I have quite a few rhubarb recipes but I hardly ever make anything with it. I tried this rhubarb pie recipe for the first time and it was quite easy. I'm going to keep changing it until I come up with the taste I (we) like. I think it would taste good with apples too.Chipless: 1 Year, 38 days
Candyless: 38 days
Chocolatefree Mondays: 21
Chocolatefree Fridays: 13
Covered nut free: 15 days
Oatmeal Brownies
3 dl oatmeal (ground in food processor until flour-like)
1 tsp baking powder
dash salt
1 dl cocoa powder
2 dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 dl oil
2 eggs
Grind oatmeal in food processor. Pour into a bowl and add baking powder, salt, sifted cocoa powder, sugar and vanilla sugar and then mix together. Beat in oil and eggs until just blended. Pour into a greased pan. Bake at 175 C for 30 to 40 minutes.
This is how the oatmeal looked before and after I ground it in the food processor.
Chipless: 1 Year, 18 days
Candyless: 18 days
Chocolatefree Mondays: 18
Chocolatefree Fridays: 10
Last week's vegetarian dish was a dahl. I got the main recipe from Thimble's Blog but because we don't eat onions or garlic nor did I have the spices, I changed it.
Coconut Dahl
2.5 dl orange lentils
5 dl water
½ curry
dash pepper
½ tsp ginger powder
1.25 dl coconut
2.5 tbsp yogurt
Cook lentils according to package instructions. Add curry, pepper, ginger, coconut and yogurt and heat through. Serve over rice.
I bought something today that I've never bought before. Fresh ginger. I wasn't even sure how it tasted so I was a bit weary about using much of it. I googled fresh ginger and found out it can be frozen, so I cut it up into pieces and froze the rest. I also read that it is possible to put it through a garlic press which sort of worked.
Today's vegetarian meal was what we call a macaroni salad. I use either a tin of kidney beans or chickpeas. I tried a new dressing on top. I usually just mix some oil, honey, orange juice, dried dill, paprika and curry together.
Apple Salad Dressing
1 apple, cored, seeded and chopped small
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp sesame seeds
¼ tsp dried dill
dash chili powder
½ tsp curry powder
small piece of fresh ginger, grated
¾ dl olive oil
Puree until smooth
Macaroni Salad
1 tin of kidney beans or chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1-2 carrots, diced small
cucumber, diced
red pepper, chopped
(celery, chopped)
1-2 tomatoes, chopped
Mix well with dressing.
Chipless: 1 year 9 days
Candyless days: 9
Chocolatefree Mondays: 17
Chocolatefree Fridays: 8
I can't believe I actually did it and how fast this past year has gone. I wonder what I'd look like if I had been able to cut out all of the extras I've eaten over the year too. Oh well on to the next stage which is cutting out candy. It won't be too hard because I don't each much candy and I'm not including chocolate or marshmallows.
Chipless: 1 Year
Candyless:
Chocolatefree Mondays: 16
Chocolatefree Fridays: 7
Well I had my first all vegetarian day. For breakfast I had oatmeal porridge and fatfree milk. Lunch was peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam on bread. I had heard about Chef Marc Meyer's Lemony Broccoli and Chickpea Rigatoni recipe on some body's blog and looked it up. I adapted it and my version is below. Oops, I can't remember what we had for our evening snack.Broccoli and Chickpea Pasta
265 g cooked chickpeas (I used tinned, drained and rinsed them.)
1½ tbsp lemon concentrate (Use more lemon next time – 2 tbsp?)
1 tbsp olive oil
10 rose peppers, crushed
head of broccoli, cut into pieces (I use the whole thing, not just the florets.)
200 g pasta
1½ tbsp olive oil
1 dl cooking water
2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp Parmesan cheese, for garnish
Mix chickpeas, lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil and crushed rose peppers together and set aside.
Cook broccoli for 4 minutes. You need to keep the water, so remove the broccoli with a slotted spoon. I steamed the broccoli because I don't have a slotted spoon and it was easy to lift it out but I had to add more water before adding the pasta.
Add pasta and cook according to package directions.
While the pasta is cooking, heat 1½ tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet and add the broccoli and chickpea mixture and heat through. When pasta is done remove 1 dl of cooking water before draining pasta and add it to the skillet. Add 2 tbsp of Parmesan cheese to skillet and stir well. Mix in pasta and stir until coated with liquid. Garnish with rest of Parmesan cheese.
Chipless Days: 259
Chocolatefree Mondays: 15
Chocolatefree Fridays: 6
I've been putting off going vegetarian because 1)I'm lazy and 2)I'll have to make everything from scratch because it's almost impossible to get vegetarian convenience foods here. SS said that he wouldn't mind trying though he wouldn't go completely vegetarian outside the home. (I don't think his meat and potato grandparents would understand.) So once we've eaten up all of the meat, fish, etc. that we have in the fridge and freezer (I can't afford to throw it away), maybe we'll try it. I'll have to pig out on bacon before giving it up!
I'm disappointed. I was all ready to celebrate being a year without chips but I miscounted somewhere along the line. It took me awhile to find the calendar I used last year and according to it I started on May 9th. So I still have some days to go.
Chipless Days: 354
Chocolatefree Mondays: 14
Chocolatefree Fridays: 5
I haven't been doing much lately. The last baking I did were these sweet buns I baked last month. Sugarless Friday was a disaster! I'm going to try instead to have a second chocolatefree day a week.
