Desperation Dinner

OK, this is my pantry staple dinner. It's the one that I pull out when I'm in one of those situations where I really need to go grocery shopping, or it's been one of those days and I just have no interest or energy in cooking. Sometimes I fall back on this one if James isn't going to be around, and I don't feel like putting a lot of effort into a dinner for just me. It comes in handy if the dinner plan fell through for some reason. By keeping just three little ingredients around, you can save yourself from resorting to that other kind of fast food.

This makes enough for 2 people--you could easily double or triple it for a bigger family.

1 can of chili beans in sauce
1 cup of salsa
1 cup of corn (can be frozen or fresh, or even canned if you drain it)

Pour them all into a pan, stir and heat.


It's that simple. It's not gourmet, but it's better than Taco Bell and just as cheap. I've been making this since I was in college, and I was pretty pleased recently when Kroger started carrying organic chili beans. Since I live in corn country, at this time of year I have plenty of locally grown corn that I cut off the cob and freeze, but I had this floating around the freezer from when last summer's supply ran out, so I wanted to use it up.

You can easily jazz this up, if you like. In this case, I stirred in chopped fresh tomatoes. I like to sprinkle green onions on top, too. You can use any kind of salsa your family likes, and I heartily endorse using homemade. You could add more vegetables or even a side salad to actually make it a balanced meal, if you were so inclined.

Depending on what I have on hand and my level of energy and time constraints, I serve this over baked potatoes, with tortillas (seen here) or tortilla chips. Crackers, rice, couscous, quinoa or biscuits would be fine choices, too. If it's not a fast day, sometimes we eat this with fried corn bread, and top it with cheese or sour cream.

And I really like it with polenta. Polenta only has two ingredients! And one of them is water, which doesn't even really count, so this is great if you're in an Old Mother Hubbard kind of situation with your cupboards.

1/2 cup cornmeal (not a cornmeal mix with flour, just straight up cornmeal)
2 cups water (divided)

Whisk together the corn meal and a 1/2 cup of water. Bring the remaining water to boil, then stir in the cornmeal slurry. Reduce heat to low, and cook, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes until it's thick and creamy. Season it any way your heart desires.

Tofu Part Two

Tofu and veggies are sort of the meat and potatoes of fast days at our house. We often have some kind of combination of the two, although we also eat many bean based meals or tempeh. Since I'm a vegetarian, I don't like to eat meat substitutes, chik'n patties, soy crumbles, and the like on fast days, though those can be quick and easy dinner solutions if you need something to fall back on.

In the summer, we love to grill. Or I should say, I love to chop things up and give them to James to grill. We mainly grill lots of fresh vegetables. I chop them up, marinate them in Italian dressing, and James grills them in a grill basket. I make my own dressing. I make a mix of dry ingredients and keep it in a jar in the cupboard, then I add it to the wet ingredients to mix up a batch as needed. I thought I'd post the recipe, but I looked at it and realized I don't use half the ingredients listed, so the next time I make the mix I'll pay attention to what I actually do and post it later. You can use any vegetables that you like. We especially love onions, cherry/grape tomatoes, and mushrooms. We typically do squash and peppers as well. Sometimes eggplant makes an appearance. Really it's whatever we've got from the farm share lately.

We recently tried a new (to us) method for grilled tofu. The twist here was I froze the tofu first. This changes the texture of the tofu, and makes it really spongy. This is great for grilling, since it really soaks up sauce that way. Here's what I did: I froze a block of tofu in its original package (which is a handy thing to do if you have some that's about to expire). At some later date, I took the tofu out of the freezer and defrosted it. I drained it, cut it into four chunks, and squeezed the water out of each chunk. Then I put the chunks in a dish with some barbecue sauce, squished them around and turned them over, so that they were well infused with the sauce. Then I handed them over to James, and he grilled them up.


It was pretty good. I'd welcome other sauce ideas. I always like barbecue sauce, but James isn't too crazy about it. He really liked the texture of this tofu, though.

Brightening the Bedroom

I love having company. Of course, I really enjoy the chance to hang out with friends and family in the comfort of my own home, but I also love that it's such a great motivator to clean and get stuff done around the house. Aside from the normal clean up preparation before our recent company, James and I were inspired to do some more decorating projects.


We rearranged our bedroom, and I really love the new layout. Now I can lie in bed and look out the window. James hung this stained glass piece that I bought for him several years ago, and which we hadn't had the chance to display in previous homes. I love it there! It looks so pretty against the tree outside the window. It's a copy of the rose window at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York. It's quite lovely; that's Christ in the center, of course, and he's surrounded by a heavenly host. Angels radiate from the center, the four Evangelists are at the cardinal points, the four Great Prophets at the ordinal points, and cherubim all around.

James also hung up the wedding shadow box he gave me for our first Christmas, with our Wedding at Cana icon, which was a wedding gift, and this crucifix which was a wedding gift to my (Roman Catholic) grandparents from the priest who married them. It is a sick call kit, like this, and it's over sixty years old so the candles and holy water are long gone.


