Four winning meals with a 50% chance of failure

CURRY! Can't get enough Indian food. I've said it before and I'll say it again: we eat Indian food probably 80% of days. This is an old throwback recipe. Decided to take a photo before it was cooked so you could see the pretty blue potatoes. 

Was hungry like the wolf the other night. Crazy wildly, ravenously famished/have-been-neglecting-to-eat-while-working typa hungry. Quickly thought: "make parsley pesto pasta!"-- so I did. Steamed some already-peeled squash, carrots and parsnip and the whole thing was done in like a half hour or so. Pesto was made with sunflower seeds and pasta was my beloved kamut. This hit the spot niiicely! 

I was simmering ingredients for miso soup while rushing around trying to get ready to leave the house, and had the lid slightly off this pot while doing so. I came back and the broth had ALL evaporated-- every drop! 
 

....so I took the fail and made it into a win by quickly making up a dressing consisting solely of miso paste dissolved in some cooking sake. Friggin' divine, and much more zen than the time 
I got drunk and spilled sake in a temple in Kyoto. 
 

Yeah, so tonight Brucifer and I were making supper and we smelled burning. Uh, this is what was INSIDE THE OVEN ON FIRE! This was the first time in all my years in the kitchen when something was totally afire, but it went okay I guess. No casualties and since we don't have a smoke detector in the building, the annoying alarm didn't go off. Obviously the chance of us dying in our sleep was a downside to this. Note to self: call landlord. 

Luckily, our supper was totally fine and great and we dined on this quick and easy meal: cumin lime baked tofu, sweet potato and blue potato garlic fries, and stir-fried carrot, napa and tatsoi (first time for this awesome green) with parsley pesto and a bit o' balsamic. 

Anyway, Charlie Sheen and I are winning this week. Must be all the tiger blood I've been bangin'.

The Purple Count

What's better than a bigass five pound box of frozen wild local blueberries? Not a frig of a lot if it's winter and you're kind of sick of it! Good morning, delicious blue wonderorbs!
 

 

What do I detest about this blog editor? A lot. What don't I hate? This amazing smoothie.

I promise you this won't become a smoothie blog, but I'm pretty proud of myself that I've been actually eating breakfast, as I've been pretty lax on this lately (read: the last few years). The strange schedule that I keep messes me up in the appetite. This smoothie was gorgeous and  the colour reminded me of both this awesome Playskool vampire figure and the Count from Sesame Street, thus the name. Here's how to make it:

THE PURPLE COUNT

1 c. almond milk
2/3 c. blueberries
1 banana
1 tbsp. chia
1 scoop vegan proteins+ vanilla
1 tsp. gelantized maca powder
1 tsp.matcha powder
1 tbsp. hemp oil
bunch o' cinnamon
handful of shredded coconut
1 tbsp. Nova Greens
2 medjool dates


Wow-- I actually thought I might've tooled this one up by putting too many ingredients in it. Instead, I got a thick, not too sweet, delicious purple smoothie. It felt awesome, imparting awesome nutrients, nourishing me with sustained energy. I'm so glad my body knows how to use nutrients now! HAHA. It's great. 

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. 

Root vegetable stir-fry and other dandy rigs

The other day I saw a recipe for a root vegetable stirfry and it blew my mind a little. I'd never thought to do that. What a wicked idea! So I set out to appropriate it. Although Bruce still claims to not like vegetables, there are certain vegetables he likes even less than others, and turnip is one of them. This root vegetable stir-fry had a ton of turnips which he didn't even notice. Carrots, beets, turnips, and parsnips sliced thinly and stir-fried with a sweet and sour sauce (mirin*, soy sauce, lime juice, garlic, ginger, sesame oil).  Turnip, rest your weary battle-worn body. You have prevailed once again! Let it be known that I've always had faith in you. Bruce also hates toasted sesame oil "right up there with mushrooms and onions" and he still liked this which was great.

I decided to make cinnamon rolls out of sugar cookie dough at 1:30 in the morning. I'd been thinking about making these for months. Bruce got leftovers for breakfast. "You're dandy," he told me this morning. "Of all the rigs, you're the dandiest." 

Awww :)

*Mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine. Hopefully you can easily get it at Asian groceries, or I'll be screwed next time I have to buy this without a discount. It's pretty expensive from a health food store.

Scotian Kimchi Chigae

I have a headcold. I've been working diligently to burn this cold out of my system with fiery foods. I've been making insane hot toddies, employing all sorts of food cures: Garlic, ginger, black pepper, cayenne, sriracha, lemon, honey, shitake mushrooms, miso, sauerkraut, umeboshi plum, licorice, thyme, fennel, a ton of tea and lots of vegetables. Last night, after having to miss one of the two actual workdays of my week where I have to go outside, I really wanted to make sure it didn't hang around and stop me this week. I tried to recall the spiciest dish I've ever eaten, and I fondly remembered the kimchi ramen soup I'd eaten in Korea with my brother. 

Unfortunately, it's almost midnight, and I don't have any kimchi.... But I do have sauerkraut! Kimchi is, put simply, spicy sauerkraut. I'm certainly oversimplifying it here, as there're many special methods to making it, but when you break it down, this is what you've got. I turned to one of my most trusted authorities on Korean cooking, the girls from Crazy Korean Cooking to show me the ropes.

Here's my version:


Scotian Kimchi Chigae

1 tbsp. toasted sesame oil
2 lrg. cloves garlic, sliced
1T. minced ginger 
2 c. sauerkraut, chopped, juice reserved
2 carrots, sliced thinly
1 lb. tofu, cubed
2 c. broth (in my case-- homemade shitake/kombu)
3 tsp. gochu  (Korean red pepper powder)
1 bundle of mung bean noodles

In a pot, heat the sesame oil. Add garlic and stir for a minute or so. Add cubed tofu and fry for 4 minutes or so. Add chopped kimchi, gochu powder and mix to combine. Add carrots, ginger and, broth, and some sauerkraut juice. Bring to boil. Cover and lower to a medium-low for 15 minutes or until carrots are tender. If much of the broth has evaporated, add some more sauerkraut juice. Add the mung bean noodles and simmer for a couple of minutes- they only take a couple of minutes to soften. I chopped up the shitakes from my broth and threw 'em in, for extra immune-boosting and flavo(u)r-flav.

While this soup didn't boast the complex flavours of Kimchi Chigae, as the kimchi tends to be left for a long time to ferment with the gochu, kniting the flavours together in a magical way, this soup was certainly awesome in a pinch, and I'm pretty pumped on my hilarious Nova Scotian bastardization  (with all due respect) of this wonderful, medicinal dish. If you're sick and you don't have any sauerkraut, it'll do in a pinch. I noticed my head clear quite a bit last night, but this morning, it's about 80% gone (the congestion, not my head). Pretty amazing. I've only had this cold for a couple of days and now it's practically gone. BURNINATING THE COLLLD!