big mess in my kitchen

Things I have accomplished since dinner:

• Cleared the table
• ate some Halloween candy from my parents (my mom put a note in the bag that says "Better your home than ours," but I see there are only a few surviving Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bars and I don't think the kids took them - I'm on to your tricks, lady!)
• engaged in a fun Facebook message session
• trolled YouTube for a clip from the movie, "Anastasia," then posted said clip on Facebook (go, social media!)
• pestered Mister

Things I haven't accomplished since dinner: cleaning up.  In fact, my kitchen is such a phenomenal mess right now that I think I might actually bake cookies or cupcakes or something, just to see if I actually can dirty every dish in the house.

It's probably not as bad as I think, but compared to the super-simple clean-up from last night's dinner, a stove and counter and sink covered in dishes is a little daunting.  This is what happens when I make blender sauces.  More accurately, this is what happens when I make a blended sauce that could totally fit in my smaller food processor attachment to my immersion blender, so I start piling everything in there only to remember that I have to blend for 5 minutes and realizing that I have no desire to push the button that makes the blades spin for 5 minutes.  So, having dirtied the little food processor, I dump everything into the grown-up food processor and proceed with the excessive blending.  Which makes a huge mess.

Meanwhile, I'm chopping and roasting cauliflower while rinsing the chickpeas (and contemplating the effort required to pinch them out of their little skins) and cooking the bulgur, then scraping the sides of the food processor (with yet another spatula) and trying not to drip the sauce that collected on the lid onto the counter (and failing).  Nevertheless, it all came together beautifully for our Mediterranean Bowls from Appetite for Reduction.

By way of a short aside, last week I did a favor for a colleague who then did her best to show her appreciation by gushing all over me and then buying me Starbucks.  She asked what I wanted when she was going out to get it and I told her, "A hazelnut americano would make my heart sing," which she thought was very funny.  I tell you this because roasted cauliflower makes Mister's heart sing.

I cut it into small florets, then doused it with olive oil and tossed it with some kosher salt and the Mediterranean herb blend I picked up in California:

No joke, the cauliflower had been roasting about 15 minutes and I was getting ready to add the chickpeas while gathering all of the ingredients for Isa's Caesar Chavez dressing, also from Appetite for Reduction, when Mister followed his nose into the kitchen and asked what he smelled.  I told him it was roasted cauliflower (even though it was still in the act of roasting) and he asked when he could eat it and if now would be a good time.  I explained he would have to wait 5-10 more minutes and after one more try, he went back to his computer to wait like a good boy.

After all my kitchen gymnastics, here was the result: Caesar Chavez dressing, clearly meant to replace fattening, anchovyful Caesar dressing.  While I don't think you could mistake this for "the real thing," it has a delightful tang and very strong flavor, most likely attributed to the shallots that haunt my breath even now.  In fact, I'm going to blame my inexcusably excessive candy consumption on that - I'm just trying to get rid of the taste and my breath mints are allllll the way over there in my purse.

The finished product went over much better than the last time Mister had something specifically titled Bowl, and merely mentioning "that outdoor restaurant" threw Mister into a memorymare and he proceeded to once again voice his complete displeasure with the Gyro Bowl he got.  I think he's being a little over-dramatic, but then again, I loved my Hollywood Bowl.

But again, how could I not?  I'm a rockstar ;)

When I'm not being a rockstar, though, I'm the kitchen help... better get on that pile of mess...

autumn minestrone = awesome sauce

This is truly one of my favorite times of year.  I love each "first" of fall - the first cool day, the first time you pull on a long-neglected jacket, the first scarf draped loosely around your neck.  I love the first nip in the air and the first time it is truly justified and not just paranoia to button/zip up your jacket and maybe hunch up a little against the wind.

I love the smells - the crisp scent of firewood set ablaze in someone's cozy fireplace, the smoke wafting from their chimney and filling the air with an unmistakably autumnal feel and smell; the first emergence of cinnamon brooms and pine cones in the supermarkets, and the syrupy aroma of freshly baked apple cobbler in your own kitchen.

Yours.  Not mine.  I'm not baking until Wednesday at the earliest.  But you can share your smushy, cinnamon-y, warm apple-y cobblerness with me if you'd like.

Today was the first day the sunlit temperatures couldn't find their way out of the 50s, which meant it was also the first day we didn't have the a/c on at work, which meant it was the first day I was actually warm.  Regardless, the walk home was all the chilliness I needed to be perfectly provoked to make Autumn Minestrone from the Moosewood Restaurant Soups & Stews Deck.

To a soundtrack of Apoptygma Berzerk, I lovingly made the broth myself last night, following a recipe from the same deck for Garlic Broth.  Believe me, anything involving 3 heads of garlic is okay in my book.  I expected the resulting soup to be a bit brothier, since it called for 6 cups of the broth I painstakingly simmered while playing on facebook,  but I guess I underestimated the sheer volume of veggies that would be going into it.  Believe me - I'm not complaining about the veggies.  Every time I eat something this full of veggies, especially lovely, dark green, Tuscan kale and Vitamin C-rich cauliflower, I can just about feel the health flowing into me.

I could use a little boost right now.  But hey, when I can breath without tightness in my chest, I'll appreciate breathing all the more, right?  This is just another opportunity for gratitude.

Nevertheless, I did anticipate the soup would be, well....soupier, so I asked Mister to pick up special rustic Italian bread for us to dip in the broth and make our soup dinner a little more substantial.  Turns out I needn't have worried, but the seeded spelt bread he picked up was still a delightful addition to our light Mediterranean feast, which I topped off with a generous bowl of mixed olives.

One final thing of note, merely because I'm making such a concerted effort to improvise more: somehow, in a moment of brain malfunction, I used up the zucchini I meant to add to this soup.  After a thorough interrogation of the cat, I remembered what I had done with the zucchini and moved on to being grateful I was too lazy to make the roasted cauliflower appetizer I had intended for a few nights ago (when I used up the zucchini without realizing), so I subbed the cauliflower for the squash.  Mister loves cauliflower and merely tolerates zucchini because it's a part of so many recipes there would be nothing left for me to cook if he outlawed that ingredient, too (along with eggplant, mushrooms, tempeh, quinoa, and "squishy wheat").  Mister and I agreed, though, that this soup was far better completed by the cauliflower than it would have been with zucchini.  The texture it leant was perfect, as was the subtle flavor and the barely perceptible way it soaked up the garlic broth.

squiggly pasta and other favorites

So, Friday finally marks the official start to my favorite season.  I get excited about the Autumnal Equinox the way most people get excited about Memorial Day marking the inaugural beach weekend.  For me, the First Day of Fall marks the end of the hot, sunny season that makes my husband sneeze and sweat and makes me squint too much.  More importantly, it reminds me that other favorites are just on the horizon - my favorite month (October), my favorite time of year (between Thanksgiving and Christmas), my favorite weather - cool, dry, a little bit of a nip on your nose by the time October bleeds into November...that first time a starkly cold breeze whips your breath away or colors your cheeks with the slightest crimson.

