately 3 C, 5 points a cup.

Okay, here's the deal with "A Meeting at Corvallis"- I get the feeling that the author is drawing out this book so that he can write another one afterward. This really irritates me. I know there is this whole movement where tonnes and tonnes of novels are written and people breathlessly wait for the next one, so maybe I should just get with the program, but really. Please don't waste my time. There's a difference between being drawn into a book and being drawn out over it. I'm reminded of that torture where they tie up your wrists and ankles and streeetch you out.

I am over halfway through this book that has drawn out and drawn out and drawn out this battle, and while reading about all the strategy etc. etcetera is cool, I know you, Mr. Stirling, were sitting there rubbing your hands together thinking 'I can milk this for another book's worth!'. Maybe I am bored enought to actually finish this, we'll see.

No knitting, although I did work up (in my mind) a little baby blanket pattern to try. We'll see if I get the time to go out and put away the yarn for the baby sweater and pull out a bunch of different yarn.

Bread and Soup

Soup! I wanted to use up the baby fennel we got from Ironwood Farms, so I made this soup- it was pretty good, but D. is not a fennel fan, so I placated him with focaccia.
Oregano and thyme, fresh from the backyard, and garlic pressed into the top...
It was really good! I'm guessing that with rosemary it would be even more astounding, but the herbs was from our herb garden, so that was fun. Oh, and of course if I slathered the top more with olive oil... oh, and if I used those kalamata olives I got from the store...

Bean and Fennel Soup

2 cans cannellini beans (7)
2 T vegetable broth powder
2 T olive oil (8)
4 baby fennel, sliced thin
1 T fennel seeds
1 t coriander seeds
6 C water
1/2 t salt

Throw it all into the slow cooker and cook on high 4 hours. Remove as much as you can to the blender and blend. Soup!

Three points a cup.

Focaccia (from Veganomicon)

1 scant T yeast
1 1/4 C warm water
3 T olive oil (12)
3 T chopped fresh oregano
3 C flour (or half white and half whole wheat)
1 t salt
coarse salt and rosemary to top

Combine yeast and water in mixer bowl. Then oil, herbs, flour and salt. Will form a soft dough. If it's too sticky, mix flour in 1 T at a time.
Knead 5 - 6m, toss in oil in bowl and rise 1 hr or refrigerate overnight.
Punch down, knead a little and roll out to 1 1/2" thick.
Transfer to greased baking sheet or onto cornmeal strewn peel (if using a baking stone).
Rise 20m.
Poke holes with fingers, brush with oil and top with toppings and coarse salt.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees (don't forget that baking stone if you're using it) and bake 30 - 35m. Cool 10m.
Makes 12 slices at 3 points a slice.

Notes;
use baking stone
use rosemary- figure out how much dried rosemary to sub
try with kalamata olives and sauteed onions/shallots

Still reading Stirling, getting rather loooong.
No knitting, v. hot yesterday.

Pesto!

Hey!! Last night we had pesto!! Sooooo good. I had been looking forward to this for so long, too! Hooray! And it did not disappoint. The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance. You should buy that book (and Veganomicon). Full disclosure; I did not toast/roast the walnuts and I used half a recipe for a full pound of pasta! Tee hee!

Pesto

1 1/2 C fresh basil leaves, packed
1/4 C walnuts (5)
3 cloves garlic
1 t salt
1/4 C olive oil (16)
2 T nutritional yeast
1 t lemon juice
1 lb/16 oz angel hair pasta/spaghetti/whatever
up to 1 C pasta water, reserved

Boil water for pasta.
Meanwhile, in large bowl of processor, combine walnuts, basil, garlic and salt, scraping down sides to ensure everything is blended well.
Then add olive oil in a steady stream. Scrape sides again. Pulse again.
Add nutritional yeast and lemon juice, mix well.
Scrape into a large bowl.

When pasta is ready, place one spoonful into bowl, mix well (I just put my bowl with the pesto in it next to the pot of spaghetti and use a pasta spoon to pull out the pasta, keeping the pasta water handy). Add another, along with some of the pasta water if necessary, and mix well, keep adding spoonfuls of the pasta and water and mixing well until it's all in there. Be patient. The end.

This "Meeting at Corvallis" book is sort of taking a long time, not as good as the first, or actually the second, as that's the one I read first. But isn't that always the way... At least now they're finally fighting. I love me a good fight.

