Tofu scramble

1-block medium tofu (or firm) crumbled-- press out the moisture between two clean kitchen towels
1-can black beans drained and rinsed and heated to a warm temp.
Turmeric
Nutritional yeast (can buy in health food store, is NOT the same as bread yeast)
Vegetable stock or water
Salt and pepper to taste

In a skillet, use the stock/water as you would oil and start to heat it. Add your
tofu crumbles and cook as you would scrambled eggs, adding 1 scoop nutritional yeast and 1 teaspoon turmeric. When bright yellow and fluffy, add your heated beans and season to taste. If you feel it is a bit dry, add a bit more stock/water.

I have made hundreds of variations on this recipe...I added sliced mushrooms to the cooking water and left out the black beans, throw in some diced left-over baked potato, add onions, veggies, left-over chili...it makes a great breakfast, or add chili/taco/burrito seasoning instead of turmeric and have a
taco.

Veggie salad (also vegan)

1 box-Chick pea pasta -curly or other shape (if you can't find chick pea use something fortified with extra protein) I buy mine at Sprouts.
1-can corn kernels (frozen and thawed would taste better)
1- can black beans (you could use white beans or navy if you prefer)
1/2 chopped red onion (small dice)
1/2 chopped green pepper-medium dice
1 chopped and pealed cucumber-medium dice

Cook the pasta according to package instructions then drain. Add your corn to a hot hot hot non-stick skillet and try to get good toasty color. Drain and rinse your black beans...all other beans could just be drained.

Chop your veggies (you could add others if you think they would mix well), and add all of your ingredients together in a bowl.

Add any kind of dressing you would like...I use a light orange juice based dressing on mine, but any kind of vinegar based dressing would be good as well.

Okay, I split the meat up and made two dishes.
First, a form of Shepard's pie with ground chicken, a little cream sauce that I whipped up, carrots, and peas topped with potatoes.

Next, ground chicken taco meat because I can't live without spice.

:linecook:

This is what I call a "cheaters risotto" to make with leftover cooked brown rice. The recipe is for a squash risotto but I've done it with pea puree, carrot puree, pretty much any veg you want to cook down and make creamy.

Cheater’s Risotto

• 4 c cooked brown rice
• 4c cooked and mashed butternut squash
• 1 leek, sliced in thin rounds
• ½ c coconut milk
• ¼ c vegetable broth
• Olive oil
• Dry or fresh sage (to taste)
• Salt and pepper (to taste)
In a large sauté pan, put in a little bit of olive oil and bring to heat over medium high. Add in leeks and stir. Sauté for 3-4 minutes and then add in brown rice. Stir well. Add in squash, broth, coconut milk, and spices. Stir well. Season to taste. Remove from heat when rice is warm and becoming soft. (About 8-10 minutes)

Some make-your-own veggie burgers:

Falafel Burger
• 1.5 c cooked garbanzo beans
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic minced
• 3 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375
Pulse garbanzos in a food processor. Stir in onion, garlic, parsley, cumin, turmeric, baking powder, bread crumbs, and a dash of salt and pepper.
Shape into golf ball size balls.
Oil baking pan and place falafel balls in rows in baking pan. Flatten them slightly. Bake 10-15 minutes on each side.

Red Bean and Wild Mushroom Burger
• 1 small red onion minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme
• 2 tbsp fresh sage
• 2c c wild mushrooms, chopped
• 2c red kidney beans, cooked
• 1 1/2c cooked wild rice
• 1 egg

Sauté onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add in mushrooms, and ½ thyme and sage.
In food processor, pulse cooked red beans and rice until well blended. Toss in remaining thyme, and sage. Pulse again until incorporated.
Put ¾ of mushroom mixture into a large bowl and mix in all other ingredients.
Form into patties and cook on skillet 3-4 min on each side until browned and cooked through.
Top with remaining sautéed mushrooms

Quinoa and Kale Burger
• 2c cooked quinoa
• 2c cooked garbanzo beans
• 2c raw kale, washed and chopped into small pieces
• 2 tbsp tahini paste
• 1 tbsp braggs liquid aminos
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ¼ c fresh cilantro or basil or a bit of each
• 1 egg


Put garbanzo beans and kale in food processor and blend until smooth. Add in quinoa and blend in briefly.

Place mixture in bowl and add all other spices.

Form into patties and cook in a skillet with just a touch of olive oil to prevent sticking. Cook over medium high heat for about 2 minutes on each side, until browned.

Enjoy as is or top with slices of tomato, chunks of avocado, and or sprouts.

BUMP! ......

you may want to half this recipe...its great for breakfast or dinner!

This is super easy
 

Recipe
 

I am looking for a fun recipe for sweet potatoes.

I thought about mashed and roasted but both seem boring. I thought about soup but that may be too advanced for me.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Sweet potato soup would be easy I think.

Roast your sweet potatoes, skin them, and purée with a bit of chicken stock.

Add the purée to a pot of chicken or veggie stock, add whatever cooked veggies you like, season with a little pumpkin pie spice, heat and at the last minute add a bit of cream or half and half.