I put my husband in charge of determining how we would celebrate the arrival of Fall (it's his favorite time as well) and upon conferring, we came to a mutually agreeable decision - we planned to go to Linvilla Orchards, a little outside the city.  They have baskets upon baskets of freshly plucked apples of many varieties we don't commonly see in Whole Foods or Essene.  There are apple cider donuts, dozens of different pies, and of course, apple cider and coffee.  This year, Mister has his heart set on funnel cake with gooey cinnamon apples piled on top.  There is also plenty of lovely land upon which to wander and enjoy each other.  We went to Linvilla to celebrate our first wedding anniversary (and left with every imaginable apple product that you don't have to plug in).

Fast forward to the weather forecast.... of all the days this week, the day it's supposed to pour and be absolutely miserable?  No, you don't get a prize if you guessed Friday - it was kind of a "gimme."

So, new plans?  Baking.  Probably lots of it, too.  What this is all leading up to is that there is just no way I will have the energy to care about making good spanakopita until Friday, when I've sat inside all day watching P!nk videos on YouTube and trying to decide whether to bake cookies or cupcakes or both.  Instead of spanakopita, tonight I made Pasta Twists with Cauliflower and Spinach from Vegan Express.

Let's see - pasta, cauliflower, garlic, kalamata olives (subbing for sundried tomatoes, about which Mister can sometimes be a bit wary), and spinach... yup, lots of favorites in there.  I will almost definitely make this again - it was easy and tasty.  There are, however, a few things I will do differently in the future.

Since there is no "sauce" to speak of, there needs to be something else lending flavor.  Cauliflower is not the most exciting vegetable (especially after you slightly over-steam it...sorry, Mister) and spinach is good, but again, not a hugely flavorful vegetable.  The only real flavor came from the kalamatas and the dried cranberries (subbed for raisins, which Mister hates more than I thought possible), and unfortunately, they didn't play together all that nicely.  In the future, I'll steam the vegetables with broth, not water, and I will be a bit more generous in my sprinkling of Mediterranean Sea Salt.  I may also involve a flavorful finishing oil, like a fruity olive oil or possibly walnut oil with the slightest drizzle of dark sesame oil.

As you may be able to see, there is a round of garlic bread peeking in on the pasta...

Mister was kind enough to go to Superfresh for me while I was at work today (second time!), and when I got home, he explained that there was a sale on the big round kaiser rolls I asked him to pick up for sloppy joes, so he got 12 instead of 6.  I know he'll use some for sandwiches, but 12 is a lot of rolls when they're the kind that are freshly baked and without preservatives, so they'll go bad before Monday.  Remember - no kids - it's just me and Mister.  So, I figured two of them could turn into garlic bread to accompany our meal.

Well!  It's still early, which is one of the many things I love about my new job, so I've been able to devote a few hours a night to redeveloping myself into an intelligent and well-rounded human being.  Let's compare:

Old Job:

• get home around 9pm
• hurry to get dinner on the table between 9:30 and 10
• eat
• clean up
• screw around on Facebook for a few minutes and probably drink a glass of wine depending on the day
• Go to sleep (and still only get 4-6 hours a night)

New Job:

• get done work around 6:30 or 7, depending on the day
• stop at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Superfresh or anywhere else on the way home
• take my time saying hello to Mister and telling him a little about my day, maybe lying down for a couple of minutes before starting dinner.
• Dinner is on the table and we're eating between 8 and 9pm
• By 10, the dishes are done, the leftovers are put away, and I'm blogging (sometimes).
• Now, I will spend a little time doing work homework (that I'm happy to do because I like what I'm learning and know that extracurricular work will help me to succeed at a growing company that is willing to take a chance and invest itself in me)
• Then I will continue reading my silly Anne Rice book for my own adolescent pleasure,
• then bedtime with 6-8 hours of sleep.

Cheers!

sometimes, you need to squish

Angst does this thing we call "squishing."  It involves him poking, kneading, and otherwise massaging something soft and puffy until it seems comfy to him... at which point he usually walks away, abandoning all his hard work.  It's always fun to see him really working something, though, even if it boggles my mind that he doesn't do the obvious thing and lie down on the thing he just squished to oblivion.

He's got something, though - squishing is fun!  It feels neat and benignly destructive.  A human example might be something like a stress ball or the ghetto equivalent - an uninflated balloon filled with flour and tied off.... or tofu.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of my tofu-cotta tonight but my hands were a little bit covered in tofu to operate a camera.  Tonight's scrumptious meal was Baked Ziti from Vegan on the Cheap.

We actually have a few contributing factors for how this became the dinner of choice.  First, I got home from work a little bit earlier than usual (= more time), and Second, I have tomorrow off (= more time to stay up).  Third, and possibly most important - it was really darn cold by the time I tested how fast I could walk in my new boots.  Hey!  That reminds me - I never talked about my boots in the last post!

No time like the present...

Aren't they adorable?  I'm spending a bit too much time on my feet to continue wearing 3-4.5" heels, but I just cannot get into the flats trend.  It is my opinion that they spread out your feet and make the whole picture less attractive... or maybe I'm just not willing to pay $60 for shoes that don't have a heel and don't make my legs look longer or my stature taller.  I won't lie - high heels are a woman's Power Suit.

Anyway, I went to Macy's - twice, actually, and the first time almost made me swear off the store and did make me write a long and detailed (and unanswered) email to the company's customer service department.  Regardless of my growing disdain for the store, I had spotted a few pairs of boots when I was wandering around the shoe department unattended for 40 minutes the week before, so I figured I would give them one last chance.  I'm glad I did, because I ended up with these adorable, non-leather American Rag cowgirl boots that show the rockstar side of me without breaking my ankles or helping my outermost toes bind to one another.

By the way - when it's in the upper 50s with a strong "breeze" and I'm wearing nothing but an above-the-knee skirt, mid-calf boots, and a short-sleeved polo shirt, I can walk pretty fast in them.

So, now that that's out of the way - back to dinner.

