Meatless Mondays: All the Cool Kids Are Doing it

One of my oldest and dearest friends, Tina, and I often talk about and swap vegetarian/meatless meal ideals and recipes. She was a vegetarian for many years, and is a great and creative influence for my 1-3 meatless days a week goals. She shared with me today this link:

Paul McCartney on Meat Free Mondays

The article shares this video of Paul advocating Meat Free Mondays and the good they do to our young people.

I like how he shares all the points- not just health, but the economic and environmental impact reducing our meat intake has.

Plus, he's freakin' Paul McCartney! ;-)

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Mocha Sorbet

Here's a delicious treat we've been noshing here at the the Disheveled house.

I make this without an ice cream maker, because I do not have one, but feel free to toss the mixed ingredients in one if you have it!

You will need:

• 4 cups of coffee, doesn't have to be piping hot- warm enough to dissolve the sugar is fine
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder (not hot cocoa mix!)
• a dash of salt
• a splash of vanilla

Mix it all up until the sugar is COMPLETELY dissolved. pour into a big, kind of flat container that's safe for the freezer. I use a big , thick, rectangle food storage container. Cover. Every few hours, scrape up the mush with a fork, and mix around a bit. After about 8-12 hours (you can totally leave it to sleep or whatever, it's flexible...) you can run it through a food processor or blender to smooth it out more if you want a finer texture. Return to the freezer to firm back up a bit. Enjoy!

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In a Hurry Dinner Rolls

I whip up these rolls when we've decided we want bread with our dinner- but the time for kneading and long rises has passed.

You will need:

• 1 1/4 C flour
• 2 TBS sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 1/4 tsp (one package) yeast. I use the "quick-rise" for this recipe, but if you use regular it'll still rise pretty fast.
• 1 C very warm water
• 2 TBS shortening
• 1 egg

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt and yeast.

 

Add the water, shortening and egg. With a wooden spoon, beat until smooth. 

Scrape down the sides, you'll be letting it rise first in this bowl.

 Cover and let rise for 20-30 minutes until doubled in size.

Beat down about 20 turns of the spoon, and divide into a lightly greased muffin pan.
Let rise again for about 20-30 minutes. There is no point in trying to cover them- it will just cling to the plastic wrap and deflate when you try to remove it ;-)

Preheat oven to 400 during the last few moments of the second rise.

Bake the rolls 15-20 minutes, or until golden on the tops. If you had a helper grease your pan for you like I did- make sure you check the finished job before plopping in batter...or your sides will be super brown like the ones above! (They were still delicious though!)

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Homemade Natural Soft Scrub

Here's another use for Dr. Bronner's Castile soap that I use around the house. It's quick and easy to make, so you can always whip it up when needed, and not have it sit around.

Simply mix together 3 parts baking soda, and one part Dr. Bronner's or other Castile soap.

Cut together with a fork, it'll start to look like a tiny batch of biscuits. =-)

Stir in drops of water, as needed, until it becomes a creamy paste.

There are many "recipes" out there that include vinegar. While I am a BIG fan of cleaning with vinegar, NEVER mix vinegar with Castile soap. It unsaponifies the soap, separating it and making it useless. Oily and useless.

Now that you've got your scrub, you can clean all over the place.

Coffee spill under the maker and dry on the counter?

A little soft scrub with a rag:

Gone with little effort!

Little ones are getting the fridge all grubby?

Gone.

 Happy cleaning!

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What The Heck Is This!?

I was prepping a few heads of garlic (sale!) the other day to roast in olive oil, and I came across something strange...

Yellow (goldenrod even- close to orange!), slightly wrinkly, strong smelling garlic- so strange!

What the? I quickly went to Google. Well, after I got my garlic in the oven...

Apparently there is some sort of harmless condition called "waxy breakdown" that happens when garlic is exposed to too high of heat. Usually during careless handling after harvest, but it can also happen while the garlic is growing. In all my MANY years in the kitchen, I've never seen this before. It wasn't plastered all over Google like I expected either, I had to click around a bit to find a real answer. It sure was freaky at the time!

The rest of the garlic roasted up beautifully, and was soooooo good on EVERYTHING! ;-)

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