Breakfast for Dinner

Just had another wonderfully cool day in the Tampa Bay area. I am really going to be a bit unhappy when we warm up at the end of the week. I really like not running the air conditioning and running up a near 100 dollar electric bill in our tiny apartment.

Dinner was breakfast, for me today. I figured with the cool weather and lack of humidity, it would be a perfect day to make the Sweet Potato Hash from VwaV. The only thing I hate about this dish is cutting up the sweet potatoes, other than that I could easily make this weekly. Tonight it is paired with some more of the Puttanesca scramble made with Bryanna Grogan’s Chickpea Chilla. And since I cannot find any watercress around here, I use frozen spinach. I do lose some nutrition in squeezing out the thawed spinach, but that can’t be helped. A very nice little dinner.

Menu for Week of October 18

Here is the tentative menu for the week. As you will notice, since I neither got to the Chickpea Scramble nor the Sweet Potato Hash last week, I just moved it forward to this week. I think you will also notice that I have a lot of leftovers in the refrigerator right now. That does happen with me, every couple of week or so. I just make too much and don’t eat enough. But a lot of that should be cleared out this week. So next week will be a big week of cooking for me. However, next week will be busy for me also, since I will be starting a tax preparer course for a local company and hopefully be able to work tax season and make a bit of money.

I am also going to have to change what goes into my meals since it appears that fall has finally come to Florida, for this week at least. The low at TIA was 48 this morning, which is a new record. Unfortunately, the forecast for the week shows the temperatures going back up to the mid-80s by week’s end. I have some soups and chilies I would really like to make, but not until it cools off and stays that way. Which the way our fall is going this year, that may not be until December.

Spaghetti Squash and Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce

Fall is finally making its way to Florida. We have a cold front that is hitting us tonight and the Tampa Bay area has had rain off and on all day and the highs for the weekend will be dropping into the 70s. It has been so warm here that we have been setting new records for record lows for the month, because the lows have been in the mid to high 70s. For the next few days, that will be the highs. This means that I can again use my oven. And that meant I could finally make something that I’ve had for a couple of weeks, spaghetti squash.

I got this on my last trip to my store in Clearwater. They were up front and in a nice bushel basket. Now normally I don’t buy spaghetti squash unless it is already pre cut in half, since I was not sure if I could do that at home. However, I saw this fairly small one and thought it was just the right size to work with at home. So into the basket it went and it has been just sitting until it cooled enough to be able to use the oven.

It cut in half much easier than I expected and the seeds came out fairly easily. After about 40 minutes in the oven, I took it out to let it cool enough to scrape the meat out with a fork. While the squash was in the oven, I also heated up some the Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce, thinking that it would work well with the squash. Once the squash was cool enough to handle, I scraped it into the pan with the sauce and mixed them together. Then pour on the plate and eat. Not a bad little light dinner.

Peanut Tofu: Not Good Beginnings

I am not going to talk about my dinner tonight, since all I had was a smoothie (peanut milk, peanut pulp, banana, frozen cherries, agave nectar and chocolate powder), walnuts and my daily brownie. For some reason I am just not hungry and I have learned that when I don’t feel hungry I shouldn’t eat because it can really upset my stomach. But I do have a few things to talk about tonight.

The first is my new Oster blender. So far I have used it today to make the peanut milk for my peanut tofu attempt and the smoothie I had for dinner. This blender is far superior to the Magic Bullet, due to its size and power. The smoothie came together quite easily and I didn’t have to worry that if it ran to long the lid would stick. The peanut milk was also a cinch to make. And I am going to have to check how much milk I am getting from each cup of soaked peanuts, because I think it is more than one quart; which is what I expected to get. The nut pulp I am getting as leftovers is so fine it is like nut flour. I may have to try and make raw peanut butter cookies out of it. So am I happy that we spent the money on it, not really; however now I don’t understand why I didn’t do this sooner.

