Another Great Weekend and a Few Recipes

Saturday was for sailing:

Time has been flying by recently. We have been getting a lot accomplished but very little of it has been at home. I have gotten pretty good at making food that is portable or taking the ingredients with me and whipping things up on the boat. I will need to write a post about that soon so I can share what I have learned with all of you. There are definitely some tricks that I have picked up.

Saturday we had good wind and took advantage of it to figure out what the boat would do. Did we have a good time? No doubt about it! When we left the dock the wind was about 5 knots but it reached 13.6 knots so we had a great day to try things out. We got rid of the prior boat over a decade ago so we really needed to “get our feet wet” and it was the perfect day for it. We had the boat moving at 7.6 knots which wasn’t bad for our first trip out. I was pleased with how she handled which was a little bit of surprise. Since the last boat was a racer I assumed she would have been much easier to handle but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Here is Dan behind the wheel.

This is me trying my best to see over the cabin. The world is just not made for short people. ;-)

I loved this picture of the Inner Harbor as we were coming back to the marina.

Here are a few more shots I took while we were out.  Sailing out of the inner harbor is definitely different from having the boat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

We go right by Fort McHenry on our way to the bay. It is great be surrounded by history. It isn’t like being in Italy but we have our share of American history at least. ;-)

While we were underway I made us a salad of: tatsoi (an Asian green), quinoa (which I cooked at home), marinated mushrooms (also made a home), tomatoes and pine nuts. I was able to toss this together while Dan took the wheel.

We sailed for about 4 hours and it was getting cold (temps in the mid 60’s and a lot of wind), and we weren’t really dressed for it, so we headed back for the marina.

I couldn’t get warm so I made us some hot green tea. When that didn’t do it I decided a mostly raw dinner was out of the question. Thank goodness I had stashed some of the Tasty Bites packaged vegan food on board. See even we eat “packaged” food sometimes. ;-) I am sure you know me well enough to realize that I didn’t eat it as it came out of the package though. It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t tinker with it now would it?

Sunday:

We started our morning at the farmers’ market like always. Fall is definitely fast approaching as the winter squash is plentiful now. *boo hoo* It is always sad to see summer end. However I am consoling myself with the good wind we always have in the fall. On the Chesapeake sailing is better spring and fall than it is during the summer. Additionally the powerboats don’t seem to come out as much and that makes for less dodging them since many of them don’t seem to understand the “rules of the road”.

Here are some of the fun hummus flavors I picked up at the market on Sunday.

After the market we came home and lounged around for a while since neither of us got much sleep last night. There was a new episode of Dr. Who on so you know Dan couldn’t go to sleep. I am not sure what my excuse was for getting into bed so late, but I am going to blame it on Dr. Who keeping Dan up. ;-)

Dan ran out to the hardware store to pick up some materials to make a device to hold the spring line up at the marina so that it will be easier to dock. Good thing one of us is handy isn’t it? As you probably guessed I am not the handy one in our family. ;-)

While he was gone I made another batch of curried split pea soup because it travels really well. I measured this time so that I can share the recipe which you will find at the end of this post.

Since it was so cold last night I thought some hot chocolate would be nice to have on the boat and whipped up a batch of almond milk and part of that became hot chocolate. This recipe will also be at the end of this post.

I also wanted to make a sweet and spicy pickled salad of sorts. I had something similar at Jesse Wong’s a few months ago and knew I could make it my own, and dare I say improve on it from both a nutrition and taste perspective. I have also shared that at the bottom of this post.

When we got to the marina it was much later than we had intended it to be. I got busy stowing everything on board so that we could go out if we decided to. Dan took care of installing his new device on the dock. While he was busy with power tools I took a little time to write this post and get some veggie chili with mushrooms in the crock pot. The boat came with a crock pot on board so I wanted to test that out and see how it would work on board since that was a new idea for me. For some reason I never used a Crockpot on the prior boat. Since it seemed to work fairly well on high I may start making more meals in the Crockpot on the boat.

