I love my tastebuds

I have had a couple of great-tasting days! I have finished my bars, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow (I've gotten myself into a habit now), although I'm thinking of "sharing" one of Mister's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Clif bars.

Yesterday I had my Chocolate Coffee Jocalat bar. I have to say, this was my second experience with these bars and I can see why people love them! This one was deliciously rich...I couldn't necessarily taste the coffee, but I think it served to enhance the very dark, bittersweet chocolate taste. It was dense and satisfying, with just the right amount of nuts, and tasted like clean food should. Furthermore, all of the ingredients are organic, and if that isn't enough, the coffee used is Fair Trade Certified. Even though it had only dates in it with three different kinds of nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, and cashews), it still counts as a fruit serving. A chocolate fruit? Don't mind if i do!

Today's grand finale reached its culmination in the Cinnamon Roll Larabar. This was incredible. When I opened the wrapper, it smelled like the inside of my cinnamon jar. Cinnamon is both a favorite scent and a favorite flavor of mine, so this bar was the perfect way to end this week's parade of alterna-fruit-servings. Again, it was the perfect combination of nuts and sweet cinnamony goodness. It tasted just like the wonderful gooey stuff between the rolls of a cinnamon roll, but there really wasn't any taste of the roll itself. I'm okay with that.

Last night I just heated up some of the leftover Mediterranean Risotto and finished the Killer Wheat Bread (be careful, it contains wheat!). I think the problem is the sun-dried tomatoes...I cut the quantity by more than half and they're still too strong...Next time, we'll try something in place of them, or just leave them out in favor of the olives and roasted peppers.

Upon his return from work, hubby gave me a present!

I am so loved!

On a related note...kind of...we've hit a serious cool-down here in Philadelphia (which Mister and I are absolutely relishing). I had strawberries and yogurt earlier this week, but today I happily had my very first oatmeal of the season! It was wonderful - I cooked the oats in unsweetened soymilk and threw in a handful of dried cranberries about halfway through. I didn't take any pictures because I can barely see in the morning (squint squint), so aiming a camera is pretty much out of the question. Anyway, my recent reading has inspired me to get a little more creative in my oatmeal preparation this fall and winter.

Ordinarily (as in, for the past two winters), I cook my oatmeal (real oats, none of that instant crap - it's hard to get whole grains when they're ground to oblivion) in apple juice and water with some cinnamon sprinkled in. Every once in a while I got fancy (read: I ran out of apple juice) and made my oatmeal with almond/soy milk and swirled in this delightful pure maple syrup, given as a gift from my husband's boss, in a real mason jar! Well, taking a cue from Chocolate Covered Katie I think I'm going to do something completely out of character tomorrow morning:

I'm going to cook my oatmeal in soymilk and then throw in a truffle or two and stir until it melts! In my head, that tastes so good...

Finally, for dinner tonight I reprised Nava's BBQ-Flavored White Beans and Sausage with Spinach. It was just as good (and fast to make) this time, and instead of roasting some potatoes I heated up the leftover coconut rice and served the BBQ beans over that. Also, this time I used Tofurky Italian Sausage, rather than their Bratwurst. It has a bit of kick to it, I'll tell you that! It was almost too exciting - I think without being served on that creamy rice to calm it down, it would have been too much for my poor little tastebuds.

bring on baking season!

The perfect way to welcome September - with Apple Pie! Okay, it was just a larabar, but it was delightful!

This was a dense and very sweet bar. I was initially inclined to think it was too nutty, but after a few more bites I realized that the nuts helped to calm the flavor some. It reminded me a bit of the Apple Cinnamon Nectar bars (which also have gorgeous packaging), but easier to eat, due to the nuts - the Nectar bar is just too sweet.

The first thing I noticed when I unceremoniously ripped open the wrapper was the wonderful smell of apple and cinnamon...absolutely one of my favorite scent combinations. It was like tearing open the wrapping paper on Autumn (my favorite season).

Now, when I say "baking season," I am primarily thinking about tasty little treasures made up of warm syrupy fruit, smothered with an oaty, streusal topping, or maybe the melt-in-your-mouth crumbs of a coffee cake, or these fantastic little cookies baked with freshly cut apple chunks. However, I also love baked dinners. They provide warmth from the inside out in a way only slowly cooked foods can...the rich scent of lasagna or pastitsio, the tenderness of stuffed peppers baked in the oven, rather than on a skillet, and the inherent sweetness roasting brings out in vegetables. Also, baked dinners allow me a little bit more time to relax in the evening, as opposed to the whirlwind of perpetual motion that leaves me dancing around my small kitchen, tending to three pots at once and hoping I don't burn the garlic.