The shadow box contains: the program from our wedding ceremony, the church wedding certificate, one of the little tissue packets that my mother and I made to pass out to guests (this was a joke on me because I cry at everything), a wedding picture in one of the little frames we gave as favors, and the service book the pastor used to marry us (he gave it to us as a wedding gift). We had yellow roses at our wedding, and these little ones also indicate our wedding date: August 9, 2003. 8 vertical, 9 horizontal, 3 vertical. You can tell we're converts, since we married during the Dormition fast.

Our bedroom feels so much more comfortable. We had really done less with it than any other room. We're planning to put new flooring in all the bedrooms sooner or later, and we had been holding off on painting our bedroom until then since it had been painted more recently than any of the other rooms. But the floors are on hold on right now, and I loved changing things up in there, so I'm starting to want to get in there with paint. But what color...

Roommate Reunion

For my junior and senior years of college, I shared a four bedroom apartment with three other girls. Almost ten years later, we are now scattered far and wide. We had last all gotten together three years ago in Dallas, where we went to school. One of the roomies still lives in the metroplex, another has lived in Germany since graduation, and the third is in the foreign service. She has spent the past three years in India, and is now back in the US for a stint in DC. With me here in the Midwest, you can see why we don't get together very frequently.


This past weekend they all converged here for a long weekend at my house in Indiana. We had a wonderful time, although it was the hottest it's been in this unusually cool summer. They arrived late Thursday evening and we stayed up talking until four in morning. We had a lot to catch up on, and we just couldn't stop! Naturally, we slept in on Friday, and then went out to lunch at a local market that I love. It has a focus on local foods, and features locally made gelato and sorbetto, a big draw for an ice cream lover like me. We then went to the Children's Museum, since as far as I'm concerned that's a can't miss for first-time visitors to Indianapolis. Plus, we got to see the King Tut exhibit. We had so much fun. It was a great time to visit the museum since most Indiana kids had gone back to school, so it wasn't very busy. We actually had the King Tut exhibit virtually to ourselves.

The next day, I snuck away for Dormition Liturgy while they slept in again. We wandered around in Zionsville in the afternoon, checking out the little shops, and topped it off with ice cream at Trader's Point Creamery. I didn't ask them if I could post their pictures here, so below is a barn at TPC. I love going there: for one, the ice cream is out of this world; the farmer's market on Friday is great, with lots of organic produce and foods; plus, it's fun to see the cows and chickens. I think they all really enjoyed it as well. Afterward, we went back to my house, played cards and relaxed, and made dinner.


Coking together was just like old times. One night we made veggie fajitas with homemade pico de gallo and guacamole, which was delicious and easy with all those hands to do the chopping. My sweetie grilled up the veggies for us--he was such a great host. He gave us plenty of space for girl time, but was really helpful and fun when he joined in. The next night we made pizza, which was also yummy, but wow, we were worn out at that point! All that catching up can be exhausting. We talked non-stop the whole weekend. Thankfully, we'll all get to see each other next summer when our German roommate gets married. I'm sure that will be even more of a whirlwind, but I'm glad to be able to look forward to seeing them all again so soon.

Tofu Fingers

I know, appetizing name, but that's what we call them. And we actually quite like them, plus they are super easy to make. The original recipe was by Nava Atlas, and it's posted online (Scroll down or do a page search for tofu). She calls it Shake and Bake Tofu, which sounds somewhat more appealing, but it just didn't stick around here. I've since tweaked the recipe somewhat to suit us, as I tend to do.

One of the reasons this recipe is so quick and easy is that there is no need to press the tofu first. If I think of it, though, I like to do it while I'm preparing the rest of our dinner, since I don't usually use extra firm tofu. Another thing that's great about it, is that it's basically two ingredients, wheat germ and tofu, which I pretty much always keep in my fridge. Even if you don't normally buy wheat germ, it's worth it to stock in your fridge for this one recipe, since it keeps really well.

1 19 oz. block of firm tofu (This is the size block I get at Trader Joe's. You can use a standard 1 1b. block with only 1/4 cup wheat germ and dial back a little on the seasonings)
1/3 cup of wheat germ
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. or so of seasonings of your choice. Use whatever floats your boat. The original recipe called for a seasoning blend like Spike or Mrs. Dash, which works great as well.
For instance:
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp dill
1/4 tsp basil

If I press the tofu, I slice it into 8 slices, lay a kitchen towel on my cutting board, put the tofu on one half, fold the other half over, and then top with a cookie sheet and a couple of heavy cookbooks. I let that sit while I do any other prep work for dinner I need. This is really not necessary though, so if I'm in a hurry I just slice up the tofu and blot it with a towel.


Then mix the wheat germ, salt and seasoning. I just mix them together on a plate. Slice your eight pieces in half the long way, and dredge the tofu pieces in the wheat germ mixture.


Arrange them on a lightly oiled sheet pan. Bake them for about 20 minutes at 425 degrees, flipping halfway through. Or just bake for 20 minutes, but I find the coating tends to stick to the pan when I do that. When they are done, they will be golden and crispy, unlike the picture immediately below, which is before baking.


Then serve them up with your favorite dipping sauce. I usually offer a variety. Our favorites are probably honey mustard and tahini-lemon. Barbecue, sweet and sour, and marinara are fine choices also, and you could go with plain old ketchup if that's your style.