Eat Air - A Vegan Food Log

The End

2009-12-27T16:36:00.001-05:00

I'll cut to the chase - I won't be updating this blog anymore. I'm finding I just don't have the time or energy to keep writing regularly and more importantly to keep it fresh and interesting. I've had so much fun writing this blog these last 4+ years. There were very few vegan food blogs when we started but now there are hundreds - please go show them some love.

I feel like I've already let this one languish but rather than let it languish any more, it will have a definitive end. A huge thanks to all of you who have stopped by over the years - I've enjoyed reading your comments and getting to know some of you. This site will most certainly stay here as long as Blogger is in existence so I encourage you to browse the archives of over 600 posts (you could start with my top 10 list). I'll probably stay on Twitter so you can follow me there (@eatair) or just check out my updates in the sidebar here.

I don't want to leave you completely empty handed so below is a recipe I took to a Christmas potluck recently. I threw it together very quickly with what we had on hand but it garnered a few compliments so I wanted to share.

cheers,
Chris

Walnut and Barley Salad

1 c. barley
2 c. water
1 carrot, grated
1 stalk celery, diced
1/3 c. chopped walnuts, toasted
2 Tbs. each dried cranberries & dried blueberries
1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
pinch each ground cumin and cinnamon
salt & fresh ground pepper
3 Tbs. olive oil

Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan and add the barley. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes or until all the water is absorbed. Allow the barley to cool for a short time then add it to a large bowl with the carrot, celery, walnuts, cranberries and blueberries. In another small bowl whisk together the remaining ingredients. Add to the barley then refrigerate until ready to serve.

Thanksgiving Feast 2009

2009-11-29T22:46:00.005-05:00

Once again, our Thanksgiving feast was not as involved as years past but unlike last year we cooked more from scratch and didn't rely on a Tofurkey. We tried a number of recipes this year from the current edition of Vegetarian Times and they all came out great. For the first time in memory - maybe for the first time ever - their Thanksgiving menu was entirely vegan. We started with the Butternut Squash-Bartlett Pear soup. It was sublime.

The main course was Smothered Seitan in Mixed Mushroom Gravy, which we had over simple mashed Yukon gold potatoes. On the side were Citrus Collards with Raisins and Cranberry Conserve (slightly modified from Emeril's recipe). It wasn't quite as crowded of a plate as we've had in the past but it was all delicious - particularly the seitan.

Finally, dessert was a tried and true recipe from a back issue of Vegetarian Times - one of the first issues we ever bought from 1996. It's a pretty basic veganized pumpkin pie recipe that primarily uses silken tofu as the binder. Basic but yummy!

Eat Your Broccoli

2009-11-21T22:13:00.000-05:00

This is by far the longest I've gone between posts so my apologies for leaving you hanging. It's a long story that I won't go into here but what I will go into are a couple of great ideas for using broccoli. And we all know broccoli is so good for you, right? We've been getting some great broccoli from our CSA recently and one night I grabbed the first cookbook that caught my eye and flipped to the first broccoli recipe that caught my eye. The book was Nava Atlas' The Vegetarian Family Cookbook and the recipe was the Creamy Tofu and Broccoli Skillet. I went with tempeh instead of tofu and also made a few other changes and I ended up with a scrumptious meal that came together very quickly.

Creamy Broccoli with Tempeh (adapted from Nava Atlas)

4 Tbs. olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green bell pepper, cut into strips
2 large heads broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
1 c. rice milk
2 Tbs. flour
3 Tbs. nutritional yeast
salt & pepper to taste
2 8-oz. packages tempeh, cut into strips
2 Tbs. soy sauce

Heat 1 Tbs. oil in a very large skillet over medium heat and saute garlic for about 30 seconds. Add bell pepper, broccoli and 1/2 c. water. Cover and cook over medium heat until broccoli is just getting tender. Whisk flour and nutritional yeast into rice milk, stir into broccoli and cook until thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, heat remaining oil in another skillet over medium-high heat and fry tempeh strips until they're starting to get brown. Stir in soy sauce and cook for another minute or two. Serve broccoli over rice with tempeh on top.

We also got our broccoli fix recently from the Broccoli Quiche recipe from Vegan Brunch. This time we made the recipe as is and it came out great. I'm too lazy to type in another recipe and anyway, you really need to buy this book if you haven't already. And trust me when I tell you this is definitely a recipe you have to try.

New Kitchen!

2009-10-26T22:41:00.004-04:00

After six and a half years in this house we finally broke down and remodeled our kitchen. The old kitchen had a certain funky charm with its huge cast iron sink and painted cabinets but it dated to when our house was built in 1958 so we figured over 50 years was a good life span for a kitchen. The main issues were the lack of a dishwasher and drawers that slid open on friction so we always had sawdust all over our pots and pans below. Plus the sink cabinet was completely rotten underneath from a long-ago water leak. We couldn't afford the higher-end builder we talked to so we went to Lowe's and made it work by getting middle-of-the-road cabinets and counters and doing some of the work ourselves. We gained some cabinet space and a good bit of counter space and are quite happy with the result.

Here's the "before" picture in all its cluttered glory.

We don't quite have a final "after" picture yet because there was a mistake with the countertop order and the sink counter arrived two inches too short. The short counter was installed temporarily but there's a gap between the counter and wall. Hopefully a new counter will come in any day now and the short one will be replaced. Once that's done we can mount a few things on the wall by the sink, and I'm also planning on building a new spice rack since there's not enough room for our old one anymore.

And now that we have a great new kitchen maybe we'll start cooking more in it and get back to posting about food one day soon!

Baked Spring Rolls

2009-10-12T22:02:00.002-04:00

OK... this is mainly an excuse to re-hash some old content but for those who have only started reading more recently I did want to bring up this old standby. A couple weeks ago we got the largest head of napa cabbage I've ever seen from our CSA. It was still in the back of our fridge tonight and we really needed to use it so we decided to make spring rolls. There are any number of things with which to fill spring rolls but ours usually have cabbage as the main ingredient. If you have an Asian market near you that's where you'll find spring roll wrappers (as opposed to the more common egg roll wrappers which of course are not vegan). You'll usually find them in the frozen section.

One of our recipes, along with step by step instructions for rolling, is here. Most often we fry our spring rolls in a thin layer of oil in a wide flat skillet. If you want to use less oil though you can bake them like we did tonight and they'll still come out quite good. Just brush a thin layer of canola oil on a sheet pan, place the spring rolls on the pan, then brush the tops liberally with more canola oil. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes, flip them over, then bake for another 15 minutes or until they're a little brown and crispy. And our first spring roll recipe, along with our go-to apricot dipping sauce recipe is here. Enjoy!

Product Review: Cool Cups

2009-10-07T22:23:00.003-04:00

Remember Jell-o? If you weren't vegan as a kid you probably ate plenty of it. I can't say I really miss this stuff, what with the artificial flavors and all, but I did jump at the chance to sample Cool Cups recently. In two words: vegan Jell-o. Oh, but so much better! No nasty gelatin for one thing. And no artificial colors or flavors for another. We had great fun snacking on all three flavors (orange, peach mango & black cherry). Our toddler liked them too but they do contain a good bit of sugar so mostly we kept them for ourselves. If there's one drawback it's the packaging. There's only one place I know of around here that will recycle the #5 plastic cups. Hopefully they'll figure out how to package them in something that's more easily recyclable. They're also supposed to be coming out with a powdered mix you can make at home, which will certainly also help reduce the packaging. I wonder if it'll work the same as Jell-o with alcohol. Cool Cups shots anyone?

Calzones with sunflower seed pesto

2009-09-23T21:52:00.004-04:00

We were away for a while and we've been neglecting this blog but to get something up, here's basically a copy of something I posted recently over on my mama blog.

Here is my version of a toddler friendly pesto that is made with sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. I am waiting until Jonas is around 18 months to introduce tree nuts so decided to try a variation that he can also enjoy on his pasta. He seems to really like basil. I made a summer tomato salad with a thai basil dressing and he ate it very quickly. I was surprised since the thai basil has a strong flavor. Maybe he will take after his mama and love basil. I am a big basil fan and cannot get enough of it in the summer time. Here is the recipe.

Sunflower seed pesto

3 cups of basil leaves (I used a mix of thai, globe and purple)
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 cup of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Add all of the ingredients except the olive olive oil to a food processor and chop well. Add enough olive oil to form a paste. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I used the pesto to make calzones. Jonas also really liked them a lot. I used a basic pizza dough recipe and also marinara that I made a while back and froze. Here is the recipe.

Sunflower seed pesto calzones

1 cup pesto
1 cup marinara
1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives
2 tablespoons capers
pizza dough

Mix together the pesto, marinara, olives and capers. Divide the dough into several pieces. Roll out each piece, fill and bake them all for 25 minutes at 375 F. Brush the tops with olive oil after they come out of the oven. We also enjoyed them for dinner one night with a nice heirloom tomato salad.

Raw Stuffed Peppers

2009-09-11T22:53:00.003-04:00

The last few weeks from our CSA we've been getting these "snack peppers", which are basically cute little bell peppers. At first I wasn't sure what to make of them (or with them) but they're aptly named because they're super sweet and perfect for snacking on. Last weekend we got a whole pound of them and Darlene had the brilliant idea to stuff them with a raw filling. Normally this might be a tasty appetizer but these days if we do anything remotely involved we make a meal out of it. I don't think the presentation and the picture do them justice because they really were fabulous.

Here's what we did; the filling is adapted from the Garden Pate in Ani's Raw Food Kitchen.

1 lb. small bell peppers, halved and seeded
1 c. raw cashews
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
3 carrots
2 stalks celery
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1/2 c. raisins

Cover the cashews with water in a small bowl and soak for several hours. Coarsely chop the garlic, carrots and celery and add these to a food processor with everything else except the peppers. Buzz in the food processor until everything is finely copped then spoon into the pepper halves and serve. Simple!

Fresh Salsa

2009-09-03T21:23:00.004-04:00

I'm sure many of you out there have made fresh salsa. This is for those who haven't. It's tomato season, what are you waiting for? I often don't use a specific recipe but just keep it simple. This time I diced a nice yellow heirloom tomato from our CSA, along with a little bit of red bell pepper. A minced jalapeño went into the mix too. If I would've had an onion, a small minced slice of that would go in there too. Then I added about 1/4 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a drizzle of sunflower oil and a splash of cider vinegar. Then I mixed everything together and opened a big bag of chips...

Summer Veggies

2009-08-27T22:26:00.003-04:00

It has occurred to me that I've been neglecting this poor blog but I guess that's what happens when you have a 15-month old. Our meals these days often consist of a quick pasta, or sometimes just something frozen. This particular meal isn't necessarily something to write home about (and maybe not something to write a blog post about) but it's all I've got at the moment. Actually it was very tasty. And a good way to use a bunch of fresh veggies from our CSA. We got corn and fresh lima beans together and I thought of succotash again, but then at the last minute I decided to cook the limas with squash instead of corn. Either way they're much better than frozen lima beans. I also used up a bell pepper by slicing it and frying it with tempeh slices. At the end I poured on a mixture of soy sauce, maple syrup, ketchup and a dash of liquid smoke. Probably better to marinate the tempeh first but this was the quick method and it turned out good. Finally, we had a simple tomato salad on the side, which is something we've been having a lot of these days and never tire of. Simple is best here - chopped tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, a dash of red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Black Bean Baked Pasta

2009-08-11T21:44:00.003-04:00

Here's a recipe I've been meaning to post for a different sort of baked pasta. I came up with this one night while pondering how to use up some yellow squash from our CSA. I ended up using too many bread crumbs for the topping but I think I've rectified that in the recipe below.

1 lb. pasta
1 Tbs. canola oil
1 medium onion, diced
3/4 lb. yellow squash, cut into large dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
3/4 tsp. dried oregano
2 c. cooked black beans (or 1 can)
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
salt & pepper to taste

For the topping:
3 Tbs. Earth Balance, melted
1 1/2 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. nutritional yeast
2 tsp. chili powder

Cook pasta according to package directions in plenty of boiling water. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet. Add onion and cook for a couple minutes then add squash and cook until squash is just getting a little tender. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt & pepper and cook for another minute. Add black beans, tomatoes and tomato paste and mix until well combined. Combine all this with the pasta in a large bowl. Pour into a lightly oiled 9" x 13" baking dish. Combine all the topping ingredients in a small bowl and spread on top of the pasta. Bake at 375° for about 30 minutes until the topping is getting brown.

Product Review: Bountiful Vegan cookies

2009-08-09T23:05:00.003-04:00

I admit it. I'm a total cookie fiend. So when the folks at Bountiful Vegan asked if we'd like to sample their vegan cookies I jumped at the chance. They come in four flavors (or themes as you'll see if you follow the link). No sooner had they come in the mail than we were scarfing down the Well-Being cookie, which is Coconut Pineapple flavor. It was quite big enough to share as were all the others. I didn't get a strong coconut flavor from this one but still it was delicious. I really enjoyed the flavor combination in this one and in the Chocolate Chip-Orange and Lemon Snickerdoodle. And who doesn't like Chocolate-Chocolate Chip? The Chocolate Chip-Orange in particular has inspired me to throw in some orange zest or orange oil the next time I make chocolate chip cookies. What an amazing flavor profile! All of these cookies were a little more crumbly than I generally like my cookies but I think that mainly means they're not loaded down with fat, and anyway the flavors more than make up for that fact.

Tempeh & Seitan with Onions & Peppers

2009-07-28T21:34:00.003-04:00

Back in my college (and pre-vegan) days I'd often cook a simple meal of sausage with onions and peppers. We got a nice bell pepper from our CSA this past weekend and still had some sweet onions from last weekend. Plus we had some locally made tempeh and a little seitan left over from the previous night so that got me thinking about something similar last night. This is sort of a general idea rather than a recipe but here's what I did:

Cook bell pepper strips in a cast iron skillet in plenty of olive oil for a few minutes, then add sliced onions and some coarse sea salt. Next add chopped seitan and tempeh, then cover, reduce heat and cook for several minutes. Add paprika and fresh ground pepper and continue cooking and stirring occasionally until everything is getting a bit brown. Finally, add a tablespoon or so of soy sauce and a bit of liquid smoke and give it a quick stir. We had ours with mashed potatoes and it was scrumptious.

Simple Salads

2009-07-22T21:51:00.003-04:00

This is probably already making the rounds on blogs and in forums but in case you've yet to see it, I thought I'd get up a quick post about this Mark Bittman article, 101 Simple Salads for the Season. The first third or so of the list is vegan and there are a number of good ideas there I want to try. Tonight we made numbers 1 and 3 on the list and both were outstanding. For #1, we used nectarines from our CSA instead of peaches or watermelon, cherry tomatoes, Thai basil, orange champagne vinegar and olive oil. You might think mixing nectarines with tomatoes is odd but I thought it interesting that I didn't notice a strong nectarine taste, it just made the tomatoes taste sweeter.
We also made the simple cucumber salad with red onion (both also from the CSA), and a whole grain yellow mustard instead of Dijon. Very yummy.

