Sickness and Health...and Salad

First of all, I just want to make something clear: Tony is perfectly capable of cooking. He's even good at cooking. His spaghetti sauce is incredibly delicious. When I was pregnant, he actually did the majority of the cooking because I was practically always sleeping.

That said, I do the majority of the cooking now. The reason for that is because I enjoy cooking. I like losing the stress of my day in the mundanity of chopping and sauteeing and the focus that comes with meal preparation. So, when I'm down for the count, the cooking either stops or shifts to convenience cooking. This is, once again, not because Tony is not capable. It's because when one of us is sick, the other takes over for childcare and meal prep, and since keeping the kid alive is the priority over meal prep, the kid wins.

For the last week or so, I've had a weird stomach bug going on. I had a fever and chills, and I was really nauseated. I spent a lot of time in bed, drinking mint and ginger teas. So our meals have either been repeats of stuff I've talked about in the past (tacos, for example) or they've been desperation meals since I've been sick--like canned soup. Don't judge us.

Tacos repeated! Plus the guacamole I made for myself.

Last night was probably the first I've really cooked in a while, and it was nice to get back to it. I made a mushroom, lentil, lemon and arugula salad. I found a recipe for it Pinterest--I do that a lot--and it was pretty good. I say pretty good because it was alright, but I don't think it was great. The recipe as it was written just wasn't there for me. I'm not going to link to the recipe because I think I want to try to change this one up myself and then post my recipe for it when I really feel like I have it where I want it.

Here's what I'll say in favor of this dish: mushrooms are probably my favorite thing on planet Earth, and the combination of mushrooms and garlic will always be a win for me. The arugula also pairs incredibly well with mushrooms and lentils. Tony doesn't feel particularly fond of arugula, but he commented last night that he liked it with this dish.

I just feel like the whole time I was eating this I was thinking about what I could have done differently and trying to figure out what was missing from the flavor. There are also things that I would omit next time, like the chili flakes the recipe called for. I will say, though, that this mixture was really good when I spooned it on top of the naan we had with dinner. In the future, no matter what else we decide on to change it, it will definitely be served with naan.

I feel like last night's dinner was disappointing to me. It was decent enough in flavor to eat, but it was just not that satisfying. The best meals are the ones that are satisfying in flavor and in effort. I feel like last night was neither. I put in a fair amount of effort for very little return in flavor, which makes me feel like the effort was somewhat wasted. This does not please me at all.

The good news is that today is a new day, and I can try again. We were between a few options tonight for dinner, so I'm not exactly sure what I'll be making for later. At any rate, I know it will be better than yesterday. It has to be. Otherwise I'll just have to quit cooking and become one of those people that subsists only on coffee and my disdain for others.

Vegan Tacos

Confession: sometimes, I get in this experimental phase where I just keep playing with something until I'm over it for a while. For example, when I discovered that Korean beef recipe, I made it over and over again until I was tired of it. Right now, for me that thing is TVP.

First, you should know we've discovered that now all three of us have pink eye. The baby got it again after she finished her antibiotics, which means that all of the things we thought that we had disinfected will need to go round two on their Lysol bath. And, of course, Tony and I both got it, even despite the rigorous hand-washing and disinfecting (probably because the baby is going through this face-grabbing and face-slapping stage).

So begins the eye drops and hyper-vigilance. I have to say, this is not easy for me. I'm a pretty chill mom. I'll probably never be the kind of mom that totes along the hand sanitizer and freaks out about germs, but now I suddenly have to be. Just the very notion of it seems over-whelming and annoying to me. I feel tired already just thinking about the extra laundry and cleaning I'll be doing for the next week or so.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I wanted to keep dinner tonight easy, which is why we opted for tacos. I mean, what's easier than tacos? We discovered with the nachos that TVP actually functions really well as a taco meat replacement, so we decided to just go back to that for tonight. I know, it seems repetitive and not at all inventive of me. There's going to be more interesting stuff on the horizon, guys. I promise. For now, let's just talk about taco TVP.

Last time, I mentioned that I thought that the TVP would be much better if I'd actually used a taco seasoning packet with it, so tonight that's what I actually did. We used Bob's Red Mill TVP, and I rehydrated it with water and a few drops of liquid smoke. Our taco seasoning was actually in a big shaker that we bought at Costco, so I basically just used three tablespoons of it and 3/4 cup of water. I put the taco seasoning and water in the skillet, added the TVP, and heated it up until there wasn't a bunch of extra water hanging around and the seasoning looked evenly distributed. I wouldn't say it took much longer than it usually takes for meat to absorb taco seasoning.

Taco TVP "meat."

In my opinion, it's more the accouterments that make the tacos. We did the usual lettuce, tomato, red onion. I also mashed up half of an avocado with some lime juice (I just used the bottled stuff in the fridge because my limes always go bad on me before I can use them) for my tacos. We bought some Tofutti sour cream to try, and I can report that it tastes surprisingly like sour cream. I was kind of impressed with it. I will say, however, that the warmer it gets, the less it tastes like sour cream, so it's really best to have it cold. We also had taco sauce; we use Ortega mild because it is vegan and we like the flavor the best.

There are two things that I missed about tonight's tacos versus our usual non-vegan tacos. First, I should have taken the time to cut up some black olives like I normally would. I definitely missed their flavor. I thought about it, but I was too lazy what with the pink eye and all. Second, I really did miss the cheese. We bought some vegan cheese to try, but we bought the block stuff (because I refuse to pay more money for shreds when I can shred it myself at home for free) and again with the lazy.

The red onions are hiding under the lettuce.

A word on vegan cheese: so far, I've had three experiences with vegan cheese. The vegan cheese on Whole Foods vegan pizza is tasty, but it does not taste of cheese per se, nor does it have the texture of cheese. I also made the mistake of buying a cheap vegan cheese just to try some vegan cheese, and I can honestly report that vegan cheese is not something to cheap out on. The results will be lackluster if you get the cheap stuff and you will be afraid to try again. The third result was much better. I tried some Follow Your Heart provolone today actually. It was pretty good. It smelled exactly like cheese and had the texture down. It tasted like cheese, but like a mediocre quality cheese, which is pretty good for something that doesn't contain any dairy whatsoever. Someone had to science the shit out of that stuff to get even a mediocre result. I have bought some other brands to try, but I'm trying to go sort of one at a time on them. I'll report more on my experiences with vegan cheese as they come up.

One thing that Tony and I both found surprising about these tacos is how quickly they got us full. Actually, that's something we've been surprised about since going vegan in general. We both get full more quickly and end up eating less food in the long run. On a normal non-vegan taco night, I'd usually eat three tacos. Tonight, I only ate two and felt full and satisfied. The good thing about that was it enabled me to make a taco salad for lunch with the leftover toppings and TVP. My easy dinner transformed itself into an equally easy lunch, which will enable me to get a little more sleep in the morning tomorrow.

I have about one more meal worth of TVP left in my pantry. I'm going to make it my goal to use that TVP in a way that doesn't revolve around tacos or nachos or something like that. I'm going to try to think outside of the taco-type box that I seem to have put the TVP in in my brain and focus on doing something different. What that will be remains to be seen at this point, but I swear I'm going to try to make it a fresh, new thing! Like I said, I'll try to be more interesting.