Salmon Sushi Hand Rolls

I had another go at making hand rolls.  This time, I used sushi rice instead of leftover brown rice.

Sliced smoked salmon

I put the rice into balls to make things easier.

Put one of the rice balls on the nori sheet.

 

Hold the nori sheet in your hand.

Use your finger to make an indentation in the rice, almost like a channel.

Add your fillings.

Note that the fillings are going on the wrapper on a diagonal.

Start rolling.

Put a dab of rice on the corner to help it stick closed.

Voila!

They pack well for a snack or meal the next day.  They taste great with soy sauce, too!

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Bento Sauce Containers

How do you get your salad dressing to work in your salad container without pouring it on your salad and wilting the lettuce?  Use a Bento mayonnaise/sauce container!

You can see how it holds the sauce!

So cute!

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How to Use a Breadmaker

Here’s how to use a breadmaker:  Remember to add liquids first, then dry ingredients, and finally yeast on top.  Put a small crater in the flour and put the yeast in that. You can find recipes on several websites online.

You don’t need to mix anything.  Sometimes, I warm up my liquid (water, milk) to 100-110 degrees before putting it in the breadmaker.

Put the pan in the breadmaker and select the type of bread, such as white or wheat.  Some breadmakers have you select the size.  Often, recipes are for 1 pound loaves.

Once you press Start, the breadmaker should do everything and you can walk away until the bread is baked.  Make sure you remove the bread from the pan to a cooling rack immediately and take the mixing paddle out of the bottom of the bread (it often sticks in the bread instead of staying in the pan when you pull the bread out).

If you are doing dough, the bread machine will beep when your dough is finished.  Don’t get mixed up with an early beep (often about 30 min. in) that signals when you can add fruits or nuts to your dough (for fruit and nut breads).

Your dough should look like this after a while.  It should form a ball and not stick to the sides.  If you look at your dough during the mixing stage and see it sticking, add some more flour to the pan.

I like to keep my flour next to the breadmaker in case I need to add flour during the mixing stage.

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Raw Avocado Sandwich & Salad

This was a yummy lunch from the Raw Food Detox Diet book  I made an avocado sandwich and a salad.

I toasted the bread and added lettuce (from the garden), sliced tomato, sliced avocado, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

For the salad, I had lettuce, avocado, tomato, red bell pepper, and ranch dressing (not raw, not from the book).

It looks like a meal you could get at a restaurant, don’t you think?

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Vegan Cranberry Almond Cookies

Before I went raw (Raw Food Detox Diet), I made some vegan chocolate-cranberry-almond cookies from the Vegan Cookie Connosseur by Kellie Peloza.

After making the dough, you roll the dough into balls, flatten them, and bake.

Mmm!

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Lots of Lettuce

When I was doing my April garden planting, I had some lettuce that was going to seed.  I harvested those plants and needed three bowls.  Yes, I still have lots more lettuce in the garden.  Yeah!

I washed the lettuce and wrapped it in paper towels in zip-lock bags in the fridge.  I’ll use the lettuce for salads or juicing.

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Packing Lunch & Dinner

This is what I packed on one of my work and grad school days (before going raw).  I needed to pack an entire day’s worth of food, as I would be gone for about 14-15 hours.  I packed snacks, lunch, and dinner.

I had pasta, salad, a chicken burger, orange juice, etc.

Here is everything packed.  I used two napkin colors – one for lunch and one for dinner.

Amazingly, everything but the water bottle fit in my lunch kit.  Yeah!

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No more detoxing for me

After about two weeks, I realized that the Raw Food Detox Diet was not for me.  I may continue to do additional juicing (on occasion), and I will probably continue to do vegan meals frequently, but I will not be following the detox plan any more.

I was very fatigued, I was super grumpy, I stopped losing weight after a few pounds, and I no longer had any desire to exercise.  This was after I had been getting on the treadmill, the stationary bike, and doing abs work 5X a week for two months.  After starting the detox diet, my exercising ground to a halt.

Now that I’ve almost finished grad school (As of now, I have three tasks/assignments and two class dates left!), I want to try training for a triathlon again.  This weekend, I purchased a new swimsuit for doing laps.  My previous suit was two sizes too small.  I’m pulling out my triathlon training books so that I can determine which level to train at.  I want to start with a sprint distance.  As it is challenging and time consuming to get to a pool, I don’t know how things will work out with the swimming (at least until I finish grad school early next month).  Still, if I get the bulk of my swimming done during weekends, I should be fine.  As for cycling, I see myself using my stationary bike more than my street bike, at least during weekdays.

