Vegetarian Times Win - Again!

Monday night was a Vegetarian Times Win - which seems to be a pattern lately. The best magazine subscription ever.

We made 2 different dishes from the April/May 2009 issue. They didn't go together per-se, but worked well in their own right.

Whole-Wheat Shells with Asparagus and Peas

This was from their "Greening Up Your Kitchen" section. Normally, I dislike their preachy lifestyle guides - although I do try to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle, I don't need VT commanding me to do it and make all my friends do it - but they had some interesting ideas and recipes (i.e., a scone recipe since scones cook 10-15 minutes faster than bread; using toaster ovens instead of conventional ovens). This recipe is "green" since it uses the same pot of water to make the veggies and pasta. I made it Sunday night (it was to be Saturday evening's dinner but Chinese food trumped) and it was fairly simple and tasty. I did make some quick switches, which I won't do next time. (I didn't have enough fresh basil, so I used dried. Not worth it. I didn't have garlic oil, and instead of thinking ahead to soaking some garlic in EVOO for a bit I used EVOO and garlic powder. Also not good.) But it was refreshing and tasty. It has 1/2 cup fresh mint and lemon zest which give it a tang. Also, some feta, and I love crumbled feta.

Thai Eggplant and Green bean Stir Fry

This is from their "30-minute meal section" where the "secret ingredient" is coconut milk. This dish was a complete win. Basically, cut up and stir fry small eggplants. Then using the "coconut cream" (the part of the coconut milk on the top of the can before shaking it) you stir fry the aromatics - ginger, garlic, Thai chili paste and add in the green beans and 1 red onion (our red onion was very unhappy so no go for that) and the rest of the coconut milk. Let it stir fry to perfection. And it was perfection. We said next time either we can add in chicken, tofu or both to make it a more filling dish.

Coconut Milk Night!

For dinner last night there was a theme - coconut milk. The Pedant saw that at the Teet last week there was a sale on mangoes. Now, I love mangoes. And, while doing a project started over the week off I had of organizing recipes we've amassed over the year (VT, internet sites) in a binder, I printed out a Mark Bittman recipe for Savory Mango Soup (Mangoes, milk, coconut milk, yogurt, ancho chili powder for big, bold flavor). An excellent way to utilize the sale. Plus, a few months ago we made a tofu asparagus stir fry (that uses, you guessed it, coconut milk!) from a weight watchers cook book so we decided to work off of a theme.

The mango soup was good - not perfect, but we used fat free milk and yogurt which made it a bit less creamy. I think it will be even better when mangoes are actually in season. The tofu was good and we made it very spicy. TP suggested adding curry next time to kick it up.

On a different note, I made myself a snack for work yesterday - Greek Yogurt, honey and almonds. It was delish. Not uncommon at all, but really tasty. This will be made again, never fear!

No Excuse for Bad Blogging

I have been remiss, even though food has come through my life. Let me do a little recap, and a little look forward.

Last night The Sherbs and I went to Meskerem, an Ethiopian restaurant. In Ethiopian cuisine, everyone takes chunks of the main dish by scooping it up with a spongy tortilla-like bread called injera. Since all the food is served on a big round of injera, after most of the dishes are eaten, there's some saucy injera goodness at the bottom. Injera is tasty, with a mildy tart yeasty flavor. I will eat Ethiopian food again.

Tonight we are going to make a coconut milk, tofu, and asparagus dish out of The Sherbs's Weight Watchers cookbook with the three panels of flip pages for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. It sounds delicious, but I'll eat anything with coconut milk.

Times, Responses, and Other Excuses to Change the Subject

To play off the Sherbs's previous post: yes, Ikea in Woodbridge, VA has at its restaurant a meal special which pairs fifteen Swedish meatballs in cream sauce with a healthy portion of macaroni and cheese for $5.49. There is also the small dollop of lingonberry sauce (I originally thought it was cranberry, but no - it has to be Swedish, and it has to look like salmon roe) that suffices as the concession to the existence of vegetables in the meal. The Swedish meatballs are in a gravy that Ikea calls "cream sauce." It is delicious. It is food that will kill you.

Today we went to Mai Thai in DC, as the Sherbs had to work late and I believe that eating at Mai Thai gives me a trifecta on credit card points and various other loyalty reward programs. We each had our own soups, which were tasty, but it seems that everything but the tom ka soup uses the tom yam soup base with extra stuff in it. If you love spicy lemongrass soup, you'll love these.

A parenthetical before I continue with the main dishes - the Sherbs and I had a conversation just now about the fact that it was nigh-impossible to find the Thai soups I am blogging about using the Food Network recipe extension for Firefox. Looking on Food Network's programming, there's basically no non-white ethnic food on the channel. Ever. And excessively Caucasian food hosts like Paula "smear it with lard" Deen and Sandra "You Can Make Angel Food Cake Hawaiian by Adding Runts Candy" Lee get tons of airtime. Make no bones about it, I watch a lot of Food Network - but are they racist?

Getting back to our Thai dinner, the Sherbs and I shared a salad and an entree. The salad was made of shredded mango and chopped red onion in a dressing that tasted like lime juice, cane juice, and cilantro. Little bits of toasted coconut were added for texture. Once we get the mandoline blade sharp enough, we are going to try to make it ourselves.

The entree was drunken noodles with tofu. I don't know how authentic the spicy candied version of drunken noodles is, but it's tasty - how could pan frying chow fun noodles not be? We ate every last molecule of it.

Be my Netflix buddy!

I'm trying to get everyone I know with Netflix to become my Netflix buddy, in part so I can engage in a voyeuristic look at other people's media consumption, and also to see if there are any movies on my queue that I should skip.

Speaking of which, I saw the first three episodes of All Creatures Great and Small with the Sherbs last night thanks to Netflix. It was adorable and we will watch more of it, but I won't give you the heartfelt review here. Instead, I will satirically summarize it as follows:

The Fifth Doctor infiltrates a rural veterinary clinic as a drunken layabout in order to keep in check the mercy-killing impulses of recent veterinary-school grad James "The Angel of Death" Herriot, a man who finds fatal ailments requiring euthanasia in every third animal he treats. Meanwhile a blond version of John Steed from The Avengers pretends to be a veterinarian but in fact treats as few animals as he possibly can.

In other news, my new favorite flavor of Harris Teeter brand light yogurt is Piña Colada. The Sherbs and I have been visiting "the Teet" regularly as there's one that keeps giving us $5 coupons, plus their fat-free, low-sugar yogurt was 33¢ with my "frequent Teeters" card (not in fact what it's called). The yogurt has little bits of coconut and pineapple in it, which make the aspartame in the mix a lot less cloying.

Salad Days

Like the Sherbs, I find there's not much to look forward to in terms of sweets (much less palatable crunchy starches!) over Passover. And I get tired of meringue much faster than she, although I like coconut (although most prepackaged macaroons get old fast).

Regardless, I made a pretty fab salad dressing for myself yesterday for my alternative Passover lunch: salad with turkey on top. It was vinegar, oil, garlic powder, and salt. I'm not really sure of the proportions because I rebel against measuring things, or even pouring them into containers where I could measure them.