korma korma korma chameleon

Tonight we had vegetable Korma from my new cookbook. I was going to cook this tofu stir fry dish from this cookbook cause I am horrible at stirfrys, but everyone always says they are so easy etc. etc. but they are hard to put flavor into if you ask me. This recipe had its own seasoning for the tofu, which was really hard for me because it took so many years to prefect the tofu seasoning recipe I have, I just can't believe if I put a tablespoon of paprika and a teaspoon of cumin on some tofu its going to be enough. Clyde looked over the recipe and said he would eat it, but wouldn't order it in a restaurant. Me neither. Tofu in restaurants suck. Rubbos friend lydia that was visiting told me all of her experiences with tofu are restaurant ones, and so her opinion of tofu was bad. She said she didn't know it could be another way. Damn restaurants. so I went to another item on the list for the week: vegetable korma. This is also a chance because ever since I stopped cooking lentils (because I read they inhibit iron uptake ) I make bad curry. This was a good one. My tofu flavors are more mexican than Indian though, so I used beans instead of tofu. I need to adjust the seasonings for it later.

Vegetable Korma:
1/4 cup butter
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon ginger or 1 inch ginger root
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander (they call for a tablespoon, but I ran out and this amount worked well so I would hate to advocate more and it not taste good)
1 teaspoon cardamom (they call for six cardamom pods)
2 inch cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon ground tumeric
1 and 1/2 cup mushrooms
1/2 can chickpeas
about 6 pieces long green beans cut (not from can, farmers market kind)
about 1/2 zucchini cut
1 Japanese eggplant, first cut into length size pieces and covered in salt for about 1/2 hour before cooking, and rinsed before adding.
1 carrot
1/4 cup water
4 tablespoons yogurt
2/3 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
If you like spicy add a red chili, I didn't try this

Melt butter, cook onion until it gets the clearness you want. I like mine super clear. Then add garlic and ginger and stir fry for 2 minutes. add the rest of the spices and let cook about 30 seconds.
This is where you decide how mushy you want this dish to be. Especially if you are changing the vegetables and adding potato, you want to put that in now. I decided to add my eggplant and mushrooms and 1/4 cup water. Boil this and turn down to low and simmer with top on for 15 minutes. Then add all the crisp vegetables. Thats when I put in my carrot and zucchini and beans, so there would be some crunch. I cooked this without the top for five minutes. Then you scoop out the vegetables with a slotted spoon and put them in a baking dish in a low heated over. On the stovetop in the remaining sauce add the yogurt, milk, salt and pepper and heat up. Pour this over the warm vegetables.
No, its not a complete protein, so we had roti (see falafel recipe) with it for the accompanying whole wheat. It was pretty good, and clyde liked it a lot.

success food day

Man today was the best food and related wise. For breakfast I had oatmeal that is instant banana bread flavor and mixed in oats from a container. it was good. For lunch I wanted protein, so I had scrambled cheesy eggs, black beans, toast from bread I made, and a small salad. Talk about heavy.
Then I got presents from clydes mom (we both got them for getting married) that was a pepper grinder, one that I almost bought the other day. And those spice mixtures the clyde and rubbo loves that you add oil to and heat up. And 2 cookbooks. I looooove getting cookbook presents because I never buy cookbooks for self but love them so. One if them is titled :"500 greatest-ever vegetarian recipes" and it really is. just looking thru I have found so many things to cook. I will update you as I cook them. The other one is comfort vegetarian food, and there is a tempeh section. I can't wait to cook. Its like I want to have already tried them all already, but that would ruin the fun.
So then for dinner I made vegetarian lasagna. It was pretty good, but I tried something new that didn't quite work out. I tried frozen spinach. Its so tempting because everyone on Foodnetwork uses it, and it takes a lot of spinach to cook down to have any amount of substance. but it was a mistake. it was tough and stringy. but the rest of the lasagna was good. clyde and I had fun trying to talk about how the flavor was changing in each bite: "sweet, savory, sweet....spicy" it always ended with spicy. here is the recipe:

First I got my tofu pressing to be my ricotta.

while it was pressing I made the sauce:
1/2 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 cans diced tomatoes pureed in magic bullet
about 10 leaves of basil
1 sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

I sauteed the onion with some salt in olive oil until almost translucent.
Added the rest of the ingredients. Cooked until ready to assemble lasagna.

