Back on track! Meal planning and a new recipe.

I've been lazy and got WAY off track food-wise these past few weeks. I've been eating so many things that really I shouldn't be eating and it shows.

So, time to get back on track.

I have found I don't do really well with walking into the kitchen/house with just an hour or less to plan for dinner. I do MUCH better with a plan, even if it's a pretty simple one. In the past, when I do my planning, I will write it on a pad of paper and then try to keep track of it. This doesn't work so well for me.

I'm scattered at times. I have ADD tenancies that make it near impossible for me to keep track of that pad of paper and even remember to look at it. I know that sounds bad but it's true. I will forget to look for the paper until I'm hungry. Never fails I had to start making something earlier those days. So, I'm trying something new and I'm going to really try to stick to it!

I use Google Calendar. I have to put everywhere I need to be on this. If it's not there, I probably won't make it on time. I love the Google Calendar because I can access it anywhere. No more excuses. I access it on my phone and on any computer. Also my husband can access it from work or on his phone (no more of that "what are we doing tonight?" questioning). We have our calendars synced so I can see what he enters on his and he can see what I enter on mine. I look at it several times a day.

Which led to the idea of putting my meals on the calendar and an approximate meal time. Eventually I'll get good enough to put the cooking times on there for myself because prep always makes me later than I planned. I also can put a reminder on there for stuff I have to do in the morning/afternoon (crock pot meals). AND, my husband knows what is for dinner every night :) I put the meal in the title and the location of the recipe in the comments.

Which leads me to tonight's recipe. I recently bought the book Fresh & Fast Vegetarian  on ebay. It arrived damage and the seller offered me it for half price. Turns out, this is a great book - even more-so for under $5! Tonight's dinner was "Bulgur pilaf with roasted vegetables" (pg 112).  My husband loves grains, especially rice and the nuttier flavored hearty grains. I love roasted vegetables. It seemed like it was made for us. Basically it's oven roasted veggies (peppers, red onion, carrots, zucchini) and bulgur cooked with onion and raisins. It turned out to be a very yummy and filling meal.

Cook Book Review

I got a new book to try out last week and I've been happy with it. It's not flashy and doesn't have a lot of pictures (I do LOVE lots of pictures in my cookbooks so this is a minus for me), but the recipes are good and easy to make.

Quick-Fix Vegetarian by Robin Robertson, also author of Vegan Planet.

The title of the book says it's a vegetarian book, but all the recipes are vegan. That said, they are not unusual vegan recipes. Most of the recipes are the type that you can feed your non-vegan friends and have them like it. The book includes appetizers, soups, salads, skillet meals, pasta dishes, oven baked dishes, slow cooker meal, sauces and desserts.

I have made three of the recipes from this book so far and they were all great. The ingredients were easy to find and the directions easy to follow.

My husband and daughter LOVED the "Potato and Onion Pierogi with Broccoli and Walnuts".  It's one of their favorite dishes I've made this month. As I have said before, I have two other children who are not so adventurous with food. A great thing about this meal was that I was able to easily do something they would like too. The first step is to boil water and add the broccoli, without any spices. I was able to scoop out some of this broccoli when cooked a little for their veggie and then made some whole wheat couscous with some Earth Balance butter. It was a simple modification to make a slightly different meal for them.

Yummy Summer Squash Pasta

This week was super busy but I was feeling the need to make something fresh tonight. I've been out and about and just eating sandwiches and simple stuff the past few days. Tonight I wanted a real dinner! Plus, I really needed some leftovers for tomorrow at work.

After a day at the beach with a long time friend (lunch- PBJ and some crackers) and then evening activities for the kids, I picked a dinner to try tonight and quickly squeezed a shopping trip to the local hfs.
Today I was at a city library and found some vegetarian/vegan/healthy cookbooks that looked good. I dropped my daughter off at her tumbling class and skimmed the books and found something I could make tonight.

Tonight's dinner was based on a recipe in "The Vegetarian 5- Ingredient Gourmet" -- Overall I like this book. Naturally, I can't just make something the way it's written if it's simple. I'm not a cook, so this doesn't always turn out for the best.

The recipe I started with was Spinach Fettuccine with Summer Squash. Like the cookbook says, it's just 5 ingredients: spinach fettuccine, olive oil, 2 medium yellow squashes, tomatoes, and Parmesan (copy Parm) cheese.

While getting things together, I had to make a little something to eat because the PBJ from 11:30 this morning was long gone (it was 7pm). So I whipped up a quick bit of what my husband and I call 'almost bruschetta'.  I have a gourmet friend who totally scoffed at this and it makes us laugh whenever we say we're having bruschetta now. All it really is chopped basil, garlic, tomatoes, and a touch of salt, pepper and very little olive oil served on pita crackers. My husband likes it with goat cheese too.

For dinner I found an interesting dry pasta that was calling my name. A dry pasta with spinach and chia. The texture was a little different and it cooked up really fast, but tasted pretty good.

While cooking the pasta, I chopped up and sauteed the yellow squash and some asparagus. Then I added some halved cherry tomatoes and tossed it with the past. I didn't use the oil because I didn't need it. The recipe did call for a little salt to taste, but was really good.

Last week I made a wonderful veggie chili. I love how colorful the peppers and onions look all cut up!

Breakfast foods

I really need to get some sewing reviews up or this will become a food review blog.

I've been experimenting with tofu this week. I'm actually getting decent at the breakfast foods now.

First up - Tofu Scramble. This was pretty good, but a little too much for me. After doing a little on-line search, I came up with a plan.
Got out my tofu and drained the liquid. Cut off a little bit and pressed it (put the rest in a glass lock container for another day). Cooked up some onions, garlic, carrots. Added the tofu and scrambled it up with the spatula. Added mushrooms and spinach and spices (turmeric, italian seasoning, and pepper) and then a little of my vegan pepper jack cheese. Cooked and chopped up some vegan sausage. Mixed it all together.

