Fun with leftovers

Mondays are usually crazy at the office. It's when we get the most tapes in and the most handbacks to either correct or send to the recipient. By late afternoon, things have died down, but it's still a crazy day. And yesterday I somehow didn't get a chance to eat lunch, so by the time I left work, I was ravenous. So I stopped at Java Green and picked up a Tofu Green Salad, an order of soy "chicken" and an order of lotus root. I ate the salad and part of the "chicken" and lotus root yesterday, and kept the rest.

Today, I roasted made Balsamic and Rosemary Sweet Potatoes (okay, they're really yams) from a recipe in The Garden of Vegan. Yams are one of my favorite foods. They do really well when oven baked with seasonings, something cut-up Russet potatoes don't. I heated up the leftover "chicken" and lotus root to go with it. It's not the most colorful dinner, but it sure was tasty.

And today I did have lunch. I went to a local place called High Noon and had a custom salad made for me. While they have menu items, customers can also get pasta or salads with the ingredients of their choice. So I did. It was HUGE, and it was tasty. I have sent an e-mail asking about vegan options there (I'm concerned about the dressings), but as expensive as the place is, I will try to eat there semi-regularly just so I can get nice big salads.

You'll notice I go through phases--I'm sure lots of people do--where I feel like having something healthy a lot and then I just don't feel like eating what's good for me. And, no, they don't coincide with my monthly occurrence. It just happens.

Tempting

One of the first products I really learned to cook after I went veg was tempeh. Tonight, I found a recipe from www.vegweb.com, a Pomegranate-Balsamic Tempeh. You marinate in soy sauce and balsamic vinegar, grill the tempeh, then make a sauce of pomegranate molasses and balsamic vinegar and drizzle over the tempeh sticks. Much to my consternation, I ran out of balsamic, so I adjusted the recipe a bit with extra tamari sauce and pomegranate molasses. It was delightfully tart and chewy. I also broke in my grill pan that I bought a few months ago with a gift cert I got for my birthday (thanks, Mom).

I cooked the veggies a week or so ago to go with some peanut tofu chunks (that I did not blog about when I made them) and I threw in my favorite accompaniment, a baked potato with Earth Balance margarine. I have a couple of garnet yams that are begging to be made into what I call sweet potato fries because it sounds better than yam fries.

And now a message for spammers of the world. I notice in my Outlook inbox at work a lot of spam, typically offering me Viagra and the like, often with extra characters thrown in so it looks something like "Vlkagra." Some of you send me what looks like stock or investment tips. Or I get stuff that guarantees I will please my wife. I must insist you stop. Number one, I am NOT going to buy drugs -- or anything else, for that matter -- based on an e-mail from a stranger, especially if you can't spell it right or format it right. Number two, women do use the Internet and e-mail and probably don't need Viagra or devices or drugs to help them enlarge a body part they don't have or increase the volume of a fluid their bodies don't produce. I'm not sure any woman cares how much a guy produces; I sure don't. And since I am a heterosexual female, I clearly DON'T have a wife. I don't know whether to be amused or annoyed that there aren't products promising women better bodies, the ability to really please their men or whatever.

Find another job, dear spammers, and keep your garbage out of my inbox. Please. Because every time I see an e-mail from you, it goes straight into the spam folder at the office. I just wish I could send something back to you telling you to get a damn life, but I don't want to take the risk.

I'm baaack

I haven't felt like doing much cooking, not to mention my boyfriend has taken me out a few times. With my new job, I get home later in the evening, which means I eat later. But there are times when I absolutely have to cook.

Now, you have a bunch of ingredients, and you need a recipe for them. Or you feel like a veggie loaf, but the recipes you have call for ingredients you don't have in your house and you really don't want to go out grocery shopping, thus delaying the dinner bell even more. Well, Jennifer Shmoo, the Vegan Lunchbox genius, created the Magical Loaf Studio. You enter the ingredients you have (or want to use), click the button, and you get direction. Now, I don't know if I can skip a category -- I haven't tried -- but there are countless combinations one can come up with.

My loaf -- not a pretty concotion, but a tasty one -- had ground almonds, a shredded carrot, a chopped onion, some mushrooms, tofu, brown rice (I had some leftover), flaxseed meal, various spices and seasonings, and nutritional yeast. It was pretty good, but the loaves I make tend not to be very firm and sturdy, but this held together fairly well. I drizzled a little leftover barbecue sauce on it for flavor, and it really rocked.

So as it gets colder, check out the Magical Loaf Studio and make your own veggie loaf -- but don't blame her if it doesn't turn out. Like Flat Top Grill (or whatever your favorite Mongolian-grill type place is), you pick the ingredients yourself.