Staying with my grandpa for a few days

Tuesday to Saturday, I was staying with my grandpa. We played with the dog and the cats, burned a pile, and just spent time with each other, but we also ate lots of delicious food! (More on that later)

Here's my grandpas sweet chocolate lab, Sara.

And one of his two cute cats, Lucky.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good photos of her looking at me. Or any photos of her sister.

Back to the food! For lunches we always had sushi, because, well, we both just really like sushi. We usually had some edamame and gyoza to go with it.

We had quinoa sushi filled with grated carrot, green onions, and avocado.

Since we get up at pretty different times in the morning, we had our breakfasts separately, most of the time, usually leftovers from dinner the night before.

The first dinner was yellow curry with brown rice, which for some reason I didn't photograph. Maybe I forgot. Here's a photo of a different curry!

I think the one we had had potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, and probably some other things I can't remember. It was a tiny bit spicier than I'd like, but I'm a wimp, and maybe that helped me become slightly less of a spice wimp. We can hope.

He had these greens in his fridge which I thought looked really pretty, so I photographed them. Four different kinds of tasty salad greens! Yum!

And here's what I made them into: A nice salad along with onion, carrot, pomegranate, and a homemade herby balsamic vinaigrette.

And with a tasty brown rice jambalaya with pepper, zucchini, and onion.

The next night we had minestrone soup, a nice salad, same thing as the night before but I remembered the avocado this time, and some bread. The minestrone had Carrots, onions, potatoes, zucchini, broccoli, kale, and whole wheat pasta.

Then I decided I'd make some pancakes for him. With warmed maple syrup (The real stuff) and some margarine. The recipe will be at the end of the post.

My grandpa doesn't really seem to like snacks, heck he usually doesn't even eat lunch, unless I'm around, but I do, so I snacked on pomegranate seeds and dried blueberries a lot. They're really a gorgeous fruit.

I also found lots of mushrooms in the yard. I thought about bringing some home to see if I could figure out what kind they are and if I was sure I could eat them, but most of them looked slimy or a bit past their prime.

There were WAY more, but I didn't really want to photo all of the different kinds. There was a ton of them in that spot. And in a few other places too.

Dinner on the last night was stir fry.

Made with snow peas, carrots, red peppers, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. (Not from the yard!) It was nice and colorful. I also added some noodles and sauce after that point, but the photos didn't come out well. Steamy foods are hard to photograph!

I really had a great time. I got to be with my grandpa, Sara, the cats, and my grandpa even made Jasmine (My bunny) a cage so she can come when I come, and not have to be without me while I'm there. She also really likes grandpa, Sara, although she's very nice to Jasmine, Jasmine doesn't like her too much, Sara can get a little too friendly, and start licking Jasmine's face and pushing her over. The cats and Jasmine have not met, since my grandpa lives on a big property with lots of wildlife, and the cats are there to keep the rodents away, so I don't think introducing them to Jasmine would be a good plan.

And as promised, a great recipe for delicious pancakes! Not totally perfected yet, but pretty close! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Whole-wheat pancakes:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Scant 2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Generous sprinkle of cinnamon

1 1/3 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup melted vegan margarine (Half a stick)

Whisk the flour through cinnamon together with a fork until fluffy and there are no clumps. Make a well in the center and set aside.

In a separate bowl, or just a measuring cup, whisk with a fork the soymilk, vanilla, and melted margarine until mixed, and then add to the dry ingredients, and whisk it together until mixed, but don't over mix it or they will not be wonderful pancakes.

Using a measuring cup, pour the batter into a fairly hot oiled pan. If you want to add chocolate chips or fruits, now's the time to do it! Once golden-brown to your liking, flip them over, and do the same on that side. Then serve! I like mine with warmed maple syrup, a little extra margarine, and sometimes some chopped fruit.

Yum!