Morocc'n'roll Oven Roasted Carrot Spread and Roasted Carrot Spread with Fresh Ginger and Curry

These two dips/spreads are very similar in that their base ingredients are the same. Both require a pound of carrots, one red onion and one head of garlic to be roasted with tamari sauce and oil. That alone was scrumptious! It made the whole apartment warm and smell great! I could have just eaten the vegetables. The Ginger and Curry dip required some sauteed ginger for which I got to use my brand new garlic press for the very first time. It was so cool!! It's not going to replace hand-chopping the garlic for me, though. I'll use the press when I need a lot of garlic but I can chop garlic by hand pretty fast, too. Still, it was fun! I also got to use a great wedding gift for the first time. We received a Cuisinart 14 cup food processor as a wedding gift (Thank you Josh and Eryn!). I'll admit - I thought it was too big at first. That thing kicks butt! It's so great! It's quiet and it actually gets the job done. I cooked for six hours yesterday and I used that thing the whole time. Before this, I only had a 3 cup processor from Black and Decker. It was okay. It was too small (especially to puree soups) and didn't do as good a job. But this giant Cuisinart beast is thing to behold! I personally like to chop veggies by hand so it won't replace that for me but it is perfect to make silken spreads or puree stuff within an inch of its life.
The Roasted Carrot Spread with Fresh Ginger and Curry is just a bit too strong for me. Were I to make it again, I would halve the suggested curry (or use a more mild one) but then I'm not a huge curry lover. It's a decent dip and it won't go to waste at our house but I don't think I (or my sweetheart) will ever be craving it. Ditto on the Morocc'n'roll Oven Roasted Carrot Spread. Solid, decent but I won't be coming back for seconds. Both spreads can be used as the base for other things so I may experiment with that or freeze them for when we have a party to go to and unload them there. I'll admit, I'm disappointed since those vegetables smelled FANTASTIC coming out of the oven and the spreads are only so-so but again, I'm not a huge curry lover so that might be the problem on the one hand.

Find it: Morocc'n'roll Spread - page 23 of PV and Roasted Spread on page 15 of PV

Thai Sweet and Garlicky Cauliflower with Red Bell Pepper Strips

This book is riddled with long titles but that was no reflection on the time it took to make this dish. I ended up making a double batch because a single batch called for 1/2 head of cauliflower, 1/2 a yellow pepper and 1/2 a red. I figured if I was going to be left over with exactly enough to make a batch, I might as well make it again. The hardest part of this dish was chopping everything up - and isn't prep always the most time consuming? But even that wasn't bad. I had my sweetheart help me and we were done with everything in about 15-20 minutes. Just enough time to make some rice - which I did. There is a lot of juice left over from the 3T of soy sauce in here and rice just seemed like a perfect thing to serve this with, though CD doesn't call for it. Next time, I'll serve it with quinoa to up the protein intake (I was hungry again in about an hour). CD recommends that you measure everything and prep all your ingredients prior to cooking. I never used to do that but I started trying it and it really helped with this dish (there is a little bit of "do this for 15 seconds then quick throw this in for 30 seconds" that was greatly eased by having everything ready.) Oh, and it was delicious!

Find it: On page 723 of Passionate Vegetarian

Ned's Firey Oven Bakes

I thought I would start with something pretty easy. I've actually made these before but, in the spirit of things, I'm making everything at least once starting now. These are delicious and I like them spicy (so three tablespoons of tobasco sauce for me!). One tip I can offer from experience: Do NOT put the garlic (alone or with the sauces) in a food processor and mince it. It turns into a garlic slurry that does not help out the fries. Crescent Dragonwagon knows her stuff and if she says coarsely chop, just coarsely chop it.
Speaking of Crescent Dragonwagon (CD), now is probably a good time to go more into depth about why I'm doing this and why her book. I became a vegetarian in the summer of 2004 when I started graduate school. I had begun looking into the effects of eating meat on the environment and was leaning toward vegetarianism when I began to really look at the effects on one's health of a meat based diet. I've been a vegetarian ever since but feel that it is a decision that everyone has to make for themselves. So you'll not hear me trying to persuade someone else to eat the way I do nor hear me lament over the poor creature that died to feed you. I do truly believe that animals are here on earth to feed and clothe us but I really think that we have messed that up so much that it's just no longer healthy to consume animals. That said, I found Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon and have loved it! It's a great book just to sit down and read. I have several vegetarian cookbooks that I use but this is my favorite. It contains 1000+ recipes and I intend to cook them all.

Find this recipe: On page 792 of Passionate Vegetarian