More Food Stuff

The second sleeve of the Jaeger cardigan still slogs along a few rows at a time. Nothing new and exciting to see on that front.

I got behind my predicted schedule today due to lunch out with my mom and then retelling each other old family stories for a couple of hours afterward, so the fruit balls aren't done. They're chilling in the refrigerator, waiting to see if I successfully made fake powdered sugar from erythritol - as soon as the white cloud in the blender settles enough to open it again without inhaling another lungful.

I don't have a food processor here, so I also used the blender to make the 'dough.' I had a blender with a food processor attachment, but I plundered it for the house on Bainbridge Island.

The blender worked fine. I processed in small batches, each ingredient separately. Then I cut them together with a spatula and a knife. I used the spatula to smush in the orange juice until I had a well-blended base studded with small chunks of fruit. Based on the photos with the recipe and the amount of processing called for, I think I got a very similar result to that intended, though it was more work.

I keep finding things, ingredients, I don't have. While I experimented with a non-dairy Vegan Macaroni and Not-cheese recipe and Spousal Unit worked on the Hashed Brussel Sprouts, I realized we had neither paprika nor poppy seeds.

Now, we're not in this place much, but most of our time here comes over the holidays and we cook and bake a lot. How come I still lack some basic ingredients and tools after several years?

Anyway, I used nutmeg as well as stone ground prepared mustard and lots of garlic in the pasta. I'll need to experiment with this more as the bland but dominant nutritional yeast and the whole wheat and flaxseed pasta we like need way more seasoning. For the sprouts we used fennel seed, which went quite well with the lemon juice and vegetable. I may prefer fennel seed to the recipe's poppy seed.

A couple days ago I cooked broccoflower with a bit of lemon juice. Based on these two experiences, cruciferous vegetables really brighten up and taste fresh and crisp, not over done even when soft, with the added lemon.

As soon as the pasta came out of the oven I put in a dish of butternut squash and yellow potatoes coated in garlic olive oil and rosemary. We'll have the roasted vegetables tomorrow.

I did find some tapioca flour today. Yipee. The small health food store here now carries a large part of the line of flours from Bob's Red Mill. So tomorrow we'll also have Lemon Olive Oil Cookies, or some attempt at them.

You know, it's really a lot of fun to photograph food. You get to play with arranging things that have interesting shapes and colors. And things look good from several angles. No model needed.

Still, I'd like to spend tomorrow making some progress on the knitting - while filling up on tea and cookies. The weather prediction is suitably wet for that plan.

Comments

[Birdsong]

Sounds like you have been on a regular food adventure! I am wishing for more time for holiday cooking, but have to save that thought til Sunday, when DD and I will be doing a cookie-baking day, which will have to do double-duty as food-prep day for our family holiday dinner on Christmas Eve.

[RobinH]

It all looks lovely! And I'm with Birdsong- I'm being thwarted from holiday baking...just finishing up the latest 9" of snowfall (on top of the nearly 2 feet we've already had- and it's not even winter yet! Insane.) But everything takes longer with snow.