Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Little Shanghai takeout (Thankfulness #16)

Thing I'm thankful for #16: weekends!

My job is really grinding me down right now, and that's the truth of it people. I'm trying to stay cheerful and upbeat but it's a lot of work at present. So right now, the thing I'm thankful for is the fact that I have two whole days a week where I don't have to go to my job, I just get to spend time with the people I love doing the stuff that I like doing. (Well, and chores and errands and the other stuff one always ends up doing on the weekend, but that's life.) Weekends: what a good invention!

Between work stress and then another time commitment, I was just totally wiped out today so we got takeout for dinner from Little Shanghai. That's the place in town that has vegan things labeled clearly on their menu. They make this dish that I like a lot which they call Vegetable Cho:

Vegetable cho

They're basically balls of chickpeas and some vegetables rolled up, fried, and covered in sauce. They're not nearly as heavy or greasy as you might expect them to be. (They don't really oversauce terribly either.) I've been looking for a recipe for them since the first time I had them; I think they're actually very similar (if not identical?) to an Indian dish, vegetable chop. DIfferent seasonings, and no potatoes... but I think that's their origin.

Josh got some tofu in sauce. The Emperor was THRILLED with our dinner selection. We have eaten at little Shanghai once and had takeout from there maybe 2 times other than this in the past year... but apparently it has made a big impression. His first three sentences to me this evening were:

1. It's Grey!
2. Take my shoes off Mommy!
3. I want to eat CHINESE FOOD!

And eat he did. He had a ton of the brown rice we got to go with our entrees, a bunch of Josh's tofu, and even one of my cho balls. He asked for seconds of everything, which is quite uncommon for him. And everything except the rice clearly had sauce on it, yet he ate it. How fascinating! I sometimes wish I knew what goes on in his head.

Here it is clear that what is going on in his head is WHEEEEEE GLOWSTICKS:

Glowstick glee

4 comments:

Richa said...

yumm looks good. i think it might similar to vegetable machurian balls like this http://cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com/2011/01/vegetable-manchurian-recipe-step-by.html maybe with added chickpeas.

hope you have a nice relaxing weekend.

Anonymous said...

I am convinced now that the Emperor is preparing for a career in show business!
I'm not a big fan of Chinese food but this *actually* sounds good to me (and I NEVER say that about Chinese food!) It makes me wanna say:
1. It's Cara!
2. I'm taking my slippers off.
3. I want to eat Chinese Food!
P.S. Work. Why does it exist when it sucks the life out of us, eh? xo Enjoy the weekend :)

coldandsleepy said...

Richa, thanks for the link! That looks close too. I think maybe I just need to start experimenting...

Cara, I don't really like Chinese food much either... well, that's not 100% true. Mostly I just don't like *restaurant* Chinese food and since I've never learned to cook it myself that's about my option.

The Emperor is a little bit of a ham... a delicious vegan ham...

Anonymous said...

HAHA. A vegan ham :) One of my best friends (the girl that lives in San Jose that I went to visit the other week) married a Chinese guy. She says that authentic Chinese food is SO good in comparison to the standard American restaurant food we are accustomed to. I still won't try it. haha