Early mornings and seaweed

Quinoa with cashew *cheese* over a bed of shredded cabbage.

I am finding the cashew *cheese* fairly addicting. You can find the recipe here. I changed the recipe quite a bit - I am still tweaking it to my liking but I will post my version when I get it just right.

Self control won out this morning and the cashew *cheese* was off the breakfast menu.

Miso soup, quinoa and seasoned nori.

I was reading about potential dietary deficiencies that can occur when eating a plant based diet. It seems low levels of iodine can be a problem.

But I doubt this will be an issue for me since I almost always eat some form of seaweed everyday. 

For some reason I woke up very early this morning. It was so early that the dogs didn't even bother to wake up.

What do you do when you wake up hours earlier than everyone else? You make miso soup, of course! (you can find my basic process here)

Assembling the soup was easy - 

Cubes of tofu and some wakame went into the bottom of a bowl.

 Then I poured the miso soup on top.

It was a bit of a seaweed bonanza this morning. I used Kombo seaweed to make the dashi broth, wakame seaweed was in the finished soup and the small bowl of quinoa was a wonderul excuse to enjoy tons of seasoned nori.

Yes, I do believe my iodine levels are just fine.

I am looking forward to watching the Oscars later this afternoon.

Happy Sunday all!

It's all about the portions

It was another one of those early mornings.

Something tells me I shouldn't be up before the street lamps turn off...

But since I was awake I decided I might as well get busy.

I put the beans I had soaking overnight on the stove to simmer.

I pulled out this from the refrigerator:

It says it is a portion(s) and I was planning on having it for dinner but I knew it was way too big for one meal.

The dogs got the better end of this portion dilema.

The portion on the right is the one destined to be my dinner. The three on the left will be the dogs breakfast and mine as well.

I cooked up a mix of 1/2 quinoa and 1/2 basmati rice.

The halibut went into a saute pan on medium heat and got a quick sear.

I also had some pine nuts, olives and yogurt in the fridge so I created a sauce for the dog's breakfast.

I did soak the olives in water for a bit - otherwise they would have been too salty for the dogs.

The dog's breakfast pre-saucing:

And post-saucing:

This was my meal.

Quinoa and rice with seared Halibut plus seasoned nori strips, miso broth and some of the cooked kidney beans.

 Check out this post to see how I go about eating this.

I ended up eating all of the fish, most of the rice/quinoa, all of the miso broth and only a couple of bites of the beans.

The beans will be making an appearance later today :-)

A dog's breakfast

The dogs got to enjoy the rest of the soft tofu this morning. 

Yes, running out of kibble is a good thing!

Quinoa, ground pork, soft tofu, carrots and seasoned nori.

I used quinoa in this recipe because it has a nice protein content and I only had a little bit of the pork and tofu left.

I wouldn't bother adding salt to this recipe - dogs usually don't need it added for taste and the chicken broth should provide plenty of salt.

I drizzled Udo's oil over the top.

A golden pool of Udo's oil at the bottom of the bowl.

Quinoa and tofu in chicken broth

Serves 4 (40 lb dogs)


Ingredients:

1/2 a package of soft tofu

1/4 lb of ground pork

1 large carrot chopped

8 strips of teriyaki nori torn into small pieces

3 cups of chicken broth

1 1/2 cups of quinoa, rinsed

2 Tbsp. of Udo's oil

Directions:  

Pour three cups of chicken broth into a sauce pan and place over medium heat. Add in the ground pork, tofu, carrot and half of the seasoned nori. Rinse the quinoa with water several times and then add to the pot.

Bring up to a boil and then turn down the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

Keep an eye on the pot - if the quinoa has absorbed most of the chicken broth - add in a little more.

The nori will dissolve and color the quinoa green - Don't worry the dogs won't mind.

When the quinoa has become translucent and the carrots are tender, remove from heat and let cool. 

When the stew is cool, ladle 1 cup of the mixture into bowl(s), top with one or two strips of the nori torn into pieces and a generous drizzle of Udo's oil (you can substitute with olive oil).

This is a quick and easy meal especially for dogs that are sensitive to wheat or rice.