I have no idea what went wrong. It’s still edible as we enjoyed hunks of it with some soup tonight. But it’s definitely not going to make the sandwiches I intended. Back to the drawing board!

We had a wonderful holiday overall. The first year as a family of three! Lots of time spent with family and I was able to take all last week off work. But yesterday it was back to the grind and our regular schedule.

Today’s post is a recipe I made almost two years ago and sadly haven’t made since. It is lentil dumpling soup from Hillbilly Housewife. I made it again for lunch on Christmas Eve for Benzo and I and it was very comforting on that chilly day.

This time I made a no-chop version to make it a little easier. It doesn’t really speed up the recipe at all as there is still a lot of simmering, but it does reduce the active time spent on the recipe.

All you do for the no-chop version is use a 16oz bag of frozen mixed vegetables instead of the carrots, celery, and onion. Follow the rest of the directions as written.

I thought it turned out very good and I would definitely make it this way again sometime. The dumplings are what really makes this soup tasty anyway.

Hopefully everyone reading had a wonderful holiday. If you have any favorite recipes or homemade gifts to share please do!

On top of that we’ve had contractors at our house last week and this week working in our basement.  We finally decided it was time to have it redone.  I’m all for DIY but sometimes on big projects like that its worth it to call in the pros.  Even though the contractors are doing all the work there are still questions to answer, decisions to be made and supplies to buy, which takes time.

And then….Christmas is right around the corner!  I’ve completely procrastinated on my shopping this year.  I think a couple people might be getting IOUs in a box with a gift being shipped directly to their house next week.    Note to self:  next year start shopping MUCH earlier.

So back to the tater tot casserole.  A long time ago my youngest SIL was talking about tater tot casserole and I’ve wanted to make it ever since.  I think the original version has ground beef and cheese but being mostly vegetarian (fish is my exception) and currently on a dairy-free diet due to breastfeeding that version wouldn’t work for me.

I googled vegan tater tot casserole and found a gem of a recipe over at Snarky Vegan.  Love it!  Only problem was I had white Daiya, not yellow.  So I flipped and halved that recipe and added a little spice to the top.  Here’s what I did:

Veggie Tater Tot Casserole
Serves 4-6

1 recipe cheezy sauce from Veganomicon
1 16oz bag frozen mixed vegetables
A few sprinkles of mozzarealla style Daiya
Salt & pepper to taste
A big bag of tater tots (won’t need them all)
Season salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Make cheeze sauce according to directions.  If you do not have Veganomicon, try this cheeze sauce recipe or any other cheeze sauce recipe.  You need about 2 cups of sauce total.

In a large bowl, mix sauce with frozen vegetables.  Sprinkle a few handfuls of white Daiya.  I only used a few handfuls because Daiya is expensive so I try to make it last awhile.  But go crazy if you want to splurge.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spread cheesy veggie mixture in a 8 x 8 baking dish.  I would’ve used my square baking dish but it was otherwise occupied with snickerdoodle blondies.  So I used my other small dish, like a 9 x 13 only smaller.  I could go see what size it is but I don’t feel like getting up right now.

Arrange frozen tots on top of vegetable mixture.  Sprinkle the top of the tots with season salt.

Bake the tater tot casserole at 375 degrees F for about an hour.  EAT!

It was so delicious.  Benzo said it was his new favorite dinner.  I may have to stock the freezer with bags of tots and mixed vegetables so I can make this on a moment’s notice.

If you are not interested in a dairy-free version you could easily use Snarky Vegan’s recipe with the white sauce and yellow cheese instead of cheezy sauce and white cheese.  Or a cream-of-something soup and a little milk.  Lots of options here.

By the way we ate this with simple baked seitan strips that I breaded with homemade breadcrumbs.  They were good but not great.  But I did make another version of seitan last Sunday that was much better.  Look for a post on it soon.

Ok I’m off to bed.  One more day of work tomorrow then I’m off for the rest of the year.  Hoping to find some time to bake some treats soon!

Snickerdoodle Blondies

I thought it sounded amazing and made a half batch on Sunday.  Other than halving the recipe I made it as written except I used Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer instead of an egg.

I paired the blondies with some coconut-cinnamon ice cream.  Inspired by this recipe at Healthy Green Kitchen I came up with the following:

Cinnamon Coconut Ice Cream

2 cans full fat coconut milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
Couple pinches salt

Place all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until well combined.  Freeze in ice cream maker according to instructions.  Mine took a good 30 minutes to freeze.

