We're having new windows installed this week, so I'm trying to minimize time spent cooking since I'm not sure when or how long they'll be working in the kitchen. Here is what I'm making:
Veggie Dogs and Baked Beans and Leftover Pumpkin Soup and Steamed Asparagus with Lemon-Caper Mayo
Asparagus isn't cheap right now, but I have a container of lemon-caper mayo in the fridge right now, and I love it. Making this tonight because Sameer is fasting and won't miss it. Sim and I might be able to finish off the soup currently in the fridge.
Ravioli with Arugula & Pecorino Romano
I made this yesterday, but I still have half a package of cheese ravioli in the fridge and everyone liked it, so I'm making this again tomorrow. I can slice the shallot and grate the cheese today, and I won't even have any prep work to do tomorrow when the window installation people are here.
Vegan Meatball Subs and Veggie Sides
Because it's easy and Sim likes it and we'll have hot dog buns leftover from tonight's dinner anyway.
Gnocchi with Spinach & White Beans
Another easy pasta dish heavy on the vegetables and low on prep work, in case the window installation people are still here on Friday.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Monday, October 7, 2019
Meal Planning
Most of this week's meals were suggestions from Simran. Here is what we're having:
Veggie Dogs and Baked Beans and Summer Corn with Green Chile Cream (Vedge, pg. 101) and Steamed Asparagus with Lemon-Caper Mayo
We have two more of the good Beyond Meat hotdogs taking up space in the freezer, so I bought the (Field Roast brand) ones Simran prefers and we'll eat veggie dogs tonight. This corn recipe is delicious, so I'm hoping to find corn on the cob at the store, and I already bought asparagus. I'm not sure if the veggie dogs and the vegetarian baked beans I buy are vegan, but if they are, this entire meal is vegan.
Vegan Meatball Subs
We need a way to finish off the hot dog buns, so this will use a couple more of them.
Vegan Homemade Pizza
Sim has requested pizza again, but I'm making it vegan this week. She doesn't like it as much, but she'll still happily finish off the leftovers. I'm pretty sure we ate dairy cheese at every dinner last week. The only good thing was we haven't had a meal from a restaurant of any kind in a couple of weeks.
Curried Tofu Pot Pie
It's supposed to take a turn for the much colder Friday, so I'm making one of my favorite warm and cozy meals. Also I have tofu, homemade broth, and a couple tiny baby Yukon gold potatoes that need using up. The only animal product I use in this recipe is butter in the pie crust. I might try making it with vegan butter just to see how it goes, but if it doesn't work out, it would ruin the entire meal.
Veggie Dogs and Baked Beans and Summer Corn with Green Chile Cream (Vedge, pg. 101) and Steamed Asparagus with Lemon-Caper Mayo
We have two more of the good Beyond Meat hotdogs taking up space in the freezer, so I bought the (Field Roast brand) ones Simran prefers and we'll eat veggie dogs tonight. This corn recipe is delicious, so I'm hoping to find corn on the cob at the store, and I already bought asparagus. I'm not sure if the veggie dogs and the vegetarian baked beans I buy are vegan, but if they are, this entire meal is vegan.
Vegan Meatball Subs
We need a way to finish off the hot dog buns, so this will use a couple more of them.
Vegan Homemade Pizza
Sim has requested pizza again, but I'm making it vegan this week. She doesn't like it as much, but she'll still happily finish off the leftovers. I'm pretty sure we ate dairy cheese at every dinner last week. The only good thing was we haven't had a meal from a restaurant of any kind in a couple of weeks.
Curried Tofu Pot Pie
It's supposed to take a turn for the much colder Friday, so I'm making one of my favorite warm and cozy meals. Also I have tofu, homemade broth, and a couple tiny baby Yukon gold potatoes that need using up. The only animal product I use in this recipe is butter in the pie crust. I might try making it with vegan butter just to see how it goes, but if it doesn't work out, it would ruin the entire meal.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Meal Planning
This is what I have to use up this week: about 2 cups of vegetable broth, 1 cup watercress, 2 cups butter lettuce, 2 cups fresh broccoli sprouts (most of which I just finished sprouting myself from seeds -- took about a week), 1.5 cups sliced fresh mushrooms left over from Friday's veggie tacos, 1 avocado, 1 Roma tomato, and half a pint of grape tomatoes. We'll have a good mix of hot (80+ degree Fahrenheit) and cooler fall weather this week. Here is what I'm going to make:
Veggie Tacos (Again) and Black Beans
Monday. I don't know how else to use up the fresh mushrooms and broccoli sprouts, but this will do it. It'll also use up the lettuce. I just need to buy guacamole, more tomatoes, and more taco size flour or whole wheat flour tortillas. Tomorrow is one of the hot days this week, so this will be a good no-cook meal.
