Mother's Day My Way

Since I’ll be eating out on Mother’s Day at a vegan unfriendly restaurant, I pretended this Sunday was Mother’s Day and cooked whatever I wanted. I wanted to eat and play. There were some experiments, a pasta dish using my colorful corkscrews, sushi from my new cookbook, and dessert.

Our sushi appetizer was pretty basic (nothing fancy for our first attempt) - nori rolls with cucumber, red pepper, green onion, and carrots, sesame seed garnish, pickled ginger, wasabi paste and tamari for dipping. Sushi should be a meal in itself. It’s rather stressful to prepare as an appetizer while you have a whole dinner yet to make. But it was fun to see how the rolls turned out and of course yummy to eat. This was our first roll. Obviously we still need practice, but I got the wasabi leaf down!





Experiment #1 – Two-bean Loaf. I layered lima beans on top of red beans in a loaf pan. I pureed the beans separately and added ground oats and seasoning to each. I made a maple, soy, ketchup sauce for the topping. I baked it for 40 minutes, added the sauce, then baked another 10 minutes.

Before baking…..

…. and a slice.

A successful experiment in flavor. Not so much in appearance. It puffed up a lot while baking, then sank as it cooled. I think my pan was a little too small. The slice looks like it’s smiling. I will keep working on it because it tasted great, held together, and was very filling.


Pasta – the sauce is made with onions, roasted red peppers, peas, corn, olives, arugula, and a small amount of tomato sauce. I seasoned it with fresh basil, oregano, sea salt, and crushed red pepper flakes. I thought the sauce was so pretty.

For the noodles - once cooked I added a little olive oil, nutritional yeast, and fresh parsley.

I love the spiciness of arugula, and the sweet peas and corn were a great complement and just plain fun to eat in a pasta sauce. This was so colorful and tasted fantastic and there were no leftovers.


Experiment #2 – Broccoli Crepes. First I made “Tangy White Bean Sauce” from The Saucy Vegetarian. It’s tangy from Dijon mustard and lemon juice, perfect for broccoli, which is why I decided to go ahead and add chopped broccoli right into the sauce. Next I cut the broccoli into stalks, trimmed the stalks, then steamed them until they were tender. Just before dinner I heated the sauce and made “Savory Crepes” from VWAV. I wrapped the crepes around the broccoli, then topped them with the sauce. It was just as I had envisioned, like Crepes Divan without the chicken and cheese! This too was great and a nice departure from the usual plain old steamed chopped broccoli. This picture doesn't bring out its true beauty.

After finally finding the crepe recipe, Amey confirmed it was a good choice. Thanks, Amey! I made the first "throw away" crepe, then Chase took over and really got the hang of it. He did an outstanding job.

With the sushi rice, pasta, crepes, and oats in the bean loaf, we could have done without bread, but I baked one of my favorites, Oat Walnut Muffins from Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons. I love their sweet, nutty flavor.

I don’t know why I didn’t want a chocolate dessert, so I’m afraid you’ll have to endure ANOTHER strawberry dessert. I found beautiful organic giant strawberries for $2.20 a pound! I used “Blueberry Orange Crisp” from TEV as my inspiration for Strawberry Lemon Crisp. I now love the combination of sweet strawberries and tart lemons. I do not own an 8 x 12 pan as the instructions called for, so I made a thinner version in my 9 x 13.

I served it with extra strawberries on top.

What a great Mother’s Day! We were stuffed and had a blast cooking and eating. I’m afraid I must end with a complaint, though. What is up with quality control these days? Take a look at this mutant shaped pasta we found amongst our corkscrews!

;)