Mac & Cabbage Polonaise: This is a Polish-inspired baked mac and cheese, with a sorghum flour roux-based cheese sauce, macaroni, and cabbage, all topped with a crispy cheesy crumb. I halved the pasta, and as a result also used only 2/3 of the sauce to get my perfect pasta to sauce ratio. The recipe calls for a head of cabbage, and I used half a large head... there is always so much variation in sizes with vegetables, but this seemed right for the rest of the amounts. The instructions say to make the mac and cheese first, then the cabbage, but I made the cabbage first, then the sauce, then the pasta and stirred it all together. The pasta is layered with some cheddar cheese in the middle (I used Daiya), and then topped with more cheese and the topping. The mix of creamy sauce and strong cheddar was great!
Rating: :D
Quinoa Tabbouleh: I had some parsley and mint I needed to use up, so tabbouleh was on the cars. This uses quinoa rather than bulgur to make it gluten free. I only had 3/4 cup of dry quinoa, rather than a full cup, so I slightly decreased the other ingredients as well. I also decreased the amount of oil in the dressing. I served this with some salad, hummus, and a Fry's Falafel Burger.
Rating: :)
Late Summer Salad with Creamy Dill Dressing: I love dill, so I was excited to make this salad, but I was a bit underwhelmed. I was making a single serving for my own lunch to use up some silken tofu, so I made a third or a recipe (I had 150g tofu). I do often find that I prefer silken tofu dressings to have time to sit overnight for the best flavour, so perhaps that would improve it next time.
Rating: :|
Drenched Pad-Thai Salad: Full disclosure, this is meant to be entirely raw zucchini noodles, but I am just not a fan. So I used some cooked a cooled Pad Thai noodles (a 200g packet), though in this case I did also still add one small zucchini that I spiralised. Zucchini is not pasta, everything is better with carbs! This salad is topped with a beautiful five-spiced tofu, and grilled pineapple slices from a can. The marinade uses the juice from the tin of pineapples. To make the dressing, you mix leftover marinade with peanut butter and lime. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup of the marinade for the dressing, but I had just under so I topped it up with a little bit of orange juice. The salad also has fresh mango in it, so it is lovely for summer.
Rating: :)
Cheesy Broccoli Soup: This soup is thick, rich and very cheesy. I made a half recipe for two lunch servings. The entire recipe serves eight, and if you were serving with anything else I would say that was right, it is so filling! It uses cashew cream, loads of nutritional yeast, and there is also the option to add some shredded cheddar (I used FYH shreds). This soup also thickens up a lot as it cools, so leftovers would be great as a dip or sauce for vegetables.
Rating: :)
Pina Colada Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting: I have blogged these cupcakes before, but wanted to update with my frosting experiments. The frosting in the book uses a lot of coconut oil, and I made it like that once for a bake sale but it didn't set up well enough to pipe, only to smear. And there was so much leftover. Since then I made it a few times with a VWAV coconut frosting. But I recently remade these using the original recipe, but subbing the coconut oil for half cream cheese and half shortening, using only 1T of pineapple juice (rather than 2). The icing was still soft, but I could pipe it and it set up well in the fridge. So if you are adverse to coconut oil, try it this way instead!
Rating: :)
Pineapple Carrot Cake: I really love carrot cake, and made this for a friend's birthday. But unfortunately it didn't turn out great texture wise. Thankfully I only made a half recipe to make a single layer. I baked it for 35 minutes as directed, a skewer came out clean, but it was still kind of underdone and a bit smooshy in the middle. I would suggest baking for longer, regardless of the skewer. At least the taste was still good. There is a recipe for cream cheese frosting to go with it, that is full of coconut oil. I just made an easy frosting using 1/2 cup of cream cheese (Tofutti is my favourite), with a scoop of sifted icing sugar (I don't like things too sweet), and a splash of milk. Perfect. Unfortunately my cream cheese had frozen a bit a the back of the fridge, and thawed with a slightly lumpy texture, but it still tasted great. I ended up putting the rest of this cake in the freezer and eating it frozen, it was still soft enough to do this!
Rating: :|
Banana Berry Cobbler: I made a half recipe of this and got four serves, using a mix of frozen blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. The filling was good, but the topping had a strong baking powder taste (a full recipe calls for a whole TBS, so I used 1.5tsp for my half batch), and wasn't very sweet. Improved with ice cream!
Rating: :|
Chocolate Peanut Butter Green Smoothie: It's cute that this recipe says it makes four serves, because I made the whole thing and it was one actual serve. A simple blend of spinach, frozen banana, cocoa, and peanut butter. The recipe calls for cold water, but I used oat milk to make it creamier and to get a calcium boost in. I also halved the amount of vanilla and agave called for.
Rating: :)
Cute Kitty Photo of the Post
Dim Sim had her liver biopsy on Tuesday. The results are back, and unfortunately they came back as most likely small cell lymphoma. There is still a small question mark, so I have requested an addition test that takes a couple of days to come back. Small cell lymphoma is a type of cancer. It is a different type of lymphoma than the one Sahara had, and has a much less intensive chemo protocol (all done with tablets at home), and has a fairly high remission rate, so that is something. But cancer is never good. My poor baby. Here she is sleeping yesterday after coming home, you can see part of her little shaved tummy peeking out.
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