I also made an attempt at the peanut tofu this morning. Unfortunately, the attempt was a failure. I made the peanut milk, added the nigari and let it sit. Curds and whey did form, but when I poured it into the mold, it went right through the cloth that came with my kit to line the mold. Apparently the curds were too small. I went back to Pangea and looked at the ingredients again and noticed that they actually use two coagulants in make the Nufu Tofu, nigari and calcium sulphate. Not sure as to why they do this, but it appears this will not be as simple as we all hoped. However, I would think that we can duplicate the process or figure out another one that works also. I’ve sent an email asking for help to Brenda Wiley (she provided the tofu directions as Bryanna Grogan’s site) and am waiting for a reply. Hopefully she can come up with an idea or may even figure it out and let me know how to do this.

Orzo and Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce

Today started somewhat like yesterday. I was making the peanut milk to make the first attempt at peanut tofu and what should happen; my lid is stuck to the Magic Bullet container. It is currently in the freezer, to see if I can get the pressure inside reduced so that it will come off. However, last time this happened, it took a few days for me to get the lid off. Therefore, I now have a new Oster blender (that my fiancé was nice enough to buy for me) and the Magic Bullet will be retired. Tomorrow I should be able to make my first batch and I will have something to report tomorrow night. And I have found one way to reduce the nut pulp from this. The finer you grind the nuts, the less pulp you have in the end. But I am still going to be overrun by it.

Since I had to go to the store today and buy some more bread, I also picked up an eggplant to make the Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce from The Mediterranean Vegan. Mine doesn’t look quite as nice as what Kmouse put up on PPK, the eggplant is cut a bit too big, but it was as good as it looked. I had it with some orzo that was sitting in the fridge as a leftover from another recipe.

I may have to take another look at this book. It may be more useful that I originally thought on first look. Even if I don’t use the recipes as written, I can take bits and pieces and use those as in other ways.

Puttanesca Scramble Variation and Salad

This has not been a good day. I went to grab my eggplant to make the Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce from The Mediterranean Vegan and found that it had gone bad on me. Ok, I thought, plan B; I will make the Puttasesca Scramble with Bryanna Grogan’s Chickpea Chilla and a salad for dinner. So I start to make my salad, and in the process of getting the romaine head out of the bag, the other two fall out onto the floor. I have had to put way to much produce down the drain today. Not happy. I don’t like to waste food and we are too poor to really be able to do so. Like I said, not a good day.  At least the food was good.

I did take a few liberties in making the scramble. Since I had no fresh herbs, I had to use dried and all of the herbs, capers and tomatoes went in together after the garlic was finished. I also used jarred minced garlic, since I normally don’t keep whole garlic around and was unable to find any pre-sliced garlic in the store. After cooking the tomatoes and seasonings, I left about a quarter of it in the pan and then stirred in the cut up pieces of the Chickpea Chilla (which were made as normal, except for omitting the tomatoes). I then let it sit on the stove and let the omelette get hot and covered in the tomato scramble mixture. The idea worked much better than I expected.

The salad is just romaine, carrots, celery, and radishes with some Drew’s Raspberry Vinaigrette. It was just the right thing to cool my mouth off after eating a few bites of the scramble. And a cool side dish on a very hot night in Florida (we are still in summer down here).

Menu for the Week of Oct. 11

I think this will be the workaround (print screen, Microsoft Paint, save as jpeg file, upload) for putting my weekly menu online and not having to retype it. Actually I just wanted to show off my computer. As you can see above, I write my menu in OneNote. How do I do that you ask? Simple, I have a convertible laptop/slate that spends most of its time in slate mode. Much better to use when you have chronic tendonitis in my hands, as I do. Now I do type some things, such as this blog post, but my typing is limited. I hope to do more with dictation, but that is currently waiting for Windows 7.

I moved the Summer Vegetable Sauce and Vegan Mozzarella Cheese to this week, since I was unable to make them last week. I also have some scrambles I am making as well. The Chickpea Scramble is something I have wanted to try and I am taking a different take on Isa's Puttanesca Scramble from Vegan Lunch. I am making the Sweet Potato Hash from VwaV simply because it will work well with most of the main dishes for this week and the sweet potatoes in the market are decent again.