Quick quinoa salad

Another no recipe needed quick summer meal. I had some cooked quinoa on hand (per Mark Bittman's suggestion, I made extra from the last time I cooked it, so that I'd have leftovers for just this sort of thing), and I just tossed it with some chopped orange and yellow bell peppers, store-bought baked tofu, fresh italian parsley, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. I imagine it would also be great with summer squash, a little lightly steamed broccoli, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, or any other veggie/protein combination you like.

Raw pasta sauce

This is not really a recipe, but I made my first raw pasta sauce of the summer and it was soooo good. This will be a once-a-week dinner for sure. I just threw tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, pepper, a dash of sugar, and a splash of olive oil into the food processor (an appliance I love for things like this) for less than 1 minute. Voila. Perfect summer meal with a big green salad.

I had read you should not make sauce like this in a food processor - that it should be chopped or put through a manual food mill. Phooey. Just toss it in and eat it up. Yeah, maybe for company you should do it the "right" way, but for everyday, I don't need superb, just damn good.

Banana Oat Pancakes

Certainly too rich for every day. But a lovely Sunday treat. Note - the recipe makes a lot. I cut it in half and it's still too much for my husband and me to eat alone.

A new use for an old appliance

As a follow-up to the yogurt maker post, I thought I'd mention a cool new use I've found for an old appliance. My 16-year-old Black and Decker Food Steamer (a going-away-to-college gift from my Aunt), designed to cook rice and steam vegetables, also does a great job for whole grains like quinoa (which I now know is pronounced keen-wa, thanks to the locavore on core,who I had the pleasure of meeting last week) and hard-boiled eggs. There is a newer version of the steamer available and I got some info about using a steamer for whole grains here. There are directions for steaming eggs in the book that came with the machine, and I tried that this morning. They were perfect.

A note about appliances - I love them lately and definitely could not cook as much as I do without them. Any appliance that prepares food without assistance, and then shuts off or "keeps warm", makes it possible for me to take advantage of those 5-10 minute moments when my toddler is otherwise occupied to get something started that I can eat or use in a recipe later. So I love the yogurt maker, bread machine, slow cooker, and now food steamer.

Though they're not "set and forget" appliances, I also love the food processor and hand blender. They make things like muesli possible - there's no way I'd grate an apple. Just wouldn't. And tonight I used the hand blender's cool chopper attachment to make pesto with basil from my garden.