Enviromom is hosting a little "meatless supper club" for the next 8 weeks and I have volunteered to be a part of it. The point of it is to reduce our reliance on meat for dinner because let's face it, meat production is hard on the environment. (You can read Enviromom's original post on the supper club
here). I've been cooking occasional meatless meals for a number of years now but am excited to get a little more focused on that again and share my experiences with you too. These first few weeks I'm going to re-visit some old favorites I haven't made in awhile. Later, I'll branch out and try some recipes from my newer cookbooks.
Tonight's meal was
Tofu with Peanut Ginger Sauce. The recipe comes from
Eating Well magazine. This is quick and easy to whip up and I love that it has so many veggies in it. This is how I love to get my veggies--as part of the main dish.
Basically you mix up the sauce ingredients in a little bowl and set it aside. Chop you scallions and mushrooms and break up your tofu.
Fry the tofu in a little olive oil until it is nice and toasty. After that it is very easy and it goes fast. You just add
all of the vegetables (the spinach looks like it will never incorporate because there is so much of it, but it does) and the sauce and stir it around over the heat until the spinach wilts a little. Done!
I served this over brown rice and with a green salad. I usually keep the side dishes very simple--especially when the main dish has so many veggies in it already. I always set out fruit as well--on this night it was some nice organic pears from Trader Joe's (my little boys eat them up!)
I made dessert too, just for fun.
Carrot Oatmeal cookies from
101 cookbooks. Yum and yum! These are super healthy--no sugar, no white flour--and they are full of good things: whole wheat, carrots, maple syrup, oats, and coconut oil (which is actually quite good for us--you can read about that in
Real Food or
Nourishing Traditions). These will be part of my regular cookie repertoire from now on.
Some thoughts:
:: Ben and Faith both ate this dinner up; Faith loves this dish in particular (they're both 16).
:: The little boys (age 4 and 2) not so much. Although I will say, Rainer ate some, especially the rice. Dieter ate a mushroom and a piece of tofu, which he did NOT like.
::Both little boys ate fruit and a selection of vegetables from the salad.
::Everyone loved the cookies and drank milk.
Having both teens and little ones makes me a bit calmer about the fussy eater thing. I think no adult likes to see a small child not eating his dinner (I don't), but for years now my philosophy has been to keep cooking healthy meal after healthy meal and keep plunking it down on the table with fruit and salad and not buy junk and the healthy eating will follow. I have to say our teens are pretty healthy eaters and eat more foods than some other teens they know.
More meatless meals here:
rustic lentil soupcheese fondueblack bean enchiladas and etc.
zucchini quesadillasgrilled veggie sandwiches
Sunday night I decided to try a spinach souffle for the first time and I was thrilled with how it turned out. Look how pretty! Ken likes to eat steak and I have been making an effort to buy steak more often. With it, sometimes he likes those little Stouffer's spinach souffles they sell in the frozen foods aisle, and while they are pretty good, I decided I'd really rather make a homemade one. The thing about souffle (I found out) is that it takes 3 steps: cooking a white sauce on the stove, separating eggs, and getting out the mixer and whipping the egg whites (then folding it all together and baking it in the oven--so I guess that's 4 steps). That's a lot for someone who rarely makes side dishes, but I was so happy with the results. This looked and tasted delicious. (I followed the recipe in How to Cook Everything. Love that Mark Bittman).
I also roasted tomatoes for the first time. We still have so many coming in from the garden. These are a little under-roasted, but I put another batch in for roasting slowly overnight (at the lowest oven setting) and those were quite condensed and yummy. So this morning I had roasted tomatoes with my daily poached egg and it gave me a lot of energy throughout the day. The magic of fruits and veggies . . .
Also, you know how leftover baked goods always taste better the next day? I very much enjoyed a cupcake and a half this evening and I thought it worth mentioning that I used this recipe for the chocolate cupcakes. They have a sandy/velvety texture and a dark chocolate flavor that I find very appealing. And I so liked making these from scratch--they rose up and had pretty domed cracked tops, unlike cake mix cupcakes which always seem to fall.
And finally, Rain found a link for the game some of you were asking about. It's here (scroll down, it's at the bottom of the page, "Pair Discovery"). This photo shows how Dieter set up the next game--all the "hole" tiles are very far apart from the solid ones! I like seeing what he does when left to his own devices . . .
