White Bean Dip

To make a quick WHITE BEAN DIP, in a food processor or blender mix up one fifteen ounce can of white beans (I used Cannelini), one peeled garlic clove, the juice of one lemon, a couple of sprigs of fresh parsley and basil, two Tablespoons of miso (one of the lighter ones), one Tablespoon of olive oil and one quarter to one half a teaspoon of garam masala. Garam masala is an Indian spice mix which can be made at home to your own tastes, or purchased already ground up. If you don't have it, add some chili powder or make up some other flavor of spices you do have, within reason. Maybe some olives, for instance. Use tamari soy sauce if you don't have miso, adding about one Tablespoon. Serve with tortilla chips, cut up vegetables or toasted bread.

Tofu Lasagna

Last week I was thinking about making TOFU LASAGNA, and I wondered why you are supposed to boil the long wide noodles first, before baking them in the lasagna. This seemed redundant to me, and it was always annoying when the noodles stuck together after I drained them, as I was trying to make my layers. So I decided to experiment with using dry noodles. I also decided to use some of my vegetable soup vegetables in my tomato sauce, as we didn't seem to be eating it up fast enough, and it had started out as a giant pot of soup.

First I started out with some tomato sauce, the recipe for which you can find in an earlier post. I added scooped out vegetables from the previous posted vegetable soup recipe. This added bulk to the sauce, which was good, because I make lasagna in a very large pot I found at a yard sale. It is a big long oval stainless steel pot with a lid that is supposed to be used to roast...other things. (It comes with an insert holed tray that fits inside the bottom which I don't use.) Maybe you have one around or can find one. I actually have found two of them over the years. Or perhaps you have some other deep dish casserole you could use. It needs to be pretty deep to contain all the sauce and layers, and this new method works best if you can cover the pot during most of the cooking.

Quick Tofu Pot Pie

To universal acclaim (all five family members liked it) last night's TOFU POT PIE made its way to the table in just about an hour, using only one skillet and one deep dish casserole in the process. That's a good thing, as I didn't get around to starting it until after seven. This streamlined version was based on the Farm Cookbook (a good compendium of family favorites, which, if you ignore and change their use of white flour and white sugar, is completely vegan-friendly), but combined several processes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mine takes about twenty minutes to preheat, which, if you are efficient, should be long enough to prepare the dish for the oven.
ingredients
1 block--cubed extra firm tofu

flour mixture to coat tofu
1/4 cup--whole wheat pastry flour
1/8 cup--nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 tsp--garlic and/or onion powder
1/2 tsp--turmeric
sprinkles of--salt and black pepper

filling
1 Tbl--olive oil, plus more if you want
1--chopped onion
1--minced carrot
1/3 cup--whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup--nutritional yeast
1 Tbl--tamari soy sauce
1 each can or 1 each bag frozen--peas and green beans
1 sprinkle--celery seed
optional--cubed potato, celery, broccoli, mushroom, sweet peppers, corn, chopped greens--but not all at once
1/4 tsp--Smoky Serrano hot sauce
2 cups water

crust
1 cup--whole wheat pastry flour
sprinkle--salt
1/4 cup--olive oil
1/8 cup or so--water: enough to make it into soft pliable dough to roll or pat out