Meals made while feeling like a lunatic

On the night of the full moon, I went kind of crazy and made a bunch of food all within an hour. I chopped cabbage for sauerkraut, made some roasted beet dip and cooked up a batch of rice pudding from brown rice. I listened to :wumpscut: and danced a lot. I thought I might turn into a werewolf, but I didn't.

I worked all day at the market, ate the rice pudding at the market for breakfast, shared a chickpea roll, a pakora, a samosa and salad drizzled with delicious tamarind sauce from Unique Catering with my brother at lunchtime, then made myself this quick orange and purple plate for a snack. The plate features: kalamata olives, purple carrot sticks, kimchi, and roasted beet dip. Pretty dope.

It may have been later that night that I made these. I was still feeling wild, fast and furious and these were really quick to prepare. I prepared some mung bean noodles and forgot to put them in the rolls until the end. It was awesome to be able to make these fresh spring rolls in the winter. I was given some produce by a lovely friend of mine as it was being given away at her work. I've been pretty much refusing to buy out of season produce, but I will eat it if it's given to me. These spring rolls featured Acadiana Soy tofu, mung bean noodles, lettuce, shredded carrot, green onions and possibly some other stuff, rolled in rice paper. I made a quick sauce with almond butter rather than peanut butter (I was out of pb), rice vinegar, water, ginger and sriracha. Pretty fresh.

Here I made some dark miso soup featuring shitake mushrooms, nappa cabbage, baby bok choy, grated ginger, broken up kamut spaghetti, fried tofu, topped with green onions, splashed with shoyo soy sauce, littered with korean red pepper powder (gochu), and cooled down with some cooking sake. OH YEAH! Not exactly a traditional miso soup, but I'm not exactly a traditional gal.

I'm really sorry this doesn't look as beautiful as it tasted. It's called Acorn Squash Poriyal (even though I used butternut) and I served it with some plain brown rice. It was brutally delicious and pretty quick to make.

Some day I do hope to be able to take a decent photo of a meal indoors at night. Until then, we all suffer. I made this meal at midnight for Brucifer to welcome him home from his rock n' roll vacation. It's basically an old-style curry that we used to make a lot together when we first started dating. It's really easy, versatile and delicious. I made some yellow rice a la Manjula to accompany it. Wowzers.

Missed Meals Vol. 2

Yes indeed I HAVE eaten in the last 11 days. Here are some of the vegetabley things you haven't seen me eat before:

 This oatmeal dish was inspired by this Carrot Cake Oatmeal. The best part about checking out this recipe was the discovery of the mixture of pure coconut milk with maple syrup to make a new sweet topping that rivals icing. Whoa, Nelly!

Standard lentil soup for around here

Miso soup with enoki mushrooms, kamut soba, carrots, napa cabbage, shitakes and chia seeds.

Some sort of Indian dish with beets and barbeque flavoured mung beans (a neat concept which I will aim to perfect).

Spicy miso with sriracha, tofu, noodles, nappa, cabbage, enoki and shitake.

Skipped meals

It's been inordinately insane here at VV headquarters. You've missed a few of my meals. Allow me to fill you in.

Canadian winters are awesome for some things, namely cooling things off quickly. Put it outside and it'll be cool in no time! 
 

This pie was stupidly good. I'm not a food photographer and this photo looks particularly gross, but trust me-- vegetables in pie format are an experience unmatched. I can't believe I actually bothered to make this pie, as I've been thinking about it for months. My good pal Kevin made this pie a few months ago and gave me a slice. His was a ten (at least), and my first attempt here was a 7.5-- but still stupidly great. The recipe can be found here.
 

Oh yeah, I had a party for Lunar New Year. I forgot to take photos, so I staged these ones after the fact. 
 

One of my lovely guests, Laura, suggested it would be fun to put flowering tea in the Crystal Head vodka bottle. She was right. After the guests left, Bruce begged me to make cookies, so we made these peanut butter pillows. Also stupidly good and highly recommended. 
 

I wish a few things about this soup. I wish a) that I copied down the recipe that I made up, b) that I took the time to make this next-day soup like I did the day before, c) that I put enoki mushrooms in this soup. Basically, the soup I made for the Lunar New Year party was perhaps the best soup I've ever made and I have no idea how to recreate it.  DAMN, though! Some day I'm just kickin' it, I will make this happen again. The main culprits: shitake mushroom/kombu dashi/broth, shitakes, kombu, turnip, cabbage, yam noodles (they have 0 calories and are awesome), carrots cut in rolling wedges a la Cooking with Dog, and fried tofu balls. I think I threw in some sake and some soy sauce too. The first soup (complete with enoki mushrooms) simmered for hours. This was obviously part of the awesomeness.  

I was teaching at the nutrition school this week, and I got the students to track where their food came from for a few days. I was so stressed out I hardly made a decent meal for myself all week, rather opting for mass amounts of sauerkraut and homemade garlic mayo delivered on various carby vehicles. A couple days ago, I grabbed a stir fry pack from the health food store which contained a lot of peppers. I don't generally buy peppers during the winter because they come from far away, but since the stir fry mix is cuttings from vegetables that would otherwise be thrown out, I feel it's okay. Anyway, this looks pretty hilarious-- like a plate of Chinese food with red sauce-- but really it's just a simple stir fry with beet-stained tofu. 

Tonight's awesome meal contained onions (I had one tiny one in the crisper) and sesame oil since Bruce is at work. Here we have balsamic-maple brushed baked tofu, maple-nutmeg mashed turnip, arame and carrots with onion, cabbage and black and white sesame. Oh yeah, and pickled beets, 'cuz they're the bomb.