Something Old, Some Things New

My friend Shannon requested that I start posting some repeats so that she can be refreshed about some of my older dishes. So, the first of my repeat posts are these Tomato Basil Lasagna Spirals from Vegan Planet. I can't believe it took me until now to repeat this dish. They really are delicious!! This time I made my own pesto subbing sunflower seeds for the pine nuts, and of course omitting the pamesan. These are so good that even the omnivores wouldn't miss the meat from their lasagna. I've decided that these are the next dish I'm making for any pot lucks that may come up.........or maybe I'll just have a dinner party of my own!!!

Also, in the repeat department, we had Lentil Tacos. These appear pretty frequently on our menu, at least once a month, sometimes twice a month. The girls really, really love these tacos (Rob and I do too). They are perfect for a weeknight when I have to teach. I just prepare the lentils ahead of time and when I get home all I have to do is heat the shells, whip up some guacamole, reheat the lentils and voilà, dinner is served.

Now on to something new. The mess of a dish pictured above is the Old Fashioned Pot Pie with Biscuit Crust from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. Absolutely delicious. The steam from the crockpot cooks the drop biscuits so moist and tender. This is comfort food at it's best.

I was short on garbanzo beans so I used half garbanzos and half black eyed peas. Plus, I didn't have any frozen peas so I subbed corn instead. This was so good I was craving it when I woke up the next day, so I finished off the leftovers for breakfast!!!

And the last new dish of this post......Channa Masala. This recipe came from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook, but there are plenty of recipes to be found all over the internet. Again, incredibly simple and absolutely delicious. I made it quite mild so the girls would eat it, and eat it they did. Mairin finished hers and asked for a second helping, and Stella made good work of hers as well. Along with the chickpeas I served the ever popular naan bread from Manjula's Kitchen. Everyone here loves this naan so much I have to double the recipe!! This time I subbed coconut milk yogurt instead of soy yogurt and the results were fantastic. I think the consistency of coconut milk yogurt is more comparable to dairy yogurt.

And finally, is it just me, or are the rest of you finding it very difficult to be inspired in the dead of winter? There's nothing local at the grocery store, there's no CSA bounty, nothing growing in the garden. All of that equals uninspired resorting to cookbooks for me. I feel like I haven't created my own dish in months. I have my CSA application hanging on the refrigerator waiting for me, but May is sooooo far off. I guess the cookbooks will be getting some good use for the next few months!!

Falafel

Last night for dinner we had falafel in a pita with tabbouleh. I've eaten falafel a number of times, but this was my first attempt at making them. All in all I'd say it was almost a success. They tasted delicious, they were devoured by the girls (always a sign of success), and Rob and I were left longing for more. Frying was the unsuccessful part. I SUCK at frying things (which, I guess if you're gonna be bad at something, frying is probably a good thing to be bad at!!). My things never turn out evenly browned, and it just never seems to work out quite right. The recipe came from a cookbook that a friend gave me, Vegetarian and Vegetable Cooking. You can find falafel recipes all over the web, but this one is just the basics. Chickpeas, cilantro, parsley, mint, garlic and bread crumbs all pulsed together in the food processor, rolled into balls and fried.

I served the falafels stuffed in whole wheat pitas with lettuce, tomato, onion, and cucumber. Along with the falafels we had some tabbouleh. I didn't use a recipe for this. Just cook the bulgur, and add in one large tomato, chopped, one medium onion chopped, and 1 medium cucumber diced small. Then flavor it all with lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley and chopped mint to taste.

Bombay Spiced Chickpeas

Last night I made the Chickpeas and Spiced Potato Cakes from the Best Ever Curry Cookbook. The book says this is a dish served by street vendors in Bombay.......I've never been to India, so I couldn't tell you. The book isn't a vegetarian cookbook, but it has a lot of recipes that are adaptable by adding tofu, and there are a few, such as this one that need no adaptation at all. Hey, it was on the discount table at the bookstore and I got it for $3.99, couldn't pass it up, even if it was filled with meals for meat-eaters.

The chickpeas were delicious. Just boiled chickpeas combined with tumeric, coriander, cumin, ginger and green chilies. They were nicely spiced and the little bit of heat the chili added was perfect.

The potato cakes were really good as well. Just mashed potatoes, seasoned with cumin, cilantro, and diced chili. Mix it up, form it into cakes and shallow fry it. Like I said, really tasty, but I am not good at frying things at all, so mine were less than pretty.

I will definately make this again, although, I need to work on the frying thing.