On the I'm Knitting As Fast As I Can blog Susan mentioned that she had made pecan caramel turtles from the recipe she had found on the Stitch-N-Snitch blog. Susan had changed the recipe by using Riesen candies instead of Rolos. I was at the store the other day and saw that they had Riesen's on sale because the best before date was coming up, so I bought some, thinking of the recipe. I had a hard time finding the recipe because I thought that it was on one of the food blogs that I read, but it was on a knitting blog. I had to buy a bag of mixed party snacks so that I could get the pretzels. And pecans are very expensive here, so if I make them again after finishing these, I'll use some other nut because we didn't really notice the taste. But they are worth making.
Speaking of sugar, I made these Runeberg muffins yesterday. They have ground gingerbread cookies and raspberry jam in them. Yum. Much better than last year's that were swimming in butter. I reduced the butter by 50 g.
Someone had mentioned making this orange lacquered tofu on her blog, and because I have been wanting to try a tofu dish where I didn't puree the tofu beyond recognition, I thought that I would try it. But it was a disappointment and I won't make it again. Too much oil I guess.
I didn't have any chocolate yesterday. But I'm pathetic. I had chocolate for dessert today – after my breakfast. I should have marked down how many times I was ready to get up and get some chocolate because it seemed like all the time! At least I realized what I was going to do and stopped myself. It isn't because I eat chocolate all day long but it seems like eating chocolate is connected to certain things I do. And when I've done them sometimes I'm ready for some chocolate.
These are chocolate peanut butter cups I made for SS for Christmas. I've been trying to have a chocolatefree day for a week now and it isn't working. So Mondays are the day. I want to slowly work up to only having chocolate once a week.
We had a late Thanksgiving meal because SS was at his father's Thanksgiving weekend and Monday wasn't a holiday here. I made roast beef for the first time because SS wanted to try it. I didn't think it was worth all the chewing. I didn't see a pumpkin here so I made our ”pumpkin” pie from carrots. If I hadn't known it myself then I wouldn't have noticed the difference.
I did make these vegan cookies. I have never put cinnamon in chocolate cookies before. I don't know if I like it or not. I might try it again but only using ½ tsp. I used regular sugar, syrup and oil. I look for recipes that don't use vegan margarine as I can't get it here and I would rather use oil anyway.
I've been baking though. Here are some coconut oatmeal cookies.
SS takes a snack to school everyday because his day is so long. I've been trying to come up with things that will last out of the fridge for about 9 – 10 hours before he can eat them on the way home. I've been making muffins and loaves. This is a pineapple loaf.
This is black currant jam. I didn't want to make any jam as we still have some from last year but I felt bad that the owner of the black currant bushes isn't able to freeze them herself because she still hasn't bought a new freezer because she is going to remodel her kitchen and doesn't know yet what color scheme she will use. Last year I made two batches. One had water as the recipes called for but when I noticed that the berries had so much juice I didn't use any in the second batch. I didn't use any this year either. But I did use jam sugar because the strawberry jam turned out so well with it but the black currant jam didn't taste as nice as last year's.
I tried out the spelt again. Someone kindly sent me Dreena Burton's Peanut Butter Cookie recipe. She mentioned that she had use spelt instead of the flour called for in the recipe. So I did too but I didn't add the extra spelt flour as she recommended, and I suppose I should have because they didn't hold together too well. I also left out the molasses because we don't have that here. I only used ½ dl maple syrup (I couldn't make myself use more, it's so expensive) and ½ dl of regular syrup. We didn't notice the maple syrup, so I'll try just regular syrup next time and leave out the sugar. I made 8 cookies but they were so big that I'll try making 16 next time.
I made cinnamon raisin bread. I substituted 1 dl of spelt flour for the regular flour and next time I'll try 2 dl. Taking the bread out 5 minutes early wasn't enough because it was a bit burnt on top.
I used the spelt again. SS's grandmother sent home 2 bananas. She likes them almost starting to spot whereas I like them just turning completely yellow. By the next day they were quite spotty and I had no desire to eat them. So I made a banana oatmeal spelt loaf. I'm still using white wheat flour as we ease into using the spelt. I took my trusty old high school home ec banana loaf recipe and adapted it. Turned out quite well.
I finally bought some spelt flour. I have been wanting/waiting to try it. I made some carrot bread in my bread machine but I only used 1.5 dl of spelt because I haven't used the machine for so long and I wasn't sure how it would work. And even though the breadpan fit and looked the same as the original, who knows what could have happened. The bread turned out great, but, as you can see in the picture, the crust was quite crummy. I stopped the machine 4 minutes earlier, but I'll have to experiment how much earlier I need to stop it. We didn't notice the taste of the spelt or the carrot for that matter.
Anyway I decided to make some jam. Only half of the recipe (1 kilo of berries) because I didn't know how it would turn out or if we would like it or eat it. And look what I got. It was still quite liquidy at this stage but after being in the fridge overnight it thicken up well and tastes great. Next year I will consider making the whole recipe if the jam survives being in the freezer.
We both need more vegetable fat so I'm going to add 5 walnuts and 5 almonds each day to our diets. That is if I can find walnuts and they are a reasonable price.
