Recipes tried so far....

Well, since my last blog I have tried a few more recipes from my new cookbooks and have had a successful trip to our local Asian Supermarket (well not too local, it's the other side of town).  One thing I didn't do when making my list for the supermarket is write down the chinese names for some foods I was looking for, so I am not quite sure if I got the right things.  I now have a cupboard and fridge brimming with all sorts of noodles, sauces, veggie meats and different vegetables.  I was super excited to do some cooking last night for my hubby and see how I fared.  I made rice, Spicy Sichuan Eggplant and my own creation of veggie shrimp, mushrooms and snow peas with Vegetarian Oyster Sauce (I had no idea there was a vegetarian version).

Here are a few pictures, again, sooooo not a good photographer, but hope you get the idea.

Those veggie shrimp are pretty good, we first tasted them at our local Buddist Veggie restaurant here in Calgary.  I was surprised how good they were in the restaurant and when I saw them at the supermarket I scooped up a couple of packs, they are in the freezer, I hope they freeze well.  The veggie shrimp is made from isolated soy protein, wheat fibre, paprika, konnyaku powder, vegetarian seasoning and water.  Hmmmm, no additives, perservatives, artificial colour, excellent!  The spicy eggplant was also something we had at the veggie restaurant and I was able to make it taste very similar.  Although spicy, it was finished off with no problem.  I am happy to report the hubby thought it was my best dinner in a long time.  He is right I have not been very creative lately and dinners have kind of sucked! 

Only a couple of things I would do differently next time, I would cut the eggplant a bit larger and use a bit less cooking wine for the spicy eggplant, but I think the veggie shrimp turned out pretty good.  The Spicy Sichuan Eggplant was from my "Authentic Chinese Cuisine for the Contemporary Kitchen".  I still have not made anything out of the baked seitan balls from the other day, actually a bit scared of that...I did see them at the asian supermarket and they are not suppose to deflate like that, now I am really not too sure what to do with them.  Also, the one thing I learned was to have everything on hand, there is no dilly dallying looking for ingridients, not having anything chopped, etc. once that wok is hot you better be ready to go.  I had everything lined up on the counter and was able to add it all in at the right time and that made a huge difference.

So tonight I am going to try a soup, the son has a T-Ball game so we need somthing quick, although, who am I kidding, he won't touch it with a 10 foot pole, he'll probably want mac and cheese.  Sigh!

So that's all I got for now, the little girl is sleeping and I actually have a bit of housework to get done.  Please pass along suggestions, recipes or thoughts.  Have a great day!

Lots today

I have quite a list of comments for today.  First, a couple of weeks ago I talked about grocery shopping and price comparisons.  I specifically talked about vital wheat gluten, at the time I thought Superstore was the cheapest, until I was at Safeway.  Well last week I was in Planet Organic (one of my favourite natural food stores) and found it for $8.69 a full $2.30 cheaper then Superstore.  It was a shock to me, as I always thought specialty food stores would be more expensive.  So word to the wise, even though they advertise cheap food prices, when it comes to the natural food section, please shop around, as they are not the cheapest. 


We experimented with the juicer this weekend.  We tried pear juice and it was a hit with everyone.  I do have a older not very well made juicer and it left behind ALOT of pulp, this is why I wanted a newer one.  The new juicer did a fabulous job of juicing all the fruit, out of 6 pears I had maybe half a pear in pulp.  Fantastic!  When I did the grocery shopping this weekend, I stocked up on oranges, apples and a pineapple.  We will do a bit of testing this week, I am hoping to get a leaf or two of spinach into one test.  Will have to be something green that we are juicing so the picky son won't notice.  Hehehehe. 


And finally to let you know about the "vegetarian" dinner I was served at my husband's company christmas party.  The first course was a salad with a side of potato based something which clearly had bacon in it, pass, but the salad was good.  The second course was a mushroom soup in a broth base, I have never had a mushroom soup in anything but a cream base.  This was very, very good and I am going to be doing some searching on the internet for a recipe today.  Then we had a sorbet to cleanse the palate.  Our main course was a baby carrot and two asparagus spears on top of mashed potatoes and then some sort of eggplant thingy in a pastry shell.  Absolutely no taste, no spice, no herbs, no flavour whatsoever.  It was very disappointing, I tried three bites to see if it got better, but no such luck!  I was hoping for a risotto, pasta, lasagna, something with flavour, sadly no.



Yesterday I was able to carve out a bit of time to do some cooking for the week.  I found two soup recipes in my "1000 Vegetarian Recipes" by Carol Gelles.  One was a Lentil Cauliflower Soup and then a Creamy French Lentil Soup, both sounded yummy.  When I cook, I sort of follow a recipe, so this time I did a combination of the two.  The combo soup turned out great and I was able to freeze two meals worth.  The second thing I tried to make was seitan, I got the recipe from http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=112.  It looked very easy, so away I went.  This was my first time making seitan and I had never tasted it before, so I am not sure how I did.  My version didn't quite look like the pictures I had seen, as for the flavour, it was good.  I fried a couple of pieces for dinner that night and had it with mushroom gravy, rice and carrots. 


So far this week I have planned:

• Roasted Vegetable Lasagna
• Pizza night
• Soup/Stew night with some good french bread (it's cold outside, good hearty soup)
• Seitan and mushroom Stroganoff

Again, not in any particular order.  Have a great day, stay warm and safe.