Gooooooo Veggie! June 23, 2008

Boom had been a great sport with my whole going veggie, ’cause it basically means he has to go veggie, by default, since I won’t cook meat and I am usually dealing with meals we eat in the house.  So I decided to try a recipe that Oprah used during her 21-day cleanse.  A tofu wrap - it was delish!  And it met all my criteria for a try-worthy recipe - short ingredient list and few steps to make it.

I like to dabble in veganism, but not sure I could give up eggs and butter.  This wrap is vegan and really, it was so good!  Full of flavor and just very fresh tasting.

Boom really enjoyed it as well!  It says it serves 4 for lunch, but we gobbled all of it up - the 2 of us for our dinner.  I think even non-veggies would enjoy this, or I could replace the tofu with a white fish and make spicy fish wraps!  So many possibilities!

Tingaling Homemaker June 20, 2008

I haven’t been crafting much - with the move and all, I’ve had my hands full. Anyway, whilst unpacking, I came across Marm’s old, ratty yoga mat she gave to me many years ago as I was just started up practicing yoga. I used it for some time, but soon started finding bits and pieces of the blue mat stuck to my hands and feet. I got a new mat, but never threw away the old one - the thought of it in a landfill made me feel too guilty and literally kept me chucking it. I kept thinking I could come up with a new use for the old mat - and volia…

I cut up the mat and added some scallops…

..and created a lovely and durable under garbage can mat! (Our simplehuman butterlyfly trashcan, that I love, really hacked up the floor beneath it in the Richmond house, so I knew I needed to either put felt pads on the bottom of it or come up with another solution.) I love it! I kept opening the door to our pantry (where this all lives) a few days ago after I had made it so I could see it and bask in its cuteness!

Since that only took about 1/4th or less of the mat, I used the rest of the mat to line the under part of the kitchen sink:

Not too shabby, and then I only had an tiny little strip to throw away - so no guilt there. I actually wish I had more old, no-longer-in-use yoga mats so I could line all the under parts of all my sinks. I don’t have anymore, but I do have EE looking to see if they have one hanging around.

As with crafting, my baking has taken a back seat. Now that everything is here, I have all the tools I need. And my hand was forced - for some reason this week Boom and I were not that good about eating up our bananas. So I had 5 old, soft bananas to deal with yesterday. I had one with peanut butter toast for breakfast, and that was when I decided I need to bake up the remaining 4.

I looked around on-line for a recipe, but I mainly like recipes that have a short list of ingredients and not too many steps to finish. All the ones I was finding were too fancy. So I turned to my lovely ART 180 cookbook and found a great recipe for Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins - easy and they were delish!

I did one batch with 1 c wheat flour and the rest white flour, and the other batch with 1/2 c wheat flour, 1/2 c spelt flour and the rest white flour. The cinnamon really added a lot to how yummy they tasted and I used dark chocolate mini chunks.

Get the adorable cookbook and you too can have the delicious recipe! And you’ll be helping to support a wonderful organization.

Yarb can attest to how yummy the muffins are - she had one yesterday after lunch and then I sent her back to work with 5 others. By this morning they were all gone! I hope that Josephine was able to get one, before she gobbled them all up - I know in their house it is very cutthroat for any sweets that might be around.

Good to see that my economics degree from arguably the best public university in the country is getting put to good use

Banana Walnut Biscotti March 6, 2008

I used the Martha Stewart Cranberry - Pistachio recipe and altered it like the first commentator suggested, with 3 ripe bananas and about a cup of chopped walnuts.

Much better than the last batch - and I used up 3 bananas I had frozen a while ago, with the thought that I would make banana bread with them. Clearly that didn’t happen, so I am glad I used those bananas up!

I think I made my logs to big and wide, as I ended up with some monster biscotti pieces. Oh well, live and learn! I will say the (frozen) bananas made the dough much stickier, so it was harder to deal with than should have been.

[and it took 3 eggs, as well as some butter - my vegan baking is not coming along as I would have hoped - sigh.  But butter and eggs are hard to replace in baked goods.  I do have some vegan margarine that I should try in some recipes...  next time...]

Ratatouille & a Milky Way March 4, 2008

Last night I made vegan ratatouille - served over organic polenta. The ratatouille turned out ok - I over peppered it. When I asked Boom if he thought I had over peppered it, he was like “Well, I love the ratatouille, but if you ever make it for a broader audience, perhaps you should lay off the pepper”. What a sweet guy. At least it had lots of veggies (zucchinis, eggplant, red bell pepper, can of tomatoes, chick peas, onions, & garlic)!

