A Day of Cooking...and Un-Cooking!

Like Saturday, today was a day spent in the kitchen!  It started before 7 am and ended around 7:30 pm.  Granted, I did venture to other rooms and leave the house but there was a whole lotta kitchen time, that's for sure!

This morning, before I went to yoga, I made a fresh batch of almond milk (I already used up my previous batch!) and washed the spinach I bought from the bulk section of Whole Foods the other day.

Because I'm OCD and because I prefer a thinner almond milk, I used not only the sieve seen here but a cheese cloth as well to strain my milk.

I take such pride in this.  Easy-to-make, whole food-based, preservative-free almond milk :)

Getting back to the almond milk, though, Sarah inspired me with her recent post, saying she was going to make something with her leftover carrot pulp and my almond milk also created leftover pulp.  I thought, There has to be something I can do with this.  And sure enough, there was.  A little less than five minutes of Googling brought up several recipes for crackers and cookies.  I settled on simple thyme and sea-salt seasoned crackers.  They are in my dehydrator as I type this.

It's hard to tell from this photo but the almond pulp is slightly pink!  It really is an appealing color!

Aaaaaannnnnnndddddd...CRACKERS!  I followed this simple recipe and whipped it together in no time at all.  Next time, though, I probably would have added a bit more thyme and perhaps oregano...and maybe rosemary???

Getting ready for the dehydrator.

Cracker close-up.

Second cracker close-up.

I also made some oat-free granola which came out so, so, so yummy.  The recipe was inspired by one of my Instagram friend's recipes and includes almonds, walnuts, shredded coconut, flax seed, hemp hearts, dried cranberries, raisins, cinnamon and sea salt.  The awesome thing about this granola is that when you process the nuts and dried fruits for just a little bit, it kind of clumps together and resembles a very granola-like texture!

Process together--just a little bit though so that the clumps are inconsistent in size.  I'm still learning the ways of my Vitamix and I think I might have layered the ingredients incorrectly because it turned off on me as a safety measure.  Oops.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

From top to bottom: almonds, dried cranberries, raisins, hemp hearts, walnuts and more almonds.  The almonds on top were added afterwards, obviously, because I thought the granola needed more.  

After I blended the nut and dried fruit mixture, I mixed in 1/2 c. shredded coconut and 1/4 c. flax seed along with 1 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. sea salt.

Love my piggy spoon.

This is how it looks before going into the oven...

Second pre-oven shot.  

Getting ready to go in the oven!

Et voila!  

Mmmmmmmmm..........

For lunch I grilled up some tempeh I had marinating in some hot sauce for the past 24 hours.  I threw it on a bed of romaine with cucumber and avocado and drizzled some leftover marinade over the whole thing.  It was awesome.

Dinner consisted of roasted beets on a bed of spinach (the same spinach I washed this morning) with raw cashew-macadamia nut cheeze by my favorite makers of nut-based "cheeses", Punk Rawk Labs, some toasted cumin seeds and cinnamon-cumin vinaigrette.

I have one happy, contented tummy.  A day of great eats!

Oh!  And I almost forgot--one more thing!  Last night my lovely mama treated me to a homecooked meal from Chloe Coscarelli's cookbook, Chloe's Kitchen.  The dish was "Tempeh Piccata" and between the two of us, we managed to finish every last morsel.  So much for "Serves 4"!!  Ha!

Dinner!

My mama asked me if I wanted some sauteed garlic-y kale with my piccata (per Chloe's suggestion) and I answered, Heck yes!  I will almost never turn down greens.  I eat so many each day, it's surprising I, myself, am not green...

Boy, oh, boy does this look good.  It sure is a shame my mom and I were such piggies and ate it all, leaving neither one of us any leftovers :(  Oh well.  I fully enjoyed the dinner I had tonight too.

Close-up photo of the tempeh piccata, with a lemon-caper sauce and freshly cracked black pepper.  I am obsessed with pepper and sprinkle it on nearly EVERYTHING.