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.
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.
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"?
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!
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.
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.
This time it'll be in October instead of November, says Isa.
I hope I get a new camera by then. :(
Stay tuned!
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.
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.
