We experimented with the juicer this weekend. We tried pear juice and it was a hit with everyone. I do have a older not very well made juicer and it left behind ALOT of pulp, this is why I wanted a newer one. The new juicer did a fabulous job of juicing all the fruit, out of 6 pears I had maybe half a pear in pulp. Fantastic! When I did the grocery shopping this weekend, I stocked up on oranges, apples and a pineapple. We will do a bit of testing this week, I am hoping to get a leaf or two of spinach into one test. Will have to be something green that we are juicing so the picky son won't notice. Hehehehe.
And finally to let you know about the "vegetarian" dinner I was served at my husband's company christmas party. The first course was a salad with a side of potato based something which clearly had bacon in it, pass, but the salad was good. The second course was a mushroom soup in a broth base, I have never had a mushroom soup in anything but a cream base. This was very, very good and I am going to be doing some searching on the internet for a recipe today. Then we had a sorbet to cleanse the palate. Our main course was a baby carrot and two asparagus spears on top of mashed potatoes and then some sort of eggplant thingy in a pastry shell. Absolutely no taste, no spice, no herbs, no flavour whatsoever. It was very disappointing, I tried three bites to see if it got better, but no such luck! I was hoping for a risotto, pasta, lasagna, something with flavour, sadly no.
Yesterday I was able to carve out a bit of time to do some cooking for the week. I found two soup recipes in my "1000 Vegetarian Recipes" by Carol Gelles. One was a Lentil Cauliflower Soup and then a Creamy French Lentil Soup, both sounded yummy. When I cook, I sort of follow a recipe, so this time I did a combination of the two. The combo soup turned out great and I was able to freeze two meals worth. The second thing I tried to make was seitan, I got the recipe from http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=112. It looked very easy, so away I went. This was my first time making seitan and I had never tasted it before, so I am not sure how I did. My version didn't quite look like the pictures I had seen, as for the flavour, it was good. I fried a couple of pieces for dinner that night and had it with mushroom gravy, rice and carrots.
So far this week I have planned:
- Roasted Vegetable Lasagna
- Pizza night
- Soup/Stew night with some good french bread (it's cold outside, good hearty soup)
- Seitan and mushroom Stroganoff