I felt like the Baked Ziti needed a companion of the greenish nature, so when I was at Trader Joe's after work on Monday, I picked up a bag of broccoli and cauliflower.  I used about half the bag and steam-sauteed the veggies with some olive oil, garlic, my Tuscan herb mix from California, and some salt with just a few spritzes of water to keep everything steamy.  It came out sooooo well.

It tasted just like the baked ziti I remember my mom making (well, her's probably had melted mozzarella,  but beside that, it was pretty close) and it was actually pretty simple.  One of the reasons I made it tonight was because I thought it would be really time consuming, due to the need to cook the pasta and make the "ricotta," but it really did not take as long as I thought it would.  In fact, if I had been prepared (and didn't kind of want it to take a while), I probably could have made the whole thing, start to finish, in a little more than an hour.

That being said, this most likely would not be a dinner I would make after a particularly tiring day or on a normal work day in the middle of a normal work week, unless I had thought ahead and already boiled the pasta and prepared the tofu-cotta so all I had to do was combine everything.  The tofu-cotta was convincing enough that I am pretty sure you could feed this to a bunch of omnis and no one would know it wasn't "real" ricotta.

To be completely honest, though, here is the order of dinner's awesomeness:

2nd runner up - the baked ziti itself

1st runner up - the surprisingly tasty (and simple) side dish

Winner - squishing the tofu through my fingers until it was all coarsely crumbled.  That was really way more fun than I thought it would be and I probably enjoyed it a bit more than I should have.  Cheers!

a bean is just a bean

I'm gonna make this quick because I have to get up earlier than usual and my internet connection is being stupid and that is immensely more frustrating than it would be ordinarily due to the huge and unnecessary amount of stress trying to strangle me.

Tonight's dinner was Veggie Goulash from La Dolce Vegan.  We haven't had this in a long time because I repeatedly forget how good it is.  Granted, when you look at the ingredients, it's easy to see my hesitation.  It just doesn't seem like this is going to end well: carrot, zucchini, tomato, cauliflower, and pinto beans?

Doesn't it look incredibly tasty, though?  That's because it is.  I always forget what a good simmer in some garlic-laced, paprika-spiked broth will do for a melange of vegetables.  I did make a couple of adjustments due to budget issues (or, you could just say I'm frugal to a fault?).  Fresh cauliflower is stupidly expensive when I only needed a relatively small amount, so I bought a block of frozen cauliflower.  Although I'm pretty good at stretching frozen veggies packed in bags, I'm not so good at figuring out how to protect a cardboard box from freezerburn, so I just threw all 10 oz of cauliflower in there.  I'm pretty sure Mister didn't mind.  I also subbed Great Northern Beans for the Pinto beans.

Pinto beans would have been a little creamier, I'll grant you, but I cannot figure out this weird recent phenomenon at Superfresh.  For reasons unknown and probably illogical, for the first time I've ever seen, Goya brand beans are much more expensive than store-brand beans.  The brown rice is actually more expensive than Carolina rice.  I don't get it.  So, since Superfresh was having a Great Northern Bean sale (5 for $3!), I bought 3 cans of those instead of a can of Pintos ($1.07, which doesn't seem like a lot, but for beans??  really???), and two cans of cannellinis @ $.89 apiece. 

That's all for now, kids.  It would have taken me half the time to write that (or I could have written twice as much) if I didn't have to wait 15 seconds for the damn pinwheel to stop spinning after every second sentence.  Hopefully, tomorrow's better.  See you then!

garlic + harissa > cilantro

About two years ago, I got into a bunch of blogs.  I'd never really explored the blogosphere and honestly, I can't tell you what made me reach out two years ago, but I can tell you what has kept me here.  There are blogs I read because I like the wit, there are some I love for the pictures, and yet others for the scathing sarcasm or descriptive eloquence.  I love words and I love looking at things of beauty.  I've also discovered I have quite a taste for what foodies/food bloggers call "food porn."  You want to know what really hooked me, though?

The recipes. 

I'm sure you kind of expected that since I'm kind of a recipe-hoarder, but it's true.  Especially in the beginning, if a blog I was following went too long without a recipe I found attractive, I usually lost interest in the blog.  Inspired by two things, I started my own blog.  One of those two things, if you're wondering, was my lofty aspirations of honing my skills in writing and recipe-creation so I could realize my dreams of becoming a successful cookbook author or maybe the next superstar chef just waiting to be discovered and put on display on the Oprah Show.  The other was that I enjoyed reading Isa's recipe intros as much as I enjoyed the recipes themselves.  I recognized that her humor closely mirrors my own and that our writing style is similar.  I thought to myself, "even if my recipes suck, at least I can write in a way that is entertaining enough to keep people reading until my recipes don't suck." 

I hope I'm right.

I also hope my recipes don't suck.

Anyway, as my little blog evolved and branched out a bit, I found that I don't get inspired to write recipes nearly as often as I have some amusing/traumatic/enlightening experiences in the kitchen, so I hope you'll find tonight's tale of discovery as amusing as last night's exploding tofu.

Tonight I made Potato and Cauliflower Burritos from the June 2011 Vegetarian Times magazine.  The assembled burrito pictures did not come out at all.  That's another thing I've enjoyed the last two years - the incredible progress I've made in my ability to take pictures of stuff that not only don't look awful, but actually make the subject look appealing (most of the time).  In addition to tasting really good, these burritos helped me to expand my learning into another dimension.

As you may have noticed, I rarely repeat recipes.  I realize this is not completely normal, but there are so many neat recipes out there, I want to try them all.  I've also turned every vacation into an opportunity to go to as many strange restaurants as possible and truly savor every meal I eat while away from home - whether I'm down the street at Horizons or on the other side of the country, testing out the San Fran Veg Scene (as I will be in July - yay!).  When I was flipping through the latest Veg. Times, I came across this recipe and immediately thought it would be fun to make and that Mister would love it.  I was right on both counts.  I think it could have been a little spicier, but I didn't follow the directions 100% (that's becoming a theme, actually) and instead of using a chipotle chili in adobo sauce, I squirted what I thought to be a healthy dose of harissa into the sauce.  I think it would have had the desired effect if I had squirted twice as much, so I'll keep that in mind for next time.

So, with the potatoes and cauliflower simmering away with what I had hoped would be a spicy red curry sauce, I grabbed my bag of cilantro from the fridge and started gathering leaves for chopping.  Then, I smelled it.