The blondies were very, very good.  But mine were not as thick as the picture with the recipe.  Maybe because of the egg substitute?

The ice cream turned out delicious but I may make some tweaks on the next round.  The recipe got super hard in the freezer though and it was really tough to scoop out.  That’s why it’s in a bunch of little chunks.

I may make a full batch of these blondies for Christmas.  They were that good!  And the cinnamon ice cream wants to go on top of an apple pie.  I might just have to oblige.

There are a lot of different topics of discussion when it comes to cloth diapers – reasons to use cloth, types of diapers, wash routines, benefits, saving money, etc.  This post would be really long if I tried to go into all that and besides it’s all out there on the web already (see links at the bottom).  I just wanted to share my story as a working mom who cloth diapers and hopefully inspire other working moms to give it a shot.

Child Care

The first step in cloth diapering as a working parent is to either find a child care provider that allows cloth diapers or ask your current child care provider if they are willing to use them.  Jack goes to a center and I never thought they would allow cloth diapers until a friend encouraged me to just ask.  I did and sure enough there were two other families there cloth diapering already.

If your child care provider doesn’t have any experience with cloth diapers or seems unsure, offer to go in a do a demonstration or a training session on how cloth diapers work.  For the child care provider the only difference from disposables is where you put the dirty ones (wet bag vs. trash).  They may not realize how easy it is.

Diapers

After a little bit of trial and error, Benzo and I decided we liked the BumGenius one-size pocket diapers with aplix the best.  These are the only diapers we send to day care because they operate just like a disposable.  At the day care center there can be several different people changing Jack’s diaper so we wanted to make it as easy as possible on them. 

We have 22 day care diapers, which are a mix of BG 4.0 and 3.0 pockets as well as a few medium-sized all in ones.  Some were acquired new, many were acquired as seconds and some were bought new without tags off eBay. 

We have other diapers that we only use at home and do not send to day care.  Click here if you would like to see a picture and a full list of my diaper stash.

There are so many different types and brands of cloth diapers out there and every baby is different.  What works on one may not work on another so you may have to do some experimenting to find the one that works for you, your baby and your child care provider.

Routine

Here’s how it actually goes down every day.

1. Each week day morning we take Jack to day care with a Planet Wise hanging wet/dry bag.  In the front pocket are 6 clean BumGenius pockets with aplix, stuffed and ready to go.  We have two of these wet bags so when one gets smelly we have a clean one ready to go.

2. The day care workers take the clean diapers out of the front dry pocket and put the dirty ones in the large wet pocket.  Jack typically uses 4-5 diapers per day and he is there 8-9 hours.  Sometimes they keep the extra clean ones there for the next day and sometimes they are still in the bag when we pick him up.

3. At the end of the day when we pick up Jack we bring home the bag of dirty diapers.  I take the dirty ones out of the bag and put them in our even larger wet bag at home.  The day care workers close up the dirties like they would a disposable.  We don’t ask them to fasten laundry tabs or pull out inserts.  If there are any number 2 diapers I try to spray them off immediately with the diaper sprayer attached to our toilet.

4. I count the diapers and make a mental note if there are clean ones missing (I sent 6 and only 5 dirties came home).  With the exception of Wednesday nights, I go ahead and load up the front pocket of the bag with 6 clean diapers (or 5 if they kept a clean one) so it is ready to go for the next day.

5. We do diaper laundry on Wednesday nights and Sundays.  Yes that’s right – only two extra loads of laundry per week.  Our wash routine is as follows:

Gather up all dirty diapers and take them downstairs to the laundry room.  Pull out diapers one by one and fasten laundry tabs and pull out inserts.  Toss in the washer.  10 minutes

Run a cold, rinse-only cycle.  If diapers are especially dirty run a short cold wash (effectively two rinses).  No soap.

When the washer is finished go back downstairs and set the washer to a heavy hot wash with soap and a double cold rinse.  Sometimes on Sundays I’ll also do a 15-30 minute soak.  1-2 minutes for pressing buttons and scooping soap.

When the washer is finished go back downstairs and put all inserts, cloth wipes and pail liner into dryer.  Set dryer for 80 minutes on low heat.  Take shells upstairs and hang on drying rack in Jack’s room or over the shower rod in bathroom.  10 minutes

The next morning (or later that evening on Sundays), bring liners up from dryer.  Gather up shells from various drying racks.  Bring everything into the living room and stuff all diapers.  15 minutes

Take stuffed and folded diapers back to nursery and store in changing table. 1-2 minutes

Note: While I prefer to stuff all the diapers at once so they are ready to go, that doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes I just stuff them as I need them and leave the laundry basket with the separate components next to the changing table.

