Try Roasting the Beets

The family thinks they don't like beets, but when I roasted some chopped-up golden beets tonight, along with carrots, onion and turnips, olive oil, seasoned salt, and balsamic vinegar at 350F degrees for about forty-five minutes, stirring them now and then, they liked them fine. I roasted the vegetables on the lower rack while my sourdough bread was cooking on the upper rack.

I served the roasted vegetables with roasted potatoes, leftover homemade baked beans, and steamed collard greens. Sometimes the simpler dinners taste the best.

It's Lovely Bread Pudding Again

When you've got some stale bread or bread ends stashed in the freezer for the future, a good use of it is to make BREAD PUDDING. We had some last night for dessert, but it is also a yummy snack on a cold day.

Ingredients
4-6 cups — stale bread, broken into pieces
1 quart — soy milk
1/2 cup — raisins
1/2 cup — sunflower oil
1/3 cup — Sucanat
1 1/2 teaspoons — cinnamon
1 teaspoon — vanilla
Drizzles of — oil and maple syrup or sugar

Banana Bread

 

 

The next time you see overly ripe organic bananas on sale, buy a bunch or two and make some BANANA BREAD. You can also peel some and freeze them for use in making smoothies. They are sweeter and more easily digestible when the skins are beginning to turn brown and show no more green. Brown spots on the skin are a good thing. If any bad spots are on the banana itself, just scoop them off.

Wet Ingredients
2 — ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup — water
3/4 cup — Sucanat
1/2 cup — sunflower oil
1 teaspoon — vanilla
Sprinkle — salt

Dry Ingredients

2 cups — whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 Tablespoon — non-aluminum baking powder (like Rumford)

 

Method

To make banana bread, preheat the oven to 350F degrees and oil a medium-sized loaf pan, though this could also be made in a cake pan if that's all you have. Just cook it for a shorter amount of time.

Birthday Breakfast in Bed

My fourteen-year-old twins made this breakfast and took a picture of it before serving it to me in bed this morning. Pancakes (leftover batter from yesterday featured some of the first trial of homemade soy yogurt, whole wheat pastry and unbleached flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, vanilla, cinnamon, and some water) with applesauce and agave syrup. Scrambled tofu with homemade sourdough toast with Organic Smart Balance spread and Eileen's Fuchsia Pickled Onions. Orange pieces, orange juice. Good job, boys!

Condiments — Yummy Piquant Miso Dressing and Eileen's Fuchsia Pickled Onions

Plain rice and beans is all very well, and anyone would be happy to have a bowl of them if they were starving, but if you add a few CONDIMENTS to your meal, you might enjoy it a little more.

My boys loved an organic creamy miso dressing that had been available at our grocery store, but then it was discontinued. I tried once before to duplicate it, and it wasn't quite right, but this time they liked it. I also was referencing my memories of another discontinued nutritional yeast dressing which I am missing, so I changed a few of the ingredients to try to mimic that, as well.

The only odd ingredient is guar gum, a vegetable-source product that I get from one of my buying clubs. The good thing about guar gum is that it thickens something like a dressing so that you can add more water and less oil, making it lower in fat. I also used liquid lecithin, which is an emulsifier that helps to distribute the fats in the blended product. I had some flax oil in my refrigerator so I used some of that, too, for its omega 3 fatty acid content.

Tomato Okara Gluten Roast with Quinoa, Kale, and Sweet Potato Fries

I had to leave before the dinner was served last night, but the TOMATO OKARA GLUTEN ROAST with Quinoa, Kale, and Sweet Potato Baked Fries was still good when I got home. The photo was taken by one of my three sons, who told me last night that it looked like something-unmentionable-on-a-vegan-blog. My partner said he liked the texture better than the usual roast gluten. My other sons rated it a seven out of ten. Their two friends ate it and didn't complain. 

 

I was happy to get rid of the okara (soy pulp) left over from making two batches of soy milk. After a while, one gets tired of soysage, and I am not yet ready to add it to my compost pile, but my freezer is filling up with it, and a friend who has been taking it (free protein source!) is also getting sick of soysage. I am always looking for new ways to use it up.

Ingredients

4 cups — gluten powder

1 1/2 cups — okara (soy pulp) or substitute tofu or beans

15-ounce can — tomato sauce

1/8 cup — tamari

1 tsp — onion and garlic powder

1/2 tsp — red pepper

1/2 tsp — turmeric

1/2 tsp — cumin

Enough water to turn it into a glossy ball with no dry parts

Method

Pretty much follow the roast seitan recipe found elsewhere on this blog. To four cups of gluten powder add the dry seasonings — I used garlic and onion powder, red pepper, turmeric, and cumin — and to one-and-a-half cups of soy pulp (or blended beans or tofu, I suppose, if you haven't any pulp) add a fifteen-ounce can of tomato sauce, an eighth cup of tamari, and enough water to mix the gluten into a a ball with no dry parts. 

 

Knead it all together and add water as needed. Flatten it into a large glass baking dish that's been oiled, and pour on two more cups or so of water, to which another eighth cup of tamari has been added, or to cover. Bake at 350F degrees for one-and-a-half hours.