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Bringing you the very best of my kitchen experiments

So apparently this is the week of preparing home-cooked meals on a regular basis. Last weekend I powered through all of my home projects so I can focus on planning my trip (I am hours away from booking the flight!). With the extra time I’ve been flexing my cooking muscles for our health and sanity - I love being able to bring real meals to work with me. And in the interests of phasing out some of the plastic in our home, we’ve purchased two glass containers that are microwave safe. So far I really like how when you microwave it, the parts of the glass that you hold are never too hot. Also, it seems more efficient - cooking the meal itself, rather than the container holding it. No plastic chemicals, and beautiful. So highly recommend it - got mine from Home Hardware. So far:

Monday: Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits from Veganomicon

I had heard so many mixed revews of this dish on veg blogs - some people loved it, others hated it. J and I enjoyed it - but it needed more salt once it was done cooking. And surprisingly I didn’t find the biscuits were too soggy. I was so proud of this production! A real casserole with a white bean, leek, carrot, peas and potato stew. Replaced the white flour in the biscuits with whole wheat flour, ’cause that’s the way I roll.

Tuesday: Vegetable Fried Quinoa from Fat Free Vegan

(Here it is in one of my new glass containers.) Susan is a genius at creating healthy, low fat and delicious recipes. This recipe has virtually no oil (using lots of vegetable broth in the ‘frying’ process), has lots of bok choy, tofu, carrots, and mushrooms, and of course has the nutritional allstar - quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”).

The “cassoulet” looks great…I may try that one later this week.
Since you’re getting new baking pieces, have you considered a Le Creuset pot? I don’t do alot of microwave cooking and the Le Creuset is a great stovetop/oven dish. I have just gotten a second one and I am looking for something to make in it.

Ooh - no haven’t looked into that yet. I find there’s always some new kitchen gadget I need to get - does it ever end? I figure I’ll save some of these things for my eventual wedding where you tend to get lots of domestic things.

I got this baking dish at some point for a Christmas gift or some such; it seemed to do the job pretty well. I may have to break down at some point and get a Vitamix blender though! I make lots of smoothies.