A "good recipe" is kind of like a "pretty girl"...subject to the vagaries of personal taste. Certain elements may draw you to one (recipe, that is) only to find that she - I mean "it" - just doesn't perform as the picture or profile elements imply it will. [A brief aside, LG performs at all levels somewhere above 10.0]
Anyway, we've been trying a variety of recipes from various sources including The Engine 2 Diet book, Whole Foods vegan online recipe collection, Healthy Girl's Kitchen blog, and the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen web site. LG is working at translating some of our pre-E2D dishes into vegan iterations. Generally they work pretty well, but we're still getting used to the way different products perform (or fall flat.) Pasta, for example, is an acceptable food on the E2 diet, with the caveat - we were beginning to think - that it has to taste crappy or feel like sawdust in our mouths. Fortunately, a package of brown rice spaghetti found its way into our cart at Trader Joe's (I will claim that I chose it. LG may remember it differently.) Suffice it to say, we were favorably surprised that this whole grain, low-glycemic pasta has the taste and texture of good old semolina wheat spaghetti noodles.
The various forms of tofu are still a bit mysterious to me. The extra-firm version comes packed in some kind of milky liquid and has to be squeezed through a (preferably clean) dishtowel to remove about half it's weight in additional mystery liquid. Is all that really necessary? In a cooked dish, however, it's like a good bartender - it brings the required goodies, but then retreats into the background. But - I've yet to have a chunk of tofu make any effort to engage me in sports-related conversation. The "silken" variety of tofu is just plain goo. If you try it out of the container - goo - somewhere between puss and Elmer's glue. If you cook it in a broth or soup (like I had at an Asian restaurant)...goo. Probably good for some kind of sauces or something, but I haven't been able to get past the whole goo thing to find out.
Unsweetened, unflavored soy milk is nasty. I'm not positive, but it might be that stuff the firm tofu is packed in. It's watery and gray...that can't be good. Fortunately, other non-dairy options are available and far superior to beans-crushed-with-dirt soy milk flavor. Almond, rice, cashew and various combinations of these can be downright acceptable, if not delicious.
Vegetables - now these I'm more familiar with. As I've said before, between rinsing, peeling, coring and chopping, my relationship with this foundation of vegan cooking has garnered a major chunk of time in the Mac/LG kitchen. My knife skills are approaching awesome and we keep the cutlery well honed. A couple of early-on incised wounds reminded me that a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one. Ours are sharp. If you ever visit our kitchen, consider yourself advised. I've found that you can have too many sweet vegetables in some dishes. We tried a lasagna that contained sweet corn, red bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes, a sweet pasta sauce and a thick layer of mashed sweet potatoes. We both agreed that, if one could suffer hyperglycemia from a low glycemic food...this would be the recipe that did it. Of course, some people love that recipe...different strokes, as they say.
Herbs and spices become pretty valuable allies when your traditional flavor front line has been decimated. Saying goodbye to olive oil, salt, butter and the like creates the need for assertive, high-performing back-ups from the bench. Last night, LG hand-made a batch of chai spice for an almond milk, date, spinach (yes, fresh spinach) smoothie for dessert. In spite of the bilious green hue and the knowledge that spinach lurked within, it was darned tasty. The chai was the flavor champion and, though I've never been a fan of that sweet tea version, I am now in favor of this wonderfully complex and assertive combination of sweet spices and pepper.
The adventure continues and we are actually enjoying this land of culinary mysteries known as veganism. At least for the time being...and without soy milk.
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