Fettuccine Bolognese

I'm calling this a fettuccine bolognese. I'm not really sure what a proper bolognese is, but m-w.com tells me it's a tomato sauce flavored with meat. Well, this is a tomato sauce, and it's flavored with fake meat, so that's close enough.

I made my basic marinara, with onions and garlic, a can of crushed tomatoes, a bay leaf, some red wine, salt, pepper, and a bunch of Italian spices. Then I stuck a couple of Tofurkey Italian sausages in the food processor, ground them up, and added them to the sauce.

I know this isn't terribly exciting, but it was terribly delicious, and it's the easiest way I've found to make a really "meaty" pasta sauce.

I'm going to be playing a lot of catch up this week, I have posts ready to go about the following foods: pumpkin pudding, peach cobbler, homemade bread, bbq tempeh and coleslaw, spaghetti bolognese, aloo ghobi, and (coming up tonight) vegetable samosas.

Another Pasta Salad

It's boring lunch time! I'm sorry, I've neglected posting, but starting work and adjusting to a new schedule has taken a lot of time away from cooking and putzing about in the kitchen. I did make a big pot of pasta shells last night and took half of it for a pasta salad. Here is it on my desk. It's got sliced almonds, golden raisins, peas, celery, and some vegenaise.

This morning at my gym some people presented me with a cookbook and a card they'd chipped in for to celebrate me passing the bar exam. How adorable is that? It's the Designing Women Cookbook: lots of great traditional southern food. This link mentions the cookbook at the bottom, and on the left you'll find a link to Designing Women Fanfiction. Now I've seen it all.

I think I'm going to make something Thursday morning to share with the people who got it for me, so I'll post about that when it happens.

Impromptu Pasta Salad

I made a big batch of pasta the other night and only sauced my own serving, thinking I might get creative with the rest of it. Today for lunch I was craving something substantial, so -- while it's not terribly creative -- I made pasta salad. My mom makes a pasta salad with chicken and peas, and for some reason I can taste the chicken in this one even though it's not the same recipe at all. It's just cooked pasta, frozen peas, chopped celery, vegan parmesan, vegan mayo, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Yum.

Ditalini with Salsa di Limone

I'm sick today. I think it's probably a kidney infection, which sucks, but I've already started popping cipro. I'm sure I'll feel better tomorrow. For lunch I had some classic comfort food: potato soup and rolls. For dinner, I still wanted something warm and filling, but I wasn't in the mood for soup. Ever since I bought the Sunergia Soy Feta I've been sprinkling my salads liberally, but dying to see what it was like with pasta. I went to the food network website and dug around until I found a Giada recipe for Rotini with Salsa di Limone. I substituted ditalini for the rotini, and I used more lemon and more salt than she calls for. I used the Mediterranean Herb flavor feta, which is the only one I've tried, but I can't recommend it enough. It turned out really nicely, very fresh but still substantial enough for a sick girl.

Spaghetti and Beanballs

Tonight I made the spaghetti and beanballs from Veganomicon. There has been some twitter on various blogs about the texture of the balls, but I liked them fine. A little mushy, but I think if I cooked them longer or at a higher temperature I could fix that. I did use red beans instead of kidney beans, but I doubt that made much difference. I also used diced tomatoes with a little tomato sauce instead of crushed tomatoes in the marinara, just because I like my sauce a little chunky.

Sorry about the weird food close-ups lately. I'm just playing around with different angles and different styles. At this point, I'm not sure which I like better.