cramming

I managed to cram in a few more cooking projects before the end of the weekend, and I'm so glad I did! It's supposed to be awfully hot again this week, and I'm so glad I have a fridge full of food and won't need to turn on the oven or stove AT ALL.

Breakfast Sunday morning:

Homemade bread, toasted, with homemade jam. :)

Snack Sunday late morning:

I tried a green smoothie with kale, instead of my usual spinach. I think my stick blender is not powerful enough to handle the kale leaves. I'll have to stick to spinach from now on, until I get a new blender, that is! (This was still really good, even though it had some chewy bits in it!)

Sunday lunch:

Pesto pasta with white beans, broccoli, and a few leftover artichokes. Mmm.

Baking project:

Scones! I made the chocolate chip scone recipe from Joy of Vegan Baking, with only a few minor modifications: half whole-wheat pastry flour, (I find that sometimes all whole-wheat pastry flour makes scones too dense and dry,) and instead of the 1 cup of chocolate chips, I used 1/3 cup chips, 1/3 cup dried cranberries, and 1/3 cup sliced almonds. I had one of these at work for snack this afternoon, and they are FANTASTIC! Scones can often be too try and/or too dense -- this one was neither! Fluffy, "buttery," and perfect! Hooray!

Roasted chickpeas! These are SO, SO, SO amazing. Thank you, Courtney, for turning me on to the wonderful world of roasted chickpeas!

I had to quickly stuff these into a container and hide them Sunday night, or I think Dan (and I!) would have eaten the entire batch!

Remember my watermelon sorbet? It became unnecessarily hard in the freezer after a day or two, so I decided to thaw it out and refreeze it in popsicle form:

Just as refreshingly satisfying, but easier to get out of the popsicle mold than scraping the sorbet out of the container!

Part of dinner last night:

Dan and I were deep in conversation last night at dinner time, so I totally forgot to take a picture of our meal. We enjoyed a variation on this potato salad recipe. Since I had only two pounds of potatoes, instead of the three pounds called for in the recipe, and don't cook with alcohol, I made the following modifications to the dressing:
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
4 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons grainy mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup minced fresh chives
4 teaspoons minced fresh parsley
2/3 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon
Although not as pretty the next day, since the herbs had wilted and were no longer a vibrant green, the salad definitely had better flavor. I'd HIGHLY recommend this recipe -- a nice, basic, picnic-worthy, flavorful potato salad! We enjoyed this for dinner with a green salad with beets, and some curried tofu.

Brekafast this morning:

I made the most wonderful, all-in-one smoothie this morning. Mmmmm . . . plain yogurt, cold-press coffee concentrate, a frozen banana, some frozen raspberries, a couple tablespoons of Ghiradelli sweetened ground chocolate and cocoa, and a splash of almond milk. I might have to make this exact same concoction for breakfast tomorrow!! Delicious!

And last, my goofy, sleepy cat:


Off to eat some leftovers!