Catalan Sauteed Polenta & Butter Beans and Green Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette
Wednesday. I still have champagne vinaigrette I made last week, so this seems like a good use for it. I can also include broccoli sprouts and the last of the watercress in the salad. Simran has been asking when she can eat lima beans because of that Bad Case of the Stripes book, and this is one recipe that came to mind that features them. It'll use up the vegetable broth currently in the fridge. It'll also use up some of my coarse grits currently in the pantry when I make the polenta.
More Sambar
I want to eat the last of the idli and the coconut chutney I made rather than let them go to waste, so I'm making another batch of easy sambar to have for lunches and maybe Tuesday night. This will use up the Roma tomato and potentially the grape tomatoes too. There is also a small container of diced red bell pepper in the freezer that I can include. I'm going to make some more vegetable broth for the polenta dish, so I can use the remains of that in the sambar too.
Homemade Pizza
Thursday. Sameer has work in the city so he won't be fasting that day, and this way Sim can take leftovers in her lunch Friday.
Macaroni & Cheese and Vegetable Sides
Friday. I'm not sure yet what vegetable sides we'll have with this, but this is what I made for dinner this past Saturday (with shaved Brussels sprouts in a mustard sauce and asparagus and artichokes hearts in a vermouth brown butter sauce), and I've still got eggs, good cheddar, and the exact amounts necessary of evaporated milk and elbow macaroni.
Veggie Tacos (Again) and Black Beans
Monday. I don't know how else to use up the fresh mushrooms and broccoli sprouts, but this will do it. It'll also use up the lettuce. I just need to buy guacamole, more tomatoes, and more taco size flour or whole wheat flour tortillas. Tomorrow is one of the hot days this week, so this will be a good no-cook meal.
Catalan Sauteed Polenta & Butter Beans and Green Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette
Wednesday. I still have champagne vinaigrette I made last week, so this seems like a good use for it. I can also include broccoli sprouts and the last of the watercress in the salad. Simran has been asking when she can eat lima beans because of that Bad Case of the Stripes book, and this is one recipe that came to mind that features them. It'll use up the vegetable broth currently in the fridge. It'll also use up some of my coarse grits currently in the pantry when I make the polenta.
More Sambar
I want to eat the last of the idli and the coconut chutney I made rather than let them go to waste, so I'm making another batch of easy sambar to have for lunches and maybe Tuesday night. This will use up the Roma tomato and potentially the grape tomatoes too. There is also a small container of diced red bell pepper in the freezer that I can include. I'm going to make some more vegetable broth for the polenta dish, so I can use the remains of that in the sambar too.
Homemade Pizza
Thursday. Sameer has work in the city so he won't be fasting that day, and this way Sim can take leftovers in her lunch Friday.
Macaroni & Cheese and Vegetable Sides
Friday. I'm not sure yet what vegetable sides we'll have with this, but this is what I made for dinner this past Saturday (with shaved Brussels sprouts in a mustard sauce and asparagus and artichokes hearts in a vermouth brown butter sauce), and I've still got eggs, good cheddar, and the exact amounts necessary of evaporated milk and elbow macaroni.
Herbed Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
This is a best-of-both-worlds pizza dough recipe. It's basically Neal Barnard's whole wheat pizza dough recipe with herbs in it for flavor, kneaded and cooked thin like NY style pizza.
Ingredients
2 tsp agave nectar
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup bread flour
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp salt
vegetable oil cooking spray
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
Directions
1. In a measuring cup, dissolve the agave nectar and yeast in 3/4 cup warm water (100 - 110 degrees F). Let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine flours, dried herbs, and salt. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic. Dough should be slightly sticky. If it's too dry, add tiny amounts of water; if it's too sticky, add tiny amounts of flour. Pinch off a small piece of dough and work it into a thin sheet through which you can see light. You'll know it's ready when you can do this without tearing a hole in it.
2. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat the top. Cover plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 40 minutes (or do it for a couple hours like me). If making in advance, put the dough in a ziploc bag and refrigerate until a couple hours before you plan to use it. If making farther in advance, freeze until the day before you plan to use it.
3. Place pizza stone in middle of the oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit an hour in advance so pizza stone can heat through.
4. Punch down the dough and roll into a 10- or 11-inch circle (or divide the dough by however many people you're feeding and do small personal pizzas) on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle pizza peel thoroughly with corn meal to prevent sticking, place pizza dough on top of corn meal, and arrange sauce and toppings. Sprinkle pizza stone thoroughly with corn meal, slide pizza from pizza peel onto pizza stone in the oven, and cook pizza for about 13 minutes.
5. Allow pizza to cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Ingredients
2 tsp agave nectar
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup bread flour
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp salt
vegetable oil cooking spray
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
Directions
1. In a measuring cup, dissolve the agave nectar and yeast in 3/4 cup warm water (100 - 110 degrees F). Let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine flours, dried herbs, and salt. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic. Dough should be slightly sticky. If it's too dry, add tiny amounts of water; if it's too sticky, add tiny amounts of flour. Pinch off a small piece of dough and work it into a thin sheet through which you can see light. You'll know it's ready when you can do this without tearing a hole in it.
2. Place dough in a large bowl coated with cooking spray, turning to coat the top. Cover plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 40 minutes (or do it for a couple hours like me). If making in advance, put the dough in a ziploc bag and refrigerate until a couple hours before you plan to use it. If making farther in advance, freeze until the day before you plan to use it.
3. Place pizza stone in middle of the oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit an hour in advance so pizza stone can heat through.
4. Punch down the dough and roll into a 10- or 11-inch circle (or divide the dough by however many people you're feeding and do small personal pizzas) on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle pizza peel thoroughly with corn meal to prevent sticking, place pizza dough on top of corn meal, and arrange sauce and toppings. Sprinkle pizza stone thoroughly with corn meal, slide pizza from pizza peel onto pizza stone in the oven, and cook pizza for about 13 minutes.
5. Allow pizza to cool for 5 minutes before serving.
Cheap & Lazy Sambar
I never wrote down the sambar ingredients I used before, so I snapped a picture of the ingredients once I had them in the pot so I wouldn't forget later. This recipe is so quick and easy and healthy, but I still love the taste and how filling it is, especially now that the cold months are coming.
Ingredients
1) 1 cup red lentils, rinsed (I like red lentils for this because lots of dals require longer cooking and then smashing up whereas red lentils just explode into a mushy stew texture in ten minutes)
2) 1-2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and diced (or 5-6 baby potatoes, quartered)
3) 1 jalapeno, seeded and split
4) 2 tomatoes, diced
5) 1-2 carrots, diced
6) 1-2 shallots OR 1/2 medium onion, diced
7) Any other vegetables you want to use up. I used half a diced green bell pepper in the picture. My next batch will include whatever color bell pepper I have on hand as well as half a cup of cut green beans. If I have to buy celery for something else this week, I'll include some chopped celery too.
8) 1/2 tbs sambar powder (I use Badshah brand Madras Sambar Masala), for a moderate level of heat
9) 1/2 - 1 tsp turmeric powder
10) salt, to taste
11) Enough water (or broth) to cover all ingredients plus a couple inches (keep in mind the lentils will absorb a lot of it). Last time I used up a few cups of homemade vegetable broth with the water. I just found a carton of broth in my fridge I forget I had opened, so I'll use that up this time just to get rid of it.
12) 2 tbs tamarind paste (This is important. Sameer used to use a bit of sugar when making this, but I think the tamarind paste adds a richer depth of flavor, so I keep a jar of Swad brand tamarind concentrate in the fridge just for this.)
Directions
1) Put ingredients 1-9 in a large pot and cover with the water or broth.
2) Boil for 10 minutes. (This should be enough time to cook the potatoes and the red lentils, which are the only two ingredients you really have to check doneness on. If they don't seem done, or if you just have more cooking to do, turn heat to low, cover, and simmer up to an hour.)
3) Stir in tamarind paste and salt to taste. Serve hot with lazy coconut chutney, cilantro, idli, mendu vada, whatever you like. If you don't have idli or vada, try pouring your sambar over half a cup of cooked brown basmati rice for a filling, healthy winter lunch.
