Take-Out and The Plague

The last couple months there has been lots of take-out meals walking through our door. We have been plagued with mono and other various diseases and apparently cooking requires a lot more energy than we ever realized. Grocery shopping, prepping food, and standing for long periods of time near a stove or oven became as insurmountable as Mt. Everest. With the plagues slowly retreating we are hoping to get back to our normal cooking routine. The few dishes we made over the last several months had to be excellent to be worth the energy expenditure. Below are some pictures and blurbs of the few and far between cooking experiments since we last posted.

First, we made "hippie-style" stuffed eggplant. Moosewood's recipes have never let us down and this was not the exception. This is a fantastic and filling meal. It does take a little prep work, but is worth it (even if you find that you have no energy). After scooping out the eggplant saute it with onions, garlic, mushrooms, and salt and pepper. Then you combine that mixture with cottage cheese, cooked brown rice, cheddar, thyme, hot sauce, sunflower seeds, parsley, and paprika. Stuff all that back into the shells of the eggplant and pop it in the oven. In 40 minutes or so a wonderful vegetarian meal emerges.



The picture below does not do justice to this amazing dish. We were down on the fact that we hadn't been away on vacation together in almost a year. Our last trip was to Portland, Oregon. We really wanted to recreate our favorite restaurant meal in Portland and due to the wonders of the internet it was possible without a sweat. Our favorite restaurant in Portland was The Farm Cafe. Not only is the atmosphere exactly the way we like it (homey), but the food is a local home run. Our favorite dish we had there was herb-crusted tofu in a marsala mushroom sauce. We shouldn't have poured the mushroom sauce on top of the crisp fried tofu, but we had decided not to make the mashed potatoes that traditional are served with it to save energy. I would highly recommend googling this recipe and trying it out. Ingredients needed without the potatoes are: extra firm tofu, soy sauce, marsala wine, water, thyme, salt and pepper, bread crumbs, canola oil, yellow onion, cremini mushrooms, herbs de provence (we just did our own mixture of what we had on hand), and silk soy creamer.



This last meal was a gamble. My soon to be husband's parents brought us back a cook book from their trip to Thailand over the holidays. The pad thai recipe looked so simple we just had to try it. It turned out that the flavor was successful and delicious, although it seems like we need a little more practice cooking the noodles.