Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Pasta, Pumpkin Seeds, Pancakes, and Pirates

These pirate pictures are from a month or so ago, but I had to share them. I've talked about my great neighborhood over and over, but I really can't stress enough what wonderful neighbors we have. One warm fall weekend, the kids were invited over to our neighbor Gail's house (her child is college age now) for an impromptu crafting session. They came home with these amazing pirate hats made out of newspaper. How cool is that?

I just had to share another picture of this pose of Parker's. He is not my usual child who goes for the "pirate look", but he really loved it and they had hours of fun. The hats are still in great condition and used often. Gail rocks!
This meal was based on Squashed Macaroni from Mothering mag e-mail. I don't subscribe to Mothering magazine anymore, but I still get their emails and sometimes the recipes catch my eye. I tagged this recipe as one to make and finally did the other day. Obviously, I used whole wheat fusilli instead of macaroni. I didn't have any walnuts to sprinkle on top so I added raw almonds to the sauce instead. I think the walnuts would be better, but the almonds were fine. I skipped the parsley and kelp, but added steamed kale and peas. I'll make this again as this is a great way to use squash. This time I used an acorn squash leftover from our CSA, but any squash would work.
We've been roasting a lot of pumpkin seeds from the many pumpkins we carved for Halloween. I usually roast pumpkin seeds with much of the same seasoning I use to bake tofu; Bragg's amino acids, olive oil, blackstrap molasses, and curry powder. Many batches are just eaten right out of a bowl, but if there are any left I like to add a few to everything we eat. Salad mix from the farmer's market, raisins, and pumpkin seeds (added homemade tahini dressing before eating).Pumpkin Pancakes from Vegan Brunch. Rob played chess after work one night so I decided we should have pancakes for dinner since it was just the kids and me. I decided on the Pumpkin Pancakes from Vegan Brunch because they included a vegetable (a stretch, I know). I topped them with homemade apple/pear sauce and walnuts. They didn't need syrup. We had soy yogurt with the last of our farmer's market blackberries we froze (I need to buy more next year so maybe we can make it until winter). To round off the meal and to make me feel better about pancakes for dinner, we had baked tofu sandwiches with avocado on Veggie Seed bread from Strawberry Fields. The pancakes were very liquidy and cooked up very thin, almost crepe like with a great taste and actually perfect for a fall dinner.

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