My inaugural baked meal (welcome, dear September!) was Isa's BBQ Pomegranate Tofu, served on a bed of coconut rice (with real toasted - and almost burnt - shredded coconut). I love this tofu - I keep saying "this is my favorite," but seriously - this is my favorite tofu. It's baked to perfection, then smothered in the best BBQ sauce ever and baked some more. We ate every last morsel!

salt and strong spice make everything nice

Maybe. They certainly make everything pungent and made my tongue numb by the end of dinner. The leftovers have become Mister's responsibility to finish.

First things first: today's bar was the Larabar Coconut Cream Pie. It smelled SO GOOD and fortunately enough, it tasted pretty good, too. In fact, if I ever truly went vegan, these bars would be a phenomenal replacement for Almond Joy bars (which I also love). The interesting thing about that is that there is no chocolate in this bar, but it really does taste like Almond Joy.

Again, my only grievance against this bar is the high calorie content and fat - 200 calories with 10g fat, of which a whopping 7g are saturated fat! In any case, I'm currently justifying future purchases of this bar with the knowledge that it still has a better nutritional profile than Almond Joy does, though just barely. The ingredients are much cleaner, of course, and as I thought more about the whole situation, I thought "Lara wouldn't put something that bad in her bars...there must be a reason for the saturated fat."

I knew already that the source of the saturated fat was the coconut and extra virgin coconut oil listed 2nd and 5th in the ingredients, and I have heard rumors that the saturated fat in coconut oil is not the unhealthy, cholesterol-raising, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen saturated fat in animal flesh. Never content with rumors, I did some research.

As it turns out, coconut oil, and the saturated fat it contains, may have a host of health benefits. A theme among many articles I read was that the reason Palm and Coconut oils have such a bad reputation is because American oil-producing farmers (ironically, soy farmers) were feeling threatened by these "tropical oils," so they got together and launched a massive PR mudslinging to dirty their names. It worked, coupled with the knowledge that the sat-fat in animal products has very negative health effects when eaten to excess (in America? NEVER!) There have even been some studies touting the medical possibilities of coconut oil to cure cancer and a host of immunodeficiency diseases, but I'm not willing to go there just yet.

Granted, the folks at www.coconutoil.com are probably more than a little biased in their research, but after reading through several articles by several authors and finding a lot of similar thought, I feel like it's at least worth a read if you'd like to get some info and form your own opinion about coconut oil. I just think it's cool that it's solid when stored under 76 degrees.

Actually, I have a second grievance against my bar today: it did not keep me feeling full as long as the other bars did. I don't know if it was because I was much more active at work today than I sometimes am, running from one end of the building and back again several times, but I was definitely feeling hungry again within about 2 hours of eating it. Fortunately, I also had an apple. Maybe today is just a hungry day, though.

Back to our title, though - dinner narrowly averted complete disaster tonight, saved only by my nose and my (at times) very strange husband. I've been struggling to make the Five-Spice Vegetables and Tofu on Coffee Rice for a little more than a week now. Every time I start to make it, I get distracted by something on my list I'd rather make. Well, I knew from my last look in the crisper that if I didn't use the broccoli tonight, it might sprout legs and run away tomorrow, so I made up my mind that tonight was the night.

I put on my new apron (yay!) and set about chopping the vegetables, changed my mind about the Coffee Rice, opting instead to cook the rice in green tea (resulting in an amazing aroma!), and actually almost managed to accidentally make black-bottomed tofu. Everything was going well and when I started stirfrying the vegetables, I realized I had left out the Five Spice powder for which the recipe is named. Still stirfrying (is that a word?), I opened the cabinet above my head, grabbed a bag of spice and a measuring spoon and upon opening the bag decided the one tablespoon I had written into the recipe would be WAY too much. So I did a teaspoon instead, sprinkled it on and added the salt, stirred it up really good and smelled the weirdest thing ever... So I looked at the bag of Five Spice again and realized that in my hurry I had accidentally added a teaspoon of ground cloves to my vegetables. I turned off the heat and stood there pondering my wok, trying to discern if I had actually ruined dinner.

I figured Mister would let me know.

So I put everything out on the table like we were really going to eat it and then waited for my dear husband's reaction. In a nutshell: he liked it a lot (he likes weird food anyway) and because of the clove scent he kept expecting the tofus to be ham and kept being surprised that they weren't. When he went back for seconds (braver than I), he tried to add some spices to enhance the ham taste. I never cared much for ham myself, or any piglet product for that matter (except bacon, now and then), so though I managed to eat everything in my bowl, the idea of eating the leftovers is positively revolting.

