Tuesday was MIL’s birthday! We took her out to dinner (she loves to eat out) and we gave her this as a gift.
No, it’s not just a box. It contains an assortment of amazing raw chocolate confections!
Here is what is hiding under the two big ones.
Don’t those look luscious!
DH and I made these, from scratch, over several days as a special treat for his Mom for her birthday. She is a major choc-a-holic, but we wanted to make her chocolates that are actually good for her, along with tasting good!
This year is our first totally vegan Thanksgiving dinner!
We actually made our dinner on Tuesday, so that we could share it with MIL. Here’s what we had.
From left to right:
Carrots cooked in a sauce of orange juice, vegan butter and parsley Pickled Green Beans (served hot) Foxbarrel Blackberry Pear Cider (to drink) Mushrooms and onions sauteed in olive oil, with white wine, rosemary, thyme, poultry seasoning and basalmic vinegar, then stir fried with temph Roasted potatoes, onions and yams with the sour cream from the coleslaw and chives Kale, rainbow chard, spinach salad (with other veggies) and a home made vinaigrette For dessert, DH made apple cranberry pie with a pecan crunch top, which was served with sweet cashew creme.
It’s the time of year when just about every foodie magazine and television show is featuring something made out of pumpkin! So often, though, the recipes call for canned pumpkin puree. It will work, if you don’t have access to the fresh stuff, but making your own is not all that difficult!
Start with a fresh, sweet, pie pumpkin.
Organic is the best. You don’t want to use a jack-o-lantern pumpkin. Those are specifically bred to last outside with a light in them… not for flavor! In addition, they often have a weird protective coating on the outside. Yuck! Pie pumpkins are smaller, weighing in at 2 to 3 pounds.
We eat a lot of tofu! I use it in both sweet and savory dishes. That means I’m doing a lot of pressing, to squeeze the water out of the block of tofu. You probably saw the post In The Kitchen: Tofu about the standard, low-tech way of pressing it. It works, but it’s messy and leaves me with a lot of stuff to wash. It also uses a lot of paper towels.
I did it! I made pizza, from scratch!
I had home made pizza for my Birthday Dinner! (Doing the happy dance!)
We love The Uprooted Kitchen Trailer (food truck?)!!!
This is a family owned business, based in a 1968 vintage Avion trailer that specializes in vegetarian cuisine. It is owned by Chad and Erin Romanoff. Chad is a pediatric occupational therapist and Erin is a pastry chef. Their menu includes breakfast, lunch and any time fare.
On Saturday’s they are at the Gilbert Farmer's Market , which is where we discovered them. We had gone to the market to see what all was there, and, of course, looking at food makes you hungry! I discovered they had gluten free carrot and walnut bread, and just had to try it.
I have a special request from a regular viewer! He has asked me about my food dehydrator!
A Few Years Ago My daughter asked for a food dehydrator for a gift several years ago. I don’t think she really thought I would get it for her, because of the cost, but I did. She is very involved in the Boy Scouts (my grandson is a Scout) and loves camping. In addition, she lives in an area of the U.S. where just about everyone hunts. She wanted to be able to make jerky, and to dehydrate foods for camping. I think she has used it to make fruit leather more than for any other purpose.
Daryl: Knarly, Dude! What is that thing?
Sam: I dunno. I found it in the grocery store. I thought you might know what to do with it?
Daryl: Ummm… Looks like a door stop to me!
OK, enough fun. This thing is a Jicama! (And it actually is gnarly, as you’ll see in a bit.)
Jicama, also called a Yam Bean or Mexican Turnip, is the tuberous root of a Mexican legume vine. The vine itself can grow very large, over 15 feet tall and the root can be as large as 6 feet in diameter. Needless to say, you won’t find one that large in the grocery store!
The Kitchen Angel must have heard my plea last Friday! (See my post about Chocolate Raspberry Pie !) This has appeared in my kitchen.
I received a brand new Vitamix 6300 with a 64 oz container! It came from Costco. Vitamix is doing demos of this new model in Costco Stores around the country. The savings is significant when purchased at the demo.
I am SOOOO happy! I’ll probably be doing the happy dance for days.
I recently got twenty pounds of California ripe tomatoes as an addition to my regular Bountiful Baskets. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, it looks like this:
See, not quite as much as you thought it would be! These were ripe, meaty and delicious!
I love tomatoes. They are really good for you, high in lycopene, a powerful antioxidant! They also contain vitamin C (when eaten raw) and potassium.
