I Love Flowers!

I'm still loving the flowers my husband got for me last week, thought I'd share. Very, very springy and it has been so very beautiful outside, I love it!

It's fun making sushi!

Dinner at mom's house on Saturday was a blast. William, Dennisa, Jim and I made sushi. No pictures yet of the event, they are still on mom's camera :0). But good news, Seth stayed at William's Saturday and almost all day Sunday so Jim and I decided to make them again at home. We went out looking for all the necessary supplies, had most of the ingredients, but we needed a sushi roller. We couldn't find a "sushi mat" at Walmart but my brilliant husband suggested looking at bamboo placemats which after finding them looked JUST like the roller William and Dennisa had but bigger and a dollar fifty cheaper. Can you believe our luck?? So we came home and started rollin'. Our ingredients were: Avacado, sauteed portabello mushroom in garlic and soysauce, carrot, cucumber, sticky rice and WASABI! and the Nori wraps. We were turning into professionals by the end of the day! We had soooo much fun.


It was suprisingly simple to make, you just lay the Nori paper shiny side down and (wet your fingers, so the rice doesn't stick) then put down a thin layer of your sticky rice leaving an edge so you can wet it and seal it after you place your fillings in. Now I'm wishing I would've taken a picture before we rolled it. You just add a line of each filling on the rice that is closest to you then using your mat start rolling it up away from you, wet the exposed edge, finish rolling it up. We would roll it back and forth for a second or two just to give it time to seal real good.

So Jim was feeling pretty confident and rolled up one with just rice in it, cut it in quarters long ways, placed them on the mat with the rice pointing out making like a square and then put avacado in the center of the 4 corner pieces and rolled them in a nori sheet...and this is what it looked like. I hope that wasn't confusing, it's kinda hard to explain. They came out beautiful and we were soooooo proud of ourselves. They were, out of this world, awesome!

Fancy! Love it!

Sausages!

I finally made Julie Hasson's Spicy Italian Sausages and they were pretty good, I think next time I will add more spices to make them taste more "sausage like" but we ate them for two days and I think the second day was better. They had more time to sit and "get happy" like Emeril would say. The process of making them was easy and fun. They recipe can be found at Julie's website http://www.everydaydish.tv/Recipe%20Pages/Spicy_Italian_Vegetarian_Sausage.html If you wanted to find it. Here's some photos of my sausage adventure...

This is what they look like in the process of rolling them in the aluminum foil...

It made 9 sausages, I steamed them in my metal colander for 30 mins.

This is after 30 mins. and they plumped up to sausage goodness. Some were pretty funny shaped when I unwrapped them. The recipe called for you to measure out 1/2 cup full to mold into a sausage, next time I will be making them with my 1/3 or 1/4 cup. They were pretty big. :0)

I almost forgot to take a picture...shoo wee... I made oven fries to go with it and sauteed up a red, orange pepper (that I got from Trader Joes, they were so pretty.) and onion to put on top also I put some veganaise and roasted red pepper hummus on the bun...mmm.mmm.delish.

Seth loved his dinner. Yippy! He just had ketchup and veganaise on his.

In this recipe she called for a "chicken-like" seasoning and I wanted to share the one that I like that I got from a friend.

Chicken style seasoning

1/4 cup salt (I use 1/2 that)

1/2 cup Nutritional yeast flakes

1/2 t. turmeric

1 t. garlic powder

1 T. onion powder

1/2 t. marjoram

1/2 t. sage or summer savory

1 T. parsley

Blend thoroughly to a powder like consistency. Store in a sealed container in refridgerator. It's great in any of your recipes that call for chicken like seasoning or chicken broth. Use it to season soups, sauces, gravies, burgers, loaves, or other savory dishes. ( I don't put it in the fridge and it's still ok)