Monday, July 13, 2020

Polenta! Banana Puddin! Randomness!

I recently KonMari'd my cookbooks (in a larger effort to KonMari my entire house). I had hundreds of vegan cookbooks, but I scaled down to just the ones I thought I'd cook from in the future. Honestly, that's still several hundred. But there's room on my cookbook shelves for more books now, and there wasn't before.

To make extra sure I want to keep the ones I think I want to keep, I've decided to slowly work my way through all of them, cooking at least one recipe per book. This will take a few years, but that's okay! I started with Crazy Sexy Kitchen by Kris Carr, which I hadn't cooked from in a long time. I had polenta in my pantry that needed to be used and a can of whole tomatoes (plus a can of mushrooms). So I made the Sage Polenta with Nana's Marinara & Mushrooms. This was really yummy and felt very fancy. I much prefer fresh mushrooms, but since I'm limiting grocery trips, I find it's nice to have some canned ones in the pantry.


Here's an amazing bowl of Vegan Banana Puddin' from Imagine Vegan Cafe! I had this as dessert on a recent takeout night, and I posted the sandwich I had already. But I forgot to show you this puddin'. Imagine's banana puddin' is out of this world. They use coconut whip, so it's super light and fluffy. If I had to pick a favorite dessert, it would be banana puddin'. And no, there is no "g" in puddin'. By the way, I ate this in the car while I waited for my takeout to be ready. Nothing wrong with dessert first!


Here's a not-pretty-but-tasty Grilled Pesto Veggie Bowl using the last of leftover grilled veggies a few weeks ago. After we got our new grill, I made a LOT of pesto grilled veggies, and I was eating them in all kinds of ways for days. Served atop quinoa, steamed kale, and mung beans. The veggies were eggplant, squash, and zucchini. Pesto was made with basil from my porch.


I also had a lot of smoked tofu a few weeks ago that my dad sent me home with on my last visit to see my parents. I used some of that for Smoked Avocado Tofu Toast. It's hard to improve upon avo toast, but tofu manages to do just that!


And finally, here's another not-so-prettily plated meal! I made Grilled Kielbasa (using Simple Truth meatless kielbasa) with sauteed mushrooms and onions this weekend, served with my favorite summer side dish, Potato Salad.


2 comments:

Hillary said...

Winco has been out of smoked tofu, but I really, really want to try smoked tofu with avocado toast! I hope they restock soon!
That banana puddin looks INCREDIBLE!!!

Susan said...

Haha, I love that your take away from clearing out space on your shelf by getting rid of cookbooks is that now you have room for more. A person after my own heart!
I recently weeded out a few cookbooks and donated them. I find my recipe round up posts are a good way of working through the books I still have, so I can see if there is still more I want to make from them, and it encourages me to make stuff as well.

Love the look of that puddin!