Next I cut up one container of mushrooms, and melted 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and cooked them until the liquid came out and then got absorbed back in. Then I added in strips of zucchini I cut up for about 2 more minutes, and took it off the heat. The other day I read you can put white wine in sauce, and so I tried deglazing the pan with white wine and then put that into the sauce. it didn't really help. I thawed that nasty spinach.

I took my pressed tofu and crumbled into pieces, and added 2/3 cup of tomato sauce, spinach, and about 2 cups of mozzarella cheese, salt, and fresh ground black pepper (thanks to my new grinder).

I boiled my water and cooked my noodles. they were still hard when I stopped. So oven 375 degrees. I put about 2/3 sauce on bottom of lasagna pan. then then I put half of the tofu mix on it and pressed it down. Then I put all of the vegetables on top of that. Followed by enough sauce to cover the top layer.
3 more noodles. rest of tofu and more sauce.
3 more noodles. rest of sauce. about 1 and 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese and about 1/8 cup Parmesan cheese.
I cooked covered with foil 20 min and uncovered 10 min.
Clyde ate four pieces. he is so cute.

I was making bread all wrong

Oh my, I found this great site online with cooking video demonstrations. The site is:
http://video.epicurious.com/
I was making bread all wrong. Not all. but some. the trick I know to test if its been kneaded enough is opposite. The kneading technique is off. It sure is nice to know that there are so many ways to do things.







Now we all know

lunch as a nemesis

What I really want to write is a lunch cookbook. But its too ambitious. I mean lunches I can bring out into the field, not ones I can heat up in the microwave. Those are dinners reheated. leftovers. I want lunch. I think I have a food OCD, where I get up and have to eat just because I think I have to. I spend a lot of time thinking about lunch, and I have to eat by a certain time every day, even if I am not hungry, and then repeat with dinner. Lately I haven't been cooking dinner, because clyde has been at work which makes me lazy. Lunch at home is only slightly better, because I have to make something simple and quick and not a large quantity. Thats a pretty hard thing to do for me, I think in recipes, which are normally elaborate, or at least the ones I read are. Except for salad. How many days in a row can I eat salad for? So here is what I have been eating for lunch last two days:

Black bean tacos. I had a lot of black beans from the hurricane stock up and clyde suggested this. Tacos at home are such a good idea, cause they are cheap and they taste just as good as bean tacos anywhere you go. especially if you have sour cream. I didn't realize until a few years ago that I could make tacos at home very easily, with more ingredients that are too expensive in restaurants to add on.

Today I had pasta without sauce to make it quicker. I wish I had breadcrumbs. Tossing pasta with breadcrumbs, oil, and feta is surprisingly really really good. I know I can make breadcrumbs, but they aren't as good. Today I heated up between 1/8 and 1/4 cup oil and put in about 7 basil leaves from the backyard, 1 sage leaf ditto, 1 rosemary stalk ditto, and 4 chive stalks ditto. also 2 garlic cloves and redpepper flakes. I cut up vegetables and steamed them over the noodle water and tossed with feta and Parmesan cheese. It was a really tasty quick lunch. I need to look at recipes.
Any good lunch suggestions?

blinded by the pad thai

I finished my last post while agitated from sub-par dinner that I forgot to talk about all the successful meals of the day. For breakfast I made these muffins from a recipe I got off the flax meal package. Here they are:
Healthy good muffins

1/2+1/4 all purpose flour
1/4+1/8 flaxseed meal
1/4+1/8 oat bran (but I used oats, no bran)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
(this is not listed but I add similar spices, such as cloves and nutmeg)
1/4 cup shredded carrots
1 shredded apple
(this recipe calls for 1/2 cup chopped nuts, but I put in 1/4 cup chopped sunflower and pumpkin seeds)
1/4+1/8 cup milk
1 beaten egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Mix dry ingredients
Mix in fruit and veg
Separately mix wet ingredients
add wet to dry
Mix until moist
fill 3/4 full of muffin cups
bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes
Clyde later suggested smartly that this tastes like carrot cake, and can only be benefited by adding cream cheese to the top. I am really looking forward to trying that.