I had some issues with the polenta. I have never cooked it (bought the kind that is in a tube) - seemed easy enough, slice, and then fry until golden brown. Well, the first set of polenta rounds that I sliced were paper thin, quite literally. Once Boom got home, and I asked him how big 9/16″ is, I realized I had sliced them much too thin (they needed to be closer to 1/2″ thick). So I cooked up the rest of the polenta, slicing thicker. But they also didn’t really get”golden” brown with frying - just more yellow, but I assumed that meant they were cooked.

Raw (?) polenta and then the fried polenta. Got a little bit darker, but I wouldn’t call that “golden” brown.

Final plate of ratatouille over polenta rounds. Not my fav recipe, but definitely worth trying out.

I think I need to make some more chocolate chip cookies. We didn’t really have anything sweet to eat, so I ended up busting into a king size Milky Way that we bought on a long plane ride home from somewhere (Nevis?) and didn’t end up eating, until last night. Boom laughed at me when he saw what I was going to have to dessert, but I was the last one laughing when he came over 30 minutes later to eat the other half of said Milky Way.

Lunch February 26, 2008

I made a delicious dish for lunch today - organic quinoa, corn and potato stew. YUM! I am really quite pleased with how it turned out - and it was easy! Though it is not really a stew, but that is ok. I got the recipe out of Carole Raymond’s “Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook” (that I checked out from my local library - hey, we all pay for the public library system, so we should go ahead and use it!) and doubled all of the ingredients (so we could have left overs, as her recipe only makes 2 servings).

Boom kinda “discovered” quinoa for us, back before I was even a veggie. It has gotten a lot of press in the last 6 months or so - and it kept coming up in periodicals that he would read. It is a super food - contains protein, a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete food. This means it takes less quinoa protein to meet one’s needs than wheat protein. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Really great for veggies!

It also only took 1 pan to cook it - so clean up shouldn’t be too bad. This dish has onions, red peppers, red potatoes, and corn in it, in addition to the quinoa.

The final garnish is fresh cilantro and red pepper flakes - which really makes the dish complete. I love fresh cilantro - as it makes everything taste fresh! and a little heat is alway good. Very yummy!

Normally, I would have made this for dinner (perhaps with a spinach salad), but I am heading over to my friend’s house for dinner tonight. I feel kinda bad when I go out to dinner b/c Boom will just eat an Amy’s organic frozen pizza. So I made it for my lunch and Boom can eat it for dinner - voila! Problem solved.

Sigh… February 20, 2008

The vegan lasagana was just as tasty the 2nd time around - had a healthy portion for lunch. Tho it did look better than this yesterday…

I added the corn in myself… I think you could also add in chopped broccoli and whatever other veggies you want. And for the record, the tofu mix (ricotta sub) was not brown. Maybe not a white white as ricotta, but definitely not brown. Maybe a light tan, at the most…

Cookies also yummy, had 8, heated. Mmmmmm…

Yesterday was quite productive… February 20, 2008

There are a ton of free tutorials out in blog land - I have a huge running list (in my mind) of ones I want to try. So yesterday I decided to just plunge into on - fusing plastic bags to make (plastic) “material” to make a new, more durable bag. It wasn’t hard, but not as easy as I had imagined. I used the Etsy Lab Tutorial - their bags look much fancier and prettier than mine, but I was pleased nonetheless.

Here she is in all her glory! Each panel is 1 bag, folded so there are 8 individual layers. I then used my sewing machine to put her together. B/c of the seams, I am not too sure how strong the bag will be. Next time I’d like to try to make larger fused pieces with multiple bags stacked on top of each other. That is actually how I started out, but quickly realized I needed to test for heat and which bags actually fuse the best (from my experience, Target, Fresh Market, and Ukrop’s bags work the best. Kroger bags are crappy to fuse, which is unfort.)

I think that most people usually fuse the seams (?) so there is no sewing involved. And some actually make patterns with the plastic - that would be very ambitious for me! As it was, this bag took about 3 -4 hours to complete. And I made a mess of my work area (a.k.a. the bathroom - love the formica counter top to iron on):

Here are all the handles and bottom seams that I had to cut off. Easy clean up, though - all went straight into the trash can. I have a few panels left - may try to make some little bags (no zippers, though, think that would be too much for me. Perhaps a snap or something like that) or business card / credit card holders.