Yumbolicious!

That sounds yummy. I will try to make it.
Thank you Mrs. Tinkerbelly.

Ms. Tinkerbelly,

The soup is turning out good. I added carrots, new potatoes, onions, chicken stock, curry, ginger, nutmeg, oregano, sage, and three bayleaves. I will finish it with cream like you suggested.

Thank you, Chad

Recipes
 

I am going to attempt to make Sauerbraten in just 3 days. I will need to make short cuts in the marinade time.
A roast of beef takes a 14 day marinade so I need to use less meat to start.

Ingredients
2 cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, additional for seasoning meat
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
6 whole cloves
12 juniper berries
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 (3 1/2 to 4-pound) bottom round
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/3 cup sugar
18 dark old-fashioned gingersnaps (about 5 ounces), crushed
1/2 cup seedless raisins, optional
Directions

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/a...mp_next_recipe

Squash
 

I made this the other night and it was delicious!

1 Zucchini Squash
1 Yellow Squash
Green or yellow onions (I used green onions)
Fresh Dill
Butter

I sliced the squash, layered it in a pyrex dish with the onions, dill, and butter on each layer. Baked it for 350 (F) for 20 minutes. Added a little salt and pepper and that was it.

It was easy to make and so good.

One night I sautéed it in a pan, but it's easier to just put it in a baking dish and put it in the oven.

:bow:

Recipe
 

I plan to make butternut squash soup tomorrow so I have looked at some on-line recipes that seem easy. It looks like roasting the veggies makes the best soup.

Any tips or favorite recipes out there?

:linecook:

A Salad for When You’re Out of Lettuce
 

A Salad for When You’re Out of Lettuce
by Melissa Clark

This starchy grain bowl makes use of those sturdy vegetables in your fridge.

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All those long-lasting, juicy vegetables in my fridge — the celery, radishes, fennel, turnips, carrots — have come in handy these past weeks (four, but, hey, who’s counting?). They’ve kept me rich in salad when the lettuces run out between market runs.

The trick is to turn these sturdy roots practically into gossamer — or to at least slice them as thinly as you can, either with a knife or mandoline — so they act lettuce-like in the salad bowl. My $30 Benriner has never seen so much action; I’ve been keeping it out on the counter.

I’ve also been adding thinly sliced, marinated vegetables to anything that needs some verve, like a starchy grain salad.

I like to start with freshly cooked grains, which can absorb maximum dressing when they’re still warm. But leftover grains work well, too, especially if you let them come to room temperature if they’ve been in the fridge, or zap them in the microwave for a minute. You want them warm, not hot. For one person, use about a cup of cooked grains, and you can scale up from there.

Put any grain you like (rice, farro, bulgur, millet, quinoa, fonio) into a bowl, and toss it with lemon juice or vinegar, salt and lots of good olive oil. Keep tasting it: It will need more salt and oil than you might think, but exact amounts will depend on how you like it.

Do the same thing in another bowl with your veggies (also about a cup of sliced vegetables per person). Toss them with acid, salt, pepper and oil to taste. If you want to add a grated garlic clove, a pinch of red-pepper flakes or ground spices (coriander would be nice), and a tablespoon or so of chopped herbs, all the better. A tablespoon of sliced onion or scallion would be good to add here, too.

When the vegetables and grains both taste delicious on their own, you can introduce them. I piled mine into a shallow bowl, drizzled more olive oil on top, and ate it with toast and some anchovies on the side. But a jammy egg, or a smear of goat cheese, would also be excellent. Or eat it by itself, because it really doesn’t need embellishment.

The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow
 

The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow

By J. Kenji López-Alt

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With most of us quarantined in our homes, chances are you’ve been reacquainting yourself with the forgotten spices and fusty beans from the depths of your pantry. But how fusty is too fusty? When is the right time to throw something out? And what about fresh ingredients? If I’m trying to keep supermarket trips to a minimum, how long can my eggs, dairy and produce keep?

Here’s the first thing you should know: Expiration dates are not expiration dates.

Food product dating, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls it, is completely voluntary for all products (with the exception of baby food, more on that later). Not only that, but it has nothing to do with safety. It acts solely as the manufacturer’s best guess as to when its product will no longer be at peak quality, whatever that means. Food manufacturers also tend to be rather conservative with those dates, knowing that not all of us keep our pantries dark and open our refrigerators as minimally as necessary. (I, for one, would never leave the fridge door open for minutes at a time as I contemplate what to snack on.)

Let’s start with the things you definitely don’t have to worry about. Vinegars, honey, vanilla or other extracts, sugar, salt, corn syrup and molasses will last virtually forever with little change in quality. Regular steel-cut or rolled oats will last for a year or so before they start to go rancid, but parcooked oats (or instant oats) can last nearly forever. (Same with grits versus instant grits.)

White flour is almost certainly fine to use, no matter its age. Whole-wheat and other whole-grain flours can acquire a metallic or soapy odor within a few months. This whiter-equals-longer rule of thumb is true for nonground grains as well. Refined white rice, for example, will last for years, while brown rice will last only for months.

