So the garden plot has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, and I can't give away enough tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers.

I'm averse to the risks and expense of home canning, but otherwise open to suggestions. There's a wide variety of heirloom cherry (if you can get seeds for "Brad's Atomic Grape", they taste amazing), Roma, and beefsteak types.

Tomatillos are getting roasted and made into salsa verde for freezing.

I'm going to make freezer salsa rojo, but any other suggestions or favorite recipes are welcome. [I do have a dehydrator, but that seems like cheating.]

Since I was a kid my main reason for avoiding meat has been the spongy, chewy texture that makes me nauseous in just a couple of bites. I've been trying to find good substitutes, but despite vegan stuff becoming more popular, food companies are all trying to make the taste and mouthfeel imitate meat. Nice for a meat lover turning vegan, not so much for someone who never liked meat to begin with.

I've tried tofu and soya chunks, but they both had the aforementioned problem. Coarse soybean meal is the only very high protein (>50%) thing I can handle, as when cooked it closely resembles one of the few meat products I used to eat without a problem: ground beef/meat.

Are there any foods that are of softer consistency? Something similar to beans, cheese, or fish, perhaps.

I should mention that I live in Europe, so any US specific brands/chains may or may not be available here.

Hi,

Where I am living we are going back into a month long lockdown, I would like to find some vegetarian recipes to cook.

I am not a Chef but I cook everyday so more advanced recipes are fine, though I also like quick wins when I don't feel like spending much time cooking.

What do you people eat when you don't want to eat meat? What are your favorite recipes?

Thanks!

It's time for another round of "name your favorite mixed drink, and how to make it". Or describe an outlandish, ill-considered, or random mixture and how it turned out.

Right now, I'm drinking an unnatural experiment made with odd drams to get rid of a couple of near-empties prior to moving.

2 oz. jack pine gin (freezer cold, local product, could use any botanical gin)
1 oz. peony baijiu (gift from a friend's visit to China)

Shake with ice, serve in a coupe glass with a very small amount of ice. It's good enough that I'll try making peony-infused vodka next spring.

[I don't usually enjoy mixed drinks because so many are too sweet - that's the spouse's domain. But some combinations of herbal, floral, spicy, bitter, or sour flavors work for my taste.]

Feel free to share what's working for you.

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P Since I missed the writeup for last week, I'll be putting both on the same post for extra goodies for the fellow readers of this !

June 5th:

this week for my curry dish I have prepared a green indian curry ! Which, frankly, I didn't know existed in this form before.... If you know me, you know there are two foods that I really hate the most when raw, those being cilantro and yoghurt. So, when my dad sent me a green curry based on cilantro and yoghurt, I was a bit skeptical at first. I mean, surely combining both of my least hated ingredients together would make for a sensory disaster ! But, to my surprise, eating this was not as much of a pain as I thought it was going to be. No no, instead of being an awful pile of green mush, it ended up being quite nice chicken with a rich and tasty green sauce on top. Honestly, one of the most confusing and fun times of my life ! Cooking it was a bit of a hassle tho, since it did smell awful for me. But it was well worth it ! :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/LNV3nAl
Recipe: https://www.scrambledchefs.com/classic-indian-green-curry/

June 12th:

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P

This week, I have prepared a dish I found on the channel Get Curried: Chicken Handi! It's a dish traditionally made in a special pan called a Handi, which I do not own! So I just used my trusty dutch oven pot. The recipe was a pretty simple curry, consisting of a mostly cream/yoghurt based sauce with a little tomato, varied spices, onion, and of course, chicken ! I think by it's own it was a pretty good recipe, but for me, what made it stand out was the fact that I used ghee for the first time in one of these. Took me 6 months to finally do it, but I bought a tub of ghee for this just to try it out. And...
Oh My God.

Ghee was an absolute game changer !!! The nutty, creamy flavour really propelled this dish into fantastic territories I didn't even know were possible ! I haven't been this ecstatic for a single ingredient in a while, but god damn. I truly believe ghee to be irreplaceable after this experience, I'll have to see if it impacts other dishes I've made a lot or not. But safe to say, this was such a great addition to my cooking ingredients. Will have to use again.

On another note, here's a little anecdote about the whole cooking process from that day. Dad and I went to buy some yoghurt to make naan (which turned out quite amazing in the end), and he saw a tub of yoghurt that was on sale. Quite cheap, too. So without hesitation, he bought it. Once we got back home, he realized it was skim yoghurt, which wouldn't make for the best naan, but it's alright anyways. Once he started kneading the dough, he soon quickly realized that he had gotten... Vanilla yoghurt. So now, we had a whole batch of sugary naan dough which would definitely not work well with our curry and no yoghurt left for anything. In retrospect that was quite funny, lol.
He did end up going for some yoghurt, though. We ended up making some pretty great naan, as I said before :P

Anyhoo, great recipe that I'd REALLY recommend doing, especially if you're using ghee! But maybe don't use too much, we made the mistake of adding a bit much, which made a really big grease pool on top, which could be unappetising. But hey, you ain't hearing me complain about it :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/uEi00Q9
Recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO0issT0Rmc
Question of the day: what foods have had a "click" in your lifetime? Perhaps something you have once hated, but then suddenly just finally understood. It's happened to me a few times, curious to see if anyone else has gotten that feeling hahahah.

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~