Cooking Experiments

So far I have tried out a vegan mac n' cheese recipe that turned out great. Sly ate it no problem. She refused the chicken hot dogs, but ate the fake cheese. Go figure. And I officially love tofu for it's ability to trick my child.

I also made a bunch of gluten free gnocchi today. It took me about an hour. I had a lot of fun actually. Sly helped some with the rolling and such. I am very happy with the results. They are now in the freezer waiting on some culinary inspiration. I'm thinking about cooking some in some dairy-free butter with sage, salt and pepper. Maybe some basil too.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to start on the road to making gluten free pierogies. If nothing else, I'll make the fillings and get ready to really go the distance on Sunday. I'm thinking potato and onion for half of them and a fried cabbage and bacon filling for the others. I don't want to use the Daiya because I don't know how well it will turn out and I'd hate to waste that much effort. I suppose I could pick up some more nutritional yeast to make the potato and onion ones a little "cheesy".

I'm really enjoying getting to experiment with ingredients again. I am not quite brave enough to make bagels yet, but I've been eying some recipes. I may make some of my own bagels that are normal anyway because I've been toying with a basil and goat cheese idea.

More Food Stuff

Autumn always seems to bring out the ant in my typical grasshopper self. Today I made two pierogy fillings: fried cabbage with bacon and potato with onion. They are chilling in the fridge now because I think they will spoon easier when not hot. I also cooked some spaghetti sauce from scratch and put it into a quart jar to go in the freezer after it's done cooling all the way. I bought some extra tomatoes this week, but I didn't get the rest of the ingredients to make more spaghetti sauce so I'm just going to make this one jar this time. I mixed up and froze a half dozen eggs. I get them in the farm share and don't use a full dozen a week, so I'm trying to freeze the surplus for when the farm share ends. Other plans for the day include blanching tomatoes to chop and freeze. I need to rest a bit though because blanching keeps me on my feet with no rest.

I did other chores today too. I stripped and remade my bed. I did laundry. I did dishes. I still have plenty that need to be done...but I cleaned the cat box and swept and mopped the kitchen yesterday. I suppose I could probably get away with just a vacuum.