Pink Eye and Leftovers

Just when you thought it was safe to settle down a little, there has to be yet another little thing that gets thrown at you from left field. This morning, the baby woke up cranky and with a little bit of gunk in the corner of her right eye. By 9:30 AM, her daycare is calling me to tell me that she has pink eye and that I need to come get her. At 10 AM, when I got to the daycare, both of her eyes had gunk in them, were bright red, and her right eye looked swollen with red circles underneath and on her eyelid.

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...

Chocolate Cake

Confession: I love chocolate. Dark chocolate is actually my favorite, but I like most chocolate in general unless it's cheap and crappy. So you can imagine how sad it makes me that the majority of the chocolate that I really love contains milk, which is a vegan no-no.

Let me be straight up with you here: I can live without dairy if I have to, despite being raised on milk and cheese in true Midwestern fashion, but what I'm not sure I can live without is my chocolate. Especially around a certain time each month (you know what I'm talking about, we don't need to be crass here).

Before you give me guff, I already know that there are vegan chocolate options, and I plan to indulge in those. I just don't have any of them right now. And since Tony and I make a point of grocery shopping only at specific times to avoid spending too much money, it'll be a little while before our next shopping trip rolls around. Plus, we have tons of food right now, and I simply can't see going to a grocery store just to find chocolate without milk because there's no way that that will be the only thing I buy. I know myself way too well for that!

So, in the mean time, the chocolate is all on me to figure out. I will be honest, I wasn't really even thinking about chocolate when I ran across this recipe for vegan chocolate cake. What I was thinking was that I needed to find something delicious that I could impress some friends with because we had friends coming over for dinner (and, really, what's dinner without dessert?).  And since I was going to be serving them vegan food, I wanted it to really shine. You know how it is, you make the best dishes when you have people over so that you can really show them how well you can put a meal together. It ain't no time for boxed mac and cheese when company's coming, let alone boxed cake!

The recipe seemed really simple, which was what sold me on this cake. I wanted something that I could put together while the baby was napping. Minimal fuss, but maximum flavor. The liquid component in this cake comes from warm coffee, vanilla, and vegetable oil instead of containing eggs. I had a bit of a concern that it would taste too much like coffee, but the flavor of the coffee was really very minimal here. It was a nice undertone, but if you didn't know that there was coffee in the cake, you probably would never have guessed. Tony actually didn't know that coffee was one of the ingredients until I started to write this and asked him about the flavor of the coffee in the cake. His response was, "What coffee?"

It was a really nice, moist cake. It released very easily from the bundt pan. It assembled easily, baked easily, presented easily. This is a really good recipe, guys! It's perfect for a time when you want to put out minimal effort but still have something really good. I'd say it's exactly the kind of vegan desert that a busy mom can work with. And everyone who ate it tonight enjoyed it. We still have half the cake left, and I am really looking forward to having another piece tomorrow.

A little powdered sugar on top, and you've got a winner!

This cake could definitely get me through those chocolate cravings. Until I can find a vegan chocolate that I know I enjoy and can reliably find, this cake will make things a lot easier for me. It'll probably make things a lot easier for Tony too. Just sayin'.

Satisfying a Kale Craving

Ok, so I had every intention of holding off on more blog posts for a few days just to ensure that I had something of actual value to write about, but then something weird happened to me today: I had a craving for kale chips. I know that probably doesn't seem that weird, but it was weird for me. I don't usually crave kale. I crave things that are obscure. I crave sweet. When I was pregnant, I craved crunchy. In the past I have craved, and this is a direct quote from my grasping-at-straws struggle to vocalize my desires, "something cold and sweet, but not ice cream...but also soft..." Yeah, I know. It's weird. I'm weird.

