spinach and mushroom bread pudding

All right, I'll admit it.

I'm bad with bread.

Most of the time, I try to avoid bread, knowing this. If I had my way, I would pick up a freshly baked loaf every day. I get depressed at the notion of bread that is doomed to the fate of resealable plastic ties. In general, my rule is, if the bag it comes in seals, then it isn't worth eating.

Naturally, this poses a problem for the feasibility of my bread consumption. It does not keep well. And, while the tortilla challenge of last week was entertainingly delicious (in which I successfully burrito-ed, cheese quesadilla-ed, and enchilada-ed myself to glory, FINALLY managing for the first time in my adult life to finish an entire bag of tortillas before the last few dried out), there's only so much love that I can give to sandwiches.

I know, I know. 'But sandwiches are delicious! And versatile!' you're saying. And yes, these this is true. Soon I will buckle down and try to come up with a good grocery list for a week-long sandwich challenge. Unfortunately, the sandwich's structure is not, shall we say, renowned for its longevity or constitution. So, since every given day usually involves running around for several hours in and between unrefrigerated places, the glory of the intricately stacked sandwich tends to make a remarkably swift transition to Sogville.

Despite all of these things, sometimes I can't resist. I walk past the bread in the bakery, and I'm doomed. In this particular instance, creamy roasted pepper soup was to blame. I had soup on the brain, knowing that the clock was ticking on the opened carton after making these babies.

So, despite my better judgment, I got a french baguette. I sawed off a fourth of it, and had a blissful soup experience.

And then I promptly forgot about the rest of it.


Cleaning my kitchen this afternoon, I stumbled upon it. Or rather, I practically cracked my knuckles against it in passing, since at that point, it was creeping its way towards the consistency of petrified wood.

After uttering a colorful menagerie of salty language, I was about to toss it into the bin when I dawned on me: bread pudding.

Spinach and Mushroom Bread Pudding

INGREDIENTS:

7-8 oz. firm tofu (I used half of a 15.5 oz twin pack)
2 tablespoons mustard (if you can, try to grab Trader Joe's Garlic Aioli Mustard - heaven!)
1 tsp peppercorns, crushed

1 cup almond milk
4 oz crimini mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup basil, chopped
1 head garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced

1 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp rosemary

3-4 cups stale bread, cubed (i guesstimated with 3/4 of a stale baguette)

2 cups spinach leaves
9 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Saute mushrooms over medium heat until tender. Set aside.

Mash tofu, almond milk, shallots, garlic, and mustard together until well incorporated.

Add peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, and salt to taste.

Stir in spinach and mushrooms.

Add bread cubes and basil. Toss until well incorporated. Prod one of the cubes to make sure that it seems to be softening - if not, then add a bit more almond milk.

Spread into 9x13 baking pan and place mozzarella slices on top.

Bake at 400 degrees for 30-40 min, or until the cheese is brown and bubbling

(p.s: i realize i've been bad about logging groceries. i've stopped doing huge weekly grocery runs because i was tired of having my mushrooms be shriveled or my basil wilted by the time i got round to the recipes i wanted to make. so instead, i've been just running to the store(s) before cooking, since we're lucky to be so close. today i grabbed mushrooms (half of a package at $1.69), garlic aioli mustard ($2.49), almond milk ($1.69).

Cauliflower Pepper Curry

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hello beautiful friends!

so sorry for being quite MIA in the past week. a fatal combination of house guests, laziness, and a renewed inspiration to make work had culminated in a bit of stagnation, cooking-wise.

but as a peace offering, i have the recipe from the cauliflower pepper curry that i made for the second time in a week. so take that as an endorsement; this stuff is good.

this recipe is a great illustration of one of my favorite food policies: "more pepper". (the others being, 'more mustard', and 'more garlic'.)

