Food stuffs and laziness.

I don't know about you folk, but summertime for me - I'd rather be doing almost ANYTHING but cooking. Its hot but its also beautiful out - I want to be active, I want to be crafty I essentially want to be doing SOMETHING ELSE. So a big staple of my diet lately is 1) Napa Cabbage & ramen salad & 2) Rice with steamed veggies. Also anything I can drag fresh out of the garden.

The salad is really quite simple.
You chop the cabbage up into bite sized pieces, add some chopped green onions (and any other veggies you want - I sometimes add carrots, radishes, or tomatoes) set aside. I know I don't have any measurements for this - sorry you already know I'm not good with this. How much dressing will vary depending on how much salad you need. For approximately two-3 servings of dressing, I used about 1/4 cup apple cider, 3TBSP sesame oil, a good tablespoon or so of agave syrup and I mixed it. Pour on top of salad and top the whole thing off with a heaping handful of "CRUNCHIES!" Yums. You can also replace the napa with regular cabbage - it still tastes good, just not quite the same.

As for the rice & veggies. I make a big pot of rice about 3 times a month (sometimes weekly). So I tend to have either mahogany, basmati or brown rice on hand. I toss that into a bowl, throw on some veggies (often; mushrooms, zucchini, baby bok choy, and green onions) splash with water (or ume vinegar) and nuke it in the microwave. I then smother in sesame oil, ume vinegar & tamari or Bragg's liquid aminos - top with either the "Crunchies" as seen above OR just plain sesame seeds. Yum.

What's for dinner?!?! Kulbyaka & Blackberry Peach sorbet

Oh My Goddess.

So, earlier int he week Kathy came across a bunch of dill and couldn't pass it up. She loves dill. I happen to love dill too! Yay! One of her favorite recipes is Green Lentil Kulbyaka which can be found in this awesome awesome cook book. Unfortunately, its not vegan. So we make a few adjustments. For starters, we skip the eggs. I'm SURE that it would have more body if we added tofu or something, but to be honest... with all the flavor that is already in this... its unnecessary. Maybe I'll try it some day. The second "change" was vegan margarine versus butter. No big surprise there. The third change... we used a crap ton of dill. It calls for 2 Tbsp fresh, we probably used 3 or 4. We also used less parsley because we had MORE dill. Fourth change... instead of using a max of 8 sheets of filo pastry, we used a whole roll. Maybe... 12 sheets? More? Super extra crispy nom. Overkill? Maybe just a little.

Oh, yeah, we definitely added more mushrooms too.

All in all this is one of my all time favorite lentil dishes.


Ok, ok, i'm rushing to the sorbet, relax already!





We had this baggie of frozen blackberries in the freezer - these are NOT store bought, but either picked fresh or picked up from a farmer's market. Kathy is so freaking awesome about buying TONS of fruit and freezing it for to make the long winters more bearable. So I came across THIS recipe for blackberry sorbet and adjusted it by adding 2 cups of frozen (thawed) peaches. I did not add any more agave or water.

This... is... the... shiznit... and by THAT I mean it is SO WONDERFUL! YAY! What a feast! "Feast of kings" maybe :)1