A Week of Weekday (Vegetarian) Meals
Beans and Spanish Rice
I wrote up last week’s cooking schedule. You’re lucky (or maybe not!), I don’t always cook so much.
Sunday: I served our Sunday standby, leftover chicken and potatoes with salad. Okay, not 100% vegetarian. I set up a kilogram (2 pounds) of dried kidney beans to soak.
Monday: In the morning, I cooked the beans in the pressure cooker for twenty minutes. I turned off the gas and left the house, releasing the pressure slowly. Later in the day, I spread half the beans in zippered bags on cookie trays in the freezer and refrigerated the rest.
I had asked my husband to buy chili peppers at the shuk. As I live in the Middle East, I always felt I should be using them more but had never worked with them. So I asked for ideas on CookingManager.Com Facebook page, and Tikva recommended Spanish rice and salsa.
Spanish rice: I peeled, chopped and sauteed an onion and garlic in a pan, then added two cups of uncooked rice. At this point my teen daughter asked what smelled so good. Then I added 3 cups (corrected) of cooking liquid from the kidney beans, about a cup of the beans, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a little salt, and brought it to a boil. Then I covered the rice, lowered the heat, and set the timer for 17 minutes. Here’s the Spanish Rice recipe in more detail
For the salsa I chopped two cloves of garlic in the food processor. I added one chili pepper (I’m weak), handling it with a clean rag instead of gloves. I removed the seeds and added radishes, a sweet pepper, and two tomatoes chopping everything coarsely. I dressed it with some lemon juice and more tomato paste.
The salsa wasn’t a large enough salad I made coleslaw: I sliced the cabbage leaves and grated the carrots with the food processor. I dressed the salad with Tamari sauce and more lemon juice.
I still had some time to play because the rice was prepared so quickly. So I toasted a teaspoon of cumin seeds in a teaspoon of olive oil and toasted them in a glass bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds. I added some seeds to the salsa and the rest to the coleslaw.
Tuesday: I had some rice and salsa for breakfast. For lunch I made sourdough pancakes. My 13-year-old son brought home two friends to sleep over and do a project. I made bean soup. I sauteed 3 onions in the pressure cooker. In the meantime I grated a turnip, 5 carrots, and some sorry-looking potatoes and celery. I added the vegetables and several cups of the beans along with whatever liquid was left, a can of tomatoes, and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste, and two tablespoons of Tamari sauce (which was not enough). I added the water by filling the food processor and the tomato can, cleaning out the remainder of the vegetables. I cooked the soup in the pressure cooker for ten minutes (30 minutes in a conventional pot). I was pleasantly surprised that my son’s friends ate it and one even asked for more.
I also served the rest of the pancakes and coleslaw and the last of my sourdough bread. My daughter and husband shared the last bit of rice. Before I went to sleep, I put up the sponge for a quadruple recipe of sourdough oatmeal bread.
Page 1 of 2 | Next page
Related posts:
