So dinner for me was the tempeh curry that I prepared earlier today. I ate it cool, from the pot, when we finally got home after a long day hanging out with friends and shopping.
Adam and I stopped at the Indian grocery store near our friends' house to pick up some staples. We love buying Kohinoor Indian packets of deliciousness to take for lunch. They have a variety of dishes, including Chana Masala and Palaak Dal, that are vegan. When we're looking for the vegan varieties, we find the Kosher label. If it says Pareve, then it's vegan. Pareve means that there is no meat and no dairy, so Orthodox Jews don't need to worry about the two mixing. In fact, many Orthodox Jews are vegan because it's actually easier than having two sets of dishes, two dishwashers, etc.
Anyway, we bought a bunch of other random things at the Indian grocer, including Naan and a TON of bay leaves. I plan on giving half to my sister, because there is no way I'll go through that many bay leaves in a reasonable amount of time. The packet, which cost $1.69, filled two 1-pint canning jars. Yeah.
After the Indian House, we headed over to the co-op to get "staples." I happened to be starving, so before we shopped, I went to the deli fridge and grabbed some vegan Chicken Chow Mein. It's made by some sort of macrobiotic company outside of New York City, and I have two complaints: 1. Not enough chick'n and 2. Way too much garlic. It was a bit too strong for me, but otherwise it was tasty. I scarfed the whole thing down. Adam and I also shared a "plum-apricot" that a friend recommended to us. It was quite enjoyable, and a good way to clean my palate after all that garlic. I also had a few bites of Adam's pumpernickel bagel. The co-op sells fresh bagels for about $1 and they have free soy margarine (as well as soy creamer for coffee) in their refrigerator by the toaster.
Generally, when I go to the co-op, I stock up on "analogs"--foods that are meant to "replace" common non-vegan foods. For example, we get tofu, tempeh, beans, and deli "meats". We also get soy creamer, margarine, vegan cream cheese, Vegenaise, and soy yogurt. We don't always buy all of these things. But since we still like to have a pretty standard diet, we tend to find the vegan equivalent of typical foods. This week we plan on making sushi for a friend, so we grabbed some vegan cream cheese, pickled ginger and an organic avocado. I also got some black beans on sale and some French lentils. It's funny--some months, it seems like everything vegan is on sale, and some months it's exactly the opposite. We generally try to buy only things that are on sale, and stock up enough in case those things aren't on sale the next month. Olive oil is a good example for that. Same with beans. There's almost always one type of bean on sale, so we buy a lot of that and then get the one that's on sale the next month. Variety is super important to me, so I try to buy some different things every time I go.
After all of that excitement, I came home and vegged out for a while, and then I ate my "leftover" Indian dish. It is so satisfying to have delicious foods around to eat when I'm too lazy to make anything. We all need "convenience foods", but that doesn't mean we have to eat junk food.
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