I'm not exactly sure how to describe "it," but here are some adjectives that seem to apply: strong, pungent, musty, green(ish), stinky.  I wish I had some $5 words to use here, but I'm still using that part of my brain to figure out if that's what fresh cilantro is supposed to smell like while simultaneously reaching an understanding of why so many [white] people can't stand this herb.  Part of me hopes I got a bum bunch while another part of me really doesn't want to contract some kind of Mexican supervirus 36 hours before my brother-in-law's wedding.

Why does cilantro smell so bad???  It doesn't smell that bad when it's dried and it doesn't smell bad at all when it manifests itself as ground coriander.  Did I get a bunch of half-rotten stalks or is that extraordinarily pungent scent supposed to accompany the bouquet in my fridge?

The Happily-Ever-After end of my story, though, is that dinner was really good - the flavors and textures worked together beautifully.  I increased the final garlic count from 2 cloves to about 5 and I decreased the prescribed cilantro from 3 Tbsp to 1, but the mixture was well balanced and tasty.  Mister and I each wolfed down two burritos (which would probably [rightly] be called dosas in another culture with better spices) and I can see this easy-to-prepare, fast-cooking meal becoming as regular in our "rotation" as any recipe is likely to become.

baby, posh, ginger, scary, sporty, and SNEAKY spice?

I guess harissa is not so much a spice as it is a paste made of a spice blend and other flavor-contributors.  Nevertheless, it has a heat that sneaks up on you and suddenly, out of "nowhere," kicks you in the throat.

I know, I'll wait while you all run out to find this magical condiment.  I know, it's too tempting to resist with a review like that.  It might take you a while to find it, though.

Tonight, I made Cauliflower-Chickpea Tagine from The Urban Vegan.  Funny story.  I made this because Mister wasn't feeling terribly hungry, which I thought gave me a little liberty to spend more time making dinner.  If I knew he had something to do, I would have made my other quick-cooking dinner.  In fact, I almost did, but I though Mister would enjoy the tagine.  I hadn't even added the cauliflower to the simmering carrots, tomatoes, and garlic when Mister came in and started to set up the table. 

Anyway, the end of the story is that I did my best to speed-simmer and help the rice finish absorbing all the water, while Mister stalled his plans a little so we could have at least a little time for dinner.  I got a few bites into my bowl and felt justified in my initial reaction to the recipe's prescribed half-teaspoon of harissa: entirely too little.  I got about halfway through my dinner thinking that next time I would add a whole teaspoon (even though the 1/2 teaspoon was definitely heaping).  All of a sudden, I got a swift kick to the back of my throat and realized I had completely underestimated that building heat of harissa.  I took a short water and olive break and then got back to my tagine, recognizing that it was actually sneaky spicy and it would get me again if I wasn't vigilant.

Overall, it was a very good tagine.  Although the recipe suggests salting to taste at the end of the cooking process, I did not find salt necessary at all - the spices and vegetable broth did quite a good job of flavoring the dish without added salt.  I enjoyed the kick of harissa, and despite its assault on my esophagus, I probably will increase the amount in the future.  All that said, there was nothing terribly outstanding about this tagine - nothing that made it stand apart from a dozen other Moroccan-inspired recipes I have.  Perhaps with some tweaking it could turn into something a little more memorable, but not every dinner has to be life-changing, so maybe I'll just let it go.

Speaking of letting go, the poor cat continues to be plagued by his tail.  Damn thing follows him everywhere, taunting, haunting, just waiting for the chance to be seen and chased.  It followed him all the way from the old apartment and won't even give him a moment's peace to relax on the couch.

Fortunately, it's an exceptionally long tail, which makes it pretty easy to get a hold of.  As long as he doesn't let go, he should be able to get some sleep tonight...

lessons learned at the cutting board

Call me a lifelong student or simply a student of life; I love learning things and applying the things I learn.  When I was actually in college and grad school, you couldn't shut me up once I got going about something I had learned or read and once I had babbled all about it to one person, the information was with me - learned.  There is something about sharing what I learn with others that helps me to more fully understand it myself.

It was really difficult to make myself go back to work yesterday - I had a three-day weekend because of taking my birthday off and at least half the country seemed to have yesterday off because of Martin Luther King Day.  I tried to give myself a pep talk by asking myself, rhetorically, I thought, what on earth I would do if I didn't go to work.  Unfortunately, I was prepared, and started listing things I would do if I stayed home.  Ultimately, I convinced me to go to work because I knew we were in for some nasty weather and I wanted to leave myself the option of calling out today if it really was bad.

That's exactly what I did.  I'm pretty sure it was fate or possibly predestination (in other words: I had predetermined to take the day off if the weather was even remotely hazardous to travel).  After thawing out from my walk home in 20something degree weather since the buses felt the best way to honor MLK was to make sure Rosa had to walk, I started making dinner.  As I was shredding my cabbage and boiling the farfalle, Mister drew my attention to the little sparkly bits of snow dancing around in the streetlamps' light.  By the time I put dinner on the table, there was actually a coating on the roads which surprised the heck out of me - I didn't think we were actually supposed to get an accumulation!  Through dinner and clean-up, the snow continued to fall - just tiny little guys, but enough of them that the 20-degree streets didn't stand a chance - and then they got bigger.  By the time we were heading to bed, the snow had turned from fluffy flakes of happy to ominous drops of freezing rain, ricocheting off the windows before coating the snow-covered streets with a layer of ice.

I got up in the morning and it looked like the rain had cleared up most of the streets, so I had some tea and breakfast, but as I listened to the moaning of the wind outside, I became more than just a little curious about the state of things, so I visited weather.com and decided now was as good a time as any to follow SEPTA's tweets and was I ever right.  For the next twenty minutes, as I hemmed and hawed about whether to risk a relapse of my fragile health to go to work today, I was bombarded with updates on this bus being rerouted and that one being cancelled, while this train was late and that one is only going half its normal route, and let's not forget about the trolleys being stopped because of "smoking manhole covers."  I decided the apocalypse was manifesting itself through public transit and said to myself, once again, "what will you do if you stay home?"  This time, though, I made a list of all the ways I would be more productive at home than at work, and when I hit the bottom of the paper, I called out.  It took a minute, including writing time, by the way.

What on earth does all this have to do with learning, you ask?
Well, nothing really, aside from allowing me a little extra time to cook dinner and forcing me to be introspective about something I thought I'd left mostly in my past for the sake of helping a student with her homework.  So, on to dinner!

