Sequestration Meal #428

 

I didn't so much want to cook but need to cook for this one, but it turned out well. There are some meals I can make essentially on autopilot. This is Calrose rice, steamed broccoli, my own recipe for Chinese-inspired saucy beans, and a few wedges of a yam pancake I had in the freezer.

Lately I seem to be traversing some sort of personal vegan nostalgia pathway. I keep making things that were my earliest vegan standbys or first meals to give me renewed confidence in the kitchen. These beans were probably the first time I made something from the standpoint of just thinking like a vegan. It's hard to explain, but one night when I was missing some familiar comfort food--a Chinese dish taught to me by a friend when I was a student, tomatoes and eggs over rice--I decided to take a different protein that had some rich tomatoey flavor and transform that into something familiar. Some onions, peppers, a splash of rice vinegar, and a splash of soy sauce later and I had something new, but not so new. And I stayed vegan.

Now, of course, I can use JUST Egg and replicate tomatoes and eggs in a way that wouldn't make anyone miss anything, but there was a time before JUST Egg, and we still liked our food then. With the price of everything going up so much, there is a bit of reassurance in that. JUST Egg, or a can of beans? One of them costs three times as much. So beans it is. But that doesn't mean they can't be delicious.

That yam pancake has sat in my freezer for who knows how long. I'm trying to get control over my freezer these days so I'm really trying to restrain what I buy that's frozen and use up what's in there. This meal seemed like a good one to have a side of yam pancake. All in all, it was highly satisfying.