Yesterday, with its' rain and sog, was a good one to just stay put at home, which I happily did. Nowhere that I HAD to be. And I needed that -- I'm such a homebody, really....

So I putzed around in the kitchen with the leftover soy pulp (AKA 'okara'), from the batch of soymilk I made last week. First, I pressure cooked it to make it thoroughly digestable --then I seasoned it with spices, plus a bit of chopped green onion, and fresh sage and chive from my waking herb garden. I added ground oats to the mixture for a little extra 'body' -- then shaped it into long little patties/strips, and baked them on oiled cookie sheets. The results were very "health food a la the 1970's" -- but not bad, not bad at all. Very veggie burger-ish. In fact, the kids and I nibbled on them all afternoon, with DH taking the remainder for lunch today. In any event, the entire soymilk-from-scratch experience was encourging enough to inspire me to purchase bulk organice soybeans from my co-op yesterday (a 25 pound bag, hello), because we could save so much $$ by just making our own. Sure, it'll be another thing to do around here - but what's one more thing ...?

Speaking of pressure cookers, I had an interesting experience this week with one of mine. I lurve my pressure cookers, all THREE of them (one's a canner, actually) -- putting my two kitchen ones into near constant use. Well, I blew the jiggle top off one of mine on Monday -- only the second time to do this in my 13 years of pressure cooking. Heh, it was pretty funny actually. I was cooking black beans, and probably a piece of bean skin got stuck in the valve. I *KNEW* it wasn't sounding quite right, and seemed to be taking longer than it should to get up to pressure -- anyway, the next thing I knew the little jiggler thingie went flying across the room and I had a geyser of black bean steam hitting my kitchen ceiling. I turned the stove off immediately of course, but it still took awhile for things to simmer down. No harm done, not even much of a mess -- just a reminder to be... oh, a bit more mindful next time? Ahem.....