with xmas, and a’s pre-xmas illness, i didn’t get to cook and bake as much as i’d wanted to, and documentation of what little was done was even more sparse.  so this is a bit of a backlog of some things i haven’t had the chance to post.

my love affair with extraveganza! was in high gear the other week.  i made two new recipes:

tofu baked in almond mint cilantro sauce (served over brown rice):

this was really tasty, creamy, and simple to make.  there was both plain and smoked tofu, green peas, and a mint and cilantro almond butter sauce.  so good!  i will make it again for sure.

ginger fried rice:

with leftover almond mint cilantro tofu:

though not reflected in my usage above, what i really like about this recipe was that there isn’t any tofu in it.  i love tofu fried rice, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes a big load of vegetables and some spice is all i want.  i think i ended up adding a few extra vegetables because i had some in the fridge, but the recipe has a tasty variety already.

with my usual habit of not eating breakfast, and especially now that i have to work so early in the morning three days a week, me making anything beyond toast is a pretty big deal.  inspired by oatmeal discussions on the ppk, i bough a can of mccann’s irish oatmeal and made enough for a couple of meals.  irish oatmeal, cooked up in apricot nectar, with bananas, walnuts, and cinnamon:

the first recipe i tried from yellow rose recipes, per josh’s recommendation, was the sweet potato and black bean flautas.  delightful!  i also made the tangy sour cream (yum!).  i had cilantro to use up so i also served it with chimichurri sauce, and some free avocados i got from work:

another cookbook/zine i am super excited about but hadn’t gotten a chance to use is kittee’s.  i remedied that last night by making a cake, using the non-chocolate cake recipe from papa tofu, and adding some chopped rhubarb, cinnamon, and cardamom.  i’m not much of a cake decorator, but here is the whole thing:

inside shot:

must say it smelled so good while baking that i almost didn’t decorate it!  but i resisted, whipped up some maple frosting from vctotw, and ate a piece as soon as i was done with the photos.  next time i will add more rhubarb (i wasn’t sure how tart it would be), and maybe even some raspberries or strawberries.  yay kittee!

lastly, my dinner tonight… a creamy potato-leek soup with red chard.  i was craving something like this all day at work, and also thought back to the christmas eve dinner soup that a’s brother in law made (though it involved lentils and ginger and fennel and coconut milk).  i added a little bit of anise to the soup as a nod to the rye bread i didn’t have a chance to bake today (tomorrow it will have to be!), and i really liked it that way.  i want to tweak the recipe a little bit, but this really hit the spot.  the rich creaminess of a potato soup with the tender crunch and beautiful colors of swiss chard (not to mention nutrition), with a hint of anise and white pepper: