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!

Homemade peanut butter cups

I did a double batch of this recipe, and got very many. I did some in mini cupcake liners, but then I switched to some little heart-shaped molds I have, which were much less tedious. It was hard to get the chocolate into all those little ridges.

And I must say, these peanut butter cups are great! Better than Reeses in my opinion, but I can be a bit of a snob.

And it also just occurred to me. Why am I putting up medium sized photos? Why not large? I'll make them large from now on.

Quinoa sushi

I got the idea from some other blog a while ago, but I can not remember which one to give them credit for the idea. So if you know, let me know.

Same as regular sushi, but you use quinoa instead of rice. I think I actually prefer the taste of the quinoa to white or brown rice in sushi, and with all the nutrients it's got, that's great! It was slightly harder to get to stick than white rice, but I think with a little tweaking I can make it stickier. And it took less work than regular sushi rice.

These rolls are filled with grated carrot, alfalfa sprouts, green onion, and avocado. (Can't have sushi without avocado!)

They were great!

Portobello burger and sweet potato fries

Well I was going to have a burger... But I forgot to get bread at the store, so I had a breadless burger.

Just my usual sauteed whole portobello with balsamic vinegar thing, topped with tomato, sprouts, and avocado.

On the side are some sweet potato fries. Wash and peel some sweet potatoes, cut them into fries, then drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and maybe some garlic powder or paprika, and bake at 400 degrees until tender and crispy.

I'm really liking my new square blue plates.

Peanut sauce stir fry

I was planning on making a soup or something for dinner, but my brother really wanted some pad thai, or something similar with peanut sauce, or some sort of stir fry. So I told him I could do that if he made the peanut sauce, which isn't hard to do or anything, you just need to keep an eye on it, and I needed to chop the vegetables. Because if I did them separately, it would have taken an even longer time to make.

You need to make four things separately, so two people would be ideal, one person could do the sauce and the noodles, the other person could do the tofu and veggies. This is pretty messy, and labor intensive, so don't make this unless you have a good amount of time on your hands.

For the tofu:

First I cut some tofu into bite sized pieces, rolled 'em around in some cornstarch, and carefully pan fried them. (Careful or they'll fall apart or the cornstarch crust will fall off)

For the vegetables:

While that cooked I started chopping a ton of veggies. I had some of those precut carrot chip things that I used, some snow peas, zucchini that I cut at a slight angle, broccoli, green onion, red pepper strips, and maybe some other things. I made this on Tuesday, so I don't totally remember everything that was in it. Once the tofu is done, remove it from the pan, then start cooking your vegetables.

For the sauce:

Meanwhile you should have someone making your peanut sauce. You need a bunch of all natural peanut butter, chunky if you want there to be chunks in your sauce. Then add some chili paste, vinegar, lime juice, soy sauce, garlic, and honey/agave,/whatever you use to taste.If you think it needs something else, go right ahead. Mix it all up in a pot on your lowest setting, and stir it often until the peanut butter melts. Once it's melted, turn of the pot, and remove it from the burner. It is done.

For the noodles:

You should also cook up some rice noodles, we used some kind smaller than pad kee mao noodles, but bigger than pad thai noodles. Cook them according to the package directions.

Once your sauce, noodles, tofu, and finally you vegetables are done, add them all to the pan and stir and heat everything up. It's pretty messy and labor intensive, but so delicious!

The photo is really bad, but it was so good!

Here's a photo from Google images that looks way better. This looks closer to what I made then my picture, actually.

Big, chewy, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies

I used the recipe for chocolate-chocolate chip-walnut cookies in Veganomicon, with a few changes. And they were heavenly. I used whole wheat flour, half brown sugar, half organic sugar, water instead of soymilk, (I was out), and no walnuts. And I made them pretty darn big. They were so delicious, and perfectly done and chewy, and very chocoatey, and big. They were best when they were still warm, and the chocolate was still melted... Mmmmm

The smaller ones in the photo above were a little bigger then my palm, so the bigger ones were pretty big.

They didn't last too long...

Maple-Balsamic yams

This is a meal I made shortly after our trip to DC. The only veggies in the house were a yam, and a couple onions.

I made my maple-balsamic sauce for the yam and roasted it halved in the oven until tender.

I also had some caramelized onions, and a pile of quinoa.

Raw foodist for the day

I'm going out of order with my posts, I have foods from before today that I should post at some point too.

Anyway...

We've recently decided to do meal planning, and I decided most of them, but mom also picked some. Two of mine happened to be raw, raw spaghetti and meatlessballs, and raw sandwiches with raw onion "Bread". I was going to have the sandwiches for lunch on Tuesday, and the spaghetti for dinner today, but we didn't go to the grocery store until Tuesday, rather than Monday, so I didn't have time to dehydrate the "Bread" until that night, so the sandwiches got moved to lunch today, and since I had two raw meals planned in one day, I just decided to try being a raw foodist for one day.

