Ginger! It’s warm, sharp, tangy, and yet seldom burns the tongue and isn’t likely to inflame any pepper allergies. So! I made carrot-ginger-chia dressing (Salad Samurai recipe) to drench my lunch in. Mmm.
It turned out a burnt orange shade because I used a purple carrot and a red onion – it’s what I had! Still good though.
It’s been a while since I felt like I was really in a cooking groove, but I’m getting back to it.
Breakfast was a now-standby chickpea scramble from Isa Does It, with a side of braised chard and toast with Miyoko’s Double Cream Chive and sliced tomatoes. Reliably good. I woud’ve gladly made avocado toast, but our last avocado was too far gone. Alas.
For lunch, I quickly cobbled together these collard wraps stuffed with spicy red beans and rice and topped with leftover carrot ginger dressing. I used canned kidney beans and a little bit of yesterday’s brown rice and just sauteed it with chopped tomatoes, minced onion, a dollop of hot sauce, cumin, coriander, and a handful of chopped fresh cilantro. The collard leaves are just steamed until tender. It’s pretty damn tasty for something I threw together in 20 minutes.
Usually I like to eat out on Friday nights – it’s always been a long week, I’m always tired, I always get home later than usual. But, well – I’ve been home all day, and I have an excess of tasty vegetables. Why not save money and the frustration of deciding where to go and just cook?
It started with my standard last-minute recipe search technique: I had some beautiful fresh shiitake mushrooms and I was in the mood for tempeh, so I searched* for “shiitake tempeh stir fry.” Among the first results was this perfectly acceptable suggestion: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/vegan-recipe/shiitake-tempeh-and-kale-stir-fry/
Made a few modifications to account for the fresh mushrooms instead of her dried, partially because I hate dried shiitakes but mostly because, hello, beautiful:
But that was minor – subbed vegetable broth for the mushroom liquid in the tempeh marinade, and fresh for dry mushrooms in the stir fry itself. Easy.
After making the marinade and adding the tempeh, I threw a mix of sprouted red rice and plain long grain brown rice in the clay pot while everything else prepped. (This rice combination turned out especially good. I need to find more sprouted red rice.)
I didn’t think this was quite enough of a meal, so I decided to add a simple salad (just mixed baby lettuce) and carrot ginger dressing from the Isa classic Appetite for Reduction. I don’t know how I’d avoided making that recipe before–it is very tasty. I may have used more ginger than it called for, and I have no regrets.
* So until quite recently, I worked on Yahoo’s Search property. Since getting laid off, I decided to switch to another search engine, but feeling contrarian, I opted to set it to DuckDuckGo instead of Google. I know most people won’t care, but good lord, we could have a very long and likely boring conversation about search results.