Guess what I am making for Thanksgiving...

The November issue of Sunset Magazine has a recipe for Pearl Couscous with Fall Vegetables and Caramelized Onions. The lone reader review rating it has received was not complementary. I will have to disagree and try it anyway. How on earth can a dish with cinnamon, jalapeno, saffron, cumin, cilantro, and all those lovely fall vegetables be considered bland?

This recipe is Sunset's answer to vegetarian Thanksgiving' main dish. I think I'll make it long before T-day just to be sure. Mmmmmm.

What's that, Lassie?

You say Timmy's stuck in a well and he's got a hankerin' for pumpkin cake and you'd throw him a piece but you think it'll fall apart on the way down? Have I got a recipe for you.

War muffins and Tomato Lentil Soup

On Friday we had pumpkin pancakes (the recipe is in the sidebar) and scrambled eggs (they were delightful). By Sunday I was out of eggs, so I looked online for a recipe for eggless muffins to go with some Tomato Lentil soup I was going to make for dinner.

I found this recipe and tried it out. It was really pretty good, given there's no eggs, no butter. It's definitely a vegan recipe. This seems like a good food storage type recipe, ya know?

And here's the Tomato-Vegetable Lentil Soup (adapted from Ken Haedrich's Soup Makes the Meal).
4 TBS olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
4 ribs celery, diced fine
1 green bell pepper, diced
salt to taste
10 cups broth---veg, chicken, beef--you decide ;)
1 1/2 cups dried lentils, rinsed and picked over
2 large carrots, diced fine
2 bay leaves
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
black pepper to taste
28 oz can crushed tomatoes (or petite-diced), undrained
2 potatoes, peeled and diced

Heat olive oil in large soup pot. Add onion, celery, and bell pepper. Lightly salt. Cover tightly and sweat over med. low heat until veggies are soft, about 9 minutes.

Add the stock, lentils, carrot, bay leaves and other herbs and season with pepper. Bring to a boil, cover partially, and reduce heat to medium low. Simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in the potato and simmer 10-15 minutes more. Add the tomatoes; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, another 10 minutes. Correct seasonings as needed. This makes 10-12 servings.

For the pathetic people who think they need flesh, I gave them a few bacon bits. I tell them when they eat those things they smell like doggy treats, but they don't care. They just feel the love that I even allowed anything piggy in my house.

Some ideas

Things are going well at our house. I'm successfully having meatless dinners about 4 or 5 times a week. DH has noticed, but I don't think the kids have. And, as an unexpected bonus, I've lost about 3 pounds in the last two weeks. Not sure if it's the meatless meals or the bronchitis that I've been battling, but in any case I'll take it. ;o)

Here are some things we've eaten lately, in case you are in need of some ideas.

Salad and veggie soup

Black Bean soup (mine was similar to this, but without the rice) and cornbread muffins

Burritos/tacos with refried beans

Black bean quesadillas served with chips and salsa and sour cream

Broccolli Gratin (recipe here)

Brie sandwiches on baguette with lots of veggies (tomatoes, spinach, cukes, sprouts)

Tortellini soup

Spinach Quiche

Families are Forever, but beans are not.

Another reason I got interested in vegetarian cooking is its relation to food storage.  You can't dry-pack meat.  And I found, once I was baking with whole grains, that I was halfway completing a protein vegetarian-style anyway.

The other half would be a vegetable, or beans.  Beans were what I had in storage.  There was a time during my husband starting his business, that I was cooking from my food storage more than adding to it.

And that's when I found out beans aren't forever.   I had bought black beans--my favorite--at the grocery store, in those one-pound packages, before we'd moved to that house.  But in my years of extravagant living in that house, I'd been using pre-cooked beans from a can.  The dried beans I'd had at least two years, but certainly less than five.  I soaked them overnight, cooked them the next day, and those dried beans didn't soften a bit.  I think I ended up raiding my limited supply of canned soup for dinner that night.  Don't like the kids to go hungry, you know.

Next I experimented.  Soaked for 24 hours.  Started cooking them early in the morning.  They simmered until I went to bed, still hard as rocks.   Marbles.  Diamonds.  I gave up.

It's not like I didn't know how to cook beans.  I didn't put salt in the water or anything like that.  Before children when I had been actually vegetarian, I had been soaking and cooking a pot of beans successfully every week.

I threw the rest out and got new dried beans.  The new beans cooked fine.

Rotate your beans, people.  They're great in food storage, eat them a couple times a month.  Make bean-bags, toy dolls, or art projects out of the old beans if you can't throw them out.  If you have a lot of old beans, I suppose they might make good ground cover for a garden path.

Just don't try and eat them.

Can I get a witness? Miss Vickie agrees with me.

Habits to break

"I am SO tempted to eat one of those sausages. If I ever quit being a vegetarian, that is the first thing I'm going to eat." and she has said that about something before--but was it about Kielbasa?  Honestly, I don't have much brain space for keeping track of what anyone's theoretically likes anymore.  I'm just glad dinner will finally start, once my son finishes washing his hands.

"Have some if you like," I say.  "You could eat meat again, or if you just have some today.  Doesn't matter."

We eat in the kitchen, and my son is washing his hands at the sink, so everyone hears this.  He's close enough to done that we're waiting for him before we start eating. He loves to give this vegetarian sister a hard time.  Every other week he'll try and sneak meat onto her plate, or wave his meat-laden fork in her face, or tell her how delicious it is.   I suspect mostly he's dumbfounded by her, since he would eat only meat and bread if I'd let him.  Heck, he may think she's the reason vegetables are served, the way I have a side of something in every meal for him.

They smell SO good... and then she pops one of those sausages into her mouth.

Immediately, the other children begin crying foul. "Not enough sausages to go around," they claim. "Don't waste the sausage on the vegetarian.  She has her own food!"  Though when I produce the heart-shaped poached eggs, the first grade princess immediately asks for one.  Then I start counting out the kielbasa slices among the family members.

"Do you want more?"  I ask my vegetarian daughter.

"Nah.  I just wanted the one."

And so we settle as usual to dinner.   A little what-did-you-do-today, a little hey-she-poked-me, and all that good family stuff.

I believe this is the first time the vegetarian has eaten meat in four years, and I am curious about the coming months.  Not so much if the vegetarian will eat meat again, but if her break has broken her brother's hang-up with her diet.

Because family dinner is an ongoing dynamic, no matter what you eat.

This week in Split Meals

Monday:
Stuffing (actually, I guess it's called dressing when it's cooked in a dish?)
(apples, onion, celery, raisins, torn bread, vegetarian boullion from Knorr cube. This is my one make-an-effort dish this week.)
--thanks kits54 for suggesting the Knorr.
Top with Poached egg for vegetarian tonight; with Kielbasa, top or to the side, if you're not.
Green Salad

Strange Dessert: Twinkie-Hot Dog, as seen in Weird Al's UHF movie.
Twinkie without hotdog for the vegetarian and the sane.


Tuesday:
Refried Beans, Queso Fresca
Spanish Rice
Green-sauce corn tortilla Enchilada, (some with cooked ground turkey, some without.)
Green Salad


Wednesday:
Sloppy Joe, or
fried egg sandwich on bun, topped with sloppy joe sauce.
fruit

Thursday:
something with yams and leftovers.


Friday:
Pizza. It's always Pizza on Friday.
usually with apples or green salad or both.