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Eggplant Satay Skewers with Lime Basil Noodles
Sorry I’ve been a little scarce. NaNoWriMo + class + setting up my new business = busy busy busy! You’ll have to forgive me if I’m away more this month. But my little head is quietly planning Hanukkah crafts and holiday recipes! Hopefully I will get to them before I run out of time again. If you are interested, my new business is called Wonderlust, and you can visit the website at www.artofwonderlust.com. I also have an Etsy store which will soon be filled with whimsical jewelry, headbands, and more. That address is www.etsy.com/store/artofwonderlust. It is all very exciting and slightly anxiety provoking and I am really hoping it works out. So peanut butter and coconut cream might be the best combination since peanut butter and chocolate, which makes this satay sauce completely irresistible. Add just a little bit of curry and you won’t be able to stop thinking of new things to dip in this. Or you could just eat it off a spoon. Yes, it is that good! I was kind of over tofu the day I whipped up the sauce but I had plenty of eggplant. I can’t say I like grilled eggplant as well as I like it roasted or stir-fried. It might benefit from being roasted first, then briefly charred over the grill. If you do grill it only, make sure that you leave it on long enough and that it is cut into small pieces. Oh, and soak the bamboo skewers before using. Unless you like your food en flambé. The rice noodles were a quick and easy side to throw together. They were mostly inspired by my desire to use up...
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Tofu “Sausage” with Caramelized Apples and Onions
Does everyone get completely weepy when tired or is it just me? Because we went to Mickey’s Halloween Party last night and all I want to do today is cry. I was completely cranky in class today and then I spent the rest of the morning wandering aimlessly through Target. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind not to spend my entire life savings, because being sad makes me want to buy myself things. And eat junk food. I should really take a nap. One thing I most definitely do not want to do is cook dinner tonight. This is a good meal for the sort of day that you just want to lie on the couch. It will satisfy your junk food cravings – sweet, buttery, smoky – and provides much needed protein and healthy carbohydrates. It doesn’t require much effort to make, and if you precook the tofu (or sub packaged sausage) it’s quite quick. This should go over well with the kids, since it’s basically dessert for dinner, except maybe the onions. If you wanted to add carrots or sweet potatoes or winter squash I think it would go quite well. This makes a great dinner with some crusty bread or roast potatoes, and it reheats well. You can also skip the apples and onions and just make the roasted tofu. It’s flavored based on apple-maple sausage and is smoky-sweet and savory. It’s a long cooking time, so plan ahead, but it has very little prep time so you can make it while you do other things around the house. You can store it in the refrigerator for at least a few days and then use...
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Sweet and Sour “Meatballs”
Well, vegan MoFo has officially come to a close but I couldn’t go without posting this recipe. Sweet and sour meatballs were my favorite childhood food and one of the few Jewish dishes we would regularly eat outside of holidays. Like the cabbage rolls, it is based on a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce, which might be my favorite thing to eat. Honestly, I think I could eat the sweet-and-sour tomato sauce with a spoon, never mind the meatballs. I tried to recreate this dish with my recipe for lentil meatballs, with moderate success. The problem is that you can’t boil the lentil balls in the sauce, so the flavor of the sauce doesn’t permeate through as well. It’s still very tasty, but not perfect. Next time I might try adding a few tablespoons of the sauce to the lentil meatballs when I cook them. I would advise leaving out the spices from the lentil meatballs if you make them for this recipe. If you’re not gluten free, you could also use the sauce with pre-packaged veggie meatballs. You have to serve this over mashed potatoes with peas, and then pretend that it is a volcano. At least, that’s how we did it all throughout my childhood. But seriously, even if you don’t go in for potato volcanoes, you do want to serve this with a nice absorbent carbohydrate to sop up the extra sauce. Trust me, you don’t want to let a bite go to waste. Mashed potatoes work very nicely, which is probably where the tradition got started. If you don’t like potatoes, rice is also a good option, or a soft bread. (Kind of like wonder...
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African-inspired Peanut Stew
Did you make my eggplant satay? Was the sauce not delicious? But I had a lot of it left over and it couldn’t just go to waste, oh no. And I kind of ran out of things to dip into it. So I had to come up with something new. Plus I had the weekly CSA allotment to use up – in this case, sweet potatoes and kale.
Read MoreEggplant Satay Skewers with Lime Basil Noodles
Sorry I’ve been a little scarce. NaNoWriMo + class + setting up my new business = busy busy busy! You’ll have to forgive me if I’m away more this month. But my little head is quietly planning Hanukkah crafts and holiday recipes! Hopefully I will get to them before I run out of time again.
Read MoreAva Dress Part III
Wow! Halloween just flew past. So much for my 7 days of Halloween crafts! I’m still new to this blogging thing and it’s pretty easy to get behind – I get the feeling I need to prepare for holidays several months in advance. Not so easy with a busy schedule. I really admire all the bloggers who are actually on top of things. Well, I really admire anyone who is really on top of things. But I digress. Even though I didn’t meet all my halloween goals, I still want to share the final Ava/Anna dress with you.
Read MoreAva Dress, Part II – Fashion Fabric
I was trying to get this dress done really quickly, so I had about 2 hours to shop for fabric. Sometimes I shop for fabric online – assuming I know exactly what kind of fabric I want – but that was definitely not going to work this time. So I had to work with the local big-box fabric store and a little fabric warehouse nearby. I have to say that choosing fabric is my least favorite part of sewing. I still don’t have a great handle on how a particular fabric behaves and I most certainly can’t tell what something is just by looking at it. But mostly, it’s because I’m cheap. I know what the best fabric IS, I just don’t want to spend the money on it.
Read MoreSewing the Ava Dress: Part One
So we went to Mickey’s Halloween party at Disneyland, and of course I wanted to wear a costume. But they have specific rules about when and where adults can wear costumes, and I didn’t really want to get in trouble if I went a few hours early or wanted to go across to California Adventure, so I was worried about how to manage that. I decided the best route might be to make a dress that wouldn’t look completely out of place as day-to-day wear, but still gave a nod to a disney character. This is referred to as “disneybounding”, a practice which started with the Disney Bound Tumblr blog of Leslie Kay. If you’ve never seen it in action, you really should check out the Tumblr!
Read MoreTofu “Sausage” with Caramelized Apples and Onions
Does everyone get completely weepy when tired or is it just me? Because we went to Mickey’s Halloween Party last night and all I want to do today is cry. I was completely cranky in class today and then I spent the rest of the morning wandering aimlessly through Target. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind not to spend my entire life savings, because being sad makes me want to buy myself things. And eat junk food. I should really take a nap. One thing I most definitely do not want to do is cook dinner tonight.
Read MoreSweet and Sour “Meatballs”
Well, vegan MoFo has officially come to a close but I couldn’t go without posting this recipe. Sweet and sour meatballs were my favorite childhood food and one of the few Jewish dishes we would regularly eat outside of holidays. Like the cabbage rolls, it is based on a sweet-and-sour tomato sauce, which might be my favorite thing to eat. Honestly, I think I could eat the sweet-and-sour tomato sauce with a spoon, never mind the meatballs.
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