No knitting. Boo.

Phew!

Good morning! Whee! We had a very nice weekend visiting with K. our guest who came all the way from Milwaukee!! We went out in the boat, played on the swings in the backyard, checked out Lumberjack Days... and of course we ate food.

Here's my favorite new recipe that I tried this weekend! It's the Morning Glory Loaf turned into muffins! People, these are gooood! I doubled the recipe and we still have batter in the fridge awaiting deployment (aghlaghlaghlaghl)!

Morning Glory Muffins

3 C all purpose flour (24)
1 C whole wheat flour (4)
1 1/3 C brown sugar (22)
1 T cinnamon
1 T + 1t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 C canola oil (32)
1 16 oz can crushed pineapple (reserve 1/2 C juice) (8)
1 T ginger paste
2 t vanilla
2 C carrots, grated
1 C craisins (6)
1 C shredded coconut (16)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease muffin tin.
Mix dry, then wet.
Makes 2 loaves, bake 50 - 60m or until tests done.
Makes 36 muffins, bake 18 - 22m or until tests done. Cool in pan.
Each muffin is roughly 3 points.
Notes;
next time add 2 T flax seed meal?

I kept meaning to make the green beans this weekend, but never got to it- here's what we had last night, sauteed green beans with herbs from the back yard! and Susan's Easy Mac and Cheeze reheated (I made this for when K. got in Fri. night) with 1 T oil added. Oh, and some salt and pepper. Yumm...
Bug break! Okay, check out this guy I saw while I was outside taking the seed pods off of my lilies... is it a spider? I Googled yellow spider with orange stripes and came up with nada. Maybe it's one of those bugs that masquerade as another?
I also made Chocolate Chip cookies, and did the whole refrigerate them for 24 hours thing...
I thought the refrigeration time really helped with the consistency of the dough- it was much firmer, and so therefore the cookies themselves baked up really nice, like where you get that crispy edge around the outside and it was all melty chewy in the middle and the tops crack a little bit- super!! Plus the dough got browner (due to saturation of the flour with the water) so they look better. And, it's hard to judge, but I think the taste was better. I did not bake a control batch, so who knows.

Unfortunately, I also think that the extended time that gave the cookies a richer taste also allowed for the baking soda to permeate? the cookie too. D. said they tasted like baking soda. Boo. So next time I'll drop the baking soda and then we'll see if we don't have chocolate chip crackers...

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance

1 C Earth Balance margarine (2 sticks) (48)
1 1/4 C sugar (20)
1 T molasses (1)
2 t vanilla
2 1/2 C all purpose flour (20)
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 C chocolate chips (12)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together margarine and sugar until fluffy.
Add molasses and vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda and salt and mix well.
Fold in chocolate chips.
Drop by teaspoonfulls 2" apart on greased cookie sheet.
Bake 8 - 10m until slightly browned, remove and cool on sheets 5m, then on cooling rack.
Makes 3 dozen.

notes;
I got 4 dozen.
better with refrigeration (24 hrs), but reduce baking soda to 1/2 t.
Next up, this Napa Cabbage Salad. This was an amalgamation of several recipes. It was pretty good, but next time I'd double the dressing or something- it didn't really pop like I wanted it to...
I have to admit I'm kind of a sucker for recipes that use things like a package of ramen noodles in a salad. Must be my roots showing...

Napa Cabbage Salad

1 Napa cabbage, julienned
2 C edamame
8 green onions, sliced thin
1 carrot, grated
1 pkg ramen noodles, souop packet reserved and noodles crumbled
1/4 C sliced almonds
2 T sesame seeds

dressing;
1/4 C olive oil (16)
2 T sesame oil (8)
3 T rice wine vinegar
2 T sugar (2)
packet ramen soup mix

Toast the sesame seeds, almonds and ramen noodles in a large skillet, stirring constantly. Set aside.
Blend dressing.
Chop veggies and toss everything together.
If refrigerating, add toasted noodles, almonds and sesame seeds right before serving.

Makes a lot!

Notes;
In lieu of ramen soup packet, use soy sauce.
Could double dressing.
Finally, here's what we took out on the boat for a picnic- Tofu Dill Salad Sandwiches. This was also from Vegan with a Vengeance! It was a great way to use up that dill from the CSA.

