Day 48- Samosa Smashed 'tatoes

I just noticed this morning (in a really *aware* kinda way) how much of my food gets cooked in the wok, over heat, in oil with salt. I need to work on cutting back on the number of things I eat that are cooked that way, but it's a fast, easy, cheap way to add falvor, so I'm not sure what to replace it with. It also *really* helps keep the house cool. Not as much as not cooking at all, but way better than turning on the oven.

So yesterday I made Samosa (S)mashed Potatoes.

Now, this might *look* healthy, but I assure you it wasn't. Between the salt, oil, and more salt I added, any bonus from all the veggies was lost. But it was yummy.

I've done several different samosa projects over the years. Different levels of difficulty, authenticity, freshness. My first "homemade" samosa experiment was actually with a box of premade-frozen ones from the grocery store in NZ. When I got back to the States I started trying to make them from scratch, since wasn't (yet) an Indian-style restaurant in the town i moved to. Pizza dough doesn't work, btw. Homemade pasta dough isn't bad. Eggroll wrappers work, but the flavor/ texture is off. Instant potatoes work, but... yeah. And the twice-baked recipe from Veganomicon is super yummy.

But I didn't want authentic, this time I just wanted tasty and easy to re-heat.

• 1+lbs potatoes
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1/2 C frozen peas
• 1/4 yellow onion, chopped
• 1/4 C zucchini, diced
• 2 cloves garlic
• oil
• salt
• 1tsp curry powder (I used a mix of sweet and hot)
• 1/2tsp ground ginger
• some extra water and/ or milk

Boil the potatoes. I peeled them after I cooked them, but if you aren't going to "reheat" the potatoes in the frying pan, go ahead and peel before boiling. Chop and fry all the veggies in the oil (and salt). Smash the potatoes. I don't have a potato smasher, so this was the most labor intensive part of the whole thing. Mix potatoes, veggies, spices, and extra liquid together. Mix them up and reheat them a little. Nom them.

This made probably about 3 cups of tasty potatoes. As a side, for normal people, with other stuff on the plate, it's probably a good size for 4 people. I ate half at a time, though.

The second half was for dinner, with "Popcorn" Tofu

The tofu is just chopped and tossed with flour and spices, shake-n-bake style. also in here- onion, zucchini, last of the eggplant, too much salt.

Might have been something else, too. I used it as a way to use up the bits of left over veggies I had in the fridge. Not that there aren't still other's, but... yeah.

Veganomicon at Amazon, for anyone interested.