Learning Experience

This year has been a learning experience. I learned how to make bread, pizza dough, and sourdough starter from wild yeast. I learned how to make vegan fudge, seitan from gluten flour, the best soups ever, and how to write a novel in 30 days. So that's my profound statement for the end of the year. Learn something new.

Now on to your regularly scheduled update. Last week was Christmas so I tried my hand at making vegan fudge. The recipe came from Veg News and it worked pretty well. It would have been better if I had let it cool longer but I had a party to attend. I even added pomegranate pips to it.



Thursday night we had a simple dinner of buckwheat (kasha), red cabbage, broccoli, kale, carrots, and cannellini beans. If you've never used buckwheat before I highly recommend it. It's a fast cooking traditional grain from Eastern Europe. Kind of like quinoa it has a nutty flavor and cooks in about 15 minutes. The toasted kind is better than un-toasted and worth the extra ten cents to have it done for you.



I made seitan for our Christmas dinner. We had it with the leftover buckwheat and a side of baby carrots, kale, and chantrelle mushrooms.



By Saturday night we were in a crazy rental condo in Yosemite dealing with ovens and cookware not our own. We made roasted veggies (cauliflower, carrots, and brussel sprouts) and quinoa.



Sunday night we had broccoli, chard, and seitan strips with some chewy rice. I am very grateful to have our pressure cooker after that rice cooking experience. Note: there were also no measuring devices in this condo.



Monday night we had baked tofu with cauliflower, broccoli and chard, served with quinoa.



Tuesday night we managed to make it to Manzanita on our way home. Oh, how I wish I lived closer to this restaurant! The soup was a gingery- miso- squash- mung bean soup.



The grain was long grain brown rice with quinoa, an amazing combination. Served with pinto beans which were cooked with kabocha squash, kale with a delicious dressing, perfectly cooked beets, daikon, and carrots, and a green salad.



Tonight: Pizza version 2.0 was more successful than 1.0. I used our classic caramelized onions for the sauce. Simple cut onions in thin slices, cook in a cast iron pan (if possible) with a little bit of soy sauce for as long as you can stand it. They will shrink down and turn brown and caramel-y.