My usual grocery delivery arrived this morning, and as before, I had not ordered quite so much. The freezer is full to bursting at the moment and I have to keep rearranging things in order to make room for the continuous tidal wave of apples from our tree, which is producing a bumper crop this year! My hubby is going to have to start giving them away soon, but the trouble is, everyone else is in the same boat! He suggested I might make some more chutney, and this is certainly an idea. The last lot I made was delicious.
Here’s the prep done.
I made some more of the cauliflower and quinoa lunch bowls, which are really a substantial salad also containing chick peas and some cashews, with a delicious honey and ginger dressing. This was my Recipe of the Week a while back. It’s a good standby because it keeps a good few days in the fridge and when I haven’t got time to do a meal, I can just whip it out and we’re ready to eat.
I’ve plated up a couple of portions ready for our lunch, and the rest is in the two square boxes ready for the fridge. When cooking grains or legumes for a recipe, I always do a double quantity and freeze the rest, which saves a lot of time. I was just refrigerating them in the early days, but I often found them at the back of the fridge, and going bad, so I’ve found the freezer to be the best option. In the centre of the photo, the three ziplock bags (recycled – came with cheese and other stuff from the supermarket – I just wash and reuse them) contain these extra portions.
Last weekend I used up the remaining mushrooms by making a garlic sauce to go with them and they were delicious – my hubby said they were like the garlic mushrooms they serve as a starter in a restaurant! Doing a bit more than they give you as a starter, they make a very nice Sunday night supper, and it’s a good way to use up any leftover mushrooms. With the new delivery I sliced them ready for use, and they are now wrapped up in their flour sack towel which keeps them lovely and fresh all week if necessary. Mushrooms in plastic are a no-no – they go slimy and revolting. You have to allow the poor little things to breathe a bit!
In the afternoon I pressure-cooked the veggie trimmings to make some nice stock to last the week. This is now in a bottle in the fridge.
I also made a double quantity of the honey and ginger vinaigrette needed for the cauli and quinoa recipe. I put the excess in a squeezy bottle ready to add to salads during the week. It’s very good.
Since I needed to make almond milk today, I thought I’d put that in the picture too. It is being strained through a nut bag after being blitzed in my high speed blender. I use 1 cup raw almonds (shelled, but with the brown skins still on) and 4 cups filtered water. I used to make the almond milk with blanched almonds but I find the raw ones make the milk more creamy (and not such a bright white colour either), and you get more goodness from the skins, with the added bonus that they are quite a bit cheaper too. I buy them in bulk. Once I have squeezed as much milk as I can from the pulp, I use the pulp to cook with in various recipes. I normally make almond milk either every day or every other day depending on how much we’ve used, and I can’t keep up with the amount of pulp I’m generating, so unfortunately I end up throwing quite a bit away, which rather goes against the grain. I need to find some more recipes to use it, but I don’t always have the time to do huge amounts of cooking, let alone having sufficient energy! Doing what my hubby calls my “liquids” – he makes it sound like the product of a mad scientist’s laboratory! – takes up quite a lot of time. I do my rehydration/electrolyte drink daily, as well as two sorts of kefir now (dairy and almond milk), the almond milk nearly every day, and the kombucha every week, so it’s all fairly labour intensive.
I am buying a lot less dairy milk than I used to. We are still not 100% plant based because I haven’t yet managed to get round to perfecting a decent recipe for almond milk yoghurt. The problem with nut milk is that although it will ferment well, for yoghurt or for kefir, the process will not thicken it. With the kefir this doesn’t matter because you drink it anyway, but for yoghurt you have to add something to thicken it. My first attempt involved adding agar agar (a natural gelling substance derived from seaweed) which is quite a bit more powerful than gelatine, and the yoghurt came out like really stiff blancmange – memories of “shape” pudding when I was a child! I’ve been too busy to settle down and try some different methods, so in the meantime I am continuing to make yoghurt and kefir from normal dairy milk.
