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Lentils and potatoes

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Langar ki dal, creamy mixed lentils Cucumber raita Aloo jeera, cumin spiced potatoes One thing about Indian food is that it's already mostly vegetarian, and many things are straight up vegan if you use oil instead of ghee. During our strict phase, we ate a fair amount of Indian food. Now, we don't cook that much of it since it's not a family favorite, but occasionally when I feel the need to eat something different, I can whip out a couple of dishes from things we have lying around. All recipes from Urvashi Patel's Indian Instant Pot cookbook . Secret ingredient in the lentils? Ajinomoto!

Vegan Carbonara

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This has become a staple in our house because it is so easy and the daughter loves mushrooms. It's from Serious Eats . Tofu, olive oil, a little lemon juice, miso, wine, and mushrooms, over pasta. Too easy! The one thing about the recipe is that it calls for 2 tsp pepper, which is a lot of pepper. I don't mind, but it's pretty aggressively peppery if you use that much.

Pumpkin baked ziti

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Pumpkin baked ziti out of the Veganomicon cookbook. I ran out of panko for the topping so I ground up some toasted no-knead bread. It was, uh, chewy but not totally unpleasant since it still did the job of adding texture to the dish.

Rebooting the Journal

Obviously we neglected the blog for 2.5 years here, but we're in the mood to start posting things again, for no real reason other than we felt like it. This post was written in February 2021 but placed in January to kick off the journal reboot. The biggest food change since the last 2018 post was that we began eating a more plant based diet in late 2019. Initially we were pretty strict, but if we went out to eat, we would eat fish and occasionally other meats, like chicken or pork. We ate a lot of tofu and cooked a lot of dishes from Veganomicon. They would have made for some great posts. Samosas, lasagna, baked pastas, sandwiches, seitan, dumplings... the list goes on and on. For the most part they were great, but there were some disasters too. One time I forgot to add enough liquid to the mac and cheese and it came out dry and sticky and barely edible, though I did try to serve it... After a few months of a mostly vegan diet, we eventually loosened up, maybe because the pande

Frittata with spinach and shoyu pork

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2/27/21: Posting some old photos that I had sent to the blog but never written up. Frittata with shoyu pork? I don't think I would make that again.

Pork Adobo Recipe | Serious Eats

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Pork Adobo Recipe | Serious Eats I made this in the Instant Pot. The photo is not mine but it came out exactly like that as far as I can remember. https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/12/pork-adobo-philippino-braise-recipe.html Pork Adobo Recipe Max Falkowitz [Photograph: Max Falkowitz] Adobo is more a cooking style than a recipe. Pork, chicken, fish, beef, or pretty much any protein you want can be adobo'd. Some cooks swear by coconut milk, others consider it verboten . You can add coriander, cumin, and chiles (smoked or fresh), or just stick to classic bay leaf, as I've done here. Even the inclusion of soy sauce is negotiable. There are few rules with adobo, and fewer agreements about what constitutes it. The big non-negotiable is a hefty dose of vinegar. Coconut or palm vinegar is tradi

Pork saag

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2/27/22: Apparently I sent this photo to the blog 2 1/2 years ago. Looks good! Must be from the Indian Instant Pot cookbook, or maybe some variation on a recipe in there.