A belly of beans

I've been trying to do more bean and altogether healthier meals lately. Unfortunately this doesn't always mean that said dishes are attractive. One of my creations from this week involved mole roasted cauliflower. Okay, not bad, but when you add it to wild rice, adzuki beans, and a tahini sauce drizzle it equals a play on various browns. Not so photogenic. However, last week I managed to make something both tasty and pretty.

Enter, my mexican inspired lunncher (well, it was really late for a lunch, and a bit early for a dinner). I had some avocado left over from making sushi which were getting a bit too ripe. I figured guacamole would be a good call, even if I used diced canned tomatoes since I didn't have any fresh. Much to my horror, all I had was various kinds of crushed tomatoes. To make up for it, I cooked up some millet with fire roasted crushed tomatoes instead of plain water, topped it with some overly dry refried beans I whipped up, and guac sans tomato. I'm really pleased as to how it turned out. I'm seeing this as a summer staple with homemade crushed roasted tomatoes perhaps...

A saucy state of mind

Erm, I still to exist. Honestly. The last fews weeks have been insane. Loads of exams (mostly for me) and grading too. Not to mention a prospective grad student visitation weekend thrown in the middle as well. As a result, some of my meals haven't been very original or noteworthy, especially since I was eating leftovers from the fall stashed in my freezer for a while. (This did result in a beet juice accident when I had lunchbox leakage of the black bean beet soup from Vwav get over everything, including a batch of lab reports that I was grading. Whooops)

One mighty tasty meal was queso with broccoli and polenta. It was my first time making polenta, and wow was it easy!

The polenta that I ate for dinner I just plopped on my plate, but I got fancy with the leftovers for my lunch the next day and molded it. It made me feel as if I wasn't eating the exact same meal as the previous day for some reason.

I also did some fridge and pantry cleaning out this week. Because of a storm dumping 18.5 inches of snow on the area, and me being a lazy arse and not attempting to dig out my car until the snow was impossible to remove as it was covered in a layer of ice from melting, I wasn't able to go grocery shopping for almost three weeks! Thank goodness I have a well stocked pantry and freezer. Near the end, my fresh produce was looking a bit worse for wear. Using three sorry potatoes and some crimini mushrooms that had seen better days, I whipped up this last dish that included a cashew miso gravy as well as Vwav tempeh sausage crumbles.