What to do with rhubarb

2009-07-19T21:49:00.005-04:00

One thing about joining a CSA is that at some point you're likely to get something you haven't had before or that you aren't quite sure what to do with. Rhubarb was both of those for me. That's right, I was a rhubarb virgin. But the first time we got rhubarb in our CSA share, a stroke of good fortune arrived around the same time in the form of a Penzey's spice catalog. In this catalog was a recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch submitted by someone named Iona Keppler. It was fabulous and I hope she and Penzey's don't mind if I share the recipe here (veganized by using Earth Balance margarine instead of butter):

1 c. flour
1 c. packed brown sugar
3/4 c. rolled oats
1/2 c. Earth Balance, melted
2/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 c. diced rhubarb
2 c. strawberries, sliced
1 c. water
2 Tbs. cornstarch
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, oats, Earth Balance and cinnamon in a large bowl and mix until crumbly. Press half this mixture into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Cover with the rhubarb and strawberries. In a small saucepan, heat the water, cornstarch and vanilla over medium heat, stirring frequently, until thick. Pour over the rhubarb and strawberries, top with the remaining crumb mixture and bake for 1 hour.

The next time we got rhubarb I wanted to do something else with it so I started poking around my cookbook collection. I found a recipe for basic stewed rhubarb in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and adapted it thusly:

1 lb. rhubarb, diced
1/4 c. agave
1/2 tsp. lemon extract
insides of 1 vanilla bean (or 1 tsp. vanilla extract)

Simply cook all of this in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rhubarb gets soft. This would be great over vanilla ice cream, or you can do what we did and store it in the fridge, then have a bit in your breakfast oatmeal each day for a few days.

Product Review: Curry Love

2009-07-07T21:58:00.004-04:00

We love curries and we're also all about convenience these days so we were thrilled to have a chance to review these new simmer sauces from Curry Love. They're vegan and organic and come in three varieties: banana ginger, red Thai, and yellow Thai. The general idea is to sauté some veggies, pour in the sauce and simmer for a few minutes. The Curry Love folks offer a wealth of recipes on their web site but alas, only one of them is vegan. At any rate, we've been getting a lot of great fresh vegetables from our CSA and we're always in a hurry so we mostly kept it simple. First up we tried the yellow Thai curry with cauliflower, zucchini and seitan. I sautéed the veggies and seitan in a little oil for a few minutes then added the curry sauce, covered the pot and simmered until the veggies were tender. The result was a very quick meal that tasted like it took a lot longer to prepare.

Next up we tried the red Thai curry, opting to do something similar and have it with broccoli and seitan. This was my favorite of the lot, with a variety of subtle flavors and a nice little kick.

Finally, we had the banana ginger curry using just a slew of veggies (some from the CSA and some not): yellow squash, kale, carrots, red bell pepper and onions. Plus pineapple - always good in a curry I think. (Fresh pineapple would've been best but I opted for the convenience of canned.)

Overall we definitely enjoyed our Curry Love experience. We especially appreciated the convenience. It's great to see new products like this come out that are specifically labeled as vegan (though more vegan recipes on their web site wouldn't hurt).

Pasta Stir Fry with Beet Greens

2009-06-27T21:27:00.004-04:00

We've gotten beets several times from our CSA and thankfully the greens have always been included. You can use beet greens in any recipe that calls for greens. They're a little more delicate than kale or collards, though they don't cook quite as fast as spinach. We got shiitake mushrooms once too so I threw together this stir fry one night and we had it with pasta.

1 lb. pasta, cooked
2 Tbs. peanut oil
1 carrot, sliced diagonally
1 bunch beet greens, sliced
3 oz. shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 spring onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp. minced ginger
cilantro for garnish

For the sauce, whisk all this together in a small bowl:
1 c. veg. broth
1 Tbs. rice vinegar
2 Tbs. soy sauce
2 tsp. maple syrup
1 Tbs. cornstarch

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large wok or skillet. Add carrot and cook for 2-3 minutes stirring frequently. Add beet greens and mushrooms and cook several more minutes until all the veggies are starting to get tender. Add onion, garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Stir in the sauce and cook just until it starts to thicken. Finally, add the pasta, mix well and turn off the heat. Serve garnished with chopped cilantro.

Lettuce Wraps

2009-06-21T21:23:00.002-04:00

Almost every week so far from our CSA we've gotten two heads of Bibb lettuce. So yes, we've been eating a lot of salads but we also realized early on that the shape of this stuff lends itself perfectly to lettuce wraps. The first time we did them they were totally raw, the next time the filling was cooked. The raw filling recipe we used was the Garden Pate from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen. We found this book at our library a while ago and really enjoyed this recipe so I wrote down the ingredient list. I don't remember if there were more detailed instructions but all I do is buzz all this stuff in a food processor until it's well blended:

1 c. raw almonds, soaked in water for several hours then drained
1 Tbs. minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
3 carrots
2 stalks celery
1/4 c. chopped onion
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1/2 c. raisins

We also did lettuce wraps with tempeh. I went the quick route and didn't marinate the tempeh first but you might consider marinating it in the soy sauce/maple syrup/lime juice/chili paste mixture. You can use the other half can of bamboo shoots in a stir fry another time.

Tempeh Lettuce Wraps

1 Tbs. peanut oil
1 can water chestnuts
1/2 can bamboo shoots
1 stalk celery
1 medium carrot
8 oz. package tempeh
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. minced fresh ginger
3 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. maple syrup
1 Tbs. lime juice
1/4 tsp. chili paste
2 Tbs. chopped cilantro
1 tsp. sesame oil

Cut the water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, celery, carrot and tempeh into a small dice. Heat the peanut oil in a large skilllet or wok and cook all of the above for 5-10 minutes until the tempeh is starting to brown. Add the ginger and garlic and cook another minute. Then add the soy sauce, maple syrup, lime juice and chili paste and cook several more minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat and stir in the cilantro and sesame oil. Serve wrapped in lettuce leaves.

Product Review: WK Pacs (or Indian cooking made easy)

2009-06-17T22:15:00.004-04:00

Recently the folks at Waverly Kitchens asked if we'd like to sample their WK Pacs, which provide a foolproof way to create an authentic Indian meal at home. Not being ones to ever turn down a good Indian meal we were happy to oblige. The WK Pacs include the spices and instructions you need to cook your own three course Indian meal. Ours included the Chola (chickpeas), Potatoes & Peas (a sabji, or dry vegetable dish) and a Spinach Raita (yogurt dish, or soy yogurt in this case).

I've dabbled in Indian cooking before and have even learned some tips from Indian friends in the past but this was probably the most authentic tasting Indian meal I've made. It's all in the spices and that's what you get from the WK Pacs. Plus a shopping list and straightforward instructions. Honestly, I'm not sure if we'll sign up for a subscription but this allowed us to enjoy a great home-cooked Indian meal and there's certainly something appealing about doing that every month.

Back Soon!

2009-06-13T20:10:00.004-04:00

I've decided to end the hiatus so I hope we have some readers still out there. Within a week of putting the blog on hiatus we decided to sign up for a CSA for the first time and I've really been wanting to write about the produce we're getting and what we've been doing with it. For starters, we've been getting a lot of lettuce and some nights we'll just have a big salad for dinner. Like this one with two kinds of lettuce, arugula, spinach and radishes all from the CSA, plus carrots and Tofurkey sausages.

We've also done lettuce wraps a couple of different ways. Stay tuned for recipes. Another thing that has inspired me (and all the rest of the vegan world) to cook recently is the release of Vegan Brunch. I'm hoping to find time to delve more deeply into this incredible book but not long ago I did manage to make an awesome tofu omelet with spinach and mushrooms.

Finally, we've had the opportunity to review some cool new products recently so stay tuned for some product review posts as well. Our little guy is 13 months old now and keeping us as busy as ever but I'm hoping to get posts up at least a few times a month. Thanks for sticking around!

Seitan, Mushroom and Veggie Stew

2009-03-29T12:26:00.000-04:00

First things first. A recipe will follow but the main point of this post is to announce that I'm putting the blog on hiatus for an indefinite period. This is our 600th post but it'll also be the last for a while. It took two years to get to 500 posts and another year and a half to get another hundred up. Which says something about the amount of time we have now. Not that quantity is more important than quality, but I'm having a harder time with the quality these days too. I'm generally happy with most of the recent posts but I'm struggling more to come up with creative ideas for posts and more importantly, to find the time to actually execute those ideas. Most of our meals lately are repeats of things that have already been posted here. I do have a number of ideas rattling around my brain and I hope to eventually find the time for them. Maybe as I do I'll save them and get back to posting once I have some things in the can.

At any rate, a huge thank you to all our readers for the comments and inspiration these last 3+ years. Keep us in your feed readers or otherwise stay tuned - I hope we'll be back here in the near future. (We're not totally done with blogging either because Darlene is about to start a mommy blog - if you're interested in that, she'll be here.)

Now for the recipe - I had some seitan patties that were seasoned in sort of an Italian sausage style and I was looking for a way to use them. When I went to our local produce market I found some nice broccoli and yellow squash, and also a decent deal on dried porcini mushrooms, so here's what I came up with.

1 c. dried porcini mushrooms
1 c. boiling water
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 lb. seitan, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. dried marjoram
1/2 ts. dried basil
2 roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 c. red wine
1 medium yellow squash, quartered and sliced
2 c. broccoli florets
1/2 tsp. salt or to taste
fresh ground pepper to taste

In a small bowl, pour boiling water over porcinis, let stand for 15-20 minutes, then drain and dice mushrooms, reserving the soaking liquid. Meanwhile, in a large pot, cook onion in olive oil over medium heat for a minute or two then add seitan. Cook for several more minutes until seitan and onion are starting to brown a little then add garlic, marjoram and basil and cook another minute. Add tomatoes and wine and cook a couple more minutes, then add squash, broccoli, salt & pepper, plus the mushrooms and their soaking liquid. Bring to a boil then cover, reduce heat and simmer until broccoli and squash are cooked to your liking, 5-10 minutes. Serve with rice or pasta.

Even Easier Curry

2009-03-20T22:14:00.004-04:00

A few months ago I posted about this curry recipe I saw on Good Eats. It was quick and easy but nowadays I'm always looking for quicker and easier. Thankfully an Indian market recently opened right next door to my office. It was there I found this chana masala spice mix.

We tried it once with chickpeas and tomatoes per the package instructions, but I also figured it would be good to use with the aforementioned curry recipe. Oh sure, grinding and/or mixing your own spices is really the way to go but that takes time. For this shortcut I minced a couple cloves of garlic and cooked that in oil with a couple teaspoons of the spice mixture for about 30 seconds. Then I added some frozen veggies and a can of chickpeas and cooked until they were heated through. I added soy yogurt at the end and we had our "curry" over brown rice. Quick and delicious!

Blueberry-Walnut Scones

2009-03-14T07:17:00.005-04:00

It was another morning where I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep, so I went into the kitchen to make something for breakfast. Something different from our usual oatmeal that is. My first thought was to make something fun we haven't tried before but with creativity lacking at 6 a.m. I turned to a tried and true recipe - scones from Vegan with a Vengeance. I jazzed them up a bit by adding blueberries and walnuts, the combination of which I think is quite delicious. So now I'm going to cheat a little (ok, a lot) by essentially just copying Isa's recipe here.

3 c. flour (I used 2 c. white and 1 c. whole wheat pastry)
2 Tbs. baking powder
1/4 c. sugar, plus extra for sprinkling on top
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. canola oil
1 1/4 c. soy milk + 2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 c. frozen blueberries (or fresh if you've got 'em)
3/4 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400° and lightly oil a sheet pan (or 2). Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl then gently mix in the soy milk/vinegar and canola oil. Now fold in the blueberries and walnuts. Drop by 1/4 cupfuls onto sheet pan, flatten the tops just a bit and sprinkle with a little sugar. Bake for 12-15 minutes until slightly browned on the bottom.

Cooking with Beer

2009-03-11T21:09:00.004-04:00

I'm not a huge beer drinker but I do like to toss back a cold one now and then. I think it's fun to cook with alcohol too, so when I saw the article on cooking with beer in the latest issue of Vegetarian Times I made it a point to try some of the recipes (4 of the 5 recipes are vegan too - bonus!). Plus this gave me an excuse to pick up a variety pack of local brew. A few days ago I made the Tempeh in Hearty Mushroom-Lager Sauce. It was simple to make and tasted amazing. Basically it's a mix of button and shiitake mushrooms simmered in beer with fried tempeh added at the end. We had it over red quinoa with some nice chard on the side (that I also simmered in beer).

Last night I made the Ale-Braised Cabbage with Leeks, and this was also a winner. Especially with tasty seitan patties on the side. I still have plenty of beer in the fridge so maybe I'll try the black bean chili next.

Food for Baby

2009-03-08T16:16:00.004-04:00

Our little one is eating more solids these days and we've been trying to make as much of his food as we can. We occasionally get the pre-packaged stuff but it's not that hard to make food for him ourselves. We buy organic fruits and veggies, fresh where we can but sometimes frozen, and cook them until soft. Then we puree them in a food processor and freeze individual portions in ice cube trays. We store the little cubes in a container in the freezer and then thaw one or two at a time in a ramekin with a bottle warmer (and when I say 'we' I mean the royal 'we' because it's mostly Darlene doing this).

What's been cool for us about doing this is that it's made us appreciate how tasty and beautiful plain unadulturated fruits and veggies can be. What we have on hand at the moment is shown below - apples, cherries, mango, pears, spinach, cauliflower, red lentils, sweet potatoes, carrots and red quinoa.

He's eaten all of these, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm. His favorite fruit is pears and his favorite veggie is sweet potatoes.

Vegan and Cheesey

2009-03-01T17:34:00.005-05:00

Not long ago a wonderful vegan friend gave us a gift certificate to Food Fight Grocery. It's the best gift we've received in a long time, and that includes what we got each other for Christmas. We got some yummy snacks (Tings are so addictive!) but perhaps what we were most excited about was the opportunity to try Sheese, the vegan cheese that everyone's talking (or blogging) about. We opted for the sharp cheddar style and the blue style and we already had in mind an application for each one. In the last post I mentioned that we had the cheddar style on a taco soup, but what we really wanted to do was make tacos. We also got a boxed taco filling mix from Food Fight so this was a super-easy weeknight meal. We toasted blue corn taco shells and added the taco filling along with salsa, shredded lettuce and shredded Sheese.

It's been a long time since either of us has had cheese but this stuff really reminded us of the dairy-based stuff (but without the cruelty). It shreds well and tastes great - in fact I'd go so far as to say it's hands down the best vegan cheese I've had.

Another obvious application is pizza. We weren't sure about how tasty the mozzarella style would be so we went the very non-traditional route. Neither of us were vegan in college and we both have had our fair share of Buffalo chicken wings in the past, especially since Darlene grew up in Western New York. Wings are frequently served with blue cheese dressing and we were seeking to create a similar flavor profile using the blue style Sheese. The sauce for our pizza was a mix of equal parts hot sauce and melted Earth Balance margarine. On top of that was some chicken-style seitan; more hot sauce went on top of that, and our pie was topped with the shredded Sheese. It didn't melt all that well but that didn't bother us because this was one awesome pizza! I had some dough and a little of the sauce left so I also made bread sticks topped with the sauce. Quite the fun and tasty meal!

A Week of Soup

2009-02-23T15:15:00.007-05:00

I have to start by giving credit where it's due because this was Darlene's idea. She thought the week of breakfast was fun and since it's winter it might also be fun to try a new soup recipe every night for a week. This started after she made a variation of the Pho recipe from Quick Fix Vegetarian. This recipe is itself a variation on a Vietnamese beef noodle soup, using seitan instead of beef. We didn't have seitan so she made a quick seitan batter (wheat gluten and water), then tore off little pieces and cooked them with the soup. She also added a can of coconut milk, which isn't authentic but sure was good.

