Baked marinated tempeh

October 25, 2021 at 9:13 pm (F (0 stars, inedible), Other, Tempeh) ()

This is another recipe from the cookbook Whole Food Cooking Every Day. I’m not a big tempeh fan, but Derek and Alma like it. They usually just buy pre-seasoned tempeh (the coriander cumin one) and eat it pan-fried for breakfast, so I thought it would be nice to add another tempeh recipe to our repertoire.

I decided to start with the base marinated tempeh recipe. It has you steam the tempeh for 5 minutes, then bake the tempeh in a marinade of apple juice, orange juice, coconut oil, soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic.

The recipe says to cover the baking dish with parchment paper and then foil, which I totally missed, then bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Even though I forgot to cover it, the final tempeh was extremely soft and limp. I couldn’t eat it, and Alma didn’t like it either. Derek thought it was reasonably tasty, although it would be better crispy. He polished off the whole dish over several days.

When I’ve made baked tempeh before it’s always gotten more crispy. Maybe I should have cooked it longer until all the liquid evaporated? Or maybe it’s just too much liquid? (2 cups of juice + 1/4 cup soy sauce and vinegar). I should compare it to my other baked tempeh recipes.

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Oatmeal cottage cheese banana blueberry nut pancakes

October 24, 2021 at 10:53 pm (Alma's faves, B plus (3.5 stars, like a lot), breakfast, Derek's faves, Monthly menu plan: brunch, Other)

I often make the banana oat nut pancake recipe from Cookie and Kate, and I have another oatmeal walnut pancake recipe from the McCann’s oatmeal box. But today I was in the mood for something different. My friend Qi recommended this high-protein pancake recipe, which she got from her son’s preschool teacher. I like cottage cheese a lot, but Derek and Alma usually don’t. I thought maybe it’s a texture thing and if I blend it they won’t mind it. I changed the recipe a bit, swapping the original 3/4 cup of whole what flour for 1 cups of rolled oats ground to a flour, and adding blueberries to one half of the batter and chopped walnuts to the other half. (Qi says she often adds chocolate chips, but I’m not sure I’d like that with the sourness of the cottage cheese.)

Both Derek and Alma liked these pancakes. In fact, Derek not only loved the “sour taste” but he preferred them with blueberries over walnuts! What has happened to my non-fruit lover? Read the rest of this entry »

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Granola from Whole Food Cooking Every Day

October 14, 2021 at 10:35 pm (B plus (3.5 stars, like a lot), breakfast, Grains, Other) ()

No one has been a big fan of the last few batches of granola I’ve made, so I wanted to try something new, and I decided to try the base granola recipe from my new cookbook, Whole Food Cooking Every Day. The author, Amy Chaplin, says it makes 15 cups, so I decided to just halve the recipe in case we didn’t like it. I successfully halved everything except the salt. Oy. The granola was inedible. I ended up making another half recipe with no salt and mixing them together, but the final product still tasted quite salty. She calls for fine sea salt and I used table salt. Maybe the sea salt is coarser, and next time I should cut back on the salt? With the saltiness caveat aside, I think I quite like this recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

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Chia bircher bowl

October 3, 2021 at 10:21 pm (breakfast, B_(3 stars, like), Grains, Other) ()

When I looked through my new cookbook Whole Food Cooking Every Day, one of the first sections that interested me was the one for chia bircher bowls. I’m always looking for new, quick, filling, nutritious breakfast ideas. Derek isn’t a fan of chia pudding, and no one liked the two “overnight oats” recipes I’ve tried, but maybe this combo would be more of a hit? It took me a while to find the hemp seeds, but finally I got some and was ready to try the recipe.

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