Black Bean Enchilada's, Homemade Almond Milk and Other Stuff to Say

This week I tried this recipe for "sloppy joe's" or sloppy lentils as the case may be. They were surprisingly tasty and super easy to make and I'm pretty sure you would like them Mom. Even Wayne had one. The only thing I changed was that I used brown sugar in place of the molasses and sucanat (I don't have those on hand) and I didn't have canned tomatoes either. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly and it was quite good. The seasoning was what made it good though, I still can't say I like lentils.

Anyway, making that recipe left me with a half a can of leftover tomato paste so last night I made some black bean and cheese enchilada's. They turned out quite tasty so here is kind of the recipe of what I did.

Mix:

6 oz tomato paste

1 little can of tomato sauce

1 can cream of chicken soup

about 3/4 cup salsa (I'm not sure how much, I just dumped some in until it looked about right)

1 Tb onion powder

1 Tb garlic powder

2 Tb chille powder

Then dump some black beans in a bowl and mix about 1 cup or more of the sauce with the black beans as well as a handful of cheese. Use that as the filling for your enchilada's. Dump the rest of the sauce over the top and bake it covered at 350 for about 35 minutes. Remove from the oven, top with cheese and then let it bake again while the cheese melts. Remove again and top with chopped green onions and tomatoes if you have them.

I think I make my enchilada sauce different every time I make them depending on what I have on hand. I learned this from my old roommate Meagan.

I also tried my hand at Almond Milk again this week because I have a huge bag of almonds that needs to be used! The recipe I tried this time worked out wonderfully and the milk was pretty good. Here's what I did:

Soak 1 cup of Almonds in 3 cups of water with 3 dates overnight. In the morning blend it up for awhile. Then I stretched an old clean t-shirt over a large bowl and pretended it was a cheese cloth and used that to squeeze the milk through. Then I dumped the strained milk back into the blender and added ice cubes to bring the level up to about 4 cups and blended it again. Then I dumped it into a pitcher and enjoyed it on my oatmeal that morning.

Now, I don't really know what to do with the left over almond meal stuff. I made some cookies the other night and threw a bunch of it in them. They didn't add to the flavor or texture, but maybe they added some fiber or something. I don't know. Any other suggestions of what I can put it in?

Trying new things

Since coming home from out little family vacation I am feeling motivated again to get back to healthy eating. The constipation that I thought we had gotten under control is back again in full swing so here we go again. We are going to cut out cheese and I am also cutting out milk for a bit to see if that helps. I bought almond milk this week and I really liked it, but I'm not the constipated one, and she won't drink it without chocolate mixed in, just because it had bubbles when I poured it into her cup. That's ok though, she'll get used to some small changes. I tried this quinoa pilaf from my cousins blog and I really liked it! If you like rice pilaf, you would probably like this recipe too. It's really not anything too terribly different. I also tried this quinoa bread recipe and it turned out great too. The only problem with it is that it's incredibly crumbly and a little hard to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches with. I think I will make it again occasionally, but not as my normal bread. Just because of the crumbliness though and it also takes longer than my normal bread making routine. The taste is delicious and I like that it has oatmeal and quinoa in it. So I still have a bit of quinoa left and I will probably try a breakfast cereal recipe with it and let you know how that goes. Oh, and another new recipe I tried was this cheese less mac and cheese and I'm sorry, but she must have an awful memory! The stuff was awful! I'm not meaning to be rude, but it's not a recipe I recommend. Luckily I was pretty sure my family wouldn't care for it so I made that as a side dish to our waffles last night. None of us liked it and it is not a recipe I will ever try again. I am finding that trying to pretend something is cheese when it really isn't is proving to be almost more disappointing than I can bear. So instead of trying all these cheese substitutes we will just try real recipes that don't include cheese for awhile. We will all miss it dearly but after the issue is under control again I think we might be able to add it in once or twice a week again.
So I am now off to make my shopping list and get some healthy food. Wish me luck!