Once a Month Cooking: Prep/Cook Day 1

Today, my husband and I attempted to prepare about half our meals for the month. We bought the food this morning, took about two hours to cut up all the vegetables, and then began cooking. About 1.5 hours into the cooking, we burned out and decided to begin a new tomorrow. We are about half through making all the meals. If the meals turn out and taste great after being in the freezer for a few weeks, this is going to become a regular occurrence at our house. I roughly used the menu plan at Onceamonthmom. There were several recipes for the October menu that we were not down with - the stuffed squashes and a tofurky sandwich - not for us. So I supplemented recipes from the September and August menus.


Most of what is going to get turned into our meals for the month


We don't have a lot of counter space, so we made use of the stairs to hold the prepped vegetables

The recipes that we made/going to make are:

x Pumpkin Muffins (I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance)
x Roasted Sweet Potato, pomegranate seeds, almonds as a salad topping
Lentil-Mushroom Sliders mini-burgers (My husband refuses to call them sliders)
Nut Loaf in Pastry
x Pomegranate Chili Tofu
Gnocchi in pumpkin sauce
Curried Lentils and Sweet Potatoes
Curry Tofu Scramble
x Baked Empanadas
x Bubble up pizza bites
x Kale Pesto, basil, mushroom pizza
Spicy Seitan Flautas

All the recipes can be found at the Once a month mom website.

Goodness, it is making me tired thinking about all the ones we still have to cook. I have placed an x next to the ones we have completed. 6 more recipes to get through and then hopefully it will make cooking over the course of this month, so much easier. Things are starting to get crazy with school - homeworks, tests, research, etc - so having good food to come home to will be great.

After we lost steam to cook more, we discovered that we didn't really have anything planned for dinner. It was decided that the Pomegranate Chili Tofu I was preparing was going to go in our bellies instead of the freezer bag.



Pomegranate Chili Tofu


Notes
If all our meals are as good as the tofu, then we will be in for a good food month. We couldn't find any pomegranate molasses, so we picked up some pomegranate juice and added it to blackstrap molasses. The dish was a good level of spicy and sweet. The breading for the tofu was a little strange, but I just decided to add whatever spices I wanted and called it good because we didn't have the Thai 7 spice blend called for. I would say this recipe is a success.

I really really hope that the freezer meals work out for us, it would simplify our cooking schedule so much. I'll be reporting back on all meals as month goes on!

Happy day 1 of Veganmofo 2011!

Menu Planning Sunday

On Sundays I like to plan the meals for the week. I like to be able to look at the board, know that I have all the ingredients for everything on there and be able to put food together easily. When we moved into our new apartment, there was a perfect nook for a chalkboard in the kitchen. Everyone that comes over comments on it. So, it must be awesome, yes?


If you can't read the picture it is transcribed below. The top row is breakfast, middle lunch, and bottom dinner. The CP in a box means that the meal is made in the crock pot.

Monday: Beans on toast, tasty sandwich, fajitas

Tuesday: Steel cut oats, lentil soup, taco Tuesday!

Wednesday: breakfast sandwich, chili, tater tot casserole

Thursday: bagels, Amy's Soup, curry with rice

As you can see, I spend a lot of eating foods that I have made before and I know are good in the interest of time. I love cooking. A lot. With the semester in full swing I have less time to spend there. Speaking of time and not having enough but doing more things anyway, I signed up to participate in Veganmofo again this year! I hope that I will be full of inspiration for meals to make in October.