I’m going to a cookout today, and I decided to make an asparagus salad to bring. Here are the raw materials.
First I steamed the asparagus (after breaking off the ends of the stalks). I let the water come to a boil, and I put the thicker stalks into the pan first so they would be submerged and cook a little more than the thinner ones. Then I put all the others in, put the cover on and steamed for about 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes I took the pan off the heat and put in the sink and began cooling the asparagus by running cold water on it and putting some ice cubes in the pan. Then I dried a bit with paper towels, put half of it in the serving dish and made the dressing.
I didn’t measure the dressing ingredients. I just used the juice of 1 lemon and chopped up what looked like enough of the dill and red onion and mixed all those up (along with a few sprinkles of salt), with some Vegenaise.
I poured the dressing over the first layer of asparagus and then put the rest in and poured the remaining dressing over that, sprinkled on a little salt, ground on some black pepper and garnished it with some sprigs of dill.
Then I put the cover on the serving dish and put it in the fridge where the salad chills awaiting its trip to the cookout.
Tags:
asparagus,
herbs,
recipes,
salad,
vegan mayonnaise
The main news here is that spring semester is over. Woo hoo! The last week of it had some pretty intense writing (and freaking out), but I got the paper done , did a presentation and got an A in the class. It’s been a week now, and I’m still reveling in being done! At least for now. I need four more classes to get my degree. But still – four more classes – that’s not many at all.
Right now I’m in Rockport with Blue, visiting my mom and Andrea (my sister) and the cats of course. I brought Woody’s ashes with me to give to Andrea. Sweetie and I still miss Woody, but she was my sister’s cat for years before that, and besides, with the ashes of Max (my dog) and Trinka (my cat) on the fireplace mantle, I feel like that’s enough. I don’t think I will be saving the ashes of all my pets for years to come. I mean, it could get out of control. I did put Woody’s personalized ceramic bowl on the mantle though.
During the last few weeks of the semester, I gave myself something of a pass on working out, planning to train for a 5K and hit it hard once I was “free” again. I pictured myself running fast and feeling great. It didn’t really end up going that way. Monday I didn’t have any running buddies so I ended up walking (I ran for like two minutes somewhere in there) the 2.2 mile path at work, then Tuesday I went to Power Sculpt class (more on that in another post), Wednesday I bagged out, but on Thursday I did run-walk intervals for 20 minutes on the ‘mill and 10 minutes on the recumbent bike, and that felt more like it as far a training for a 5K. That is, training to *run* a 5K. I have to do some more cardio this weekend too…
I also kind of took a break from cooking the last couple weeks of the semester, but last week, I got back into it. I guess it’s fortunate that I love vegetables so much since they’re naturally vegan and healthy. Monday night I made of my favorite combinations: braised leek, Swiss chard and corn served over soba noodles, seasoned with roasted sesame oil and nutritional yeast.
I also adore the seitan made by The Bridge, (admittedly, I haven’t tried any other brands yet), but I hadn’t had any for a while when I finally made some on Thursday. I came home from my workout and slapped together an easy but yummy dinner: pan-fried seitan, Road’s End Shells & Chreese, and steamed asparagus. It was all delicious, and especially great to have seitan again. I’m going to make sure buy some more for the coming week. A friend mine who tried seitan after she learned how much I love it commented on Facebook that she’d like to love it but she really doesn’t. Oh well, more for me then!
Tags:
animals,
asparagus,
corn,
leeks,
nutritional yeast,
pasta,
recipes,
Rockport,
running,
school,
seitan,
sesame,
Swiss chard,
working out
We’re having a cold snap here in Connecticut. The weather and the presence of over-ripe bananas seemed to indicate the time was right for making banana bread. Sweetie will often do me the favor of eating the over-ripe bananas (which are way too sweet and yucky for me), but this time I didn’t want him to so I put a note on the bananas in the morning before leaving for work.
After work, I came home and cooked up some red quinoa and steamed some beautiful asparagus for our dinner.
After we ate up that yummy goodness, I started in on the banana bread. I adapted the recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book. I just switch Ener-G Egg Replacer for eggs. It’s easily the best banana bread I’ve had, and it’s also quite nutritious. I admit only three bananas were not enough make up the two full cups of banana pulp the recipe calls for so last night’s loaf wasn’t quite as good as usual, but Sweetie and I managed to put away a good chunk of it anyway.
Tags:
asparagus,
baking,
banana bread,
grains,
recipes
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