Winter Menu Planning, Just Some Free Thoughts on a New Year

Thank goodness the holidays are behind us, I am just not a huge fan. It is funny how many people have weight and health related New Year's resolutions. Not me!!! I guess to me January is a comfort food time of year which for me means warm soothing drinks, cozy hot vegetables, warm delicious foods, maybe just maybe relaxing the exercise a little, ok probably not. While I admit to lots of raw salads still, I tend to follow them up with hot soup or some warm vegetables. Admittedly, we have been off our game a little with holidays and laziness, ordering in mostly very healthy things but we do want to be back on track for cooking at home. New York where everything can come to your doorstep in minutes sometimes allows for complete and utter laziness, yes, I have friends who use their ovens for sweater storage and their refrigerators merely for take-out leftovers.

I have been wanting the warm kale pancakes from Hangawi, or even the leek ones, so delicious, or a big dim sum. Anyway, for this week I am planning to make my own versions of some of those foods. Sweet potato, cabbage and leek dumplings using rice paper are so cozy. We made them last year on the Chinese New Year. For recipe see http://www.nutrimommy.com/2011/02/gong-xi-fa-cai.html

I have glutinous rice flour that is chewy and would make a delicious kale or leek pancake with lots of vegetables so not too starchy but I have not quite perfected the actual recipe yet but have made them vegan and delicious. Most nights, I will go back to steaming or stir frying a big assortment of vegetables so picky kids can pick out and eat what they want. Larry made an unreasonably huge amount of brown rice yesterday so I have that to work with and may have vegetable fried rice one night. I am thinking of make your own pizza and a vegan lasagna with cashew basil cream for next week...and I have some local organic butternut squash for soup...so we are soon to be cooking more but keeping it cozy for winter.

Perry is doing well on her up week, starting three weeks in a row of chemo tomorrow, after which she will have just ten more weeks. That is sounding long to me...yikes.

p.s. The chocolate snowman and santa are turning into hot chocolate momentarily!!!