Another vega, vege, carne sort of day. 12/23/17

Posted on December 24, 2017 by Beebamom

Started off the day with a nice bowl of oatmeal with flaxseed. John has been unhappily noticing that I tend to call it gruel. I am turning over a new leaf and only saying positive things about my daily delicious and healthful breakfast of amazing grains.

I could not think of anything to make for lunch. I did not feel like a veggie burger since I made the terrible one the other day so I opted for a salad and an egg sandwich.  Those are a few of our daughter’s cookies in the background.

Omelet in a pita pocket and a salad (it is officially winter and we are still having daughter’s tomatoes!)

Pasta for supper tonight. Thought we might just have tomato sauce but during a trip to the grocery store, we bought some ground beef. John made the sauce which was very nice of him. I got to lounge around instead of having my back hurt while I bent over the counter chopping up vegetables and stirring the sauce.

Spaghetti with meat sauce and fresh tomato

 

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Follow directions! 12/21/17

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Beebamom

Today for lunch I took a short cut. On the Masala Veggie Burger from Trader Joe’s the package gives instructions for stove top and grilling to cook the burger. I decided it would take too long to use these processes so I decided to microwave the burger. It turned out mushy and bad tasting. I served it to myself on toasted rye with one of the last of our daughter’s tomatoes and lettuce. It was all I could do to choke it down. Believe the package when it tells you how to cook it!

  Looks good, tastes bad

Having had my oatmeal gruel for breakfast and a rather sad lunch, I decided on some comfort food for dinner.   Since we hadn’t had chicken for the last few Mondays, I decided on Chicken Monday on a Thursday. Chicken breast, spinach, mashed potatoes, and gravy fit the bill. It was quite tasty and enjoyable.

Roast chicken breast, spinach, and mashed potatoes with gravy

 

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Some things do not go together. 12/20/17

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Beebamom

In an effort to clean out the refrigerator and still have a vegan lunch, I took out three containers. One had Rotel jalapeño and tomatoes, one had olive oil smashed potatoes, and one contained black beans. I figured, hey, I like all those things.  I will just put all these in one container and it will be lunch. Nope. It was not tasty. I tried to eat it but finally gave up. This proves once again that just because you can put different ingredients together does not mean you should.

Gak!

For dinner we ate up the hot and sour soup from our last takeout Chinese dinner. We had saved some crispy knots to crumble on top.

Hot and sour soup

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Latkes and cookies. 12/19/17

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Beebamom

It is the holidays and at our house we have multiple holidays with lots of holiday food. The only thing that I can say about last night’s dinner is that it is not healthy but it’s vegetarian.

John made his world-famous (at least in our little world) potato latkes in celebration of the last day of Hanukkah. We lit the candles and tucked into these fried goodies. Since we don’t like getting the grease all over the kitchen, John heats the oil up in our electric wok on the back patio. After squeezing out excess moisture from the potato, onion, egg, and matzoh meal mixture, he slides them into the hot oil.

Latkes going into the oil

In the meantime daughter has made Christmas cookies! So far she has baked macaroons, Moravian spice cookies, and Norwegian drommer or dream cookies. She is taking the global approach this year. She is a really excellent cookie baker. Secret ingredient to great cookies? Don’t forget the salt!

Hanukkah candles and Norwegian drommer Christmas cookies

So our dinner last night consisted of latkes and cookies. December is for celebrating! January is for paying the piper.

Latkes and cookies

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Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean Burger.. 12/15/17

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Beebamom

The last of my veggie burgers that I have been sampling is the Morningstar Spicy Bean Burger. At 110 calories and only 4 grams of fat it fits in much better with my diet plan. I microwaved it and stuffed it into a pita pocket with some onion. It tasted pretty good, better than my two other veggie burgers. However, in looking at the ingredients it has calcium caseinate from milk so it is not vegan. Since I am not strictly vegan I don’t mind but I know a lot of people would.

Morningstar Farms Spicy Black Bean burger with broccoli salad and lettuce

For dinner John requested spaghetti with the meat sauce I make (although I let him make it.) It was delicious.

Spaghetti with meat (ground beef) sauce

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Masala Veggie Burger and Porchetta. 12/14/17

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Beebamom

I have lots to talk about from yesterday. I tried another veggie burger and John cooked his porchetta.

Starting with the Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala Burger, I liked it much better than the Hilary’s World’s Best Veggie Burger. This burger had a nice vegetal taste with a slight spice at the end. It was also lower in calories and fat and is labeled vegan. I ate it in a pita pocket with lettuce and tomato (the same as I did for the Hilary’s) and did not feel that it needed a sauce or anything else to enhance it. It definitely does not taste even remotely like a beef burger but that is okay with me. I usually do not like the taste of the pretenders.

Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala Burger

Nutritional information for the Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala Burger

Here it is in the frying pan. The instructions are for either cooking it on the stove top or on the grill. I imagine it falls apart if you cook it in the microwave.

Yum, tasty veggie burger in a pita pocket

And so ends the vegan portion of my day. John bought a large pork shoulder (butt) for the porchetta and made it according to the Milk Street magazine instructions. The shoulder separated into two pieces so we decided this would be the trial-run one and the larger one we would make for Christmas Eve. It takes all day to cook at a low temperature.

Here is a picture of it from the magazine

The roast is opened like a book and rubbed with a fennel/garlic paste. Then it is rolled up and tied and has to sit in the fridge for 24 to 48 hours. Then as I said it needs to cook for like 6 hours. It came out very tender and tasty and will make a fine centerpiece for our celebration. We used an electric knife to cut it which makes the slicing much easier.

Porchetta with smashed new potatoes and broccoli salad

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Vegetarian South Indian fare. 12/13/17

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Beebamom

This holiday season seems to be filled with dining out especially at lunch. I am often too full from lunch to bother with much cooking for dinner so new recipes are going to be a little slow.

One thing I have found when dining out is that ethnic restaurants often present a much wider set of vegan and vegetarian tastes than standard American fare. Yesterday we had lunch at Ananda Bhavan, a vegetarian South Indian restaurant. I chose their lunch special, thali.

Thali refers to the metal platter that the dish is served on. On the plate are seven or eight cups filled with a variety of condiments running the gamut from spicy, salty, citric, sweet, and mellow. It is served with rice and Indian breads. It was attractive and delicious.

Thali, a South Indian vegetarian dish

 

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Celery soup. 12/12/17

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Beebamom

It is busy times with the holidays approaching. The kitchen has been taken over by John who has been making gravy for our son’s prime rib roast on Christmas Day and a porchetta recipe that he wanted to try. There is not much space for my vegan/vegetarian fare.

I did manage to make a quart and a half of celery soup which I think is the best of the puréed vegetable soups I have made. It is basically a bunch of stalks of celery, a medium waxy potato, a half an onion, and garlic sautéed in olive oil and then cooked until tender in three quarts of vegetable or chicken stock. You can also add a little butter or some cream if you are going the vegetarian route. I whiz mine up with a stick blender and voila you have a pretty decadent tasting low calorie soup. It can be served hot or chilled like vichyssoise.

Celery soup

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Testing veggie burgers. 12/11/17

Posted on December 12, 2017 by Beebamom

Good to be home and eating normally again. John and I went to the grocery store and picked up three different kinds of veggie burger – Morningstar Spicy Bean Burger, Hilary’s World’s Best Veggie Burger, and Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala Burger. I was especially interest in the Hilary’s burger because I had read a rating online that it really was the best. It has 190 calories which is more than I like in my lunchtime burger but I was willing to eat the extra calories for a really tasty burger.

Hilary’s World’s Best Veggie Burger on an English muffin with tomato and lettuce

Even daughter’s fabulous home-grown tomatoes could not save this tasteless burger. I was really disappointed! I still have one left in the package so I am going to have to figure out a sauce that can make this taste like something. Bummer.

For dinner we defrosted some hot and sour soup and made a salad to go with it. It was nothing exciting except for the chow mein type noodles we put on top.

Hot and Sour soup and my latest edition of Cook’s

I will try a different veggie burger towards the end of the week and let you know my opinion.

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Birthday Weekend. 12/8-10/17

Posted on December 12, 2017 by Beebamom

I had a great time on my birthday weekend. Our destination was Little River, CA on the Pacific Coast. Since we were a party of four it was important that everyone have the choices they liked for their dining experiences. That is hard to do because no one wanted to eat the way I do. So I compromised. Here are some high and low lights.

On the way up we stopped at burger and fries place. I ordered a falafel burger which unfortunately came with a ton of feta cheese on it. I scraped that off and ate the burger sans the bun lid with a knife and fork.

Falafel burger

When we got to our room, look at who was greeting us on the deck!

Sea gull on the deck of our room overlooking the Pacific Ocean

Later we went out for a fancy dinner at the hotel. I ordered pasta. It was not good. Way overcooked.

Overcooked pasta and greasy broccolini

The next day we headed out for some wine tasting. We stopped at a pizza place that had a real pizza oven. It was some of the best pizza I have eaten on the West Coast.

Pizza being cooked quickly in an extremely hot pizza oven

Pizza!

The second night we just ate snacks at the bar which was fun. On Sunday we drove the coast road for a long way. It was slow going but beautiful. The rocky northern California Coast is pretty isolated which keeps the number of people visiting way down.

What a wonderful birthday weekend I had!!

Pacific sunset

Along the coast road

Misty rocks

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