Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Beetroot chips, Sweet Millet soup, and Tofu sausages!

I decided today was the day I would try to make my beetroot chips :) Yesterday I bought a little pack of discounted baby beetroot for $1.50, it's perfectly fresh. We've mainly been having it steamed with potatoes as a side dish.

So I sliced the beetroot as thinly as possible (I thought I got it quite thin but apparently not thin enough) and lay them out on a piece of baking paper on the glass dish inside the microwave, ground a little bit of salt on it and zapped it on high for about 2 minutes before it started to smoke so I turned it off for a few minutes. Then zapped it again, and turned it off...flipped over the slices and repeated. If I zapped it for longer they probabaly would have been perfect, but I think little sections of beetroot caught fire...well I didn't see fire but when I got them out there were little circles of burnt =D

They tasted fine though, they tasted almost raw (good thing I like raw beetroot), but chewy instead of crunchy. It was odd, and I will try again another day. I think I'll put them under the grill instead of the microwave next time! I had them with a banana smoothie (pink from the extra bits of beetroot I chucked in) with wheat germ and whole oats. Tasty :)

For tonight I decided to make a 2 course meal with a light soup as a starter. I made Sweet Millet Soup from Karma Cookbook by Boy George and Dragana G. Brown. Yeah Boy George wrote a macrobiotic vegan cookbook! Who knew? I didn't, until I saw it when I was scouring through the cookbook section in one of those cheap cheap book sale stores, hoping to stumble upon a gem...I did. This book is great! I got it for $3!
 Anyway, the soup is just millet, pumpkin, parsnip, carrot and onion boiled in water until vegetables are soft and millet cooked properly. Sprinkle some green onions on top and you have yourself a tasty soup! Apparently it helps any digestive problems you may have. It's very light and naturally sweet. The only 'flavouring' is a sprinkle of salt. Perfect starter.

As soon as I saw this recipe for tofu sausages, I knew I wanted to make them. So I did :) I blended the tofu to make it as smooth as possible (it feels like a sticky dough!) and cooked the cracked wheat (recipe didn't specify but I didn't want to break my teeth :P). I used almonds instead of walnuts because I don't like walnuts,but almonds worked fine. While they were cooking they smelled like peanut butter for some reason!

We had them with steamed brocolli, Steamed-and-then-grilled potato and beetroot (this makes the potato taste like a baked potato!), hummus, and this amazing beetroot and orange relish Nadine picked up for $1 at her work (discount rack, yerrrr!).

The sausages held together very well (I refrigerated them for about an hour before cooking too, only because I made them earlier. I don't think it would make too much of a difference.) I made them quite a bit larger than the recipe says, too. I made 12 out of the mix. 3 would have been enough for one person :) As you cut into them they do crumble but that's fine. You gotta like tofu to like these! I wouldn't give them to someone who didn't really, like my dad :) We loved them. I will make them again.

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