This was today's breakfast. A vegan "egg and sausage muffin".  Wheat English muffin with 'butter'. In the pan I cooked up 2 slices of tofu, seasoned with turmeric and pepper and one slice of the vegan sausage. Browned a little spinach and added a pinch of the vegan cheese. The cheese didn't melt well this time, but it added flavor. I think I need to cut the sausage thinner because it has a very strong flavor. Overall, I really liked this breakfast.

A quick and easy breakfast or lunch (I think I ate this for lunch the other day, not breakfast). Good bread, Earth Balance crunchy peanut butter with coconut oil, and sliced bananas. Yum!

Vegetarian Rice Noodles

Tonight I cooked a recipe from The Vegetarian Bible, which I bought on clearance at least three years ago. This is the second time I cooked from it. The other time was 2 weeks ago. Yes, it's sad.

That said, it's a good cookbook.

This dish was veggies, rice noodles and tofu. Since I have a very hard time following a recipe as it is written, I added asparagus and carrots. I had bought water chestnuts but totally forgot to put them in. I also used aminos for half the soy sauce.

Opinions: My oldest and youngest didn't want it. This wasn't surprising. I made them whole wheat couscous and peas.  My  more adventurous middle child thought the sweet potato was really good, but didn't like the noodles or tofu. The husband and I thought the soy sauce taste was too strong but overall, it was good. He liked the tofu (the guy who doesn't like tofu), but I thought it would have been better without it.

Vegan Quesadillas for lunch

On a posting role today. Actually, I am home all day because all the kids have a friend over. Which means, I have to stay alert for any crafty plans, arguments, or injuries. (so, no shower until tonight).

I wasn't feeling a veggie burger today and had just given my youngest daughter a quesadilla, her favorite. I've never been a fan of cheese, but I was thinking about that vegan pepper jack 'cheese' I bought yesterday for my breakfast sandwich. That might be good.

So, a plan was born. Vegan Quesadillas!

Remember, I'm not a chef - just a mom sharing my ideas and trials.

Ingredients:
Slightly less than half an onion, chopped
1 can of corn (forgot I had some fresh stuff in the fridge -oops)
1/2 can of green chilies
1 can black beans (drained)
tomatoes (I had cherry so I cut them in fourths)
a good shake of cumin (around 1 tbsp, maybe a little less. I love cumin)
a quick shake of turmeric, crushed chili peppers, garlic powder, and chili powder (maybe 1 tsp each)

In the pan, add a little olive oil and start cooking the onions until slightly cooked and starting to get clear. Add the corn and cook for another minute or so. Then add everything else. Cook for a good 5 minutes to mix the flavors and taste. Put all this good stuff into a bowl for later.

Take a tortilla and fill half way with the good stuff and add a little of the pepper jack 'cheese'. Spray the pan or tortilla with some olive oil and brown for a minute or so on both sides. And it's done!

I remembered I had some avocado and just added it as I ate my quesadillas.

This is a two day lunch (or more). Tomorrow I work and I'll take some tortillas and topping with me to heat up. I always have such a hard time figuring out what to eat when I'm out, especially at work. By the time I get a break, the choice for buying stuff are quite limited (as in Mcdonalds or pre-made stuff in the cafeteria  and I only have 30 minutes too. So, this will be perfect.

Vegan Breakfast Sandwich

Looks pretty good, huh?

It was.

In general I don't like fake meats. I have really liked tofu when eating out, but have yet to make it well at home. So, I was a little nervous about trying this recipe.

Guess what? It was really good. Of course I modified it a little bit.
Whole wheat English muffin
onions
spinach
mushrooms
Earth Balance "butter"
Lightlife Lean Gimme Sausage
Daiya Pepperjack shredded 'cheese'
a little salsa.

I didn't feel like getting out my press because mine is big and I already had the dehydrator out. So, I did it in a pan. Cut the 'sausage', put it in the pan that I had just sprayed with olive oil, and pressed it with the spatula. OOPS! stuck to the spatula! Scraped it off and sprayed the spatula and pressed again. This worked better. I cooked up the veggies right next to it. I don't really care for syrup  so I skipped this part. The cheese didn't melt but had good flavor. Really it was fine and tasty without the salsa, but I decided to add it for more flavor.

Overall, wonderful. I think even meat eaters would like this one.
The Lightlife Sausage is a keeper too. I will have to try some other meals with it.

Healthy eating changes

I've been trying lots of new recipes lately. I realized that I had gotten off track with my eating habits and needed to clean things up a little bit. I feel better when I stay away from meat, so that what I've been doing. The focus is on trying to be more healthy.

Labels - I would call myself a flexitarian or a meat minimalist. I've been doing LOTS of reading and making my own conclusions. The main points I agree with are that meat is not meant to be eaten at every meal, not even every day. It should be a rare item. Food should be non altered (not chemically or mechanically processed) to the point that it really isn't food any more. We need to eat what was meant to be food and avoid what wasn't meant to be food (chemicals, additives, etc).

Of course, this isn't easy and it is a huge change. We didn't eat a lot of boxed or prepared foods but it's amazing what is in things that I thought were "healthy" when I looked at the labels. Goodness!

So what to eat. At home this is easier than on the road. I have found that some places have very limited choices (we just finished a long road trip). I have realized that I have issues with buying something that would have meat, without the meat, and paying the same price. That is something I need to get over.

Friends have asked me what I think of foods I try. I'll try to post them here, but I know I can be inconsistent.