when good dinners go bad

sometimes I cook dinner from a new recipe and it doesn't taste good. This is slightly sad for me because I feel like I just wasted a meal. If I ruin dinner I don't have a chance to have a good one until the next day. But new recipes are like that, sometimes they turn out really well. I have to accept that there is a balance, but I don't have to like it.
So tonight I cooked what was supposed to be pad thai. I was in the bulk store the other day looking at all the sauces on the Asian food aisle. In Hawaii we don't have Asian food sections, we have asian food aisles. There are so many sauces. So I look at them and dream about knowing what to do with them. most of them contain some kind of meat product, so I don't normally get them. One time I bought this black bean sauce that sat in the refrigerator until I was sure it was no longer safe to eat. So I saw this pad thai sauce and picked it up and looked at the back and I saw a recipe where it read to put bean thread noodles in with this sauce and some tofu so I thought I can do that. It didn't even occur to me to read the ingredients list on the container because I confused it with reading the recipe. So last night I was looking on foodnetwork.com for other recipes of pad thai and all of them had fish sauce in it. So I checked, my sauce had anchovies. I was still going to make it though, just not for clyde. so tonight I made it. Here is what went down:
I soaked the noodles in water for an hour and then fried them up until they were clear. they weren't the way I think of glass noodles. Is bean threads glass noodles? I fried the tofu like normal. I put it together and with the sauce and vegetables from todays lunch salad. I was not even really close to the one on the container that read to add just green onions, peanuts, and something else that I didn't add. it was too sweet. The sauce was. I put in cumin, but to no avail. too sweet. So I am not sure about pad thai, if anyone has a good recipe let me know.

what about tempeh?

I am kind of afraid of tempeh. its the texture. I think the first time I tried it was in boone, North carolina, at a small coffee shop on a morning platter. It was very untasteful and the texture was not to my liking. about a year ago I tried to cook it, but I thought it was over from the start and didn't put too much effort into it. But I think I need another meat alternative than just tofu. Here is what i have been reading about tempeh:
(this is pure wikipedia talking)
Like tofu, tempeh is made from soybeans, but tempeh is a whole soybean product with different nutritional characteristics and textural qualities. Tempeh's fermentation process and its retention of the whole bean give it a higher content of protein, dietary fiber and vitamins compared to tofu, as well as firmer texture and stronger flavor. Tofu, however, has a higher concentration of protein per carbohydrates, and is thought to be more versatile in dishes.
(what is the difference between protein and protein per carbohydrate? I don't know)
and holy crap- this is when I find out wikipedia has a cookbook. who knew.
so I put into google "protein per carbohydrate" and the three hits didn't tell me anything.
mysterous.
I found this tempeh site that sells kits for people to make their own, with recipes.
http://www.tempeh.info

lazyyyyy

Breakfast was usual for the last few weeks:
scrambled eggs with melted cheese, homemade toasted bread, some apple.

bread recipe:

2 and 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast 1/4 cup warm water 1 tablespoon maple syrup (I have this because its cheap at the bulk store, but if you don't just add some sugar).
Mix these ingredients in a big bowl that can hold lots of flour later for about 10 minutes until the yeast looks all bubbly.

Meanwhile mix:
4 and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 2 cuts whole wheat flour (sometimes I substitute a cup of this for blended up six grain cereal from the health food store)
Mix this together

When the yeast has risen add to it:
2 tablespoon Olive oil 1 tablespoon of salt 2 cups warm water.

Add half of the flour to the liquid and mix it. Then add the rest. I kind of get most of it to stick together in the bowl, and then dump it on the floured board and mix the rest of it together. If you are adding any herbs like fresh basil or rosemary or parsley do so now. This is where I call clyde to knead it because I don't have a kitchen tractor (mixer), and he adds flour to it when it sticks and kneads it for about 10 minutes. Usually I can push in the dough and it comes back to me. I put it in a big bowl and coat all sides with oil and cover it for 1 hour.
after an hour put it in the containers it will cook in. I vary between bread pans and just making a Italian bread type shape on a baking sheet. Oil the pans you use. Let it rise on these pans covered for another hour.
heat over to 450 degrees.
it goes in at that temp for 10 minutes.
reduce temp to 350 degrees
the cooking time here varies. Its about 30 minutes, but I start checking on it at 25.
SO good.
I also made a spinach salad because a bad of spinach was on sale at the bulk grocery store for 1.50$, but its your basic salad. No recipe necessary. But I want to get into the recipe of it.

