More Testing

Last night I tested yet another Isa recipe and I also tested something else, with potentially more serious outcomes. With all of Nora's food allergies, we've been delaying all nuts, but while at the doctor's this summer, she mentioned that coconut was not like other nuts and that we should consider giving it a try with Nora. I hadn't really felt like doing it until last night. Testing food on Nora is always a bit of a worry. The results can be fabulous (like the other day she decided out of the blue that she would eat salad - salad!!!) or they can be much more risky - vomiting, hives, or worse, using the scary epi jr. pen. Thankfully, we haven't had to do that yet. You'd think I'd have given much more consideration to trying a potentially dangerous food on her, besides, hmm, I've got some coconut milk, I wonder if it would taste good in this - maybe I'll give it to Nora. So we did. And she liked it and there have been no reactions so yea! coconut is okay now! This is a plus since many vegan recipes use coconut milk - especially desserts and also because coconut is a favorite of mine and several other family members (Laura!).

The Isa recipe I made was the potato and edamame samosas. I ended up using green peas instead of the edamame. These were delicious and very kid friendly. They made a bunch of cute little pies with plenty for dinner, leftovers and the freezer. It was also a bit more ambitious than I initially planned for a weeknight menu, but I am so happy with the results and it wasn't as bad as I thought to work with the dough. However, they made much more filling than I needed. So I tossed some frozen cauliflower in a pot, heated it up with the potato water, a small can of coconut milk and a couple of tablespoons of tiki masala paste. I pureed it all together and then folded in the extra filling (which was really yummy on it's own) and it made a really nice soup/very wet curry. Together with the samosas, curried chickpeas and tomatoes (I think I got this recipe from Natascha) and rice and it all turned out so well. And surprise of surprises, Nora ate much of it - well actually the tomato chickpea curry was not as well received and occasionally she would stop and make this terrible face and grab her soy milk so perhaps it wasn't all good. I'll post pictures of the samosas later.