More questionable photos of tasty meals

So today's installment of good food, horribly immortalized in digital format, comes in part from Zoa who has lately been talking up Jamie Oliver's cookbooks. I never thought I would bother with his oeuvre, but Zoa made his recipes sound awesome so I got some of his cookbooks from the library. In this one, there was a recipe for Jools' beef stew. I guess Jools is his special lady friend? I don't know. Anyhow, the recipe sounded good except for the beef (ugh). It entailed many root vegetables, winter squash, lemon zest, sage, and rosemary.  Subbed in seitan for the beef.  It was pretty much delicious.

Now back to the Vegan Slow Cooker.  This week I made the chickn noodle recipe (it was a little on the bland side, but I think if I had a cold, I would love this. Half of a toasted cheeze sandwich on the side), and.... 

the mushroom "soysage" ragu recipe (definitely not from the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls--I just included that for Shen).

So far I would rate this cookbook pretty highly. I'm not blown away, but the recipes deliver what they promise: straightforward, easy, wholesome, accessible, and healthy vegan food.

Spanish (not really) stew

T'other night I wanted stew (yet again, see http://shortycanburn.blogspot.com/2011/09/couple-of-noms.html).  But we had the last (sniff sniff!!) of our garden tomatoes to use up, and somehow none of the stews I usually make are tomato-based. But those 'maters REALLY needed to get eaten or they were going to go bad, so I poked around on the Internerds for something stew + tomato-centered.  I found a lot of Spanish-esque tomato-based stews out there, but how to veganize? Let me tell you, we went to Spain some years back when I still ate dairy, and it would be hard to get by there as a vegan. All the recipes seemed to have chicken and bacon in them.  I ended up sauteing some onion and LOTS of garlic in good olive oil, adding in some Butler Soy Curls and smoked tofu (in lieu of the aforementioned chicken and bacon), about 4 big chopped up tomatoes, veggie broth, smoked paprika, chickpeas, potatoes and cilantro.  I bet some olives would've been awesome too, but we were out. Anyhow, I served it over polenta and it was really good. I felt like this was one of the first new things I'd "engineered" largely on my own in a while so I was pleased :).
Have a great weekend!