The next night our fridge was looking sparse but we did have canned chickpeas so I made this chickpea soup recipe I found in a back issue of Vegetarian Times. It was fairly light, like more of a first course, but we had it with a salad and bread and it made an OK dinner. Here it's garnished with chopped parsley and chili oil.

We started next on a trio from Veganomicon. First up was the Spicy Peanut and Eggplant Soup. Only we couldn't find eggplant so we went with sweet potatoes instead. I know, sweet potatoes are quite different from eggplant but they really worked well with this peanut butter and tomato based soup.

Next it was a quick minestrone from Quick Fix Vegetarian. Honestly I've had better minestrone but this was thrown together quickly with canned tomatoes and chickpeas and frozen vegetables and it made for an easy weeknight meal.

Then it was back to Veganomicon for the Baked Potato and Greens Soup with Potato-Wedge Croutons. We baked the potatoes ahead of time so the soup came together fairly quickly, but it definitely took me longer than the 30 minutes suggested in the book. But I admit to being a rather slow cook. At any rate, it was worth it as this was an awesome potato soup with kale and earthy spices (I never would've thought to put fennel in potato soup). And the cornmeal-breaded and fried potato wedge on top was the perfect accompaniment.

The last in our V-con trio was the Ancho-Lentil Soup with Grilled Pineapple. I never would've thought to put pineapple in lentil soup either but it worked well. This was another weeknight meal so we simplified it considerably by skipping on the homemade ancho chile powder and just using store-bought chile powder. I'm sure it's much better with homemade but this was the quick version. It would also be better with fresh grilled pineapple but in our quick version we used canned pineapple that we sautéed in a little Earth Balance.

Last but certainly not least was the Taco Soup from Nava Atlas' Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews for All Seasons. This is a newly released re-issue of her excellent book Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons. This particular recipe is not much different from a chili. It was excellent on its own, but was made even more so by the addition of some righteous vegan cheese. And that's a story for another post.

Brunch

2009-02-15T21:52:00.002-05:00

I'm finally getting around to posting about last weekend's brunch. When our baby was born, a number of friends from work brought dinners over for us. And nine months later we finally got around to returning the favor and feeding them. Here was the menu:

Praline Baked French Toast
Herb Roasted Potatoes
Roasted Asparagus
Tofu Scramble Caribbean Style
Seitan Breakfast Patties
Cranberry Crumb Muffins
Vanilla Scones / Chocolate Chip Scones

The French toast is a veganized Food Network recipe that we've posted about before and it definitely seemed to be a crowd favorite. The potatoes were Yukon golds roasted with olive oil, rosemary, salt & pepper, and the asparagus was roasted almost the same, sans rosemary.

My Sweet Vegan and Vegan with a Vengeance were the source for the muffin and scone recipes, respectively. And if you don't have either of these books, rush out to your nearest bookstore (or to Amazon) and buy them now. Go! For the scones I used the basic scone recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance, added the insides of a vanilla bean and a teaspoon of vanilla extract, then I divided the batter in half and added chocolate chips to one half.

I've posted about my seitan patties a number of times before and I'm always futzing with the recipe but I think I've settled on a definitive (for now) recipe for the breakfast-style patties:

3/4 c. + 2 Tbs. wheat gluten
1/4 c. chickpea flour
3 Tbs. nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1 1/2 tsp. ground sage
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/2 c. white beans (cooked or from a can)
3/4 c. water
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. soy sauce

In a large bowl, mix together wheat gluten, chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, salt, herbs and spices. In another bowl, mash the beans very well with a potato masher then mix in water, oil and soy sauce (you could do this in a blender too). Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix very well then divide into 8 equal portions. If you have a kitchen scale now would be a good time to use it but if not you can just eyeball it. Form each portion into a thin 3" patty and place on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes, flip patties then bake another 10 minutes. You could serve them straight from the oven but to bring them up to another level fry them in a little Earth Balance margarine for a couple minutes on each side first.

That brings me to the tofu scramble. In all the time I've been writing this blog I've never posted my tofu scramble recipe. That's in part because there are a bazillion tofu scramble recipes already on-line. And I think it's like what I've heard said about curry powder - that there are as many recipes for curry powder as there are cooks in India. I think there are also as many tofu scramble recipes as there are vegan cooks. All that said, here's how I like to do my tofu scramble and also how I changed it up for this brunch.

Basic Tofu Scramble

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 c. diced onion (1 small or half a large onion)
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 tsp. salt, or to taste
1 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. turmeric
fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 lb. firm or extra firm tofu, drained and pressed (or at least patted dry)
2 tsp. lemon juice
3 Tbs. nutritional yeast

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until it starts getting soft, then add garlic, paprika, turmeric, salt & pepper and cook another minute or so. Add lemon juice and stir quickly then crumble tofu into the pan and stir well to coat with all the seasonings (it doesn't have to be finely crumbled - a few larger chunks are OK). Continue cooking and stirring occasionally for 6-8 minutes, then mix in nutritional yeast. Cook for another minute or two then remove from heat.

For Caribbean style replace the lemon juice with lime juice and add to the spices:
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. allspice

Then towards the end, stir in the following:
3 Tbs. diced mango
3 Tbs. diced papaya (or more mango)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 large carrot, shredded
2-3 Tbs. chopped cilantro

Not the best picture but here's how it looked for brunch.

3 Weeknight Meals

2009-02-08T20:26:00.007-05:00

As I was moving around some cookbooks and magazines the other day I came across an old issue of Vegetarian Times that had a section on "5 Weeknight Meals". And this must have been from back in the good 'ol days of Vegetarian Times because all five recipes were vegan. I thought it would be fun to get away from our old standbys and try some new recipes for a week. The only thing is, a couple of these recipes didn't seem to me to be as quick as promised so I only made three of them.

First up was a red lentil soup with spinach and cauliflower. The recipe called for parsnips and I couldn't find parsnips at the store but we did have cauliflower on hand so I thought, well... they're both white... I think I like cauliflower better anyway. I didn't quite make this in the less than 30 minutes that was indicated in the recipe but it was worth the extra time.

Next we tried a warm chickpea salad that we served over mesclun greens and this one was quick, easy and delicious. Quick because the main ingredients came from a can or jar - chickpeas, artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes. Pretty much anything with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes is a winner in my book.

And that brings us to the Seared Tofu with Orange Glaze. The recipe called for a side of watercress but we had collards instead. The tofu is just dipped in flour and pan fried, then the glaze that goes on top is reduced orange juice, soy sauce, sake, scallions and garlic. This was a simple and tasty way to cook tofu, one we'll have to file away for future reference.

Update: I didn't take the time to look up the recipes when I originally posted this but they're all on-line.

Red Lentil Soup
Warm Chickpea Salad
Seared Tofu with Orange Glaze

Follow me on Twitter?

2009-02-04T21:19:00.003-05:00

All the cool kids are using Twitter these days so I decided to jump on the bandwagon. It's kind of an experiment and for now I'm mainly using it as an extension of this blog. Either I don't have time to update the blog as often anymore or more likely, we're cooking things that just aren't very blog-worthy. I'll use the Twitter feed to post short but more frequent updates (that will most likely be all food-related). So follow me on Twitter if you want (@eatair) or just check the feed on the sidebar of the blog to see what we're up to food-wise (when we're not updating the blog).

Split Peas 2 Ways

2009-01-31T20:41:00.003-05:00

I know. I've been neglecting the blog. But it's been a lot of the same 'ol in our kitchen lately. The best I could come up with for this post is two disparate but delicious uses for the venerable split pea (both of which we've posted about in the past). The first thing that comes to mind when you think split peas is soup right? Last week I made a monster pot of split pea soup. We ate a bunch and froze some for later. I should write down the recipe too because it came out great. It was a fairly standard split pea soup but I added a package of Fakin' Bacon and also a little barley to give it some extra oompf.
We also had an Ethiopian meal again recently. A co-worker is moving and she gave me a barely used package of teff flour that she didn't want to pack. And the only thing I know how to do with teff is make injera. And in this case, three Ethiopian stews to accompany it. The injera and split pea alecha recipes were from Vegan Lunch Box, the collards were mostly following this recipe, and I sort of winged it on a spicy red lentil and tofu stew but it came out good.

Charlottesville Restaurant Update

2009-01-21T21:37:00.003-05:00

With apologies to those of you who aren't from around here (and that's probably the majority of you), I thought I'd spend some time updating our restaurant post. This was prompted by our first dinner out since before baby was born. The last time we ate out was right before he was born. We went to Mesob, our local Ethiopian place that is sadly no longer in business. That was over 8 months ago and it was high time to head out again, so for Darlene's birthday recently we got a babysitter and headed to the downtown mall.

When Himalayan Fusion first opened we looked at the menu and it didn't really strike our fancy. It looked mostly Indian and though there were a number of vegetarian dishes it didn't seem particularly vegan-friendly. We've walked by there countless times since then and we finally got around to scoping out the menu again over the holidays. To our delight, 6 or 7 of the vegetarian options said "vegan option" next to them so we made it a point to give this place a try. Not only does the menu list what entrees are vegan but our waiter was knowledgeable about what appetizers and breads were vegan (the samosas and pakoras, and only the roti for the breads). Darlene's Aloo Palak (spinach and potatoes) was excellent, as was the Nepali-style dal that I had. We'll definitely be heading back here when time and finances allow (which unfortunately could be months from now).

We also managed to go out to eat recently (with baby in tow) at Eppie's, also on the downtown mall. Again, we had glanced at their menu in the past and not thought much of it, but someone gave us a gift certificate there so we tried it out. This is more of a cafeteria-style place and the main draw for us was their vegetable plates. They have numerous "veggies" that you can get in various combinations. My first thought was, "well we're in the South so all their veggies probably have a ham hock in them", but their menu clearly indicates which veggies are vegan. We each got a 3-veggie plate so we sampled almost everything that was vegan: collard greens, broccoli, sweet potato, cole slaw, black beans and brown rice. It was mostly basic food but tasty and good to get such a variety all at once.

Since I don't have any food pictures for this post will you be satisfied with kitten pictures instead? This is Ginger, the latest addition to our family. (And yes, that's a baby toy she's playing with.)

4 meals inspired by 1 recipe

2009-01-13T21:46:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to trying another recipe from the Real Food Daily cookbook before it had to go back to the library. Back when I first posted about this book a commenter recommended the Ying and Yang salad so I looked it up and it sounded awful good. It's a big salad with raw red cabbage, napa cabbage, daikon, carrots and green onions and is topped with marinated baked tofu, sesame seeds and an outstanding peanut sauce. Like many other recipes in this book it was a little involved to put together but so worth it.

But what to do with all the leftover veggies? There was definitely a lot of cabbage left over. The first thing I thought about was this salad from a back issue of Vegetarian Times that we go back to on occasion. So I made the same salad from RFD but with the dressing and marinated tempeh from the VT recipe.

I really had a hankering for that peanut sauce again though so for a quick meal the next night we had pasta (whole wheat spaghetti in this case) with broccoli and that luscious peanut sauce.

And finally, I still needed to use up the rest of the cabbage so I made a bit of a German inspired meal - cabbage stewed with plenty of vinegar, and my bratwurst-style seitan patties (still a work in progress but these were petty good).

Another Week of Breakfast

2009-01-03T13:25:00.013-05:00

The last week of breakfast post was one of my favorites (and yours too), so I thought it'd be fun to do it again since I took off work for the holidays. I've been off since Christmas day but it took a couple days to get my bearings and I started last Saturday with miso soup. I used leftover mushroom soaking liquid from Christmas dinner, plus miso, silken tofu, brown rice and minced chives.

On Saturday night I made granola using my favorite Alton Brown recipe, so Sunday breakfast was granola with soy yogurt and homemade apple jam.

On Monday I made crepes. My German grandmother used to make me eierkuchen for breakfast when I was growing up (which literally translates into "egg cake"). This is similar to though a little thicker than a crepe, and is often served spread with jam and rolled up. For these I made a maple tofu cream with silken tofu, maple syrup and lime juice, and there was some more apple jam in there too - not exactly authentic but we enjoyed them.

Tuesday was seitan breakfast patties with hash browns and a bagel. The seitan patties were another variation on this recipe and I think I nailed it this time. I left out the apple and went back to using mashed white beans, plus I increased the salt to 1/2 tsp., the sage to 1 1/2 tsp. and the red pepper flakes to 1/2 tsp. After baking I also fried them in a little Earth Balance to get them nice and brown and crispy on the outside. If you want to see how I make my hash browns, it was my first ever attempt at a video.

On Wednesday I made Tangerine-Cinnamon Rolls. The last time we did this was on New Years Day 2007 and we thought about making this a New Years Day tradition but ended up doing it a day early.

On Thursday, New Years Day, we made Darlene's Paula Deen veganized Praline French Toast (I also added some chopped walnuts to the topping). This could easily become a New Years tradition too.

Finally, on Friday we had Sambhar with Idli, a South Indian soup and rice dumpling that can be eaten at any time of day. We've made both of these from scratch in the past but this was from packaged mixes that are available in any Indian market.

No donuts this time but we managed to do something different every day and also keep it different from what we did last time. So now you have 14 scrumptious vegan breakfast ideas.

Christmas Dinner 2008

2008-12-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

The Voluptuous Vegan served us well for last year's Christmas dinner and that Seitan Bourguignonne recipe has been on my list for a long time so there you go. We sort of followed the menu idea in the book, starting with a simple salad of mesclun, carrots and an orange champagne vinaigrette (which is a fancy way of saying I mixed Trader Joe's orange champagne vinegar with olive oil, mustard, salt & pepper). The menu suggestion is to serve the seitan with mashed potatoes and parsnips but I wasn't too keen on the look of the parsnips we found in the grocery store so I made mashed potatoes and celery root instead.

Speaking of the grocery store, the first thing that dawned on me, shortly after arriving, was that this is not an inexpensive meal. Start with the alcohol (red wine and mirin) and already we'd spent more than we do for most meals. Then there's the shiitake and porcini mushrooms (we subbed plain 'ol button 'shrooms for some of the shiitakes), and red bell pepper isn't cheap this time of year either. Having said all that though, this recipe makes a lot. We had it for dinner three nights in a row and there's still a little left over. Oh, and the flavor. Layer upon layer of rich complex flavor. Definitely something worthy of serving company. And worthy of a holiday meal too. Especially Christmas, what with the red pepper and green peas and all.

Quinoa with Seitan and Vegetables

2008-12-23T21:21:00.001-05:00

I've managed to check off at least a couple of things from my list. The Sauteed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach from Veganomicon made for a fairly simple but very delicious meal a few nights ago (sorry, no pictures of that one). I also went back to the test kitchen with my seitan patties this past weekend. This time it was for sort of a chorizo style, seasoned with smoked paprika, cumin, oregano, cayenne, fennel seed and garlic. And once I made the seitan the idea for this quinoa dish started formulating. Actually it was going to be a rice dish but we were out of white rice and I didn't feel like waiting for brown rice, so quinoa made a fine substitution. Here's how it went down.

1 lb. seitan
3 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 med. onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
pinch saffron
14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
3/4 c. water
1 c. quinoa
1-2 c. broccoli florets
1/2 c. frozen peas
salt & pepper to taste

Short version: cook onion in 1 Tbs. olive oil; add garlic, thyme, paprika, saffron. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Meanwhile chop the seitan and fry in 2 Tbs. olive oil until nice and brown. Stir into the quinoa at the end.