Since I was well-rested (yes, I left out the part about going back to bed after leaving the list to be completed upon re-waking), I had plenty of energy to devote to making Chickpea Piccata, served on a fluffy cloud of Caulipots, both from Appetite for Reduction.  Here are some things I learned:

1. If Isa wants to help people lose weight, she needs to stop making her recipes so darn tasty.  I have not had trouble keeping my promise to my mom yet.

2. Thanks to Isa and Dynise, I have become much more daring with garlic and with shallots.  There was a time, about a month ago, actually, when I couldn't fathom preparing garlic in anyway that did not involved pressing it so that it would more or less dissolve innocuously into my food.  Now?  Check out these huge slices of garlic:

3. Shallots make me cry.  I've seen some funny pictures of onion goggles, but I've never really had any problems with onions, green onions, shallots, or garlic making me tear up...until tonight.  It was the weirdest thing; I was slicing the shallots and all of a sudden, I noticed my eyes were stinging and about to tear up and I stood upright and allowed myself a moment of confusion - it's not like tonight was the first time I'd sliced shallots.  I think the difference tonight is that I was wearing my glasses, not my contacts - can anyone else confirm this or am I just a freak?

4. Angst loves when I stay home, but he doesn't like to share.  He demonstrated his defiance tonight by hopping up onto Mister's dinner chair while I was filling our bowls and making himself very comfy.

Look at that scowl!  He was very clearly saying, MY chair.  When Mister came to sit for dinner, Angst just gave him that same angry look, as if to say, "find another chair. This one's taken."

He scrammed when Mister made like he was going to sit on him, though.

The Chickpea Piccata was absolutely fabulous.  From the minute I opened this book for the first time, that was high up on my list of things I wanted to make, and it did not disappoint.  I want to share Isa's intro because it perfectly sets you up for the amazing flavors about to meet and mingle in your mouth:

A plate of piccata is like an instant fancy dinner with all the stops.  One second you're just sitting there, all normal-like, but the moment that first forkful of lemony wine bliss touches your tongue, you're transported to candlelight and tablecloths, even if you're sitting in front of the TV.

I served the piccata over Caulipots, as Isa suggests.  Mister and I love the way this girl thinks; one of the things we missed the most after "going veg" was mashed potatoes, which doesn't make any sense, since potatoes are not an animal.  We realized, though, that there are very few things in our diet with which you can serve mashed potatoes.  Isa has changed all of that, though, with her genius scheme to used mashed potatoes as the starchy base, rather than the standard rice/grain or pasta - we love her for it.

The caulipots were unbeatable - they were just a little lighter than regular mashed potatoes, but packed a powerful punch, flavor-wise and nutritionally.  I used only two Tbsp of broth in the mashing, yet the whole batch was perfectly seasoned from that + olive oil + little bit of salt.  This may very well become my standard "mashed potatoes" recipe.  If I haven't said it yet, please do yourself and everyone you cook for a big favor: break open your piggy bank and head to your local bookstore to get yourself a copy of Appetite for Reduction.

sometimes I lose it

One of my favorite parts of every week happens tomorrow night.  Yes, it's Friday, but it's not my non-stop, can't-slow-down social life that has me to excited: tomorrow night I get to plan my new menu.  Yes, I know that makes me a total dork, but I'm actually okay with that.  I truly enjoy sitting down with my cookbooks and thumbing through, thinking of new ways to wow the Mister and get the most out of the money I plunked down at some point for the cookbook.

It's really a soothing, creative process for me.  I have a whole ritual!  Here is how tomorrow night will go, give or take an exciting detour I may take on my way home from work:
Come home and make dinner
Clean up dishes
Open wine while dinner photos import
Post something fun and entertaining about dinner or how relieved I am that the week finally ended but OMG I can't believe the week is already over and next week is Thanksgiving and there's only one full week left of November
Whew!
Then, finally, I will pour [another] glass of Beaujolais Nouveau (which just hit stores today!) and sit down to plan the new menu, including my part of Thanksgiving dinner.

The longer I spend developing my menu and poring over recipes, the more courageous I become.  The wine might help, but I've noticed this phenomenon even without my dessert buddy.  As I work my way through cookbooks I've perused possibly hundreds of times, my eyes urgently scanning the pages for one recipe I haven't made yet that doesn't contain an ungodly number of things Mister hates or might kill him, I become enveloped in adventure and make, at times, outlandish decisions I might have otherwise passed over.  As a result, at least once a month, I end up in my kitchen, staring at my menu and thinking, "Really, Natalie?" or "What was I thinking?"  I end up saving the "weird" recipe until I have run out of other options, and finally...

I make Curry Fennel Cauliflower Bake from La Dolce Vegan, and wonder when I became so self-doubting.  I mean, really, isn't it possible that I know what I'm doing by now and I can just trust the part of me that thought this recipe was a good idea in the first place?

It was every bit as good as it looks.  The spice blend melded with the cauliflower and rubbed itself into the tofu while it baked, creating a savory meal complete with the perfectly conflicting textures of cauliflower and tofu.  The peas provided a nice squish of sweet in an otherwise umami-dominated dinner and the rice balanced out the light heat from the pepper that made my lips tingle and burn toward the last few bites.

That's all for now, folks - tomorrow I'll be wading through the wealth of amazing recipes suggested by VegNews to round out the perfect vegan Thanksgiving.  I'm still overwhelmed by the volume of recipes collected in the email I received, so if my brain is spectacularly broken by tomorrow evening, I may save my poking around until Saturday.  Sleep sweetly, MoFos!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

I love October.  What's not to love?  In the Northern Hemisphere, the weather is cooling into a delicious (if not sniffle-inducing) autumn.  Having recently become a train commuter, I'm looking forward to watching the trees turn beautiful colors without having to worry if the jackhole in front of me just slammed on his brakes to stare at the accident on the other side of the highway.  Autumn in Pennsylvania is gorgeous, specifically October, which is Pennsylvania's most popular wedding month for that very reason.  So, of course, I'm also looking forward to another celebration of marriage this weekend between a dear friend and his ladylove.  I'm also looking forward to driving the Audi A4 I reserved through PhillyCarShare to arrive at this blessed event in style.

The end of the month will find Mister and I winging our way to sunny Southern California.  Mister will be attending the much-coveted BlizzCon with our brother-in-law and my dear sis-in-law and I will be frolicking old school style (but with the addition of her adorable little son).  I'm already starting my list of awesome places I've read about and desperately want to visit at least once, including Real Food Daily.

love her!

We'll be flying home the day before our anniversary, so we can celebrate by dining at our favorite restaurant instead of flying and going deaf from the air pressure changes.