I ate out every meal today

Today me and the clyde got married. That meant one thing important to me, I can unashamedly eat out every meal. I made breakfast for me though.
So me and the clyde left to go to kukio resort to get married. we were nervous mostly. She was cool though, she wanted to get all into the aspects of the relationship. We decided to head to Kona to eat at this place clyde ate with anna and tish, a greek restraunt. Last night I got on the internet to look up vegetarian restraunts on the big island, but there are not any listed Online except for the hot bars at the health food store. nope. So the greek restraunt passed the clyde test, because he had already eaten there and wanted to go back.
Here is some background: I love restraunts and clyde hates them. He hates being served, he thinks the food is not as good as mine, and he doesn't eat any meat so there are very limited choices for him. I love restraunts. I love being served. I usually want restaurants for food I can't cook, like chinese and thai, but there are not that many good types of those kinds of restraunts around here. oddly enough. And its all meat based. I eat chicken, so sometimes I am better off than clyde, but I don't eat it very often when with clyde.
So when clyde has eaten somewhere and would go back thats a good sign. it passed his heavy criteria. We go to this greek restraunt, cassandras, and clyde explains to me we are eating all appatizers, because those are the vegetarian options. He says " it will be fun to order four or five appatizers and share them." I agree after looking at the outdoor menu. We got to sit on the second floor on the veranda.


We got a mixture of things I have always wanted to try, stuff I like but is too excessive to cook, and stuff I had never heard of.
I always wanted to try Dolmades. They are in about every cookbook, but I don't know how to get my hands on any grape leaves. So this looked like my chance. I don't have a specific recipe because I didn't make it, so here is one from online, it looks about to be what I ate.
http://www.mediterrasian.com/cuisine_of_month_dolmades.htm
Mine was cold. I am not a lover of the flavor of vinegar. This will always exclude me from the enjoyment of many foods. I think the leaves just have that flavor. I'm glad I didn't make them at home, or I would have thought I messed them up and would be upset I wasted a dinner on something I don't like.
The thing I got that is too excessive to make is Spanokopita. I have had it in Greek restaurants in the past and it is a filo pastry with spinach and feta. its so rich. and good. I can't make this, its such an excess of cheese and butter and only one vegetable. I have tried over the last two years variations of this recipe with little success. When adding more vegetables and reducing the cheese its more like a dry strudel. and sauce doesn't help it. The most success I had was last thanksgiving, but I don't know what I did different that time. So that was one of our appetizers, it was worth adding it in.
One of the dips we got that i had never tried before is Tzatziki – dip of Greek yogurt, garlic, cucumber, dill, vinegar and olive oil. It was good, even with the vinegar, but a little spicy. It was served with pita that was soft and grilled. the other dip was kafteri. we agreed this was the best item on the table. it was a red pepper dip, and thank goodness I discovered red peppers being good last month. They are a new part of my food repertoire.
For dinner we went to Maui Taco. This is our favorite restaurant in Hilo, and we were tired after todays activity. We got our favorite sandy beach, a burrito filled with black beans and rice, and covered with enchilada sauce. so yummy. we always get that.

