Dinner Bowl #36

 

The pantry challenge may be requiring more creativity, but amazingly enough, it's still working! Here we have garlic bread (made from a mini baguette in my freezer), cheesy beans with tomato, some yellow squash, and some multicolored peppers and onions.

I had some leftover vegan pizza cheese, and somehow ran across this recipe from Food with Feeling. It's not a vegan recipe, but it gave me the idea of making a tomato-y white bean base (mostly following their directions, but adding some Italian seasoning) to top with my pourable cheese. Having the crusty baguette on hand meant I could have something almost elegant, I figured. It turned out well, and it was really nice to have the bread and beans together. I'd want to have this on an ordinary day, not just when I was only using what's here.

The vegetables were some of what I had left that needed eating and seemed like they'd go alongside the beans. They were good, nothing special, but you don't need everything to be special all the time, do you? Sometimes you just need food.

But also sometimes I want to be special, so I did something that is all too rare for me: I made a cake.

It's just a basic chocolate "wacky" cake with some homemade vegan chocolate frosting, but it is delicious and it really made my pantry challenge meal a lot more satisfying.

So here's to good food.

And cake!