Tempeh Helper

Tonight for dinner I made Tempeh Helper from the PPK blog. I'd seen it a long time ago but finally decided that tonight was the night to make it. I made a few substitutions as one often does, listed here:

-used fresh minced garlic in place of granulated garlic I didn't have
-probably didn't use enough broth powder in the tempeh helper part cause I didn't have a lot left
-used veg broth instead of broth powder and water in the cheesey sauce part
-used tri-color alphabet pasta instead of small shells (all TJ's had that was small)

Despite the minor changes, it turned out good. Now that I'm thinking about it, I totally forgot the frozen peas. I even bought them, but I got so excited about eating it that I forgot.

Here's a picture of it on the stove:



















And here it is in my bowl ready to eat:


















Make it!

Adzuki-Palooza

So I acquired a large amount of dry beans/lentils and I just finished up using all the chickpeas in various dishes. Now onto ... adzuki beans! The only thing I've ever eaten adzuki beans in is daifuku, and then I found another recipe for a Chinese style sweet bun using the same sweet bean paste ... and it meant I didn't have to go to the store for anything, so I made these instead.

Recipe here: http://veganexplosion.com/sweet-buns

I had mixed results. First I started off by burning the beans in the pot, but I was luckily able to save most of them. Making the paste was fine, but the dough threw me off. I realize it was probably because I used WWF instead of AP flour but it was all I had and I am lazy. The dough was DRY. I added some extra water so that I could actually work with it, but it was still really tricky. What I don't really understand is how I ended up with such a large dough to filling ratio. I divided the dough into 12 parts, put a tablespoon of filling in each, and well, you can see the result. There is actually a little more in there than it looks like, there is more behind the swirly parts of dough. I also burned the bottoms of all the buns a little, but not badly. They are pretty good I guess, but I wouldn't make them again without the promise of there being less dough. It just got so huge when I let it rise and then again while I steamed them. =\