well you know how to make your basic pesto yeah? basil, pine nuts (i prefer walnuts), garlic, olive oil, parmesan

fine

but basil is not always around, pine nuts are suppa-expensive, walnuts aren't cheap either, parmesan rules but you can't find good one in a regular supermarket (f you do they charge a ton).

so, i'm trying to formulate an alternative/cheaper version-- you can make it with parsley (flat only, of course), but i'm trying to go further.

so far:
-cilantro instead of basil
-peanuts instead of fancy nuts. a 2lb jar of dry roasted planter's peanuts is $5 cheap at any walmart.
-garlic too
-olive oil too
-a squish of lime to play off the cilantro/peanut
-looking for a parmesan substitute for the umami. already tried red miso but it destroyed the flavor a bit. gonna try nutritional yeast next.

so there you have it but watch your blood-jellied sockets

in the meantime have some smoothies

oh shit, that sounds delicious. yeah, i'm feeling better now... not looking forward to friday but it could be worse.

i made a smoothie with lemon juice/strawberries/cayenne pepper/greek yogurt. it was fucking awesome.

that sounds good & sour!

when you get your wisdom teeth out put some avocados into that. the good fat in the avocado will stick to your ribs & keep you un-hungry when you can't chew. avocado smoothies are the greatest. oh, now i have to make one for breakfast.

i have an avocado sitting waiting to be used. i have zero to no appetite today or i'd use it.

My standard breakfast:

Kale stir fried with onions and chilli flakes
2 eggs
Brown rice
Cocoa (made with unsweetened almond milk)

Normally I would have toast but I'd run out of bread so I'm having rice instead

sounds mighty! do you put soy sauce on your stir fried kale?


===

was cooking for the week today. made a bunch of stuff.

had the oven cranking and these came out in sequence:
- granola. oats, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame, butter & honey, cinnamon, ginger, sprinkle of coarse salt
- fresh roasted white corn. ate some with butter, the rest will get shucked.
- roasted cauliflower with turmeric and ginger
- roasted beets. when i pulled them out of the oven they where whistling.

also made some of the tropi-pesto i've been working on. has:
-cilantro
-sea salt
-dry roasted peanuts
-raw garlic
-olive oil
-fresh lime juice
-NUTRITIONAL YEAST <-- this supplants the parmesan and works great.
i'm not a vegan, but vegans should eat this stuff! better than weirdburgers and fake meats.

i fucked up by smashing the cilantro stems with the leafs. a major fuckup. almost ruined it completely. the motherfuckers are too bitter and impossible to completely chew. had to yank them out string by string. next time i'll buy 2 cilantro bunches so i have enough leaf to work with (and no more bitter stringy stems).

also cooked black beans. just with a head of garlic in them and some dulse flakes (a red seaweed). ate the garlic head afterwards.

last, making yogurt for overnight fermentation.

hot damn, i'm set for the week.

i think i'm gonna make that pesto later this week.

i had two smoothies today. one was avocado/raspberries/pineapple and the other the same lemon/cayenne one. i've lost a good pound this weekend not really being able to eat anything.

shoutout to KALE.

avocado creamy goodness!

if you can add some whey protein isolate to your smoothies-- i know it's a steep price for one can, but it turns out a really good value.

in my area a can of gold standard natural whey ("natural" has no weird sweeteners/flavoring agents) is $65-- costly at first but it gives you 72 scoops with 24g protein each (= about 6 egg whites?). it's a great emergency supply etc.

i mean just to make sure they weight you're losing isn't muscle.

yeah, i have some whey in (but it's vanilla) for just the smoothies. i hit the gym today even just to distract myself from the mouth pain. i have a pounding headache too from it and nausea, which sucks. i'm pretty damn hungry, too.

vanilla is great to blend all. the natural i get is vanilla. but they don't add aspartame and acesulfame k and othe stupidly unnecessary chemical shit. like msucle milk-- it tastes nasty.

some years ago i tried some of these gnc pre or post workout shakes or meal replacements or something and they gave me major assplosions, ha ha ha.

muscle milk is the worst, ugh. i hate milk so the mental connection in the name alone, ugh ugh.

made a great salad for lunch with

-roasted corn
-black beans
-crumbled cheddar
-fresh tomato
-avocado
-green onions
-lime juice
-champagne vinegar
-red chile powder
-salt, obviously (ha)

i could have used a little cilantro maybe but i had none left. still...

SOOOO GOOOOOOOD!!!

i love summer cooking. everything fresh and alive and good. my favorite for eating. all those colors.

Naw, just salt, pepper and chili flakes.

try it instead of salt & let me know what you think

Ok.

this morning i made the last chocolate cake (cake flour is spent, no more till next winter) and i put less sugar than usual. used coconut oil instead of butter-- plus olive oil for the oil. came out awesome.

lunch was a bowl pasta with the now-famous cilantro pesto (ha ha).

afternoon snack a piece of the cake.

dinner was a salmon burger with a slice of grilled pinneaple and a quick red cabbage/shallot coleslaw (put too much vinegar). for appetizer the roasted cauliflower i made on the weekend-- turns out a couple of days in the fridge really help infuse the cauliflower with the spices-- they were fantastic.

i love food. food is starting to love me back, i think.

i ate four tablespoons of vanilla cream cheese.then i had what's supposed to be frozen strawberry slices but it was really more like a strawberry sorbet the way they froze/thawed/refroze in the container. then earlier today at work a baked avocado with spicy mayo and tuna inside. it was awesome. i'm on a very soft diet.

for breakfast i made turmeric rice and fried eggs.

for lunch i ate the rest of teh turmeric rice with the black beans i cooked on sunday.

to this i added this fantastic salad of red onion, lime, apple cider vinegar, red chile powder, tomato, avocado. it was... spectacular.

today at lunch i made myself cry a little with joy, ha ha ha. nah, not really, but damn, it was good. i'm seriously feeling like some aspect of my cooking is starting to level up. this thread of course has been part of the whole inspiration. thank yous.

that salad sounds heavenly. i'm doing something kind of similar for dinner, i have a good bunch of veggies in the freezer to use up. all i've had today is a smoothie with whey/strawberries/bananas/yogurt.