The idea of recipes

I realize that I like the idea of recipes much more than I actually like following them. I have a pile of vegan cookbooks that I checked out from the library, and I was planning to try some new recipes over the weekend, but I didn't. I ended up mostly alternating between peanut butter sandwiches and microwaved frozen veggies with lentils, rice, and recaito sauce.

One reason that I like the idea of recipes more than the actual recipes is I just want to have everything I need. I don't want to have to shop for a recipe! Please note, I think our pantry is reasonably well stocked--wide array of spices, grains, etc. But I don't have tamari sauce or a zillion different types of miso. Just the soy kind from our Asian grocery. I forget what else we don't have that I see showing up in recipes. I confess--I'm prone to laziness, especially on weekends, which is when I actually have time to cook. Also, I don't like having to use our food processor, mainly because it's a pain to clean it up properly. We don't have a dishwasher. If you don't get all the little areas cleaned up, you get mold. Mold is bad!

To my credit, I did try a new recipe during my holiday time off between Christmas and New Year's. I tried the lentil pie from Vive Le Vegan (with some modifications; miso and soy sauce instead of vegan Worcestershire and tamari, for instance; also pan-fried all the ingredients before putting them into the food processor, and lentils pre-cooked in the slow cooker). My husband liked the results enough that he asked me to write out the recipe (with my modifications) on a recipe card for further use. This is a high honor, because he's got very exacting standards when it comes to food.

I've been meaning to check out Food For Thought, Albany's new vegan café, and might do so today during lunch. I brought a peanut-butter sandwich in case the weather fails to cooperate.