Surprising, then, that I should crave something so definite. I also know how fake it sounds when people say things like this when we live in the junk food era, and believe me, no one is more surprised about my new-found love of kale than I am. I used to hear people say that they loved things like kale and glare at them skeptically. My mom, on the other hand, would tell you that she's not surprised by this behavior from me. She tells a story of how, as a two-year-old child, to the disbelief of our waitress, I ordered a salad. When it came, the waitress set it in front of my mother, I snatched it from her, and exclaimed, "Salad!" in an excited and adorable way. Maybe you can detox from all the crap food and actually start to crave healthy foods again. 

The good news is that I had kale at home! In fact, I had two different kinds of kale at home, red and green kale. I bought them for the kale chips that I made here and for a lemony white bean and kale soup that I found here. I hadn't made the soup yet, but I figured that it was as good a time as any since the baby is still getting over being sick and Tony got sick too.

The recipe was really good, but it was not vegan the way that we made it. We had leftover chicken stock that needed to be used, and it also called for a tablespoon of butter. But two small tweaks, and this soup would easily be vegan. I just had at least two and a half cartons of chicken stock that we had bought in bulk at Costco that I didn't want to waste. The butter could easily be omitted. It didn't really contribute to the flavor of the soup in too meaningful a way, and it make the surface a bit oily. That or it could be replaced by another tablespoon of olive oil.

The lemon in this soup is the thing that really makes it extraordinary. The burst of freshness that it contributes is the real star here. It pairs so well with the rosemary, thyme, and oregano that it makes you wonder why you never thought to put lemon in a soup before--or it did for me because I've never put lemon in a soup before! The only thing I wish I had done differently with this is tear the kale into smaller pieces so they were a little easier to get in a bite. The kale stands up really well to the heat of the soup, so it's an ideal green for this sort of application. The recipe suggested that spinach or chard can be used instead, but I feel those would be far inferior in both mouth-feel and flavor. The kale and lemon go so well together that I cannot conceive of replacing the kale here.

Each night that we try a new recipe, Tony and I have a discussion about it. The discussion always ends with me posing a question to him: is this a do-over? Because if he doesn't like it, then there's no point in me making an entire meal that he won't eat. Tonight, I didn't ask that question. Tonight, I said, "Oh yes. OH YES. This is a keeper." There was no debate. I'm definitely making this one again. It was also really filling. We each had one bowl and that was enough to satisfy us both.

The other good news is that this soup only called for about a cup and a half of kale. Since I had a whole bunch of kale, I had plenty of extra kale to use to make some kale chips. Overall, I would say today was a culinary win. I satisfied a craving, and I found something new that was really awesome, cheap to produce, and quick to make. Not a bad way to spend an evening. 

Nachos and TVP

Sunday is my favorite day, always has been. It's a day for chilling out, meal prepping, catching up on some TV and emails, and just generally being low-key. And since Josephine is still pretty snotty, it's a good time to be resting and doing as little as possible. She spent at least two hours this afternoon sleeping on me. It was a really nice moment.

Now, when it comes to food, this weekend has been less about meal prepping and more about using stuff up--whether that be leftovers or just previously purchased ingredients before they go bad. Since we've decided to transition into vegan, we've been buying a lot more produce and beans (obviously). You know what doesn't keep for very long? Avocados. I got really excited to see avocados on sale the last time we shopped. Per Alton Brown's advice, we let them ripen to perfection on the counter and then put them in the fridge when they were ripe. This kept them from getting too ripe, and it helped to keep them fresher for longer since we can only shop every two weeks.

Even despite the fridge trick, my avocados were close to being at the end of their lifespan. So what do you do when you have avocados on the edge? You make guacamole. There's really nothing all that special about the way I do it. Yesterday's guacamole was really in keeping with the using-up-some-stuff theme. I had tomatoes and avocados that needed to be used, some red onion I bought for one recipe that needed to be put to another use, and half a lemon to use up. It was the perfect collection of things to make guacamole, though I would normally use lime juice, Throw into that salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and you're in business. (Pro-tip: if you put cling wrap on the surface of your guacamole when you put it away, it won't brown. That's my trick for making it last longer!)

