Weekly wrap-up.....

The food first, on New Year's Eve, I made a Middle Eastern style black bean and chickpea dish over basmati rice.  I served it with some homemade flatbread.  It was simple, and oh so tasty.

Middle Eastern Black Beans & Chickpeas

Yogurt sauce. It was so tasty, garlic, garden fresh mint, and cilantro, and soygurt.

Homemade flatbread.

New Year's Day, we had some cinnamon rolls. I call them, fresh vanilla bean cinnamon rolls. I stirred a vanilla bean into the batter, and used  vanilla sugar.  Wow! 

Vanilla bean cinnamon rolls.

For our New Year's Day dinner, we had a blackeyed pea stew.  I started the crockpot up early in the morning.  I threw in a pound of blackyed peas, 2 cans crushed tomatoes, 4c veggie broth, 2 links homemade soysage, potatoes, greens from the garden, garlic, onion, okra, and some cajun seasining.  I also made hush puppies for the first time.  They were a hit.

Blackeyed pea stew.

Hush puppies

I also made a baked ziti this week.  I used a mozerrella cheese recipe from the cookbook 'Artisan Vegan Cheese', my friends Becky, and Chris gave me.  I made a cashew ricotta for the ziti, and also added some vegan pepperoni to it.  It was great, and made a ton.  I froze some for later.  I served the ziti with a small salad, and baguette.

A big tray of baked ziti.

A lovely salad we had with our ziti.  It has spinach, lettuce, dill, snow peas, sugar snap peas, and tomatoes from the garden.

Friday night I made burgers.  Easy and good.  I used this bun recipe.  Homemade buns are the best.  I made the buns using this recipe. http://www.vegweb.com/recipes/burger-buns It is a great recipe, and I have made it several times. 

Hot Buns



Saturday, we went to the garden center.  I bought red bell pepper seeds, as well as yellow ones, jalapeno peppers, habanero, eggplant seeds, and we bought some more dinosaur kale plants.  I will be planting the seeds this week, along with four different types of tomatoes.  Yay!

For dinner Saturday, we had falafel.  Our 6 year old had a potluck at his karate dojo, so I made falafel for the potluck, and extra for us.  We had the falafel with homemade flatbread, garden fresh lettuce, and tomatoes, and a homemade soygurt sauce, using mint, and parsley from the garden.  Yummy!

A big tray of falafel.

And last, but not least, the grocery bill for this week.  Drum roll, please....our total was:   $31.56.  That leaves an extra, $28.44.  Yippee!  I love starting the New Year staying way under budget. 

Hope you have a wonderful day.

peas and love....
Krys and the boys