Stuffed Pepper

One small pepper can hold it all: grains, protein, veggies. More specifically, the stuffing includes Israeli couscous, lentils, tomato, and shiitake mushrooms. It was a very yummy combination. The recipe comes from Vegan Cooking for One, and is one of the slightly complicated Sunday dinner recipes. There are several different steps including cooking the lentils and couscous, softening the pepper in some hot water, and cooking the veggie mixture and seasoning it, before everything can actually be assembled and baked. I think next time I'd add more veggies and less couscous/lentils so those flavors come through a little more.

Lentil Cauliflower Curry

Coming from Veganomicon, this delicious curry calls for red lentils, which I thought I had on my shelf but they turned out to be typical lentils. No problem there because curry dyes all ingredients a beautiful yellow tint; so red or brown, you can't really tell from looking at it.

This is a sweet curry rather than spicy. It's a very comforting and warm flavor. There is also parsnip in the dish along with the star ingredients, lentils and cauliflower. I've actually never had parsnip prior to this, or at least never realizes I was eating it had it been hidden in a dish. Because the spices are so overpowering, I couldn't really tell what parsnip tastes like. It certainly didn't stand out in this dish; but rather it offered a different texture for some variation.

Although curries take awhile to make, there isn't much active cooking time besides chopping during the prep stage. It's a very easy meal...if you ca be patient enough to wait!