Total active time for one wash: about 40 minutes broken up into short intervals.  I do this twice a week (Benzo helps).

Once or twice a month we might put Jack in a disposable at night if he needs some diaper cream that is not compatible with cloth.  But that’s it.  I bought a small pack of size 3 diapers at the end of the summer and we have barely used half of them.

I will admit there are times when I think “man it would be easier if we just used disposables”.  This has happened lately when spraying poo off diapers.    But I get over it quickly when I think about how much money we’re saving and how much better cloth is for the environment and Jack’s bum.

Overall I enjoy cloth diapering and hope to continue with it until Jack is potty-trained.  And if we are blessed with a second child we’ll be able to use the same diapers for him or her as well.  I’ve included some links below with more information on cloth diapering and you can always leave a comment or contact me with any questions and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.

Cloth Diapering Resources

Cloth Diaper Basics – Cotton Babies

Cloth Diapering 101 – Momadvice.com

Cloth Diapering Community – BabyCenter

Cloth Diaper Types – Diaper Jungle

Kelly’s Closet – Besides Cotton Babies I also shop at Kelly’s Closet.  They frequently have deal where you get a free diaper if you spend X amount.  I’ve gotten several freebies this way which is fun because you get to try out different types of diapers.

That was the case with me and breakfast pizza.

I have been wanting to make breakfast pizza for months now. The opportunity finally presented itself last weekend. I got home early on Friday afternoon and decided to make homemade pizza for dinner. We had some vegetarian pepperoni I wanted to try. So I whipped up the dough and made the pizza. It was delicious and Benzo and I ate the whole thing.

But the pizza dough recipe makes enough for TWO pizzas, meaning I had the dough for another pizza just sitting there. I tossed it in the fridge and declared I was making breakfast pizza the next morning. Here’s how I made it but the options are endless here.

Breakfast Pizza

1/2 recipe pizza dough
Gravy
Sausage
Scrambled eggs
Cheese

Make pizza dough according to instructions. Dry bake crust for 5 minutes and then top with gravy, sausage, eggs and cheese. Return to oven and bake for 10-12 minutes or until crust is golden and cheese is melted.

Benzo used Boca crumbles with some spices to make our vegetarian “sausage”. I then added soy milk and flour to the pan to make a “sausage gravy”. This mixture went on the pizza first, then the scrambled eggs and finally some Daiya mozzarella shreds.

It was insane! We ate the whole thing. Again! Two pizzas in less than 24 hours.

Next time I will use more eggs. I only had three and that was barely enough. I also think some browned hashbrowns would be good or some sautéed spinach and red pepper if you want to get healthy.

Any other topping ideas? Leave them in the comments below.

I glanced through the recipes and found one for sweet potato tofu jambalaya that looked really tasty. Lucky for everyone it’s posted online!

I made this for dinner on Sunday night and meant to post it yesterday. However I’ve been reading this book called The Night Circus. Has anyone else read it? I’d love to know what you think. Anyway it was due back to the library yesterday and I’m trying to get it finished up so I can return it without too much of a late fee donation.

Back to dinner. This recipe was very easy. Don’t be turned off by the tofu if that’s not your thing. You could easily leave it out and the dish would still be delicious.

The recipe is written for white rice which I didn’t realize until after I threw in the brown rice. I tried cooking it a little longer but the rice never cooked all the way and the liquid was all absorbed.

Even with the semi-crunchy rice the dish was very good. Benzo and I both enjoyed it and I will definitely make it again (with white rice).

A few items to note:

• Worcestershire sauce contains fish so it is not vegetarian. There are fish-less varieties you can buy so read the labels if you want this dish to be completely vegetarian.
• I pressed the tofu as a big block wrapped in a towel between two plates with 4 cans on top. I left it for 2 hours, changing the towel halfway through. After pressing I chopped it into chunks.
• I left out the green onions because I didn’t have any.
• I used two cups of water plus two teaspoons of vegetable bouillon instead of one can of broth.

Here is a shot of the leftovers for lunch yesterday:

This was such a fun combination that has generated more dinner ideas in my mind. Can’t wait to bring them to life!

