Archive for August, 2009
Making Your Own Menu
Today lifehacker linked to KitchenMonki, a site that generates grocery-lists for you based on the recipes you choose (Here’s the lifehacker post, complete with a cute scripted video about how to use KitchenMonki.)
It sounds excellent – you should be able to just decide what recipes you want to make for the month, click the ingredients needed, and then get a grocery list created by the site. Much smoother than the method I use, which is filled with tallies and annotations and a lot of things crossed off by hand as I change my mind about recipes.
That said, it might suck, I don’t know. I think it’s a Great Idea Whose Time Has Come, and I’ll definitely be using it when I do my OAMC next week. If you experiment with it, please let me know how it goes! I’d really be interested in whether it lets you add rarer items like nutritional yeast or tempeh. I’ll probably post my results with it next week sometime, but it would be cool to see what other people think.
(Unrelated: It turns out that I don’t like gazpacho. I probably should have thought of this before making and freezing 5 servings. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but I think cold tomato soup is really just not my cup of tea. It’s super nice to be able to reject a meal and pull something else out of the freezer, though. Mexican Gumbo for dinner!)
Menu A Progress Report
I really like the Ratatouille – especially the eggplant. I don’t know if I got a really awesome eggplant or what, but it’s fantastic. (Posting pictures of my food on the internet makes me painfully aware of how often I use the same side dishes – but making rice and peas is easy, darn it!)
Also, I’m getting a better feel for what needs to be thawed the night before (anything where more liquid would be unappetizing – i.e., lasagna and the veg curry) and what can be chucked in the microwave for 14 minutes on 30% power at a moment’s notice (so far, everything else.)
My sister even microwaved a bunch of the mac & cheeze straight from the freezer – no problems, and she really liked it, she’s been eating it for lunch all week. I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of having any more of it – I’m just glad there’s a vegan mac & cheeze recipe that she’ll eat!
The semester has started and I’m bringing lunch to school now. I grab a black bean burger/chickpea cutlet from the fridge, put it in the microwave for 2 minutes, and make a sandwich to take with me. When I do my OAMC next month, I’ll be making like a 5x recipe of burger patties, since at this rate I’ll be running out of them next week.
Overall, I’ve been really happy with the change in how much I’ve spent in groceries. So far this month, I’ve spent $130 – but that’s including a skillet, a lasagna pan, and beer (all of which I’ve shoehorned nicely into my “grocery” budget.) I’m not going to get into what I’ve spent in months before this, because man, $130 is a serious improvement – especially considering that my sister is also counted into that, at least partially. I’ll probably buy another box of cereal at some point, but I’m happy with how this is going!
Un-Beef Stew
No problems heating up the Un-Beef Stew from Menu A – I moved two servings from the freezer to the fridge on Sunday night, and heated them both up in the microwave for 2 minutes yesterday.
Unbeef Stew
This tasted just as awesome as it did before I froze it, and the omni boyfriend loved it. He was surprised that the meaty chunks were tofu, and he’s definitely no stranger to tofu. (Glad that all of the tofu prep was worthwhile!)
I turned on the rice cooker and steamed some frozen peas for side dishes, but I could’ve gotten away without the rice. The stew was really thick and it could’ve functioned as a meal on its own.
I’m totally going to make it every month.
Unthawed Success
I came home a few days early, popped a thin frozen rectangle of Veg Curry into the fridge around 8pm, and spent the day running errands. When I came home around 5pm, the curry was completely unthawed, and I microwaved it for about 90 seconds to warm it up. It tasted great – couldn’t tell the difference between it being out of the crockpot the day I cooked it and now, having been frozen for about a week. I love curries.
Veg Curry
I’m clearly going to have to work on my camera skills if I’m going to keep posting pictures of food here – every other vegan blog on the net puts me to shame. But hey – at least this time I paid attention to the background of the photo (as opposed to setting the dish down on, say, the stove burner. What can I say.)
Yesterday I unthawed the Mexican Gumbo, and I actually had some of it for lunch today – it, also, was great. It was a bit spicier than I expected, but the red bean base with the texture was amazing. I’m partial to anything that has rice cooked into it, honestly – it means I don’t have to set my rice cooker.
Tomorrow, the Ratatouille!
Menu B: Grocery List & Instructions
I’d hate to give anyone carpal tunnel from excessive scrolling, so I’m just going to put these up as Google Doc files. A few notes:
The Barbeque Tofu recipe is cooked overnight, although the recipe specifies that it should be cooked on low for 4-6 hours. I’ve assumed you have a crock pot capable of cooking for 8 hours on a lower heat setting than it uses for 6 hours. If your crock pot doesn’t work like that, you may want to change the order of recipes around (unless you normally sleep for only 4-6 hours). The Pinto Beans & Rice crock-pot recipe is supposed to be done around 3 hours after you put it in, so you can just start the Barbeque Tofu right after the beans are done instead.
The Eggplant Pomodoro recipe also calls for making a sauce to put on the eggplant rounds. I really don’t like thawing sauces, and it’s an easy tomato sauce, so I haven’t included the ingredients in the grocery list. If you’re up for making it, check out the recipe and add it to the list.
Link: Grocery List for Menu B (doc file)
Link: Instructions for Menu B (doc file)
Let me know if you find any mistakes. I’ve been through them both a couple times to check, but as I haven’t actually tested the instructions, I haven’t had the chance to come face-to-face with anything glaringly wrong. Hopefully you won’t either! (Comforting, right? Seriously though, I think it’s all in order.)
And finally, instead of chopping things into bowls, you could use ziplock bags or even grocery sacks – it would save on counter space, since they’re condensable, and there would be about 14 fewer bowls to clean (always good!).
Game plan
I’m visiting my family for the week, but next Monday I’ll go home and start living off of the month’s meals. I’ll be sure to post the reheating results. I feel optimistic about things tasting fine (my mother did a lot of freezer cooking when I was growing up, so it’s what I’m used to), but I’ll be interested to see how things hold their shape! I tried to pick recipes that would be fairly safe bets on looking good dethawed, but I have a gut feeling this won’t be one of the vegan blogs with beautifully plated food. I expect this to be more of the vegan equivalent of TV dinners (albeit healthier, much lower in sodium, and way cheaper.)
My boyfriend is planning on doing a VOMC breakfast session and a dinner session – he’s in medical school, so he seriously doesn’t have time to cook. I’ll put what I can of that menu and plan up here as well. He loves the sausages from the Vegan Brunch book, so he’ll definitely be doing a few batches of those. I might just copy him on that – they’re fantastic! They require almost no time, and it’s so simple to just boil them. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably frozen tofu before to get that heavier texture, and I imagine freezing those sausages will be a lot like that. We’ll find out!
I’ll also be posting a Menu B in the next week. Since my freezer is full, I won’t be doing the actual run of a new menu for awhile – but I feel strongly that it would just be helpful to get more ideas out there so other people interested in VOAMC can have a few different ideas of how to get started. As always, let me know if you have any suggestions – or your own menu!
