Thrift Can Be Delicious

A half-cup of soymilk, scraps of dried bread, a few chocolate chips, a cold cup of coffee -- makes a Mocha Bread Pudding in 8 minutes in the microwave. Great to eat chilled.

Shreds from a cabbage so old I don't recall what I bought it for, a small onion, some frozen carrots, a few garlic cloves, breadcrumbs, some nutritional yeast and some soy sauce, and a cup and a half of homemade seitan "hamburger crumbles," sauteed and mixed together and pressed into a glass loaf pan and baked for 30 minutes will be vegan meatloaf. Topped with ketchup, it's better than the beef version. The recipe is in La Dolce Vegan, p. 166. Don't miss it.

Took an overload of zucchini, sliced and blanched it, and then packed and froze it for the zucchini-less days of winter -- although it's 100 degrees outside today.

Cut basil from my garden, smashed some garlic cloves, put in olive oil, and one cherry tomato for sharpness, and made garden pesto for a soup I just made out of overripe tomatoes, more zucchini, a pattypan squash, some kalamata olives, vegan chicken-broth powder, and a few dry tortellinis I found in back of my pasta shelf.

There is more pattypan squash to dip in breadcrumbs and fry for dinner.

It's a good day to make cookie dough; tomorrow when the dough is chilled I can bake some, along with the meat loaf -- doubling up saves on propane. My bread machine has just finished a new white bread. I threw into it about an ounce of sunflower seeds and oatmeal and millet, the bottom of a bag of mixed grains.

Using up the odds and ends of food in the kitchen is a creative challenge, and fun. Not only do I love to -- I have to. Times are tight around here, and not just for me. It'll be another two or four weeks until I can set foot again in a grocery store. Luckily it's summer and the whole county is giving its vegetables away.