Food!

Hey y’all,

It’s not terribly often that I post pictures of my food, but I had to tell you about this today.

For breakfast this morning, I’m having a gluten-free flatbread with vegan ricotta cheese and raisin puree.

It’s kind of like my version of a bagel with cream cheese and jelly since there are so many things I can’t eat.

But y’all! The ricotta cheese, which I’m sure if you blended up smooth would be a lot like cream cheese, is uh-mazing! It’s from this recipe from The Spruce Eats.

The recipe makes a lot, so I might be making half in the future, but I’m definitely doing it again. Even my husband who is pretty anti-new and eats dairy just fine likes the flavor. The texture was a bit much for him, but I don’t think he’d like the texture of straight regular ricotta cheese or cottage cheese either. The texture of this version is definitely somewhere in between ricotta and cottage cheese, but I really love it.

For the raisin puree, I was trying to find an easy but cheap whole food sweetener. I like using pure maple syrup, but it’s so expensive, and I’d barely count it as a whole food. Raisins are a good sweetener, but they only work well if they’re blended up in a recipe. My husband’s usually asleep when I want to sweeten things (during breakfast), so I decided to make a big batch in advance, and then I’d have the raisin puree on hand.

I took about a cup of raisins and about half a cup of water (I just eyeballed. I didn’t measure.) and blended them up in the blender and stored the puree in a pint jar in the fridge.

It looks like a form of baby food, but it tastes good so it’s fine. Besides, it’s not really a stand-alone thing.

Once I made it, I thought I’d use it for not only sweetening my food, but also when I wanted a jelly-like addition to a meal. (Not that it’s like jelly in texture at all, but it tastes like fruit and spreads)

Now, for those of you waiting with baited breath for my easy, gluten-free, dairy-free, tomato-free lasagna, just know that I am making progress on it. Last night, I made version 1.0 of the recipe, and the flavors were spot on. However, it didn’t quite pass the husband test. Almost, but not quite. The sauce needs to be thicker. I’m glad to say that I have a lasagna recipe I can use that doesn’t give me the lasagna-sweats. I hate the lasagna-sweats. The Spruce Eats also has a lasagna recipe that inspired mine. It contains spinach, and it wasn’t easy enough for me, but I’m sure it tastes fantastic because I used some of the components, and they were fantastic.

I’ve definitely learned that I’m not a foodie like others on the internet. I can cook alright, and I’m ok at mixing recipes and substituting, but I definitely wouldn’t call myself a foodie. I don’t have the imagination of some. But I will say that I’m a better cook than a fair amount of people I know.

Anyway, stick around for lasagna recipe 2.0. I have it nearly ready, but not ready enough to release it. But here’s a hint. I did end up using alfredo sauce. It’s basically noodles, alfredo sauce, and that ricotta cheese recipe from earlier.