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I found this wonderful recipe in Vegetarian Times magazine.
Vegetables in Thai Red Curry. Sounds so good on a cold autumn night.
Ingredients:
~1 small head cauliflower cut into florets
~1 cup green beans, stems removed and cut into 2-inch pieces
~2 T. Canola oil (I used, as I always do, olive oil)
~1 cup cremeini mushrooms, ends trimmed and quartered if large (used regular white mushrooms, cut in half)
~1 14-oz can light coconut milk
~1-2 T. Thai red curry paste (check ingredients to make sure doesn’t include fish sauce)
~2 T. brown sugar (I hate adding sweetener to non-deserts, so I only put in 1 T. and it was still naturally sweet from the coconut milk. Next time I wont put in any at all.
~2 T. Tamari/low sodium soy sauce
~1small red bell pepper
~20-30 fresh basil leaves
Directions:
Blanch cauliflower 4 minutes, or until aldente, in a pot of boiling, salted water. Remove with strainer, and rinse under cold water to stop cooking. Repeat with green beans in same pot of water. Set aside.
Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook 5-7 minutes, or until mushrooms have browned and released some juices. Set aside.
In a wide sauce pan over medium heat combine coconut milk, curry paste, sugar, tamari, and 1/2 cup water (the recipe says to start with a small amount of curry paste and adjust for spiciness. I ended up using more paste than originally called for)
Add cauilflower, green beans, mushrooms, bell peper, and 1/2 of basil. Simmer 10 minutes. Garnish with remaining basil.
My friend, the Mysterious M, and I both agreed, it was delicious. Our favorite part was the fresh basil (right off my plant!). Next time I think I’ll add even more basil.
Currently listening to:
Fraud In the ’80s – Mates Of State
Devil’s Dance Floor – Flogging Molly
The heat in my apartment is not working properly, and this is a big problem for (eternally cold) me. We have steam heaters in my building, and about a week ago I noticed that my main heater was leaking – actually to the point of burning a hole in my carpet. Wonderful, this happened last year at my old apartment, and what did the management do that time? Wrap a towel around the base. Not too surprising I don’t live there anymore…
Luckily, the management at my current apartment got on the problem pretty quickly. The next day I came home to see that they had already been up to my place, ripped apart a bunch of stuff, and, as far as I could tell, re-assembled the stuff back together. My heater no longer leaked.
Then I discovered a new problem. Indeed, my heater no longer leaked. It also, however, didn’t turn on. Now before I make this sound more dramatic of a situation than it is, I must point out, I also have an electric heater in my apartment (though I thoroughly dislike it, loud blowing air that dries out my apartment…), as well as a small portable plug in heater. Really, I’m just annoyed because the steam heater is the only one that’s output is included in my rent, and because I hate the way my apartment feels when I used the electric blowing one. So really, if I got too cold, I could, and did, turn on my other forms of heat.
Anyway, when I talked again to my management I discovered that the reason my steam heater won’t turn on is because they actually removed the coil, which now has to be re-welded, and which I won’t get back in my apartment for about a week. Woop-de-doo.
Anyway, after a full day of feeling chilled, I decided to take matters into my own hands and whip up some Wonderful Winter Warmer Soup (WWWS). I had heard that a good cold buster was an intense, spicy, vegifull, soup, and since I was practically shivering, and didn’t want to catch a cold, I thought it would be a good idea. And, it was wonderful!
Wonderful Winter Warmer Soup
1/2 onion
1 large tomato
2 cloves garlic
1 cup chopped cabbage
a couple celery stalks with leaves
1-2 green onions
dash of peppermint tea (or water)
To Taste:
ginger powder
cilantro
chili powder
turmeric
salt
red chili pepper flakes
fresh basil leaves
Dice all vegetables. Sauté onion a few minutes, then add tomato, garlic, cabbage, and celery, pausing and stirring a few minutes between each addition. At this point add a dash of water/peppermint tea to your soup if it needs more liquid. Add remaining spices and cook, stirring occasionally, several minutes. Eat and feel the wonderful warmth!
Makes 1 serving.
Unfortunately, I seem to have left my camera at work, so no pictures of my soup. Though I find it’s hard to photograph soup well anyway.
Ah, the stir fry. Sometimes the simplest things truely are the best.
