Nut Roast Recipe

(Dave Blogging)
OK. Trying to get back into shape. Robyn recently snapped aphoto of me from behind during a recent trip to Lake Lure. …Ahem,….Sad revelation…

So today is the third day in a row I have worked out. Robyn is also a great cook, which is where I lay the blame for my less than svelte figure. So I put an end to that–I made lunch and dinner today. Lunch was plain old Quaker oats with Soy Nut Butter, skim milk and Worcestershire sauce–tastes as bad as it sounds. Of course, I had mercy on the kids and made PB&J and Batman Spaghetti-Os for them.

For dinner, I made a Nut Roast and 16-bean soup. They turned out pretty well, and as fortune would have it, we got a last-minute call from friends who came by for dinner. And, you guessed it, the husband is vegetarian. So it worked out well.

We first had Nut Roast on a trip we took to Scotland in 2001. During that time, they were recovering from Mad Cow Disease, so they had diversified their palates quite widely, and I was pleasantly surprised at the food fare, having traveled in England and Ireland in the past. So the nut roast is based on a variety of nuts ground in the food processor, and mixed with herbs, etc. Most use cashews, but I don’t since there are healthier nuts to use. We have plenty of pecans, since Robyn’s brother’s house has several fruit-bearing pecan trees and we get a healthy bolus when family visits. We also use toasted almonds (great flavor), and a few pine-nuts and sesame seeds thrown in for added flavor.

That serves as the base. We find that since we are getting the food processor all gummed up anyway, we go ahead and make a few batches (3 tonight). For two batches we added a second base of vegetable fiber (ground red and orange peppers, sweet onions from the garden sauteed with garlic cloves, cherry tomatoes and one golf-ball sized tomato from the garden), chick peas and split green peas, ochra (compliments of our neighbor’s garden), olive oil and bread crumbs. Please don’t ask me how much as we do it on the fly, based on what’s available and how big our bowls are. You can get several different Nut Roast recipes by searching on Google

We then split this into two separate batches. In the first we mixed in a plain green pesto (basil, pine nuts, sauteed onions and garlic, mixed cheeses, olive oil) we made fresh from the garden earlier in the week, with small cubes of tofu. In the second we mixed in red roasted peppers, sundried tomatoes, bread crumbs, tofu cubes, tempeh cubes, and a tomato-basil-mixed herb pesto we made earlier in the week fresh from the herb garden.

The final batch did not have the peppers, used the nut base, chick peas and split peas, tomato-basil-mixed herb pesto and olive oil. We also added an undisclosed amount of apple sauce since the batch was looking a little dry and crumbly as we mixed it. We could have used milk instead, but I was looking for a little sweetening ‘Zing’.

Finally, you throw them in the oven for half an hour while whipping up some Risotto, and ‘voila!’, you’ve got a meal! The consistency was excellent, and the flavor was really good (I was afraid the pesto would overpower the nut flavor, but it didn’t). Unfortunately, I enjoyed the meal too well and I am afraid I will be back to exercising tomorrow.

Until next time,
Dee-bu-o from Charlotte