More Chapati Pizza

This chapati was topped with an Indian inspired sauce, cheddar cheese, and sprinkled with chili powder. Grilled, or pan seared tofu would make an excellent topping in place of the cheese for a dairy free (vegan) version of this dish or even in addition to the cheese for an extra bit of protein.

I used the recipe I always use for chapati but found that I needed much more olive oil than last time.....perhaps because I had to keep interrupting my kneading to wipe, hold, or feed a child. The sauce came together quite well, despite the fact that I needed to improvise a bit with my ingredients and their amounts.

The sauce

5 cloves crushed garlic
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground ginger
dash or two of cayenne (if you like spice)
1 can of tomato sauce 15oz
olive oil to coat the pan

Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, and spices, stirring to keep the garlic from browning. Cook for two minutes, until the spices become fragrant, stirring as needed. Add the tomato sauce and stir. Cook for five minutes more, stirring occasionally. At this point the sauce should be bubbly, and the spices should have had a chance to work their way around the sauce. Taste and add salt as desired.

Top the chapati with a few spoonfuls of sauce, some cheese (or tofu) and a generous sprinkling of chili powder. Heat in the toaster oven until cheese bubbles, or you just can't wait any longer. :)

Vegetarian Loco Moco

Loco Moco is a Hawaiian dish that usually consists of rice, a hamburger patty, gravy, and it is topped with a fried egg. I made this version with brown rice, my vegetarian breakfast patties, and vegetarian gravy....no egg.....no substitution for the egg....but it still tasted really good.

Creamy Vegetarian gravy

3tbs butter
3 Tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 1/2 cups milk
liquid smoke to taste

Melt the butter over medium low heat, and whisk in the flour and seasonings. Cook for about two minutes to get rid of the raw flour taste, then dump in the milk all at once while whisking. Cook until thick and bubbly (not boiling), whisking occasionally. Add more salt and liquid smoke to taste.

Onion gravy variation
This is the gravy I made last night. It has...hmmm...well lets just say "a texture" to it. :) Didn't bother me one bit (mostly because I love the taste of onions), but if you are a texture person and don't like the idea of lumps in your gravy, then this is not the recipe for you. I just caramelized some onions and blended them in my food processor with the milk. I reduced the butter, and flour to 2 tbs each, because the onion acts as a thickener. And I left out the garlic salt. Other than that the process to make it is the same.

Vegetarian Breakfast Patty (soy free)

I don't know how I feel about these. The hubster loved them, but to me the texture was off, and I think I will use more brown rice next time to get that chewy, hearty texture one expects from a breakfast patty.

What you need
1 onion
1 1/2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1 cup brown rice
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 tsp sage divided
1/4 tsp garlic salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt divided
1 cup breadcrumbs
olive oil for frying

Dice the onion and saute with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp sage until golden brown. Add half of this mixture, along with the clove of garlic, black pepper, cream cheese, garlic salt, chickpeas, and 1/4 tsp sage to your food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Pour this mixture into a bowl and stir in the brown rice, bread crumbs, the rest of the onions, and salt and pepper to taste. Shape this mixture into a log and refrigerate. Slice and pan fry when ready to eat.

This made a decent post workout snack, but there is room for improvement. I will let you know how it turns out in dinner. I'm making vegetarian Loco Moco.

Jaime Oliver Reminder!!!

Jaime Oliver's Show starts tonight at eight (seven central). I am interested to see what they do with the show. I am also interested to hear what everyone out in Blog Land thinks about it. Let me know if you watch. I will be watching tonight with my company, who will be leaving tomorrow. I'll be sad to see them go, but it will be nice to get back to blogging regularly.

Chipotle Sweet Potato and Caramelized Onion Un-Meatballs

I couldn't sleep last night. Among the many thoughts that danced through my head in between dreams of being a professional tap dancer, sweet potatoes were the most prevalent.....that's right produce keeps me up at night. I am not sure if it was the rain that inspired these cravings, the lingering nip of winter in the air urging me to seek out comforting carbs. Whatever it was I lay there mentally digging through my pantry and figuring out how I would prepare sweet potatoes for dinner tonight. The given recipe is how I made them. I have not tried the variations, but halfway through making the un-meatballs I realized that the dough (is that even what you would call it) could be used for other things as well.

what you need:
2 sliced onions
1/4 tsp salt
olive oil for frying
1 baked sweet potato
2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
1 chipotle chili or more to taste
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (omit for vegan version)
food processor

What you need to do:
Heat the oil over medium heat and add the onions and salt. Cook until translucent with some browning.
Meanwhile in your food processor combine the sweet potato, chickpeas, BBQ sauce, chili, and process until everything is mixed together. It should be smooth and almost like a thick batter. Taste and add more chilis or Tabasco if desired at this time.
Pour mixture into a bowl and stir in onions and shredded cheese. Using an ice cream scoop form mixture into balls and bake on a cookie sheet @ 350 for 10-15 minutes. I pan fried half of these in olive oil as the kiddos need the fat. Both baking and frying produced nice results.
If you are having trouble getting them to hold together add breadcrumbs until they are the desired consistency.

I wish the pictures did these justice, they were sweet and spicy, crunchy on the outside and gooey melty on the inside. To vary this recipe a bit you could add flour and roll the batter into gnocchi, or use it as a patty for a veggie burger....I'm thinking ciabatta with garlic butter, mozzarella, and baby spring mix.

In other news, we will be having company so posts will be few and far between....even more so. I look forward to getting into a less hectic pace sometime around 2026 though. So unless the zombie apocalypse* comes to pass before then look forward to more frequent postings at that time.