What I really wanted to do, though, was find something else to put that vegan nacho cheese on. If I didn't make it clear before, I really enjoyed that vegan cheese. But leftover vegan nacho cheese and guacamole does not exactly nachos make, and what I wanted was nachos. It needed something else, something meat-like. So I thought this might be a good time to experiment with the TVP we bought.

If you're not familiar, TVP is texturized vegetable protein. It's a dried food that simply needs to be rehydrated to be eaten. I rehydrated ours with vegetable stock according to the package directions (ours was the Bob's Red Mill variety, but there are other companies that offer it as well).

After that, I seasoned it with some cumin, onion power, garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and liquid smoke. I didn't measure anything, just seasoned to my own taste. I was going for a taco meat kind of flavor, but I didn't have any taco seasoning on hand. Next time, I think I would just use taco seasoning because it would be easier and probably have a more traditional taco meat sort of flavor. Even with my improvisation, the results were good.

For the record, it also bears noting that the vegan nacho cheese actually heats back up really well when left over. I was concerned that it would get much too thick, and it did thicken up more over time, but it thinned back out very nicely. All we did was heat it up in the microwave, add just a splash of water, and stir. It worked out.

I started out just making it for myself because I was hungry after work, but Tony took an interest in it too after it was made. He actually voluntarily ate some. I have to give him credit. Lately, Tony has really been branching out with food. Eating cheese is way out of his comfort zone, vegan or not, but he was willing to try it. This morning, despite his hatred of coffee, he was willing to try a new coffee that we bought, and he discovered that he liked it. He also really liked the TVP with the vegan nacho cheese. I know because he ate a full plate of his own nachos, minus the guacamole.

Finished product on my plate. Picture this without the guac for Tony's plate.

 I'm a bit relieved to see Tony trying to be more adventurous with food because it would be pretty hard for us to go vegan if he wasn't willing to be more open about it. To be honest, I was bit skeptical when he suggested that we go vegan. It was a battle just to convince him to go for meatless meals a few times a week for the sake of our budget. Tony is a creature of habit. He likes to stay carefully ensconced in his comfort zone, and anyone who suggests he come out of it is usually met with irritation and attitude.

I'm not trying to disparage him; obviously I love him or we wouldn't have a daughter together and a relationship. It's just that going vegan is a big lifestyle change. I don't want it to be something that we do for a week and then just go back to the old habits. And I don't want him to feel the need to go sneak a hamburger on the sly. This relationship is not one where we force each other to do things or guilt each other, and it's counter-productive if we feel like we have to hide things from each other. If he's going to do the vegan thing, I just think it's going to be more successful if it's something that he actually wants to do. But I would be lying if I didn't admit that I'm really relieved to see him being so open and receptive to it.

Anyway, the other stuff we've made this weekend has been part of the continuing effort to use up our remaining meat and dairy. I did finally make the chicken wings. They were good, but I truly don't feel like I'll miss them. I also made some popcorn earlier today since I couldn't really decide what I wanted to have, but I wanted something. Tonight's dinner was more vegetarian than vegan since it contained butter and cream. I made garlic asparagus pasta. It was good, but I'm not going to really get too detailed with the recipe. Why? Because I want to find a way to make the recipe vegan, and then share it here! So expect that to be coming in the near future.

For now, we're closing out this Sunday night with some tea and fresh fruit in bed while Tony catches up on Fuller House--I finished binge-watching it earlier today. Our nightly routine lately has revolved around sharing a bowl of sliced fruit and having some herbal tea once the baby is in bed. It's a new routine, but I find that I really enjoy it. It's a nice way of winding down, so I'm just going to let the winding down commence right now.

