Getting some sun!

It was fairly warm and sunny today in Portland, so I sat outside my apartment, read about half of Vegan with a Vengance, and got my Vitamin D fix. I wrote an article about why sunlight is important and especially for dark skinned folks living in the US, particularly the northern half.

I try to get about 15-20 minutes of sun (no sunscreen) whenever I can. I also supplement with cod liver oil pills during the winter here, when we get no sun.

Barbara

Pizza night

We had homemade pizza last night for dinner. I made the pizza sauce from a recipe in Table for Two, and since I didn't have time to learn how to make pizza dough, I bought two premade crusts from New Seasons market, a brand call Vicolo. The crusts were whole wheat and cornmeal.

I also made Russell's TVP sausage (from Ruthies blog). It worked out great on the pizza. I didn't have chunks of TVP, just the small crumbly kind. I don't know if I've ever really seen chunks of it.

My partner and I put on whatever we liked and baked it for about 18 minutes. Very good.

Barbara

Quinoa Muffin picture

I decided to post a picture of the Golden Quinoa muffins I made. They taste great. This picture is of one whole muffin and one split in half.

Today I'm making pizza sauce and trying Russell's TVP sausage for the top of the pizza.

Quinoa

I tried a Golden Quinoa muffin recipe from Bob's Red Mill. Their quinoa is high quality and already rinsed, which is really nice.

Here is the link for the recipe. It came out good, if a bit crunchy. I think the boiling water wasn't quite hot enough. But they are tasty.

I also used the Nesco to make brown rice and I'm making apple butter tomorrow. I plan on making frugalveggiemama's apple pull aparts sometime this weekend.

I'm trying to learn knitting. So far I'm not very good at it (stitches are super tight). Hopefully by next winter I can make us sweaters.

Have a great weekend!

Barbara

Spring has sprung!

Here in Portland spring is well on it's way. The cherry trees are in bloom, a couple of flowering bushes are blooming, and daffodils are all up and the tulips are on their way.

The big planter I have outside the door of our apartment did hold fuschias. The last cold air/gorge wind blast we had killed them so I need to figure out what to put in them for this summer. Maybe pansys.

Barbara

Food experiments

The last two days I've been trying new recipes.

First up was black bean soup. Not sure where I got the recipe from. It's supposed to be spicy, chili-like. It was pretty good, but my partner would have liked more spice and less water. Not sure if I'll make that again.

I made whole wheat muffins with brown sugar on top. They came out great. I also over the last week made 2 cornbreads. First one was a recipe from Bob's Red Mill off their cornmeal package. It was okay, but dry and crumbly. Next I tried a vegan cornbread recipe from Jennifer at veganlunchbox. It was a hit! Tasty and it held together much better.

Off a great recomendation from Katie at frugalveggiemamma, I made seitan from Vegan with a Vengance, which I had recently picked up. It was pretty good. Of course I'd never had seitan before, so hard to tell exactly.

Last night I tried making Breaded Seitan Nuggets, from Jo Stepaniak's book, Table for Two. It came out fine. You need to eat them hot (I used BBQ sauce to dip them in.) I need to make them crispier though. Otherwise, I liked them.

Barbara

Going along

I've just been busy searching for bargains, finding ways to stretch what we have and planning for spring. We can't grown vegetables here, so I am looking into a CSA. There are several around here.

However, while we both like veggies, we don't like all of them and we are afraid a lot of what we get won't be used and thus waste our money. So we're still thinking about it.

Tried a couple of recipes, for wholewheat pancakes and bread. Both worked well. I still have a biscuit and a muffin recipe to try out.

Barbara

High gear

I'm going to have to shift into high gear on being frugal. Our money flow is reducing, so we need to make our money count.

I'm lucky to live about 2 miles from Bob's Red Mill, a wonderful source of whole grains and lots of other useful stuff. I got 8 ou of active yeast for $3.19, Fleishmann's 4 oz at the grocery store was $7.99. They have packaged flours of all kinds, beans, rice, and everything is also available in bulk. I did check and bulk is only cheaper if you only need a little bit. If you buy boxes of 4, you get an additional 10% off, and about 10 items are on sale each month. And it's kinda cool to be able to say hi to Bob, as in the owner. They also have a great, healthy restaurant there, with lots of vegan choices. They also have flaxseed, gluten free things, it's great.

I went there because we were running low on Bisquick. I saw the price and said no. We don't use it that much. Instead I bought Bob's whole wheat pastry flour, to make pancakes and biscuits and so on. Their stone ground ww flour is great in my breads.

I've kept up my price book and know just where to go to find the best daily prices. And I use cairo.com and my links to all the local stores online ads to see what might be worth buying.

We do have a lot of food in the house, so we will start using that up first, to limit the funds we need to spend on groceries.

Thanks to frugalveggiemama and others, I have a lot of great ideas and recipes to use.

Have a great rest of the week!

Barbara