* Note to Hun, talking about, and blogging about the zombie apocalypse are two different things. One, is a single sentence made in jest, the other is an ongoing obsession that interrupts daily life with disaster planning and escape routes.....don't for one second think this means I have lifted the ban.

On Saving Money and Time

This is a gluten free cake I made, it has nothing to do with the following blog. Doesn't it look yummy though?

The hubster and I eat out about once a month, sometimes less. It seems silly to pay triple the amount for something that we could easily make at home. Not to mention worrying about food allergies, cross contamination, a child with sensory integration problems is no fun in a restaurant, and oh there was that one lovely occasion that I took a big bite of my veggie burger to find it was a beef burger........yuck. Beyond that, since moving here we have found no food that is so superb, or that tickles our taste buds to a degree that we MUST have it. So in short, until a vegetarian restaurant opens in town, or we find the ultimate Thai curry we will be partaking of most of our meals at home.


We stay super busy though, when I'm not at Dr.s appointments, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, the gym, gymnastics, story time, the park, play group, or church, I am at home. While at home I am cooking, cleaning, crafting with the kids, lesson planning, cooking, and blogging about what I am cooking......sometimes I sleep. Here are a few things I do so that my family is always fed, and also a few tips on making meals special without spending all a lot of dough.

• I thought it would be fun to make this blog bulleted...I like bulleted blogs, they are quite fun aren't they? I hope you like them too, imagine....mankind finally found a good use for bullets, just another wonder of the interweb.
• I keep a well stocked pantry, plenty of rice, beans (canned and dried), coconut milk, pasta of all sorts, tomato sauce, tomato paste, sulfite free dried fruits, Spices. There isn't a bean or veggie I have met yet that doesn't taste good with Indian spices on it, if I'm stuck for an idea or I just have to work with what is on hand I will turn it into a curry.
• I also keep a well stocked freezer, not only with frozen vegetables that I have bought at the store, but also foods that I have made. I always try and keep a few of the kids favorite meals in the freezer like chili or spinach soup. Beans also freeze well. I will often make a large pot of beans when I have time and store them in the freezer for future use. Currently in my freezer I have home made broth, chickpeas, chili, taco filling, spinach soup, home made pop tarts, and cookies.....cookies freeze well too.
  
• Meal planning is important!!! I started meal planning in the land before kids and it has really paid off to have it as a habit. I shudder to think how much food we threw out before I started meal planning, produce wouldn't get used, or I wouldn't have to make this that or the other thing....oh it was awful. Now if I know Tuesday afternoon is going to be hectic I know I need to throw something in the crock pot Tuesday morning or declare it left over night. This saves us from making a mad dash to a restaurant because "I don't have time to cook" or even worse if because of poor planning I start thinking about what to make for dinner after everyone is already hungry. Crock pot meals are for busy days, casseroles (because they reheat well) are for days when I know the hubster won't be home in time for dinner, and leftovers or previously frozen meals are planned for the nights when the hubby has the kids all to himself. Produce that will quickly go bad is used early in the week, while squash, carrots and potatoes can be used later.
  
• I have plan B meals, a mac and cheese recipe that takes 15 minutes, pita pizzas that can be thrown together in no time, and other meals that I always have on hand.
  
• I love me some small appliances. The crock pot, toaster oven, rice cooker and even the waffle iron can cut down on time in the kitchen, and I experiment with them regularly, but most often in the summer when we don't use our oven.
• We picnic! At the park, in our yard, and even sometimes in our living room. My daughter gets tickled pink at the idea of eating an a blanket on the floor. It makes sandwiches and diced up fruit seem special and fun.
• The hubster and I sometimes eat a special dinner after the kids are in bed. I might buy one fancy ingredient like truffle oil or an imported cheese, and it is still so much cheaper than eating out.
• In a word.....lentils. Lentils are cheap, and full of protein. Learn to love them
• Buy seasonally! Join a co-op, shop farmers markets and oooooh...
• Grow your own!!!! Anyone can have an herb garden, it's so easy and fresh herbs spruce up any meal. Plus some can be dried, or even frozen for future use. And if you have the space why not a veggie garden? Eating a fresh tomato is a wonderful experience.
• Lastly....and I'm putting this last because it really doesn't count as "not eating out"....but it's my blog and I'll do what I want. Sometimes we go out just for dessert. We get ice cream, or stop by a bakery, and I'm sure the kids enjoy it just as much (if not more) as if we had eaten a whole meal out.
  

Happy (late) St. Patrick's Day!!!

We have been experiencing difficulty with our interweb service lately, sorry for the delay. We had a wonderful St. Patricks day, I helped the kiddos make three leaf clover wands and we rocked out to some Celtic tunes. We also feasted on some creamy spinach soup, colcannon, and pound cake with lemon curd for dessert. Everyone agreed that there was no need to wait a year to make this again. The Kids favored the green soup, and both had seconds.

Creamy Spinach and Mashed Potato Soup

A lot of the texture and flavor of this soup comes from the mashed potatoes. I used garlic parmesean mashed potatoes that I had left over from Making the colcannon. Use your favorite recipe.

1 package neufchatel cheese softened
1 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
1 cup steamed broccoli
10 oz baby spinach
4 cups veggie broth


Put the first four ingredients into your food processor and slowly add the broth until heated thoroughly. If you like your soup on the thin side heat this mixture up and call it good. For a thicker soup you can always add cornstarch, or more mashed potatoes! Add salt and pepper to taste.





Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes, and either cabbage or kale. Here I used a layer of garlic mashed potatoes, a layer of cabbage sauteed with butter and Creole seasoning, broccoli, and topped the whole thing with a layer of good Irish cheese.



And here is the pound cake......not really Irish, but neither am I. :)