For those of you who do not know what raw foodists are, they are people who do not heat their food over a certain temperature, usually under 115 degreed fahrenheit. The reason they do this is because when foods are cooked, they lose a lot of their nutrients and enzymes. You can read more about it here. Some of the more elaborate raw foods, or raw foods trying to be similar to cooked foods use dehydrators, so that some of the moisture can be taken out without cooking the food. Since I like cooking, and also like more elaborate foods, I usually involve a dehydrator when I make raw food. Although I can make some darn tasty raw wraps without one.

So anyway, for breakfast I made a strawberry smoothie, with a tiny bit of kale, since I can only appreciate a little at this time. I didn't take a picture since it didn't look like anything special.

The night before I made some raw onion "Bread" (Recipe here, all the way at the bottom), an hour before lunch I marinated some sliced mushrooms in a clove of minced garlic, and a little nama shoyu. Then once I got hungry, I piled on the veggies onto my raw bread.

Tomatoes, red bell pepper, onion (Although I think it may have been a little excessive with all the onion in the onion bread) alfalfa sprouts, marinated mushrooms, and avocado. I don't think I dehydrated the bread quite long enough, so it was a little messy, but still delicious! I will be making this again!

After lunch I started forming these raw, vegan meatballs.

Aside from getting the meatballs going, making dinner probably took about ten minutes. I made a sauce out of a big handful of sundried tomatoes, a red bell pepper, olive oil, basil, oregano, thyme, a tiny sprinkle of cayenne (You don't want it spicy, just a little zing), garlic, and half a tomato. I like my sauce really thick and flavorful, so I only use half a tomato and one big handful of sun-dried tomatoes, but if you like a thinner sauce, just add more fresh tomato. And just blended it in a food processor. Then I spiralized some zucchini. Then I put a pile of noodles on the plate, a little grated carrot, some sauce, and a few "Meatballs".

It was great, I always love that sauce, it tastes cooked, and also fresh and delicious. The meatballs were also very good, the texture was pretty similar to meatballs, but definitely not the taste. Which I'm glad. I don't like it when my fake meat recipes taste like meat. I don't want something that tastes like meat, I want something that is tasty, healthy, and goes well with similar things to whatever it is supposedly imitating.

Then I made some fruit and nut bars, they came out pretty good, I made blueberry-almond, and almond-cranberry. I think they'd be really nice with some coconut, but I didn't taste them until they were all done so I didn't decide that until They were already formed, and most of them wrapped. They're still good though. I look forward to doing maybe a coconut-chocolate. Maybe I could call it a cocoa-nut bar. :3 Then maybe a coconut-mango? Strawberry-chocolate, apple-cinnamon, coconut-pineapple, oh man, I'm gonnna make so many different kinds.

Pictured above is the blueberry-almond.

This is the almond-cranberry, please excuse the sponges and bananas in the background, for some reason I cannot crop this photo.

I also snacked on dried blueberries and sunflower seeds throughout the day. Being raw for the day was surprisingly easy, although I do think planning ahead helped a lot. Maybe I'll plan to be raw for a day once a week or something. At the very least once a month.

Balsamic portobello mushroom

This is a very delicious, meaty dish, that looks very nice, and tastes wonderful. It's very simple and quick.

Wash a portobello mushroom, and take off the stem. Chop the stem, and slice half a small onion. Heat up a pan (Preferably cast iron) with a little olive oil, and add you cap, gill side up, and your sliced onion and stem pieces to the side. Drizzle some olive oil into the cap, and drizzle a little balsamic vinegar into the cap and onto the onions and stem. Stir the onions and stem fairly often, and check the cap occasionally, once the cap is slightly browned on the bottom, flip it over and cook until tender. Once tender place it on a plate gill side up, and top it with the stem and onion, and garnish with basil. Yum!

Oh woah! This is my hundredth post!

DC

I'm sorry I haven't posted for weeks. My 450+ photos were a bit daunting. And then after sorting out all the blurry ones, the photos of the same thing, and the photos of people, I got a little under two hundred. Which was still very daunting. And since I have to upload photos five at a time, and I have to select them all individually, I really didn't want to do that. But eventually, today I just decided to narrow it down a LOT. Until finally I got these 11 photos. I can just tell you about some of the things I did without photos.

This is a photo of the Capitol Building. We took photos from the back, but we did not manage to go inside.

The Capitol Building.

Then we went to the Library of Congress, which was a beautiful building. With art everywhere and tons of symbolism. You need some sort of pass and a reason to go into the actual library, but there's a balcony where you can see it from the top, and we looked at it there. There were no photos allowed there though.

Really beautiful building.

The Lincoln Memorial.

"IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER"

The Washington Monument. It's VERY tall.

WWII Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

WWII Memorial.

We stayed in an adorable little apartment, because it wasn't much more than hotels in DC, and it had a kitchen, so that would save us money on going out for food. It was really cute and cozy.

We also saw the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, a statue of Einstein, the National Zoo, and two concerts. It was a wonderful trip, and I'm very glad we went.