clydes food rating system

Theres an ancient culture that based their entire religion off of food. Now no one knows where they went to or what lead to their demise, but whats amazing about them is the extent of happiness which is apparent at each of their archaeological sites. Its only comparable to the food-centric quality of their artifacts. OK.
So they had a very useful calender system that was based off of what to eat and when. everyone had to have their own personal one, in some cases a household could have one. and even more rare cases there might be an entire town which migrated together because they could all be happy based off the same food calender.
So Clyde has experienced a spiritual awakening due to how good my food is that makes him aware of this calender and that he can fit into one basically. But he only has a few pieces of the puzzle and has no idea where to look for the "others".
This is what clyde does know:
falafel has a frequency of around 3 days of the 10 day cycle.
tonights ravioli rated a 1 day out of 10 day cycle.
mega nachos rates a 1 day out of 20 day cycle.
Meatball subs rates a 1 day out of 20 cycle.
Tofu Taco rates a 1 day out of a 15 day cycle.
Fajitas rates a 1 day out of 15 cycle.
Burritos with sweet potatoes rates 1 day out of 20 cycle.
Calzone rates a 1 day out of 20 cycle.
Pizza rates a 1 day out of 25 day cycle.
Chili rates a 1 day out of 30 day cycle.
Eggplant rates a 1 day out of 30 day cycle.
baked pasta with tofu rates a 1 out of 20 day cycle.
Anything new 1 out of 20 days.
snack days 1 out of 10 days (hummus and trail mix junk)
Potatoes rojo rates a 1 out of 20 day cycle (but not cooked near the time of eggplant. on opposite times. such as potatoes rojo is like Taurus and eggplant is like scorpio.)

I can't think of anything else I cook all of the time. This list is not based of what is better than something else, its based on the proper frequency for the full enjoyment of each meal. Once clyde finds his calender he may meet others with the same calender.
Clyde is so cute for saying all of this stuff.

Tonights dinner was good. I made ravioli, tomato sauce, noodles, and garlic bread sticks.
Recipes:

Ravioli:
I have been wanting to try this technique for awhile because my ravioli dough never works right and it always breaks open while boiling. This worked great.

package of won ton wrappers (comes with 24- so you get 12 ravioli).
1/2 container of firm or extra firm tofu.
1/2 container of mushrooms
1/4 of a med. size zucchini
1 egg beat with 1 teaspoon of water
cheese, like parm.
2 cloves of garlic
1 Tablespoon dried basil
1/2 tablespoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of tomato sauce

This is pretty simple. If you use firm tofu press it first about 1/2 hour before cooking, if extra firm just squeeze all of the water out. mash tofu in a bowl with your hands until its all in small pieces. It will remind you of ricotta. Add 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic, basil, parsley, and salt. Mix together. Add about 1/2 cup of tomato sauce. Mix.

In skillet on med. heat saute up mushrooms until they release and absorb all of their liquid. Add in Zucchini about half way through that. Take off of heat.

Take out wonton wrapper and put about 1/2-1 tablespoon of tofu mix. Top with about 1 teaspoon of mushroom and zucchini mixture. add a small amount of cheese on top. use brush to spread egg mix around edges of wrapper, and around edges of second wrapper. put the two wrappers together and press out air and make it tight. Put on floured board until ready to boil.

Salt a large pot of boiling water. drop ravioli in about 3 at a time, and let it cook about 2 minutes. They will rise to the top.

I can't put in my sauce recipe yet because I haven't measured out any of the spices for it yet. Or for the garlic breadstick topping yet. that is for later.

hurricane food and falafel recipe

So I went to the grocers store on Monday, yesterday, to get famine food for the oncoming hurricane. It turns out to be very stressful going to the grocery store at the same time as every single other person. At least we were all clumped in the grocery store together instead of the highway trying to evacuate. Where do we evacuate to when on an island? At the grocery store people had their carts in the aisle way in order to check out. so you couldn't peruse the food. Which stressed me out, not being able to think about what should I get for a hurricane. I love this sort of thing usually, disaster planning that is. When given time. So I panicked and got some cans of beans and some candles. and some cereal bars. So I think I want to make a list for the next time this happens, I can get in and go. But I am having a hard time still. Such as: Should I get things that I have to add water to? Shouldn't I be conserving water in this type of situation? I saw people buying ramen and thought about how my survival handbook suggests adding things to getaway pack such as packages of instant mashed potatoes and those dried up soups, where you just add water and you get a very filling meal. It seemed to stress the idea of filling self up with little food. More cans, I guess, but if we have to flee up the mountain then we wont be able to carry them all if on foot. Dried fruit I should have gotten, but it was so expensive I didn't think it would be worth it. seeds, those are light and proteinous.
So trail mix. item one.
some cans of beans are good if we do have to stay home, but what to eat them with that would make a complete protein? I should have made some bread, and I thought about it but was unmotivated because we still have a whole loaf clyde made the other day. bread would also be hard to carry more than one loaf of, but a loaf would have been good and filling.
Loaf of bread and cans of beans. Item two.
real fruit would have been good for home too, because it doesn't have to be refrigerated. Like a bag of apples. and some bananas. some of those would have traveled well, and they provide a lot of water. What kind of vegetables do not have to be refrigerated? potatoes, and we can cook those on an open fire when wrapped in foil. but then we also have to have foil.
Fruit. Item three.
If we have to walk a long distance we are going to need more protein. I think some of those protein bars are a good idea, not just cereal bars, because cereal bars are mostly junk food. I should have optimized my bars for doing the most.
Protein bars. Item four.
and then the filling add water stuff, like the ramen and the dried potatoes and the soup containers.
Of course the hurricane hasn't taken out the power yet. Tonight we had falafel for dinner, which is the house favorite. I videotaped myself making it in short bursts.
Falafel:

