Summer in New Orleans is nothing if not one thing: HOT. It’s the perfect time to eat cool salads and refreshing dishes that don’t sit too heavily in your stomach. Most everyone is familiar with the classic cucumber salad. Our parents made it and so did their parents. The combination of freshly sliced cucumbers and vinegar is perfection, in its own right.
Tonight’s dinner was easy, fairly quick and extremely delicious. It was perfect for warmer weather too, because it tasted light and fresh and the flavors were clean and bright. It would make Rachel Ray and her 30 minute meals proud. We give you… Polenta Primavera!
Today’s lunch was super yummy. Poking around on vegan blogs last night, I saw a few recipes for quesadillas. So today I decided to give it a try. We had some corn tortillas in the fridge (fat and flour free) so I put one on our nonstick skillet to brown 1 side and then spread refried black beans, corn, salsa and cilantro on the browned side.
This weekend, we celebrated Jasperfields’ 40th birthday! When we first started thinking about throwing her a party, I announced that I really wanted to make her a McDougally cake for her birthday. Her favorite kind of cake is spice cake, so I quickly set about the business of locating a tasty recipe that could be feasibly mcdougallized.
Last weekend, I made our Pumpkin Oatmeal Cakes again, at my girl’s request. I had pureed a cooked butternut squash a few days before in order to make an Impossible Pumpkin Pie (which I discovered I like better, using butternut squash rather than pumpkin) – so I had some left over and used it,
This is one of those made up meals that is the result of leftovers. I had heard about people making pumpkin oatmeal… Susan V did a great post after Thanksgiving about what to do with your leftover pumpkin and she mentioned pumpkin oatmeal too. So one morning shortly after Thanksgiving, I decided to try it out.
I just want to make a quick post since it’s been a while (we will get to our Thanksgiving posts, really). I had a realization (and discovery) the other day while holiday shopping, and I thought it might be a useful idea for anyone doing the McDougall thang.
This year for thanksgiving, I decided to try a Cranberry Relish recipe from Susan V’s FatFree Vegan Kitchen. It’s fresh, incredibly easy and surprisingly delicious. I tried it once before Thanksgiving to test it out and really enjoyed it. I tweaked it just a bit for t-day and liked it even better.
Last night I baked another successful fat free vegan recipe from Susan V’s FatFree Vegan Kitchen blog; her Impossible Pumpkin Pie. Far from impossible to execute, it gets its name from Bisquick’s Impossible Pies which called for mixing the Bisquick in with the pie ingredients. This would produce a kind of “crust” on the bottom and sides as the pie baked. As someone who cooks but very rarely bakes, I don’t really get how all this baking stuff works.
This easy and simple brown rice dish is one of our most satisfying and tasty McDougally creations so far. My girl calls it crack and I quite agree. I first made it when I wanted to stuff Acorn Squash with an earthy, risotto-like rice mixture. It worked great for the squash dish, today we had it by itself for lunch and I’m planning to do a variation of it to serve as our Thanksgiving dressing next week.
The Garbanzo patties were my first attempt at something burger like. It is a stretch to call it a burger. The patties browned on the outside but stayed soft. I will need to do a lot more experimenting to get something firm. The cool thing is, it was our first “burger” and fries since going McDougall. Let’s start with the patties.
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