Vegan Nacho Cheese

The last few days have not exactly gone as planned. And by that I mean that they were a total mess. Wednesday, the baby ended up with a fever, I had a doctor's appointment of the unpleasant feminine variety, and I had to take the baby to a last minute doctor's appointment. I also completely forgot about a board meeting, so I had to sort of re-plan my evening. Then, after the pediatrician appointment, I had to go to the pharmacy, drop off the baby, and head straight to my meeting.

It should come as no surprise, then, that dinner sort of fell by the wayside. I had every intention of making the chicken wings so that I could just be using them up and getting rid of the last remnants of meat from our freezer. Yet, by the end of the evening, we couldn't be bothered. We ordered in Mediterranean food from a local restaurant, Elia's, instead.

Vegetarian (but actually vegan) combination plate.

In fact, if I'm being perfectly honest about it, dinner has been a bit of an after-thought the last few days. Thursday, I had a funeral viewing to go to. Tonight, we went to Costco after work while my parents watched the sick baby for us. This entire week has been a bit of a wash for me, food-wise. It could have been worse, but it also could have been exponentially better.

Here's the thing: things are getting busy and I feel a bit on edge about the fact that I now have less food options to fall back on when they do because we're going vegan. It's easy to stop and get a burger. It's easy to pick out literally any restaurant and get chicken or some other form of meat. It's ridiculously hard in northern Indiana to find vegan options on a menu. I went to a restaurant with my parents this week and everything had meat or dairy. There wasn't even a salad that was free of meat. The sad thing is that this is not unusual. This is how it is in our area.

So, this evening, I just felt like I needed a few things. First, I needed a snack because I was still hungry after the take-out Chinese dinner we had with my family. Second, I needed to prove to myself that I could still have good snacks in a shorter amount of time without really feeling the sacrifice. In that spirit, I decided to give a try to a recipe that we found on a YouTube channel we follow called Hot for Food. Tonight, I made vegan nacho cheese.

Feel free to ignore my terrible cropping and the mostly empty baby bottle.

That's right, vegan nacho cheese. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the recipe, but you can find the video here. The video also contains a link to their website, where you can find the written recipe if you don't feel like watching the video (or click here if you're really lazy).

I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious this recipe happens to be. I will say, first of all, that it does not taste like the nacho cheese sauce that it looks like. It has some cheesiness to the flavor, but I wouldn't say that it tastes like cheese. But then, who really expects vegan recipes or products to actually taste like cheese? I just think this happens to be a really delicious sauce with some cheese-like undertones.

I think that the reason this cheese sauce is so good actually has a lot more to do with the jalapenos and their brine than it does the nutritional yeast. It wouldn't be nearly as good without the jalapenos. The texture of it, especially when pouring it out of the blender, was actually surprisingly cheese-like. The mouthfeel was a bit less smooth than it looked, but I think that may have more to do with the fact that I don't have a Vitamix than it does anything else.

We bought some multigrain tortilla chips at Costco tonight from a company called Food Should Taste Good that I had with the nacho cheese sauce. Those chips were also surprisingly good. They have flax seeds and sunflower seeds, so the flavor is a bit more nutty. Most importantly, the paired really well with the nacho cheese. Tony, the notorious cheese-hater, actually tried them together and liked them.

Ultimately, I think I accomplished what I set out to do tonight. I wanted to create something delicious in a shorter amount of time and prove to myself, after a week of crappy eating and disappointment in my food, that I would still be able to eat tasty, easy things while vegan. I think, including time to cook the potatoes and carrots, that this nacho cheese took about 15 minutes to prepare. It also made quite a lot of cheese sauce. I don't even think I ate a quarter of what it made, so there's still quite a bit left.

It took me until Friday night, but I managed to redeem myself with just a simple, satisfying snack. I feel like I can do this again after having spent the last few days worrying about how I'll be able to find things to eat that don't just consist of raw vegetables or scornful glances from meat-eaters. After all, one cannot subsist on judgement alone.

Life's Little Updates and Kale and Banana Experiments

Ok, so it's clearly been a long time since I've posted on this blog. BUT I didn't forget about it. Life happened! So, let me tell you what's been going on.

