Food porn!

Since we're leaving for New England in a couple days, we realized we have a ton of fresh food we need to deal with. So we began a busy weekend of cooking with breakfast:

vegan pancakes with pink lady apples

boiling potatoes (yeah, I know: boring, right?)

but add some baked tofu,

and SHAZAM! it turns into something more exciting

pretty exciting: Thai tofu red curry with yellow, orange, and red peppers, onions, and zucchini

spicy Thai peanut noodles with tofu
(seeing a theme? it was actually accidental)

prepping brussels sprouts for Fresh Brussels Sprout Salad
from Earth Eats, a podcast I love.

adding green onions to the brussels sprouts

Unfortunately, the brussels sprout salad was kinda disappointing.
In fairness, I didn't have the toasted sunflower seeds or the red pepper flakes.
But I did have tofu and a hot skillet, which did wonders.

Another disappointment: Thai peanut cakes from an otherwise normally fantastic cookbook, The Gate Easy vegetarian Cooking , from The Gate vegetarian restaurant in London.

I know what you're thinking: what kinda lameass food porn blogging cooks are we that we need the "easy" version, rather than the full version ? Well, we also have the full version, and it has some amazing recipes, but the dishes can take hours, and the ingredient lists are often super complex and obscure. So many recipes might be feasible if you live in San Francisco or NYC and have hours to shop, but you'll have to trust me: it's much more difficult in Atlanta.

Why a disappointment? Well, they just didn't hold together in frying. At all. And since they're vegan, we couldn't cheat with a binder like egg. I mixed in a bunch of flour, which made them hold together better, but also took away the fluffy texture and made them taste a little more mild. I still have some of the mix, so I might try to work on them more tonight.

Three people, one dinner party: six wine glasses, five pint glasses, one small wine glass (the chef's share!), two digestif glasses.
Among other delicious libations, we enjoyed a 1.5 liter magnum of Anchor's Our Special Ale 2009 , their always delicious xmas ale. Yum.

And here's just a hint of what a three dish dinner party does to your kitchen. (It was well worth it.)