Needless to say, there was a pediatrician appointment this afternoon and a trip to the pharmacy. Of course, my insurance--for whatever reason, maybe just because the universe decided it was my time for something stupid today--didn't list the baby's information on file correctly, so I ended up having to pay full price for her eye drops.
By the time I got home, the baby looked like she had two black eyes, and I was ready to call it quits for the day. Tony got home, we gave her the eye drops, and we both just mutually understood that dinner was catch-as-catch-can tonight.
The good news is that since we had friends over yesterday (which I mentioned in the post about the chocolate cake), we had leftovers. Yesterday, I had made vegan mac and cheese, barbecue soy curls in the Instant Pot, and coleslaw. I was feeling the spring barbecue vibe since the weather here is back up in the 50s, which is practically shorts weather for Indiana. It was a good night for reheating and just throwing together on a plate, given the events of the day.
The coleslaw was a throw together vinaigrette since Tony hates all things mayonnaise and mayonnaise contains eggs. Basically, I used 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of sugar, a few liberal splashes of lime juice, and salt and pepper to taste. We used a prepackaged coleslaw mix, but I added red onion and some yellow bell pepper to it just to give it a bit more flavor. The flavor of the bell pepper really came through prominently, and it ended up being a really wonderful addition.
The barbecue soy curls were the product of a recipe that I found on Simple Daily Recipes by Jill McKeever, but I did mine the lazy way. If you guys have never seen any of her recipes or videos, I highly recommend her YouTube channel. She's really entertaining, and watching her videos gave Tony and I a lot of inspiration about what kind of meals and things we want to eat and play with and try in the very near future. Also, she's 110% right about how awesome the Instant Pot is, and I am so glad that I bought one! I normally feel somewhat ambivalent about fancy kitchen things because I can create so many awesome things without fancy crap, but there are three things that have become indispensable to me now that we're doing the vegan thing: food processor, decent blender (we use the Ninja Mega kitchen system for both), and Instant Pot. Seriously, guys. All of these items are worth the money if you want to eat more healthily.
But back to the soy curls. First of all, we had never even heard of these until we watched Jill's channel, but they are actually really good. Like a lot of soy products, they don't have a great deal of their own flavor, so they can take on the flavor of the things you put on them incredibly well. I treated ours similarly to Jill's recipe, but the main difference was that I got hella lazy about the sauce. We had some store-bought Stubb's original sauce (which is vegan, according to their website!) that we used instead of making our own sauce, but the rest of the process was the same. Tony was not crazy about their texture, but he liked the flavor overall. I thought their texture was actually pretty good. We had whole wheat buns to eat them with, and I actually really loved how delicious the combination of the soy curls and the buns were together.
The mac and cheese, to be fair, was kind of a big cheat for me. About two months ago, Tony and I made this vegan mac and cheese from a recipe that we found on Pinterest. It was so good, and it made so much sauce that we ended up freezing about half of the sauce that it made for later use. So, really, all I had to do was make more of the macaroni, and then pour some of my left over sauce on it. I did end up thinning the sauce out a little bit with some cashew milk since the sauce was a little bit thick. I also added a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast just to boost the cheesy flavor. Honestly, though, this sauce doesn't need nutritional yeast. It's actually really good on its own, totally untampered with. In fact, I didn't think that Tony would even notice a difference, but when he tasted it, he surprised me by saying that it tasted different than the first time we had it. He didn't dislike my improvised change, but he did notice. So I guess that should be a sign that the first time we had it, it actually made an impression on him.
Really, I'm just grateful that there were leftovers to be had today. Everything went so awry that I don't really know what we would have eaten if not for the leftovers. If my leftovers could be like this all the time, I would have no problem at all with having leftovers. This food was just as good today as it was when I made it yesterday--I might even say that the coleslaw got better, but coleslaw often does when given the chance to hang out for a while. Let's just hope that tomorrow isn't as crazy. But if it is, there are still leftover soy curls and vegan mac and cheese...
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