Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Some Food I Made This Week

I haven't felt much like cooking this week. It's hot out and stuff.  But here are a couple of dinners that I managed to put together and felt worthy of committing to blog-memory.

Cooking out -- veggie burgers, corn with garlic butter, grilled peaches.


Spelt crust pizza with cashew cheeze, tomatoes, basil from my garden, and grilled corn left over from the night before.


I made another batch of kale chips in the dehydrator, this time using Averie's recipe. I've made them in the oven before, but this way is so much better. Oven chips have to be eaten right away or they get soggy, but these keep in the fridge for days. My dehydrator cost $60 and it's going to pay for itself in kale chips, in no time at all.


I had a couple of dehydrator failures this week as well. I tried making the rye bread and corn tortillas from Ani's Raw Food Essentials. After ten hours of dehydrating, they were still goopy and messy, and tasted pretty gross. I don't own a fancy Excalibur dehydrator like Ani uses, so maybe something was lost there. But I did get good results with her eggplant bacon.  I'm looking forward to having it on BLT's for lunches this week.


Thoughts on dehydrating so far...it's nice to not have to turn the oven on or mess up any pots and pans. But it's labor-intensive in other ways. Cashews have to be pre-soaked in bowls. The food processor gets used a lot. And the dehydrator screens must be cleaned after use. So there is still dishwashing to be done. Also, pre-planning is a must. If you think you might want some kale chips for lunch tomorrow, you best get on that tonight. And don't wait too long because you can't leave the dehydrator running and go to bed!

 I hope today is less eventful than yesterday. A guy hit my car in the H-E-B parking lot. He backed into me and I couldn't go anywhere because there was another car right behind me. Luckily, me and the kids are totally fine and there is just a minor scrape on my bumper. The man was Canadian, so of course he apologized like 20 times and that was actually kind of funny.

 

4 comments:

  1. That's too bad that your car got hit. I hope there wasn't any major damage.

    Grilled peaches? I've never heard of doing that, but I want to try that now!

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  2. Yes, we Canadians are known for going overboard with "sorry, sorry":-) Glad you guys weren't hurt and I can tell you that the guy probably is REALLY feeling bad about it! As for the dehydrator, we have one that we use for drying our homegrown herbs and its wonderful. Didn't care for the dried apples we tried (we get gazillions of apples every fall from our trees). Still learning to cook Vegan after being vegetarian for many years but finding the cashew "sour cream" and other recipes to be surprisingly good! My husband has now purchased over a dozen vegan cookbooks!

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  3. karen, i was vegetarian for a long time before making the transition, too. nut cheeses are a lifesaver for me when i have a craving for "cheese" and crackers, or pizza. that's so cool that your husband has gone vegan along with you!! i wish i could get mine to convert or at least go vegetarian. but at least he is vegan by default at home, since i do the majority of the cooking :)

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  4. The thing that bugs me the most about my dehydrator is the noise level. I try to do it when I go to bed because I can't handle the roar. I love eggplant bacon and too bad your kale didn't turn out!

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