Eating During the Storm

Hurricane Sandy came and went in Baltimore. I'm very fortunate. Except for some leaks here and there, and a loss of income, my household was unaffected. It was, and still is pretty chilly here though.

I did stock up on emergency supplies though, and I still have plenty to eat. I wanted to make a big, filling, comfort meal beforehand so that we'd be well fed in case of an outage. Initially I decided on Mac and Sleaze from 500 Vegan Recipes, but I had loads of veggies from the farmers' market that I wanted to use up. I always bolster my M&C style recipes with extra veggies to make them healthier, but I ended up completely changing the recipe to do so.

I added:

-15 oz tomato sauce
-1/2 bunch kale
-1/2 head roasted cheddar cauliflower
-1/2 head broccoli, chopped
-1 roasted red pepper

Since I had power and gas, I did a lot of other cooking, partly just to keep the joint warm. I had overfilled my stock bin again, so I made a batch of that. Since I didn't have a perfect however many cups, I made some tablespoon-sized stock stars.

Naturally, I also made cookies.

I realize now that I began to make good on my promise by making Game Day Nachos from Alicia Simpson's Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations. I've made these incredible nachos before, following the instructions to the word. This time, I didn't have everything required, but I was close enough to make reasonable substitutions.

I'm the last person to obsess over how healthy my meals are, but I gotta say, these nachos stack up pretty well in that arena. The cheese-style sauce is mind-blowing because it requires no plant milks, no nutritional yeast, and no animal product stand-ins of any sort. It's all veggies. I can't help but think it's cool. If anyone ever gives you crap about being able to give up cheese and weird vegan foods, just slap them with this book.

The above is the best of the quick and dirty pictures, so you'll notice that I took care of any healthy moments by having these for dinner, with beer.