Fast Food

We've been eating a lot of what I would call "fast food", things that can be made quickly and easily. Sometimes that means it's a very simple meal with only one or two ingredients. Sometimes that means we order out.

Thursday night was Thai food. We avoided the peanut sauce dish (which is always my stand-by) because it really is just a ton of sugar pretending to be peanut sauce.

Friday night we didn't want to waste any time cooking so that we would have more time to watch Buffy. We made rice and lentils in the pressure cooker (20 minutes!) and the awesome brussel sprouts dish that I've mentioned before. It was great and I highly recommend doing it in the broiler. Nothing caught on fire this time so I count that as a huge success.


Tonight Dandelion the Bitter Green has a show so I made some roasted veggies based on a recipe from a Vegetarian Times article: Sesame-Roasted Sweet Potato and Broccoli.

One pot meals

Ok, I know I've mentioned my obsession with sweet potatoes. Again last night I made sweet potato chips. They got fairly burnt but didn't stay super crispy (at least not in my lunch box today). I also made a all-in-one-pot meal (excluding the chips). I'm a big fan of cooking everything together- fewer dishes to clean up! On Sunday I made an extra huge batch of brown rice and lentils. I cooked 3 cups whereas usually we only do 1/2 or 2. This is enough rice and lentils to last through the millennium. Or almost. I've been running out of clever ways to use them. The first day I put it in the soup I was making. (Again one pot.) The second day, yesterday, I put it in the stir fry. Today? I might have to order take out. I'm planning on going to a book signing for Dale Pendell. Yes, of the Pharmako/poeia fame. He seems like a fascinating person so I am even skipping a show that D's band is playing to do this instead. I love getting books signed! I feel like a little kid about it.

I will report back on the take out options. It will probably be Samila Thai (I think that's what that place is called.) It's on Haight St. near Cole. They have pretty standard Thai food with a few vegan anomalies which are worth checking out. They make a fake fish dish which is pretty good if you like spicy. It's also better if you are sharing dishes with the whole table. On its own it's very much just the "fish". I think they have some other things that you can get with fake meat as well. I'm not a huge fan of the fake meat so after trying the "fish" (and determining that it was too damn spicy for me!) I've stayed away from them. I tend to go with the standard "tofu and veggies with peanut sauce". The one other thing that puts this Thai place above the rest is that they offer brown rice. Hooray! That's always the disappointment of ordering take out, especially Chinese or other Asian specialty. There's a mound of that crappy white rice that polishes your insides (in a bad way). I'll support almost any restaurant that serves brown rice. It's such a staple of my diet that it's hard to be without it, especially when white rice is the substitute. sigh.