Polenta and Baba Ganoush

I read Susan at FatFreeVegan.com’s recent post about baba ganoush and her enthusiasm for it made me really want to try it. It’s super simple to make. I think it’s a taste that takes a little while to get used (for me anyway), but the more I ate the more I liked it!. Even though it gives you mega garlic breath I really enjoyed it with my celery and carrot sticks :)As I was already toasting the aubergine for the baba ganoush I thought I might as well throw some other veggies in the oven. So I also roasted some onion, courgette, cauliflower and broccoli. I know they look like kind of burnt and shrivelled, but they were soooo good! I’ve never roasted cauliflower before and I think it’s the tastiest way I’ve ever eaten it. Even Wee G liked it and he generally doesn’t like cauliflower (unless it’s in curry). I served the roasted veg over Millet and Spinach Polenta from VWAV. I also made a lazy, quick tomato sauce from a can of fire roasted tomatoes, basil and garlic.
Next night we had polenta again. This time I topped it with some pesto I whizzed up. I only added one tablespoon of olive oil and used some water to make it slightly “saucier”. It worked really well and I prefer this to a regular pesto laden with oil. And it's much lower in fat! Yay!

A Whole Lotta Food

First up is an amazingly yummy curry posted originally by Fairly Odd Tofu Mom a while back. It’s Aloo Mutter Gobi (Spicy Cauliflower, Potatoes and Peas). I saw it again on Veg-a-nut's blog and she was raving about it. Like veg-a-nut I used less oil and light coconut milk. I also used edamame in place of the peas. I have to agree with veg-a-nut, it is soooo good! Anytime I have made Indian food before it’s never been quite as good as from a restaurant, but (even if I do say so myself!!) this could easily have came from a top notch Indian restaurant! Wee G was well impressed! So, thank you Fairly Odd Tofu Mom for this wonderful recipe! I will be making it again many times I am sure!

I also made some garlic and coriander naan bread to go along with it. I forgot to add the baking powder and only realised just before I was going to cook them...oops! So I tried to knead the baking powder in to the dough!! They actually came out reasonably well considering!

Then I still had some coconut milk left over so used it making this Coconut Millet Pudding. I got the idea from a recipe on the millet packet that used dried coconut. I missed out the dried coconut and used the coconut milk in place of some of the soy milk in the recipe. It came out pretty nice, but slightly dry and I had to add more soy milk after it was cooked. Yummy served with a dollop of jam. It wasn’t very coconutty mind you...

Artichokes were on sale in their thousands in Trader Joe’s last week and I’ve only ever eaten them a couple of times before so I jumped at the opportunity to try them again. I followed the instructions I found on this web site and served them with some melted Earth Balance margarine and some Vegenaise (thinned down a little). I know that you eat far from the whole thing, I was a little disappointed that for all the effort there really was next to nothing to eat...I couldn’t even find much in the way of hearts in them. I probably ate more mayo and margarine than artichokes!!

Another exciting find, at Whole Foods this time, was Living Harvest Hemp Milk. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as hemp milk and was keen to try it in the hopes it would be a nice alternative to my usual soy milk. First of all I drank it plain and I really didn’t like it. A couple of mouthfuls was more than enough! It was kind of nutty, but even after a good shake it seemed a little oily to me. However I did use it to make a quick smoothie the next day and I was happy to find that I couldn’t taste the yucky flavour this time (smoothie made with 1.5 cups hemp milk, 2 dates and a banana). If I was to continue to buy it I would probably use it mostly as an ingredient until I got a bit more used to the flavour.

This is some scrambled tofu from VWaV with added courgettes and broccoli. This is so good and makes a great brekkie with some whole wheat toast.

This is a mix of two recipes I have posted about previously – Far East Spicy Tofu and Tofu and Pineapple Stir Fry. It was basically Meoldy’s sauce from the Far East Spicy Tofu with tofu and fresh pineapple, broccoli and mushrooms. It was gorgeous! I love Melody’s sauce...it’s so tasty!