I think my main hurdle for training will be jogging.  I’ve had a terrible time jogging for more than a half-mile or so over the last couple of months.  I want to be able to jog 2-3 miles nonstop.  I will consider interval training when selecting a triathlon training plan.

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Another Go With the Juicer

Getting ready to use the juicer – apples, kale, lemon, celery, salad spinner, cutting board, etc.

I tried putting a towel under the juicer, but it couldn’t grip on the counter.  I then changed to towels surrounding the juicer.

Green juice hitting lemon juice makes great colors.

For this juicer (Juiceman II), you have to cut things into small pieces.  When I upgrade juicers, I hope to get one that can hand a whole apple.

Kale washed and ready to go

So far, we have apple, lemon, and green veggies…

I love this picture…

Celery washed and ready to go.

This is what I got after the first round.  I then put the pulp back through the juicer to get more juice.  If I had a better juicer, I probably wouldn’t need to put the pulp through again.

This is the pulp after the first round through the juicer.  You can see that there are still large pieces of roughage.

I put all of the roughage into a container to make it easier to run it though the juicer again.

I got 3/4 cup of juice from putting the roughage back through the juicer again.

This is how much juice I got after two rounds through the juicer.

This is the mess I ended up with.

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Making Pizza Dough, Part 3 of 3

This is the dough after rising.

Before rolling out crusts, I get my cooling racks ready.

Using parchment paper keeps things from sticking.

A pastry mat and non-stick rolling pin are helpful.

I like to have a cup of flour ready for rolling out pizza crusts.

Here’s my workspace, ready to go.

This is the dough after rising.  I cut it in half, put half back in the dough rising bucket, and work with half of the dough at a time.

Here are two crusts.  I try to make them the size of dinner plates, or a size that will fit in gallon zip-lock baggies.

While you have one set in the oven for 3 minutes at 400 degrees (partially baking = par-bake), you roll out the other two crusts.

The most recent ones from the oven get their own spots on cooling racks.

The crusts pile up quickly.

Use the parchment paper from the cookie sheets to separate crusts for freezing in gallon zip-lock freezer bags.

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Garden in Early April

These flowers had been in a flower bed for a while.  Due to some work on our home, I had to transplant them to my garden boxes and then move them back to the original flower bed.  I hope they do well, as the flower bed was quite compacted and missing a lot of the soil that had been there before the work was done.  I did add quite a bit of compost when I moved them back, so I hope that helps.

Here are my four garden boxes.  In the bottom left, you can see oregano in its own pot, because otherwise, it will take over everything.

Top left to right – patio, bush, and cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and snap peas

Middle boxes – red and yellow bell peppers (just planted), lettuce, kale, thyme, and multiplying onions

Bottom row – basil, rosemary, and strawberries

Sorry, the cage is on this box.  We have carrots, yellow summer squash, leeks, and potatoes.

I put the cage over the newly-planted squares to discourage digging.  We have lettuce, cucumbers, and zucchini.

This box has swiss chard, onions, and lettuce.  The swiss chard will probably go into my frying pan or juicer this week.  Some of the onions are probably ready to be harvested as well.

Mmm, onions…

Lovely swiss chard

The snap peas are attaching to the tomato cage quite well.

The top left is a cherry tomato plant, the top right is a patio one, and the bottom two tomato plants are bush tomato plants.  The Square Foot Gardening Book by Mel Bartholomew says to put four bush plants in a square together, and as the patio and cherry tomato plants say that they are great for containers, I thought that I would put all four in the square and see what happens.

My lovely strawberries are doing well.  Some day, I’ll be able to have an entire box of them, but for now, they produce enough for a few bites every couple of days.

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Making PIzza Dough, Part 2 of 3

At this point, I’ve kneaded the dough.  This is a dough rising bucket from King Arthur Flour.  It holds 6 liters, but I could use a larger bucket for this recipe.  Give it a spray and add your dough.  It comes with a snap-on lid, so you don’t need to worry about covering your dough with plastic wrap or towels.

Note the size before rising.

This is the dough before rising, with the lid on.

Come back for Part 3!

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