I'm sleepy and I don't know what to have for dinner and it's already 9:00pm.
I made some nice black beans & rice with BBQ tofu for lunch. Here's the beans recipe, as usual modified from a recipe on AllRecipes.com
( recipe! )Ground coriander seed is my new favorite seasoning, I've been putting it in a lot of things. It used to be oregano when I was first learning to cook, then for a while it was basil. My earliest experiments with cooking involved adding extra seasonings to Campbell's minestrone soup. I pretty much had to teach myself to cook. I was kind of bad at it in high school and university - broccoli in a slow cooker: BAD IDEA - but I was getting fairly good by the time I graduated.
I try not to do that, always adding the same seasoning; I want to choose seasonings that are really appropriate for the dish, not just put them in because I like them. But gosh, coriander seems to be appropriate for a lot of things lately. In fact, the original recipe called for cumin, not coriander, but I didn't have any cumin, plus I was kind of tired and hungry at this point (big coffee and a cookie = A+ breakfast!) so I seriously thought "ehh, it starts with a C." Yeahh.
Just looked it up - cumin tastes like caraway? I don't like caraway. Good thing I didn't have any!
I'm also liking a McCormick lemon herb blend I just got. That's handy to throw on things. Like the other day I did roasted root vegetables, I just tossed them in olive oil with this lemon herb mix and some salt & pepper and that was really good*. I put some of the lemon herb mix in with the rice today. I buy the boxes of Near East pilaf in Spanish Rice flavor. It comes with a handy spice packet but the full dose is too strong for me so I put in about half the packet then add a bit of salt and today I also added some of that lemon herb mix. It was good.
The tofu was just tofu strips in BBQ sauce and a bit of oil in a frying pan. I like the super firm tofu from Wildwood. It's easy to deal with, it doesn't fall apart like most extra firm tofus.
* More on the root vegetables - they're easy and very tasty:
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