Vegan MoFo, Day 29: Rent Week Dinner!

Ain't no week like rent week. I know you know what I am talking about. Especially if you are trying to make a living while also going to school. When it comes to meal planning for rent week, we go cheap around here.

Do you have wilting veggies in the fridge? Use those. What about grains/beans/lentils/etc. that have been taking up valuable pantry space? How about that! And why not throw it all together into one dish? Sounds like a plan, Stan.

I give you...

"God, I Am Broke and Need To Pay Rent and Also Eat...Meal"

serves 2

1/2 cup red/orangey split peas or lentils (I forget)

water (enough to boil them in)

coconut oil/spread

2 carrots, slices on a bias

1 red onion, diced

6 baby port. mushrooms, sliced

2 cups fresh baby spinach

S&P

vegan Worcestershire sauce

onion powder

smoked paprika

1 tbsp. curry paste

1/2 tsp jalapeno paste

Boil the red/orange split peas/lentils until tender, about 30 minutes.

In a skillet, saute the carrots and onions in coconut oil or spread. Add the mushrooms and possibly more coconut oil or spread, if needed. Add the spinach, jalapeno paste, curry paste, and seasonings, plus about 1/4 cup water. Cover with a lid until the spinach is steamed. Add in the cooked split peas/lentils.

Top with cilantro that you need to use up before it goes bad.

And there you have it, a rent week meal to be proud of.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to don my hipster costume for the Halloween party this evening. Another thing I saved on since it's all my own clothing, ha!

Jes

Vegan MoFo, Day 22: Curried Corn Soup

There's a wonderful restaurant here in Wichita, which shall remain nameless until I do a future review, that serves some awesome soups and it pretty veg-friendly.

The ONLY beef I have with this place is their preference of cold vegan soups over hot vegan soups, even during cold weather. The last time we wanted to go there and saw that the vegan soup was a cold one, I made a promise to myself that we wouldn't go back on a Friday (our usual night to eat out) until they had a hot vegan soup. They MIGHT have had one yesterday...but I wasn't certain if the hot soup was vegan (the language used on their FB post of the daily menu was iffy). Seriously, I LOVE the place and have eaten some good cold soups, but if I see another gazpacho on a 50 degree day, things will get ugly. :(

Sometimes a girl just wants some hot vegan...soup. Their menu Thursday had a curried corn soup made with coconut milk, but we were broke. However, I had all of what I thought I needed at home, so I decided to make up something easy.

"Sumptuous Hot Vegan Concoction"

serves 4

1 bag frozen corn

1 onion, diced

1/2 red pepper, diced

1 jalapeno, seeded and minced

S&P

Earth Balance

2 cups water

1 no-chix bouillion cube

1 can coconut milk

1 tbsp. curry paste (this is going to be based on what you can find at your local supermarket)

sprinkle nutmeg

red pepper flakes

squeeze of lime juice

In a skillet, saute the onion, corn, red pepper and jalapeno in Earth Balance or olive oil. Saute these ingredients until they start getting toasty and charred.

While cooking the vegetables, fill a large pot with the water and the bouillion cube, and heat it over med-high temp. Add the coconut milk when the water is hot but not boiling. It may not be entirely incorporated, but a good stir helps. Add the curry paste and stir in. Ours tasted a little of chai tea, but was really, really tasty.

Add the sauteed vegetables to the pot of soup. Using an immersion blender, blend up the soup a little to thicken it. Add the nutmeg, red pepper flakes. Once in a bowl, add a squeeze of lime juice.

{hot, creamy, and not gazpacho, yay!}

If this lack of hot vegan soups continues, I may just have to keep making my own versions at home! And that's not a bad thing :)

Jes

Vegan MoFo, Day 1: Curry is for Lovers

As a response to a mind-blowing discussion shared with a friend several weeks back on the ole Facebook, I decided to create a "Foodies" theme for Vegan MoFo. (Plus, I learned about MoFo being in October this year the day after said convo occurred, so I was still a TAD BIT offput.)

Basically, the here's the gist:

-friends post about having a great experience eating pho

-I comment that I also made it (SUCCESSFULLY THIS TIME!) that same evening and linked my blog post

-one friend decided to take it upon himself to point out that I couldn't call the concoction I made and consumed "pho" because it wasn't made of "animal-bone-rendered-until-its-soul-turned-to-delicious-broth" and then suggested that I had to call it something else, not unlike the case with Champagne.

-I suggested that the term I had used, "Vegan Pho," should have been enough of a qualifier for what the hell I meant, so I started calling my food "shit in a pan" or "weird stuff that looks like X," you know, so there wasn't any confusion.

-Then I told him to "Phok Off." (hey there, friend, if you're reading this, no hard feelings, but you pissed me off at the time, kthx!)

So, here we are, on Day ONE of Vegan MoFo, and I decided to make something positive out of this negative BS.

And I begin my journey through Vegan MoFo and October with a curry.

I hate curry...hate hate hate it. I've never liked it. The taste...the smell...it just weirded me out.

But I felt a major craving for it last week after seeing it in several magazines and sites. I decided to build upon the Chickpea Curry from The Vegan Stoner and also make the coconut rice recipe from the Vegetarian Times Healing Foods mag that I picked up recently.

Curries are an interesting thing. They are big in Britain, acquired from colonial days in India and adjusted to their liking. There are many different ways to make a curry, many different ingredients and formats to use (you can even make curry soups!). And curry powder was something entirely made up by the British.

So it only fits that a curry would go with my theme. People seem to go ga-ga for it, have their favorite curry-serving restaurants, and like to make it at home.

Here's the result:

"Some Bean Sh*t and Sauce over Rice"

makes 3-4 servings, adapted from The Vegan Stoner and Vegetarian Times

curry

coconut oil (I used the new Earth Balance Coconut Spread)

1 green pepper, diced

2 carrots, sliced into half-coins on a bias

1/2 a yellow onion, diced

3 cups cooked chickpeas (usually 1 cup before cooked)

1/2 can lite coconut milk

onion powder, S&P, curry powder, smoked paprika (I just basically added these until it looked right...)

3 green onions, sliced

rice recipe here, which I made exactly as listed

topping

1/4 cup flaked, unsweetened coconut

1/8 cup raw sesame seeds

Make the rice according to the recipe (this should be done first, you can make the other two components while this is finishing).

Saute the carrots, onion, and green peppers in coconut oil/spread, about 5-7 minutes. Add cooked chickpeas and continue sauteing until heated through. Add the 1/2 can of coconut milk (the other 1/2 can is used in the rice recipe), stir and lower heat until simmering. Add spices, mix, and continue simmering for about 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small pan, toast coconut and sesame seeds together, making sure to stir often. There will be a little oil given off while toasting that can coat the seeds and coconut, but it will also make them stick to the bottom of the pan and burn, so make sure to keep stirring often.

Stir the rice, spoon it into a bowl, top with the chickpea mixture, followed by the seeds/coconut and sliced green onions.

Eat, enjoy, and realize that you DO, in fact, like curry.

{noms}

Jes

PS--

{i'll call my food what I want.}