Last night I made Pasta Jambalaya from Vegan Express and aside from finally fully cooking the celery, there wasn't much to say about it.  Tonight, I reprised Isa's Braised Cauliflower in Three-Seed Sauce from Vegan With A Vengeance.

It was magnificent - far better than I remembered it, and I remembered it being pretty darn good!  There was some neat interaction going on between the tomatoes and seeds that really enhanced the flavor of the dish.  Another part of it might be the minced poblano pepper I sauteed with the garlic in place of the jalapenos called for in the recipe.  Ordinarily, I leave out hot peppers without bothering to substitute anything in place of them, but I've been wanting to cook with poblanos and the one I picked up at Whole Foods was just so pretty and ready to be cooked.  I'll admit, I was a little trepidatious when I was mincing it, since I touched my tongue to a piece and it was a little burny.  I seemed to have cooked out all the hot, though, because it seemed to enhance the sweetness of the sauce which dressed the cauliflower.  It also looked pretty.

Next week is looking to be a bit hectic at work.  We greeted the fourth fiscal quarter today, which generally means a serious slow-down in activity for our sales agents (not many people are eager to lose weight heading into a season peppered with parties and eating - that's what January is for.  It's like a month-long hangover from the festivities that took place between Halloween and New Years.), but it means a serious ramping up in the training department.  In preparation for the penitent clogging up our phone lines come January 1st, now is the time that my boss and I scramble to train roughly 80-100 new hires before Christmas.

What I'm trying to say is this: don't be surprised if the new menu (up soon) is comprised mainly of express meals.

chickpeas and chocolate

Before you ask (in case your memory is super-sharp), No, I have not made chocolate hummus yet.  It is most definitely still on my imaginary To Do list, but it is yet unmade.

Why don't we back up to last night's dinner then?  We took a second go-around with Colleen's Saffron-Spiked Moroccan Stew, but this time I left off the saffron.  Despite that exclusion, when I tasted the simmering broth halfway through, it was undeniably sweeter than I thought it should be.  I held off on adding a glug of tamari like I really really wanted to and instead doused it with a healthy shake of salt.

It's really a very attractive dish - bright and colorful, just brimming with the colors you can imagine as scarves tied to the poles holding up tents at a Moroccan bazaar.  I served it over top of Israeli couscous, and I would like to record here, for future reference (most likely my own), that it takes about 7 minutes of boiling for Israeli couscous to be al dente.  Israeli couscous is delightfully light, so it felt like I was eating a fluffy white cloud.

Mister had picked up something I consider utterly revolting at the corner store because he thought it would help him sleep.  We've been having another fun bout of insomnia, so at this point, I was pretty on board with almost anything non-habitforming that would help him get some much-needed sleep, but I really wasn't expecting this:

Drank is formulated to thoroughly relax the person drinking (dranking?) it.  On the back, where it touts the chillaxing ingredients, such as melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips, it also carries the following "pieces of advice."  It is not advised to have more than 2 servings in a 24 hour period - mind you, there are two servings in one can.  Also, it is advised that the user drinker not drive while drinking it.  I read a review of this magical beverage and became a little doubtful that it was anything more than some genius attempt to make a dime off my husband's inability to sleep soundly.

He wanted to drink it right after dinner, because he was thirsty.  I had to beg him to hold off until later,  "just in case" it worked and knocked him out.  Meanwhile, I was hurrying to get a batch of cupcakes done by Midnight - Mister's birthday.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, frosted with melted Dark Chocolate Dreams.  These are absolutely the richest baked treats I have ever made.  They are so good, but holy cow!  These are the first cupcakes I have ever made that were so intense, Mister and I could both only handle one heaven-sent cupcake each. 

I just realized how gluttonous that sounded.  Unfortunately, I'll take this moment to confess - normally, if I make cupcakes or muffins, we each have 2 right out of the oven, and if I make cookies, we usually have between 5-6 the night I make them.

Anyway, Mister made it to Midnight, I said "Happy Birthday" and presented him with a frosted cupcake (since birthday cakes always have icing), and then I let him drink his Drank.  I tried a sip, and ironically, it tasted like a watered-down energy drink.  I prefer the bite of Red Bull, as well as its effects, but I will say one thing:  Mister slept like the dead last night.

We had a pretty relaxed day in celebration of Mister's Birthday as well as his first day off since last week.  We slept until about 11:30, which is more and more rare these days, and after a leisurely time waking up, we took a little field trip to Mister's Toy Store: Radio Shack.  He was like a child, rifling gleefully through bins to find the strange little things he will stick together to create a sound-making apparatus (some people call them amplifiers).  About 30 minutes later and a bit lighter of purse, we left with Mister's Bag O' Goodies in tow and he's been playing with them pretty much all day.

Meanwhile, I made Curried Cauliflower, Garbanzo, and Tomato Salad from The Complete Vegan Cookbook.  It had to marinate for a few hours, so I started my chopping, mixing, and marinating during the rainy afternoon.  By dinner time, all I had to do was tear up the butter lettuce and scoop the vegetables over top of it.

In addition to being pretty, it tasted pretty good.  Although the cauliflower was steamed before I marinated it, it was still pretty crunchy and it took me a while to chew my way through dinner.  Nevertheless, it was filling but not bloating and now I am relaxing with a few squares of dark chocolate and a glass (or two) of Montepulciano.

Philly's a little seedy sometimes

There's some kind of zen going on in this picture...maybe it's the accidental placement of the bay leaves so that they vaguely resemble

In any case, when I was mixing up my seeds and spices for Braised Cauliflower with Three-Seed Sauce from VwaV, I was struck by how pretty they were, so I snapped a picture [or five].  This was my first time cooking with fennel seeds and I can't say I wasn't a little leery.  I have not had much experience with licorice outside of these beauties:

The idea of integrating the taste of a popular childhood candy into my dinner made me both cautious and curious about the outcome, but one whiff of the newly opened spice had my head spinning with ways to integrate it into at least one recipe of my next round of creativity.  It came out really well and what was really fun was discovering the flavor of each bite - sometimes it was fennel-heavy, then just when you weren't expecting it at all, a smack of cumin would take over and recolor the whole experience.

I served it over bulghur because I had forgotten Jasmine rice cooks as long as brown rice (okay, maybe not for forever but at least for 40 minutes) and I didn't start it early enough.  It neither complimented nor distracted from the dish - the cauliflower and tomatoes definitely shone.  I used Fire Roasted diced tomatoes because I like the flavor they lend to Indian-style dishes.  It was a very pleasant inaugural dinner after our vacation, including a flavor-packed mixed greens salad, topped with carrots, strawberries, and kalamata olives.  I dare you to imagine that flavor combination - it was unique, but definitely worked.

