Doesn’t these look awesome? The colour will not keep when cooking them, but I love the pinks and purples of the raw beans.
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Huh! this is pretty good.
I fried potatoes and onion in coconut oil, just until they started browning. Then added the gnocchi I made and sliced green tomatoes. Salt & pepper.
My nephew bought me a small jar of coconut oil, and have been using it once in a while (I kind of forget I have it, heh. Though, I do need to be careful using it…Oh my word the coconut flavor is so strong, and I can’t stop myself licking the spoon off after getting some out, 
).
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After a trip to costco the fridge & pantry are overly full & the kids get lazy about what they’ll eat. It’s so weird, the more fully stocked, the less they’ll cook.
To prevent waste I started cooking right after work & just stopped about an hour ago, so over 4 hours on my poor feet, owch. But I made:
Potato leek soup
Beet & cabbage soup
Cilantro sauce
Fennel & pear slaw
Beef & egg burritos (for the working kid’s lunches)
& quick pickled jalapeños & another jar or carrots.
Phew, am I tired.
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I forgot to get a pic, but Sunday I made a ‘clean out the whole kitchen’ chili verde. I used up tomatillos from the CSA from 10 days before, green & orange tomatoes, and green onions from that week’s box, some gold potatoes my FIL left here, some chicken broth from the freezer, also from a FIL cooking extravaganza at our house. White beans from the back of the cupboard. And a package of chicken thighs I bought for something else before plans changed. I only bought an onion and 2 jalapeños to round out the flavors. Roasted the tomatillos, tomatoes, onion and jalapeños to make a salsa verde, then threw that in the crockpot with everything else, and let it simmer for hours. We had dinner Sunday and last night, and I was able to freeze 2 more dinner’s worth. Bonus: Ada loved it. She enjoyed demanding bits from our bowls, and happily ate the potatoes, beans, and bits of chicken.
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Hmm??? I think the coconut filling needed butter, and I shouldn’t have fried the bananas. Meh, it’s not bad, just rather bland. 
(whoa! just remembered I wrote a recipe down).
1/4 c. unsweetened shredded coconut
3/4 m. almond milk
1 large egg
2 tsp. flour
3 Tbls. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla.
Cook til thickened. (definitely needed something else. maybe a teaspoon or half of butter. O_o).
Also, another thing I noticed, the frying the crepes in coconut oil adds a nice flavor to the crepes…However, they start sticking to the pan after the first two or three. 
I wonder about mixing half butter and half coconut oil…
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More lunches:
- roasted chicken
- sweet potato
- last of the arborio rice
- steamed carrots & broccoli
- green peas
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Ok! since a mill is out of the question, I boiled some barley, and pulverized them as much as possible in a food processor.
Not very well…, but it did work enough that I could use that method for some breads and pan fries. As for rice, I’d have to add something extra to it (as I added half flour to these pancakes).
Almond milk, one egg, baking powder, sugar, and fried in coconut oil.
Used a couple of my blueberry rhubarb ice cubes to spread over a couple, and it was actually pretty good.
Meh, not as great as I had hoped, but good enough that it gives me something else to eat for this stupid stomach, 
oh! I might mention why I was even looking up a flour mill. As I said some time ago, the coconut oil tastes strongly of coconut, and yesterday, as I was finishing off the crepes I made the day before…Oh my word, they were so good. Almost like a coconut custard by themselves. So I had wanted to try to make some crepes the same way with half rice flour (or all rice flour), and since none of our stores sell rice flour any more (we have four stores, and I keep forgetting the vietnamese, hispanic, and natural stores…MENTAL NOTE TO SELF: Check them out tomorrow…Sheesh!). Anyway I thought of buying the flour online, to which I thought, why stop there. I could make all sorts of flours cheap (that was before I found out how much a mill costs, ).
Anyway, that was what led me down that road, but meh, I’ve god lots of idears…I just need to actually put them to test. .
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Amaranth flat bread.
A small oat bread (honey and almond milk, so no milk).