In the past, I've written about my relationship with Tony and the kind of cooking that we did together. The biggest thing that's been going on since my last post is that WE HAD A BABY! Yay!

To be fair, this picture is somewhat misleading. She's about three days from 10 months old today. This is more current.

My pregnancy was somewhat difficult. I was considered high risk, so we saw a specialist frequently. Josephine was a c-section baby, so there was quite a recovery time too. And then there's all the new mama drama!

The good news is that I'm ready to jump back into the blog. The bad news (maybe?) is that Tony and I have decided to make some pretty serious changes with our lives. In my last post, I talked about how we've made more of an effort to choose responsibly when it comes to food. That said, we've decided that we're going to go vegan.

Now, I know what you're thinking. There's a lot of criticism about the vegan lifestyle. There's the ever-present question of where the protein comes from, and there's also the fact that it seems like a really big sacrifice. So here's some background. The main reason that Tony decided to give vegan a try is that he wants to feel better. He's got some digestive issues and these issues are definitely exacerbated when he eats processed foods and high-fat foods. For him, it's really all about feeling better. For me, there are actually a lot of reasons. I feel like a vegan lifestyle is more healthful. There's also a large part of me that wants to do this for ethical reasons.

Let me be a little more specific about what I mean by ethical reasons. For one, I don't want you to think that I'm a card-carrying member of PETA or that I'm all about animal liberation. I don't think the meat industry is an "animal holocaust." I don't want anyone else to feel bad about eating meat. However, I do think that factory farming animals is having an incredibly negative impact on our world and our environment. I also think that, while there are companies out there that treat animals with respect and use Temple Grandin designed systems for compassionate slaughter, not all meat companies operate ethically. All you have to do is a quick Google search to find hundreds of videos of people gleefully abusing animals that are being bred for meat. I'm not naive enough to think that my abstinence from meat will change an entire industry, but I do feel that it will clear my conscience.

The point of all of this is that we wanted a platform to catalog our journey to the vegan lifestyle. We're not just jumping in with both feet. We're trying to sort of transition into the vegan lifestyle. Right now, we're in the process of using up the meat and dairy products that we still have. As it gets used up, we'll just be replacing those animal products with plant-based products.

Obviously, then, our goal is to get more creative with food in order to keep the positive momentum going. So we've been doing some great experimentation lately with trying new things. Sunday, I made kale chips for the first time, which really were just as easy as the internet said that they would be.

If you've never done it, it's super simple. You wash the kale and let it completely dry. Then, you toss it with a small amount of oil, lightly sprinkle it with salt, and bake it at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a snack that's easier to produce than kale chips. My entire family loved them, so we'll definitely be repeating this recipe. In the future, though, I think I'll experiment with different flavors and seasonings for them.

Tonight, we actually enjoyed a vegan dinner. We had some veggie burgers, roasted broccoli, and salads. Tony had never had a veggie burger before, but veggie burgers and I are old friends. We found some veggie burgers at Aldi that were cheap and also contained only vegetables and no funky ingredients, which I was pretty impressed by. Tony found them somewhat bland, but he did like them enough to have them again. The real star of my dinner was actually the broccoli. I oven roasted it after tossing it with some minced garlic and salt and pepper. To be honest, I really put an obscene amount of garlic on the broccoli--which is why it was so good!

Those little brown bits are the garlic.

For dessert, I decided to try making ice cream out of frozen bananas--another little thing that I've read about countless times on the internet. I'll be honest, I was skeptical about how this would work, which was only exacerbated by the way it initially looked before it came together. At first, the bananas were crumbly and strange until they started to get creamy. It was just a food processor full of frozen banana shards. I should have taken a picture because none of the things that I'd read had prepared me for the weirdness of those bananas before they got creamy. The finished product, however, was delicious. It does still taste like banana. Everything I'd read about it before said that it would taste more ice cream-like, but it really just tasted like cold, chocolately banana (because I put cocoa powder in it, which was a fantastic choice).

