Monday, August 4, 2008

Farida, I love You--Stuffed Vegetables

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Farida, that Azerbaijani cooking whiz, so kindly gave me an award recently. First, Farida, Thank you.

Second, I am not great with awards/memes. I attribute this to a childhood of being picked last for games. (Yes, that was a pathetic ploy for sympathy but also true as I am totally uncoordinated.)

Anyway, I have such a hard time picking people for awards, but at the same time I am honored, because Farida's Azerbaijani Cooking is so wonderful and popular. So, I didn't want to seem ungrateful. So, I have decided instead of passing on the award, I would just honor my award giver by making one of her recipes. (I will treat those meme passer-on-ers the same soon, you know who you are.)

For Farida, I had to go with her stuffed vegetables. While aesthetics affect me more than I would like to admit, I made this choice not because of the lovely photograph (though it was lovely) but because of the inclusion of dal. It was a meat free night so we took out the ground meat, and upped the amount of dal to 1 cup, paired it with 1 cup cooked rice. (In case you are keeping score, I followed her directions and added the rice when she directed you to add meat.)

The result was delicious. I alloted two stuffed vegetables per person and one for Belle. We ended up with a little more stuffing, and I planned to make them into veggie burgers, but it was so good, we ended up eating it for breakfast. Alas.

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11 comments:

michael, claudia and sierra said...

LOVE this meatless version...

really beautiful and seasonal and all good things.

Anonymous said...

i can feel myself losing weight as i even think about making myself some of those stuffed veggies. they look really healthy and really delish.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful summer meal. I am going to make these for myself and vegan clients tomorrow with the eggplant.Thanks for the inspiration.

Melissa said...

So, I have decided instead of passing on the award, I would just honor my award giver by making one of her recipes.

What a GREAT idea!! I wish I had done that in the past. Nice one.

And these look lovely. :)

Dragon said...

Congratulations on the award. I'm sure it is well deserved. If only for those stuffed tomatoes alone.

Poonam said...

Great dish! Congrats on the award!

pam said...

I love this! I keep meaning to try stuffing some vegetables.

Anonymous said...

You deserved the award! I love your blog a lot. And I love you too:)

And what a surprise!!!! I am soooo honored that you actually took the time and efforts to try our my stuffed veggies! So nice of you.

So glad you liked them. I think the meatless version is equally delicious, I can tell from your pictures. Yum!

Thanks again!

Sophie said...

What a yummy picture! I love the summery colors :).

test it comm said...

Those stuffed vegetables look really good!

maybelles mom said...

cook eat FRET: meatless is good...

We Are Never Full: you don't need to loose weight, but these are good.

lifeinrecipes: do tell me how your eggplant went.

melissa: feel free to use that on memes too, and thanks.

Dragon: the tomato was good, but so was the eggplant and zucchini. I couldn't pick a favorite.

Poonam: thanks and thanks.

Pam: peer pressure here, everyone is stuffing vegetables.

farida: it seems like we are even--i thank you for the recipe.

Sophie: thanks. it was such a nice sunny day, so that made it more colorful.

Kevin: thanks.