Mung Bean Noodles & Peanut Sauce

Have you ever tried "mung bean noodles" before? They're good. Hugely long and awkward to get onto the plate, but delicious and a nice change from rice or rice noodles for a peanut dish, if you're not eating wheat :-). Tonight's dinner was a heaping plateful of these wheat-free noodles, with a thick vegetable sauce full of peanut butter. The noodles cook very quickly, soaking for 7 minutes then boiling for three, and you can put the sauce on top of anything so I won't go into detail about the noodles. If you put them to soak in some water before you start the sauce, they should finish up at about the same time.

Peanut Sauce:
1 egg
water
5 tbsp peanut butter (more?)
3.4 cup salad mix (w/carrot, cabbage, romaine, etc)
handful of raisins
handful of sliced mushrooms
honey
garlic powder
black pepper
salt

Boil a small amount of water in a saucepan, about 1 inch. In a frying pan, put the salad mix, mushrooms, raisins, and honey. Mix them together on medium heat, stirring in some water and peanut butter. When the water in the saucepan is roaring, crack a raw egg into it and stir it around. Let it cook most of the way, then dump that water and the egg into the frying pan with the peanut butter. The water should mix with the peanut butter and make a lighter-colored sauce. Stirring it a lot will keep the peanut oil from separating out (if it does happen, give it a stir!). If the peanut butter starts getting dark or too thick, add more water. Cover, and let it sit on low heat til it seems like the mushrooms are soft and the peanut butter is thoroughly mixed with everything (probably less than ten minutes). Add the spices and some salt to taste, and serve over the noodles!

Travis' rating: Texture of the noodles was weird/mushy, sauce was good. 100.


:-)

Yellow Lentils!

This dinner was wheat/gluten-free, one for you, Susan!
A few days ago, I had pressure-cooked some lentils with a little garlic powder and spices -- I think I used cumin and black pepper. The pressure cooker is amazing for dried beans. The split yellow lentils cooked in 8 minutes (probably could have been less, but I didn't want to risk it). A 4:1 ratio of water to lentils is good, and won't burn even if you cook them a little too long. If you're not using a pressure-cooker, dried lentils will take about 30 minutes to cook. I like this website http://www.beanslentils.com/preparelentils.htm for making a good time estimate.

Lentils:
3/4 cup split yellow lentils, dry
approx. 4 cups water
2 tbsp tomato soup concentrate
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp garlic powder

For tonight's dinner, we had rice with a lentil-based sauce on top. While the rice is cooking (about 15 minutes, 2:1 ratio of water to rice), I drained most of the water from the lentils and mixed them up with some other things to make the sauce.

Lentil Sauce:
1 cup prepared lentils (a little less than half of the lentils from above)
1 apple, diced
handful of raisins
sprinkle of Cajun spice (or something else spicy?)
sprinkle of Italian spice (or a little basil?)
broccoli -- 3 or 4 "trees"
leftover rice -- not necessary, but we had some in the fridge. it gets served with rice, anyways, so the extra was no harm/no foul

I cooked all that on a low heat for about 15 minutes, all the time that it took the rice to cook. Obviously, the spices and other additions to the lentils can be whatever suits your fancy. I am vegetarian, but Travis ate his portion with pieces of pork and a chopped up hot dog...

Rating: "I don't think I like lentils very much. I'm not a good judge, I'll eat anything! Everything is good that I don't make..." haha

Pizza With Hummus!

Tonight I made a pineapple and mushroom pizza, with hummus as a layer under the tomato sauce. Yummy! It was the last of the sun-dried tomato and basil hummus in the fridge, and it needed to be used up. It also tasted delicious on homemade pizza dough with fresh pineapple!

Dough:
[Water - 1/4 cup
Sugar - 1 tbsp
Yeast - 1 tbsp] - set aside 5 mins to check if yeast is active
[Olive Oil
Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup water
Honey
Italian spices
Garlic salt] - about 1 cup total liquids
Flour - as much as needed for good consistency


Use your favorite bread recipe for the dough, if you're making it yourself. I love experimenting with breads, so I always cook them a little different! http://www.justpeace.org/bread.htm#Making%20Bread%20is%20Easy%20as%20One-Two-Three-Four! is a great site if you need directions. I put a little tomato sauce in my pizza doughs, as well as Italian spices. The dough is quite sweet, and the crust of your slice of pizza tastes excellent with some garlic butter, if you so desire..
Toppings:
Sundried Tomato Basil Hummus
Tomato Sauce
Fresh Pineapple
Sliced Mushrooms
Cheese

When the dough was ready (risen, punched, and spread on a pizza pan), I baked it for 5 or 10 minutes while the oven pre-heated. While that was cooking, I sliced up mushrooms and fresh pineapple, as well as cheese since I had no grated cheese, unfortunately. After taking the crust out of the oven, I spread a thin layer of the sun-dried tomato and basil hummus over the whole thing. I covered it with plain tomato sauce from a jar, and sprinkled the fruit, veggies and cheese on top. Bake for 15 mintutes at 425, you have a perfect pizza! It was delicious, but not very filling. The two of us ate the whole thing quite easily :-)

Travis' rating: "yumm, it was good!"

Sweet Potato and Spinach Ravioli

Noodles:
3 Cups Flour
1 Egg
Warm water -- about 1/2 cup?

Put the flour in a mixing bowl, make a little hollow for the egg. Mix the egg in as much as you can, then start adding the water slowly until the dough is knead-able and knead it to make it smooth. I put too much water in and the dough was very sticky, but to fix it I added a little more flour and it worked out great. When it's mixed together thoroughly, put it back in the bowl and set aside while you work on the filling.

For the filling, I chose a sweet potato and spinach base because that's what I had in the kitchen. It would have been delicious if I had added some cheese (ricotta or feta seem the most fitting) but I had none on hand.

Filling:
1 Medium sweet potato
1/2 cup frozen spinach (or fresh if you have it)
2 tbsp hummus (mine was sun-dried tomato and basil! yum!)

Cook the potato, my preference is by poking some holes with a fork and putting it in my microwave on "potato." Boiling it works, but I like the shortcut. Peel and mash the potato into a small skillet with the spinach and the hummus, cooking it at medium low 'til it is mixed together well.

Making the Ravioli:
Roll out the dough on a floured board, as thin as you can get it. Cut the dough into the shape you want your pasta, I used a drinking glass to make circles for mine. Fill a large pot with water and set it on high to boil it. Then, take a small spoonful of the filling and put it between two pieces of noodle, crimping the edges with a fork. Repeat til you've filled up all the ravioli. I made ten large raviolis, and had a little filling and a little noodle-dough left over. Boil the finished ravioli's in the water (with a little oil) til done, for me this was about ten minutes.

I heated up some tomato sauce with the leftover spinach and potato filling to serve on top, which was delicious. We also had a salad with Italian dressing and crunchy onion salad-toppings to finish off the meal. Yum!

For the next time: use cheese. roll dough thinner for pasta. make garlic bread to go with it.

Travis' rating: 5 stars! Yay!

A Few Photos from the Past....

White bread, drizzled in honey



White bread again, shaped like a snail :-)



Aly helping me with a home-made pizza (mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, plain organic tomato sauce, white bread dough with italian spices in it)



Dinner rolls (again, plain white bread, this time with lots of honey in it, if I remember correctly)

Alright, those are all the photos I can find for now! From now on, however, I'm going to photograph the meals I make as I go, and share them with you as often as I can! Thanks for reading,

Sophi