Chickpea Broccoli Casserole

We've been having left-overs and pasta with sauce from a jar for the past few nights, so there's been very little to blog about. With the exception of some Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from ED&BV, and some more vegan muffins, I haven't really cooked anything.

So, tonight I thought I'd get back in the kitchen. I decided to make up this Chickpea Broccoli casserole from Vegan with a Vengeance. It seemed simple enough, and it was. It was also great because I could make it up and refrigerate it, then have Rob pop it in the oven while I was out teaching my class. Seems like the perfect solution to a quick weeknight meal, right? Well, it was the perfect solution if you like bland casserole with more or less raw vegetables in it. In other words, BLECH!!! I even heeded Isa's warning that it was bland and added what I thought was an adequate amount of seasoning....still, no flavor. I also cooked it the recommended amount of time......basically raw veggies. This casserole was an all out flop. It really was the most unsatisfying meal I've ever eaten. I couldn't even bring myself to make the kids try it, and we all ended up eating cereal.

I know there are a lot of VwaV fans out there, but I have to say I'm not one of them. I've checked this book out of the library several times, and I've never found a recipe in it that I like. Most of the recipes seem to include soy which Stella can't have, or seitan, which all of you who follow my blog know how I feel about that!! I guess I'm gonna have to send this one back to the library and stick with my trusty ED&BV, because I've had quite the opposite experience with it.....I have LOVED every recipe I've tried!!

Soup's On!!! (and cookies too)

After nearly a week with ED&BV sitting on my shelf, I've finally gotten around to making something from it!! I must be the only person who owns ED&BV that didn't start cooking from it right away. It's that whole menu planning thing, you know. I had my weeks meals already planned before I purchased the book, so it kind of set me back a bit on getting to try some of Dreena's tasty creations.

Last night was cold and rainy, again (I think it's been raining for a week now). I'm trying really hard not to complain. We were 10 inches behind normal for rainfall this year and in the past week we've gotten 8.36 inches, so we're nearly breaking even now. And, I've been hoping for awhile now that soup weather would get here. However, the grey rainy days are starting to get old......how about chilly and sunny for a change.

Anyway, it was again, another perfect night for soup, so I finally pulled out ED&BV. One Wild Chick Soup was what caught my eye. I followed the recipe pretty close, however, I didn't have any wild rice. I did have a combo of long grain and wild, so I used that. I also threw in a vegan vegetable bouillon cube to amp up the flavor a bit. I left out the fresh herbs and used slightly more (on Dreena's recommendation) dried herb. And finally, I had a bunch of red kale in the refrigerator that needed used up, so I chopped it up and threw it in too. The result was savory and delish!! Rob thought it tasted like Thanksgiving (isn't it funny how anything with sage reminds us of Thanksgiving). This one was comfort food for sure, and it will be frequenting our dinner table this winter.

Yesterday started off kind of rough for us. Mairin hates getting up in the morning and getting ready for school, it's a battle every time. Thank heavens it's only 3 days a week......we're in for it when she starts kindergarten next year, oy.

So, to make everyone feel better, I thought baking cookies together would be a good idea. What kid doesn't love baking cookies with their mama? And who can feel bad when there's chocolate involved? So, we settled on Chocolate Chunk Spice Cookies (also from ED&BV).


I didn't have everything for this recipe either, so we winged it, and they turned out fabulous. I didn't have any dark chocolate chunks, but I did have semi-sweet chocolate chips, so I subbed those. I also didn't have any barley flour so we used all-purpose baking flour. And, believe it or not, I didn't have any baking soda (I used the last of it to scrub my bathroom last week), so I had to skip that. Otherwise, we followed the recipe. They were so gooey and chocolatey, and without all of the sugar that regular cookies have they felt so "unsinful".......I had 2!!

It's left-overs tonight, so I'll be back with more in a few days.

Quick and easy Indian

I was lazy today. We had a long night awake with a sick baby Saturday night, then Mairin had a birthday party to go to this afternoon, so I didn't have a lot of energy or time for cooking. I took a little help from a jar of simmer sauce and a box of frozen naan.

I had some chickpeas frozen from a few weeks ago, so we had chickpeas and onions simmered in Taj Gourmet brand Dehli Korma simmer sauce. I also added in about 1 Tbs of mango chutney to sweeten it up a bit. The korma was served over white basmati rice that I spiced up with a dash of turmeric, cumin, and mace. On the side we had garlic naan from Tandoor Chef. Simple, quick, and delicious!!!!