Indian Yumminess

I'm fairly certain that there isn't much you can do to potatoes to make me not like them. Even so, these Samosa Stuffed Baked Potatoes from Veganomicon still rank very high on my list of favorite ways to eat potatoes. And as a bonus, they're not nearly as bad for you as a baked potato loaded with Earth Balance and Tofutti sour cream.

To go with the potatoes, I made Red Lentil-Cauliflower Curry, also from Veganomicon. I am so glad that we have discovered a love of cauliflower. This recipe made a ton, but that's okay because it was delicious and we enjoyed eating the leftovers. I didn't serve it with any rice at first, since we had the potatoes alongside it, but once we ran out of potatoes, I made Saffron-Garlic Rice (yet another Veganomicon recipe) to go with it. Garlic is pretty much one of our favorite things ever, and we can't get enough of that rice recipe. I used to love those Near East rice pilaf mixes, but they are horribly high in sodium, so I never felt very good about eating them. I now found a yummier replacement, and it's less expensive to boot.

Clearly this is not part of the Indian meal, but this is the Skillet Corn Bread from Veganomicon, which I served with chili. I was intrigued by the jalapeño-onion variation, but it calls for putting cooked jalapeños and onions on top of the cornbread mixture. I like my jalapeños mixed into the batter, so that is what I did. This was my first time making skillet cornbread. My boyfriend had an old large cast-iron skillet that I never used because he had cooked meat in it. We got a wire brush attachment for our drill and removed the old seasoning so that I could re-season it and use it for vegan stuff. I guess I did a decent job of seasoning it, because the cornbread didn't stick at all. Yay! I love my "new" skillet. It sure is heavy, though. The skillet cornbread turned out great, even though I strayed from the recipe a bit. I was running a little low on plain soymilk, so I made up the difference with some plain soy yogurt. I'm always playing with new cornbread recipes, but I think I'll be sticking with this one now.

Red Curry Seitan and Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

This red curry seitan was such a simple "recipe" (I made it up on the fly). I cut up seitan into bite-size pieces and browned it over medium heat. I added chopped onions and a red bell pepper and cooked them until they were softened. I meant to add a can of straw mushrooms, but I managed to forget it despite the fact that I had it sitting out on the counter. I then whisked approx. 2 teaspoons of Thai Kitchen red curry paste (would cut that back a little next time) into one can of coconut milk. I added this mixture, along with some chopped fresh basil, to the pan of seitan and veggies and let cook until it was heated throughout. Except for the time it took to make to cook the brown rice, this was the fastest dinner I've made in awhile. We had enough for leftovers the next night, which was good because we got home from our day-trip to Atlanta pretty late.

My boyfriend took me to Atlanta this weekend as a belated Valentine's Day present (I was sick on Valentine's Day, so he couldn't surprise me then like he'd wanted to). We ate lunch at Soul Vegetarian, then went to Ikea, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods. At Ikea I got a large whisk (my other one was getting rusty in the handle, plus this new one is silicone-coated so that it won't scratch my pots), a mortar and pestle, a wok ($7!!!), and an apron (also $7!!!). We spent entirely too much money on food, but it was a fun trip. I long to have a Trader Joe's here.


Cookies and Cream Cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, of course. So cute! Cutting a Newman-O in half is not as easy as you'd think.

It's Vegan Planet week around here.

Before we go grocery shopping on Sundays, I sit down and pick out a few recipes to make for the week. This week everything I picked was from Vegan Planet. On Sunday night we had Not-So-Dirty Rice, but I didn't take a picture of it because I've posted it on here before. We added mushrooms to it this time, which made it even more awesome. Have I mentioned how much we like mushrooms?

This is a Red Bean and Sweet Potato Curry served over brown rice. It uses curry powder, so it's not exactly an authentic curry, but it was simple to make and pretty tasty. The recipe suggests pureeing a portion of it and then mixing it back in if you like a creamier sauce. I might try that in the future (I was in a hurry the night I made this).


This one is Tofu and Vegetable Lo Mein. I hadn't had snow peas in a very long time and had forgotten how good they were. The recipe said to use either eggless Chinese noodles (that's not very specific...I'm pretty sure there are different kinds of Chinese noodles) or linguine. I went with whole wheat spaghetti since I already had it on-hand. There is shredded cabbage hiding in there, even though you can't really see it. I have no desire to sit there and actually shred cabbage, so I just buy it already shredded for coleslaw. The lo mein was good and, like the other recipes above, simple to prepare. I haven't really come across anything in Vegan Planet thus far that I've found to be complex to make. There will be another recipe from the book coming up here. I think it was an Indonesian rice dish that I picked out.

Chickpea Coconut Curry

I am the queen of accidentally making dishes too spicy. Oops. I based this recipe off of an eggplant coconut curry recipe I found on vegweb. I used mochi curry that I got in the bulk spice section of the health food store and two tablespoons full was entirely too much. Lesson learned. I cooked the onion in white wine just to use up some more of it, but I'm sure that wasn't necessary.

Chickpea Coconut Curry

2 cans (15 oz. each) chickpeas
1 can straw mushrooms
1 can baby corn
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 cup white wine
1 teaspoon red curry paste
1 tablespoon curry powder (or 2 if your curry powder is mild or you really like spicy food)
1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
3/4 cup coconut milk
fresh ground pepper, to taste

In large skillet over medium heat, cook onion in white wine until softened. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil (may have to increase heat to medium-high). Once boiling, lower heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Serve over rice.

This made a ton (I would say at least 8 servings), so you might want to halve the recipe if you're only cooking for two people or so. I was expecting the sauce to cook down more, but it really didn't.