Before I forget Dr. Greger is looking for unpaid interns for his site nutritionafacts.org to help spread the word about the health benefits of a whole food vegan diet. As you have probably guessed I don’t have a huge amount of free time but helping Dr. Greger is a fantastic cause so I am thrilled to be able to lend a hand. If you can spare 10 hours a week for 10 weeks please join me in volunteering for Dr. Greger. I am sure you will find it very rewarding. I hope to see you there soon. :-)

Recipes from this weekend:

Curried Split Pea Soup
Serves 8

Ingredients:

2 cups Bob’s Red Mill “Vegi Soup Mix” (green and yellow split peas, barley, lentils, and whole wheat alphabet pasta)
8 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 onion, peeled and minced
32 ounces homemade canned tomatoes (or 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes no or low salt)
2 tablespoons garam masala
½ - 1 tablespoon turmeric (this can be bitter so start with less how much you need will depend on how much is the garam masala you used)
½ tablespoons fresh ground black pepper (to make the curcumin in the turmeric more bioavailable)
2 tablespoons black mustard seeds
fresh lime wedges to finish

Directions:

Combine the water, bean mix, and bay leaves in your pressure cook and cook on high pressure for 10 minutes. Use the quick release method, remove the bay leaves and add the remaining ingredients, except the lime and cook until the onion is tender. Serve the soup with wedges of lime to bright the flavor.

Almond Milk Hot Chocolate
Serves 2 – greedy vegans ;-)

Ingredients:

3 cups homemade almond milk, with the oats to thicken it
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
a pinch of mace
stevia to taste, depending on how much of a sweet tooth you have

Directions:

I combine this in Mason jar and shake well to combine. By doing that you can shake the jar and pour out the amount you want to heat and store the remainder in the refrigerator. Also it travels well this way.

Spicy Sweet and Sour Salad of Bok Choy and Carrot
Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
approximately 10 whole cloves
whole dried chilis (like you see in Asian stir fry), add these to taste depending on how much you like heat (I used 15 or so but I love heat)
2 carrots, cut into sticks
4 cups shredded bok choy
¼ cup golden raisins
sesame seeds for garnish
spicy greens to be a bed for the salad (I used tatsoi)

Directions:

Combine the water, vinegar, spices, and heat on high until the liquid is just beginning to bubble. Now add the carrots so that they will begin to soften. Once the vinegar has cooled add the bok choy and raisins and store the salad in a jar in the refrigerator. Periodically turn the jar over to distribute the marinade. To serve place the salad on top of the greens and dust the salad with sesame seeds. Don’t forget to tell your family not to eat the hot peppers as they are very hot.

Happy Thoughts:

• It was another fantastic weekend for us. Dan didn’t spend any time at work so we had lots of face time and you know we loved that. ;-) We had a great sail on Saturday and a very relaxing dinner on board on Sunday.

• I have a new little feathered friend at the marina. The most adorable mallard has decided that she needs to greet me every time I come down the boat. I am sure it has nothing to do with my feeding her the leftover pancakes that the delivery crew left in the refrigerator. ;-) Thank goodness Michelle can to the rescue to tell me what I should be feeding the duck. My little friend (who I now need to name), hung around with me for an hour under Sunday after I gave her the end of the pancakes on board. I swear one day I am going to arrive at the marina and she will be waiting for me on the boat.

• I have a new human friend at the marina as well. Chris, two slips away, and I are really hitting it off. We both love to cook, and talk and have been spending a lot of time together. It is very nice to make new friends.

• The wind has really started to pick up on the Chesapeake which is fantastic. After all sailing is no fun when you don’t have wind. ;-)

Signing out:

I have been spending so much time at the boat that things at home are now out of control. Time for me to get busy and get some things done at home so that I can relax at the boat. Talk with you again soon.