VwaV Brooklyn Pad Thai

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend. We had fun at the Knitting Factory on Friday night, good friends and good music. Saturday I made it to the beach for some playtime, sad to think that in a few weeks it will be getting too chilly to go in the water anymore. Oh well, better take advantage while I can!



We made this pad thai from VwaV for dinner last night. Nothing like a big bowl of refined white carbs now and again, yum! It was pretty tasty, but the recipe disclaimer that it is not authentic pad thai is right. I couldn’t find any flat rice noodles, just the really skinny kind. I even went to the Japanese market to try and find some, but to no avail. I made the recipe pretty much to the letter (half recipe, just the two of us eating), minus the lemon grass and I didn’t use all the oil called for. 3 tablespoons for two servings of noodles just seemed excessive. I took a picture of the noodle packaging because I thought it was cute and I love packaging that I can’t read. Look, it’s 100%...something!



I’ve been experimenting with making a pear vinaigrette salad dressing and think I’ve come up with a pretty decent one. The first time I made it I used fresh pears and pear juice from a carton, but it can be costly and difficult to find good fresh, ripe pears year-round, so I gave it a go with canned pears and it came out pretty well.

Champagne Pear Vinaigrette:
1 15 oz can pears in juice
2 T Champagne vinegar
2 T oil (any kind you like, I used soybean oil)
1/8 to 1/4 t cinnamon
1/8 to 1/4 t black pepper
Sweeten to taste, I used a few drops of liquid stevia extract

Dump it all in the blender and puree till smooth. I like this on salad with walnuts and mandarin oranges. It would probably go well with many flavors, but I would think primarily with salads involving nuts and fruit.

I was pretty busy in the kitchen yesterday, I also made a batch of VwaV seitan and a big pot of chickpeas for making falafel, hummus, and maybe some chana masala later in the week. I was buying my chickpeas canned, but last week I realized just how many chickpeas we can go through and figured it would be cheaper to buy dried chickpeas and they really don’t take that much effort. Plus you can avoid the added sodium of the canned beans.

Have a good week everyone. Badger football season opener is this Saturday, very exciting! We’ll be creaming Bowling Green at Cleveland Browns Stadium. I love college football season because it means I have an excuse to start drinking beer early on Saturdays.