eat

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Stuffed Shells

I tend to get lazy cooking for myself sometimes because after all, one person can only eat so much and after 40 billion days of trying to finish something I made up.. well, it gets tiring.

But sometimes I just feel the need to cook....

And to convince my roommate that she needs to be a model because clearly she's missed her calling.

Which she quickly got tired of when she realized that she was my only subject!

I actually didn't really take any semi decent photos of dinner because well... I was hungry! The Kristin photoshoot was just me waiting the 30 minutes for dinner to cook!

I made Vegan Stuffed Shells which were SO delicious. More delicious than the picture made it out to be. Don't let the tofu part scare you, it's tasty & protein filled. And adding sauteed onions from the public market on top makes it all the better.

Vegan Stuffed Shells

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 16 ounces extra firm tofu
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 box jumbo shells
• 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

Instructions

1. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Crumble into the bowl of a food processor or high-speed blender along with olive oil, salt, oregano, garlic and nutritional yeast. Process on high until smooth and “ricotta-like”.
2. Add the defrosted spinach to the blended tofu mixture.
3. Cook shells in boiling salted water until el dente. Drain
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour about ½ cup pasta sauce into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Stuff shells with 2 T of filling and place in pan, seam side down. Repeat until all shells have been stuffed.
5. Pour remaining pasta sauce over shells, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Serve!

Number of servings (yield): 6-8

(this is what they were actually supposed to look like in all of their color-balanced glory! photo from PBS)

Peanut Butter.. or lack of.

This past week, I ran out of peanut butter... I considering calling for a state of emergency.

If you've ever seen my shelf in the pantry, I usually have no less than 4 jars of peanut butter. I wish I was kidding. It's probably some kind of incurable sickness. In my defense there are so many different kinds of peanut butter that makes deciding on one jar simply impossible.

The only thing that made this situation better was knowing that I had this puppy waiting in the fridge. And it's full of peanut butter.

(Still didn't stop me from going out the very next day to restock.)

My original intent for this was looking for a bread recipe that would be easy & protein filled for taking to work (and not messy because we tend to be eating lunch while we're still working). Unfortunately I don't think this is going to cut it so it's back to the drawing board but it was tasty anyway! Just not particularly healthy enough to count as lunch.

It's delicious by itself. Or with peanut butter spread on top -- if you haven't run out.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Bread

makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

3/4 cup chunky peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 T baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan well.

Cream together the peanut butter and sugar until well combined. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

With the mixer running on low, slowly alternate between adding the milk and the dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan and bake for one hour. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack and cooling completely.

Time:

1 hr 15 minutes

These were blueberries from the public market. I did not do anything with them other than transport them from their container in the fridge into my tummy. Sometimes they made a pit stop on top of my oatmeal. Still, they deserve a picture.

And this.. I'm contemplating giving up my love of peanut butter for this.

So. Good.