the veg out

marjorie says...

This post is for Erik mainly, who told me over the holiday how much he liked my cornbread post. As it turns out, I did document the all day cook-a-thon a few weeks past in honor of my 2nd decade as a vegetarian. Dishes included:

• Homemade cheese stirfried with cauliflower, tomatos, cumin and turmic.
  
• Stirfried tofu, portabello mushrooms, green onions and peanut sauce.
• Basmati rice, red beets, cashews and green peas.
• Pizza with grilled eggplant, sundried tomatos, and goat cheese.
• Grilled vegetables.
  
• Cucumbers with yogurt.
  

Plus folks brought lots of food too. It was a feast! Here are a few pictures showing how the cooking went...

Kudos to Eric B. who hung out all day and grilled the vegetables.

I love beets...both golden and red.

I mixed them with basmati rice, cashews and green peas. This is how it looked:

Homemade cheese? Yes...it's easy. See:

You heat milk until it just starts to rise, and you then turn the heat off and pour in a separating agent, in this case it was lemon juice.

Then stir it and you'll see the milk separating into curds and whey. The curds make the cheese.

Pour the milk into a colander lined with cheesecloth to collect the curds and strain the whey. I then tied the cheesecloth around the curds and weighted them with a bowl in the fridge to press out the liquid.

I sauteed the cheese with steamed cauliflower, tomatos cooked in cumin seeds, and turmeric to make a dish which I learned how to make in the very beginning years of my vegetarian days...yes, it kinda looks like scrambled eggs:

Here's how the buffet looked...before and after:

Mikaela spent all day making the house look pretty. Thanks, Mikaela! You're a great housemate! I also really enjoyed getting my fast food gift certificates from Gene and his lovely daughters. Gene, how did you know that BK has that veggie burger? Yep, we've come along way from 20 years ago when I couldn't order a meatless sandwich from a fast food joint if my life depended on it...