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.

Beanballs!

Dear Doofus Family in the new ad for Ambi Pur room spray;

If you hate the stench of your rotting dead fish supper cooking so much, why are you eating it? Make this instead:

Cajun Beanballs and Spaghetti from Appetite for Reduction

No need to spray your home with odour-crushing chemicals.

----

Anyway, I've made 'meatballs' quite often and when I found these ones in Appetite for Reduction I decided to make 'em. The fact that I found tempeh at Coles and am completely obsessed with it lately helped me to make the decision. Black eye peas are also my favourite legume most of the time :)

We loved them, they held together really well (we did end up cooking them for lik 15min longer than it said to) and they were really easy to make. However, I still like the other ones I make better (so does Nadine). So I decided: if I really really want spaghetti and meatballs and I only have half an hour I'll make the beanballs, and if I have all day, I'll make the other ones.

Barley Risotto

Nadine made dinner last night - 'White Bean and Barley Risotto with Kale and Tempeh' from Vegan on the Cheap. (with button mushrooms)

This is one of the most delicious meal I've had from this book. I could eat it all day, for real. I was sad there was only 4 servings :( It was also quite expensive to make, which was annoying. Spinach/salad greens are costing a fortune at the supermarket now and it's driving me nuts. I need my green stuff! No, what I need is to get off my ass every Sunday and go to the freakin market.

Anyway, make this damn meal, it's amazing.

We used spinach instead of kale, black eye peas instead of white beans and dried basil instead of savory.

This could have been made cheaper by using frozen spinach, tofu instead of tempeh, and a cheaper brand (or bulk buy) barley. So in the end it cost around $4 per serve.

Bob loves to sleep on our rainbow doona cover :) I turned the light on and she disagreed so she hid her face!

We got a laundry hamper yesterdayand Charlee couldn't resist it!

I made a couple of recipes from the PPK :)

I stumbled upon this recipe for 'Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes' on the Post Punk Kitchen blog and had to try it. I'm always on the look out for ways to eat tempeh that isn't disgusting. This is definately one of them.

Look how disgusting tempeh looks! It's like congealed set vomit with lumpy bits, and not cooked properly that's kinda what it tastes like. This one was actually the cheapest one in the store - I got it at $4.75 for 125g. I chose it because it had chilli bits in it as you can see, and I thought that'd probably make it taste better again. Another thing wrong with tempeh is that it's so damn expensive. Last time I used a tofu-tempeh mixed block which was a good stepping stone (and cheaper at about the same price for twice as much), this time we were ready for the real stuff.

Man these cake things were good. As you can see from the top picture I served it with steamed mixed veges (carrot, home grown beans, farmer's market white radish, a very sweet yellow squash and some asparagus) and some steamed-then-grilled potatoes. Oh, and a chunk of extremely delicious organic avocado I couldn't resist picking up at the same store I got the tempeh from.

The little patties were very easy to form (I think they would make a good burger pattie or sausage if rolled into the right shape). I made mine smaller than the recipe did because I made 14 instead of 10. We had enough to eat for lunch today :) I also made heaps of the veges and reheated them today as well.

Yum. Pretty sure that I'll be using this recipe quite a bit as I start to be able to afford tempeh a little more often :)

This is another thing I made from the Post Punk Kitchen blog - Chickpea Picatta. It's a very simple dish of chickpeas (duh), garlic, onion, capers and white wine. I was so excited at finding a recipe with chickpeas that WASN'T a curry that I couldn't wait to make it and it didn't dissapoint. Though the greens I chose to serve it on (I bought some chicory at the farmer's market as I'd never had it before) were a little too bitter for the dish it was still really delicious overall. Nadine didn't mind the bitter though. I also decided to serve it on mashed potatoes as the recipe suggests - but since I don't like mashed potatoes I mashed in a parsnip with it, and it worked.

Unless you can find a really cheap vegan white wine to use in this recipe, it's not THAT cheap to make (well, compared to other recipes I make) but we just drank the rest of the bottle with dinner so there was no wastage! Well I had beer, someone else finished all the wine ;)

I cooked up a massive batch of chickpeas (they take so damn LONG) and have frozen the rest to use later. I'm using some tonight as a matter of fact, in a recipe from a cookbook I just bought myself, I am very excited about trying a recipe.

Kebab sticks with peanut sauce

This is one of the best meals I have made lately. Basically kebab sticks with eggplant, button mushrooms, asparagus and tempeh. Serve it on top of rice with peanut sauce! We also drank a glass of rose wine with it too. Instead of actual tempeh, I bought this tofu-tempeh which was 80% tofu and 20% tempeh. We don't realllly like tempeh (hate it haha, It's revolting) so I thought this would be nice as a transition to help get used to it. It's not too tempeh-y but still has some of the health benefits that tofu alone doesn't have.