New Vegan Dishes

Lentil Stew

Lately I have been thinking a lot about adding some new vegan dishes into my repertoire. Since I have a stressful job, there are so many nights I get home and I am just too tired to think about what ingredients I can use to make a meal and am actually too tired to prepare anything that requires more than maybe 4 minutes in the microwave. That means vegan processed food. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good V processed food out there, but I just think I was eating too much of it. And I lacked the motivation to ignore my fatigue and just start cooking.

So…….. I decided to just make it happen! One thing I realized was that I could consider combining a processed product with whole food products – that would get me started. One result of this idea was using a tahini sauce  that  I get at Trader Joes as a dressing with lettuce, cucumber, onions, tomatoes, parsley and dried figs. To this I add 3 falafel patties bought frozen at Trader Joes and microwaved for  1 minute – plop into the salad. This is quick, easy, pretty healthy and quite delicious.

I also wanted to make some meals with all fresh ingredients, especially ones that add protein and texture. Two I tried recently were lentils and quinoa. The lentils were another purchase from Trader Joes – a bag of smoked lentils with no additives etc. To use the lentils, I read through a few recipes both from the Web and some of my vegan cookbooks and then invented my own. I made a lentil stew with fresh grape tomatoes, potatoes, quinoa, onions, carrots, frozen corn and, of course, plenty of seasoning. The cooking aromas from the stew and the vegan corn bread I made to go along with it filled the kitchen. The result was a keeper, but the down side of tweaking multiple recipes and not writing it down means……… well, you know.

Another ingredient that I have used quite a bit is tofu. One popular preparation was a  Chinese type stir fry with other vegetables and sauce makings. It was another recipe mashup and never totally successful – very difficult timing procedures and not enough sauce. So I got lucky and was given a cookbook by a friend at work called “Vegan on a Budget” and, lo and behold, it had a recipe that was very similar to my original one, but it had a better and easier process and it provided a sweet and sour sauce that sounded delicious and made a large quantity. My assessment of this new recipe proved to be accurate and I have prepared it twice recently and despite a large batch made – there are never any leftovers!!!!!

So, I have broken through and am pursuing the vegan food adventure with renewed dedication and excitement. Will be exploring more lentil variations, researching the quinoa possibilities and tweaking the tofu for now. Oh...... and I am into roasting vegetables, fruit – seasoned cauliflower with vegan parm sprinkled after roasting; apples and squash and sweet potatoes – O MY!........ OK – gotta get back to my research – the next dinner time awaits. Compassion for all.