Mister suggested renaming the recipe Chai Spice Veggies. Adorable. I think I'd rather leave the Chai spices to teas and baked goods (the Chai Luna Bar is one of my favorites and out of this world!) and try this again in a week or so with the Five Spice Powder already meted out in a prep bowl. I like the idea of Five Spice - it contains all 5 tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory (umami). I love the Chinese for their (apparent) serenity and sense of balance in life.

So, no recipe tonight - I have never been a fan of works-in-progress. I'll share the recipe when it's right, hopefully sometime next week, if I haven't tofu-ed Mister out by the end of this week...I kind of overdid the tofrequency of our tofu dinners this week. Pictures, though!

cloven veggies and tofus in the (massive) wok
mine
Mister's

Oh, there is a happy ending (if you ignore the nutritional information - sometimes I wish I was illiterate)! When we finished dinner, my tongue was numb from all the cloves (thus their medicinal uses), so Mister got me a dessert present! I knew if I read the package before I ate it that I simply wouldn't eat it so I ate it first, then looked at the ingredients and calories and fat content so I would understand why I was never going to eat it again. Like they say, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission...

It was a Mint Brownie sandwich by Nestle Tollhouse. It was so good, even though I knew that shade of green doesn't exist in nature. So I ate it all up and I will worry about the 380 calories, 18g fat with 9g saturated fat (probably not the "good" kind in coconut oil) some other time...actually, I'll probably forget all about it when I go to sleep tonight. Sweet dreams are made of this!

back in black

See? The title's funny because I more or less always wear black.

Anyway...I can't believe I haven't blogged since Tuesday - it's been a very busy and crazy week...I've had time to make and photograph food, but no time to tell stories about it.

Well, that changes now. I'm off from work today, so I can catch you up. Grab a (large) cup of coffee or tea and maybe a small snack and get comfy - this might take a while. I'm not going to go in chronological order, necessarily, but there will be order. First, the bar crawl...

On Wednesday, I had my Larabar Banana Bread Bar, and it was amazing. I am in love. From my taste-testing so far, if someone told me I could eat only one (Lara)bar for the rest of my life, this would be the one.
First of all, I have to admit, the packaging made me happy. Yes, I wear black all the time, but red is my favorite color and yellow just makes me happy (it reminds me of my sister).
It has 3 ingredients: almonds, dates, and unsweetened bananas. That's awesome in my world, and it made for a very intense bar - it was very banana-y but the nuts gave it this fabulous texture - it wasn't chewy the way a Snickers bar would be chewy, but rather the way a good bagel would be.
My only objection to this otherwise perfect bar is that I wish it were lower in calories: 220 to be exact, of which 100 come from the 11g fat in the bar (from the almonds). I understand it's good fat; I'm more focused on the 220 calories - it seems a little high for a snack bar, but there isn't enough substance for it to be a "meal replacement" bar. We'll put it on the Sometimes Foods list.

After work on Wednesday, I had to pick up a few items before heading home and I saw three boxes of Soyjoy bars. I've seen advertisements for these odd little bars in some magazines and they are so off-the-wall, it makes me curious. That's probably the point. At any rate, it worked! My choices were Strawberry, Apple Walnut, and Berry - I thought Apple Walnut was probably the safest bet.

I cracked this baby open at work on Thursday and was immediately taken aback by two things: it was teeny-tiny and so thoroughly baked it almost looked burnt. I wondered if I had purchased a biscotti instead of a bar and pondered my coffee for a moment before just biting off a reasonable chunk. I think it gave me TMJ because my jaw was making some horrible noises while I tried to chew it. The pieces of dried fruit were more like licorice you let sit out too long, and there was way too much flour/batter going on. I nearly threw it in my trashcan after that first bite, but I have a much bigger issue with throwing food away than I do with the possibility of that food disconnecting my lower jaw from my skull, so I finished it, hoping for a similar ending as the Jocalat story. No go, but fortunately, it only took me three more jaw-cracking bites to finish this itty bitty bar.

But hold onto your hats - I do have some positive things to say about the bar (but I still do not EVER plan to put one in my mouth again). One bar has only 140 calories, which makes it a more appropriately portioned snack bar in my world. The truly astounding thing, though, is that it might have been the most effective bar yet at helping me get through to my lunch break. I still won't get it again, especially due to the positively wretched list of ingredients that I should have checked before I bought it but I didn't because I was just so stupidly curious about the hype: Whole Soybean Powder, Raisin, Butter (from milk), Sugar, Walnut, Eggs, Dried Apple, Maltodextrin (natural fiber source), Dried Pineapple, Salt, Parmesan Cheese (from skim milk), Natural Flavors.
Butter? Really? And of course, my favorite: Natural Flavors. This is obviously not a vegan bar, but what really blew my mind was that in the Apple Walnut bar, they had the need to include Parmesan Cheese??? Color me boggled.

