Vegan Bolognese

Jill

From the amount of vegan recipes I post here, a person might assume I'm a vegan. I'm actually neither a vegan or a vegetarian. A while back, I thought about the amount of meat both Keith and I were consuming on a daily basis. Without making any conscious effort to do so, I realized we were both eating meat at LEAST once a day, and sometimes even with every meal. I'm pretty sure we take the availability and inexpensiveness of meat in this country for granted to be able to eat so much of it without even realizing it. We both decided to cut back our meat intake to one day a week. It's not super strict, and nobody is getting yelled at for ordering a steak if we happen to go out to dinner even if we already had meat that week. We both ended up feeling a lot healthier, and strangely enough, I find myself not even desiring meat the same way I used to. If you combine the effort to cut out some of the meat in my diet with the lactose intolerance, a lot of the things I make end up being vegan kind of by coincidence.

Home Brewing Update

Jill

My beer has spent about 3 weeks fermenting, and something tastes off. I gave it a little taste-test and it seems to be a little too sweet for the amount of time it's spent in the container. That could mean a number of things, but I'm hoping that the yeast just took a little break. Usually, sweetness could mean that the fermentation isn't finished. If the temperature of my beer dropped below 68º, the yeast would stop fermenting. Luckily, once the temperature returns to an appropriate level, the yeast will pick up right where it left off. If this is the issue, all I have to do is allow the beer to sit for a little while longer. However, if things don't start tasting right in about a week, I'll have to scrap it and start over.

Balsamic Risotto with Roasted Red Peppers

Jill

After getting comfortable with the idea of risotto, I realized it's actually a pretty easy thing to throw together on a weeknight. It's also a great base recipe to start with to get rid of some of the things in your fridge (like I keep saying I want to do more of.) I had a half of a jar or roasted red peppers in my fridge, so I used that as a starting point for this recipe. Since Keith loves the flavor of balsamic vinegar on anything and I just acquired a bottle of some really delicious stuff, I figured it might be a good addition to the risotto. I started with a pretty small amount of the vinegar and I'm really glad I did. It lent just the right amount of flavor to the dish, but I think any more might have been too much.