Spicy tempeh and Brocolli with Wholewheat spiral pasta

I decided to get out a cookbook to make tea tonight and Nadine wanted pasta so I chose the 'Spicy Tempeh and Brocolli rabe with rotelle' from Veganomicon on page 190. I used a regular brocolli instead of rabe, used wholewheat spirals instead of regular rotelle and added half a punnet of cherry tomatoes sliced in half.

Dayum this was delicious. I ate seconds which of course turned out to be way too much but I wanted me some more of that tempeh. It was all sausagey (fennel seeds) and spicy and delicious. If you don't have tempeh, tofu would do, or try eggplant or some sort of bean. Yummm. I can't wait to eat this tomorrow for lunch at work.

Orzo Pilaf with Tofu Feta

Orzo Pilaf with Tofu Feta
(I used risoni pasta, a packet of frozen spinach, canned chickpeas and fresh herbs.)

I love pasta. I could eat it every day. So when I was looking for something that I hadn't already cooked 3000 times that was cheap, simple and quick to make for a mid week meal (ah, working life) this jumped out at me from guess which book? I'm almost embarassed to be using one book so much.

I plan my meals a week in advance so I don't have to think about it. Doing this also seems to cut down my grocery bill a fair bit :) I made up the Tofu Feta the day before I planned to make this to let the flavours develop overnight. Every day after it just tasted better and better :)

The only problems I had with this meal were that my stupid frozen spinach was what they call 'finely chopped' otherwise known as minced, and turned the whole thing kind of brown; and my olives tasted disgusting. I bought a different brand than I usually buy because they had a good special. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Now I have a whole jar of gross olives to finish. Damn.

Other than that it was delicious, even better as leftovers, and made 6 servings instead of 4 as said in the book, and we were eating the tofu feta for days.