A Rice Cooker Meal

So I'm currently waiting on my student loans to come in, and we just finished paying rent and a bunch of bills, so it's fairly slim pickings in the money for food department. This means we head back to the staple vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage. Cheap, delicious, take a little while to go bad. Everything you want in a vegetable when you have a very depleted bank account!

But how to combine them? There is a very easy way to accomplish this. And it involves only 3 items: A small mug, a knife, and a rice cooker.

Here's the sitch:

Easy as Heck Rice Cooker Casserole

Ingredients:
1 carrot, chopped up
a chunk of cabbage, chopped up
1 small onion, chopped up
1 chunk off of a sweet potato, peeled and chopped up
Rice
Water
Spaghetti Sauce

Directions
Take all your chopped up vegetables and chuck them into the rice cooker.

Look at the veg. Yum!

Next, take a mug, and fill it with rice.

I never quite fill it to the top, else I always spill it

Add the rice to the bowl. Next, add 1 mug full of pasta sauce, and 1/2 mug full of water. Stir everything together.

Oooh this looks good!

Turn the rice cooker on, and let it do it's thing.

Sweet Babies!

Then you eat it, and enjoy the fruits of your very cheap labor. Adding things like garlic, regular potatoes, other vegetables, etc, and it'll still work. If you want to add frozen peas (and who wouldn't?) add them in right at the end, else they get all mushy and weird... no good.

nom nom nom!

Blogging on the GO- Boozy Edition!

So I'm in New Jersey.

Ocean City New Jersey to be precise. It's a beach town, as one might guess by the name. Unfortunately for me, I'm not really much of a beach person but it's good for relaxation.

Ocean City also happens to be a dry county, but that didn't stop my sister Shanta and I from making these!

Fishing For Swedes Martini

Ingredients:

1 shot glass of Pinnacle Gummy Vodka

7 Up

2 swedish fish

Directions:

Combine the vodka and the seven up. Add the Fish. Drink your worries away!

This makes a pretty good party drink too! I'd put the swedish fish on some toothpicks and eat them out first, they tend to get a little manky when they sit in liquid for a long time!

Matthew Cooks

Matthew cooked something!

Warning, I have no idea what it's called, or the exact ingredients.

All I know is that it had vegetables, olives, tofu, and was served over rice and incredibly spicy! It was also incredibly delicious! He tells me that it was based off of a Senegalese recipe he found in the Globe and Mail.

If I get the recipe out of him I'll edit this!

Coconut Waffles with Carmelized Bananas

I love waffles... so very very much!

My awesome cousin Bobby and his lovely wife Linda had gotten me a waffle maker back in December, but in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, it got forgotten at my grandmother's house! So I was without Belgian Waffles for many months, still knowing that they existed in potentia, but unable to savor them in my physical existence.

Luckily, my mom brought them back to her house with her when leaving my grandmothers, so I was able to acquire it while home for the wedding. The day after I got back I made these.

Coconut Waffles with Carmelized Bananas

Ingredients

2 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pancake Mix

3/4 cup coconut milk

1/4 cup applesauce

A dash of cinnamon

a tsp vanilla

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 banana, cut into slices and dipped in sugar

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Maple Syrup and Extra coconut milk for drizzling

Directions:

Combine The pancake mix, coconut milk, applesauce, vanilla, cinnamon and 2 tbsp vegetable oil. Mix together. Add in a bit of water if the batter is too thick. 

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan on medium heat, and heat the remaining 1 tbsp oil. Add the sugar coated banana slices, and fry for about 1-2 minutes on each side, until they are browned all over. Set aside. 

Heat your waffle iron, and coat with some oil using a pastry brush (or spray with some pam, whatever)

Add enough batter to cover the iron. (Mine is quite large, so my batter made 2 1/2 waffles, yours might make more or a little less)

When the waffles are cooked, remove, and top with the bananas, some syrup, and any remaining coconut milk from the can! 

It's super good! 

Delicious Eggplant Garlic Pasta

I always love serving people food that's not noticeably vegan. What do I mean? I mean food that would be vegan anyway, even if it was made by non-vegans.

It's always nice, when dealing with skeptics over food, to serve things that would be vegan anyway, like this sort of pasta dish, as it lulls them into a false sense of security that nothing is changing... and that's when you can snag them to change their minds on veganism!

As a note, I half did this at the wedding, which was completely vegan, and put half dishes that would have been vegan anyway (veggie samosas, veggie sushi, etc) and then put in things that were more out there, but still delicious (spicy marinated tofu satay, vegan cheese sauce on nachos, etc) And I had several comments to the tune of "If I ate like this all the time, I could be vegan too, I think." To whit I'd reply "I do, and I am!"

But onto the recipe!

Eggplant Garlic Pasta

Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped fine

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small eggplant, cubed

1 cup mushrooms, sliced

1 tomato, diced

2 spring onions, sliced

1 serving of cooked pasta of your choice (I used quinoa pasta!)

White wine, salt, pepper (to taste)

Baby spinach leaves, for garnish/serving with (optional)

Directions:

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic, and cook until fragrant. Add in the mushrooms, and continue to cook until they start to give off liquid. 

Add in the eggplant, frying until cooked through. Add a dash of white wine (optional, but so good!)

Add in the tomatoes and spring onions, cooking for about 1 minute to lose the raw taste. 

Finally, add in the pasta, tossing together, and add more white wine and the salt and pepper if desired. Cook until the wine liquid dissapates. 

Serve with baby spinach, or a salad, if you want (or are trying to impress someone!)