Getting back to life.....

We were broken into a few weeks back...they pretty much took everything of any value we had. After getting an alarm system, still being scared to come home (I was the one who walked in on it), dealing with the insurance, it's time to get back to food and eating. It could be worse, we could have lost our home like the people in Iowa did.
My sweetie made me dinner tonight. Pasta with marinated home grown squash crusted with garlic salt, pepper, olive oil and Italian seasonings, organic marinara sauce and tofu sausage. A sprig of basil garnishes the plate.
I love good vegetarian food.....Especially when it is made with love.

Provencal Tuesday

I had some bananas that I needed to use up, so I made the basic muffin recipe from Nava Atlas The Vegetarian Family Cookbook and added chopped banana as my mix in. I had a muffin warm from the oven and it was delicious and dense. I made the vegan version using apple sauce and soy milk. Eating one of these gems should last me through the morning until lunch time.

We are on day five of the no eating out challenge. Tonight's dinner was steamed zucchini, Greek salad with Roma tomato's, sliced red onion, and cucumber. I seasoned the salad with a little garlic pepper and dried basil. The main dish was Provencal Lemon-Herb Rice from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein. This rice is not only very easy to make, but it has a wonderful flavor. I added fresh mint at the end which I think makes taste even more special.

Sometimes Simple is Better......

Home cooked black eyed peas, wild rice pilaf, steamed broccoli, sliced red onion and tomato. Delicious.

A Fine Sunday for Adventure (Culinary and Otherwise)

My sweetie was feeling much better today, so we took a drive up north to Prescott Valley to see a good friend of ours. We drove past this sign and I had to take a picture as I thought Dawn to Milky Way was a very cool street name. We had a great time target practicing, I hiked around a little bit and took some pictures. It got very warm today, I even got a little sun burnt.


I am still learning this blog thing and my pictures are a little out of order as they were taken with different cameras. This was tonight's dinner, veggie black bean burgers made from a recipe in Jeanne Lemlin's Simple Vegetarian Pleasures. The burgers were okay, and may have been better with the salsa mayonnaise that Jeanne suggested to serve with the burgers. (I am trying to do low fat, so I skipped the mayo) I used mustard as my condiment along with sliced red onions, tomato and red leafed lettuce. I also had a problem when cooking these, I got the pan way to hot, and my Sweetie had to help me cool down the pan with water so I would not burn the burgers. (I took them out of the pan first) Once we cooled the pan down enough, we sprayed a little more olive oil cooking spray in the pan and the burgers got toasty crispy on the outside, but were very soft on the inside. I was also thinking that the bread crumbs I used may have been old and they also may have altered the taste of the burger. For my first venture in cooking veggie burgers, I think I did pretty well, and learned that I don't need to have my pan scorching hot, or I will burn the burgers.
I served a side of store bought potato salad with the burger. (Bought for today's picnic up north but never eaten) It was okay, but homemade is so much better!


Okay so we are on day three of the no eating out challenge and I think we have done very well. We ate breakfast at home, took snacks to eat up north, and we managed to make dinner at home (and try out a new recipe). Not bad for such a busy day. It's so hard for me to plan as I never know what we are going to be doing. We are a kind of "fly by the seat of our pants" people. It's always exciting because I never know what we are going to do next.

I figured we were going to be staying home today because my sweetie was sick, but he wanted to go do something as he was going stir crazy.