May, 2019
Compared to the previous post, point by point:
- I still shop about twice a week.
- Still not cooking greens in batches; taste better just cooked, and not worth the trouble to batch-cook.
- The concept of buying a group of vegetables we like (from a generic custom shopping list), keeping up with staples like rice and beans, and making up meals as I go, is still working for me.
- Batch cooking rice
- Batch cooking granola (no-oil), but now adding 1 cup of chopped pecans for 2 lb. oats.
- Batching date paste, 2 lb dates, seeded, soaked at least 2 hours or overnight, and processed to a paste. Be sure you get a seed out of every date; my cuisinart almost jumped off the counter when I left one in by accident.
- Mushroom gravy still 2 cups at a time and occasionally.
- Shiloh Farms pita is still my go-to snack.
- Canned beans: cannellini, black, red kidney, and garbanzo.
- Ed batches Yonanas, new favorite is banana and cherries, in the freezer in glass pyrex bowls with reusable plastic covers.
- I use Dr. Bronner’s bar soap, which comes in a paper wrap, for dishes; it’s available at Whole Foods. I choose to compromise with my husband Ed as he prefers the plastic squeeze bottle dish soap when he does the dishes. We bartered our dishwasher away when we downsized to our townhouse.
New Favorite Salad Dressing – Savory not Sweet
The best thing that happened over the past few months is that I have a recipe for savory salad dressing that is based on cashew nuts. Trying to completely leave out nuts was causing me to avoid salads! Not good. There are lots of recipes online, but the one I adapted tastes like a Caesar salad dressing, and I use my Kon Riko Greek seasoning, which is the flavor I like for salad dressing.
1 cup raw cashews, soaked overnight, or soaked 30 minutes to 1 hour in water which has come to a boil removed from the heat. That’s the main thing to make the dressing creamy, but I used 3/4 cup water, 6 Tbsp. lemon juice, 4 Tbsp. nutritional yeast, 2 Tbsp. dijon mustard, and 1 garlic clove sliced thin. Blend it all together until smooth.
I plan to make short updates as new ideas come and either work out and stay, or don’t work out and go. For example, making my own pita bread was not successful. It just didn’t taste as good as Shiloh Farms pita.