Here's the thing that blows my mind, though: I found this recipe in the Side Dishes section of VwaV.  Granted, Isa does say you could serve it over a grain and turn it into an entree, but seriously - what feast would this be a side dish for??

Yes, that is my full to the brim 3-quart saute pan.  I did add a 15 oz can of beans, but I really don't think that made a huge difference since I was already regretting my use of the saute pan rather than the higher-sided 6-quart stock pot by the time I added the cauliflower to the seeds.

I like my coffee like I like my attitude...bold and dark

I'm still trying to get used to this "new" schedule I'm working...Thursday is such a strange day to be off from work and it's the only day that I am 100% work-free. I am off from my pay-the-bills job on Saturday as well (which makes going in on Friday seem ten times more pointless), but I teach for a few hours, so it's still at least half a work day.

I took my time waking up and then a little more time to get out of bed, but eventually, my belly began protesting "seriously, woman? there is an emptiness that can only be filled with waffles and coffee." So, I dragged myself all five steps to the kitchen and methodically used as little energy as possible to pop two frozen waffles in the toaster oven while the coffee brewed. Hold that image in your head for a moment while I ramble about the quality of coffee and how you can taste the difference between good and bad coffee even when you can't taste anything else.

Last week, I found myself staring down a wall of organic coffee at Whole Foods, primarily because I didn't want to deal with the garbage at Superfresh anymore...I don't know when it happened, but my tastebuds seem to be constantly evolving. Once upon a time, I could not stand coffee and I could not understand how my friends could drink cup after cup of that sludge. Then, one day, as I watched a friend prepare her coffee, it looked enticing for no good reason. I asked if I could have a sip, and that was the day I suddenly liked coffee. Seriously - it was like a light switch. Same thing happened with ketchup, and I'm waiting on pickles and beer, but I'm not there yet. Anyway - back to coffee.

For years, I have been perfectly content to drink Maxwell House Colombian coffee, and occasionally splurge on Eight O'Clock Bean or Starbucks; Godiva or Gloria Jeans if we're feeling really saucy. Mister and I simultaneously discovered that we hate French Roast, so we try to stick with Colombian or Hazelnut (by the way, EOB has the best hazelnut out there, seriously). When I was at WF, I selected from this Wall of Coffee the relatively nondescriptly named Vail Blend. My favorite Starbucks coffee is Cafe Verona, because it is dark, intense, a little bitter, but tempered with a very subtle chocolatey taste. This little "sleeper" coffee could be its twin, so I was in love from the first brewing.

After we ran out, Mister replaced it with Maxwell House Master Blend. I don't know what that means, but I know I was about halfway to work when I took a sip from my travel mug and upon swallowing, grimaced and said out loud (to my purse?), "Wow, that is some awful coffee."

I needed to grab some things at WF today anyway, so you can imagine a new bag of bold bitterness found its way into my basket. The point is, the last pot-worth of the old bag was tucked away on the top shelf and this morning I drank coffee that didn't suck.

Tonight, I finally made the Aloo Chana Soup from The Garden of Vegan. It was even better than I thought it would be! When I was in the Really Weird Stuff aisle today, a convenient little gem was tucked between pickled sushi ginger and something that wasn't even in English - a jar of pre-minced ginger. I thought it might come in handy, and it did - tonight! One of the preserving agents was evaporated cane juice, though, so I think it added more sweetness to the tomatoes and therefore, the soup, than would have been present otherwise. After being sick for a week, though, there was no part of me patient enough to peel and finely mince fresh ginger, so it worked out just fine.

The primary reason I made the soup tonight, despite the fact that tomorrow's highest temperature isn't supposed to hit the freezing mark, was that I was making a side dish. Look how fancy I am. I was all about the convenience foods when I went shopping today - being sick makes me slightly less ambitious. I got some pre-cut cauliflower and knew I needed to use it immediately. Plus, I was super excited to make a "recipe" I found right after I got too sick to cook. I found it on one of the blogs you can link to on the right side of the page - Your Vegan Mom. It's a super simple way of roasting cauliflower and making it as incredibly addicting as she writes in her blog - check it out.

neither before nor after

On the ride home from work tonight, I spent some time thinking about which of the three dinners left on my menu I would make. I knew I really ought to make the Chickpea-Chard-Harissa dish since I don't know how much longer the chard will hang on, but unfortunately, none of the four stores I visited on my last day off had harissa in stock - in fact one of the smaller-but-fruitier stores didn't even know what I was talking about! I figure it's probably important to include that ingredient since it's part of the title, so I decided to refrain from making it until I can get my hands on some harissa.

I decided to make Potato and Cauliflower Curry (aka Aloo Gobi) because it's one of Mister's favorites and because I was just telling a new employee at work how I don't think I could live without curries. This was in the context of trying to prevent a new customer from getting lamb or curry spice in her order, since she was apparently severely allergic.

Anyway, I have never made this particular Aloo Gobi recipe because I think I might have at least half a dozen other recipes for it that work just fine. However, I was too lazy to cook from more than one book this week, so I decided to give this never-before-tried recipe a try. If I had read the recipe a little closer, I might have used my big, deep pot rather than overflowing my saute pan. By the way - I am definitely going to have to replace/augment the saute pan situation. Must have 5 quarts in a future life. It made a lot.

I really can't tell how I feel about the combination of fresh ginger and a tomato sauce/broth. On the one hand, it had the most fascinating aroma, but on the other hand, the antiseptic qualities of ginger really brought out the acidity of the tomatoes and not in a good way. Since I was a child, my way to make things taste better has been to add salt, but I don't think that would have helped. It wasn't bad - don't get me wrong - but I don't think I will make this particular recipe again, when I have so many other recipes that I adore. It looked nice, though:
It is so cold in Philadelphia. I think soup is inevitable on next week's menu.

what makes a curry famous, anyway?

