New Happenings

Last week we had some cold weather, so I took Joseph shopping for some new clothes. This is him in his new outfit. There is also a matching sweatshirt top. As you can see, Joseph loves to wear new clothes and model them too. I also finally got some maternity clothes, so now I have some decent things to wear again.

Recently I tried some new recipes. I made a really interesting un-yeasted bread in which the only ingredients are whole wheat flour, a little bit of salt, and water. After mixing this together, one must let it sit for 24 hours. Then after punching it down you let it proof for 4 hours at room temperature. It is very hearty! Another recipe I tried, that is completely different from this austere bread, is one for glazed donuts. This one was also very good, and very easy.

Cooking experiments

Since about a month or so ago I have been doing tons of cooking, and for me that means lots of experiments. Toward the beginning of august I was on a Mexican cuisine kick and got into making tamales and Pan Dulce. I had to order a gigantic steamer from a Mexican food supply website in order to make the tamales. I make about 60 savoury tamales (tofu with green salsa, tofu with mole, and black bean and vegetable.) Then I make about 90 sweet tamales (apple and raisin with Cinnamon, pear with Cinnamon, peach with Cinnamon, banana, and banana with chocolate.) They came out very good, and it was actually really easy to make them. I had actually helped to make them before one time with a Mexican friend when I was about twenty, but that was quite a while ago, so I used this really great website as a guide.

I decided to make the Pan Dulce (Mexican sweet bread) for a friend's birthday who is also from Southern California. We really had no idea what to get for him, and I figured that since he really likes Mexican cuisine this would be a unique and welcome gift. They came out really yummy, though I would like to work on my decorating.


For my birthday I got a ravioli maker and a pasta drying rack. I got the pasta machine last Christmas, and I have wanted the ravioli maker ever since then. The pasta drying rack is great, because usually when I make pasta I have to hang it on every clean free surface I can find, and it was quite a pain. Here I am making our first ravioli dinner. I made them with Spinach and Tofu cream cheese.

Tamales and Indian food

It has been a while since I wrote anything here, so I thought I would give an update. For some reason our website with our photos has been down the last couple of days, so I can't narrate any of our photos for you.

The last couple of weeks I have mostly been really busy at home cooking and baking. I decided to try to make everything we eat myself, such as breads (including pita bread and hamburger buns,) cereals, and baked goods, and also using only dried beans. My goal is to only buy the raw ingredients to make all of our food. The tofu burgers that I talked about last time were delicious; much better than the ones we were getting at the store. The buns were somewhat tough the first time, but I made them last night again and they were lighter this time. I think next time I will use egg in the dough.

Last weekend I made Indian food, specifically Dal, Palak Paneer (with tofu substituted for the cheese,) and Naan. It was truly delicious. I made enough for us to have four dinners from it total. I love Indian food so much, but we can never go to an Indian restaurant because they use so much dairy. I have made it before, and always with great results but lately it just never occurred to me to make it. Once I ran across this Naan recipe on the Internet, I had to do it again. It turned out to be a fabulous recipe.

Another fun thing is that I bought a tamale steamer. I used to love to eat tamales when we lived in southern California. I have plans to make some tofu mole tamales this weekend. Some other things I have been making are soy milk pudding, Pan Dulce (more on this later,) and falafal.