Darn cheezy sauce

I keep trying recipes for cheezy sauce to put on noodles, potatoes, veggies, etc. I had high hopes for one I found on 'A Vegan for Dinner' (sorry at work and can't get the link). It was okay but still not right. I think I've made about 4-5 sauces with no luck.

I actually enjoy only one thing, and this is just something I do from a suggestion I read. I make noodles, put in a bunch of Earth Balance, then sprinkle nutritional yeast till all the noodles have some, then some soymilk till the yeast is all mixed and it's slightly creamy. Good for quick noodles, but not what I'm looking for.

Barbara

Veganomican, try 1

I've been trying some recipes from Veganomican. It's a great cookbook. I plan on trying a lot of the recipes in it.

I made rosemary focaccia bread. It came out fine, but didn't have much flavor. I much prefer the italian peasant bread I made off a recipe on recipezaar.com. It was much more flavorful.

I also made jelly donut cupcakes. They tasted great, but the preserves I used didn't sink down and get covered by the batter. My partner didn't like them, said there was too much nutmeg. I took a bunch to work and no one even noticed the nutmeg.

I have already made the chickpea cutlets and I plan on making more this week.

I also have a list of recommended recipes from this book that I've accumulated and will be slowly trying out.

Barbara

Happy New Year!

Well, it is 2008. It's been a good past year, I found a job and continued our frugal ways. We got a bit spendthrifty towards the end of the year, but that will be changing.

I am back to eating vegan again. I just feel better. Been busy planning and cooking food for home and work. And I'm back exercising. This should be a good new year.

Made bean soup today and tomorrow I'm having bean and rice burritos. On Dr McDougall's DVD, I got a recipe for cabbage with some rice vinegar and lime, that makes a great taco/burrito addition.

Barbara

Some frugality, some not so

We've been doing some frugal things and some not so frugal.

My partner needed a good keychain for her keys from work. She wanted a carabiner type thing. We were going to buy one till I remembered that a small maglite flashlight I had gotten as a gift from a place I worked at. It had a keychain just like that with it. So, no money spent.

We did go to a play. This is the first time we've done something like this in the five years we've lived her. We could never afford to do anything like this. We bought tickets for "A Christmas Carol". We enjoyed ourselves immensely and felt it was well worth it. Maybe not frugal, but we got a great deal out of spending that money.

Barbar

Frugal Cooking

I take a lot of my inspiration from Katie at my favorite blog, Frugal Veggie Mama. I had some leftover stew with pinto beans, corn, some brown rice and diced tomatoes. I read through some of her old posts and came across two I used. One had Ruthies cornbread recipe and one mentioned a sort of cornbread chili pie.

So I took my beans and corn, added in some tomato paste, water, some fresh mushrooms, chili powder and cumin and some onion/garlic powder. Made the cornbread and put it in a pan, making sides to it. Here's how it turned out:



The other day I made sourdough bread from my 1834 Oregon Trail starter. Turned out great, with a good sourdough taste. This morning I made Fronch toast with it, a recipe from Vegan with a Vengance. Very filling. Here's what a slice of the sourdough looked like:



For lunch at work today I have black bean soup with homemade corn chips. Love this soup!

Barbara

Getting Ready

I've been getting ready for Thanksgiving here. Luckily both myself and my partner are off on Thursday. I've been cleaning out the refrigerator of leftovers so we'll have room for more leftovers!

I had some pasta sauce sitting there and I had bought several boxes of Golden Grain multi-grain spaghetti at 50% off, so I made a nice baked spaghetti with parmesan puffs. They didn't puff all that well, but they tasted okay.

I'm going to try some different things with the stuffing. Definitely add some pine nuts. My partner also loves those toasted, just to munch on.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Barbara

Tasty Eating

My body has been rebelling lately at all the junky food I've been feeding it. So I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. I went to Dr McDougalls Free program and printed up some recipes. Today I'm trying the day one recipes. I made the savory chickpeas and put them on some whole wheat bread (after letting it sit overnight to blend the flavors). I also made my version of black bean soup and also made up some baked corn chips to put in the soup.

For breakfast, I made steel cut oats, a new favorite. I had only eaten quick cooking oats before and no matter how thick I made them, they were never thick enough. The steel cut are chewier and just what I like. I soak them overnight then just heat them up for about 10 minutes in the morning. I put in a little bit of maple syrup and some cinnamon.

Barbara

Busy, busy

I've been quite busy recently. Working full time of course, taking care of the apartment and yes, doing some cooking. I've made a couple of recipes from Isa's Veganomicon. The chickpea cutlets were quite tasty. The creamy tomato soup came out all right, but I didn't have enough tomatoes to make it correctly.

I needed a new non stick skillet, as my previous one had the coating starting to peel. I had a $35 gift card from Sears from work, so I bought a T-fal 9 inch skillet, (made in France). Didn't cost me anything due to the gift card. It has a black enamel on the outside and a neat red spot in the middle that changes when the pan is preheated.

Barbara