Vegan Eating-African Food

Moosewood came through for us again. I'd been thinking that for all the vegan recipes that we'd tried thus far, we hadn't done any African food. To be honest with you, I'm not even sure what that means. I'd eaten African food before, but that's such a broad category, kind of like saying European food. What does that mean? I'd had Ethiopian and South African food before, but never imagined actually trying to cook the stuff.

Well, we tried a ground nut stew, which is basically a peanut stew with sweet potatoes and cabbage. It worked out well because I'd had all this leftover cabbage (steamed w/butter) that I didn't know what to do with, and rather than compost it, I put it into the stew, and it was good. In fact, I'd say it was really good, slightly sweet with a peanut taste. The recipe called for cayenne pepper, which I omitted because the kids don't go for things too spicy. Why bother?

I've also found a simple alternative to the rigmarole of fried rice. Simply fry it (the cooked rice) with a little grapeseed oil and some peas. Voila, not-so-boring rice. Very quick and the kids prefer it to just plain steamed rice.

We've done enough recipes now for us to backtrack and retry some of our favorites, though I love the sense of adventure in trying something new.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.