vegnomiconstraveganza, pt. 47, 48, 49...

I do have other cookbooks, I swear I do... but somehow I just keep coming back to the Vcon. It's like this personal challenge thing to finish it, and it narrows my weekly grocery ideas down to a manageable level, definitely. Plus it tastes fantastic, like 98% of the time, can't go wrong. :)

The prettiest salad award goes to the black bean, mango and quinoa salad, and also the "makeable in ohhh 5 minutes" award. I rank both factors pretty high, I'll be making variations on this for years to come, I think. (and each subsequent salad will rock more than this one, because I was using up iffy mango and tasteless red peppers in it. and it was still great!)

I don't know why I torture myself with risotto-making plans on my off-days. Maybe because on the other side of all that stirring I feel like I've climbed a mountain. A mountain made of patience! And about 1 more cup of water than the recipe called for. So yeah.... this is one tasty concoction. I've never even had regular risotto, but this one (the asparagus and lemongrass risotto) was worth every moment of glazed-over-eyes and stirring, stirring, stirring.......... seriously! Something really nice and exotic about it (and yet comforting like only a big ol bowl of creamy rice can be). It was even good the next day.

And what does one do when the fridge is down to carrots, celery and peas? Make pot-pie of course! This was kinda iffy for me, actually, but I'm not much of a 'beef-style' person normally, and I think the toughness of the crust was my fault since I followed normal crust procedure and not what was written in the book (I added water, chilled, and rolled. Instead of adding water, rolling and chilling). I mean, it was good, but not my usual bag, you know? I'm actually kinda curious what recipes will be left for me to force myself through when I get near the end of the Vcon - I counted today and I'm 1/5th through the book!!! Whew! (and what happens when the cookie and brunch book come out? Liz explodes, basically. XDDD)

EDIT: The crust wasn't tough it just wasn't browned enough! And I dropped a bit of water in the filling before I made the second one, to up the gravy factor, and went mad with the pepper. MUCH better this time. Extremely yum. And oh lordy did I feel like June Cleaver while making this, did I mention that? The novelty of that alone will probably get me to potpie it up sometime again in the future, maybe chicken-style next time though, cause those are the freezer-burnt memories of my childhood. White sauce-y, nutritionally void, gooey crusted toasty gems... zomg I'm getting nostalgia-drool all over! haha, anyway....