tempeh'd by the fruit of another

Yesterday I got three cookbooks in the mail from Melisser, The Urban Housewife. If you have been living under a rock and do not read her blog, you better start. Then you can say you read it before she moved to Vienna and think you have more cool points than the rest of your block. Are there cool points for knowing/reading more blogs than other people? I'll bet there are. Anyway since she is moving and cannot take everything with her, I was lucky enough to score a few cookbooks. I got Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, The 30 Minute Vegan and Yellow Rose Recipes. It was tough to not take all of the books she was selling, but I still have so many underused ones that I need to crack into. I just needed a little kick start to get the inspiration going again, and I definitely got one.

I am really excited to try new recipes from these books and from others in my collection as well. Even though I've gotten better at cooking some things still freak me out, like making my own seitan. Other things remind me of how picky/foolish I used to be, like using mint. So I think those are two things I should give myself a time limit on trying because even if mess up the seitan (I only ever tried once) or don't like the mint at first, at least I gave it (another) chance. All enthusiasm aside, I haven't really made anything "new" in a while. Last week was full of repeats: cookies 'n' cream cupcakes, scrambled tempeh, egg mc vegans with diner home fries, to name a few. Our menu for this week was already planned so I didn't want to make anything too large or complicated. I went easy on myself and made the "Pan Fried Tempt-eh!" from e,d,&bv.

It was a cinch to make and was delicious just with a few squeezes of lemon as the author suggests. I added steamed veggies and brown rice to make it into a meal. Also so I could save some for my sister to try. Otherwise I could have quite easily ate all of it straight from the pan. It was crispy and crunchy on the outside but still chewy on the inside. My mom even liked it, which says a lot since she usually does not want to try my food without asking a ton of questions first. Then she usually makes a face of some sort. But who can say no to fried food? I know I can't.

blame it on the rain

Our weekly forecast included three days of scattered showers, time to make soup! I've been trying to make the most of my pantry (again) so this Lemon Lentil Chickpea Soup was a perfect fit. I only had to get zucchini and onion but I decided to add some carrots as well. I'm not sure if the carrots will "go" but it was worth a try.

It started raining right when my soup came to a boil. I ran outside like a fool to get Penny and crate her in the garage. The last few times I have done this it stopped raining by the time I got her settled and came back into the house. Scattered showers are annoying but it's better than no showers at all I suppose. Let's see how many May flowers they bring. I have already noticed tons more birds and bees this year.

This was my second time making the recipe which I first found in an old issue of VegNews. It is also featured in Eat, Drink & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I will have to do a closer read but I think the only difference between the recipe in the magazine and the recipe in the book is the vn version calls for red onion. I could not find my copy of the magazine so I looked for it on the vn site and missed it the first time. I did find it later when I did not use as many words in the search. Maybe next I will find my magazine copy, and better yet, I will get my own copy of the book!

p.s. It is not the most photogenic soup, but it tastes lovely, I promise.