Tiffanie: this week's menu

Hey, we survived the heat! I even made those full-meal muffins. They are tasty, not very sweet, and have a good texture. I'll make them again, though the kids did not find them exciting. Even with nutella! I may have to cut out sugar entirely from their diet so they can enjoy less-sweet foods...

Plans for this week include:

• eating out at Aqui (we went to an evening outdoor play afterwards, good fun)
• mushroom cauliflower pot pie with olive biscuit crust. My CSA gave me a 4.5 lb cauliflower head, so I used about half of it in this dish (doubling the recipe's request, but it was still good). The kids sort of like this dish -- they like the biscuit crust, and the mushrooms. Sadly, the cauliflower did not pass muster, as it was not roasted. This pie has a gravy made with lots of tarragon, and it's made me a fan of this herb.
• Creole Hoppin' Jean. Doing a double batch, to split with a friend. Decided to cook the beans from dried, instead of buying the Eden Organic canned. I love that brand, but it gets expensive. I do have a fresh bottle of Pepper Plant hot sauce to enjoy on this beans/rice/tomatoes dish. A big green salad will finish it off. And lots of beer. 
• Lal dal over coconut rice. Maybe some baked tofu for the kids. Sauteed greens, whatever comes in the box.

Other nibbles:

• potato salad, in the Mediterranean style, which means olive oil, cumin, scallions, sun dried tomatoes... the CSA box had gorgeous new potatoes, which make great potato salad. It's a nice way to really taste the potatoes.
• more no-bake energy balls. The boy is looking skinny, I think he just grew taller again.
• maple mustard tempeh strips. Going to the beach this week, and I love making a wrap with these for my picnic lunch.

Deadra: Mexico eating and refried beans

My little family just returned from Mexico where we stayed in an all inclusive resort, which was nice, relaxing and all of those good things. But the food? Was bad! I was so excited to go to Mexico and have some authentic Mexican food, because since I've been living in California I've had tastes of varying levels of authentic Mexican food, and you know, I like it! But the food at the resort was horrible. There were a bunch of different types of restaurants: Asian, Italian, Mexican, French and a buffet. We tried the Asian, Mexican and French and the buffet out of convenience. It was all pretty bad. And now I feel like a total snob. To be fair the food at the wedding was good though, although the stuff the kids were given was pretty slap dash. ("chicken" nuggets and spaghetti?) So I am happy to be home to cook again, and get some healthy food into my family after a week of too many icecream cones and lots of virgin frozen margaritas.

The best food thing about the resort though, was the fresh papaya. How I love papaya!

My 4 year old decided that she needs to survive on refried beans while we on vacaiton, so I figure I should learn to make them.

Today I did just that.

Easy, not authentic, Refried beans.

1 can of black beans, no salt added, mostly drained

dash of cumin

sprinkle of salt

spash of Bragg's or soy sauce

Spill the can of beans into a small pan, with a little of the liquid, and heat,

add seasonings to taste and then mash the little suckers until you have the consistency you prefer.

Serve.

(over brown rice with ghee if you're my children)

yumm.

Beans!

This is my stash from the SF Farmer's Market. I'm going to use some of either Eye of the Goat or Good Mother Stallard for my Smoky Chipotle Beans with Masa Dumplings and Greens.

I love how the Vaquero beans look like holstein cows. :-)  All the heirloom beans were gorgeous... it was so hard to keep it to three pounds.