Dinner at My House

I went to Linens & Things the other day to see if they had something for a Christmas present (which they didn’t), and realized that I should probably take advantage of their going-out-of-business sales to stock up on the pots & pans for when Tracy goes to Kansas City next summer. 

That is going to be quite an event, and it’s just in the back of my mind right now because of the impending holidays, but I know that I will need to take advantage of sales where I can, because dividing a kitchen is not cheap.  We have some duplicates that won’t be a problem, but then most of our well-used stuff is not duplicated.  The wok, for instance, or the good saute pans, or even the pepper mill.  (I never thought we’d use a pepper mill, but then we got one for Christmas several years ago, and I use it every time I cook.  Every time!  Which is more times than you would think, because I bet you think I don’t cook, but I do.  Not well, and mostly the same stuff over and over, but I do cook.) 

Oh, and then we get into the spices themselves.  Spices aren’t cheap, either.  Building that spice rack has taken years and years.

In the meantime, where do I put it all?  We just don’t have that much storage space.

My favorite recipe, if you don’t mind that I go back to that, and if you don’t mind that I call this a ‘recipe’ when it isn’t, is what we call a ‘stir fry’ at my house, but really isn’t a stir fry.  For one, it’s always cooked on medium heat and just stirred every few minutes to keep it from sticking to the pan, while a real stir fry is cooked on high heat with energetic flipping and tossing.  But it’s made in a wok, and it involves lots of vegetables and some kind of fake meat, and so we call it a ‘stir fry’.  The vegetables are usually a bag of mixed frozen vegetables (my favorite is the California style, with broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, but I like it when they have asparagus as well), and I like either seitan or Morningstar chicken or steak strips for the meat (two of the only items in Morningstar’s line that are vegan).  Usually, I put a little olive oil in there, and maybe some Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (which tastes just like soy sauce), and then various spices as they appeal to me.  Cumin, garlic, and basil are favorites.  Sometimes I use sesame oil or garlic oil to replace some of the olive oil.  And always pepper from the pepper mill.

Trader Joe’s has started carrying these awesome little packets of rice that you can microwave for 90 seconds, but they’re either brown rice or jasmine rice with quinoa, and I love those.  They also had frozen brown rice that you can microwave as well, but they take up a lot of room in the freezer, so the shelf-stable packets are best.  They are great.

Other favorite recipes involve variations on marinating and sauteing tofu, tempeh, or seitan, sometimes with the large sliced portobello mushrooms, and then more mixed vegetables and salad.  Last summer, I started making barbecued seitan (which really isn’t barbecued, so much as sauted and then drowned in barbecue sauce), and that’s become a major favorite at our house.

Again, not so much recipes as just a way to produce hot food in less than 20 minutes.

If pressed to construct something for a real meal, my favorite recipe, hands down, is tofu spinach lasagna from the Chicago Diner cookbook.  That is an amazing meal.  I love it.  I will definitely make it for Christmas again this year.  And you can either choose to cook the noodles ahead of time or not, and the difference in the final product is pretty amazing.  I kind of like the drier version that results if you don’t cook the noodles beforehand.  Also, it’s easier.

Tofurky is great, though they are expensive and take awhile, but not as much time as the spinach lasagna now that I think of it.  But in the past I have tended to make the whole meal with the Tofurky: rolls, potatoes, yams, corn, gravy, etc., and that’s what takes so long with the Tofurky.  If I’m going to do it, I want to do it right!

I always like vegetarian chili, and Trader Joe’s makes a good one.  I didn’t really like soup for years and years, but this summer (during the weeks I was dealing with that root canal), I started eating soup a lot, and now I’m just hooked.  For one thing, it’s much cheaper to eat soup than sandwiches, if you’re eating out, and, for another, vegetarian soup is readily available at lots of my favorite downtown restaurants.  It’s also pretty healthy, because I don’t tend to eat cheesy or creamy soups, just the vegetable or bean ones, and there’s not much to fear in a bowl of vegetable soup!  (If you tend to fear vegetable soups, you need to back away from the damn Cosmo or Shape or Self magazine, and go out and find something else to do with your day.)

For a long time, we ate Tofurky sausages or Field Roast sausages, but we got tired of them and now we eat them very rarely.  But those are delicious as well.  I think we prefer the Tofurky Beer Brats over the other flavors, though those are all pretty great, and the Field Roast Smoked Apple Sage ones are fantastic if a little hard to get out of the package.

Occasionally, we have some kind of spaghetti-type dish, ususally made with rotini, Trader Joe’s or Newman’s Own marinara, and vegan meatballs from a package (which I love), but we don’t eat that very often.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s a fear of the carbohydrates?  But I always buy the whole grain pasta now.

An old standby is tofu scramble, mixed with some diced potatoes, peppers, and onions (that come in a package called Potatoes O’Brien), and usually made with Fantastic Tofu Scrambler, which the company inexplicably stopped making a few years ago but brought back after an unexpected outcry of dismay from the Tofu Scramble Eating Community.  Anyway, that’s an easy meal, and it’s good.

My mother keeps a store of Zatarain’s Red Beans and Rice on hand for us when we come over and stick around for a meal.  It’s vegan and good, and we really only eat it there.  We also have some Goya beans and rice dishes that we might eat once in awhile, and I’ve started buying Eden brand organic beans & rice, which come in a can and are already spiced, because they make a quick meal.

I tend to be one of those people who can make and eat the same thing over and over again, at least at home.  I am pretty lazy about cooking, so I don’t tend to complain about the food that I make for myself.  I do get tired of food available in restaurants, but that’s because I can personally make a better dinner than is usually available to me, and that pisses me off because, again, I am a lazy-ass cook.