kabocha squash curry

Sure, it was 96 degrees today in Oakland, but even that weather couldn’t hamper my craving for kabocha squash curry!
On Monday I went to lunch with a friend at Koh Samui and The Monkey in San Francisco, and we had such a dish, only mine had shrimp in it, too. That night I went grocery shopping and picked up a kabocha, in hopes that I would get motivated before the squash went soft. I did! Today’s the day. The rice is cooking as I type, and I am going to have a most delicious bowl of curry and rice in 30 minutes or so.

As with many dishes I make, I look up a few similar recipes and draw the common thread- this is usually the steps that *must* be taken. From there I usually riff into my own thing. This curry is no different.

I used tofu instead of shrimp, because it’s what I had, and oops, fish sauce- not entirely vegan. But delicious!
I sauteed half a red onion and added the curry paste. About two heaping tablespoons of Thai Kitchen red curry paste. I’d have used more, but that’s all that was in the jar.
I added the tofu, cubed and let it get nice and…. less raw?, then opened a can of coconut milk, took a big sip and added the rest to the pot. Into the can I scooped about a tablespoon of Better Than Vegetables boullion and filled the can with water, stirred well, and poured the slurry into the soup. About 2 cans of water and some hemp milk too, I had the right amount of liquid.

Toss in the cubed kabocha and some sliced red bell peppers, a handful of brown sugar, some soy sauce (careful, I added a little too much) and a scoop of garlic-chili sauce. Simmer for an hour or until everything looks done. The squash cooks faster than, say butternut squash or acorn seem to, but maybe it’s just because I wasn’t so hungry that I was impatient.

So the rice is almost done, and I’ve got some fresh cilantro to chop, for the top of the soup. Maybe I’ll shoot a photo of the goodness and post it here, if I don’t get distracted by what promises to be a lovely dusk hour.
Okay, here it is:

Snickerdoodles!

So far vegan baking is way easier and more ‘realistic’ than gluten-free baking.
Sorry, GF crowd but I’m super glad that I don’t have celiac. In fact, of the 96 things I was tested for, wheat and gluten were among the things I reacted to the least.
Unfortunately, I did test as allergic to eggs and probably dairy.

This is another recipe from Vegan Yum Yum, and certainly not the last I’ll try.
The recipe called for ENRG egg replacer, but I used a glop of flax gel instead. I don’t know how much, and it seems to be pretty forgiving. Maybe a tablespoon of ground flax seed and *some* hot water, left it be for five minutes, then used what looked to me like a large egg’s worth of goo.

The cookies taste the teeniest bit different to me than snickerdoodles made with egg, and that’s that the eggy flavor is missing. Quele surprise, non?
They are also delicious, and the perfect snickerdoodly texture. I guess my ancient cream of tartar isn’t bad yet!

mac n cheeze

I don’t generally go in for cutesy spellings to represent different meanings of similar words- ‘womyn’ has always rubbed me wrong, as has ‘cheeze’. Thing is, it’s ‘cheezy’.

But on my sophomore effort of making vegan pasta with goo, it’s good and I’m here to confess about it.
Who knew miso, tomato paste and nutritional yeast would approximate a cheesy dip? *shrug* those crazy vegans.
I added half a can of ro-tel salsa and half a can of kidney beans, and made a much healthier version of the ‘ghetto cheese’ I used to chow down on. That dish (flipping through flickr stream, do I have any photos of said substance? nope. rats.) consisted of a block of Velveeta, a can of refried beans – all the lard, please- and a jar of salsa. Yuck. Plus some tortilla chips made with all kinds of hydrogenated business, no doubt. I’ve come a long way, baby.

I boiled up some rice pasta, leftover from my gluten-free era (aka the first six months of 2010) and combined the two. Delicious. It’s going to take some getting used to, learning the flavors and textures that go together with these vegan ways. But I think I’m gonna make it. As long as I get some bacon once in a while.

‘Grunt’, aka ‘Cobbler’.

I picked up Vegan Yum Yum: Decadent (But Doable) Animal-Free Recipes for Entertaining and Everyday. today (truly, I ordered it two days ago but it arrived today)! So far I made mac-n-’yease’, a term I’d rather not encounter ever- and this! Strawberry ‘grunt’, evidently it’s Norwegian.
This one happens to be gluten-free too, since that’s all the flour I had in the house.
We’ll see how it tastes…

The berries are, of course delicious. The dumpling/cobbler top? Not so delicious. I made them too thick to bake through before burning on top. So the bottom part, the delicious part that is supposed to be well-baked and soaked in berry love- a tad underdone. Not terribly so, just not done enough. Lesson learned.
Also, gluten-free flour tastes weird. It just does. This mix has a distinct flavor, and while it’s not bad, it changes the dish a bit. Regular gluteny flour tastes much more neutral.
I am grateful to say that I don’t have celiac, in fact it’s not a wheat allergy at all that’s been bothering me, but an egg and dairy sensitivity. Hence the vegan cookbook. I’ll be a meat-eating vegan.

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