Most of the recipes thus far have been astonishingly good, and I haven't missed meat or diary at all. Every once in a while though, things just don't work out.
Lunch today wasn't terrible, but it wasn't amazing either. I made a Sun-dried Tomato and Hummus Wrap, which I ate along with the the last of my fruit as well as some chips and salsa.
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| Sun-Dried Tomato & Hummus Wrap |
Even though the ingredients were good, it just didn't come together. I think it was the fact that there just wasn't enough filling--too much tortilla, too little flavorful goodness. It also wasn't very filling, so I was hungry in only two hours.
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| Sometimes the whole... |
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| ...ISN'T greater than the sum of the parts. |
This pales in comparison to dinner though. What a fiasco. First, the Quick Black Bean Chili. It tasted horrible, and wasn't like chili at all. It was a pile of black beans with some mushy tomatoes clinging to it with far too much bottled chili powder taste. I took one bite and threw the entire pot out, which makes me really sad to do (good thing I made only two servings worth). It even looked terrible.
Next, the Tomatillo Salsa. I was very excited about this because I have never tried tomatillos before. First off, some of the tomatillos had bugs in them. Second, they were oddly sticky, which was a little disturbing to me. I can't really describe the texture. Are they always like that? Next, the recipe said to halve them and then simmer until they turn into sauce. They didn't turn into anything except for very soft and hot tomatillo halves. I ended up using the food processor to make it more of a "salsa" consistency. Also, the recipe called for a ton of onion and garlic--an entire onion for less than two cups of salsa! I scaled it back a little. When I tasted the salsa with a spoon after pulsing I was not impressed at all. It was sour, and I couldn't imagine what to pair it with. It wasn't
terrible though, so I decided to see how it would go on the rice.
Oh, the rice... The knobs on our stove are counter-logical, and so the three of us are guilty of accidentally turning on the wrong burner all the time. Well, I meant to have the rice on low and the salsa on med-high. I accidentally put it the other way around. It was only moments before the entire apartment was thick with burnt smoke. All three of us drug out fans and ran around flapping our arms, magazines, potholders, and whatever else we could find at the smoke. Even with the doors and windows open I can still smell it a bit, hours later. The rice didn't catch on fire, but it was close. Thank goodness the fire alarm for our building didn't go off. I'm not sure if that poor pot is salvageable now though.
Suffice to say, I was a bit put out by all of this. I had a Wildlife Society meeting to go to at 7 pm, so I decided just to get dinner out. Vegetable lo mein and a diet coke from Happy Wok might not be the best diet food, but it was vegan and I was tired and hungry. I was actually feeling pretty bad about the whole thing, thinking this whole endeavor was a waste of time and stupid of me, but a little smoke-free air and food in my belly soon turned my attitude around. That, and pretending to be an emperor penguin and frog noises at the meeting. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
