Brucifer's creaming adventure + vegetables for days!

Sometimes Brucifer likes to help me with the baking. Here, he's creaming the sugar and butter. I taught him the technique and he got really into it, suggesting that nobody has never creamed better than he creamed that day. He's making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies which disappeared too quickly to be caught on camera. He actually made them from start to finish by his precious little self. Yes, he bakes in his jean jacket.
 

Last week I got home from the market extremely excited that I could get local tomatoes, cucumbers and spicy mixed greens. Thank you, greenhouses! I made a l'il celebratory salad with my sprouts, some herbed tofu, and the tamarind sauce from Unique Asian Catering. FRAICHE!
 

I picked up another stir fry pack from the local health food store. It was so full they had to tape it shut with stickers. I fried it all up and made a ludicrously-humongous stir fry which we ate with basmati rice and a drizzle of creamy tahini! Hot + crunchy vegetablely goodness! Not much tops the deliciousness that this simple dish can deliver. I power-ate this, despite my own firm suggestion against doing so.

I didn't make this meal, as you can probably tell from the (*gasp!*) disposable plate. It came from Just Spring Roll in Park Lane mall. I love big heaping plates of vegetables consumed in malls. It doesn't seem likely, and it's just so wonderful. Malls are so gross. They seem to zap my energy. Vegetables give that back in spades! Here's my review of the meal on Yelp, where you can see that I ate this in five minutes so we wouldn't be late for seeing hometown-proud "Hobo with a Shotgun."
 

I've been making my fruit crisps lately with my Crowbar granola on the bottom, fruit, then the normal crumble on top. I was inspired by a petite spitfire of a chef who asked why one WOULDN'T have two layers of crisp?!

At first I was making Indian curry, then I decided to make Thai. Then I decided to put noodles underneath. I was feeling very wild and crazy when I made those zany decisions. The decisions resulted in mad deliciousness.

  
 This is what I had for breakfast this morning. It was kinda late, like 1:30 or something. I had vegetables for breakfast. That was awesome.

 It just occurred to me that you don't know what I measure vegetables in! Well, I use this grungy old liquid measure which the lined wore off years ago. This is about 4 cups of vegetables-- in this case: turnip, carrot and GORGEOUS SPRING KALE! WOO! I almost flipped my lid when I saw this at the market last week. I probably screamed like the little girl that I am.

Tonight's supper was pretty badass I must say, and it had three components, the concept over which Brucifer gets all giddy. I'm pretty keen on the one-dish meal-- for the lack of dishes, for ease of digestion, and for the (little) time it takes. The meal was pretty heavy on the legume content- not supremely balanced, but nourishing and tasty it was! All three are new recipes. In the top right corner we have "Blackened Chickpeas" from The Indian Vegan Kitchen: More Than 150 Quick and Healthy Homestyle Recipes. This recipe actually calls for black tea which I thought was pretty neat. It also called for tamarind sauce, and I gladly dumped in a bunch of tamarind sauce from our market friend. This was Brucifer's favourite part of the meal. 

Moving clockwise, we have the straight-forwardly-named dish "Carrots and Turnips" from the same book, which I borrowed today brand new (I'm 99% positive I'm the first one to take this out-- the book is pristine!) from the library. I also went wild and chopped up some kale and put it in there. The vegetables are basically fried up with some cumin seeds and turmeric and some garam masala thrown in at the end (so the aroma doesn't fade away. Important!). I'll probably adopt this method for simple Indian-flavoured vegetables. 

The slop at the bottom was last night's supper and tonight's leftovers, left on the stove all day (not cooking). Yesterday this was subpar, but tonight, it was unbelievable! I wouldn't've recognised this dish if I'd fallen over it. I started to make a urad dal (black lentils) dish last night that I'd made before, and part way through I decided to use the recipe on the back of the spice mix we bought that was designed for urad dal, Dal Makhani Masala. Essentially, you cook up some black lentils and in another pot throw in a heaping half cup of tomatoes (I used canned) and a tablespoon of the Dal Makhani Masala (which you should find at any well-stocked Indian grocery) and let it reduce. Add this to the lentils, as well as a half cup of coconut milk (it called for cream) and some coconut oil (it called for butter). This turned superb overnight, so I recommend if you make this, make it ahead. I also salted this and threw in some Bragg's for extra pizazz. 

What was the most delicious meal you ate today?