On Weird Types, Curries and Cookies Sandwiches

After a bizarrely stressful day, culminating in some random man shouting at me on the street*, I arrived home tonight to find that My Beloved had made dinner. He'd started out with Sarah Kramer's Eggplant Bharta recipe, discovered we didn't have enough eggplant, combined it with an aloo concoction of some shape and description, added mushrooms and a side of chewy brown rice. And it was great. No real recipe, just good, honest, off-the-top-of-your-head kind of food. Like this:



A close up:



So to make some kind of contribution - unused as I am to having dinner fully made for me when I roll in from work - I decided to use up the chocolate-citrus cookies I'd made. Fortunately there were enough for all three of us, so I made cookie sandwiches with some Tofutti Vanilla Almond Bark Ice Cream, served with a side of fresh strawberries. Thus:



An easy, quick and fun dessert. And a way to strategically use up cookies which really need to be eaten, before I can make more!

Stay Vegan, Friends!

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*OK, so here's the story. I went into Northampton to collect a bottle of my father-in-law's favourite tipple, Tio Pepe. Having parked, thrown 10c in the meter (for 12 minutes!), I made my way to the local wines/spirits store. On the way, I noticed a man having problems with 2 bags of groceries - the handle of one had broken and spilled his stuff all over the road. So, feeling like I didn't want to walk on by, I crossed over the road and asked him if he needed help. He turned to face me and said 'Are you talkin' to me??? Are you talkin' to ME???' in that kind of cinematic way. (I forget which movie it sounded like, but whatever that well-known movie was....)

I replied, 'Yes', because I was indeed talking to him....he being the one potentially in need of help.....To which he graciously replied 'Don't talk to me. Don't talk to MEEEEE! I don't talk to people!!!!!!'

And off he stalked.

'Oh, right', was pretty much all I could say in response. And then I wanted to burst into tears. Because it's pretty much been a day like that today. Full of weirdness. And silliness. And people jumping up and down about nothing at all. And questions screaming in my head along the lines of 'Why?????'

Why don't you talk to people?
Why do you eat a MacDonald's in front of me?
Why do you not see the connections?
Why don't you accept help you clearly need?
Why do you ridicule my choices?

Und so weiter. Und so fort.

Across Preston in the dark, cold and rain...

I'm very excited! My Beloved and I just signed up for a vegan cooking class tomorrow night! OK, maybe I'm easily pleased, but I am **really** looking forward to it. It's at our local Whole Foods (aka 'Bread & Circus' to those of us who remember the place before the takeover...) and we'll be cooking a 3-course meal and enjoying it with wine. All for $20 a head!

Since I know everything I know from Colleen's podcasts and her wonderful Joy of Vegan Baking (as I know, I know, I've said before....) along with the rich library of other cookbooks I've compulsively purchased over the last 5 months or so, it'll be great to actually see how others do it. And hopefully pick up a few more tips.

That's one of the best parts of being vegan - there is so much to learn. Food becomes endlessly exciting and novel. Tastes are deeper and more satisfying. And the adventure of taking a hitherto unknown ingredient and incorporating it into a satisfying and cruelty-free meal....well, for a foodie, it's really fulfilling.

Issues I must raise are:

1. how to cook with diabetics in mind
2. how to cook without gluten (the mother of a friend of mine cannot eat gluten...)
3. when's the next class...so that said friend and I can go again!

In the meantime, I *must* post some pix of My Beloved's amazing Lentil and Potato Curry that we had for dinner last night. The recipe is actually in the Veganomicon, but the original calls for cauliflower which - as noted in a previous post - My Beloved won't touch with someone else's 10 ft pole. Soooooooo, we have spuds in it instead....sorry, Isa!



And a close-up:



I enjoyed the remainder for lunch today and must confess that it was just as good the second time around. Even microwaved - a technique I don't normally use as I don't like microwaves particularly. But I was at work, so what else am I going to do????

My Beloved also made a stack of poppadoms as we'd bought some hot lime pickle from our semi-local Asian store. It transported us back to the 'old country' where on a Saturday night we'd frequently go out for an Indian and a few beers.....

Sigh!

Sometimes I miss those days!

But then I remember the long walks home too - right across Preston in the dark, cold and rain....

:: shudder ::

Stay dry...and Stay Vegan, Friends! :)

Fun and Puns with Poppadoms

Susan, over at FatFreeVegan has an inspired-looking lentil and cauliflower curry dish I simply had to try out. The only problem? My Beloved turns a perculiar shade of purple when confronted by members of the brassica family. In this instance: cauliflower.

As a child, I was never overly partial to the white florets, but these days I find myself increasingly interested in getting my gnashers around those tender little morsels. Be that as it may, I knew that hiding the cauliflower amidst the lentils and calling it good would not fool My Beloved, so I substituted potato instead and this is the result:



It is served here with a simple white basmati rice (yes, brown basmati is infinitely preferable, but sometime you have to pick your battles...) and poppadoms! Eons (well, at least a couple of months) ago, one of My Beloved's colleagues gave him a poppadom cooker. It's a little mesh-type device with a handle and you sit it on top of your stove flame to cook the poppadoms. Well, we'd never quite had the nerve to test it out, assuming that there was some trick or technique that you had to learn at your mother's knee, but this proved to be a fallacy.

On a trip to the local asian grocery store, we happened upon some poppadoms in the raw (as it were) and so gave it a go.

And it is simplicity itself!

All you do is lay one on the mesh, pop it over the flame and watch as it blisters beautifully. When it's almost all blistered, flip it over to complete and stack high!

I am perplexed as to why these are not given away in Indian restaurants as a courtesy, they are that simple to make! Yes, if I were Queen of the World, there'd be a free poppadom on every plate!

Vote for me in '08 and Stay Vegan, Friends!