Hello Loyal Readers!
Birdman here. Giggles and I haven’t abandoned this blog. We may not have had any posts for awhile, but you should know we haven’t missed a dinner yet! I just haven’t been good about writing every week. Hopefully there are many posts to come!
So going way back to Thursday, Feb. 3, just before the Packers won the Superbowl, wooohooo!! It was my turn to pick a recipe that week. But I was pressed for time and couldn’t find something I that really looked good. So I went with my own recipes. We had soup, bread, and chocolate pudding for dessert (at least I did).
After making a number of soups, I got the basic idea of how they’re usually prepared and I’ve learned what combinations I really like. So I just put my favorite foods and seasonings together and came up with this:
Packers Championship Soup
Ingredients
Olive Oil, as needed
1-2 tsp minced garlic, or two cloves minced fresh garlic
1 onion, diced
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 large carrot, sliced into quarters
1 stalk celery, sliced into smiles
1 large sweet potato, peeled, cut in 1” cubes
15oz tomato sauce
4 cups organic vegetable broth or two bouillon cubes with 4 cups water
Added water as needed?
2 cups frozen peas
Basil, to taste
Oregano, to taste
Paprika, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Lemon or lime juice, to taste
Cayenne pepper, to taste
Directions
1.) In the biggest soup pot you have, sauté garlic, onion, peppers, carrot, and celery until things begin to soften (about 5 min).
2.) Add the potato, tomato sauce, and vegetable broth. Stir and bring to a boil.
3.) Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer until potatoes are near tender (about 10 min).
4.) Add peas and spices of choice. Simmer until peas are ready (about 5 min).
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Then we had bread. This is a recipe I came up with and have made a few times before.
Birdman’s No Yeast Super Bread
Ingredients
2 tsp white distilled vinegar
1/3 cup honey
2 cups vanilla soymilk
2 Tbs. Lemon Juice
4 cups whole wheat four
½ cup oats (optional)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup flax seed
1/2 cup sunflower seed
Optional: pumpkin seed
cornmeal (for bottom)
Bagel Dip!
Directions
Preheat oven to 385.
Combine vinegar, honey, soymilk, and lemon juice in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, blend remaining dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix and squish together with your hands and make your choice of noises as you do it (animal, excited school girl, erotic, yeti, or an erotic yeti pretending to be a school girl, etc.). Do this until the dough is no longer sticky. Add flour as needed.
Sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal. Plop the blob on there and shape into a loaf. Cut an X into the top for appearances.
Bake at 385 for 35-40 minutes. Remove and allow to cool. Then enjoy with bagel dip, spinach dip, or earth balance!
And for an optional dessert, which I enjoyed, I found a recipe for chocolate pudding on VegWeb.com (http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=24046.0). I made some changes to it however.
Vegan Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups chocolate soymilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Directions
1. In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, cocoa, and flour. Add soy milk; stir until smooth.
2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Continue stirring and cook until thick, about a minute.
3. Remove from heat. Add vanilla extract.
4. Let pudding cool and continue stirring periodically.
Serves: 4-6, Preparation time: 20 minutes
Birdman’s Reflections
This was an awesome meal! I think it was a good comeback from the mac and yeast cheese, hehe. After I made the mac and cheese, everything I made the next couple of days afterwards turned out less than amazing. So the fact that this meal turned out wonderful was good to re-boost my cooking confidence!
Not to brag, but the soup was the best soup I’ve ever had! Probably because it’s everything I like in a soup … onions, peppers, sweet potatoes, tomato sauce, … hmm, and the cayenne pepper gave it a nice kick. I definitely would recommend trying it. It’s something that will probably go in my cookbook when I get around to making one. I’ll give the soup 5/5 on the basis that it tastes great, uses ingredients that can be found in just about any grocery store, and it doesn’t take terribly long to make. Oh, and it’s all vegetables so you eat it while you’re cleansing.
The bread also turned out great. This is a very dense, healthy bread. But it tastes pretty good, especially right out of the oven. I make this bread almost every week, and each time it turns out a little different because I’ll tweak the recipe. For instance, this week I made a loaf, and instead of using 4 cups of whole wheat flour, I used 1 cup of bran wheat flour, 1 cup buckwheat flour, 1 cup of quick oats, and 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour; the rest of the recipe I kept the same and it turned out unbelievably awesome! I will also give this 5/5 (I’m not modest when it comes to my recipes; they rock! J) since it is so simple to make and healthy.
The chocolate pudding was an excellent way to end an excellent meal. I kept the recipe fairly close to the original one on Vegweb, except I used less sugar in my recipe and used chocolate soymilk instead of regular soymilk. It’s a recipe I’ll definitely try again when I’m looking for something sweet. I ate it mixed with frozen yogurt chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, and dipped it with graham crackers. Yum! This recipe also gets 5/5.
Each Thursday night I’ve been looking for a good movie to watch online. I found a site that lists the 50 best movies of the decade (click here for website). #2 on the list is a French film called Amelie. It’s all in French with English subtitles. But it’s a cute, romantic comedy that makes you feel good. I’d recommend it if you haven’t already seen it. Once again, I give this a 5/5.
So it was an awesome night! A great meal, a great movie, and then a great Packers Superbowl game that weekend!
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