It's Been Awhile...

And I'm still here! Just been busy, annoyed with the dating scene, hitting the gym, and of course cooking some grub! Here is some of the food porn I managed to take the last few weeks.

Of course there were tons of enchiladas/ burritos eaten since I make a batch of homemade refried beans weekly. I love Viva Vegan's recipe for Yellow Garlic Rice and pretty much have that in my regular food rotation as well. I love stuffing these puppies with refried beans, rice, and roasted or baked potatoes :)

Also in my regular food rotation is Garbanzo Bean Salad, this time I topped the spread with some curry powder, I really enjoy it this way.

Asparagus was on sale a few weeks ago for $.99/lb so I bought 3 bunches of it and enjoyed it roasted with salt, pepper, and garlic powder alongside some pasta topped with Ragu and Tofurkey Italian Sausages.

I also enjoyed my asparagus sauteed with Trader Joe's Soyaki Sauce, my fave!

I made a big batch of the asparagus pictured above and added it to a Hoisen Tofu Stirfry along with carrots, onions, and green bell peppers that needed to be used up.

Vegweb is having a cooking challenge and last week's cookbook of choice was Vcon so I made a few recipes to participate in the fun. First up was Red Lentil Cauliflower Curry which turned out phenomenal but seemed more like a dahl than curry.

I also made the Tamarind Lentils using brown lentils that unfortunately didn't cook enough as I am not an experienced lentil cooker and this was my first time cooking with brown lentils but the flavor was fantastic.

The I made BBQ Black Eyed Pea Collard rolls, which was my first experience using collard greens and black eyed peas. I loved the rolls but the homemade Backyard Barbecue Sauce from this book was just too sweet for my tastes and I scraped all the extra sauce off the top since there was sauce inside the rolls as well. I also got 2 extra rolls out of this recipe.

I also made the Qunioa Salad with Black Beans and Mango. All my coworkers that I shared this with enjoyed it, I thought it was okay and was bummed how quickly it went bad... I threw the rest out after 3 days.

Lastly, I got a crap ton of lemons from a coworker so I decided to make a Lemon Loaf Cake. I screwed this up and added the whole amount of sugar to the batter since I feel the directions should have said, divided so my idiot self wouldn't have added the whole amount. I also used white sugar since for some reason I didn't seem to notice the recipe said to use brown. I added an extra cup or so of flour to my batter and the cake ended up turning out really good. I was going to make the glaze but it looked way too watery for me when I cooked it so I just left it off.

I am planning on making recipes from VWAV for next weeks cooking challenge and hope to post some pictures. Sorry to leave you guys and girls hanging!