To Do

2008-12-13T21:44:00.004-05:00

I know it's been a lot of the same 'ol same 'ol when the best thing I could come up with to post about was a tofu scramble. Actually I did manage to make the Pumpkin Baked Ziti from Veganomicon for a holiday potluck but I've already posted about that. So now I'm resorting to a post not about something I've cooked but about some things I'd like to cook. Maybe one of these days soon. In no particular order...

Seitan Bourguignonne from The Voluptuous Vegan. Might try this for Christmas dinner.
Sauteed Seitan with Mushrooms and Spinach from Veganomicon. Something fairly simple I might get to soon.
Cajun Meatloaf from Vegan Dad. Well, I'd really like to make almost everything that Vegan Dad posts.
Continue experimenting with my seitan patties.
Re-visit the Apple Uglies. But instead of apples use pears and ginger.
Delve more into the Real Food Daily cookbook. I checked it out from the library again but I've hardly touched it and now it's due in 3 days. Maybe I can renew it...
Another video. Any requests? Is anyone actually reading this?

So what's on your list?

Simple Wraps

2008-12-07T21:41:00.004-05:00

Are there any Annie's Goddess Dressing fans out there? Well here's an idea for you. Put some rice on a tortilla, add whatever veggies you like, slather on some Goddess dressing and roll it up. This was a quick meal from a few nights ago. I had already cooked brown rice and a couple sweet potatoes the night before. When it was time for dinner on this night, I started by cooking a couple chopped scallions and some garlic in olive oil in a cast iron skillet. Then I added a can of black beans and the sweet potatoes. I mashed this mixture up a little bit, cooked until it was heated through, then put it on whole wheat tortillas with the rice and Goddess dressing. If you're not a fan of the Goddess then pick your own personal favorite.

On another note, if you visit this blog in a web browser you may have noticed that I updated the template. When I did that, the blogroll and other links that used to be on the side went away. I added some links back based on what was in my Google reader but since I rarely use Google reader that wasn't an exhaustive list. So if there was a link to your blog there before and there's not one there now, my apologies - hopefully I'll get around to adding it again soon.
I'm still not totally happy with how the site looks so if I can ever find more time I'll probably keep futzing with it.

Thanksgiving Feast 2008

2008-11-29T07:36:00.006-05:00

How many of you out there in veg-land have had a Tofurkey on Thanksgiving? Or at any other time? I was just trying to remember Thanksgivings past and I realized this was at least our 12th vegan Thanksgiving meal (and there were one or two more that were vegetarian and possibly vegan). In all that time we'd never had a Tofurkey. Our centerpiece has most often been a layered vegetable pie of some sort but the point has always been to cook from scratch and highlight the vegetables. That can take a lot of time though, something that's in short supply this year. Now it's all about convenience so we went with the Tofurkey. We still spent some time in the kitchen cooking other dishes but not nearly as much time as in years past. The Tofurkey comes with stuffing and gravy, and to complement all that we also made roasted potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and pumpkin cheesecake.

For the potatoes I just roasted Yukon golds with olive oil, rosemary, salt & pepper while the Tofurkey was cooking. Like the last 2 years, the cranberries were a modified Emeril recipe. I wanted to try at least one new recipe though so I made the Green Beans with Walnuts and Shallot Crisps from the latest issue of Vegetarian Times. These were definitely a step up from your standard green beans. And finally there was dessert! Darlene made her pumpkin cheesecake again this year and it was fabulous! (In fact we just had some for breakfast...)

Though I missed our over-the-top Thanksgiving meals from years past just a bit, the Tofurkey was pretty good and very easy to prepare. The Tofurkey itself, and the gravy in particular was a bit salty for our tastes but that's what happens when you don't control every aspect of your food preparation.

Dessert was a big highlight for us as always, but also for baby Jonas. No, it'll be a while before he has cheesecake but we did save a little of the plain pumpkin that went into the cheesecake and he thoroughly enjoyed it.

As for us, we thoroughly enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner and eating up the leftovers too. Including these waffles with cranberry sauce we had for breakfast yesterday. We hope you all had a happy vegan Thanksgiving!

Easy Curries

2008-11-23T08:43:00.003-05:00

Finding vegan recipes on the Food Network is a rare thing indeed but sometimes you find one that's super easy to veganize. This Vegetable Curry recipe from a past episode of Good Eats is a case in point. Just swap in soy yogurt and you're good to go. This comes together in a snap and the variations are endless. We followed the recipe as is once last week and last night we swapped the mixed vegetables with a bag of frozen chopped spinach and a can of chickpeas. Both variations were excellent.

Why No Thanksgiving Turkey

2008-11-18T20:52:00.003-05:00

With Thanksgiving coming up in the U.S. I just thought I'd take a moment to talk turkey. Or lack thereof. We don't eat turkey on Thanksgiving for the same reason we don't eat turkey (or any other meat) on any other day of the year. So no animals have to suffer purely for our own indulgence. Not when there are so many other amazing things to eat that are far less cruel. In fact if you look at the archives of this blog alone you'll find over 500 other things to eat. And for specific holiday ideas take a look at our past Thanksgiving posts here, here and here.

Many people say they have turkey on Thanksgiving because of tradition, but tradition is what you make it. We've made a tradition of having a meatless Thanksgiving for 10 years now and this year will be no different. Check that. It will be different in that we'll introduce our son to this tradition and hope that he will carry it on himself one day.

Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Seitan

2008-11-16T21:39:00.004-05:00

This is what we did for our blog anniversary. It may not make the next top ten list but it's interesting (to me anyway) because I've never cooked with broccoli rabe before. Broccoli rabe (aka Rapini) is more like a bitter green than like broccoli and it has a very pungent flavor, a little bit akin to mustard greens I guess.

I got this idea from a cooking show we happened upon last weekend on PBS. There was an Italian woman on there making orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage (and also lots of butter and cheese). I was intrigued and I figured I could easily veganize something like this, thereby leaving out a lot of fat (and a lot of cruelty). I didn't recall her exact recipe or even what show we were watching but I remembered the general idea. Which goes like this:

1 lb. package orecchiette (or other small pasta)
1/4 c. olive oil
1 lb. seitan, diced (see following recipe)
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 lb. broccoli rabe, coarsely chopped and thick stems removed
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 c. vegetable broth
1 tsp. dried basil
salt & pepper to taste

In a large deep pan heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add seitan and cook for several minutes until it's getting brown. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add broccoli rabe, cook until wilted then add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer then reduce heat, cover and cook for about 10 minutes. While all this is happening, cook the orecchiette in plenty of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and add to the broccoli rabe and seitan. We served ours garnished with parsley.

And note that if you want the broccoli rabe to look brighter and not as drab as in my picture, serve immediately and don't let it sit on the burner over low heat while you try to get your baby to bed.

Here's how I made the seitan:

Italian Style Seitan Patties

3/4 c. + 2 Tbs. wheat gluten
1/4 c. chickpea flour
3 Tbs. nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. fennel seed (crushed with a mortar & pestle if you have one)
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/2 c. white beans
3/4 c. water
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. soy sauce

In a large bowl, mix together gluten, chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, salt, herbs and spices. In another bowl, mash the beans very well with a potato masher then mix in water, oil and soy sauce (you could do this in a blender too). Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix well then divide into 6 equal portions. If you have a kitchen scale now would be a good time to use it but if not you can just eyeball it. Form each portion into a thin 3 1/2" patty and place on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes, flip patties then bake another 10 minutes.

Three Years

2008-11-15T22:23:00.003-05:00

It's been three years since we started this blog and a lot has changed since then. We did a little bit of a special dinner for our blogiversary tonight (using a vegetable I've never cooked with before) but that'll have to wait because all I have time for is a short post.

So to tide you over here's the ubiquitous top ten list - my top ten favorite posts from the last three years. Many other posts could've made the list but I think this is a good one.

10. Lightlife review

9. Bread Pudding video

8. Christmas dinner

7. Jamaican Veggie Patties

6. Baby Shower

5. Thanksgiving

4. Veganizing Paula Deen

3. Veganizing Rachael Ray

2. A Week of Breakfast

And my number one favorite post: Apple Uglies!

A Week of Quick Meals

2008-11-10T20:43:00.005-05:00

A few months ago I posted about a typical week; this one was not so typical in that we actually had somewhat of a plan. I came up with some meal ideas over the weekend and we went shopping on Sunday morning to get what we needed for the week. We started by trying to use up some whole wheat tortillas and collards that had been in the fridge for a while. I steamed the collards, and while that was happening I scrambled tofu with black beans and salsa (among other things). The collards and tofu went on the tortillas with more salsa and Tofutti sour cream. Good and good for you!

Monday night was a very easy pasta dish. We made the Instant Roasted Red Pepper Sauce from Vegan Express and had that over pasta and broccoli (dump frozen broccoli into the pasta water when the pasta has 3-4 minutes left to cook). We doubled the sauce recipe and it goes like this: mix 1 12-oz. package of silken tofu, 1 12-oz. jar of roasted red peppers (drained), a little parsley, 1/4 c. lime juice and 1 tsp. salt in a food processor until well blended.

Tuesday was election day and I took a vacation day from work to volunteer for Obama (and he won in Virginia!). I also had slightly more time for cooking in the evening and another thing we wanted to use up was the package of ring-shaped pasta. Yup. Spaghetti O's! Without the meatballs this time but with plain 'ol diced seitan instead. (And also with a salad.)

It was back to work Wednesday and dinner was some quick fried rice since I also managed to cook a batch of brown rice Tuesday night to have at the ready.

On Thursday we also managed to throw together a simple salad, which we had with couscous (from a packaged mix) and easy barbecued tempeh (pour about 1/3 a bottle of barbecue sauce over diced tempeh and bake at 350° for 25 minutes). Friday was one of Darlene's old standbys, sort of a mock chicken-noodle soup that she makes with seitan and cute little pasta stars.

And I had another idea for Saturday but time got the better of us and we dug into our stash of boxed Indian entrees. We stock up on these things whenever we see them on sale and we cook some rice and nuke them in the microwave for a really quick meal. In fact I just went over to the Tasty Bite web site to borrow some pictures and I found that they sell their Indian and Thai meals on-line for much less than we normally find them for in the store. We like these Tasty Bite meals too because they clearly label which ones are vegan.

Video: Bread Pudding

2008-11-03T19:28:00.005-05:00

We got a good response the last time we posted a video and have been wanting to do another one, then baby came along and here we are 6 months down the road already. Now here's one that includes baby. We did this again with our Flip, and the audio quality in particular isn't stellar but hopefully you'll get the point. The recipe I'm using is posted here.

Two from Quick Fix

2008-10-29T21:39:00.006-04:00

Have I mentioned we don't have a lot of time for cooking these days? Yeah, probably. Dinner is often a re-hash of something we've already written about many times but I had a chance to flip through Quick Fix Vegetarian recently and I found a couple new recipes to try. First up was the Indonesian-Style Noodles. Which was not very authentic because I used spaghetti, but whatever. It was tasty and fast to prepare. It's sort of a noodle stir-fry with scallions, garlic, ginger, cabbage, soy sauce and brown sugar. We also boosted it by adding a little seitan. The recipe calls for a garnish of cilantro but I really didn't want to buy a whole bunch of cilantro just for a little garnish so I used some of the parsley that's still hanging on in our herb garden. Not quite the same but again, whatever.

Tonight we made the Sicilian Couscous and again gave the meal a boost with the addition of seitan (this time fried in olive oil, soy sauce and agave). The couscous was made with scallions, spinach, raisins and orange zest and garnished with parsley and pine nuts. Not the greatest thing I've ever had but definitely a good meal. There were plenty of leftovers from both of these as well, which is always a good thing.

Apple-Sage Breakfast Patties

2008-10-22T22:05:00.004-04:00

This is another variation on the seitan patties I recently posted about. Last time I was pondering how to make them larger (as opposed to baking them in muffin tins). The muffin top pan was a good idea but then it occurred to me that we have a set of biscuit cutters/ring molds that has about 10 different sizes (which worked perfectly when we made donuts). So this time I tried pressing the seitan batter into about a 3 1/4" ring mold on a baking sheet and that did the trick.

We've been up at our local orchard a lot this Fall picking apples so our abundance of apples was on my mind when I made these patties. I followed the basic recipe from before but omitted the white beans and added 1/4 c. finely diced apple, 1 tsp. ground sage, 1/2 tsp thyme and 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper. This time I divided the batter up into only 6 equal parts and pressed each piece into the ring mold on top of parchment on a baking sheet. I baked them uncovered at 350° for 15 minutes then flipped them over and baked another 10 minutes. We had them with toast and homemade apple jam.

This was probably my favorite variation yet. Baking them uncovered makes them a little more chewy, which was a good thing. Next time I make these I'll probably bump up the spice a little more - maybe with a little more red pepper and a little more sage.

Tempeh Fries with Sesame Broccoli

2008-10-17T21:32:00.005-04:00

We finally had a chance to open a cookbook and try something new the other night. We were still looking for something quick though so the cookbook we opened was Vegan Express, where we found an appetizer and a side dish that combined to make an excellent meal. And it was all done in 25 minutes. The Tempeh Fries with Wasabi-Dill Mayonnaise were awesome and super simple, as was the Spicy Sesame Broccoli. The tempeh is just pan fried in a mixture of soy sauce and oil and is paired with a refreshingly delicious sauce containing vegan mayo, a little rice milk and lime juice, plus wasabi and fresh dill. The broccoli is even easier, as it's steamed in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, white wine and sugar, then sprinkled with crushed red pepper and sesame seeds.

Lemon Bundt Cake

2008-10-08T21:28:00.003-04:00

What do you do when you wake up at 5 in the morning and can't get back to sleep? And you've got half a bag of organic lemons in the fridge that need to be used up? If you're me, you open up your copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking and get to work on a Lemon Bundt Cake with Lemon Sauce. These last five months have been a whirlwind and it's a rare occasion that I bake something nowadays. So today I took advantage of my sleepless morning and made this fabulous cake. The cake is good on it's own but the sauce really makes it. If you can keep yourself from eating the sauce straight up with a spoon that is. Check out Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's wonderful book for the cake recipe (or try The Millennium Cookbook, from which she adapted the recipe). The sauce is super easy and would be great on any number of baked goodies so I'll share my version of that right now. Put 1/2 c. sugar and 1 Tbs. cornstarch in a saucepan, add 2/3 c. water, simmer over medium heat stirring occasionally until thick, then stir in the juice and zest from 2 lemons. Let it cool, then drink it up... I mean, pour it over your lemon cake (or muffins, or whatever).

Seitan and Kale Stew

2008-10-05T20:54:00.004-04:00

I've probably already mentioned that I used to enjoy browsing through cookbooks (or blogs or TV shows) and finding fun new recipes to try. Now there's precious little time for such things so we're often eating some quick pasta dish or maybe something from the freezer. Here's something quick that I made up on the fly and it came out pretty good (though I'm realizing now it's the second less-than-photogenic post in a row). I did this while baby Jonas was taking a late afternoon nap and it took me 35 minutes from start to finish (which unfortunately is often about the length of his naps).

