Dinner

I purchased a number of tasty organic items from our local farmers' market, including  Piracicaba  broccoli , also known as Brazilian broccoli. I had it raw right after I bought it; it was quite tender and sweet! I also bought nice carrots, a green tomato for pressure cooking, strawberries, and peas. Earlier, I had prepared red kidney beans in my Instant Pot   (beans soaked overnight and then cooked for I think 12 minutes) as a salad ingredient for a Food for Life class for fourth graders, and used a little more water than I needed. I took most of the beans, but left maybe 1/2 cup plus about the same amount of water, now a bean gravy. I put the full tender Piracicaba broccoli, looking like broccolini with thin stalks, into the gravy, as well as carrot, frozen shelled edamame beans, garlic, onion, a bit of turmeric, kala namak (other salt would be fine, too), freshly ground black pepper, and garlic powder, and cooked on medium heat for about 10 minutes. I served, along wi...

I was happy to have a cousin in town today who came over for dinner after his business day. I thought I'd make a bean dish and was originally thinking of cooking cannellini beans then mixing vegetables and soba noodles into them. I ended up instead serving soba noodles as their own side dish. Here is what I did. Ingredients 2 cups cannellini beans soaked overnight (I got away with soaking for maybe 3 hours and it worked out okay, but I think I'd get softer beans if I soaked for longer) then rinsed and drained again Enough water to just cover the beans Vegan bouillon cube 3/4 cup compressed cup kale leaves, roughly hand separated from stems into approximately 3/4" squares 3 medium carrots cut into large sections approximately 1/2" in size Garlic to taste; 2 cloves finely (1/8" or so) chopped garlic would be good, but we had fresh green garlic, and I used at last a tablespoonful cut into larger 1/4" or so pieces 1t grated or finely (1/8" or so) chopped gi...

I made lasagne; my daughter really liked the manicotti that I recently made and I had some of Miyoko's vegan smoked "mozarella" cheese that I had used. I put four layers of lasagne down, then added leftover canellini beans with Brussels sprouts , plus some of the vegan cheese and sauce. I put down four more layers, then sauteed onion and garlic, plus mushroom and Swiss chard and more sauce. I put down a final four layers then sauce, and baked in a preheated 375°F for 40m. Results Dinner was good and I was pleased at "reinventing" the leftovers this way. Though it wasn't no added fat, I didn't use a lot of the vegan cheese, so it was reasonably low in fat. Ideas for the future It's not so difficult to make lasagne, though it does take a bit of time. One puts sauce down in a baking dish (I used a 9"x13" glass one) then boils four lasagne noodles at a time (these wheat ones cooked in about 5 minutes) and places them on the sauce. Fillings go ...

I wanted to cook with canellini beans - they're soft and creamy. I bought some organic Brussels sprouts yesterday and thought that they would go well with the beans. I soaked the beans overnight then pressure cooked for 15m after just covering with water and adding a vegan bouillon cube. In the meantime, I sauteed halved Brussel sprouts, shallot, and garlic; when almost done (I cooked with no oil in a cast iron pan), I stirred in some red onion slices and cooked another few minutes. I mixed the cooked beans with the sprouts, garlic powder, salt, chopped jalapeno, dried sage, and lime juice. It came out well!

I was cooking just for my wife and myself, so used tempeh, which my daughter doesn't like. I sauteed tempeh with onion and, when almost done, added Swiss chard and cooked down a bit. I also made asparagus and served a tomato and avocado sandwich. Results Pending Ideas for the future Pending

I saw an interesting looking product in the store and picked it up, Tres Latin Foods ' pupusas, and picked up their black bean and sweet corn variety, which I thought I'd use today, as well as their kale and pinto bean pupusa . Pupusas are a traditional dish from El Salvador; I love corn masa and bet these are good.The ingredients look great: (Black bean and corn pupusa) organic corn masa, water, black beans, corn, olive oil, and salt (Kale and pint bean pupusa) organic corn masa, water, pinto beans, olive oil, kale, salt, chili powder, chipotle powder, and onion powder ... and each pupusa only has 3.5g of fat. I cooked the pupusas at 400°F for 10m then pan sauteed on a cast iron pan for a few minutes per side to get them a bit crispy. I served with some stewed tomatoes and raw red onion I also made brown basmati rice (1:2 ratio of rice to water, plus a vegan bouillon cube, and I also mixed in frozen chopped Swiss chard, then pressure cooked it all for 25m) and steamed brocco...

I recently found vegan smoked "mozzarella " from Miyoko's Creamery I had some brown rice manicotti shells  and decided to make manicotti. The vegan cheese is a bit high in fat (it's an 8 ounce package and has 5g of fat per ounce), so I thought I'd make manicotti with half the cheese, but ended up needing about 3/4, so the total fat from the cheese (and nothing else contributed significantly more fat) was 30g of fat. The 9"x13" baking dish was heavy with the 16 filled shells and sauce; I anticipated that we'd each eat 3 shells, so have about 30g of fat x 3/16 = about 6g of fat. Here is what I did. Ingredients 7 ounce box of manicotti shells , prepared according to directions (I used a gluten-free brown rice shell that had 16 shells that I boiled for 4 minutes) About 40 ounces (I used 25 ounce jars, so went through almost two) of a favorite marinara sauce 6 ounces of vegan smoked "mozzarella cheese" roughly cut into 1/2" or smaller piec...