Sunday Doings

I got a late start on my cooking today because I had to take some pictures to use on my Steal Tomorrow fiction blog. For those of you who only visit this blog, check it out. I’m posting preview content while I clean up the draft and I hope to start posting the story itself later this summer. There will be an option to download the story as a pdf and to buy a print version as well. There is also an email subscription option in the sidebar, which sends new posts directly to your email. I and a few of my friends have tried it and it's pretty nifty.

But for now, it was just one more thing I had to do. I got my pictures, then came home and started cooking.

I started by putting some rice in the rice cooker, then got out the leftover rice from last week and made a banana/rice dish, based on the Apple Cinnamon Rice dish from last week. I used two overripe bananas and I skipped the butter just to see what would happen. It tasted great-- you can’t even tell there was supposed to be butter in the recipe, so I saved a few empty calories there.

Next I made some curried zucchini and yellow squash, but forgot I wanted yellow onions in there, too. Not a big deal, but I was a little annoyed with myself. I had extra of both the zucchini and yellow squash, so it went in the dehydrator to use when it’s out of season.

As an aside to the commenter who asked about the dried spinach, I dehydrated it last spring when locally grown organic spinach was at a good price. I’m finding that I like it better than fresh spinach for including in recipes because there’s no tedious chopping involved. Just crumble it into whatever it is you’re cooking!

After the squash was done, I started mixing the ingredients for rice balls, which Dan asked me to make again. I got a little more aggressive with the flavors this time, adding some cheddar to the mix, more spinach, and more pepper.

While the rice balls cooked, I made chickpeas with pumpkin-curry sauce. I’ve done this before and it’s a nice way to use the excess canned pumpkin when I do pumpkin bread. The canned pumpkin goes into a saucepan with drained chickpeas, cubed cooked potatoes, spinach, and a generous addition of curry, coriander, cumin, white pepper, garlic, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Heat and stir just enough that everything blends together, then set it aside to cool for mid-week dinners.

The pumpkin bread needed an hour for baking, so since it was late in the afternoon and I needed to work out, I mixed all the dry ingredients and staged everything else for quick prep later. After my spin workout, I blended everything together, put the two loaves in the oven, and by the time I had showered and had dinner, the pumpkin loaves were done.

Summary:

Today's Cooking
Plain Rice
Banana Rice
Curry Zucchini and Yellow Squash
Chickpeas in Pumpkin Curry
Rice Balls
Pumpkin Bread

Today's Workout
90 minute spin

Not bad for a day’s work!

Have a great week, everyone!