And tapioca pudding (Oh…my…word…I looooooooove tapioca pudding…this batch was made with almond milk, and came out extra thick…Oooh! 
).
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We had a really good dinner tonight, and we used up lots of leftovers in the fridge.
We had loaded fries, and as toppings we had various sauces that were in the fridge, a cucumber, spring onions, and the best bit, some leftover shrimp with cajun spice mix. This was not the healthiest meal ever, but it was really good, and we included way more greens than a restaurant would have.
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I made tomato marmalade today.
These gigantic tomatoes are really nice and sweet. They almost look striped in reds oranges and yellows. They’re crazy sweet too, so I started thinking about doing sweet things with them.
I blanched and peeled the large ”pineapple” tomatos and a couple San Marzano. After removing stems and some of the tomato guts I had around 800 g. I measured out 800 g jam-sugar (sugar mixed with pektin and some extra preservative in addition to the sugar). Zested and juiced a small lemon. We also have homegrown chili peppers so I removed the seeds and finely chopped one.
Because of the extra pectin and preservative it doesn’t have to cook all that long. Maybe 10 minutes? I did the marmalade test a couple times until I was happy with the texture.
It looks pretty chunky here, but the tomatos more or less melted…
These are not processed in any way. Just poured into clean, hot jars. However, they’ll be kept in the fridge, and there’s a ton of sugar in there so I’m not worried. Very tasty too!
800 g tomatoes (peeled, stems removed)
800 g jam sugar
1 lemon (zest and juice)
1 chili, seeded and finely chopped (or use more or less chili, to taste)
A small amount of powdered vanilla bean pod.
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Oh wow that sound sooo good!!
GERD has changed again, so brain is really fuzzy. Anyhoo, finally got a pumpkin baked: now I just need to get my brain to concentrate on sorting it to use for pasta sauces, and maybe desserts.
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Weird aside: When I’m working in my studio, I usually put something on to watch/listen to. But for some reason, my monitor goes black when I try to watch anything on Netflix or Prime. I still get the audio of the show I’m ‘watching’, but no video. But it still let’s me watch YouTube. Since I don’t want to get radicalized, I carefully create a Queue of videos on crafting or cooking, and then let those play through. I somehow ended up down a rabbit hole of “cooking from scratch/inexpensive meals/homesteader/garden folk” making lots of freezer meals and such. One of them was talking about cooking beans from scratch, and did some taste tests of canned vs homemade beans, and she convinced me to try making my own.
So yesterday I did a batch of white beans in the crockpot. I soaked them overnight, then cooked them for about 8 hours, with a bay leaf, onion and garlic in some stock. I got a 2lb bag of Great Northern beans at Walmart for $2.50. It produced 6 2-cup bags (the equivelant of 6 cans), that I froze. Tomorrow I’m doing a 2lb batch of black beans. I’ll report back when I make a meal with them!
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Jennie, they are SO FAST in a pressure cooker. Chickpeas, no soaking, 30-45 mins, commercial softness. Seriously.
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Manicotti tonight. I usually do stuffed shells but the food store was out. So I stuffed a different pasta, lol.
Stuffing was super easy with my stainless pastry bag. Prob the 5th time I’ve used it in the 10+ years I’ve owned it. Every time I use it I’m grateful I didn’t give it away.
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Oh my gosh, that looks delicious! And also that tool, wow!
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And it comes fully apart so you can clean every bit. It’s not something I would have purchased, but it was a great gift, even if I don’t use it how the giver imagined I would. 
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Got my flours and flakes, and just had to make some oatmeal, rye, and barley.
cook til softened
1 Tbls. Rye flakes
1 Tbls. Barley flakes
2 Tbls. Old fashioned oats
2 pinches of powdered pumpkin seeds
add in:
1/2 tsb. coconut oil
1 tsp. Honey
pinch of cinnamon
Stir and eat.
Next time I need to remember to cook the barley and rye flakes seperately. Not very soft (and not all flaked), . Still, really good, like a hot cereal granola bar, 
. Ooh, I bet dates would go good in this.
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