Christmas Pizza

Christmas Pizza, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

Another pizza in our long quest for the perfect pizza dough. This was really close, but probably not ready for posting the recipe yet.

In an effort to be Christmasy, we put lots of red and green peppers on the pizza and added some chopped olives and chevre cheese.

Israeli Couscous with Spiced Tofu

Israeli Couscous with Spiced Tofu, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

I used to hate couscous. I had couscous two different times when I was younger and both times it was terrible (or so I thought). I am going through a faze where I don't want to hate any food, so I am going through the things I really don't like and trying to like them. In the case of couscous, this has been a success. Recently we have had 3 or 4 different dishes that contained various types of couscous that have all been wonderful.

The first couscous dish that started my new found love of couscous was Israeli Couscous and Mushroom Pilaf with Spiced Tofu from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. The pilaf contains olive oil, cremini mushrooms, onion, Israeli couscous (a somewhat large size couscous), garlic, rosemary, dried cherries, and salt and pepper. The spiced tofu contains tofu, paprika, cinnamon, salt and olive oil.

The tofu was incredibly tasty and I think that I would like to have it just by itself for breakfast. The couscous was very tasty too and I really liked the combination of the mushrooms and dried cherries.

Now that couscous is on the menu, I have many many more recipes to choose from that I was avoiding for a long time.

tofu & potatoes

tofu & potatoes, originally uploaded by steffan.

tofu scramble: mushrooms, tofu, onions, rosemary, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper and tumeric

potatoes: potatoes, steamed, salted and peppered then finished in peanut oil until golden on two sides, in the last three minutes add 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses and one crushed clove of garlic.

Broccoli Burritos

Broccoli Burritos, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

This burrito is an homage to the broccoli burritos that my mom used to make when I was a kid.

The beans are just refried beans from a can (Bearitos, Amy's, or Rosarita vegetarian brands are pretty good), the rice is just prepared jasmin rice, the avocado is just avocado mashed with a little bit of lime juice and salt, and the salsa is jarred salsa (in this case Amy's roasted veggie salsa). The broccoli is what makes these burritos special.

The broccoli is cleaned and cut into florets. Then we run it through a champion juicer without the juicing attachment on the bottom. This results in a fairly uniform shredded broccoli. You could probably duplicate this by running it through the shredder on a food processor or chopping it up pretty small with a chef's knife.

Once the broccoli is shredded, it gets added to a pan where chopped onions and a little bit of garlic have been softening in a little bit of oil or butter. A little bit of chili powder and soy sauce gets added to taste and then cook the broccoli until done.

All of these components then go into a tortilla and eaten. (There is a debate as to whether the beans or the rice should go onto the tortillas first--I prefer rice first, the Crusader prefers beans first, but you can decide that for yourself). You can also add some cheddar cheese and/or some plain yogurt (instead of sour cream) on top. These are very tasty even though they are not the prettiest burritos.