A Stolen Sandwich

I was reading the blog "Good Good Things" yesterday and copied this sandwich for my dinner last night. Miso Teriyaki Seitan and Grilled Onions. Here are the components:

"Beef" strips (seitan) marinated in teriyaki and white miso, seared in a pan.

"Blue Cheese Dressing" from the Blooming Platter cookbook. This was one of the sample recipes in the Amazon "Search Inside This Book," and I couldn't wait to try this dressing. It is made with beer - what a great idea! It has tofu chunks in it- would have been fine without the tofu, just as a sauce. This was not in the original sandwich, but was a good addition.

Grilled onions.

Chipotle dill mayo.

Here is the awesome result.

Back shot so you can see the pretzel roll. I never heard of these before moving to the midwest, but the Carnivore says they had them in NY. They are delicious, but really high in sodium (1600 mg. for the roll. Of course, that roll was supposed to serve two, but in what universe?)

A lovely, salty, caloric meal.

I must confess, although they tasted good, I did not save the leftover beef strips. Not to be gross, but when I took them out of the package I had just come in from cleaning up my backyard from the dogs.  I just could not get past the appearance of those beef strips! Glad they were hidden in a big roll.

Another Way to Choose Recipes

You would think with all the cookbooks I have that it would be easy to figure out what to make for dinner. But I think mostly I love to read them as if they were novels, and dream about which recipes I would make if my family would eat something besides macaroni. Sometimes, just for for fun, I go to Amazon and read reviews of the books I have to see which recipes other people have loved.

One such book is called "Olive Trees and Honey." It was published a while back. It's a book of Jewish vegetarian recipes from around the world, mostly eastern European and Middle Eastern. It's interesting because it gives you a lot of different versions of a recipe, depending on country of origin. Lots of emphasis on eggplant, peppers, chickpeas, tahini, etc.

The recipe I chose for last night was for Hungarian cream of mushroom soup that someone raved about in a review of the book. I had some soy creamer to use up, and had bought some fresh mushrooms that day. The soup is seasoned with lots of paprika and cayenne, and not much else. It was simple and good.

I made some croutons for my salad. I cut up bread ends and sprinkled them with olive oil and garlic salt, and baked them at 400 for about half an hour.

The croutons were really good, but they took away the freshness of the salad. Turns out they were much better in the soup!

The salad dressing was really good. It was just rice vinegar, mustard, a sprinkle of sugar, and basil olive oil. We have a store here that sells all different flavors of olive oil and balsamic vinegars. They are all in big urns and you can pour them into tiny paper cups for tasting. I love the basil oil best - it adds so much to a salad.

Of course there was macaroni, too!

A Repeat and Cute Kid Pics

Well, the reason for the clean out the fridge menu of last was that we were driving to Florida the next day. My parents live there, and we have not visited for 5 years (usually my parents come to visit us). Also, I wanted to bring my kids to Disney while they are still young. It was a very long drive but I'm glad we did it. The flights would have cost $4,000, plus another $1,000 to rent a van. What gives, airlines? I know it is spring break but are that many people willing to pay those prices? We only went to Disney one day because that, too, has increased dramatically. I read in a guide book that the ticket prices have increased 44% since 2003 (or was it 2005?) Anyway, the kids and I really enjoyed it. The Carnivore refers to it as "that evil Mickey place."

One little princess is not happy at this point.

Waiting for Mickey's Philarmagic show.

Waiting to see princesses. Over an hour on line at 10:00 pm.

But worth it for these smiles.

This was taken about midnight. The girls were still going and Bill and I were ready to drop.

They had almost as much fun the next day for free at the shopping area. Well, maybe not so free. I could not resist the Mickey martini glasses.

Waiting for the water to pop up - I have this same pose of her at 1 1/2.

We visited the Kentucky Horse Farm on the way home. Where thoroughbreds retire to.

Visited Nashville on the way down. This is at the Grand Ole Opry.

And here's the repeat - Chinese BBQ Tofu. Original link and recipe here. This stuff is good - try it!