Alright, enough bitching about bars. I got a few more when I went food shopping today, so my review is far from complete. We still have the Coconut Cream Larabar and the Nectar bar. Today I added:
Apple Pie Larabar
Chocolate Coffee Jocalat bar
Cinnamon Roll Larabar
I could drool just looking at those names. Let's move on!

On No-Cook Wednesday (and thank heavens - I was in no mood), I came home and reheated the single serving left from the Farro Pasta with Sunshine Sauce and after I had gracefully dumped it into a pretty bowl (my days of eating right from the pot are over), I remembered that I had never really gotten a good picture of it when I made it originally. So here you go:
Still not great, but better than the way it looked hanging out at the bottom of the pot in which it was born.

Finally, last night I made Chickpea Stew with Fried Polenta from my Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. It was everything it promised to be. It was a near-existential experience, because what I imagined it would taste like was exactly what it DID taste like. I was craving something comforting - I still can't find the words to describe how much garbage this week dumped on me - and when I looked at the recipe, I knew this was what would do it. It was hearty and rich, and as Mister pointed out, much more than met the eye. Not that it isn't nice to look at, but there is a lot of good, savory flavor and a very robust texture hiding in the stew. The chunks of fried polenta were the perfect final touch, even if I did manage to accidentally throw two chunks on the floor instead of into the pot. I think I over-processed the saucy part of the stew as well, because when I looked more closely at the recipe, it seemed to indicate a chunkier stew.
A couple of notes about some background items in ^this^ happy still life: Aside from my unfortunate experience with the Soyjoy bar, I have been almost accidentally vegan the past few weeks. It all started with that exciting journey through Vegan Express (which I will reprise briefly in this week's menu) and kept going. I realized that almost all of the recipes I have created have been vegan and that when I use a recipe from my cookbooks, I have been reaching for my vegan cookbooks more. The exceptions are that I do normally have yogurt and berries for breakfast and a couple of times I have finished the "broken" cereal Mister won't eat and have (against my own better taste) used his milk out of sheer morning laziness. I say all of this to lead up to this: The little bowl of parmesan cheese you see was for Mister. It actually didn't even occur to me to use it, and I think that is because of the primarily vegan way I've been eating lately.
The second note is about the wine: it's Cavit Pinot Noir and I would like to take an opportunity to give it a little review. It's the most gorgeous shade of red I've seen in ages! That's where the good part stops. I hate this wine - I'm not going to beat around the bush. I bought the little 4-pack bottles because I don't like what happens to a bottle of red wine if it sits open more than a few hours and I'm not enough of a lush to finish a bottle alone (Mister doesn't drink). I tried the little bottles in 4 different contexts because I couldn't believe how much it sucked - I like Cavit Cabernet, so I couldn't grasp that the Pinot Noir could be this bad. The final bottle tried really hard to work with last night's dinner...but like all the others, I got 2 sips in before I just couldn't convince myself to drink more.
I am at least somewhat convinced, though, that this would be a good choice to accompany filet mignon (for those of you who eat it) because it has the same woody, buttery taste to it as Beringer Cabernet, which is excellent with filet mignon (or was 10 years ago). This wine cannot be consumed by itself...it just can't. It has to go with something, and I have come to the conclusion that vegetarians don't eat anything that it complements.

This is the longest post ever. I'm almost done, so thanks for sticking with me if you're still there. Is your coffee gone yet? I can wait for you to refill if you need to. Seriously, though, all that is left is the new menu and a brief explanation of why it, too, is longer than usual.

1. Five-Spice Vegetables and Tofu on Coffee Rice
2. Peppered Pasta
3. Curried Tofu with Mixed Baby Greens
4. Minty Moroccan Mishmash
5. Red Rice and Beans
6. Mediterranean Risotto
7. BBQ Pomegranate Tofu on Coconut Rice (from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa)
8. BBQ-Flavored White Beans with Sausage and Spinach (from Vegan Express by Nava Atlas)

#1 is a repeat from last week's menu and this menu is 8 items long because of a recent change to my work schedule, resulting in alternating long and shorter weeks. I had forgotten that last week was shorter, so I ran over by one recipe which should start this "week." This coming week is longer, so I had to plan my menu to run from Tonight until next Saturday, because next Sunday is the next opportunity I will have to do serious food shopping. I'm giving Red Rice and Beans another try - I did a little troubleshooting and feel pretty confident I can cut the cooking time in half and actually have fully cooked rice this time! Similarly, I have made a few changes to the Mediterranean Risotto which I would like to try out (one is using Arborio rice to make a real risotto, thereby not making Mister eat "squishy wheat"). To be completely honest, when I decided to make Isa's Pomegranate Tofu (one of my all-time favorite recipes), I immediately thought to reprise Nava's "beans and franks" so I could use up the leftover BBQ sauce. Plus it's tasty and ultra-fast to make.

