Lately I've been trying to find more good vegetarian recipes. Yes, partly for health reasons but my main driving force is simply my desire to buy more and more organic - esp produce and meat - and the HIGH cost of organic meat. So, the simple solution to all of this seems to be to just buy less meat. So I'm trying to use more tofu or just no meat at all. This search has been more difficult than I expected as I've found a lot of meat-wannabe dishes (meatless impersonations of a normally meaty dish) but not so many vegetable-full dishes ... Does that make sense? I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not interested in making a meatless burger; I want something that tastes fresh and yummy with veggies. I've also been in sort of a peanuty-mood, so last night I tried this dish from AllRecipes and it was quite delish! A little on the spicy side, but the girls still ate it surprisingly. If it were just Andrew and I, I would continue to make it as is, but since we have little ones I think I'm going to cut the red pepper in half next time. It was only 1/4 tsp, but surprisingly pretty spicy. I had just a few modifications: added tofu (which I may not do next time because it got a little mashed up in the stirring process), substituted snow pea pods for sugar snap peas, used green onion instead of regular onion and crushed red pepper instead of ground (it was all I had). It also made quite a bit so we have plenty leftover. I'm pretty sure I used more than 8 oz of spaghetti, though it's hard to say exactly how much ... I finished off a 2-lb. bag and used about 1/4 of a 2-lb. box, I believe. It took a little longer than the prescribed 35 minutes. For me, it was about an hour ... but that was also with a minor interruption when L came to me crying/spitting because she had bitten into a penguin-shaped soap bead she found hiding in the bathroom (this was immediately followed by a minor vomit-session). Without that, I think it would have taken me 45 minutes and I'm sure with practice and getting a better handle on the recipe (not needing to go back and forth from the kitchen to the computer so many times), I can eventually get it down to 35 minutes. Anyway, I definitely recommend this dish! It satisfied my craving for a peanuty-thai pasta dish without making me go out and buy a bunch of ingredients I don't normally use (fish sauce, etc).
In other news, I know I haven't posted about a book in a while and I promise to get cracking on that ... Right now I'm reading Too Busy Not to Pray and The Last Lecture off and on. Both are non-fiction, so it takes me a lot more to finish them and commit to reading them every day. I'm almost there though! At least with TBNTP. More to come ... :)
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