Catch Up

Last week was mildly busy and my computer is being stupidly slow, so I didn't get to put up any of the meals I made. But I'm doing the 5-day detox this week, which is the same 3 meals every day, so time to catch up a bit.

Angry Red Lentil Soup


This was from last Monday, I believe. We finally managed to get red lentils for under $1/pound thanks to my mother (Thanks Mom!) and I found a recipe by this same name awhile ago, but it wasn't nearly as good of a recipe as it is a recipe name, so I decided to just go with the theme and make my own. It consists of red lentils, carrots, tomato paste, onions, garlic, and lots o' spices; cayenne, red pepper flakes, chipotle, smoked paprika, a dash of cumin, some ginger. It came out more tex-mex-y than I intended due to the chipotle, but I'd like to try it again with hot chili oil, more ginger, ground black mustard seeds, maybe some thai basil and/or chopped tomatoes. The soup was served over steamed mustard greens.

Mock Crab Cakes and Sundried Tomato-Stuffed Artichokes




The "crab" cakes are made from a recipe from Susan's Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen blog (see it here: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/07/okara-crab-cakes.html), but modified a bunch. First, not having okara and not wanting tofu, I used tempeh. Also, celery is banned in this house since Katie has a phobia (don't ask) so that was out. I also added far less Old Bay seasoning than the original called for, as the seasoning I bought has a ridiculous amount of sodium in it, and doubled up on the dulse flakes to compensate a bit. They came out okay...nothing crazy exciting, and not really worth the effort, though I think they probably would have been awesome with the full amount of Old Bay. I found a salt-free Old Bay recipe after I had already mixed everything up, of course, but oh well, next time. The tempeh made them a bit more crumbly, so next time I shall use tofu or, if I can get it, okara.

The artichokes are just cleaned, trimmed, cored and steamed, then stuffed with a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped sundried tomatoes, sauteed onions, and garlic. Then the whole thing was baked for another 15 minutes @ 350 degrees. I made up a quick dipping sauce for both the chokes and the cakes out of nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, pepper and red wine vinegar.



Last but not least, Cinqo de Mayo


Chipotle-Roasted Veggies (above) and the whole salad (below)


Cinqo de Mayo here in Syracuse consisted of a bunch of cleaning, a major farmer's market shopping spree and then a big Mexican-inspired salad; spring greens, chipotle-roasted zucchini, red onion, mushrooms, bell peppers and jalapenos, fat-free re"fried" beans, spicy chopped up seitan (I used the infamous seitan o' greatness recipe, quite good!), mock-a-mole and an awesome (yet not so hot) garlic chipotle hot sauce from Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. The veggies are basically just chopped and tossed with a blend of ground chipotle, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano and wine vinegar, then baked covered in foil until soft, then put under the broiler to get a nice finish. Mock-a-mole is quac made with half (or less) avocado and half (or more) thawed frozen green peas. To that basic mixture I added finely chopped raw onion, garlic, tomatoes and jalapenos, plus a dash of cumin and about 1/4 lime's worth of lime juice. It was quite tasty. The whole meal was a lot of work to prep all the individual things, but really good overall, especially the mock-a-mole.

Italian Lentil Salad

Forgive me the multiple posts, but blogger and I were having a disagreement over my antiquated dial-up and uploading photos. This recipe is from Sunday...Katie and I took advantage of the nice weather and went to Onondaga Lake State Park for a picnic. Having about 45 minutes to make something picnic-able, I threw together a batch of Italian Salad, using puy lentils. We packed some plum tomato and red pepper slices, plus a couple of oranges for dessert.

Italian Lentil (or whatever) Salad

• 2/3 c dry puy lentils
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tsp Italian herb blend
• a second clove of garlic, minced
• 2 medium carrots, chopped into 1/4" pieces
• 1 med-lrg green bell pepper, or a mix of green and red, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
• 8-10 sundried tomato halves, chopped
• 2/3 c frozen green peas, thawed
• 2/3 c frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
• 3 tbsp chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1/4 c balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

Cover the lentils, along with the chopped onion and 1 of the garlic cloves, with water and cook, partially covered, until the lentils are soft but still holding shape. Drain and place in a large bowl. Add all the remaining ingredients. Stir well to blend. Cover and refridgerate for at least an hour. The longer it sits, the better the flavor but it is good right away, too.

Pesto-Adzuki Stuffed Zucchinis

About a week ago, we were in Boston visiting the folks and we ended up buying a ginormous package of fresh basil so we could use maybe 3 tbsp of it in a dish we were bringing to a potluck. So this package of lettuce-leaf basil with at least a cup left ended up sitting in the back of our fridge. We also have a lovely little basil plant trying to grow big and strong in our window sill.My policy is when life gives you excessive amounts of basil, make pesto...so I did. I had never made vegan, low fat pesto before, but I do adore nutritional yeast. So a bunch of basil, some raw almonds, garlic, pepper, nutritional yeast and just enough water to get it to blend, and I got this:

For dinner on Friday I mixed about half of the pesto with some well-cooke adzuki beans, sauteed garlic and onion, thawed out frozen spinach and more nutritional yeast, pepper, some smoked paprika and some garlic powder. I then stuffed it into some zucchinis that really needed to be used and baked it all for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. The results? Nothing pretty, as you can see, but pretty tasty.

Next time, however, this will be stuffed into tomatoes, or at least have tomatoes added and perhaps used as a sauce? I dunno. The zuccs were lacking but definatly edible so we shall be tinkering further with this.