Despite your inevitable protests, I will return later to post about tonight's dinner!

Jocalat on one shoulder, Seitan on the other...

I decided to start sampling my treasure trove of bars today. Ordinarily, this is how my day goes, eating-wise:
breakfast
morning snack
lunch
afternoon snack (sometimes)
dinner
The morning snack is usually a piece of fruit - grapes, an apple, a pear. However, I've found that they don't hold me over very long. Usually, I have my snack about two hours into my work day, but today I knew I was going to be too busy to eat something then, so I would have to go at 1 hour into work and make it last until a few hours later when I got lunchtime. I figured a 180 calorie fruit, nut, and chocolate bar would do a better job than my grapes, so I just grabbed the first one I could reach and it was my Larabar Jocalat Chocolate Mint bar.

I have to be honest: when I opened it up and smelled it, I thought, 'I don't know about this..." and when I took the first bite, every impulse in me wanted to be completely unladylike and spit it out in my trashcan. I fought the urge to be utterly uncouth and managed to chew it up and swallow. Upon doing so, there came this kind of nice aftertaste that made me pause and say, "let's try another bite." I realized about halfway through the bar that sometimes you just need to give your tastebuds a moment to shift their paradigm. If you are expecting something chocolatey the way that a Hershey's bar or (ooohh) a Dove bar is chocolatey, you will be sorely disappointed. Once I realized that something that had dates as a first ingredient wasn't going to be creamy, it was actually a delightfully dark and bitter chocolate taste on my tongue.

By the way, that little bar got me through four and a half hours of training before I could have my lunch (leftover "black bottom" tofu).

Tonight, I had more fun with gloppy sauces and once again marvelled that I can make them without gobs of some fatty substance. None at all, actually! I made Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan for dinner tonight. Tamari is a japanese version of soy sauce - a little sweeter, a little more piquant, if you will. If you cannot find it (though it is widely available where I live anyway), regular soy sauce will be an adequate substitute. It didn't turn out completely as I imagined, but it was really good, and could be a great noodle dish if I made 3 times as much sauce...and with the huge can of pineapple juice I got (because apparently they don't make single servings anymore), I very easily could have!

Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan with Vegetables

Ingredients
2 Tbsp peanut oil, divided
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
8 oz seitan
1 1/2 cups pineapple juice
3 Tbsp tamari/soy sauce
2 Tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 2 Tbsp warm water
4 cloves garlic, pressed/minced
1 bunch of asparagus*, ends trimmed and bias-cut
2 medium carrots, bias-cut
1 large yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
cooked brown rice

Tear seitan into bite-sized chunks with your hands. Heat 1 Tbsp peanut oil in a large saute pan; add seitan and saute 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until edges start to brown. Combine pineapple juice and tamari, pour into seitan and stir to coat. Bring to simmer, then cover and reduce heat slightly. Braise, stirring once or twice, 10-15 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the garlic and vegetables by pressing all garlic into a small bowl and placing all cut vegetables in another bowl. Heat 1 Tbsp peanut oil and 1 tsp sesame oil on high heat in a large wok or a very large pan - it is ready when the oil shimmers. Add garlic all at once and stirfry rapidly for about 15 seconds. Add vegetables and stir constantly for the first minute, and very frequently for another 2-3 minutes.
Dissolve the cornstarch in water and add to seitan mixture, then pour seitan and sauce into wok to thicken with vegetables. Stirfry one more minute until sauce is thick and gloppy. Remove from heat and serve over rice.
* Note:
Asparagus has an early and short season - usually around early- to mid-springtime. I was absolutely astonished to find not-rotten/rotting asparagus at Whole Foods so I bought it because it competes only with cauliflower for Mister's affections.
Asparagus is "ripe" when it is colorful and closed up - the tips should be tight and pointy, nothing should be "blooming," so to speak. If the heads are opening, you're better off skipping it. Also, always eat asparagus as soon after you buy it as possible - it's a finicky little vegetable without a great deal of stamina.
If you cannot find an appetizing bunch of asparagus, broccoli would make a very close substitute - as far as the stems are concerned, I can't taste a big difference in flavor, only texture.
final note: bias-cut means to slice crosswise diagonally.

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.