By now you’ve seen tofu pop up a few times in my recipes. I thought you might like to know a bit more about it, and why it’s used so much for a vast array of things in the vegan foodie world.
For starters, tofu is made from soybeans. First the dried soybeans are processed into soy milk. Then a salt or acid-based coagulant is stirred into the milk, causing it to form curds from the protein. The curds are separated from the whey and then pressed into a mold. The resulting product is tofu, sometimes also called bean curd. It is a relatively high protein source, low in fat and a good substitute for meat or dairy in many dishes.
There are very few people who are great cooks from birth. Everyone learns along the way. And most cooks, and even the great chefs have tools which got them to where they are now.
A very important category of tools is: Cook Books!
I happen to have two favorites. The first is a 30-year old copy of Joy of Cooking. As far as I’m concerned, no kitchen should be without a copy of this classic. It covers everything from how to set a table properly, to how to cook almost anything.
I like to start the day by loading up the dehydrator. That way, it has plenty of time to run before any afternoon storms. Today I made Zucchini Chips. These were quick and easy to prep, since all you have to do is wash the zukes and then slice them about 1⁄4 inch thick. I dry them at 125 degrees until they are dry and crispy. They keep a long time in the pantry. This is the time of year that zucchini is on sale, so I like to make a lot of these so I have them in the fall.
Last night’s dinner was delicious! Sprouts has wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon on sale right now! I marinated the fish in light basalmic vinegar, lime juice, a little olive oil, 1 clove of garlic, minced and cilantro. Then it was grilled.
The Pineapple-Avocado salsa also has red onion, cilantro and 1/2 roasted jalapeno.
The Asparagus and Grape Tomato salad is really simple and the addition of the sesame seeds gives is a little crunch.
Tonight’s dinner was Lamb Burgers on Canyon Bakehouse Gluten Free Buns. I love these buns! They taste really good, and hold up well to a hefty burger with all the fixings piled on. We have used these same buns for Portabella Burgers and they were great!
The white sauce on top of the burger is home made tzatziki sauce. On the side you see avocado, red onion, tomato, green leaf lettuce, and grilled Mexican grey squash.
I’m still being asked about what I eat every day. In addition, I have been sending pics of many of our meals to friends and relatives. So, I’ve decided to post them here, rather than sending out so many individual messages.
This first post will contain a bunch, so you’ll have to scroll a bit, but after this, I will post them as I take them. I apologize for the quality at times, but the lighting in my kitchen is bad. (Actually it totally sucks! I’m working on it, but it’s expensive to change out that many light bulbs all at once.) Hopefully, the pictures will improve as we go along.
There are foods that are good for you… And foods that are not (or not AS good!) One of the major things I did was to “swap out” bad for good and, in some cases, good for even better!
My main goal was to feel better. If I lost some weight, that would be great, but initially I just wanted to eat healthier foods. I also wanted to change things in my husband’s diet. I wasn’t aiming specifically for weight loss for him either, but to lower his blood pressure and keep his cholesterol in check. As I sort of figured would happen, we lost weight in addition! So some of the swaps below were for him, and some for me.
I’ve mentioned Bountiful Baskets a couple of times now. They are a food co-op made up of people like you and me. You can get baskets of fruit and vegetables, either 100% organic or not, it’s up to you. In addition, they offer breads and other specialty items.
There are offerings in 20 different states, mostly in the Western half of the U.S. Not every city in every participating state has deliveries. However, some of the larger cities have multiple pick up points. If there isn’t a location close to you, you may want to start one!
Since people have found out how much weight I’ve lost, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about how I did it. So I’ll answer some of the most frequent ones here.
Q: What diet did you use?
A: None. I didn’t go on a “diet”… I changed my life!
I hate the “D” word! The very idea of a “diet” implies something temporary. Your brain instantly takes on the idea that you are going to deprive yourself until you reach a certain goal. When you hit that goal, you don’t have to do it any more. It doesn’t work.
Have you seen these ? They are a huge hit in our household!
My DH has to take his lunch to work every day. The LunchBlox allow me to pack all kinds of things, such as hummus, chips, yogurt, fruit salad, trail mix, etc.
There are three different basic kits: Sandwich, Salad, and Entrée. There are two different sized Blue Ice blocks and two different sized lunch totes designed to hold them. You can also purchase the various shaped containers and ice blocks individually. The containers are BPA-free and Microwave, Dishwasher, and Freezer Safe.