Tag: rice

Negril Caribbean Cafe

Tuesday I had to take an all day class and then an exam at the health department in downtown Atlanta. It sounds kind of terrible but it was actually pretty informative. And the test was pretty easy. Anyway, we were only going to have an hour break for lunch so I had to figure out ahead of time what to eat. Calabash looked to be a bit too far to walk, so after some googling around I found Negril Caribbean Cafe. Their menu showed some veggie options. Cool!

Naturally, it was raining all day. So I stomped through the rain the 3 or 4 blocks to the restaurant. I asked about vegan options and it was pretty much all the veggie options. Cool! So I got the blackened tofu, peas and rice and green beans. She said the blackened tofu came with sweet and sour sauce. I asked for it on the side. The blackened tofu wasn’t really spicy. At all. So that was kind of odd. But everything was pretty good. The sweet and sour sauce was kind of like asian sweet and sour sauce. It also had a strip each of raw onion, bell pepper and carrot in it. And two tomato chunks. I ended up dumping it on half the rice and half the tofu. I think the green beans were just canned, but they weren’t cooked to death so I was fine with that. They also had some veggie stir fries, a curry and other stuff on the menu I’d like to try.

I almost forgot that I picked up a callaloo patty for later that became part of dinner. The greens had a bit of a kick. Very nice.

Holy crap! That wraps up my 2nd VeganMofo! 31 posts in 31 days. I might be a little blogged out….

Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet Potatoes

It’s been nice cooking lately instead of going out. While we’re lucky enough to have quite a few vegan options here in Atlanta, there is a ceiling. And sometimes you get tired of eating the same stuff all the time. At least I do.

But when you cook at home, your possibilities are almost endless. The Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet Potatoes from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan were another excuse to turn on the oven for an hour. Plus, I don’t cook nearly enough tempeh. I forgot to get pineapple and toyed with the idea of using mandarin orange segments but then just left out the ingredient entirely. The dish did not suffer for it. There was plenty of sauce and plenty of sweet and sour goodness.

For Indian food lovers

If you want to cook something that is about as close to the tastiest Indian food you can get in a restaurant, you’ll want to try these lentils from Dino’s Alternative Vegan cookbook. This is one of those recipes I keep going back to. It’s another one you can whip together with mostly pantry items.

I had a couple of options for something green to eat on the side. Instead of keeping the green beans plain, I used the treatment Dino gives to broccoli and roasted them up in the oven. There might have been just a bit more seasoning than I needed for the amount of green beans I had, but it was amazingly good.

Jackfruit “Carnitas” Again

I had the ingredients for Jackfruit “Carnitas” around since I didn’t get to use them for the failed potluck. So we had them for dinner, in flour tortillas this time instead of corn. I don’t think Kevin was too enthusiastic about them. I still dig them though and have been chewing on the leftovers for many meals. We ate the original meal with the Black Beans and Rice from the Miami Nights episode of Simply Delicioso. Definitely, simple, easy and yummy. Sometime soon I’m going to try one of her yucca recipes.

Disaster recovery

Well, I was going to make Dal Kootu last night. But then I burned the beans in my pressure cooker. The water kept bubbling out of the steam release. Maybe I need a new pressure cooker.

 

the burnination
the burnination

So I flipped around Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine from South India for another recipe I could make. I picked Vegetable Korma. It was okay, but the coconut didn’t mix up smooth enough. I think it would have have been better if I had a vitamix or if I somehow substituted in coconut milk for the shredded coconut. 

Oh yeah, now I remember why I bought a new digital camera. *sigh*