The Grit again, and more

You may be tired of seeing and hearing about my meals from The Grit, but I don't get tired of sharing them! One of my friends wanted to go to lunch with me, and The Grit is the place we chose. I could never get tired of their food, and she had never been there before--after several years in Athens. So it really was a must.


This time around, I just got a "veggie" plate--steamed broccoli with spicy peanut sauce, lentil and chickpea stew over brown rice, and a cup of hot and sour soup. The broccoli and peanut sauce was excellent, as always (secret ingredient in the sauce = orange juice), and the stew was very thick and hearty--fairly mild, with a slight curry flavor. The soup? Maybe my favorite thing on the plate. But if you don't do spicy well then this would not be the soup for you--it wasn't hot and sour, it was HOTTTT and sour! Quite tangy, with huge chunks of veggies in it, just like I like it. Sorry about the glare on the soup--it was a pretty sunny day, and we sat outside.

At The Grit they have this huge dessert display case, and recently they have always had some variety of vegan cupcake on display. There was no way we could have eaten dessert after that meal (a good chunk of my meal came home with me as it was), but I had cupcakes on my brain after that. Later that night Abby and I returned to my place, and...


Vanilla cupcakes with cinnamon frosting, from VCTOTW. I used a little chunk of cinnamon stick to dress these up a bit. So tasty! I've got to get more artful with the frosting, though. It's harder than it looks to make all those incredibly cute designs that I have seen around!

If you remember, I recently bought a ton of red and orange bell peppers, and I knew that I wanted to make stuffed peppers at some point before they were gone. I did a search on stuffed peppers just to get some ideas, and I came across this recipe for bharli mirchi, Indian stuffed peppers. I knew I had to try it.


These peppers are stuffed and then sautéed, rather than baked like most Italian-style stuffed peppers. It was tricky turning them over and over in the pan to cook all sides--you know how peppers naturally want to sit in just a few positions based on their shape. But they finally did cook all over.




The filling is made from potatoes, and your traditional spices. I added some peas just for good measure. When I finished making the filling and tasting it, I was a little skeptical--it was kind of bland. But once the peppers had cooked and released some of their juices into the mixture, it was better. I think that there was too much potato--I had a good bit of filling left over, and so the flavors probably got too thinned out with all that potato. Next time I'll use smaller spuds! But we really enjoyed it, with some homemade roti.

What can I do with the leftover filling? Indian-style potato pancakes? Or... samosas? We'll see!