Rainy day dumplings and pasta
Last week was a blur of rain every day (and a resulting ~87% humidity level in our apartment, not exaggerating; ask our dehumidifier.)
When I began this post, it was still morning, in the 40s with grey skies. I said see ya later to Evan who left for your traditional Saturday morning track workout (this is common, yes?), put in a large amount of laundry and settled in. It felt like the perfect time to revisit some of my week’s coziest creations.
Suddenly, it’s 51 degrees outside with sunshine. We’ve finally been blessed with the kind of weather that makes me grateful to live in Northern California and here I am, stuck inside due to the invisible tether that is communal laundry. You just don’t leave laundry in a machine you share with 20+ other people. [You also don’t leave your lint behind in said machine’s lint trap for others to pick out, but I guess that social construct isn’t one as widely shared by my neighbors.]
So, while I wait to be released from my duties so I can get my weekly allotment of vitamin D, let’s discuss some of the things I made this week. To be honest, I wasn’t super inspired this week. When I think back, there were burrito bowls (with some pretty amazing Santa Maria Pinquito Beans, roasted carrots, rice, and pickled onions/radishes. Ok, so those were pretty good.) There were also A LOT of salads with sourdough croutons.
However, there were two memorable meals (more importantly, w/ photographic evidence.)
The first was a very basic vegetable soup - leeks, cabbage, turnip greens, turnips, and chickpeas. The crowning glory though was… DUMPLINGS! If I can encourage you to do one thing after reading this, it’s to put dumplings in any soup. Every soup. All you have to is mix flour, a little oil, salt, herbs [thyme in this case], pepper, and “milk” [in quotes because in my case this is of the non-dairy variety]. You can add a little apple cider vinegar for a buttermilk-esque kick. (You should definitely do this.) Then, you simply drop these little dollops of joy on the soup, close the lid, walk away, and come back 15 minutes later to the fluffiest blobs of carby happiness. The lighting in the below picture is a little unappetizing, but check out the topography of this creation!
The inspiration for the second delicious thing I made this week came from Evan. I am cackling a little bit to myself as I write this, but Evan is definitely my cooking muse. And in this case, my muse asked me this week “Can you make something like chicken broccoli bake?” Chicken broccoli bake, for those in the know, is a dish we ate in the dining halls at Michigan. It was a combination of cream of mushroom soup/broccoli/rice/chicken that served as definitive proof that sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of parts. Anyway, my dear, and most importantly vegan, husband asked me this question and what resulted, at 5:22 PM apparently, was a creamy broccoli and bok choy pasta with a broiled breadcrumb everything bagel seasoning crust.
I blended soaked cashews, nooch, lemon, salt and pepper to make a decadent cream sauce. I boiled water, blanched broccoli & shredded broccoli & then cooked whole wheat pasta in the same water. All of this was stirred together with red pepper flakes, then topped with buttery-breadcrumbs mixed with everything bagel seasoning. I put this in the oven to broil and forgot about it until it was almost disaster. But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t cute in the bowl… but we ate all of it on the couch last night. Seriously, it’s all gone.
[Moment of silence here as I drool & think back on this.]
Ok off into the sunshine I go. Happy Saturday, folks.
