VeganMoFo Day 1 - Isa Is So Pretty

Wish Blogger had a feature to change the date,

(Edit: Thanks to Bex for showing me how to change the date. Now it does say October 1, the first day of VeganMoFo).

this way I could make this yesterday's post about still being sick and just having leftovers of the night before's tomato soup and ziti. No bread, though.

I also cooked up a batch of spinach with garlic, but forgot all about it. When hubby went to do the dishes for me (What a nice guy!) he asked what that pot on the back of the stove was from. Oops! It didn't matter to him that the stuff was now cold — he grabbed a bowl and a fork and dived right in, finishing half of it while standing by the sink. I'll eat my half at lunch time today.

Baked Ziti tonight

My back is still sore, so another easy meal today - Baked Ziti.

First I'll make the Tofu Basil Ricotta from the Post Punk Kitchen/Vegan With A Vengeance. I usually make that early in the day so the flavors have time to gather strength.

This afternoon I'll boil up a box of whole wheat ziti, and while that's cooking I'll sauté up some sliced onions, peppers and crushed garlic. When the pasta is done and drained I'll dump everything together, stir well, then pop it all into my 9 x 13" Pyrex baking dish and pop it into the oven. I wish I had some veg mozzarella and/or Parmesan cheese to top it off. Oh, well.

But before I even start the pasta, I'll toss some stuff into the ABM and make dough for Italian bread. When I pop the ziti into the oven I'll toss the risen loaves in, too, and whatever isn't eaten today will go into the freezer for Saturday's spaghetti meal.

I love this bread pan. I bought it many years ago from King Arthur Flour and it paid for itself within weeks. OK, so my bread may not be authentic because I toss some whole wheat flour in there instead of semolina, but who cares? All we want is something to sop up the tomato sauce and soup.

Ah, soup! I almost forgot! Well, luckily I have a very easy tomato soup recipe and I keep all the ingredients on hand. A giant 28 ounce can of crushed or pureed tomatoes, a chopped up onion, minced garlic, and my secret ingredient — a packet of Italian salad dressing, like the Good Seasons fat-free Italian or garlic, or the generic equivalent from Penzy's Spices. Add enough water to make a decent amount of soup, maybe toss a can of diced tomatoes in (salt free, of course), and you've got a great tasting tomato soup. If the soup was to be the meal, as we so often do, I would just toss in a can of kidney beans.

Now to go put that heating pad on my back again and watch last night's episode of Heroes.

Easy meal today

I wrenched my back out this afternoon so dinner is going to be nice and easy. I have a batch of brown rice on in the rice cooker and a giant Pyrex serving bowl in the microwave steam cooking cauliflower, peas, carrots and broccoli. When we're ready to eat we'll each take a bowl and serve ourselves some veggies and rice, and hubby and I will have some gluten (canned, Chinese import) added. A few dashes of soy sauce and duck sauce and off we go.

I'm hoping someone feels sorry for me and not only serves me my food but volunteers to do the dishes, too.

Double Pea Soup

I love the cookbook, Veganomicon, and find it very easy to McDougallize the recipes. Take this soup that I'm making for today's dinner, Double Pea Soup with Roasted Red Peppers. The only change I have to make is to use water or broth to sauté the vegetables in instead of the olive oil called for.



I'll make up a loaf of whole grain bread (probably a combination of whole wheat, oatmeal and quinoa) in my bread machine and it's a filling meal for a gloomy Monday. OK, so the sun is out, but aren't all Mondays, except for those during vacation, classified as "gloomy"?

Lima Bean Stew

Well, I said I was going to start being a bit stricter with my meals, so today I'm making one of our favorites for lunch, Mary McDougall's Lima Bean Stew. I'll try get a photo later. It's hard to take pictures without a view-finder/view-screen, but I'll give it my best shot.



Why this particular dish? Well, I was going to make a different lima bean dish last week but the kid had a change of plans and was home for dinner that day, and since he hates lima beans, I made something different, a non-McDougall meal. No more of that, though. If he doesn't like what I'm cooking, he can make his own darn meal!

Not 100% McDougall

Just a warning for folks who come here after seeing this blog mentioned on the McDougall Wiki links page -

Not all the recipes I post or link to are 100% McDougall-legal!

Many of the recipes are taken from other vegan cookbooks which don't adhere to the McDougall principle of no added fats or oils, and many times when I post the recipe I leave it exactly as the author wrote it, but when I cook it up use the appropriate substitutes, like Wonderslim or applesauce instead of oil or fat-free cheese sauce instead of store-bought (fatty) vegan cheese.

Most of the recipes are McD-friendly. Here's the page where I gathered up all the recipes from this site's participation in last year's VeganMoFo, and as this year's goes along in October I'll be adding more, hopefully with photos again.

More VeganMoFo info

Isa wrote a whole blog post about the upcoming VeganMoFo 2008, including info on the Flickr group for it.

Holy crap! There are dozens of blogs participating this year and over a week to go before it starts!

Still no word on hubby as to whether I can buy a new camera. I've been told it'll cost almost as much to fix the screen as it would be to just buy a new digital camera, so unless my fairy godmother appears and whacks me with a wand and makes either a camera or the money appear, I guess I'm going to be without.

VeganMoFo Rides Again!

This time it'll be in October instead of November, says Isa.

I hope I get a new camera by then. :(

Stay tuned!

Broccoli-Barley Toss

Here's a McDougall recipe I've been making for a few years now, Broccoli-Barley Toss.

I usually use regular shelled peas because we're not pea-pod fans in this house. If I don't have a can of bean sprouts around I leave it out. I sometimes substitute an equal amount of frozen pepper strips for the fresh red & green ones, and always toss in the whole 8-ounce box of sliced mushrooms.

Mary McDougall claims this makes 8 servings. The veggies really cook down while the barley blows up as it cooks. We're big eaters, and this usually lasts for one dinner for 2 hungry people plus a small container-full to put away for lunch the next day. For people with normal sized appetites, you might get 6 to 8 servings if you keep the serving size down to around 1 cup each.

On the McDougall Road Again

Not that I ever really went off of it, mind you, I just had some detours along the way since VeganMoFo ended.

I'm trying not to obsess about weight too much and concentrate on healthy eating - easily done with tasty McDougall recipes and allowable foods.

Perhaps I should start talking about my daily meals and adding/linking to more McDougall-safe recipes again, especially now that my blog was mentioned in this McDougall forum post about the McDougall Wiki. It's because of this that I added all those McDougall links over to the left there <<<<<<<

But I guess I better get that new camera first - my Nikon CoolPix's screen somehow cracked on me last week while it was sitting in a cushioned case, sitting on a shelf for a week. Yes, it was fine when I took photos a week ago, cracked when I took it out of the case to take more pix 5 days later. As soon as the government "stimulus" check comes, if we don't need it for bills or groceries at that time I just might replace the camera. I still have to replace the broken serger sewing machine, the 2 broken air conditioners, the broken air filter, the broken toaster oven, and a few more items that broke or wore out over the past decade that we haven't been able to replace.

In the meantime, I can still continue to post recipe links on this page, even if I can't accompany them with photos.