Two Dinners

Sorry about no post yesterday. That time of the month and my stomach as acting up again. Actually, I shouldn’t complain to much. It used to be like this for 3 weeks out of the month, till I went on birth control pills. However, it hasn’t come back since I had to stop taking them (since I could no longer afford to buy them or see a doctor, even at Planned Parenthood). One or two days a month, I can definitely live with.

But onto dinner last night. Yes, I did eat dinner. It wasn’t till later in the evening that my stomach started to act up. I made, what for a better term, would be a ratatouille lasagna with the leftover ratatouille and some of the polenta. The idea came from a recipe I have for a lasagna made with vegan pesto and polenta. However, finding vegan pesto in the Tampa area is just not possible and I really didn’t want to make any. But the recipe got me thinking and I wondered why something similar couldn’t be done with ratatouille. It worked, but I would do it differently the next time. The better way to do this would be to brown the rounds of polenta in some margarine, or even better, some olive oil. Warm up the ratatouille at the same time and make little stacks on the plate, sprinkling some vegan parmesan in top of each level. Then you have no need to put it in the oven and it looks a little nicer.

Tonight’s dinner is using up some leftovers. The kale, from Tuesday, and some of the Macadamia crusted seitan from last week. I cooked the kale down with some splashes of orange juice, tamari and a bit of garlic and ginger. The seitan was just reheated in the toaster oven and then sliced up and laid on the kale with the sauce. Sounds like an odd combination, but it was quite good. The kale was a bit sweet and salty and then the richness of the nut crusted seitan gets mixed in with that. And you get a bit of heat from the ginger. Kale is starting to grow on me, so it might be appearing a bit more often. Unfortunately, that will depend on how easy it is to buy small bunches of it, since the TeddyBear will not even try it.

All for this week. See you on Monday.