i wish i could take credit for this recipe, but i can’t. this recipe is the spaghetti sauce i grew up eating – a standard, week night meal, and one of my favorite comfort foods.
as i was beginning to come out of my post-holiday cooking hiatus, i read a blog post over at smitten kitchen (have you checked out her website? it’s fabulous!) about a barley risotto with beans and leafy greens. i had never tried to cook anything with barley, and the pictures left me absolutely drooling, so i starred the post (my version of clipping a recipe out of a newspaper), and vowed to come back to it.
full disclosure to you, internet: mike and i weren’t looking for a black bean soup recipe when we found this one, nor have we ever made black bean soup before. we just wanted to make some cornbread, and figured we had to eat something else alongside the cornbread to make it a complete meal.
after making tofu skewers a couple of weeks ago, i found myself staring at a little mason jar full of peanut sauce, unsure of how i wanted to use it. i strongly dislike throwing things away – it feels so wasteful to throw out perfectly good food – so i knew i had to come up with something to use up the last of the sauce.
vegetable pancakes are a classic comfort food from my childhood, a dish that i can remember requesting over and over again, and a meal that i could barely stand to wait for as the smell wafted through the house. luckily, veggie pancakes are a quick dish both to prepare and cook, so i didn’t have to wait long.