Vegetarian Sushi Filling

The video card on our desktop is down, so no pictures today. But it got me thinking about what I could write about that I don't have pictures for. Sushi is a summer staple in our house. I used to make fancy sauces for it as well, but now with little man's soy allergies less so. There are many reasons for eating vegetarian sushi, pregnancy, allergies, avoiding unsustainable fishes. Whatever your reasons you need not be limited (although it's still tasty) to cucumber and carrot matchsticks.

Here are a few of my favorite sushi fillings, mix and match them as you like.

Spicy Thai cashews from Trader Joes

Green onion

Avocado

Tempura fried tofu

Tempura fried jalapeno peppers

Hot peppers of any sort

Tempura fried veggies

Cucumbers that have been marinated in rice vinegar

Spicy cucumber salad (diced cucumbers mixed with a dressing of yogurt, cayenne, rice vinegar and a smidgen of sugar....I will post a recipe for this later, you can also add diced jalapeno to this)

Cream cheese

Cream cheese mixed with wasabi

Cream cheese mixed with Thai sweet chili sauce

Lemon pepper tofu

Lemon pepper asparagus

Marinated tofu (in a mixture of teryaki sauce garlic and cayenne)

Spicy nuts (either cashews or macadamia) Nuts that have been chopped and mixed with salt and chili oil....yum!

Veggies! Of course of any sort, matchstick, marinated, grilled, fried, whatever you like...then mix them with any of the other above ingredients.

Some of my favorite combinations....

Fried tofu, jalapeno, cream cheese

wasabi cream cheese, green onion, avocado

cream cheese, green onion

avocado, jalapeno

Marinated tofu, grilled bell peppers

Garlic Ginger Grilled Zucchini Roll-ups

I would recommend this to a zucchini hater. I myself used to be a zucchini hater, but this recipe helped me change my mind. What I hated was the taste of raw zucchini, something about it totally grossed me out as a kid. Now that I have learned how zucchini caramelizes on the grill, and how well it works in veggie pancakes, I've been won over. If you are super zucchiniaphobic, you might want to start out by trying them in veggie pancakes and working your way up to these.

I made two types, one with feta for us adults, and one with cheddar for the kids. I'm not going to recommend the cheddar ones, the kids were ok with them.....but they don't know how wonderful feta is. However, because I didn't think to take pictures of the process until I had already rolled all of the feta ones, you will get pictures of the less tasty cheddar version. You can also add diced roma tomatoes, and chopped fresh herbs to the filling with very tasty results.

You will need one recipe garlic ginger butter , zucchini, and feta cheese. It's that simple!

Melt the garlic ginger butter.

Wash off the zucchini and chop off both ends. Slice it thinly lengthwise and brush it with the garlic ginger butter. Throw it on the grill until it has these little liney thingies, and is pliable...see picture below....
Line those babies up and sprinkle feta, diced tomatoes and whatnot over the top half of the zucchini.
Roll them up and serve immediately! Here's what the kids version looked like....
I served these along side manicotti. I found 1/2 of a box of manicotti noodles in my cupboard, and though I didn't have all the ingredients I normally use I improvised.....and it was a hit. My daughter raved that she loved "circle shaped spaghetti".....do you want to know what I did? I replaced the mozzarella with cheddar...not a huge leap, and I replaced the ricotta with.....beans....white beans.....and it was delicious. My husband said he liked it better than regular manicotti. All you do is drain and rinse one can of white beans, and throw it in the food processor. I added one clove of pressed garlic and seasoned it as I would ricotta (salt, pepper, oregano, and a dash of nutmeg). It was a little thinner than normal manicotti filling, but it was pretty tasty. I didn't get any good pictures (again I wasn't thinking) but I got a picture...which is about all you really expect from me by now isn't it? That's the game, set the bar low.;)

I made this dish out of mostly pantry and staples so I'm labeling it a pantry meal......because I can, because it's my blog. :)

Mommy Tip Monday: What your little ones should NOT be eating

I had a lot of plans for today. None of them involved a teething little man waking up at 5:30 and permanently attaching himself to my hip....but here I am. So here is the extremely abbreviated version of my blog.


Most of you probably know that it isn't safe to feed your children honey under the age of one, but did you know that maple and corn syrup fall into that category? This link will tell you more about why that is, and lists other foods that can be dangerous for your little one.


Here is a list of the top ten edible choking hazards for kids. Not included on the list, but also worthy of note are dried fruits, marshmallows, gummy candies, nut butters, stringy foods, whole olives, and melted cheese. Popcorn is especially dangerous, and there are so many other choices for healthy snacks, it's not worth the risk.



Other foods that you should avoid are sprouts, and obviously undercooked meats and eggs.

This is by no means a complete list, and foods to avoid/how long to avoid them can vary from child to child based on family history of allergies, among other things. So check with your pediatrician if you have any concerns.

Have a great Monday.

Chocolate Maple Pudding and a bakefail of epic proportions

When someone experiences failure of extremely epic proportions, there is nothing more natural that said person can do than to photograph the failure and mock oneself on the interwebs for the masses to chuckle and guffaw at.

These......



are eclairs.....


I know, I don't believe it either and I made them. I promised my facebook fans that my next attempt at egg free baking would be eclairs. Attempt was certainly the word here. Why post pictures? Well, I'm not quite sure. I am not the type of person to pretend I don't make mistakes, I am the type of person to laugh at my mistakes, and now I would like to invite you to laugh along side me. When adjusting to a new diet we all have bakefails. I am determined to figure out a breakfast that we can all eat on Christmas morning......egg free, soy free eclairs will apparently not be on the menu.

Let's backtrack shall we. They started out so promising.....

