Curry and Compost

Tonight we made a recipe out of a book I checked out from the library, Supermarket Vegan, called Curried Cauliflower and Potatoes with Black-Eyed Peas. I recently started checking cookbooks out of the library instead of buying them and I don't know why I didn't do it a long time ago. It's so much better! It's hard to tell if a cookbook is going to be a good match just based on flipping through it, and this way I can try as many different ones as I want. An online catalog search of the Omaha Public Library turned up over 80 titles with "vegan" in them (not all cookbooks, but most) so I'm sure I'll be finding a lot more to try. Supermarket Vegan is great so far, the recipes are very accessible and don't use anything that can't be found in the regular grocery store (hence the name).

Anyway, the curried cauliflower was so good! Kevin made it, so I can't say firsthand how easy it was to cook, but he didn't have any complaints, and it didn't take too long. We served it over whole wheat cous cous.

Here's the recipe:

2 T canola oil
1 small red onion, cut into 1/2 in pieces
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 T milk curry poweder
2 C low-sodium veg broth or water
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
3/4 lb red potatoes, cubed
1/2 t salt or to taste
black pepper to taste
1 can black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained (a note in the recipe mentions chickpeas would also work)
2-3 T fresh lemon juice

Head the oil in a deep-sided skillet, add onion and cook for 4 mins. Add garlic and curry and cook another minute, stirring constantly. Add broth, cauliflower, potatoes, salt, pepper; bring to brisk simmer over high heat. Reduce to med-low and simmer covered until potatoes are tender, about 10 mins. Add peas and lemon juice and bring to brisk simmer over med-high. Cook uncovered maintaining a brisk simmer until potatoes and cauliflower are tender, about 5 mins. Remove from heat and let stand covered for 5 more minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed.

I personally would have liked more liquid since we ate it with cous cous, so maybe next time we won't let as much liquid be absorbed, but altogether it was really good... for the adults, at least. Emory ate one piece of cauliflower and a black-eyed pea, but he tried them so I can't complain too much. He'd been chowing down on watermelon and cantaloupe before dinner, so it wasn't a huge surprise.

Another awesome thing: I got my new kitchen compost bin in the mail today. It is such a huge improvement over the old one, and I couldn't be happier with it. I read a review on America's Test Kitchen's website of compost bins, and this is the one they recommended highly. It holds 2 gallons of kitchen scraps, is easy to open with one hand, and has a filter to keep the stink in. I also got compostable bags to line it, which will help immensely. Anything would have worked better than the one I was using, which was a cheap tupperware bin with no liner, so it's about as gross as it gets.

Kevin's the one who really wanted to start composting, but I got on board when I realized the crazy amounts of food being wasted by the kids. Iris just throws almost everything I give her onto the floor, and Emory, though he eats pretty well, does leave leftovers. Plus we eat a ton of fruit and have lots of rinds and skin and that sort of stuff to throw in the compost pile. Having a decent bin that's not so gross should help me stick with it. I got everything - bin, replacement filters, and 25 biodegradable bags - on Amazon for around $35!

On the left is the old yucky bin, and the green one is my new awesome one!

Isn't the filter cute?