Attack of the Plague

This was a rough weekend. Marc and I are both fighting the plague. I'm not a good sick person, and thankfully Marc is much better than I am about it.

Friday was pretty nice. Remember that vegan friend I mentioned? Her fiance and she came up for a visit and I was able to try out a chickpea snack recipe I had found. She also brought up this ridiculously tasty snack mix (raisins, dried cranberries, almonds and pistachios), along with cut up broccoli, carrots, red and yellow peppers and tomatoes. We had a really great visit and learned some great gardening tips. Hopefully Marc and I will be able to build our mini garden soon.

Saturday and Sunday were very chill days. We spent one of our evenings playing Monopoly by candlelight while riding out a power outage. Our days were spent practicing our crafts. Marc has a new lighting kit for his photography and I've been working on sewing a blanket for Vince to play on. We managed to spread out all over the living room and dining room doing it:

Our Monopoly game still on the floor with candles around it and Marc's photo equipment in the back

My sewing station on the dining room table

Here's the recipe for our chickpea snacks. They were actually really good and I was surprised how tasty they were. Marc and our friends were impressed too!

Ingredients:

1 15oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp paprika

1 Tbsp red chili pepper flakes

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Drain and rinse chickpeas, pat dry

3. Combine spices and oil in a small bowl

4. Stir in beans until evenly coated

5. Bake 30-40 minutes

Pictures:

The spices 

After rubbing the chickpeas through the spices 

Baking!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Sorry! This week is going to be full of off the cuff ideas and just throwing stuff together. We tried to meal plan yesterday but it wasn't very successful and this is shaping up to be a busy week.

How did your weekend go? Make anything new?

Tomato Walnut Spinach Pasta

My mentor from childhood went vegan. I'm such an awful pupil that I didn't realize that she was vegetarian till a few months ago and last week she broke it to me that she went vegan. I didn't know what to say; more importantly I didn't know what to feed her. She assures me that she comes equipped with her own food, but in an Italian household that's unacceptable. You must feed everyone.

So I set off to troll the internet and figure out what I could make. I found this neat little dish and decided to use Marc as a guinea pig. I don't think he minded.

Ingredients

1 28oz can of crushed tomatoes

Olive oil

1 cup onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp dried basil

2 large handfuls of spinach, chopped roughly

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped roughly

Pasta*

Procedures:

1. In a large skillet heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over low-medium heat

2. Sweat garlic and onions in pan (appox 5 min)

3. Add oregano, salt, and pepper

4. Stir well

5. Add tomatoes and basil, then stir

6. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer on low for 5 minutes

7. Start cooking pasta per directions on the box

8. Stir in walnuts and spinach

9. Cook 10 minutes 

10. Drain pasta

11. Combine and serve.

Pictures:

Sweating onions

Spices grouped together in the order they'll go in the pan.

After adding the oregano, salt, and pepper

Tomatos plopped in

After it all came together

Ta-Da! This is Marc's dish. It has cheese on top (Not very vegan)

And then we had some of this for dessert:

Overall it was really good. I think the spinach is really just there for nutritional value as it didn't contribute much to the flavor. Walnuts I'm pretty sure were for texture too as they also didn't add a whole lot flavor wise. I like experimenting with tomato sauce though. I'll need to tap my mom and get her recipe for the sauce she used to make.

*A note on the pasta and veganism: the pasta I'm familiar with is made with egg. I checked the box and the only listed ingredient was whole wheat flour with a note that it was made in a factory that uses soy and eggs, so I'm not sure if they used egg in it or not. Unless I've made it fresh without egg, I will assume it has egg in it.

Do you have vegetarian dishes you love? Have you ever tried to prepare foods for a vegan?