See, at this point I'm thinking....this is so easy, I have mastered the secret to egg free cooking....I'm full of all the confidence and sense of accomplishment of someone who has not yet seen this....

Oh snap!!!! At this point there was not much to do with them, I put them back in the oven hoping something would happen (maybe they would reflate) like they would crisp up or something.

Yikes!! I know what I did wrong. One, I messed with a french pastry recipe, and two, I used too much oil. I hope this has been educational for you all. Perhaps someone browsing the interweb for egg free baking recipes will find this and bake with confidence knowing that they can not mess up this badly. They were still tasty mind you, my husband loved them. I sandwiched them with chocolate maple pudding that was super tasty, which is why I am sharing that recipe with you.


Maple Pudding and Chocolate Maple Pudding variation

1/4 cup sugar
2 tbs cornstarch
pinch o' salt
6tbs maple syrup
2 cups milk
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon

Combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a medium saucepan over low heat. Whisk thoroughly.

Add the maple syrup slowly about 1tbs at a time, whisking between each addition.

Cook stirring occasionally until sugar is dissolved (about three minutes).

Add the milk slowly whisking as you pour and let the milk come to a light simmer (no boiling please). Everything I've read says you are supposed to constantly whisk....but I don't, and I've never had a problem with lumps.

Once the pudding has thickened turn off the heat. At this point you can either just stir in the vanilla for maple pudding...or...you can stir in the chocolate chips, cinnamon, and vanilla. Stir until all of the chocolate chips have melted.

Enjoy!

Avocado Sandwich Spread or Dip

I am not going to call this an egg free substitute for mayonnaise, because you couldn't really use it to replace mayonnaise in recipes. It does make a very tasty sandwich spread though. So in our house we will be using it as an egg free, soy free mayo/ranch alternative. It also works great as a dip. This isn't so much of an actual recipe as a, "here is a vague outline of what I did, with some pictures and witty banter thrown in". So now go out there and adjust it to your own taste preferences and dietary restrictions.:)

The only downside to this is that avocado turns brown and I didn't add enough lemon juice to prevent it. If you make this, you have to use it quickly, or you have to get over that lovely shade of greenish brown (that always reminds me of Linda Blair) being on your sandwich or quesadilla.

All I did was throw 2 tbs of yogurt, two avocados (washed, peeled, pitted) and the juice of one lemon into the food processor. Then I added ranch dressing mix to taste. I've found packets of ranch dressing mix on the shelves that my met our dietary restrictions before, however....I did not love them. I wanted to...believe me, but it was just not meant to be. Try making your own, you can adjust the sodium, spices, and there are even dairy free recipes out there.

This made it's way into the kids muffin tin snacks the other day, check it out....

The theme was "A". A is for apple slices, avocado dip, and ants on a log. The kids gobbled this whole tray up in no time flat. I got the idea for serving it in a muffin tin over here, at Mama to 4 blessings, our homeschool blog.

Might I also suggest you try it on a veggie burger....good stuff!

Cranberry Salsa

Cranberry salsa on top of plain yogurt....surrounded by black bean and cheddar quesadilla "petals"

I love sweet and spicy....I think I've established that pretty well at this point. One of my favorite places to eat in town has this mango habenero salsa that is sooooo good. Well it got me thinking about other fruit salsas, and I thought how about cranberry? You could actually chop all the ingredients up really small and mix them together with lemon juice for a chunky salsa, but I can't do that....because then my daughter would know there were onions on it....and then she would have to vomit at the dinner table....again.

I used this salsa to make a cute quesadilla flower for my daughter with the salsa in the middle and quesadilla "petals" surrounding it. This recipe can easily be adjusted to suit your own taste, try more or less jalapenos or different types of peppers....you could even substitute a different type of dried fruit...apricot, mango....whatever. This salsa is also really good on nachos, spread on a sandwich, as a dip, or poured over cream cheese.

Oohh and in other cool news, I'm adding a "football" tag. So you will be able to browse through my site for recipes that (I think) would be great to munch on during a game.



1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 red onion
1/2 cup cilantro leaves (washed really well)
1 clove of garlic
2 tbs sliced jalapeno or other pepper to taste
1 lemon worth of juice

Put all of the ingredients into food processor and process until desired consistency.

Lentil Croquettes

We are about to spend 450 dollars on a plumber. It is going to be ok though, because I will just take it from our food budget for the month.....let's see...
wait a minute, let me do the math.....
Yes, we will still have -50 dollars for groceries....

...

craaaaawfish

And my husbands birthday is coming up....

double craw fish.

Ever have a month like this? We will actually be ok, the money will come out of our emergency fund. However, I like to replace that fund as quickly as possible. So I am hoping to cut down on our grocery bill this month in order to pay our savings back.

One of the recipes I turn to when money is tight is lentil croquettes. They are filling, tasty, and cheap. You can dress them up with Indian spices, or sauces, such as tomato chutney.

Lentil croquettes are basically caramelized onions, lentils and bread crumbs shaped into patties. The full recipe is from the book "Vegetarian Cooking for everyone". I think this book is another must have. It's really quite fantastic. So once again I have no recipe (sorry) or picture.....all I have is this horrible heat induced migraine and a cup of chamomile tea...mmmmm.

Perhaps while I'm recovering you could keep yourself busy by telling me your favorite super cheap go to when you have to drop half a thou on pipes of all the stupid things, when what you really need is pants that fit.....hmmmm....just tell me about your favorite cheap dinner. :)

Or you could check out some of my other posts that include recipes and photos....here are some of my faves!

Curried Pumpkin Soup
Apple Cinnamon Dessert Pizza
Creamy Indian Spiced Spinach
Garlic Ginger Butter
Roasted Eggplant Unmeatballs