Today was very food-centered. I started the day with a tasty and very clean-feeling breakfast. I would almost say "pure" but I'm not sure how that can be applied when a butter substitute is involved. It was quite simple, really - I had run out of blueberries, but still wanted fruit in my first meal of the day. I remembered I had pluots, a hybrid of a plum and apricot, and I just couldn't see how my Stonyfield yogurt would fit, so I left it out in favor of two slices of my favorite multigrain bread (Whole Foods store brand) with just a little bit of Earth Balance spread on top for some fat. So my carbalicious breakfast was: two breads and a pluot (Mister is insisting on calling them plumpricots and I think I like that better - it's much more fun to say!). The reason I got the plumpricots to begin with was that I thought they had a fun shape - when you cut them open and pit them, they kind of look like hearts:

A few hours (and cups of coffee) after breakfast, I ate the last Tomato Rosemary Scone and headed out to buy the week's groceries. I confess, I was influenced in my decisions today...you could almost call it peer pressure, but the pressure was self-inflicted after looking at product reviews on a couple of my new favorite blogs: Chocolate Covered Katie and Vegan Eats & Treats. If you go to those blogs, it probably will not come as a surprise to you that my off-the-beaten-path additions to my grocery basket were:
Larabar Coconut Cream Bar
Larabar Banana Bread Bar
Larabar Jocalat Chocolate Mint Bar
Think Fruit Chocolate Pomegranate Bar
Clif Nectar Vanilla, Lemon, Cashew Bar
I have been known to get the Nectar bars in the past - in fact, that one is my favorite flavor...subtly sweet with the most sublime aftertaste of vanilla. What I love about the Larabars and the Nectar bar is that they each have between 3 and 5 ingredients. That's it! I'm not of the opinion that the fewer ingredients a meal has, the healthier it is, but when it comes to prepackaged "processed" foods, it's nice to see not everything has to have unpronouceable ingredients that sound more like chemicals than food. There's something beautifully ironic about turning over a Banana Bread bar and seeing these ingredients: almonds, dates, and bananas. Seriously. No (added) sugar, no flour, no corn syrup, rice syrup, etc....just fruit and nuts. I'm totally psyched. The Think Fruit bar had the most ingredients, tipping the scales at a mighty TEN. Anyway, I'll let you know what I think of the bars as I eat them.

Upon returning from grocery shopping, I ate the other plumpricot as a snack to hold me over until dinner. Just as I was getting ready to start dinner, my phone rang - because my mother has had and still has amazing timing for calling me. For Christmas last year, I had compiled some of my favorite recipes from my ever-growing collection of cookbooks and recipe websites in a small splatter-proof book for her. Tomorrow night she plans to make this amazing recipe for plum tomatoes with fresh basil and garlic over pasta and wanted to ask me a few prep questions. We talked about other stuff, too, but it just amuses the heck out of me that when people in my family have cooking questions, they come to me - 5 years ago I could barely boil water. Now my sister-in-law calls me for a zucchini recipe, my sister calls me about pomegranate molasses, and my mother wants to know if I really slice the garlic or if she can just press it.

So anyway, when I finally got to cooking, I made Satyamma's Famous Cauliflower Curry. It was very good and I got to make a crazy paste/sauce in my food processor, but it really wasn't anything all that special...so it makes me wonder what makes a curry famous? Is it one of those things where you and all your friends are planning a potluck and someone says, "Hey, Satyamma, can you make that famous curry of yours?" because you've made it so damn many times that people know you as "Satyamma with the curry?"

Anyway, the curry comes from The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. It's a charming book, written in the author's own penmanship and illustrated throughout with funny little ink sketches of food. There's even a picture of a pear with angel wings! I don't like to share other people's recipes (I hope I do a good enough job plugging for their books that you go and buy a copy to support their hard and hungry work!), but I want to give you a basic idea of what was in this nutty sauce I made in the food processor, so here are the ingredients without quantities:
shredded coconut
roasted peanuts
mustard seeds
garlic
ginger
turmeric
toasted cumin seeds
ground cloves/allspice
toasted sesame seeds
cayenne
water

Anyway, it was a good little curry, though surprisingly bland for everything that went into the sauce! Mister actually added salt to his food...we never have a salt shaker at the table.

magical talking devices

Every once in a while, I have this moment of clarity where I find the time to truly appreciate something that I take for granted every other day/hour. A couple of days ago, I was driving and suddenly I realized how cool that was. Now, I drive every day, just about, and there are times my 60 mile roundtrip for work everyday makes me want to sell my car, but a few days ago I realized how amazing it really is that this piece of machinery yields to my every whim. With just a tug this way of the steering wheel and some gentle (or sometimes quite abrupt) pressure on a pedal at my feet, I control the way the vehicle operates and it does what I command (this was not always so with my last car).

I had another one of those moments earlier today. This one is not nearly so deep and philosophical - actually, I think it's more comical than anything else, but I still appreciate it. Today's amazing moment was when my sister called me from a grocery store in Arizona. Here I am in Pennsylvania and my cellphone rings and connects me instantly with my sister, wandering the aisles of a grocery store thousands of miles away, asking me where to find pomegranate molasses (because she's such a wonderful sister that she is going to make a modified version of the Pomegranate Saute for a potluck). I know, you think I'm crazy, but that's because you're taking this moment for granted.

Stop and reflect on that story for a moment. Cellphones, though invasive at times, are magical!

Today was a fun day. First, Mister and I went to the spice store to get red lentils (and ground cloves, crystallized ginger, and black licorice, because I really did marry a man just like my father), then we went to a diner for breakfast at 3:30 PM. We're still celebrating his birthday, and if breakfast at 3 (after we'd been up for hours) was what he wanted, that's what we were doing. After stuffing ourselves full of omelets and potatoes (and craptastic coffee), we waddled home in the 95 degree heat and were thrilled by the still-working a/c in our home.

For dinner, we had Red Lentil Coconut Curry (thus the trip to get more red lentils):
Red Lentil Coconut Curry
serves 6-8
Spice mixture:
1 Tbsp ground coriander
1 Tbsp curry powder
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbsp canola or olive oil
2 cups water, divided
3/4 cup jasmine rice
2 large carrots
1 small head cauliflower
14.5 oz petite diced tomatoes
1 cup peas
1 cup red lentils
15 oz lite coconut milk
1/2 tsp honey

Bring 1 1/2 cups water to a boil. Add rice, lower heat to lowest possible setting, cover and simmer 20-25 minutes, until all water is absorbed.
Meanwhile, mix together all the spices and salt in a small bowl. Quarter and cube the carrots and cut the cauliflower into bite-sized florets.
Heat the oil in a large, deep pot and add the spices, stirring continuously for one minute. Add carrots and cauliflower and stir to coat with spices. Allow to cook for a minute or two, then add the undrained tomatoes and 1/2 cup of water. Stir well to dissolve spices, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cover; simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in peas, lentils, coconut milk and honey. Cover and simmer gently for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes. Serve over rice.

It was a nice tasty birthday curry. Now I'm ready for leftover birthday cake!