Chop up about a pound of seitan (or just a package of seitan from the store if you don't make it yourself) and a medium onion. Cook both in a healthy amount of olive oil in a large pot. While that's happening, wash a bunch of kale, tear off the thick stems and tear the rest into smaller pieces. When your onions and seitan are getting nice and brown pour in about a cup of red wine. Let that cook a few minutes then add a small can (or half a large can) of crushed tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and whatever else you want - I used about a teaspoon each of smoked paprika and coriander. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes. While it was simmering I made some couscous that we served it with and I sprinkled a few fresh chives on at the end. Probably not the greatest thing I've ever made but better than a frozen pot pie.

Chickpea Broccoli Casserole

2008-09-26T21:32:00.003-04:00

I posted about this casserole recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance way back when we first started this blog. In fact that post garnered our first negative comment (thankfully the negative comments have generally been few and far between). I admit my photography skills were somewhat lacking back then. In fact they're still less than stellar and this isn't the most photogenic dish either but it sure does taste good. I can't believe it's taken us so long to go back to it. It bakes for an hour but it's fairly quick to throw together so it can make a decent weeknight meal.

Start by draining 3 cans of chickpeas then mashing them well in a large bowl. Add a chopped onion, some diced chives, 3 grated carrots and chopped broccoli (I used frozen this time and it came out fine). Mix in 1/2 c. bread crumbs, 3 Tbs. olive oil, 1 cup veggie broth and 1 tsp. salt. Spread this mixture in a baking dish, cover and bake at 350° for 45 minutes then uncover and bake another 15 minutes. It's a great one dish meal as is but this time I bumped it up a little and added 1 tsp. of smoked paprika (my new favorite seasoning). One change I might make next time would be to sauté the onions first but it saves time putting them in there raw. We served it garnished with pine nuts and a little more of the smoked paprika sprinkled on top.

Quick Fried Rice

2008-09-17T12:18:00.005-04:00

Here's a quick and easy meal idea. Whenever you have a chance, start some rice cooking. Brown rice takes longer but it's better for you and you can be doing other things around the house while it's cooking. Once it's done, let it sit and cool a bit. Then dump it into a container and add a handful of cashews and some veggies - fresh or frozen. Maybe chop up a carrot and throw in some frozen broccoli and bell peppers. Now put the whole thing in the fridge. You've spent 5-10 minutes of hands-on time so far. Any time you want a quick meal in the next few days, heat a wok or other deep pot over medium-high heat, add a tablespoon or two of oil, then add the rice mixture and stir-fry for about 5 minutes. During the last minute add 2-3 tablespoons of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of sesame oil. Enjoy.

Seitan Patties

2008-09-13T07:19:00.004-04:00

I mentioned these in the last post and now those of you who were waiting for the recipe (all 2 of you) can breath a sigh of relief. I've written about how much I like the seitan recipes in the Real Food Daily cookbook and this is an adaptation of one of those. I also like Julie Hasson's seitan sausages and all the wonderful variations that have been traveling the vegan blog circuit but those do come out a little dense. What I like about the RFD recipes is the softer texture.

Now I've created the best of both worlds by baking seitan sausage patties in muffin tins. And you thought muffin tins were only good for cupcakes huh? I'd actually like to find a way to make larger patties that would fit on a bun or sandwich so I'll probably keep experimenting but these are most excellent already. I'll give you the basic recipe and the bratwurst-style variation I made, then you can go nuts trying out all manner of herb/spice variations yourself - I think I'll be trying a sage-heavy breakfast-style patty next.

Seitan Patties - Basic Recipe -

3/4 c. + 2 Tbs. wheat gluten
1/4 c. chickpea flour
3 Tbs. nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1/2 c. white beans
3/4 c. water
2 Tbs. canola oil
1 Tbs. soy sauce

In a large bowl, mix together gluten, chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, salt and onion powder. In another bowl, mash the beans very well then mix in water, oil and soy sauce (you could do this in a blender too). Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mix well then divide into 12 equal portions. If you have a kitchen scale now would be a good time to use it but if not you can just eyeball it. Press each piece into a well oiled muffin tin, cover with foil and bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Serve straight from the oven or store them in the fridge then pan fry in a small amount of oil before serving.

Bratwurst-style variation -

Replace 1/2 c. of the water with beer and add:
1/2 tsp. white pepper
1/2 tsp. marjoram
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
pinch nutmeg
pinch ground ginger

CSA Bounty

2008-09-04T16:30:00.005-04:00

Every year we think about joining a CSA but the farmers market is very close by so we end up just going there most weekends and picking out what we want. When a friend was out of town last weekend though, we jumped at the chance when she offered that we could pick up her CSA share. The cool thing about a CSA is you never know exactly what you'll get - and sometimes you might be pleasantly surprised. We got mostly what you'd expect this time of year - tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers and the like, but the pleasant surprise was fresh lima beans, something neither of us had ever had before.

I poked around on-line to get some ideas about what to do with fresh lima beans but then I realized we still had some fresh corn in the fridge and I knew I had to make succotash. Not the most original idea I know, but I've only ever had the frozen kind and I was keen to know what it tastes like with fresh veggies. Much better than frozen as you might expect. I sautéed the corn in a little Earth Balance then added the limas (which had been boiled for 15 mins.) along with salt, pepper, smoked paprika and few cherry tomatoes. We had some tempeh bacon to complete the meal; all that smokiness an homage to Southern cooking where you'll find a ham hock in everything, even the veggies.

I also experimented with a new seitan patty recipe over the holiday weekend (a post on that will be forthcoming). With the nice red bell peppers from the CSA share I made a roasted red pepper sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance and we had that over the seitan and saffron rice. Not the best presentation I know, but at the last minute I decided it was interesting and took a picture.

Product Review: Purely Decadent Ice Cream

2008-08-31T14:25:00.004-04:00

We've been fortunate enough on a couple of occasions to review some great vegan products but this was the package we anticipated the most. The kind folks at Turtle Mountain sent us samples of their new Purely Decadent vegan ice cream flavors to try and we're so glad they did. We were especially keen to try out their new line of vegan ice creams made with coconut milk. I have to confess that we tried a small sample of almost every flavor within minutes of the package arriving but this weekend we invited a bunch of friends over to help us sample this bonanza. Unfortunately almost everyone we invited was either busy or out of town this weekend (or we just don't have many friends). Either way I guess that's more for us.

So yesterday we did little sample plates for us with all five of the coconut milk based flavors and all five of the new soy based flavors. And today we did have one friend come over to sample some of the creamy goodness. I took pictures but go on over to the Purely Decadent site to see what professional pictures of all these flavors look like.

The coconut milk flavors are (clockwise from top left): Vanilla Bean, Coconut, Cookie Dough, Chocolate and Mint Chip. With the exception of course of the coconut flavor, we hardly noticed the coconut milk base in any of these. What we do notice is a rich, full-flavored creaminess that's every bit as good as (or maybe better than) dairy ice cream. To be fair, maybe we're not ones to judge since it's been many years since either of us has had dairy ice cream, but the friend we had over is not vegan and her first remark (after mmmmm) was that she would've never known these were dairy free if we hadn't told her. All of these flavors are truly outstanding (I just know I'm going to run out of superlatives here) but the two flavors that really stood out for all of us were the Chocolate and Cookie Dough. In fact the Cookie Dough is fast on its way to becoming the first of all the flavors we received to disappear completely - probably because it reminds Darlene of downing whole pints of Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream after long bike rides way back in the day.

We're totally enamored with the coconut milk based flavors but the new soy based flavors are awesome as well. They are (clockwise from top left): Dulce de Leche, Blueberry Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie, Snickerdoodle and Belgian Chocolate.

These all live up to the Purely Decadent name quite well, though they're maybe a tiny notch below the coconut milk flavors in creaminess. Our surprising favorite among this batch turned out to be Snickerdoodle. Neither of us initially thought this would be a favorite but it packs a powerful cinnamon punch and has scrumptious bits of cookie dough mixed in - what's not to like? The Key Lime Pie is incredible as well and I'm all about the Belgian Chocolate too, even though I like the coconut milk based chocolate flavor a bit more. There's definitely not a single flavor in the whole lot that we won't savor to the last drop. (I also must confess that I totally licked those plates clean after I was done eating the samples with a spoon.)

Now all this writing has made me hungry so excuse me while I go dig into the freezer...

Banana Nut Muffins

2008-08-24T10:46:00.003-04:00

I've already posted about my old standby banana bread recipe so this is really just a way to re-use some content. I've been making muffins from this recipe lately, which I like because they take less time to cook. In the original recipe I used egg replacer. There are those who would argue that you don't need egg replacer in banana bread (or muffins) because the banana acts as a binder. I did leave it out when I made the muffins this time and they came out fine but I do think the egg replacer helps them hold together slightly better. So add it if you've got it but feel to leave it out per the recipe below.

2 ripe bananas
1/2 c. canola oil
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. + 2 Tbs. soy milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Mash bananas in a large bowl then add oil, sugar, soy milk and vanilla and mix well. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and gently mix until well combined (it will be a fairly stiff batter). Fold in nuts, then divide equally into oiled muffin tins (makes 12). Bake at 350º for 25 minutes.

Vegan Express Salads

2008-08-19T20:30:00.005-04:00

I wanted to try something new but not too involved this weekend so I figured Nava Atlas' excellent new book Vegan Express might be a good place to start looking for ideas. One of the first recipes I came across sounded good - Chickpea and Carrot Salad with Parsley and Olives. It was a snap to prepare too, just mix together canned chickpeas, grated carrots, parsley, green olives, and scallions. Add a little lemon juice and olive oil, and season with cumin, salt & pepper. She suggests serving this with her Sweet and White Potato Salad and who am I to argue with that. This was a pretty basic potato salad served with a vinaigrette and chopped tomatoes and avocado, but the addition of sweet potatoes makes it a little more interesting. Everything was served on a bed of lettuce and another interesting addition is the toasted pumpkin seeds on top of the potato salad. This made for an excellent dinner and it didn't take that long to prepare.

On the page facing the carrot salad recipe is the Middle Eastern Chopped Salad recipe. This caught my eye too because it's basically a jazzed up cucumber and tomato salad - and we've been getting a lot of cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden. It also includes bell pepper, olives, scallions, parsley, sesame seeds and pine nuts. This was a good start to last night's dinner and afterwards we just had some basic sandwiches. Fun stuff, though it's not always like this. Tonight's dinner was a little of the leftover carrot salad and PB&J on toast.

A Typical Week

2008-08-12T20:37:00.006-04:00

When we started here (going on three years ago), the idea was to show what a couple of vegans eat on a regular basis, from the ordinary to the spectacular. After a while the ordinary just wasn't "blog-worthy" anymore and we started posting only the better stuff (or whatever was new or fun). Now that we have a baby and thus very limited time to cook, there's not much that's new or blog-worthy anymore. So I thought I'd document the typical again and post about what we had over the course of a week. Actually this turned out to be a decent week with maybe a little more time for cooking than we might have other times. I started a week ago Saturday with the BBQ Tempeh I've already posted about.

Next up was black-eyed peas with chard, then Monday night was a tofu scramble with spinach (that came out of the freezer) and roasted potatoes. I saw the big fingerling potatoes at the farmers' market and they were a little expensive but I just had to get them so I could make these oven fries.

I also splurged a little and got some organic baby squash at the market. On Tuesday night I quartered them lengthwise and sautéed them in olive oil with garlic then I added pasta. I was going to do just olive oil and garlic but I found some tomato/tempeh sauce I made a long time ago way in the back of the fridge so I used that up.

And that was pretty much it for the cooking. On Wednesday night we just had a big salad. Yeah, those silly vegans eating nothing but salad... Ours had red lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden, carrots, artichokes, chick peas, slivered almonds, pine nuts, and dried cranberries.

Then it was back to the freezer - this time for the whole meal - for Amy's pot pies. These are a tad pricey but a lot cheaper than eating out.

And the week finished off Friday with a salad and a sandwich. More cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden, and a sandwich on whole wheat bread with seitan, tomatoes and vegan mayo.

If you've read this far, maybe some of you other bloggers can help me with a question. Other than moderating comments, is there any way to have Blogger notify you if you get a comment on an older post? I'm not sure I want to moderate all comments, but every so often I notice comments that appear on older posts - usually a long time after they appeared. I always read and appreciate new comments, even if I don't respond to them all, but with well over 500 posts now who knows how many comments I've missed on older posts. OK, it's probably not that many but still I'm curious.

In Defense of Whole Foods

2008-08-06T21:03:00.001-04:00

Wait. Before you fire up those flamethrowers hear me out. I'm not going to sit here and extol the virtues of any money-grubbing corporation, Whole Foods included. But I thought I'd comment on this recent NY Times article about Whole Foods and how they're trying to convince people that they can be an economical place to shop. I find this amusing because I already know that. Oh sure, the moniker Whole Paycheck is not without reason and if you just go in there willy nilly and buy whatever you want it may hold true. But for a lot of our staples, believe it or not they're the least expensive game in town. And that's important when you're on a budget - especially a new-baby-budget. We don't have a Trader Joe's here, nor do we have a co-op where you could become a member and get a discount. So for things like tofu, soy milk, a lot of bulk items and even the occasional produce item we shop at Whole Foods. Yes they often irritate me but no more so than any other mainstream grocery store.

What I really wanted to point out though are a couple of choice quotes from the article that just rubbed me the wrong way. I've written before about how the mainstream media often takes little pot shots at vegetarians and vegans and this article is no exception. First up is the quote from the Whole Foods employee regarding tofu, "It looks gross but it's delicious." I supposed you could view that in a positive light but still. What looks gross is a package of bloody ground beef, or a whole fish laying on ice and staring up at you with cold dead eyes. Hell, some things in the produce section look gross (celery root anyone?) but tofu? C'mon! It's an innocuous white block. Get over it.

Worse though is the closing quote from a Whole Foods shopper who says she considers "Whole Foods expensive for average people...It was only cheap if you were a vegetarian willing to eat beans and tofu." Well count me in then! So I guess if you eat beans and tofu you're not average. I just looked up antonyms for 'average' and the first one I found was 'abnormal'. I always suspected I might be abnormal, now here's validation ;-)

Easy BBQ Tempeh

2008-08-03T21:19:00.005-04:00

I don't have many of my own recipes to share these days so I'll co-opt someone else's. We got some more fresh corn from the farmers market yesterday and the one thing I could think of that goes with corn on the cob is barbecue. Except we don't have a grill. Nor do we have the time to fire one up and cook something on it. So I decided to do my old standby of pouring barbecue sauce over tempeh and baking it. Except we didn't have any barbecue sauce. Probably because the last time I was in the grocery store looking at barbecue sauce and scouring ingredient labels for things like anchovies, I found that it all had high fructose corn syrup and I couldn't bring myself to buy any. So I made my own from a Vegan Dad recipe. All of his recipes rock, but especially this one. I halved the recipe for the sauce, upped the maple syrup just a tad, left out the brown sugar and added a tablespoon of molasses. Then I poured it over cubed tempeh and baked at 350° for 25 minutes. The amount of sauce was just right for an 8-oz. package of tempeh (unless you end up eating most of the sauce with a spoon first like I almost did).

We started the meal with a tomato salad made in large part from a monster yellow tomato from our garden. Only about half the tomato plants in our garden are doing anything this year but this one plant is producing like gangbusters. (There's a 'normal' sized tomato and an ear of corn in the picture for perspective.)

The salad was simple, fresh and delicious: tomatoes, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a touch of fresh basil.