Recently I’ve been getting together with a small group of friends on weekends to cook dinner together. It’s a nice, relaxing, thing to do. Great for those Sunday nights when we’re feeling lazy.
In fact we’re thinking of forming our own underground food society!
This time, we picked up a bunch of wonderful fresh veggies from Whole Foods (i.e. best store in the whole world), took them home, diced and sauted them in tamari sauce.
We had onion, red bell pepper, snow peas, mushrooms, and broccoli. Then we warmed some pita bread and stuffed them with the veggies. Delicious!
 So, as I mentioned the the previous blog post, I made a number of crepe fillings on Saturday; Sweet poato-fennel, egg, asparagus-tomato, creamed spinach, and a mushroom sauce. mmmm! I got both the creamed spinach and mushroom sauce recipes from “The New Laurel’s Kitchen”, which is, by now, not new at all. It is, however, an updated and all together snazzier version of the orignial. I have, however revised the recipes to make them gluten and dairy free.
Creamed Spinach: 
- 3/4 cup rice milk
- 5. T brown rice flour
- 1/2 small onion
- 1 t. olive oil
- 3 quarts fresh spinach (3 small bunches), washed, dried, and chopped
- 1/4 T salt
This makes a total of about 3 cups. At four servings per entire batch, this equals 72 calories/serving.
The spinach turned out nicely, a little watery for the crepes, but nice. I would probably add a bit of basil, or rosemary, if I were to make it again. It was also super easy to make!
On Saturday, a couple of friends and I held a “Gothic Literature Party”, in honor of one of our favorite authors, the wonderful Edgar Allen Poe. And in his honor, we had to, of course, not only produce a feast, read selected favorites of his works, but also dress the part. As for food, I had significant difficulty thinking of what would be appropriate for an American Gothic themed party. Most American foods are distinctly un-romantic (Cornbread, some will be relieved to hear, was quickly ruled out). Eventually, I settled for something entirely foreign, but definitely enjoyable – crepes. Now as I had never made crepes before, and I decided to do this at about 11:00pm the night before, I resignedly decided that there was no way I’d be able to learn how to make crepes so quickly. However, I had recently noticed that our local Whole Foods was selling pre-made “authentic” French crepes. So as lazy as it felt, I decided to go ahead with these, and make only the fillings myself. And luckily, they turned out, for the most part, quite well! I made several filling options: creamed spinach, creamed mushroom sauce, asparagus and tomato, and sweet potato. Details on these to come soon!
 mm delicious…Owl was coming over for dinner, and I decided on a whim to make us lettuce wraps.
First the filling. I had no recipe, so I just made up my own. Onion combined with tomatoes always makes a good base for stir-frys. The onions become super soft, sweet, and just generally delicious, the tomatoes release alot of juice when cooked (especially on lower temperatures – I usually start out low and raise the temp toward the end), meaning that one really doesn’t need to use any oil at all when cooking the vegetables. Note: oil, especially olive oil, has been shown to be extremely healthy in many many ways. I tend to avoid it because it does add calories, but if you’re not overly concerned about this, I strongly suggest using olive oil (it’ll make the whole thing taste better too).
For the filling I used,
-
approx. 1/2 head green cabbage
-
approx 15 pices okra
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1 onion
-
1 package baked tofu
-
approx 2 cups cherry tomatos
-
tamari/soy sauce to taste
-
handful shittake mushrooms
-
one bell pepper
All this I sauted together, and wrapped in fresh lettuce leaves and corn tortillas with a bit of eggplant pesto sauce to taste.
Total: approx 610 calories/whole filling recipe (it makes ALOT of servings!)
Oops, haven’t been keeping up my blog wonderfully over the past few days – I’ll do better! 
I recently made a very nice (and very very simple) tomato peach salad. Great recipe for hot weather, though unfortunately I made it on a rather typically gloomy NorCal day, when hot soup really would have been a better idea. This is what happens when you plan your meals without looking at the weather. Credit for this recipe goes to Delicious Living, a great free magazine that’s available at whole foods.
Tomato Peach Salad
- 4 tomatoes, diced large
- 2 peaches
- 2 T. finely chopped sweet onion (red/scallion)
- 2 T. finely chopped fresh basil
- 3 T. fruity olive oil (optional)
- black pepper to taste
makes 6-8 servings
91 calories/serving with olive oil or approximately 40 calories/serving without
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