Sunday, July 20, 2008

Take my word for it

I've cooked up a storm this week, but have nothing much to show for it. You'll just have to take my word for it. I made a Peanut Butter Cheesecake for some friends, but forgot to take a picture. Then I made a tofu quiche for an event and again forgot to take a picture. I was even going to take pictures of some yummy road trip food yesterday again forgot.

Now, I know I could tell you all about these foods without pictures, like how the peanut butter cheesecake batter was so rich that I felt sick after licking a fair amount of batter from the inside of my food processor (Don't worry, guys, this was after your cheesecake was safely in the oven).

And I could tell you about how I got home at 11pm last night after a long day at a Wisconsin Bluegrass festival and still needed to make a quiche for an event at 9am this morning. I almost didn't make it, but then decided I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to make quiche. The crust of a quiche is really my favorite part, so I had to make it from scratch. I filled the crust with sundried tomatoes, (local) broccoli, onions, garlic, and (local) mushrooms. The quiche itself was the tofu, soy cheese, turmeric base from The Garden of Vegan.

But describing food is not nearly as much fun as looking at it (or eating it, for that matter).

So finally tonight I took a picture my dinner!
I love polenta because it cooks up relatively quickly and can be seasoned with anything your heart desires. This polenta has sage and thyme from the garden along with salt and pepper. That's it. The green bean, tofu, mushroom mixture was the best part.

Lately everything I've been making has been seasoned with maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, tamari, and a touch of sesame oil. So guess what the sauce on this is...?

The tofu was marinated in this new favorite sauce and chopped up kinda little. I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and fried up the little tofu pieces, then added the green beans from the backyard. Next I threw in 2 thinly sliced cippolini onions (local), sliced creminis (local), and a pasillo chili from the garden. As soon as the mushroom started to wilt, I poured in the sauce and took it off the heat, scraping up the bits from the bottom of the pan into the sauce.

This meal came together really quickly and I'm hoping it will taste even better in my lunch tomorrow. I was really surprised how much the sage from the polenta really stood out, even with the assertive balsamic vinegar & maple flavors. Yum!

2 comments:

jessy said...

wow! your meal looks soooooooo good! and i can't believe you made a quiche from scratch after getting home so late! amazing! my lazy ass would have said "ehh!" and gone to bed! polenta is soooooo tasty - and i love that you can change it up to suite any flavor, too - it's so awesome like that. that's crazy on the batter - i made myself sick on cuppycake batter once - it was yummy & awful all at the same time! :)

Erin said...

I actually don't think I need a picture of the pb cheesecake to get the jist, I'm definitely craving it right now. Your dinner looks good! Hooray for quick dinners.