Vegan Week-Day 1

So today we went shopping for the vegetarian/vegan week. I didn't actually think of beginning this today but only preparing for doing it tomorrow but I realized that I had a menu planned for tonight. Needless to say today we didn't do vegetarian except for dinner. I made the Samosa's, Schmoop is making lentil soup, and we went without the Cauliflower Veggie thing. I think what I'll do is have the Lentil Soup and the Cauliflower thing for dinner tomorrow as its mostly prepped already.
As far as shopping we ended up getting everything we needed but at times it was a bit comical. One of the recipe's for this week calls for Burdock, needless to say I have no idea what Burdock is. I called my resident hippie kid best friend to ask her and she said she had no idea but it sounded like it tastes like butt. To which I replied, well I guess I'm not inviting you over for dinner that night! I ended up calling my other bff Mama K who googled it and told me it was somewhat of a root, weed type thing. So I wandered around whole foods trying to find a root/weed that I couldn't identify; turns out what I found was the fabled burdock. (I'll let you know how that goes!). There were a bunch of spices we needed since alot of the recipes came from the indian cookbook and I don't have any indian spices save some Curry. We ended up spending about $170 (ouch!!!) but we did get a ton of spices and splurged in areas I don't normally (getting a couple of bottles of juice to help kick the soda habit). I'm happy with what we got, all of it organic and it seems we have a good little pantry going of healthy good for you foods. Alot of the things we will not need to buy weekly so I'm thinking our actual grocery bills might stay the same or decrease since meat is such a pricey commodity. Mostly it will be purchasing the organic produce and replenishing whatever we need in the pantry.

The Samosa's are a potatoey filled pastry that you fry in veggie oil.

I made 20 of them and Schmoop and I downed 2.5 each for dinner as well as a Cilantro Chutney, or Dhania Chutney, that I also made (Cilantro, onion, chili pepper, cumin seeds, lemon juice). The Samosa's have in them potatoes, cumin seeds, ginger, peas, salt, coriander powder, green chili pepper, Mango Powder and Garam Masala (indian spice).


You mix it all together and fry each side about 4 minutes each in veggie oil. I know, I wasn't too big into the frying but they actually are not so bad in the nutritional facts with all the veggies in them (each one has 125 calories, 6 grams of fat, 1 gram of dietary fiber and no cholestorol as per my cookbook). Hee hee the chutney has 1 calorie!

Yum!!!!!