March 9, 2010 in Musings etc · No comments

It was sort of fun thinking about what I’d cooked and/or eaten recently for the post that I wrote about a month ago. I think I might try and make it a monthly tradition. (I know, I wanted to do the same with posting recipes, and the results are two – or two-and-a half – recipes in four months – but I am trying, honestly, I am.)

Whether this develops into a monthly tradition or not, here is another installment.

Lunches/dinners:

• Miso soup with tofu, spinach and scallions. I used to buy miso soup packets at Trader Joe’s until I discovered real miso paste at my local supermarket. Making the soup from miso paste is cheaper and tastier.
• Cabbage and rice patties spiced with yellow curry. I made a giant batch of rice and have been using it in various recipes for nearly a week, so you’ll see it mentioned more than once below. This is my take on typical Russian cabbage patties, which my mom used to make fairly regularly in Moscow and which do not normally include rice or curry (the original version consists of finely chopped cabbage held together with egg and flour and seasoned with salt and pepper). Interestingly, she, too, has altered the original recipe, and now adds carrots, green peas, onions, broccoli, and sometimes tofu to these patties.
• Rotini with mushrooms and tomato-cream (actually, tomato-soy milk) sauce. Very simple, very quick, reheats well. Good with parmesan on top and a green salad on the side. Not much more to say about it.
• Pelmeni. I made them but didn’t eat them – my husband did. There is still a big plastic bag of them sitting in the freezer. He doesn’t really cook, and the pelmeni are a convenient quick meal for him when I’m not home or too busy to make dinner.
• A dish inspired by the Tex-Mex version of migas, recently publicized here (original recipe here). In my case, it was more like a deconstructed burrito – torn-up tortillas, kidney beans, soy chorizo, and leftover rice all fried together, then made even tastier with the addition of hot sauce and cheese.
• Almond butter/apple/cheese sandwiches. This was my dinner after coming home from class at 8 pm one day last week. My husband politely refused when offered a bite. Not his idea of a tasty sandwich, apparently, but I loved it.

Breakfasts:

• Breakfasts tend to be quick and simple in our home. For me, it’s usually either a bowl of oatmeal with flax seeds, raisins, and sometimes walnuts, or a fried egg with a piece of homemade bread or wrapped in a tortilla with hot sauce, cheese, and maybe leftover rice. My husband enjoys a heartier breakfast and either has dinner leftovers from the night before or noodle soup (either one of those Trader Joe’s Thai rice noodle bowls or Dosirac, a Korean ramen that is widespread in Russia and that we recently found at an International District grocery store that we frequent).

Snacks:

• Plain yogurt with homemade peach jam from last summer. I love it that preserves can keep for so long and that I can eat them almost a year later and think about how I made them and what was going on in my life at that time.
• Uncooked tempeh slices. Weird, I know, but I think raw tempeh is delicious. I don’t even put any sauce on it. I think I am going to have some right now.

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