I don't want to underplay how enjoyable this was despite my criticisms. I really love bananas. Cold, processed bananas with cocoa powder and raw, shredded coconut on top is no exception to this rule. It also paired really well with the cashew milk that I'm having tonight. Tony didn't like it, but he thought that might have had more to do with the cocoa powder than the banana flavor.

Tonight was probably a bit more vegan than we've been for a while. We've been eating much more plant-based meals in general just because beans are a really good dinner solution when money is tight, and a great deal of our budget now is dedicated to formula and diapers. Lately, we've just been trying to get rid of the rest of our meat. So tomorrow, we'll be eating chicken wings for dinner because I have to use them up. We don't really have the money to be wasteful and just throw out food, and even if we did, the frugal little psycho portion of my brain would be launched into a twitching, drooling spazz attack. (If you did't know this about me, I hate spending money. The only thing I hate as much as spending money is wasting money or things I've spent money on. If I'm willing to spend money on something, it's because I think it's a viable and useful item that I actually believe in.)

I'm looking forward to sharing the ups and downs of this new chapter in our lives. Be prepared, guys, because it's going to get real honest!

Beef Stroganoff the Bittman Way

Alright, so I don't like to be the kind of person that beats a dead horse. I don't like to do things over and over again. Part of why Tony and I started branching out with food is because we got tired of having the same old things over and over. So I'm sure you're asking yourself why I'm writing about beef stroganoff again. This will require a bit of explaining.

A few weeks ago, Tony and I sat down to watch Food, Inc. Of course, we were aware that it might make us a little bit upset, but I don't think that I really had an accurate idea of how upset it was going to make me. The food industry today has become unfair to workers, animals, and consumers. It's all about profit and not at all about health.

That said, Tony and I have decided to make some different food choices. We're buying local meat and produce from our farmer's market. We're buying organic products. We're making the effort to eat vegetarian until 6 PM (the Mark Bittman way. Have you noticed a theme here? I'm a Bittman fan.) to reduce our meat consumption and try to make healthier choices.

Given our change in eating habits, we've been finding new ways to create the foods that we enjoy. Since we were in the mood for beef stroganoff, we consulted--you guessed it--Mark Bittman. My father bought me an edition of his book, How to Cook Everything, which is where we found the recipe. It can also be found on Mark Bittman's website.

The interesting thing about this recipe is that it calls for both Dijon mustard and tomato sauce. Neither of those flavors are easily picked out from the taste of the dish itself when finished. In fact, you can't really taste them at all. They lend themselves to the overall flavor of the dish, but they are not such an overwhelming component that they are discernible. For me, the mark of a well-written recipe is a list of ingredients that mesh so well together that you can't tell what they are when you eat the dish itself.

The most prevalent flavor in this version of beef stroganoff, other than the beef itself, is the creaminess of the sour cream. The onion is present, the butter, the mushrooms, they all contribute. But the main flavors, the ones that you just can't ignore, are the beef and the sour cream. I think that's part of what I like so much about this particular dish. It's flavors seem, on the surface, so simple. Yet, omitting any of the ingredients would significantly alter the taste of the dish, and I feel it would be a negative alteration.

The amusing thing about this is that it was actually easier to make than the ground beef stroganoff. That dish was easy, too, but it was nowhere near as satisfying as this one. I dare say I actually put less effort into mixing and babysitting this particular version than I did its ground beef cousin. It also bears noting that the actual finished product was immensely more satisfying than the previously discussed version.

I guess this will serve as a lesson to me. Time and effort are not necessarily indicative of good food. Fresh ingredients lacking in chemicals really make the difference. Food that I can actually feel good about is more satisfying in the long run than something that is allegedly weeknight dinner friendly. This whole process has definitely been a learning experience.