fast food - have it your way

So, apparently I've been too busy to bother posting here, so the very first thing I want to do is plug for The 30 Minute Vegan again. Without that book, dinner this week would not have been possible. At the very least, it wouldn't have been healthy. I've mentioned before that Mister would be happy to eat pizza for dinner every night, and he almost got his wish, so maybe he's not as big a fan of this book as I am. In any case, my time continues to be limited, so on with the parade of fast food.

First up, Sunday's dinner - Easy as Pie Stirfry. It was absolutely easy, though there was a great deal of chopping involved. It probably would be easy-as-pie if I would just invest the $20 in a mandoline. I'm getting faster at my prep, especially thanks to my new "chop & scoop" cutting board that funnels my newly chopped bits into whatever vessel they need to occupy, but I'm starting to think I'll never be Food Network fast. I guess I'll never be a celebrity chef, unless America's lazy rise up and demand a narcoleptic hostess.

On Monday, I made the super-duper-fast Mediterranean Hummus Wraps.


They were far tastier than I expected them to be and I had pretty high hopes for these babies to begin with, so let me make a recommendation - get this book and make these wraps. Next on my list of food-blog-feats-to-accomplish is to learn how to take a better picture of wraps, burritos, fajitas, and quesadillas. In other words, I want to figure out how to take attractive photos of enclosed dinner - I'm sure the answer lies in cutting said dinner item in half and propping one end up on the other, but I was afraid they would fall apart if I did anything other than wrap them as well as I could and then push them, seam-side down, onto the plates and hope they made it through our dinner prayers. By the way - if you want to see some amazing pictures of food, check out Another One Bites the Crust - you can also link to it on the right side of the page.

Tonight's dinner, then, was the last dinner on my humble (and fast) menu this week: Seitan Curry Bowl. By the way - this one and the wrap were part of the Lunch section of the book - I figured those meals would probably be even faster to make and I was more or less correct. This one comes together so quickly you almost run out of time to gather the spices. It's perfectly flavorful and not as overwhelming as I thought it would be considering how much curry powder, cumin, and soy sauce is in there. Also, it allowed Mister and I to take advantage of the amazing depth of flavor present in in-season asparagus. I anticipate a decent amount of asparagus recipes for the next couple of weeks, since the season is so tender and short and as tonight's experience proved, there is a remarkable difference in taste when [Mister's favorite] veggies are in season.

I'm off for now - one more day of work before my one-day weekend, so you can count on a new menu either tomorrow night or Thursday, if I get to it in the midst of re-planning my mini-vacation to Arizona and baking Irish Soda Bread :)