Corn Pudding, Take 2

2008-07-28T20:46:00.004-04:00

Way back when, I posted about the Corn Pudding and Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu recipes from Veganomicon. Somehow I remembered that post just recently because I said I couldn't wait until summer to make the corn pudding with fresh corn. And the time is nigh for fresh corn. I picked up half a dozen ears at the farmers market on Saturday and found some time to make the corn pudding on Sunday. I also made another big batch of seitan so instead of the chile-cornmeal tofu we had the same coating on seitan.

The corn pudding was amazing with frozen corn but it was so much better with fresh because it got all sweet and lusciously caramel-y on the bottom. Our time for cooking is scarce these days but we might have to make this again before corn season is over. I'm not totally sold on the cornmeal coating on either the seitan or the tofu though. I fried it this time because I thought it came out a little dry baked, but now I think it's the cornmeal that makes it kind of dry. It was still really good, but next time I might use half cornmeal and half flour for the coating. Or I'll just go for our old standby and use almond flour.

Summer Wraps

2008-07-17T18:48:00.005-04:00

I shoot from the hip a lot more when cooking these days. That is to say, I do it all the time. Sure, I used to improvise on occasion, but I also used to spend weekends poring over cookbooks or magazines or blogs trying to find interesting new recipes to try. Nowadays what little "free" time I have on weekends is spent doing errands, paying bills or maybe - heaven forbid - sleeping an extra hour. So when dinner time comes around, if it's not something frozen or just a big salad or sandwich, it's something made up on the fly. Like these wraps. I did find the time to make a quick run to the farmers market over the weekend and we've even gotten a few squash and tomatoes from our small garden.

I started by cooking some rice with crushed tomatoes and a little lime juice and cumin. Then I cooked onions and yellow squash and added fresh corn, white beans, fresh tomatoes and garlic. I don't quite remember how it was seasoned but probably with chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper. The rice and squash mixture went into tortillas and we topped it with lettuce and more fresh tomatoes. Not the best thing I've ever made but it was quick and there were plenty of leftovers which is always a bonus.

Oh, and baby Jonas is doing really well but as you can tell, we don't have time for doing much else now except for taking care of him.

Spicy Seitan Fingers

2008-07-09T07:13:00.003-04:00

Here's something fun we made over the July 4th weekend. We've done something similar in the past with TVP chunks and with tempeh but I was inspired by Vegan Dad's wingz recipes to try this again with seitan. I found time on my day off on the 4th to sleep a little and also to make a huge batch of the Real Food Daily seitan recipe so here's what I did with part of it. This was kind of an experiment but it came out really good. We use a milder hot sauce like Frank's Red Hot for this but if you want to use something hotter knock yourself out.

1 lb. seitan, cut into strips
1 Tbs. peanut oil
2 Tbs. maple syrup
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. liquid smoke
1/4 c. Earth Balance margarine
1/4 c. hot sauce

Prehet the oven to 350°. Heat a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add the oil then the seitan and fry the seitan until brown on all sides. Add the maple syrup, soy sauce, cider vinegar, and liquid smoke and cook for a minute or so until the seitan is nice and glazed. Add the margarine and hot sauce and mix everything around until the margarine is melted. Pop the whole thing in the oven to finish for 15 minutes. We had ours with macaroni salad and steamed broccoli on the side.

A Real Happy Family

2008-06-29T16:18:00.004-04:00

Have you ever been to a Chinese restaurant and seen something called "Happy Family" on the menu? This usually consists of several different types of meat, like beef, chicken and shrimp, all "happily" married together in one dish. But I got to thinking that this really isn't a happy family at all. It's a dead family. And certainly the animals whose remains are swimming in brown sauce didn't have happy lives. So the other day I set out to create a real happy family - a stir-fry containing a trio of proteins that provide an interesting contrast in flavor and texture, but without all that death.

I didn't write down a recipe but if you've ever made a stir-fry you can try something similar with whatever veggies and sauce you like. I used about 8 oz. each of seitan, marinated tofu and marinated tempeh. The veggies were primarily red bell pepper and carrot because that's what we had on hand, and I also threw in a little frozen broccoli. And the sauce was hoisin, rice vinegar and a few other things I don't remember. What I do remember is that it was an explosion of flavor. So go try your own real happy family.

On a related note I have a question for you tempeh eaters out there. You know who you are. Do you steam your tempeh before cooking with it? I did in this case and I've read that steaming cuts down on the bitterness but often I'm lazy and I don't bother and I don't know if I really notice the difference.

Hodgepodge Lentil Stew

2008-06-21T21:36:00.006-04:00

When you don't have a lot of time to cook, one obvious strategy is to cook vast quantities when you do. And a soup or stew is easy to expand. We didn't make it to the farmers market this morning (long story) but we still had some things left from last weekend's market that we needed to use up - namely a big bunch of collards, scallions and some nice red and purple potatoes. I was thinking about the white bean soup with collards that I've made in the past but lentils were what we had on hand so that's the direction I went. I kind of made it up as I went along but it came out good so I'll share what I did. It's not exactly the perfect meal for the first day of summer but the weather has been a bit mild here lately...

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 large onion diced
3 small carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried tarragon
1 tsp. smoked paprika
salt & pepper to taste (depends on saltiness of the broth)
8 cups veg. broth or water
1 pound lentils, rinsed
1 large bunch collards, chopped
1 pound potatoes, diced
chopped scallions for garnish

Heat oil in a large soup pot and add the onion, carrot and celery. Cook for several minutes then add the garlic, tarragon, paprika, salt & pepper and cook another minute or so. Add water or broth, lentils and collards. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered for 30-40 minutes until lentils are just getting tender. Add potatoes and simmer another 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Adjust seasonings if needed and serve garnished with scallions.

And since the food is not exceptionally interesting I'll be shameless and drop in another pic. It's food related only in that it demonstrates the reason we're not cooking as much as we used to.

These last 6 weeks have not been without their (many) challenges but in general everyone is doing well.

Glazed Tofu x2

2008-06-15T05:58:00.004-04:00

It seems the weekends are the only time I'm cooking anything remotely blog-worthy these days. Last weekend I made the Chili Lime Tofu from VeganYumYum. You should seriously go try this recipe.

Well what are you waiting for? Go.

OK... now that you've tried it, isn't it simple and delicious? A whirlwind of flavors? We didn't have collards so we had ours over a bed of fresh spinach. I'll show you what ours looked like but Lolo's picture is way better so follow the link and check it out.

Last night I wanted to do something different after several nights of having pasta. I thought of the Chili Lime Tofu again but I thought I'd change it up a bit. Then I saw the bottle of Trader Joe's pomegranate glaze that's been in the back of our fridge for I don't know how long and the proverbial light bulb lit up. I used that as the base for the glaze and added soy sauce, maple syrup, and a little molasses and red chili paste. We had our pomegranate glazed tofu over brown rice with some fresh local chard on the side and it was fabulous.

Restaurant Recipes from VT

2008-06-08T13:24:00.004-04:00

It figures. We're always griping about the relative lack of vegan recipes in Vegetarian Times but the latest issue has more vegan recipes than we've seen among their pages in a long time. Except we have less time than ever before for cooking. The section on favorite recipes from vegetarian restaurants is particularly interesting and I did manage to throw together the Seitan Piccata (recipe from Candle 79) a couple nights ago. The Urban Vegan stole my thunder (as she is wont to do) but I don't have anything better to post about so.....

We still had some seitan in the freezer and we love anything with capers and lemon juice so the piccata sounded excellent - and fairly simple to make. Plus I really wanted to cook with wine, which is something I haven't done since before Darlene was pregnant. Some friends brought us fresh potatoes and peas from their garden and those were a nice accompaniment to the seitan. With the potatoes and peas we kept it simple - they were boiled briefly and served with salt, pepper and a little Earth Balance. There's nothing like fresh from the garden produce.

We also tried the Mac and Cheese recipe from Vegetarian Times, which is from Portland's Vita Cafe. It was good, if a little garlicky. We made it a little more nutritious by adding frozen spinach and we had toast with hummus on the side. I'm trying to find the time to cook but this is more typical of our meals these days - just a quick pasta dish (unless we're having Chinese take out or something frozen).

Cauliflower and Seitan Curry

2008-06-02T07:53:00.004-04:00

Saturday was our first trip to the farmer's market with baby Jonas. We've been for walks around the neighborhood but this was his first outing where he got to meet lots of people. Well, lots of people met him; he was more interested in sleeping than meeting people. There was a bounty of produce, and one find was a nice big head of cauliflower. Last night Darlene's mom came over to watch Jonas for a bit while we got some things done around the house (like take showers for the first time in at least 3 days). Then I probably should have taken a nap but I really wanted to make a nice dinner for a change and use some of our fresh local produce.

One of the only things I know to do with cauliflower is make a curry so off I went. I ended up using the excellent Vindaloo Vegetables recipe from Fatfree Vegan as a guide, but made several changes based on what we had on hand. I didn't have quite the diversity of vegetables found in Susan's recipe so it was mostly cauliflower with a couple of carrots thrown in for good measure. And the seitan we made before baby came is still paying dividends. We had a chunk of that thawed from the freezer so I diced it up and threw that in the curry as well. The best thing about this meal though was that there's enough left over for lunch today and dinner tonight.

But you don't really care about any of that do you? Cute is what sells so here's the money shot.

Kidney Bean and Barley Salad

2008-05-28T09:21:00.004-04:00

Well I managed to make us a decent dinner last night and now I'm even getting around to posting about it. Though I imagine our posts here will be sporadic for a while. Our stash of food in the freezer is now severely depleted and we were fortunate enough to have some friends bring us food on several occasions, but at the moment we're on our own. So I threw together another grain salad. You could really go in any direction you want with this - what I did was mostly based on what we had on hand (and what's growing in our herb garden)

1 c. pearled barley
2 1/2 c. veg. broth

1 large can (25 oz.) kidney beans
1/2 c. frozen corn
1 roasted red pepper, diced
1 large avocado, diced
1 large carrot, shredded
2 Tbs. chopped fresh chives
1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro

Dressing:
3 Tbs. lime juice
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
2 tsp. agave
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. finely minced fresh oregano
1/4 c. olive oil

Bring broth to a boil in a saucepan. Add barley then cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for around 30 minutes until all the liquid is absorbed. While the barley is cooking make the dressing by mixing all the ingredients but the olive oil in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until it thickens a little, then set aside. Put all the remaining ingredients in a large bowl then mix in the barley once it's done and cooled a little. Add the dressing and serve as is or chill for a while first. A dollop of salsa on top is a good addition too.

Oh Baby!

2008-05-11T01:44:00.010-04:00

Baby Jonas arrived on May 6 at 2:45 AM. It's been as amazing and crazy as everyone says and more (as I type with one hand and hold him in the other at 2 AM because he slept all day and now he's wide awake).

So now this blog is on temporary hiatus while we spend all our time with baby.

Two Quick Salads

2008-05-03T21:35:00.004-04:00

Here's a couple of good meals we've had recently courtesy of Quick Fix Vegetarian. A couple weeks ago I saw that Amey made the Mediterranean Orzo Salad and I said to myself, "Self, we haven't had orzo in a long long time." But we didn't have any artichoke hearts and the parsley is just getting started in our herb garden while the cilantro is taking over. So instead of Mediterranean it became Southwestern. I used black beans instead of chickpeas, and instead of artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes and olives I added avocado, corn and roasted red pepper. And plenty of cilantro. I don't remember exactly how I made the dressing but I'm sure there was lime juice and fresh oregano in there. It was a good one course meal.

Then I was trying to come up with something to do with the nice bunch of local asparagus we found and I happened upon the Quinoa Salad with Roasted Asparagus recipe. I did add chickpeas to this one instead of white beans, and also cilantro instead of parsley but otherwise I stuck to the recipe. Served over fresh spinach, it was another fabulous Springtime meal-in-a-bowl. We do love hearty salads like these. Next time I think the grain of choice will be barley.

Making Hash Browns

2008-04-30T21:58:00.004-04:00

We really wanted to get a video camera for when baby arrives (he's not here yet but it could be any day now), so not long ago we splurged and got a Flip. It's actually inexpensive compared to most other video cameras and it's pretty fun and easy to use. So far we've mostly used it for recording the cats but today we tried our hand at making a cooking video. I'd need a lot more practice before going on The Next Food Network Star, but here's my first ever attempt at making a cooking video.

(I forgot to mention that if you're not sure about the whole flipping it in the air thing, you could use a smaller skillet and big spatula or break it up into smaller pieces in the big skillet.)

Stuffed French Toast

2008-04-27T22:11:00.004-04:00

We post here about recipes from Vegetarian Times on occasion but for vegans, VegNews is usually a better read - and they've got more recipes in their pages these days too. The Strawberry-Ricotta French Toast in the latest issue looked particularly appealing, and when we found the first strawberries of the season at the farmer's market yesterday that sealed the deal. This was french toast taken to another level, each piece stuffed with strawberries and a citrus-flavored vegan ricotta, and dipped in a banana and cinnamon-flavored batter. It made for an outstanding brunch, but it took a lot more time to make it than it did to eat it - especially if you include washing the resulting pile of dishes. It's not something you can make every day but we'll definitely keep this recipe around for special occasions.

Raw Collard Wraps

2008-04-23T21:40:00.005-04:00

After the donut extravaganza we needed to get back to something more healthy right? And we also just made tacos with the Smart Ground, so here we went to the other end of the processed and cooked spectrum. The results however were only so-so. We recently found a copy of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen at our local library and the first thing we tried were lettuce wraps with the Garden Paté and Garlic Cashew Aioli. These were outstanding. So next up was the Taco Nut Meat, spread on collard leaves and topped with some of the leftover Aioli, avocado and cilantro. Meh. They were decent but I probably wouldn't do this again. For one thing, I just wasn't that keen on the raw collards. And the Taco Nut Meat recipe was a little heavy on the olive oil for my liking. There are many other tempting recipes in the book though and it's definitely got us interested in further raw foods exploration.

Update: One comment? Are you guys just not into raw foods? Or just not this particular post? How about some suggestions on your favorite raw recipes... Or maybe we should make more donuts ;-)

Contrasting Breakfasts

2008-04-20T17:53:00.006-04:00

Quinoa. For breakfast. That might sound a little different (it did to me), but why stick exclusively with the go-to grains (wheat and oats) for breakfast? In many cultures rice is perfectly acceptable breakfast food so quinoa is not that much more of a stretch. That's why I found the Creamy Quinoa with Dried Cranberries recipe in the brand new issue of Vegetarian Times intriguing. It's pretty simple too so that's what we had for breakfast this morning. You just cook quinoa and dried cranberries in a soy milk/water mixture, then add sweetener and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice) and sprinkle some chopped nuts on top (we used walnuts). It was a healthy and delicious change of pace to start the day.

Not quite as healthy, but even more scrumptious, are the glazed donuts I made this afternoon from My Sweet Vegan. Unlike some of you out there in vegan-land we're not fortunate enough to be able to walk down the street and buy fresh vegan donuts so we have to take matters into our own hands. Thanks to Hannah's incredible recipe we can do that. The fresh vanilla bean I used in the glaze was the icing on the cake (actually the glaze on the donut). With baby's arrival imminent I don't know when we'll find the time to make these again but they sure are fun. We'll have 'em for breakfast tomorrow but we've already gone and ruined tonight's dinner by having too many this afternoon.