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I also made a delicious vegan lasagna last night. It was fairly easy and really turned out tasty. At least I think so, and Boom seemed to like it pretty well. I got the recipe off a Google search here. I will take some photos and post ‘em up today. I am looking forward to having it for lunch! The tofu mixture is great for substituting for ricotta. If I stay in supper club, I may actually make this for the gals. It was that tasty.

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And Boom liked the M&M cookies. Seems that I did as well, since I nearly ate a whole dozen yesterday! All before dinnertime. So after dindin I was certainly not craving cookies. Boom had cookies for dessert (he doesn’t like them heated up, which, in my opinion, is the only want to eat them) and I had some of my leftover apple crumble (from supper club). Eating fruit based desserts helps me to think that I am not being quite as bad as I likely am. And I don’t remember if my crumble recipe called for a lot of butter or perhaps I am more sensitive to it (and fat) since going veggie, but I can really taste the butter in the crumble mix. and it is kinda slick and slimy. But I still ate it, so clearly did not turn me off too much.

Success! January 7, 2008

My first meal from a slow cooker was quite delish, if I do say so myself! The chicken was so tender, it just fell off the bone. I was worried about the acorn squash (since it seemed really hard when I was cutting it) but it cooked up just right! and there ended up being a lot of liquid - much more than I put in.

Here it is on our plates - before the Moroccan hot sauce…

This sauce was really good - garlicky, with hot pepper flakes. So gave a nice “heart warming” (as Boom said) feel.

I am very proud of myself - I literally was a cooking dervish this weekend. Most weekends we cook NOTHING, so this was a huge, vast improvement.  and it wasn’t that hard, just required some organization and planning.  We’ll see how long this kick lasts…

Weekend cooking January 7, 2008

Sunday, 1.6.08 ~ 3:45 p.m.

Yesterday, both Boom and I were a little hung over. We went to a new restaurant with a couple friend of ours on Friday. We got to the restaurant at 8pm and were not seated until around 1015pm. So for 2+ hours we were just drinking on an empty stomach. Not that I drank that much - south of 2 very full glasses of red wine, but I am a light weight these days.

So Saturday we weren’t feel too hot. We went to bfast / lunch with Gretty - so nice to see her and catch up! After that, we just lazed around at home. I felt like having chocolate chip cookies, but definitely did not feel like getting in my car and going to the grocery store to get the break and bakes. So I made them, FROM SCRATCH! I can’t remember the last time I made cookies from scratch - it really isn’t all that hard. Less than 10 ingredients and all of them common ingredients. The only tricky thing is the butter has to be softened. Honestly, though, the baking was driven by laziness.

Here they are all freshly baked! I love eating them when the choc chips are gooey! and I used half whole wheat flour, so they are a little bit good for us…

They are so pretty and homemade looking! and definitely not over cooked.

I stored most of them in this lovely MSE (Martha Stewart Everyday) glass container with pale green top. When I bought this from Kmart, I didn’t really need anymore storage, but I loved the pale green top so much, I got it anyway!

Here is a better photo of it. I love MSE - honestly that is the only reason I ever step foot into Kmart. The ones here are totally ghetto. There aren’t even any in Texas anymore! She does such a good job with colors and branding and curb appeal. I need to check out the new MS collection at Macy’s - but that stuff certainly won’t be a cheap as Kmart…

I also made a whole wheat pizza crust and made a fresh motz pizza with pepperoni for dinner last night. This, also, was b/c neither of us felt like driving to pick up take-out. I suppose we could have order Papa John’s pizza, but sometimes I feel sick after eating delivery pizza. It was pretty good - and fairly easy since the bread machine does all the work.

Right now my Morrocan chicken and veggie stew is in the crock pot for dindin tonight. I am not sure if it is going to turn out ok. I did follow all the directions, however I did add 2 chicken thighs (calls for 6, I put 8 in) but I added more liquid (2 cups instead of 1 3/4 cups) as I think I will need to cook it a little bit longer. I am worried b/c the liquid does not cover the chicken. and with “stew” in the title, it makes me wonder… oh well, we shall see…

All and all, lots of cooking this weekend! I am quite proud of myself