Mushroom Risotto

I made this fabulous mushroom risotto a couple of days ago—no oil, no cheese or cream, just yummy goodness!  Here is a link to the recipe; it calls for oil or margarine, but I just left it out.

Dairy-Free Risotto Recipe

Oatnuts

I found this recipe on this website today:  http://www.thehealthyvegans.com/
 

I was out of applesauce so I used 4 ounces of pureed baby prunes; also did not have any tapioca starch, so I used acorn starch.  They turned out really nice!  Not very sweet, so if you want this to be a substitute for doughnuts, I would add more sugar and maple syrup.

Leftover Mashed Russets In Lunch Skillet

Lunch today is leftover mashed russets, kale, mushrooms, smokey tempeh, and nutritional yeast with sliced pickled beets on the side.  Yummy!  I just got a non-stick skillet out and put a couple of large spoonfuls of potatoes in the pan, then I added sliced mushrooms, ripped pieces off of several stalks of kale, cut 4 smokey tempeh slices into small pieces, cooked it all together, served and sprinkle on nutritional yeast and added some pickled beets on the side. 

This is so good!  The more you eat vegetables for your meals, the more your taste buds adjust to those flavors, until you crave the tastes. 

Acorn Bread

I made acorn bread this morning for the first time.  I have been reading about foods that are native to Texas and then expanded that to foods that early peoples might have eaten, especially hunter-gather groups.  Acorns came up frequently as a food source.  I read about how to make your own acorn flour, which involves removing the tannic acid from it, but it is a lot of work and I just wanted to try cooking with it. 

I ended up going to a Korean grocery store and buying Acorn Starch.  I am still not sure it is what I want it to be and have found opinions differ widely online, but I tried it and it worked just fine.  In all fairness though, it feels like corn starch and when it was in the bag, it had the "squeaky" feel when I pinched the package together, just like starch.  But I tried it anyway.

The dark color comes from the acorn flour.  I used Korean Acorn Starch, which some people say is the same as flour and some say is not.  I found a place online which quoted a man who teaches cooking with acorn flour who said that the Koreans grind their flour so fine it is as small as starch, but that you could still cook with it if used with some whole wheat flour.  So that is what I did.
 
There is a lot of interesting information on the web about acorn flour and how much it has been used for thousands of years.  I was intrigued and wanted to try it.  It is kind of cool to eat something that human beings have been eating since at least the Mesolithic period.  I watched a documentary by the BBC on YouTube called Wild Food.  It is a five-part show on hunter-gathers in Great Britains' history.

 Here is how I did it:

1 cup acorn flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup white flour
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 eggs worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk

Preheat oven to 400F.  Mix all ingredients in a bowl and put into a loaf pan.  Mine is silicon so I did not have to oil and flour the bottom.  Bake for about 30 minutes.

It has a nice flavor.  Try it!

Rice Pudding, Again

I made rice pudding again last night.  This time I doubled the recipe so the teenagers would not eat ALL of it; I really like it the next day, cold.

Barley, Bean, and Kale Soup

This evening I fixed the family Barley, Bean, and Kale Soup.  One of the girls served herself before the kale went in; she does NOT like kale.  It was really good!

Not sure why my picture says “toast.”  I am playing around with a new program that is supposed to frame your picture as you take it.  Hmmm….

I got this recipe from Dr. McDougall’s Mobile Cookbook.

Nopales Enchiladas with Tomatillo Sauce

Nopales Enchilada with Tomatillo Sauce

This was an amazing meal!  I bought nopales at the grocery store--the flat piece of a prickly pear cactus--already dethorned and sliced into strips.  All I had to do was cook and eat them.  I parboiled them in a pan with an inch or so of water, then put them aside until the tomatillo sauce was ready and I could assemble the enchiladas.

The sauce is amazing.  Take 10 or so fresh tomatillos, 2-4 Jalapeno or Serrano peppers, and put them into an oven-proof skillet.  Put them under the broiler until they are blackened, like in my picture above.  Then run them through the blender and liquify them.  Pour into a pot with 4-6 cups of vegetable broth, bring to a boil, add salt to taste, and it is ready.

Dip 1 or 2 corn tortillas at a time into the hot tomatillo sauce and leave for 20-30 seconds.  Pull out and lay on a plate, fill with nopales and mushrooms (or whatever you like), roll and smother in Tomatillo Sauce.

I like to put fresh cilantro on top, too.  Yummy!!