Asian Noodle Salad

2008-04-15T21:52:00.006-04:00

Normally I may not have posted about this noodle salad, but I also have a little bit of shameless self promotion to do. First the salad. We were channel surfing over the weekend (doesn't take that long when you only get 5 channels), and we happened to catch part of the Everyday Food cooking show on PBS. They were making this noodle salad that amazingly enough is vegan, plus it sounded pretty simple and tasty. We made it for dinner last night with roasted asparagus instead of green beans and it was great. Next time I might opt for marinated baked tofu but then it's not quite so quick and easy anymore.

So last post, I told you to go vote for Hezbollah Tofu at the Endless Simmer blog. Well the vegans wiped the floor with Anthony Bourdain in that contest and now they have a veggie burger battle going on. Yours truly has one of the featured burgers and though I won't win fabulous cash or prizes I still would appreciate your vote. (But hey, if you like one of the other burgers better then by all means vote for it.)

Finally, tonight we cracked open the Lightlife Smart Ground and made tacos. But thanks for all your other suggestions - I'm sure we'll use more of them in the future. By the way, the creamy looking stuff on the tacos is a raw cashew cream leftover from a dinner of raw lettuce wraps the other night - went good on the tacos.

7 Pounds of Seitan (and other fun stuff)

2008-04-11T22:30:00.006-04:00

One of many things we're trying to find the time to do now is cook some things that we can freeze for when after the baby comes. So last weekend I made a mother lode of seitan. We used some of it within a few days but a bunch went into the freezer for later too. I mentioned before that I'm all about the seitan recipes in the Real Food Daily cookbook. I especially like the Chicken Style Seitan recipe, in part because it makes a whopping 4 pounds at a time. Plus it's got white beans and chickpea flour so it's not entirely wheat protein (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I also made the steamed seitan sausages that are all the rage amongst the vegan folk nowadays. I tried two different kinds based on Isa's variation of Julie Hasson's recipe. Someone here recently pointed out Penzeys Spices to me and in addition to finding the smoked paprika I've been looking for there, I also found a number of varieties of sausage spice blends. They worked fairly well for making the seitan sausages but I'm not totally sold on them because it turns out they're mostly salt. I'd prefer to have a salt-free spice mix and then add the quantity of salt I want, so maybe once I use these up I'll experiment with making my own mixes.

In addition to the big block of RFD seitan and the sausages, the other part of this picture is the beginning of Susan's excellent Barbecued Seitan Ribz recipe (which calls for the aforementioned smoked paprika). Later we threw threw that sucker on a grill pan with some barbecue sauce and it was most delicious.

Another recent meal was the Moroccan Rice with Apricots and Pine Nuts from Robin Robertson's Vegan Fire and Spice. It's sort of a fried rice but with Moroccan spices and it made a quick and tasty (and somewhat different) one dish meal.

And finally, it must be spring because it was 80 degrees here today and I finally had to break down and cut the grass. But before I did I pulled out some of the many spring onions that were randomly poking out of our lawn. I've never been sure about eating these but I asked someone in the know who told me they're perfectly edible. Cleaning them was probably more trouble than it's worth, but we have a small bunch now that I'll cook with very soon. Happy Spring!

Oh, and one more thing - go vote for Hezbollah Tofu over Anthony Bourdain.

Noodles with Walnut Pesto

2008-04-07T22:18:00.003-04:00

This past weekend we had lunch at a relatively new restaurant called The Box. It's in the same location that used to house Liquid, an all-vegetarian sandwich and smoothie shop, and later Atomic Burrito which we also enjoyed. Though we miss both of these establishments, we found that The Box also offers some good veggie options. I guess you'd call it a noodle shop and we both had noodle bowls (which apparently come in a box if you get take out - hence the name). There are a vast array of combinations available, many of which are vegan. You start by picking from four different kinds of noodles, add one of several sauces (all but one of which are vegan), and you can top it off with tofu or grilled veggies. I had my noodles with an excellent walnut pesto and that's what gave us the idea for tonight's dinner. Our result ended up quite different from what we had in the restaurant but it was still quite yummy. We had it over noodles with stir-fried bok choy on the side. Here's how we did the pesto:

1 c. walnuts
1 Tbs. peanut oil
1 tsp. sesame oil
1 1/2 Tbs. soy sauce
1/4 c. packed fresh cilantro
1 roasted red pepper

Add the walnuts to a food processor and pulse a few times to coarsely chop. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until well blended, scraping down the sides several times or as needed. Serve over noodles (or eat with a spoon).

The Bacon Post

2008-04-05T21:58:00.006-04:00

It's not what you might think. Last year the folks at Lightlife sent us some products to sample and last week we received another such box of their stuff. (I'll add here that the box 'o food was free but we're not affiliated with Lightlife in any other way.)

This time we got another package of Fakin' Bacon, which is just smoky marinated tempeh strips, and also some Smart Bacon, which is thin slices of a soy-based product more akin to their mock deli slices. We fried the tempeh strips and used them in wraps - with whole wheat tortillas, brown rice, salad greens, shredded carrots and roasted red peppers. When we lived in Arizona we used to go to a place that served wraps with rice, tofu and veggies and these were based on that idea.

The next night we had some potatoes we needed to use up and I was thinking about frying up the Smart Bacon and having it with home fries and/or a tofu scramble but when I came home from work Darlene was already working on her potato soup. So we just finished that off by adding a little of the Lightlife soy sausage, then served it with some Smart Bacon pieces on top (which by the way fry up nice and crispy).

All good stuff but I'll have to stand by my earlier assessment which is that these products are generally good and definitely convenient but usually a little too pricey for us. Though once baby is here in another month or so we may really be looking for that convenience! Still, making your own tempeh bacon is pretty simple and costs a good bit less than the packaged stuff. Try my quick version of Isa's recipe some time: thinly slice tempeh strips then marinate them in a mixture of 3 Tbs. Braggs or soy sauce, 2 Tbs. cider vinegar, 2 Tbs. maple syrup and 1/4 tsp. liquid smoke. Throw a crushed clove of garlic in there too if you want then marinate for several hours. If you have a few extra minutes in the morning you can get the tempeh marinating before work, then it's ready to fry up when you get home.

Now here's a question for you. What would you do with mock ground beef? And I'm looking for something that doesn't involve tomatoes (which don't agree so well with Darlene at the moment). Typically I might use the Lightlife Smart Ground that we got in chili or pasta sauce or some similar tomato-y concoction but I'm currently at a loss for what to do with it sans tomato. Any ideas?

Men Who Cook - Summary

2008-04-01T19:36:00.005-04:00

Thanks for all the great responses to the Men Who Cook idea. I'm glad I have this to post about because we haven't been cooking as much since we spent all weekend replacing our kitchen floor. There are definitely lots of men out there cooking! So here's the round up:

Billy made chocolate chip cookies.
Ken makes Kimchi.
Shane likes to fry things up in a pan.
John made a cabbage and mushroom curry.
Alexander has a great set of photos.
Drew makes pizza.
K made pesto.
Tom made Roasted Asparagus with Mock Hollandaise.
Alec made the Veganomicon Pineapple Cashew Quinoa Stir Fry.
Fred made vegan chile rellenos. (sorry, missed that one earlier)
Susan's husband cooked but unfortunately had more important things to worry about than taking food pictures and blogging.
I made bread pudding.
And check out this thread on the PPK forums for lots more (cupcakes! apple pie! all sorts of other goodies!)

Finally, there are undoubtedly more but here's a selection of other men who are cooking and blogging about great vegan food:

I hope I didn't miss anyone but please let me know if I did. And keep up the good work!

Banana-Walnut Bread Pudding with Vanilla Sauce

2008-03-27T22:20:00.003-04:00

This is my submission for "Men Who Cook". I've posted about my bread pudding before but I thought I'd do something a little different with it this time. I have a certain fondness for this recipe since it's one of the first ones I came up with on my own when I was in college. In all these years I've always done it essentially the same way - straight up with cinnamon and raisins. After making this version though I'm not sure if I'll go back to the old recipe - I love the flavor and texture that bananas and walnuts bring to the party.

2 large very ripe bananas
3 c. soy milk
1 c. Silk creamer (or more soy milk)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 c. + 1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground cardamom
1 loaf of soft white bread (see note below)
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. dried cranberries

Mash bananas in a large bowl and add soy milk, creamer, vanilla, 1/2 c. sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and mix well. Tear the whole loaf of bread into small pieces and mix it all into the wet ingredients as you go. You should end up with a stiff but moist batter. Fold in the cranberries and walnuts then spread the mixture in a greased 8" x 12" baking dish. Sprinkle the top with the remaining tablespoon of sugar and bake at 350° for 1 hour. After it cools, slice it into squares to serve.

Note: You may need to adjust the amount of soy milk depending on the size of your loaf of bread. For this recipe I used a large (24 oz.) sandwich loaf, but if your loaf is smaller use less soy milk and if it's larger use more. You may want to start with less soy milk and see how it goes. You want to have a fairly stiff batter but it should be moist. Kind of like this - notice that a spoon will stand up in it.

I also decided to jazz it up this time and make a simple sauce:

3 Tbs. Earth Balance margarine
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 vanilla bean
2 Tbs. Silk creamer

Heat margarine in a small saucepan over medium heat until it melts. Add brown sugar and stir until it's fully dissolved. Mix in the insides of the vanilla bean, then add the creamer and whisk until it's fully incorporated. Cook another minute or so then remove from heat. To serve, pour a spoonful or two over a piece of bread pudding and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Spaghetti O's with Meatballs

2008-03-25T21:04:00.005-04:00

Yes you read that title correctly and yes this is still a vegan blog. Original Spaghetti O's are decidedly not vegan but my version sure is. A couple months ago we found some ring shaped pasta (called Anelletti) at Trader Joe's. I made our old standby mac and 'cheese' with the first bag but as I was doing that it dawned on me - Spaghetti O's! So we got another package the next time we went to Trader Joe's and it's been patiently waiting in our cabinet for this moment. Now it's probably been 15 years since I've eaten Spaghetti O's so I can't vouch for the authenticity of the taste of this recipe but I can tell you that it was good enough that I went back for seconds... and then thirds... and then I ate some more off of the spoon when I was putting away the leftovers. And now you can go find yourself some ring shaped pasta (or any other small pasta) and make your own.

For the sauce:

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. dried basil
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 c. tomato paste
1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 c. vegetable broth
2 Tbs. sugar
1/4 c. nutritional yeast

In a large deep pot, cook onions and carrots in oil for a few minutes until they're getting soft, then add the garlic, oregano, basil, salt & pepper and cook another minute or so. Add tomatoes, paste, and veg. broth, mix well and bring to a simmer. Cook for 5-10 minutes then puree with a hand blender (though you won't hurt my feelings if you want to leave it chunky). Add sugar and nutritional yeast and simmer for a few more minutes.

The meatballs are adapted from the Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets:

1 c. cooked pinto beans
2 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 c. vital wheat gluten
1/2 c. breadcrumbs
1/4 c. vegetable broth
2 Tbs. soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated
1 Tbs. tomato paste
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. paprika

In a large bowl, mash the beans well, then add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Knead for a minute or two, then form into tablespoon sized balls and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Spray or brush the tops with a little more oil, then bake at 375° for 15 minutes. Turn over and bake another 10 minutes. Meanwhile, cook a 16-oz. bag of pasta then add the meatballs and pasta to the sauce.

Men Who Cook

2008-03-23T11:52:00.004-04:00

There are 40 vegan cooking-related blogs now in my RSS reader. Four of them are written by men. I've thought about this disparity in the past and I've been pondering it again recently. Now that I'm going to have a son I don't necessarily want him to be tied to stereotypical gender roles. Darlene does a lot of knitting and sewing and if our son wants to learn those skills I have no problem with that. I certainly want him to learn how to cook. So guys, let's set a good example for him and all the other little (and big) dudes out there. Here's my proposal:

All you female bloggers - convince the men in your lives to cook a meal, then post it on your blogs. For all the men who are already cooking, good on you - post something fun on your blog. When you post something, let me know in the comments here or in an e-mail. If you don't have a blog e-mail me a picture and description of what you've cooked.

Do this by next Sunday, March 30 and I'll compile all the responses here. Feel free to grab the graphic above and use it in your posts. Happy cooking!

A Couple of Quick Meals

2008-03-20T22:10:00.004-04:00

Here's a couple of quick weeknight meals. First up, the Butternut Squash and Chickpea Stew from the latest issue of Vegetarian Times. Back in the day when we had cable and watched the Food Network one of my least favorite shows was the one about semi-homemade cooking. But as I was making this stew it dawned on me that it would fit perfectly in the "semi-homemade" category. Because all you do is cook some vegetables (onion, carrot, bell pepper) with cumin seed and a bay leaf, then add canned chickpeas and prepared butternut squash soup - you know, the kind that comes in a quart-sized carton. It was quick to prepare though, and pretty tasty over couscous. We still have a ton left over too.
Next up, Spaghetti Carbonara - a recipe I found in Vegan Express. Carbonara is typically made with eggs and bacon (or possibly with ham and cheese), but this version with tempeh bacon is most excellent. I tweaked the recipe here and there but I was happy to have found it since I used to make the death-filled version way back in my pre-veg days. I never thought about making a vegan version but now I'm glad I did. I started by making my own tempeh bacon based mostly on the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe. I fried the tempeh in canola oil while the pasta water was coming to a boil, then in the same pan I cooked a few thinly sliced garlic cloves in olive oil. I cooked some whole wheat spaghetti and added some frozen broccoli near the end, then when that was done and drained I mixed it in a bowl with the garlic and oil, tempeh, a little Silk creamer, salt and lots of fresh pepper. Finally a few of the chives that are poking up in the herb garden got diced and sprinkled on top. Can you tell I'm loving the rejuvenation of the herb garden?

Pot Pie and a Sign of Spring

2008-03-16T22:06:00.005-04:00

Here's something we've posted about at least a couple of times before but it still hits the spot on a cool night. When we make a pot pie we rarely follow a recipe exactly but usually we use the recipes in the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook as a guide. This one was filled with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, potatoes, seitan, kale and mustard greens. The sauce is a cup of plain soy milk, two cups of vegetable broth and a tablespoon of soy sauce and is thickened with a third cup whole wheat flour and a couple tablespoons nutritional yeast.

Despite the cool night, signs of Spring abound. As I was passing by our little herb garden the other day I noticed a big patch of green. At first I just assumed it was this invasive (and non-edible) mint that's slowly taking over our back yard. But then I realized it was something much more tasty (at least for some of us). An annual we planted last year and let go to seed is coming back with a vengeance. Who can be the first one to tell me what's in the picture below? Sorry, there's no prize for the winner; just the confidence you'll have in identifying a common culinary herb from a rather mediocre picture.

Mellow Mushroom Pizza

2008-03-12T22:25:00.007-04:00

Update... And thanks to the commenters for getting me to follow up on this. I just got what I think is a definitive answer from the Mellow Mushroom and their soy cheese does indeed contain casein, which makes it not 100% vegan. If that bothers you their veggie pizza would still be good without the cheese and they do have tempeh & tofu sandwiches that you can get sans cheese.

