Laziest Vegetarian Posole

Sometime I want to try this a real recipe for vegetarian posole like this one.

But today, I did the simplest thing. I put hominy in a vegetarian broth, and topped it with those yummy things I like to put on top of posole: radish, watercress, salsa, cilantro. Cheese is good too, if you take dairy.

Mother's Day Feast

Which I didn't prepare.  My vegetarian daughter, now in high school, prepared an full dinner from scratch for us in fulfillment of her Foods class requirements.

Veggie Daughter has been a vegetarian for seven years now, and is the reason I resurrected my college vegetarian meal planning skills.  Daughter reintroduced fish back into her diet two years ago; this is a fish menu we had tonight.

Gazpacho
Trout
Spinach-Strawberry Salad
Homemade rolls

Asparagus Dudes

Tonight's quick dinner was penne pasta with asparagus and cherry tomatoes in an alfredo-type sauce.  We had honeydew as a side.  It was my riff on the Bertollini frozen pasta dinner.

First, I boiled penne pasta in a separate pot.

I melted butter in a saute pan, added asparagus cut in 2 inch pieces, threw in some shredded parmesan, added cream.  When it was getting warm and melty, I added the pasta and the cherry tomatoes and mixed that in.

For some reason, I have it in my head that asparagus must always been steamed.  But this saute method worked well, the asparagus came out great.

I cut the cherry tomatoes in half.  I don't like my food to explode when I bite into it.

Anyway was delicious--why not with all that cream.  My son was bored though, and put the asparagus pieces into the penne pasta to make Asparagus Dudes.

This could be a split-meal for part-vegetarian families by serving slices of cooked chicken breast separately, for the meat-eaters to mix in on their plates.  My husband had to be away from us for dinner tonight, so only the youngest child wanted any meat.

Vegetarian French Onion Soup in Crockpot--Bad Idea

Today I made Vegetarian French Soup in the Crockpot, which I've been wanting to do for some time.

And now I know, it is a bad idea.  Don't do it.

I sliced four large onions, and put them in a crockpot on high with a melted half a stick of butter, to carmelize.

About three hours later, I added two cups of vegetable stock, and turned it down to low.

Probably, I should not have added the stock, since the onions had no all carmelized.  If it is possible for them to carmelize in a crockpot.

About five more hours later, I broiled swiss cheese onto sliced french bread in the broiler.  I put the cheese toasts into bowls, and ladled soup over them.

But the soup was short of liquid.  The bread absorbed most of what little liquid there was, giving me soggy cheese toasts with cooked onion sitting on top.

Which wouldn't have mattered if it were delicious.  But I'm sorry, Knorr vegetarian broth was not enough to stand up to the beef stock flavor I expect in french onion soup, and cooking onions in it all day did not enrichen it enough.

Everyone hated it.

I've heard it would work better if I cooked it on the stove, carmelizing the onions thoroughly first, and then simmered on the stove all day.  I hear it would have worked better if I added some miso soup for broth, to give it the umami flavor.

But frankly, I'm not going to try again.  I don't want to get anywhere near this disaster again.

Onigiri

Cute like sugar cookies, without actually being a dessert.  
We like it as an afternoon snack or in a packed lunch.

Leftover rice, about 2 cups
2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar

I spread the rice out on a plate.
I mix the vinegar, salt, and sugar to make a dressing.
I sprinkle the dressing on the rice.

I pack the rice into molds to make shapes, using my rice paddle to push the rice into the mold and level it.  I've got a little onigiri mold with three little shapes, which I bought in a japanese market a few years back.  Before that I used to just mold with a 1/4 cup measure.

Real onigiri would have something hidden in the middle, like pickled plum.  I've never met a pickled plum.  We usually just make them plain--haven't come up with a filling that interests any of us.

Do you make onigiri?  Is your vinegar-salt-sugar dressing different?  Do you put a little filling in the middle?

Applesauce Cake

Happy Birthday Captain Awesome!

I use my KitchenAid mixer for this one, because I believe in overkill.

Two sticks of butter with 1 1/2 cups brown sugar until creamy.
Mix in 2 eggs.

3 cups flour
1/2 Tablespoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon, unless it's in the applesauce already
1 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon or less salt
2 cups applesauce.

Mix it all again.
add 2 cups of raisins and stir them in by hand, unless you forgot this year again.


Put in that pretty big cakepan that looks like it would hold legal paper.  I think it takes an hour to bake.

Frosting (the last argument of kings)
melt another stick of butter with another cup of brown sugar.  Add a pinch of salt and 2/3 cup of cream.  
Rinse the cake batter out of the mixer bowl, and put this hot concoction in.  Add four cups of powdered sugar (from my interminable food storage.  Apparently we'll be eating cake during the apocalypse) and a teaspoon of vanilla.

When the cake is out and cooled off, spread this on top.  (The cake stays in the pan, because that's what I did the first year we were married)  If you were disorganized (again) spread the frosting (still warm) on the hot cake (oh well) because if something's worth doing, it's worth doing before the birthday man arrives home.

Understand that he's going to put his slice in a mug and pour milk over it.

Add the bouillon at the table

My own copy

The kids are in finals, so of course half the kids, and me, are coming down with a cold.  An excellent occasion to try at least the idea of Mark Bittman's Clean-Out-the-Fridge Vegetable Soup.  My soup was comparatively limited by what I had in the fridge to clean out, and I wasn't about to go out in the rain in my mildly sick and tired state to pretend I ever had on hand as wide a range of vegetables as Bittman.

Wannabe Mirepoix: leeks, carrots, mushroom.

Mine was a leek-carrot-mushroom-tomato-potato-spinach soup.  No pistou.  But served with cheese sandwich or hamburgers to take the pressure off.

I added my bouillon paste right into my soup bowl!

I serve a vegetarian soup at more than half our dinners in the winter, but tonight I was impatient with the thought of another vegetable bouillon broth.  So I did a crazy thing--I cooked the vegetables in water, and served a choice of vegetable or turkey Better than Bouillon soup base paste at the table.  I know this doesn't allow the vegetables to season in the broth while cooking, but it was worth it to me to serve vegetables in turkey broth to those who wanted it, without having to divide the soup into two pots so the vegetarian version would be available to those who require it.