This is because unrefined grains contain fats, and fats are the first thing to go off when it comes to dry pantry staples. Tree nuts, typically high in fat, will go rancid within a few months in the pantry. (Store them in the freezer to extend that to a few years.)

For things that go stale, it’s the opposite: Shelf-stable supermarket breads made with oils (and preservatives) can stay soft for weeks in the fridge, but the lean, crusty sourdough from the corner bakery will be stale by the next day and probably start to mold before the week is up. (I slice and freeze my fancy bread, taking it out a slice at a time to toast.)

Dried beans and lentils will remain safe to eat for years after purchase, but they’ll become tougher and take longer to cook as time goes on. If you aren’t sure how old your dried beans are, avoid using them in recipes that include acidic ingredients like molasses or tomatoes. Acid can drastically increase the length of time it takes beans to soften.

So long as there is no outward sign of spoilage (such as bulging or rust), or visible spoilage when you open it (such as cloudiness, moldiness or rotten smells), your canned fruits, vegetables and meats will remain as delicious and palatable as the day you bought them for years (or in the case of, say, Vienna sausages at least as good as they were to begin with). The little button on the top of jarred goods, which will bulge if there has been significant bacterial action inside the jar, is still the best way to tell if the contents are going to be all right to eat. Depending on storage, that could be a year or a decade. Similarly, cans of soda will keep their fizz for years, glass bottles for up to a year and plastic bottles for a few months. (Most plastics are gas-permeable.)

Oils, even rancidity-prone unrefined oils, stored in sealed cans are nearly indestructible as well (as evidenced by the two-gallon tin of roasted sesame oil that I’ve been working through since 2006). Oils in sealed glass bottles, less so. Oil in open containers can vary greatly in shelf life, but all will last longer if you don’t keep them near or above your stovetop, where heat can get to them.

How do you tell if your oil is good? The same way you would with most foods: Follow your nose. Old oil will start to develop metallic, soapy or in some cases — such as with canola oil — fishy smells. Don’t trust your nose? Put a drop on your fingertip and squeeze it. Rancid oil will feel tacky as opposed to slick.

Also from the oil-and-vinegar aisle: Salad dressings will last for months or over a year in the fridge, especially if they come in bottles with narrow squeeze openings (as opposed to open-mouthed jars).

Mustard lasts forever. Ketchup will start to turn color before the year is out, but will still remain palatable. Contrary to popular belief, mayonnaise — especially when it doesn’t contain ingredients like fresh lemon juice or garlic — has an exceptionally long shelf life. (High concentrations of fat, salt and acid are all enemies of bacteria and mold.)

The international aisle is a den of long-lasting sauces, pickles and condiments. I’ve yet to find the quality inflection point for oyster sauce, pickled chiles, chile sauces (like sambal oelek or Sriracha), fermented bean sauces (like hoisin or Sichuan broad-bean chile paste) or fish sauce. Soy sauce has a reputation for longevity, but I keep mine in the refrigerator to fend off the fishy aromas that can start to develop after a few months in the pantry.

We all know what a rotten egg smells like, right? Why else would it be a benchmark for describing so many other bad smells? But how many times have you actually smelled one: Once? Twice? Never? Probably never, at least according to the impromptu poll I conducted on Twitter. That’s because it takes a long time for eggs to go bad.

How long? The Julian date printed on each carton (that’s the three-digit number ranging from 001 for Jan. 1 to 365 for Dec. 31) represents the date the eggs were packed, which, in most parts of the country, can be up to 30 days after the egg was actually laid. The sell-by stamp can be another 30 days after the pack date.

That’s 60 full days! But odds are good that they’ll still be palatable for several weeks longer than that. You’ll run out of hoarded toilet paper before those eggs go bad.

We’ve all accidentally poured some clumpy spoiled milk into our cereal bowls. It seems as if our milk is perfectly fine, until it’s suddenly not. How does it go bad overnight? The truth is, it doesn’t. From the moment you open a carton of milk, bacteria start to digest lactose (milk sugars), and produce acidic byproducts. Once its pH hits 4.6, that’s when casein (milk protein) clumps.

Want longer-lasting milk? Look for “ultrahigh temperature,” or “UHT,” on the label. Milk in these cartons has been pasteurized at high temperatures (275 degrees Fahrenheit: hot enough to destroy not only viruses and bacteria, but bacterial spores as well), then aseptically pumped and sealed into cartons. Most organic milk brands undergo UHT. (Bonus: In the blind taste tests I’ve conducted, most people preferred the sweeter flavor of UHT milk.)

And as for baby food — the only food with federally mandated use-by dating — that expiration date represents the latest date that the manufacturer can guarantee that the food contains not less of each nutrient than what is printed on the label, or, in the case of formula, that it can still pass through an ordinary rubber nipple.

If it comes down to it, rest assured that you’ll still be able to eat the baby food and gain some nutritional benefit long after the zombie apocalypse.