Recipes of the week.

We got rain in El Paso this week! A lot of rain! I mean, it wasn't a ton all at one time, but it rained pretty much every night for a while. It was awesome. Of course, our gardens loved it, and not a moment too soon. We lost everything in our big freezer when a circuit breaker tripped, and our pantry is looking a little bleak by now, so we really need our gardens to sustain us as much as possible right now, and the rain has insured that they can do that.

In fact, one of our squashes grew a little TOO well, and was too big to eat just by itself, so I made squash bread! Our supply of sugar ran out a while ago, so I've had to venture into baking with honey, since we still have a bit of that left. I looked online for a recipe for zucchini bread sweetened only with honey, and I found this one. Of course, I used a yellow squash instead of zucchini, but it's really the same idea. I also used half whole wheat flour, and didn't add any vanilla extract since we're out of that. It turned out absolutely delicious! Erin may or may not be willing to eat it, but I know Orren will, and me and Thak definitely will.

I was particularly glad to find this recipe since we've got plenty of honey and plenty of squash, and I need the calories since baby Chai is soon to be exclusively breastfed. We only need to bring my supply up by 4 ounces a day to get to that point, and we have decided to change our WIC package to "exclusively breastfeeding" rather than what we're getting now, which is "mostly breastfeeding". That will get us more cheese, 30 ounces a month of tuna, and more juice. (We are already receiving the maximum fruit and veggie allowance.) It's going to be really great to have, but I have to eat a lot to make sure I make enough milk for baby Chai without the availability of formula to supplement. I know I can, since cans of formula have been lasting forever lately since we're hardly using it at all anymore, but having high calorie foods like the squash bread really helps a lot in making sure I can keep that up.

The other recipe of the day is what we had for dinner tonight. Holy crap this stuff is delicious. Koshari is an Egyptian street food, and probably the most filling and delicious, not to mention dirt cheap, vegan dinner ever created. I use basically this recipe. The only differences are that I only used one onion, I added a handful of parsley from our garden (chopped up finely), some coriander and cumin, and also added more red pepper than it calls for. I like it spicy. Orren eats the hell out of it. Erin ate all hers, but grudgingly, but we don't take her opinion of foods very seriously. She doesn't like anything we feed her. Thak had seconds and would have had thirds if there had been any, but me and Orren also had two helpings. Koshari may be the most delicious thing I have eaten in days aside from the squash bread.

On the up side to being very poor right now, we eat mostly very healthy foods, pretty much all vegetarian, and I'd say at least 80% vegan. I feel AMAZING, and am within five pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight, which is a record. It's taken me four months to get back to pre-pregnancy weight after my first and second births, so to be this close at less than three months is amazing. It's got to be the food. We don't eat junk food because we can't afford it. We don't even eat meat because we can't afford it. We eat what our garden provides us with, and what we can make cheaply, which is all bean and rice based dishes. With beans, rice, a well stocked spice shelf, and a garden, we have enough to eat, and it's really good stuff, too. This week, we will eat fresh veggies every day because the rain kicked our gardens into overdrive! I will also make pesto tomorrow because our basil plants are big enough for that! That will be a treat because the kids really love pesto, and so do Thak and I. We are waiting patiently for our summer squash to get big enough to pick, because then we will have squash casserole, baked squash, and all kinds of other delicious things. I will post more about the creative ways we find to use our bumper crop of squash! We are so glad to have it!