Devil's Mess

This is our favorite brunchy thing to make when we have the time. Got all the ingredients fresh at the farmer's market this morning--'cept the tortillas, black beans & hot sauce. Oh, a squirt of lime, to keep away the scurvy!

This one's:

sweet potatoes

black beans

onions

garlic

banana pepper

radish

dill

cilantro

Gimme Lean veggie "sausage"

Ethiopian Food

I never thought we'd be able to pull this off. Living in a small town, we miss access to ethnic foods such as Ethiopian, so we decided to take the skillet into our own hands and make our own. The berbere (red pepper) spice was bought last time we were in Los Angeles--that big cup was just $5. The cookbook was bought from the same Ethiopian market there (Merkato). We didn't think ahead about the bread (injera) so just used wheat noodles instead. The lentil dish, potato dish and tomato salad were AWESOME!!! And tasted even better throughout the week. This was great, economically, too--we figured out that this got us about 6 meals for almost $1 each.

Spring Rolls

soak the rice wraps individually in warm water

spread on a clean towel & fill with rice noodles & whatever else you like (we did tofu, carrots, cucumber, mint & basil)

get an assembly line of friends to fill & wrap (note home made peanut sauce for dipping)

Voila--spring rolls! Dip, eat, repeat.

I've heard these called spring and summer rolls...but whatever they're called, they're easy & AMAZING! Our friends Annie & Steve showed up with many of the fixins and showed us how to do it. We got a little assembly line going, disproving the "too many cooks spoils the broth" theory and demonstrating that group cooking is lots of fun! We made 2 big batches of these babies. Not the best photos but we were too busy to be artsy.

What the heck is Caponata?

We had a gigantic eggplant from the farmer's market. We had some figs. What to do? After googling 'eggplant fig' we found this recipe and decided to try it. We followed it pretty precisely 'cept used red wine vinegar instead of white, and added a little banana pepper from our garden. Toasted some ciabatta and presto! Soooo sweet and savory and yummy. Seems like perfect party food and a good alternative to bruschetta.

Vegan Mac-n-Cheese

Baked version of the old favorite, using nutritional yeast, mustard, macaroni, Bragg's Amino Acids, paprika.

Thai Yellow Curry

The Mae Ploy yellow curry paste is vegan (watch out for the other ones--they have shrimp paste!) We got the paste at the local Asian market, mixed with coconut milk according to directions, and used local sweet potato & basil with onions, regular potato, tofu and bok choy for our veggies. Served over jasmine rice. Nice.

Chocolate Mousse Pie, Part 3

Yup, another version of our chocolate pie. You can never get enough chocolate pie. Notice the fresh chocolate mint, from our yard.