Sunday, September 9, 2012

Restaurant Resistance

Happy Sunday night readers!

I am getting geared up to go back to work after another great weekend. The weekend was pretty chill, but did involve a Sunset Canoe adventure to Toronto Island with Mike on Friday (Groupons are awesome)
I love the Islands!
There was also a free Rugby game on Saturday, and my first hot coffee beverage since spring..it was chilly!!

With the "back to school" restart mode the other thing that Mike and I  were talking about recently was money..and saving money!! Mike and I are big on budgeting and don't splurge too much, but I think summer just lends itself to spending more (patios, shopping, fun activities..Canada's Wonderland..etc.)

One thing that I still feel I spend way too much money on is eating out. It is so easy to do in Toronto and as Gail Vaz Oxlade once said, people in general eat out way too much. Back in the day, people would get together and have dinner parties and potlucks, and a restaurant was a big fancy smancy event, but now people (including me) eat out all the time!!

So that all being said, one way to cut back on going out to restaurants is to make restaurant inspired food at home!

Last week I had a bunch of veggies that needed to be used up from my Fresh City Farm box. And I was craving Thai food (I crave Thai food at all time..lets be serious). So a catch-all veggie/tofu curry was born.

At home Thai!
I loosely followed the recipe from this website, but made some few changes. I doubled the recipe to make lots of leftovers. 

First I brought 1 can of coconut milk, and 2 cups of homemade veggie stock to a light boil (while stirring). The funny thing was the veggie stock had some beets involved so at this point it was a nice pink colour. 

Next I added some cauliflower, green pepper a pre-cooked sweet potato. I let that cook for a 5-8 minutes, and then added the spices, ginger, tumeric, curry, garlic, chili etc. Let it cook for 3 more minutes, then I added the drained tofu. I served it over rice.

This dish gave me what I was craving, but was super easy and way cheaper than going out to a restaurant! 

Tonight we were craving restaurant nachos. So Mike took over and made baked nachos with chicken. (Ate it too fast to take a picture..oops!) They tasted just like a restaurant, but was once again cheap and fast, and was most likely healthier. Yay! 

Any other simple restaurant inspired meals? Anyone else want Thai food all the time?



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