1 can or 1 and 1/2 cups of chickpeas
two pieces of bread soaked in water, start soaking at the beginning
1/8 cup dried parsley or 1/4 cup real parsley
1/2 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
hot sauce like sarachi or Tabasco, i just pour some in.
flour

So I cut the onion and garlic and put it in the magic bullet. If you don't have a magic bullet and have to use a blender then it really sucks. Magic bullets(M.B.) make it easy cause you can pick them up and shake them when they are blending, instead of having to stop the blender every three seconds cause the onions and garlic are not getting blended.
So then I pour the liquefied (if you have the M.B.) or chunky (blender) onions and garlic into my big mixing bowl. Then I add the parsley and the beans. Now if the beans are really soft you can just put them in and smash them with the bottom of a measuring cup and then a fork until they are mixed. If they are a little harder you may have to magic bullet them or blend them. I used to blend them, and so I hardly ever made falafel. Now I just pour my canned beans into a pan and cook them even longer and mash them. Couldn't be easier. So after mixing add the lemon juice, all the spices, and mix. Then squeeze the bread mixture out and put that in and stir. Maybe a food processor would make this way easier, putting in everything from the onions to the bread. I don't have a food processor, so its hard to say what they do.
so after you stir all of that together I put the oven on 375 degrees.
I get out a baking sheet and pour a good amount, maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons, on it and rub it around. Then I get some whole wheat flour, but it doesn't matter really what kind you use, and put it on a plate. just enough for dipping. then i start pulling balls of falafel out of the bowl and forming patties. we are not talking burger patties, more like meatball size. smaller meatballs, but not too small. I dip each side of the patty into the flour and put it on the baking sheet. half way thru this it all sticks to my hands. washing really helps, even if its inconvenient, it makes it easier in the long run.
Next they go into the over for ten minutes on each side on the center rack. They come out to get fried in olive oil on medium heat until they are crispy on both sides, it doesn't take long.

I make this with roti, which is middle eastern flat bread.
Roti
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (but you can just use 2 cups all purpose if you want )
1 teaspoon of salt
Mix these together
Add 2 tablespoons olive oil
Mix
add 3/4 up hot water.
Mix into ball o' dough.
Its sticky. Then I heat up my pan on about 5-7. Med - med. high heat. I use cast iron with no oil. My Teflon did well for this with no oil, but my aluminum (?) metal pans they just stick to with no oil. But if you use oil they turn out crispy. So I take out small balls of dough. really small. smaller than the falafel. I use a wine bottle for a rolling pin for this because it makes it easy to hold one side of the dough while rolling, because you want it pretty thin. Recently I have made it less thin, like maybe the thickness of a tortilla. and about the size of a small tortilla. So when your done you pretty much have a tortilla, which i have used as replacement when I didn't feel like making this bread, but this bread is better. They cook really quick, just a few seconds on each side, and they get bubbles of air on them while cooking. they are good.

I serve this meal up with some cabbage I cut up. I like using cabbage instead of lettuce, cause it lasts longer in the fridge and doesn't wilt quick and still has good nutrients. I also cut up carrots and mushrooms. we take roti and cover it in sour cream, then the raw veggies, then cheese, mostly mozzarella, and then the falafel. so good.