One of my Facebook friends posted a link to the blog Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body with directions on how to put salad in a jar.  I tried it immediately:

In my jar I have balsalmic dressing, seitan strips, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, red onions and a greens mix.  Click over to Julia’s blog to find out the most important part of making salad in a jar (scroll down it’s towards the bottom).  It will allow you to make several of these salads in advance so you have them ready to go in your fridge.  Yes it is completely brilliant.  I love this idea.

Have a great weekend!  It’s jeans day and our holiday party at work today so I’m excited to start the weekend off right. 

One of their tweets awhile back was an easy seitan recipe.  (Seitan is a vegetarian protein made out of wheat gluten.) I had been wanting to try homemade seitan for awhile now but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  Even after the tweet I still put it off because I thought it was going to be a big ordeal.  When I finally made it I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.

The recipe I used is Yummiest Seitan Ever!

First mix the dough.  It came together so easy and was not sticky at all.

I mashed it into a ball with my hands.  The texture wigged me out a little bit as it was almost too “meaty”.  I made Benzo poke the dough to see how spongy it was.

Then I sort of formed it into a log and sliced pieces off.  I layed the pieces out on a baking sheet.

Baked according to instructions, turning once in the middle.  I ended up with several pieces of nicely browned seitan.

Making the seitain was surprisingly quick and easy.  And it made a larger quantity than I was expecting for only using 1 cup of wheat gluten.  The pieces were a little chewy though.  Next time I will try slicing them thinner or I may try boiling it as some commenters to the recipe suggest. 

Now what to do with the seitan strips?  You could just eat them as is, dipped into ketchup or bbq sauce.  But I sliced mine into strips and turned them into a quesadilla.

I topped a tortilla buttered with EB with the seitan stripps and added some cooked peppers and onions and daiya cheese.  Then topped with another buttered tortilla.  Brown on both sides until cheese is melted. 

Top with avocado or dip into guacuamole.

I think seitan may be my favorite vegetarian protein.  I’m looking forward to trying other recipes for homemade seitan.  Suggestions welcome!

At church Benzo had signed up to bake a sweet potato pie for a dinner that was being delivered to a homeless shelter.  He decided to make two pies so we could keep one since neither of us had ever had sweet potato pie before.  So if the brownies didn’t turn out I knew we would have the pie as a back-up.

Of course the inevitable happens.  Both the brownies and the pie were a flop!

I don’t know what went wrong with the brownies.  I made them exactly as the recipe said and stirred in a cup of chopped up Oreos into the batter just as the variation said.  When I baked them though the cookie bits melted and got all hard in places and pooled into liquidy chocolate puddles in others.  The taste was fine but there was no way a perfect square brownie was coming out of that pan.  (I proceeded to dig at it with a spoon over the next week.)

Benzo made the pies all by himself and the first pie for the church turned out great.  He made it exactly as directed in the recipe.  The second pie we made dairy-free for me and also decided to go full-on vegan substituting the eggs to see what would happen.  Well whatever we did the pie boiled over in the oven and made a huge mess! 

When a pie is boiling over the side of the dish do you keep baking it or take it out?  We tried putting foil down in the bottom of the oven so the pie could at least finish baking and we could possibly salvage it, but it just kept on boiling over so we ended up taking it out.  We tasted it later and the flavor was nice but the consistency seemed off. 

So what to do?  Two failed desserts and company coming over!  Luckily earlier that day I had bought some pre-made brownie bites at Costco.  Have you ever seen these things?  They have them at Target too.  They look like little brownies that were baked in a mini muffin tin.  And they’re dairy-free!

Though I briefly considered just throwing the brownie bites on a plate and calling it good, I decided to fancy them up with some peanut butter frosting and chocolate chips on top.

I used this peanut butter frosting recipe, subbing EB and soy creamer for the butter and milk to make it dairy free.  A half batch frosted 16 bites with a little frosting left over.

Voila!  Peanut butter frosted brownie bites.  Oh they were delicious.  My little brother looked at me with a very serious expression and goes “these things are good.” 

I used pre-made brownie bites but if you wanted you could easily make your own brownie bites using any brownie batter mix and a mini-muffin tin.  Just know that they will bake a lot faster so keep an eye on them in the oven.

And there are so many possible variations for the frosting and topping!  Other options I considered:

• Mint buttercream with mini chocolate chips
• Vanilla buttercream with chopped Oreos mixed in or sprinkled on top
• Mint buttercream with chopped candy canes
• Marshmallow fluff with graham craker crumbs

A plate of different kinds of frosted brownie bites would be fun for the holidays and something different that the standard plate of cookies.

What are some other ideas for brownie toppings?  Something with cherries maybe?