Prepare 4 meals in an hour!

One morning I had a bunch of food in the fridge, none of it prepared and I could feel a cold coming on. So I decided to cook as much up as I could while I still had the energy and expend as little effort as possible. Afterwards it occurred to me that you all might appreciate the recipes I came up with because believe me this was the easiest four dishes I've ever made and it took me barely an hour. Cleanup consisted of washing a blender bowl, a knife, and a cutting board - the baking dish really doesn't need to be cleaned until after you've eaten the gratin, so that can be postponed.

All of these dishes (with the exception of the spaghetti squash) freeze well.

Spaghetti Squash with Basil Pesto

Place one whole spaghetti squash on the middle rack of a preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 30-45 minutes until the outer shell is lightly browned and your kitchen has a wonderful nutty smell.

While the squash is baking puree

6 - 10 bunches of basil, just pull the leaves off and place in processor bowl
sea salt and pepper to taste
extra-virgin olive oil
(pecans, walnuts, or pine nut)

You'll have to stop and scrape down the sides and add more olive oil, although don't add any more oil than you need to just get the basil pureed. Add

1/4 cup (approximately) veggie or mock chicken broth
some dried, minced garlic or dried basil(to thicken the pesto)

Taste and adjust seasoning. Pour the pesto into a storage container without scraping the sides and store in fridge. Don't worry about the pesto left on the bottom and sides of blender, it will give your Basil Potato Cauliflower soup an added kick!

When squash is done. Place on cutting board, cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out seeds and mushy strings in center, discard. Scoop meat of squash out and place in ziplock bag. Store in fridge.

Basil Potato Cauliflower Soup

Place in 8" x 8" baking dish

1 potato cut into large chunks
1/4 a head of cauliflower, separated into florets
1 small onion or 1/2 large onion cut into large chunks

Pour over vegetables 1 cup veggie or mock chicken broth.

Place a piece of aluminum foil on top of vegetables and place the celery and onion for the celery soup on top of the foil.

Cover and bake in 350 degree oven until veggies are tender. Let cool enough so that you can easily pour into the blender. Remove celery and onion wedges, set aside. Puree the veggies and broth for the basil soup in the blender with the remains of the basil pesto. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding sea salt, pepper, or broth powder if needed.

Cream of Celery Soup

Trim 1 bunch celery setting the tops and inner stalks aside. Cut celery sticks into 2 inch lengths and place on top of veggies in baking dish.

Cut 1 onion into 8 wedges and add to veggies. After pureeing basil soup, rinse out blender. Chop celery into 1/4" slices (if you skip this step the celery strings will be very annoying in your soup).

Place cooked celery, onion, 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and 1/4 block firm tofu in blender with enough vegetable broth to puree. Add broth until soup is desired consistency. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Cauliflower Gratin

Dice the saved celery tops and inner stalks, placing 1/3 of them in the bottom of the baking dish you used for the soup.

Remove and cut into smaller pieces the rest of the florets from cauliflower.

Cover the celery with 1/3 of the florets. Sprinkle with

sea salt
black pepper
nutmeg

Tear up and arrange over vegetables 2-3 slices mozzarella or provolone flavored nondairy cheese.

Continue layering until all the veggies are used. Pour over vegetables

1/4 cup soymilk(substitute 2 tablespoons heavy cream for 2 tablespoons of the soymilk).

Cover and bake 20 - 30 minutes until veggies are just tender.

Creamy Tarragon Dressing

I already had plenty of dressing so I didn't take this extra step, but since none of these dishes is a complete meal I'd recommend serving them with at least a salad and maybe some good whole grain bread or some brown rice. When I'm eating alone though I usually just have the green salad and the vegetable entree.

Rinse out the blender. Crumble into blender bowl 1/2 block firm tofu.

Add

1 tablespoon dried tarragon
a glug or two of balsamic vinegar or fresh lemon or lime juice
olive oil

Puree, scraping down sides and adding more olive oil in a slow stream until the dressing loses it's chalky taste. Add nondairy milk until dressing is the desired consistency.

If you haven't found the recipe you're looking for use this search engine to find the recipe you're looking for on the Internet.

TIP: type the word "recipe" after your search criteria, i.e. "chicken recipe" instead of just "chicken".

I love this search engine so much that I've almost abandoned my cookbooks. It's so much easier to just type in what I want and be given a page full of links to new recipes than to have to search through several cookbooks.

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last revised June 2, 2001
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