1 lb extra firm tofu, drained and pressed (8)
3 T red onion, diced fine
3 T Vegenaise (9)
1/2 C fresh dill, chopped
2 t Dijon mustard
2 T apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Crumble tofu in a bowl, mix in the rest of the ingredients.
Refrigerate before serving.

Okay, still reading through "Meeting at Corvallis" by Stirling, it's good.
No knitting this weekend.
That's all for today.

Peel This!

So here we have our csa veggies! We got some old favorites, such as arugula, snap peas and lettuce, and so many good new things... I was particularly excited about the basil!!!


Scallions... going to use this in a salad with the Napa cabbage from last week...
Green beans! Gonna saute these up and have them tonight (well, at least some, we got a big bag full!).

Beets! These are dangerous in a household with children!! Maybe D. and I will have to have them after the kids are down... romantic beets! I will cut them into heart shapes... or maybe not -grin-.

Zukes!! I anticipated soooo many zukes I sort of stocked up on zucchini recipes and so I'm kinda bummed it was a hard year for them! These were so good last night just sauteed in oil with a little pepper and garlic salt! Oh, and I added oregano and some ?thyme?- I'm having problems keeping my herbs straight. Yummm.
Popcorn! Our CSA is so cool! They secretly kept some of the popcorn they grew last year and suprised us with this! We will always remember the first time we made this and D., shall we say, exfoliated his hands right well! If you don't have super callused hands, use gloves to rub the kernels off!!

Garlic! That we pulled on Saturday!! Fresh garlic is fun! Whenever I am peeling garlic, I always imagine Isa saying that you can really tell a lot about a person by how they peel garlic... (I think it was in one of their shows, but I didn't have the patience to look through all the videos!). Well, begone selfconsciousness! Fresh garlic is a breeze to peel compared to dried.


Baby fennel! Salad? I'm not sure. I love it's licoricey taste.
And finally, last night's meal. Said zuchinni and rice with cashew sauce. The sauce is basically Dragonfly's Bulk Dry Uncheeze Mix scaled down and made fresh.

Cashew Sauce

1 C raw unsalted cashews (16)
1/3 C nutritional yeast
1 clove garlic, cut into chunks
1/2 t onion powder
1 T cornstarch
1/2 t salt
1 C water

Process all ingredients except water.
Scrape into pot, add water slowly and heat until thick.
It was really good.

Liking the Stirling book.
Started knitting a baby sweater!! Yay, me!

You Loon!

Well, yesterday was a blast, we went to a new park by us and it was really nice!! Can you believe we saw little fish in the water and some loons on the lake while the kids splashed in the water? Sweet, sweet Minnesota!

Last night we had Pumpkin Kibbeh, I found the recipe here. It was pretty good, I'll use less pepper next time, I think. It was pretty peppery. So from 1/2 t it has been changed to 'to taste'- how's that for diplomatic? I thought it was pretty good, but my husband, D., was not a fan. Alas. Perhaps I will search at the coop for fine bulghur to see if that's what I had or not. Also, in googling for this recipe just now, I came across all these ones that were stuffed, and that sounds a lot more fun and good. Maybe I'll try that next time.

1 can pumpkin (2)
1 C fine bulghur (8)
1 t coriander
1 t allspice
1 t cumin
1 t salt
pepper to taste
1 med onion
4 cloves garlic
1/2 C flour (4)
1 T olive oil (4)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Boil 2 C water and pour the 1 C of bulghur in. Let sit while you prep the rest of the ingredients.
Process everything except that last T of oil until smooth, scraping down sides as needed.
Pour into a greased 8 - 9" casserole and smooth flat. Pour 1 T olive oil over the top, spreading it so it covers the surface. Bake 20 - 25m until top is dry and deep brown. Alternately, make into patties and fry.

Finished "The Gate to Women's Country"- that was quick! See, I can't figure out if it's just that I don't like the heavy axe she's grinding or if it really is that she has just written a book soley to grind said axe. That, I do not like.

Of course I can think of authors that I love that have wierd themes they always write about- Ray Bradbury, for example, and his love/obsession with small towns and carnivals and so forth. His obsession, shall we say, fuels great ideas and his talent for writing makes for great stories about said obsessions. With Tepper, (this last one was better than "The Visitor" was, btw) I feel like she had this idea- "Women are oppressed" and then she just dragged me along through the whole book for it. Maybe I should go read some Margaret Atwood or something to compare.

Have started Stirling's next book in the series I'm reading through, A Meeting in Corvallis, I think it's called.