Cauliflower Pepper Curry

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 8 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 can of coconut milk (14 oz)
  
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp peppercorns, crushed
• 1 tablespoon curry leaves
• 1 bunch spinach, chopped
• 1 head cauliflower, chopped
• 2 vine-ripened tomatoes, cubed

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add mustard seeds and cover, until the seeds have stopped popping. Add cumin seeds and cook until browned (1 min).
2. Stir-fry cauliflower until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook for an additional one minute.
3. Pour in coconut milk and scrape bottom of pan to release spice. Stir in salt, peppercorns, and curry leaves. Reduce and simmer for about 5-8 minutes, until cauliflower is tender.
4. Add spinach, continue to simmer until cooked (about 5 minutes).
5. Stir in tomatoes. Raise heat to medium-high, and boil uncovered for 3-5 minutes until tomato is warmed, and some of the cauliflower has broken down to thicken the sauce.
6. Serve over basmati rice, if desired.
   

Bon appetit! Was a great, simple meal that could be left unattended for stretches of time. Perfect for listening to the State of the Union address and chipping away steadily at a cable-knit scarf that I have been working on since December.

There are a lot of things that I could say about my feelings (or lack thereof) on politics, and political leaders, and rhetoric, and public relations. Clearly, there are many things about our nation's shared situation that are less than ideal, and things about my own situation that are the same. In some ways, the last year has caused me to become a skeptic. Skeptical about things working out, about the seemingly inexorable slide of our country towards desperation, about things falling apart more than they come together.

As I made dinner tonight, I was a bit surprised to find that despite these precious feelings, I now have more gratitude than ever before. I no longer feel helpless. I no longer feel as if the things that happen to me are solely a result of unpredictable, inscrutable factors.

I could focus on the negative. I could grouse about tuition costs, about squeezing in hours at work at any given opportunity, about always rushing endlessly from place to place with burning calves and lungs. About millions of things, really. But the truth is, I don't. I'm recklessly, stupidly grateful to have a job, to have the opportunity to work and be paid in exchange, to have faith in my ability to do things well, in good friends and in a warm cat on my lap. I'm grateful for having the will and health to put in the effort to make food for myself, to experience the satisfaction in preparing it for subsequent consumption. In exercising a conscientiousness and a certain joy in converting raw ingredients into something worth having.

There are a lot of cliches that exist about the therapeutic effect of making food, about cooking to save yourself. I think I can buy into that to some degree, but it goes deeper than that. It's not just cooking that's saving myself. It's me. I'm saving myself. And small things, small things are saving me.

spinach breakfast salad

Don't get me wrong. I love breakfast foods. I love breakfast foods with a reverence and respect that is usually reserved for dudes with golden halos. Crispy almost-burned hash browns give me shivers. I am probably never going to procreate, lest I be tempted to trade my first-born for a perfectly browned pancake.

That being said, there is one drawback to the all-American breakfast. Once you're done with your Denny's slammer breakfast of pancakes, sausages, eggs, biscuits and gravy, all dunked liberally in butter, you're only prepared to do one thing: go back to bed.

Being as I had a manic day ahead of me, I didn't have the time to indulge in the wonderful world of breakfast. What I did have, however, was a bag filled with freezer-burned vegetarian sausage patties, some spinach that was on the verge of wiltage, and an assortment of random vegetables.

So, in the spirit of experimentation, extreme hunger, and low expectations (I should have thought to snap a "before" picture of the sausage patties - they were in pretty sad shape) - I threw it all together. And it was delicious! So delicious, in fact, that I tried making it again, this time with a freshly opened package of veggie sausage. And guess what? It wasn't as good. The excess water that came from the melted freezerburn actually resulted in the creation of some meatlike gravy that became the perfect substitute for salad dressing. No olive oil required. So file this one away as a recipe to salvage the saddest foods.

Spinach Breakfast Salad

INGREDIENTS

2 cups spinach, chopped


1/4 cup carrots, preferably shredded (I only had baby carrots)

3 stalks of green onions

1 tomato

5 sausage patties, with freezerburn (I used Morning Glory veggie sausage, but can obviously be of the Real Meat variety as well)

Salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS

Cook sausage on medium heat until brown. Remove, leaving liquid in pan.

Chop all vegetables and sausage. Throw all the veggies into the pan, and toss to coat.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

So yeah. Not the fanciest of recipes. But, I think the advertising euphemism would be, 'easy'. Takes ten minutes to make, tops. And let's face it, when was the last time that you've ever seen a recipe that called for x recipe, freezerburned? Yeah. Didn't think so.

p.s; sorry for the dearth in posts. am actually cooking quite a lot, but haven't had the time to update. will be catching up, today and tomorrow!