A Little Time on My Hands

Since I am no longer teaching, I don't spend the weekends doing newsletters! Instead, I can spend the time shopping for local produce at the farmer's market and then making delicious and often time-consuming meals like the ones that follow.
This first picture is from Veganomicon. It is the Corn and Summer Squash Bisque. It was completely delicious! With roasted yellow peppers, yellow summer squash and sweet corn, and coconut milk (blended with my handy-dandy immersion blender) it was heavenly. However, the TWO red chilies, three garlic and one onion also gave it a bit of a kick! I ended up scooping out as much of the red chilies as I could, but it still made me cough with the fumes as it cooked! I think that the peppers I picked up were too big. Next time, I'll just add a pinch of ground cayenne so that I can more fully taste the sweetness of this summer treat. A hint of maple syrup, lime juice and freshly ground nutmeg (that's what's on top in the photo, not pepper!) made the flavors sing. Three stars! (It would be four if it were less spicy). Oh, and it took about two hours to make, not the 1 hour and 20 minutes suggested.
Next up... sushi again! I was cleaning out my pantry (more on that later) and found an old can of inari sushi pockets. There are simply marinated and fried tofu pockets. I filled them with seasoned sushi rice pretty quickly. Yum! Four stars!







This is what the underside of the inari look like. It stays open and sets on the plate. Great finger food! I might make this for my next party.










The inari were a nice counterpart to the sweet and tangy Japanese eggplant, broiled with a miso-sake sauce (courtesy of FatFree Vegan), which I actually made for the first time last summer, as well as the Kung Pao Seitan, from Vegan Planet. We both just love this kung pao, and this time we used pre-made seitan (we can get it at a local store now- woohoo!), and it turned out great. Spicy, sweet, and mild - it was a yummy Asian night!

And, as I promised, more on why I was organizing my pantry.... A few weeks ago, my parents came down to help us work on the house. Well, I got the great idea to clean out a coat closet, add shelves, and turn it into this great storage closet for all our (my) appliances and extra cookware/bake ware that was cluttering up the rest of the kitchen and our poor pantry! So, here it is. It might look kind of cluttered itself from this photo, but it really is organized... I promise! I feel like I have a new kitchen now!