Yesterday, I made some wraps. As a result, I think wraps are kind of annoying. This recipe was "White Bean and Roasted Red Pepper Vegetable Wraps with Spinach" from Supermarket Vegan. There's a nice adaptation to this recipe over at Resolute Woot if you want to see what the recipe is like.
First, I should say, though this cookbook is called Supermarket Vegan, I don't actually do a lot of the Supermarket bits of it like using canned beans, etc. So, I pressure cooked some white beans (Great Northern because I was out of Cannellini) and seasoned them with bay leaves, pepper, herbs and garlic. Then when those were cooled, I made the spread, which was good, but even after adding extra garlic, was still a little bland.
When I got to the wrap part, I found that the Ezekiel 4:9 tortillas had already molded all over the place. I guess this is one of the things you realize when you start buying processed foods that are a little less processed than your usual processed foods. They're not as bathed in preservatives to keep them on the shelf for months. I should have just made the tortillas myself. At any rate, I had some roti dough in the fridge, so I just toasted those up in a pan and assembled the wraps. Jacob doesn't like spinach so I made his with cabbage and I made mine with a mix of cabbage and spinach. I also added shredded carrots. In hindsight I should have added green onions, too. That would have been nice.
The roti were sort of small, so getting them to have enough filling without spilling all over the place was a pain. I think that next time I will just skip the "assemble and refrigerate for at least half an hour" step and refrigerate the wrap contents and then let everyone assemble their own wraps at the table more like cold burritos.
I also made the "Easy Lentil Soup" to go with it which was, indeed, easy. It was pretty good. Floof in my Food has an adaptation of the recipe for that one. Jacob is a huge lentil soup fan and he liked this one better than the last version, so I guess I can toss that one out. I added about twice as many carrots and onions as were called for, as is my way. I like everything to have lots of veggies. Boyfriend added Sri Racha to everything as usual. I sometimes find it hard not to be insulted by this, but, it is his way. He likes everything to be spicy.
This morning, I made some smoothies since I bought a metric ton of strawberries this weekend and they are ripening fast. They're so good and juicy I want to spread out a blanket on the grass with a book and some sun and just eat them all day long. But there's school, so I will stay inside and drink my smoothie and do statistics instead.
My smoothie this morning was 1/2 cup frozen berry mix (blueberry, raspberry, blackberry), a handful of strawberries, half a banana, 2 tablespoons of almond butter, 3/4 cup of unsweetened soy milk and a cup of spinach. I don't usually add spinach or greens to my smoothies but my boyfriend's sister is crazy about it, so I thought I would give it a try and start with a cup.
I haven't been very happy with my blender's performance lately and it is on loan to a friend right now who doesn't have one and is just getting into cooking and stuff. Actually, I think I just gave it to him, and if I didn't and you're reading this right now, please, just keep the blender and pass it on when you get a nice one. It's good for small, light jobs but it's not up for making smoothies every day, so I just use my food processor which absolutely murders some frozen fruit. It's so fast it basically makes ice cream of it if all I use is frozen fruit and some milk or yogurt. Anyway, it did a great job this morning, but I should have mixed up the spinach first all pesto style, because I did have some leafy bits floating around. Next time. I couldn't taste the spinach at all, though, which was cool. I felt like I was sneaking myself vegetables. Not that I have to do that, but I definitely don't eat as many greens as I should.
Jacob's smoothie, on the other hand, was a different story. He doesn't like the seeds of the berry mix and he likes his fruit a bit more tropical. And he knew there was spinach in mine. One drink and he was like, "Something isn't right about this." Then he stuck his tongue out and there was a little leaf bit on it, so there wasn't going to be any tricking him this morning. I made his with a handful of strawberries, frozen tropical fruit (pineapple, mango, papaya), half a banana, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and a cup of unsweetened soy milk. He had enough for a big glass and a snack glass for after he works out.
Boyfriend's treat this morning was some cold-brewed coffee. I've been wanting to try it after having some that his cousin made that was so good. I looked around at various recipes and then just kind of winged it. I have a French press and a Hario carafe (see below) that we use for making pour-over coffee, so I figure even when one is full of grounds waiting to go to the garden I can use the other to make the next couple day's coffee. Plus, I don't need to buy any extra equipment.
At about 6:00 p.m. last night, I coarsely ground about 6 scoops of coffee and then filled the rest of the carafe with water, gave it a good stir, put the lid on it and let it sit till 8:00 a.m. Filtered it into a mason jar so I could store the excess in the fridge. Into his travel cup, I added 6 ice cubes, a spoon of sugar, some soy creamer and about a cup of the coffee and gave it a shake. It looks like I can get two days of coffee out of one batch. He said it was the jam and that it tasted like a frappuccino.
He likes his coffee really strong, so I used more coffee grounds than the recipes I found called for. America's Test Kitchen says go for a 4:1 ratio of water to coffee by weight or 1:1 by volume. The New York Times recipe says 1/3 cup grounds to 1 1/2 cups water. I just used 3 Hario scoops (which is apparently 36 grams) per cup since that's what I use when I make him a strong cup of hot coffee in the morning. I'm going to experiment with making ice cubes out of coffee for the next batch. I may also try a 24-hour steeping time just to see how that works out.
Am I crazy to be so happy about this coffee thing? I am so happy about it. I mean, I figure it will save me time in the morning. I can even fix it at night and he can just grab it out of the fridge and I won't feel bad if I stay up late studying and want to sleep in a little instead of getting up to make coffee. Also, it will be that much less energy to heat up a kettle every day and that much less heat set loose in my house. I know it's not much heat, but if it's going to be 110 degrees every day this summer like it was last summer, every little bit counts. Plus, he runs hot anyway and I'm sure the last thing he wants in the summer is a hot cup of coffee when it's already 90+ degrees as he's walking out of the house.
