Maggie's Instant Pot Lentil Sloppy Joes

The temperatures each day of the past week have been dropping, little by little. Tonight it's supposed to dip below 50 degrees and tomorrow I'll wear my first sweater of the season. I've had apple cider, gotten the first of the fall squashes in my CSA (delicata!), and purchased my first pie pumpkins at our local farmer's market. I don't care if fall doesn't officially start for a few more days; it's fall to me. 

This particular dish perfectly straddles this late summer/early fall time, including some summer produce and minimal heating up of the kitchen paired with savory, warm flavors and a hearty texture. 

All things fall make me happy. The colors of the trees = happy. The smell of the air = happy. The sweater-ready weather = happy. The food = happy. This particular recipe is certainly included! 

Vegan Tikka Masala with Soy Curls

It's been a long time, dear readers, and I'm very sorry. In fact, this may be the longest time between posts on this blog - yikes! Life has just been busy for the two of us, which means we've been meal planning around events and/or meetings most nights. We've gotten involved with some local organizations pretty heavily, I took on a new 1/3 time role at work, last semester was rough on campus, my dad was diagnosed with and treated for cancer, and we are working to make a dream/business(?) of Shana's into a non-profit! All of this creates a hectic schedule and also means that I haven't had time to be creative.

Although I haven't been creative in the kitchen on my own, I have been tweaking and we have been eating some new foods, including this amazing vegan tikka masala sauce. I love my version of this recipe for the following reasons:
1. I can mostly throw things in the Instant Pot and end up with magic.
2. I had to purchase a new herb!
3. IT'S SO DELICIOUS!!! Seriously, it's magic.

The recipe for the sauce I've tweaked from Vegan Richa's recipe (her whole blog is SO good!), most importantly to remove the ginger since Shana is intolerant. In addition, the inclusion of soy curls makes this a hearty and satisfying main dish. While there are a number of components to make the recipe this way, I promise that your taste buds will thank you.

Winter Lentil Soup

It's soup season. I love soup season so much. Soup is versatile, filling, and (usually) healthy. More importantly, soup is warm in my tummy and my soul. Many folks, myself included, need warmth in both of those places right now. Sometimes life is stressful and hard, but good food can nourish in multiple ways.

Enter this lentil soup. This soup has such an amazing taste and blend of textures. It's rich and velvety and round. Plus, it's full of good-for-you lentils and veggies. After a big bowl of this soup (plus some crusty bread), I'm comforted.

Red Lentil Curry in the Instant Pot

Most home cooks I know have stacks of recipes they've been meaning to try. I have a couple of tangible stacks, but I also have a couple of virtual "stacks" - emails with links and a category of posts in my feedly account. A while ago I was perusing one of my email collections and came across a recipe that I remembered our friends Max and Sara feeding us ages ago.

In looking over the recipe, I thought that I could make it in our Instant Pot. Plus, I've been really enjoying foods with flavors from the Middle East recently and this fits in very well.

After making slight adaptations to the original recipe, I ended up with something that Shana and I both absolutely LOVE! This easy, high-protein, high-fiber, low-fat meal has been on regular rotation.

Vegan Frisket (Faux Brisket) for Non-Kosher Seder

It seems like I am starting every recent blog post with an apology. I've been gone for over a month, but again, my absence has a good reason: we bought a house! The closing happened early in Feb, then my dad came to help us do stuff in the house for about a week. Then I went to a conference, then I went to another conference, and then we officially moved when The Bests (what we call our best friends) came to help about two weeks ago. Since then, we've moved all of our stuff and unpacked enough that we can functionally live. There are still boxes and there's no art on the walls, both of which will make me crazy pretty soon. Here's a picture of our house right after the closing!

The doilies in the windows are going. 

The days we moved, I spent an entire afternoon organizing the kitchen. Since the kitchen is mostly my domain (and Shana hates the unpacking part of moving), Shana and The Bests just let me work. I'm glad they did, because I got the kitchen organized and ready for cooking. Less than a week later, Shana and I hosted 6 good friends for a nearly 100% vegan non-Kosher Passover Seder. It was so much fun! 

For the second year in a row, I cooked what we've lovingly referred to as frisket - faux brisket. Shana grew up having brisket at nearly every major family gathering, but she recently learned that many non-Jews didn't have the same experience. I can count on one hand the number of times I had brisket growing up. Although neither Shana nor I are religious at this point in our lives, Seder is a beautiful tradition (and I've written about loving traditions). Due to our lack of a specifically religious identification with the meal, we feel a bit more free to deviate from some of the required elements, such as all the food being Kosher for Passover. Thus, this delicious (but unattractive) main dish isn't religiously sanctioned, but it is an interpretation of a regularly served dish.

Crockpot Drunken Beans

This recipe was the first of three new dinners I had planned after I got bored with everything we have been eating. We started out with a winner! There are two reasons that I'm glad this meal was successful. First, YAY a new recipe! Second, given that three new meals planned for one week is a stretch for Shana, since the first one went well, that make her more open to other new meals. In retrospect, I think I get bored with our food options every spring after a winter of heavy flavors and warming meals. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I felt like that because it made me look beyond our normal fare.

This bean dish was simply amazing. I made some slight modifications to a recipe by one of the pillars of vegan food and cooking, Bryanna Clark Grogan. And although it does take a bit more effort than your standard crockpot meal, it's all worth it in the end! The pinto beans are so creamy and the subtle heat and smokiness of the broth/sauce is a perfect complement. What's more, the leftovers the next day are even better! The flavors matured overnight (even more than after a day full of cooking) and a small dish of beans was great as part of my lunch.

Crockpot Almost Irish Stew

We had a line of autumn storms move through here a couple of days ago. In their wake, they left perfect cool, fall weather. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you should be unsurprised that this cool weather leads us to soups and stews. I mean, they really are the most perfect foods! This particular stew is one that I've been waiting to post for a while, as there was a bit of groundwork necessary. Specifically, I had to make sure that you all (lovely readers, you) were comfortable with me talking about seitan.

This crockpot dinner is a fabulous fall or winter dinner. The only veggies in it are ones that you can easily get year round and the flavor profile is hearty and full of earthy tastes. In addition, putting seitan in the crockpot with some liquid gives the seitan such a wonderful texture. Plus, if you don't like seitan, you can simply switch it out for some beans (see the Helpful Hints).

Two quick blog-related items. First, I'm very sorry for my resent absence. I've been working hard and traveling a lot this semester. Neither of those things seem to be changing for the near future, but I promise that I haven't forgotten about LesVegan. Second, I've made a new page for vegan substitutions and am working on switching the links within recipes over to the new page. Eventually, the old substitutions post will go away, so if you stumble upon a broken link, please pass a message my way.

Finally, on an unrelated note: after dinner tonight we went for a walk to enjoy 60 degree temperatures, the crunchy leaves, and lovely evening ambiance. On our way out the door, we stopped to admire the lovely work the neighborhood squirrels are doing to one of the pumpkins we put out front. Apparently it's a delicious pumpkin (but the other one isn't...?). Who knows. I'm not distressed about the pumpkin consumption, as it has been fun to watch