More Experimenting

I've been in the kitchen the last few days but mainly just juicing or packing a lunch for Clayton--assembling salads and cutting fruit. The nurses at chemo thought I was a big meanie for declining the chocolate and popsicles they offered Clayton. And they couldn't get over the lunch and snacks I packed for his day of chemo. This is amazing to me! Eating well while so sick just makes sense to me, and I would think it should make sense to everyone else.

This morning the kids and I made a fruit juice on the juicer: pineapple, oranges, and strawberries. Oh, so fresh and delicious! Juliet guzzled hers down.

L
Tempeh salad on spinach and red leaf lettuce
Hummus and spelt crackers
Oranges, blueberries, and raspberries

The tempeh salad is one you have to try! It was my first time with tempeh, a soybean product, and it felt like I was eating chicken salad. Clayton liked it, too; but the kids...not so much. I put theirs on bread for a sandwich.

For dinner we had Michelle's leftover lentil soup from yesterday with sliced tomatoes. And I just finished off the rest of the tempeh salad--it's good, people!

I tried another bread recipe in the bread maker, an oat with cinnamon and raisins loaf. It is cooling right now, but I don't think it is a keeper. Most of the raisins are on the crust--apparently they didn't get mixed in--and they scorched as the crust baked. And, I put the loaves on the "light" crust setting and the crust is still really dark! I need to check the manual.

Last night I put a dish of sweet potatoes in the oven to have after the lentil soup--having a sweet tooth, I guess. I deliberately was conservative with the maple syrup to try to condition myself for food less sweet. They were good and satisfied my sweet craving. Here is the recipe adapted from "Recipes for Life...from God's Garden" by Rhonda Malkmus:

Baked Sweet Potatoes

2 sweet potatoes
maple syrup to taste
1/4 cup vanilla rice milk
1/2 T vanilla extract
Topping:
Cinnamon
1/2 maple syrup
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Roast sweet potatoes in a 400 degree oven for one hour. Scoop potatoes from jacket and mash with maple syrup, milk, and vanilla extract. Smooth into a casserole dish sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle sweet potatoes with cinnamon. Combine topping ingredients and spread over potatoes. Bake for 20 minutes at 300 degrees.

Tempeh Salad

1 8-oz. package tempeh, diced and steamed for 20 minutes
2 T vegetable broth
1 medium unpeeled red apple, cored and chopped
juice from half a lemon
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup shredded carrots
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup chopped red onions
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
3/4 cup Vegenaise (vegan mayonnaise)
3/4 teaspoon curry powder
2 T Bragg's Liquid Aminos (soy sauce substitute)

Heat vegetable broth in a pan and saute tempeh until golden brown. Remove from heat and while it is cooling, toss apple, lemon juice, celery, pecans, and onions into a bowl. Add Vegenaise, curry, and Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Toss tempeh into salad to mix. Serve with crackers, on greens, or on sandwich bread.

One of the doctors' wives at work brought over a ton of produce Thursday night. This is what our counter looked like Friday night...and now just a day later much of that is gone!