[Edited 4/20/2021: I'm making this today and thought I should update my notes. I always make the broth in the link now in place of the water. It makes an enormous difference in the flavor. And I just use the whole batch of broth in the sambar rather than eyeballing or measuring the liquid. Works well.]
New Kale-Berry Smoothie
My regular morning smoothie recipe has changed enough to warrant an update. Here is its current iteration. I make it every day now, give Simran a little 4 oz glass worth, and Sameer and I each get a 16 oz glassful.
Ingredients
1) 2 cup water
2) 1 tsp amla powder (because it's supposed to help lower cholesterol -- skip it if you want)
3) chunk of fresh or frozen ginger
4) 3 tbs ground flax seeds
4) 1/4 - 1/2 cup pineapple chunks (I buy canned pineapple in juice for this)
5) 1 banana, fresh or frozen
6) about a thumb size chunk of fresh or frozen turmeric root (because it's supposed to decrease inflammation in the body. I haven't been to Patel Bros in ages, which is the only place I've ever found frozen turmeric, so I've learned that buying a few handfuls of fresh turmeric, washing it, cutting it into large chunks and putting it in a ziploc bag in the freezer is quick and easy -- don't bother peeling it)
7) 2 cups packed frozen kale (or dark leafy green of your choice. If you wash and freeze them in advance, they have very little flavor, which is a good thing in a berry smoothie. They taste much greener fresh. It's not good. Note: Spinach has less flavor fresh, but it's high in oxalates, so I only use it when I have some that needs to be used up. You can use whatever dark leafy greens you have, but when I'm shopping for smoothie ingredients, I just get green kale.)
8) 1/2 - 1 cup berries (strawberries, blueberries, pitted dark sweet cherries, bags of organic mixed berries from the freezer section, whatever I've got -- wild blueberries are my favorite for flavor and antioxidants)
Directions
1) Put all ingredients into a high-speed blender. Blend until smooth. Serve cold.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Meal Planning
Potato Cheese & Onion Pasties and Pumpkin Curry Soup and Baby Greens with Champagne Vinaigrette
I'm going to try my hand at making rough puff pastry dough for the pasties. Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, and it's supposed to be reasonably cool, so I'm making this autumnal meal that seems like something people would eat in a Harry Potter book.
Idli & Sambar with Lazy Coconut Chutney
I'm going to plan on having some extra potatoes to make into sambar. I have no idli rice, but I've seen Sameer make idli without it, so I'm going to use this recipe that just uses some cooked rice instead that may or may not be the same recipe he has used before. I need to get the hang of basic idli before I can successfully make brown rice idli since it turned out really badly the last time I tried. Between the fermenting and the pressure cooking, it features too many facets I haven't mastered yet.
Fresh Veggie Tacos and Red Cabbage Slaw
This will be Friday dinner. I'll go to Whole Foods that day to pick up things like fresh guacamole and fresh mushrooms.
Brinner
I'm going to have some eggs leftover from the pasties and there are already pancakes in the freezer from last week. Maybe I'll make the eggs into omelets or a breakfast mess with veggie sausages and cheese and the leftover green bell pepper and onion in the fridge and hashbrown potatoes in the freezer. This would work for Tuesday or Thursday when Sameer is fasting.
I'm going to try my hand at making rough puff pastry dough for the pasties. Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, and it's supposed to be reasonably cool, so I'm making this autumnal meal that seems like something people would eat in a Harry Potter book.
Idli & Sambar with Lazy Coconut Chutney
I'm going to plan on having some extra potatoes to make into sambar. I have no idli rice, but I've seen Sameer make idli without it, so I'm going to use this recipe that just uses some cooked rice instead that may or may not be the same recipe he has used before. I need to get the hang of basic idli before I can successfully make brown rice idli since it turned out really badly the last time I tried. Between the fermenting and the pressure cooking, it features too many facets I haven't mastered yet.
Fresh Veggie Tacos and Red Cabbage Slaw
This will be Friday dinner. I'll go to Whole Foods that day to pick up things like fresh guacamole and fresh mushrooms.
Brinner
I'm going to have some eggs leftover from the pasties and there are already pancakes in the freezer from last week. Maybe I'll make the eggs into omelets or a breakfast mess with veggie sausages and cheese and the leftover green bell pepper and onion in the fridge and hashbrown potatoes in the freezer. This would work for Tuesday or Thursday when Sameer is fasting.
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