What do Papa Tofu and I have in common?

A love for Ethiopian food!

This week I've been doing a little cooking from Kittee's Papa Tofu Loves Ethiopian Food.  Kittee has done a great job of explaining techniques, ingredients, and recipes in this adorable zine.  She worked really hard on both the designs and the recipes and it shows.  I'm super happy to have it in my collection.

The recipes I've tried so far have tasted really authentic, but even more importantly, yummy!  It was hard to decide on just a few dishes to try this week.  I'll be cooking through these pages, until I've tried every recipe, and then keep going!  The most fantastic thing about zines is that the number of dishes to try is manageable.

So what have I made this week?

Don't mind the horrible state of the injera.  I wasn't gentle with the ripping.

Here you'll see (clockwise from top right): Ye'abesha Gomen (mild collard greens), Ye'miser W'et (red lentils in a spicy gravy), mushrooms sauteed in Niter Kibbeh (seasoned "butter"), and Selata (tossed salad) with Citrus Vinaigrette.

The Ye'abesha Gomen was gingery and really on par with greens dishes I've had in Ethiopian restaurants.  I loved the Ye'miser W'et the most.  I actually made that one in the slow cooker, minus the initial sauteing.  We've had variations of the salad for three nights in a row.  The citrus vinaigrette is really simple, but I love it.  It's definitely going to become a go-to dressing in my house.

Tonight I'm going to make Keysir Allecha (Ethiopian style beets) to go along with leftovers of the other dishes.  It's been really easy to prepare one dish every night to add to the plate.

Super Breaded Tofu Dinner and a Thank you!

The full title of this meal is "Super Breaded Tofu 'Fried Chicken'-y Dinner" from Rabbit Food Cookbook.

Now that's a big lunch!  (And I ate it all!)

Vegan MoFo gave me the kick in the butt I needed to cook more from this cute little book.  Last night I made the above meal, which I loved.  It contained four components:

Breaded Tofu
The tofu was wonderful!  I don't know why, but I've never done the "shake 'n bake" thing which involves throwing the ingredients for the breading in a baggie, tossing in the cubed tofu, and shaking it up.  It worked out so well.  I did stray from the recipe just a bit by baking the tofu at 350* for 40 minutes (flipping half way through) instead of pan frying it.  The result was crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, peppery goodness.

Sauteed veggies
This was pretty straight forward- just green beans, carrots, and onion.

Mashed potato
Again, pretty straight forward.

Brown Gravy
Deeeelicious!  Again, I sort of strayed from the recipe.  Instead of using the exact dry ingredients listed in the recipe, I just threw in what was leftover in the baggie from the tofu.  This was a really, really good gravy.  There was almost this mustard taste, but there was no mustard in the recipe!  (Please excuse the 'gloppiness' in the photo- these were my reheated leftovers, which I was too lazy to heat separately.)

Also, I wanted to extend a big thank you to the lovely folks that honored me with a Liebster Award last month.  I'm going to be playing catchup in the weeks (months?) to come and will be sure to post links to some "under 200" blogs that I love.

Thank you so much:

Dawn from Veg-Am
Glauce from  All About... (vegan) Food
Christine from Christine Eats Gluten-Free And Vegan
Jeni Treehugger from Heathen Vegan

Aaaand the winner is...

Random.org has decided that the winner of one pink jar of grape jelly is Number 9: Amberle.  Amberle, please send an email to inmyveganlife a t gmail dot com with your address!  Congrats!  I hope you enjoy the jelly!

Thank you for all the ideas, everyone!  I'm definitely going to try some of them soon!