A few new recipes to report on:

Southwestern Vegetarian Pasta
This is the first dish with a Southwestern edge that I’ve tried thusfar, and it came out very well. Good spices, tasty veggies, and the chickpeas added a nice consistency to the dish. Everybody at the table went back for seconds. I replaced the vegetable oil with extra virgin olive oil.

Chrissy’s Sweet ‘n’ Sour Tomato Salad
Huyen picked out and prepared this one. It’s a great cold salad for summer days. I replaced the vegetable oil with olive oil.

Ayurvedic Smoothie
Not too bad, but didn’t come out quite right. We didn’t have access to almond milk, so we substituted vanilla soy milk. We also nixed the protein powder and put in a pinch of wheat germ. The end result was a little too gritty (thanks to the wheat germ) and the taste was off-center (thanks to the vanilla soy milk substitution). [See also: a brief introduction to Ayurveda.]