Homemade Ethiopian Feast

The thing most people do the day after food poisoning is spend two and a half hour making a big Ethiopian feast, right?  Or not.  And to be honest, there were moments when I doubted this was an undertaking I wanted to follow through on.  But I did it! and it was worth it.

I made the mushroom tibs and ye'abesha gomen (stewed collards) from Appetite for Reduction, and this Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Curry I found on the internet.  All of that stuff was great.  

However.  I tried to make the injera-style crepes from Vegan Eats World and they were a total disaster.  I asked around and it seems like I'm not the only one to have trouble with them - you're supposed to pour the batter in the pan, cover it with a lid, and let them "bake" for 2-3 minutes.  Well.  After 2-3 minutes they were still gloppy, with big holes, and when we scraped them out of the pan it seemed like they returned to their previous batter state.  How is that even possible under the laws of physics???  Anyway, after attempting 2 of them we threw the batter away and made our standard crepe recipe, which worked fine.

This was an awesome dinner!  Worth the effort for sure.

Spicy Drunken Thai Noodles

I made these delicious noodles last night from a recipe in Vegan Eats World.  Harris Teeter doesn't have the sort of noodles (wide flat somethings) she tells you to use so I bought some other random Asiany ones and they were fine.

This recipe called for three of the Thai soy sauces I went to the Asian market for a couple months ago - it's fun to have all that stuff on hand so I can make a wide variety of noodle dishes for quick weeknight dinners.

Kung Pao Tofu

Last night I made the Kung Pao Tofu recipe in Bean by Bean and it was wonderful.  The tofu first has to be briefly marinated in mirin, garlic, and cornstarch, then baked at high temperature, which makes it crispy and chewy even before it goes into the stirfry.

Next time maybe I will not chicken out and will add as much spice as I'm supposed to.

My Favorite Things

One of the reasons I post less than I used to is because I've built up a nice stable of vegan recipes over the past few years that have become part of the regular rotation.  The other night for dinner I had some collards and soy curls to use up so I threw together three of my absolute favorite things in the world to make a quick, balanced, delicious dinner:  yellow garlic rice from Viva Vegan, smoky soy curls from Vegan Diner, and my own basic collards recipe.

I could eat these things every day for a long, long time - the collards especially.  I recently found out that collard greens are not readily available year-round for dirt cheap outside of the South, and now obviously we can never move.