Succotash, Scrumptious, Saline Flush (sick!), Shish ka bobs, Sorry not Sorry.

Apparently S stands for snow in our neck of the woods. I kid you not, when I filled up the first of many cups of coffee Saturday morning, I looked out the kitchen windows and BOOM. Snow. All over everywhere. Granted it wasn’t sticking to the driveway, but snow in March is cause for a minute (not a minute, get it?) amount of complaining. It also happens that I put (and by put I mean tossed into the back of one of the closets upstairs; there was no neatly placing or hanging up. I’ll admit my organized chaos of cleaning and organizing is not for everyone. Out of sight, out of mind) all the winter gear – coats, hats, boots, gloves upstairs last weekend.  So be it Mother Nature. I’m from Iowa, I can outlast your little cold spat. I’ll raise you no gloves and a light jacket. I might even forgo the jacket for a sweatshirt….without a hood! Take that! *snaps fingers*

S stands for Spring Break this week too. Half day Thursday and no school Friday through Wednesday of the following week. Whoop whoop! I’m not 100% sure why I like spring break. I’m a creature of habit, mostly introverted naturally. I still wake up early (around 4:30am), work out, have my four cups of coffee, eat breakfast, and then… sit there…for hours. I might have to find a hobby...or continue working on the seven I currently have (knot rugs, I know you’re there waiting for me). Maybe I’ll be extra adventurous and bake a cake to share with you lovely people, which Clint will thoroughly enjoy (until I decide cake doesn’t need to be in our house and I take it elsewhere to pawn off on someone). Who knows? I’m sure something will happen, besides going somewhere for break. My actual vacation (Grand Canyon, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Vegas) happened at the beginning of February when we had baby seedlings growing instead of the adolescents and young adults they now are. It was fun, although very peoplely. Read on for the good stuff…and food pictures. Mustn’t forget food pictures.

I would say you’re probably sick of hearing about seitan, but hello, I’ve only made one post, you haven’t had time to be sick of it yet (furthermore, if you haven’t attempted making seitan, you shouldn’t be sick of it). Since St Paddy’s day is Tuesday, and my family usually gets together for the mandatory corned beef and cabbage meal around that day (today is that day, it’s close enough), you’re going to be on the receiving end of like minded recipes. As a child I was obbbsseeeesssssed with corned beef (the seitan is coming, be patient. I like to give back story info. Scroll to the next picture of the corned beef looking thing if you want to). I literally could not eat enough of it. Right now I would insert a funny/slightly off anecdote about my love of corned beef, but it’s not incredibly relevant to the recipe, so ask if you would like to know. The texture was awesome, the flavor divine, the nitrites that gives the meat its color- positively carcinogenic. Last year’s task involved attempting to find something that yielded the same euphoric experience as my beloved corned beef. I can tell you right now, my abyssmal failure, the tofu in beet brine, did not hit the spot. It tasted like tofu in beet brine (no imaginative seasonings, no sauteeing the tofu to give a little texture). To be fair, I was a relatively new vegan, just trying out a recipe without the animal product. I don’t think I even pressed the tofu to let the moisture out. I failed. I ate it, but man, it sucked. There was nothing about that tofu that made me say ‘I want this again next year.’  This year, I found a recipe (thank you Pinterest!) from Plant Powered Couple that detailed a slow cooker corned seitan. Now, I’m not one to read the entirety of a recipe until I absolutely need to. That was a mistake, but it happens. This recipe calls for multiple time steps for the seitan to hang with a homemade rub and brine in various spots in the kitchen. Once again, the procrastinator in me didn’t leave enough time to fulfill the recipe requirements. I nipped and tucked here and there.  The brine has beet juice and puree in it to make the color of the seitan more on point with the bright pink(?) color of the corned beef. It turned out more of a brisket color for me but no complaints.

I made an executive decision to sautee the cabbage instead of submerging it in beet juice (beets are one of the few veggies that don’t trip my trigger). Don’t you fret all my cabbage lovers (or those who are cabbage curious), there will be a recipe link for the recipe. Look for the plate full of food. Keep going right. Yep, you got it.

Our annual St Paddy’s day lunch also included no knead bread, recipe credit to Jenny Can Cook (for recipe link, click on the picture), and Grandma Ople’s apple pie from All Recipes (click the picture, sub vegan butter in lieu of the butter for the caramel sauce base, and the Crisco double pie crust uses vegetable shortening. I highly recommend reading the comment suggestions to kick up the recipe a notch. It’s pretty much the only apple pie I and my family make since trying the pie recipe out a few years ago.

S=Supper. Easy S word. Covers everything after this sentence. Backpedaling to…. Monday I believe (my days tend to blur together at the end of the week (weird I know – that was massively sarcastic). We had pad thai, which is one of the most delicious, easiest dishes to throw together in my kitchen. Rice noodles, peanut butter, some other spices/saucy things, and edamame (soy beans). You seriously can’t go wrong. recipe credit: Modern Little Victories. We normally have pad thai once or twice a month. It would be more, but there are so many awesome looking vegan recipes out there I want to try them all. And it totally depends on my level of motivation for the week. Some days I’m like yeah, I’m making a seven* course meal with a three* course dessert (for two people, are you crazy?). *amounts with numbers have been changed to show extreme motivation level) and other days I’m like…. I’m pretty sure popcorn and mint oreos count as a meal. Last week was an interesting combination of both.. if I can remember. I may have had the lazy meal mentioned earlier at some point, I will neither confirm nor deny. Anyway. Monday (I think?) was definitely pad thai. Easy peasy recipe, throw things together, eat things, maybe have enough leftovers the next day for two or three people. Maybe. Recipe link on the finished pad thai picture.

One last recipe because I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Back story: Clint and I watch Netflix sometimes. Every once and a while there are shows that intrigue us (in this instance not in an ooh who killed the butler way but an oooh I wonder how the restaurant is going to look after the big makeover and reveal way). I believe the show was in Malta and a dish came up on the screen – Maltese kapunata. Up to that point, I had no idea what that was, or what was in it. Clint pulled up the handy dandy Google and searched for a recipe for kapunata. Apparently it’s similar to the French ratatouille (side note, funny movie!). It has cut up vegetables – eggplant and sooooooo many tomatoes (spoiler, if you don’t like tomatoes, you probably won’t appreciate this recipe quite as much). It was relatively easy, and it was surprisingly delicious. I wasn’t 100% sure about the flavor combo while I was reading the recipe over, but color me impressed (which I hear is a lovely shade of mauve with a mint green outline- totally just made that up, do not believe the color, unless it’s true, then I totally knew that). Maltese kapunata recipe credit: Medmunch

Farm updates (just because): We now have 223 peppers currently growing, 144 pepper seeds planted this morning, around 350 tomato plants, along with numerous broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, Mizuna (a purple, leafy green, not to be confused with Mizuno, which is my favorite running shoe), eggplant and other things. Who knows how many seedling plants are growing? Our house is starting to look like a greenhouse again. Tis the season.