Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I would like to introduce to you my first completely vegetarian dish!  The best part?  The recipe is almost completely my own.  The worst part?  Ricotta cheese gets extremely runny when I impatiently cut the dish before it is cool and set…  The picture below is obviously one that I took prior to the entire dish becoming a sunken, mushy mess.

For the crust, I used a pre-made pillsbury pie dough.  From here the pie is composed of red/orange peppers, fresh chives and thyme and ricotta cheese.  The moral of this cooking story?  Don’t use loads of pie crust.  The combination of me eating the crust of my dinner as well as shoveling raw dough in my mouth before, led to the most gigantic stomach ache I have ever experienced.  It even topped the time I ate half a roll of pre-made cookie dough.

Side note: as I type this, my computer screen is divided in half, with part being dedicated to me typing this post, and the other half being reserved for my new favourite movie: Julie & Julia (I have watched it at least five times in the past month).  Quite appropriate for my recent cooking adventures, oui?  And so, as I eat the mushy remains of what is the rest of my pot pie, I listen to Julia’s French coo-ing, and the sounds of Julie attempting to kill a lobster.  What else can I say?  I’m inspired.  BON APPETIT!

It has been such a day of firsts!!  Today at work, I experienced my very first earthquake, and tonight I had my first taste of tofu, that foreign, sponge-like food that I have written about with such disgust in previous posts.  For those of you that don’t know, the ONLY reason I am even trying tofu is because I was blogger challenged by my friend Gord at the Savoury Student.  Tofu is his food bff, and he didn’t understand how I could harbour so much hatred towards it.

When I went to the grocery store Sunday night to buy the tofu for this meal, I found myself poking and prodding at the small, blue tofu package, wondering how an edible substance could feel so bouncy.  When I opened up the tofu package to prepare for dinner tonight, I scowled as I emptied the gross tofu juice into the sink.  After that was complete, I continued to poke and prod once more, on this strange food whose texture reminded me of a pile of tensor bandages.  What was I getting myself into?  Thank god the tofu was fun to dice, otherwise I may have quit right then and there.

At this time, I also texted Gord for a few words of encouragement.  Our conversation went like this:
Me: “I just opened the tofu.  It looks nasty.  I’m sorry, but in no real world can this EVER be food.”
Gord: “Lol you are lame.  Just eat it.”
Me: : (

BUT you will be happy to know that even after these less-than-confident text messages, I persevered and ended up making an interesting dish, half using Canadian Living’s “pan-fried tofu with asian garlic sauce” recipe and half using my own combination of vegetables.  In the end, my wraps contained a mixture of items, including tofu (obvi), green beans, yellow peppers, and some delicious vermicelli.

So what’s my verdict on tofu?  Well, like Gord said it would be, it was tasteless, other than the flavour it absorbed from the garlic sauce.  I’m not sure how big a fan I am of the texture, but I guess it’s something I could get used to.  Is it my favourite food?  No.  Is it tolerable?  Yes.  Was I over exaggerating just a tad when I said it was my mortal food enemy?  Major yes.

All in all, tofu challenge COMPLETE!!!!  Now I need to think of a challenge for Gord…perhaps involving his mortal food enemy, the dreaded cilantro!  Stay tuned.