There's something about ~~vegan~~ pizza isn't there? For local options we've written about Christian's and Dr. Ho's, and now we have another - ~~and perhaps better~~ - option: Mellow Mushroom. This is a medium-sized chain with locations throughout the Southeast and we recently read that the Charlottesville location was starting to offer soy cheese as an option on their pizzas and sandwiches. Ah, but some of you more in-the-know vegans may wonder about that whole casein thing. Well we've asked at the 'shroom on two separate occasions and they say their soy cheese is vegan (but it's not). They generally put butter and parmesan on their crust too but they can easily leave it off if you ask.

So last night we went there and got the Mega Veggie pie and boy was it good. And in what appeared to be some good vegan-friendlyness, another veggie pizza with a pesto base was accidentally added to our order somehow and someone came out of the kitchen to let us know that the pesto had cheese in it. Of course we hadn't ordered that option and the order was quickly straightened out but we thought it was interesting that they took the time to inform us of that fact. At any rate, the pizza we did get was piled high with a huge amount of veggies - the standard onions, peppers, mushrooms & olives, plus broccoli, spinach, artichoke hearts, fresh tomatoes, banana peppers and tofu (I know that's not a veggie). There was just enough soy cheese on there to keep all that stuff from falling off and the cheese was pretty melty. Plus the Mellow Mushroom has at least 20 different kinds of beers on tap - if you're into that sort of thing. I think this place could become a habit. Here's a pic of one of the leftover slices we brought home.

Split Pea Croquettes with Cauliflower

2008-03-07T22:37:00.004-05:00

We've written about these croquettes from Alternative Vegan already but I didn't have anything more interesting since both meals from last post ended up lasting us several days. We've got so many great new cookbooks though that if we go back to a recipe a second time it must be a good one. So it is with these croquettes. We did use green split peas instead of yellow this time and instead of going the more low-brow route and having them with ketchup we used peach chutney that we canned last summer.

On the side was roasted cauliflower. That I made up as I went along but it went something like this: Cut up a head of cauliflower and put it in a big baking dish. Pour a few tablespoons peanut oil over it, then mix about a half teaspoon each salt, ground coriander and cumin and sprinkle that on top. Mix well and bake at 400° until tender, stirring occasionally. Actually I got impatient with it and wanted it to cook faster so after it had been cooking a while I put in a couple tablespoons of water and covered it with foil - the resulting steam helped it along.

More RFD

2008-03-04T19:48:00.004-05:00

First, I think I have a new favorite seitan recipe. The Basic Seitan recipe in Real Food Daily looked intriguing so I gave it a try and it turned out fabulously. Plus I really wanted to make the Salisbury Seitan. I guess it reminded me of school lunches as a child but there's certainly no comparison in terms of taste and nutrition. We had it with a salad and roasted sweet potatoes and hours later I was still saying, "Wow... that was a great dinner". The basic seitan recipe is awesome because it's tender but firm enough to hold up to slicing it any way you want to. And it makes 4 pounds so there's plenty leftover.

I was also intrigued by the picture of the RFD Meal - looked simple and nutritious. I'll call it beans, greens and grains. I cooked black-eyed peas with onions, carrots, garlic and a few diced leftover chard stems, and we had those with the steamed greens (collards and napa cabbage) and steamed millet and quinoa. Perhaps not quite as fun as the seitan but still good. And it doesn't get much more good-for-you.

Polenta with Marinated Tofu and Red Chard

2008-03-01T21:51:00.006-05:00

This was inspired by one of the meals I had at Cafe Blossom in New York. This was the quick version though, with prepared polenta and marinara sauce, plus leftover red pepper sauce from last post. If you want to make it more fancy-like, make your own polenta and marinara, and add some more vegetables - like maybe asparagus or mushrooms or snow peas... or all of the above.

For this version I sliced a tube of polenta and fried it in a little olive oil. That went in the center of some marinara, then I added marinated baked tofu (VwaV recipe) and red chard that I cooked with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and probably a couple other things I can't remember now. Some of the red pepper sauce went on top and that was it - quite a delicious and filling dinner.

I thought I'd also give an update on my vanilla extract project that I mentioned a several weeks ago. I ended up buying a mix of Tahitian and Bourbon vanilla beans here. I got about 50 beans and spent about 20 bucks. For another 5 bucks I got a cheap 750 ml bottle of vodka. To start out with, I split about 5 whole beans and put them in a quart jar with the vodka (750 ml is a little less than a quart so I topped it off with water - which I figured is reasonable because vanilla extract is generally around 35% alcohol and the straight vodka is 40%). Since then we've been using the vanilla beans in various baked goods (and in vanilla pudding), and adding the spent beans to the jar. I think we'll need to do this for a little while longer before we have really good extract, but already it's getting nice and dark and smelling less like alcohol and more like vanilla. (I added some agave to the jar too since I read that a sweetener is supposed to cut some of the alcohol smell.) The cheapest I've seen vanilla extract recently is 5 bucks for a 4 oz. bottle and when this is all said and done we'll have 32 oz. for 25 bucks (that's a little over 3 bucks per 4 oz. for those of you who have problems with math). Plus we've got a big bag of vanilla beans to use in our baking. In fact, if you just wanted to make extract you could easily use half the amount of vanilla beans we did and get a quart for $15. So if you can swing the up-front cost, go make some vanilla extract. It's fun and delicious!

Broccoli Soup

2008-02-28T21:24:00.004-05:00

Once again we have to give props to our local library for ordering a book we requested. This time it was the Real Food Daily Cookbook. I had seen other bloggers mentioning this book and I had flipped through it in bookstores; now I'm anxious to try more recipes from our borrowed copy. The first thing we tried was the broccoli soup with red pepper crème. It's a fairly basic soup with broccoli and spinach, but the red pepper crème really makes it pop. It's a snap to make too - just buzz a roasted red pepper, 1/4 c. raw cashews, 2 Tbs. soy milk, 1 Tbs. lemon juice and 1/2 tsp. salt in a food processor until smooth and creamy. There are some interesting seitan recipes in this book too so maybe we'll try one of those next.

NYC and More

2008-02-25T20:30:00.004-05:00

We're back from the big city and there's only so much you can do in a day and a half but we did get some awesome food while we were there. We ended up staying within walking distance of the Upper West Side apartment of Darlene's aunt and uncle where we stayed but we still found plenty to do (and eat). It snowed 6" the day we got there and it was a little treacherous walking around but we did make it to Cafe Blossom for a wonderful lunch and later to the Museum of Natural History. For those of us who don't have any vegan restaurants nearby it's a little overwhelming to be staring at a menu where everything there is fair game for us to order. But after much hand wringing we settled on the Mixed Mushroom Pesto Pasta for Darlene and the Cajun Seitan Sandwich for me. Both were excellent, though the hastily-taken pictures don't do either plate justice. The sweet potato fries that came with my sandwich were especially scrumptious.

The next day we ended up going back to Cafe Blossom for lunch after the Ethiopian restaurant we went looking for turned out to not be there anymore. This time I had what I think was called the Harvest Casserole - a big slab of polenta in a red pepper sauce topped with a tofu spread and lots of fresh veggies. Despite the fact that the polenta wasn't quite heated through all the way it was still fabulous. And Darlene's Portobello Panini was excellent too - she especially enjoyed the delicious crusty bread. (The picture I took of my polenta dish turned out even worse than the ones above so I've unfortunately left it out.)

Later that day we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and quite enjoyed the Egyptian art in particular, as well as the fashion exhibit and the relatively new (since we were last there some 15 years ago) modern art wing. Here we are in front of the Temple of Dendur - quite an impressive structure considering it was built over 2,000 years ago.

We left the Met right around dinner time and headed over to Gobo. At first I really wanted to go to Candle 79 but we had already had somewhat similar food at Cafe Blossom (twice), and Gobo seemed slightly less expensive and like something a little different. It has a much more Asian flair and though not completely vegan, our server was happy to inform us which dishes on the menu were not vegan (as it turned out, only 2 dishes with casein-containing soy cheese and one with a honey-containing sauce). The lighting was very low and I don't have pictures from here either but the food was outstanding and I think I'd give it a slight nod over Cafe Blossom. They have a number of appetizers and "small plates" so you can potentially sample a number of different things. We ended up sharing the spinach dumplings, lettuce wraps and tofu with kale and black bean sauce (and a little bit of the grilled oyster mushrooms that Darlene's uncle had). I don't know how many different ways I can say YUM! Fabulous. Delectable. Delicious. etc., etc.

On the way home today we were passing through the DC area around lunch time and we stopped at one of our standbys in that area for lunch, Woodlands. We don't have a South Indian restaurant around here any more so it's a treat when we travel somewhere we can get a monster masala dosa like this.

I wish we had time during our trip to see more sights and sample more vegan food but it was fun while it lasted.

Tofu-Spinach-Olive Calzones

2008-02-20T20:56:00.004-05:00

That's really just a fancy way of describing how we used up some leftovers. For the baby shower Darlene made a huge batch of kalamata olive tapenade and we still have plenty left over. Plus we had some spinach/tofu filling left from the puff pastry turnovers. So tonight I mixed up a basic pizza dough then I added about a quarter cup of the tapenade to the dough and we made it into calzones filled with the spinach/tofu mixture. We had marinara sauce left from the chickpea balls too - just right for topping a calzone.

Tomorrow we're off to Delaware and then to New York City where we're sure to find some good vegan food. So if you don't hear from us for a while know that we're still eating well.

Baby Shower!

2008-02-17T21:17:00.009-05:00

We've been looking forward to this day for quite a while. Darlene's sister organized a baby shower for us and today was the big day. The idea seemed a little odd at first but we decided to have it at our house and to make all the food ourselves. We thought about restaurants or various catering options but this was a way to ensure we had plenty of good vegan food prepared just how we like it. It was a lot of cooking but worth it in the end. Darlene started making a few things on Thursday and Friday, then yesterday we spent at least half the day cooking, and finally we had a big blitz this morning to finish everything up. I had a slight panic in the last 15 minutes or so trying to finish everything up on time but otherwise it was all very smooth (oh, except for when I was making cupcake frosting and I microwaved the chocolate chips too long and burnt them... but we had more). Menu and photos from the big event are below. (The food pictures were taken hastily just as the first guests were arriving in low light with a flash so they're not exactly fine art quality...)

- Orange Sesame Tofu Lollipops - recipe from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan; presentation idea from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway.
- Barbecued Tempeh - very simple - Trader Joe's barbecue sauce poured over tempeh cubes and baked.
- Chickpea Balls with Marinara - sort of a cross between the Chickpea Cutlets and Spaghetti and Beanballs recipes from Veganomicon.

- Jamaican Veggie Patties

- Puff Pastry Turnovers with Tofu and Spinach - the Spanakopita filling from Vegan with a Vengeance wrapped with puff pastry.

Spring Rolls with Apricot Dipping Sauce

Artichoke Dip, Kalamata Walnut Tapenade (from Vive le Vegan), Mushroom Caviar (like what we did for the roulade filling last Thanksgiving). We had crackers and various breads with these.

Tamari Almonds, Chili Lime Cashews (both store-bought), Roasted Pepitas (from Vegan Lunch Box)

Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcakes (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)

The punch (not pictured) was quite tasty and very easy - mix 2 quarts each pineapple juice and water, then add a cup each simple syrup and lime juice and throw in a couple of sliced limes.

Here are the organizers of this shindig, Darlene's sister Kristen and her husband Ryan.

Darlene enjoying some good food.

And a couple shots of the two of us opening some of many wonderful gifts we received.

In all it was a great day - lots of good food, lots of good friends and lots of beautiful gifts for our baby boy on the way.

Creamy Pasta, Valentine's Cake and more

2008-02-13T21:08:00.004-05:00

It was round 2 from Vegan Express tonight, with the Creamy Pasta with Asparagus and Peas. We were thinking this would make a good Valentine's Day dinner but then we decided to go out on Valentine's Day so we made the pasta tonight. This one was a snap to make too - sautéed garlic; steamed asparagus, yellow squash and peas; sun-dried tomatoes and parsley; and a simple sauce of Silk creamer, lemon juice, salt & pepper. Tossed with pasta, it was divine.

And since it's almost Valentine's Day we broke out the heart pans again for a special dessert treat. This is essentially the Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but baked in the heart pans. We didn't have enough powdered sugar for the icing but there was enough for a nice dusting and that was all we needed. We've got two more of these for tomorrow night too!
Now for some thoughts on veganism in the news. Why is it that any article about vegans or vegan food has to take a subtle (or often not-so-subtle) swipe? Last night we were thrilled to find our blog mentioned in an article in our local alternative weekly. It was cool enough to read about local pizza joint Mellow Mushroom adding vegan cheese to their offerings (we really must go back there soon). Then lo and behold there's our blog mentioned, along with a list of local restaurants taken mostly straight from our restaurant post. It's really a nice article, but still they have to get in a little dig at the end by dissing cheese-less pizza. I know... it's all in good fun, so I'll move on to a much worse example.

I thought it was cool to get a mention in a local weekly, and then I see none other than the Urban Vegan with her picture in the New York Times. The article, about dietary differences in relationships, is interesting but there are some choice tidbits. Like the mention of a quote comparing vegans to militant terrorist organization Hezbollah, then enforcing that ridiculous notion by suggesting that vegans wouldn't kiss "someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea".

Then there's the “picky eaters are remarkably unsexy” quote too. It's not necessarily aimed straight at vegans but I've seen that suggestion made elsewhere as well. To me anyway, there's nothing more unsexy than eating wild game and foie gras.

Vegan Express Blog Tour

2008-02-12T21:18:00.001-05:00

So many new cookbooks, so little time. But Vegan Express, the latest offering from Nava Atlas is made for those who have little time. And with a baby on the way I'm sure we'll have much less time for spending in the kitchen in just a few more months. So when Nava graciously offered to send us a copy of her new book to check out, we couldn't refuse. We cracked it open tonight for the Quesadillas with Black Beans, Broccoli and Portobello Mushrooms. These are baked quesadillas, stuffed with black beans, salsa, broccoli and portobellos. On the side were Rosemary Roasted Potatoes with Black Olives, and I also made the Instant Roasted Red Pepper Sauce to go on top. Nava suggests that you could also use extra salsa instead of the red pepper sauce but the sauce really is a snap to make and it was the highlight of the meal - it's just silken tofu, roasted red peppers, lime juice, parsley and salt all blended together in a food processor. At first glance it seemed a little involved to make all of this stuff but it came together quickly - less than 45 minutes from start to finish (and I got a few dishes done during the last few minutes of baking too). Plus there's enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Which I'm quite looking forward to because this was all D-lish!

Dr. Ho's Humble Pie

2008-02-09T14:12:00.001-05:00

This dates to last weekend but better late than never right? I wanted to get this up on our restaurant round up. Dr. Ho's Humble Pie is an eclectic pizza joint south of Charlottesville near the town of North Garden. We read a review of this place several months ago where we saw that you can get tofu on your pizza. We never made it there since it's a little out of the way, but last weekend we were traveling home from points south and we were passing right by Dr. Ho's at dinner time. And you can indeed get tofu on your pizza. They only have one vegan-friendly special but it's a good one. The Buddha is overloaded with veggies and has no cheese but has tofu instead. This thing was smothered with all the veggies - spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, olives, roasted garlic, pineapple (I know, that's a fruit... but good on a pizza!). They use silken tofu which seemed to be a good choice for pizza, and the crust was thin and crispy and delicious. The lack of cheese meant the toppings were falling all over the place but that was a small price to pay for such a good (and vegan) pizza.

Tofu and Broccoli with Hoisin-Ginger Sauce

2008-02-06T21:28:00.001-05:00

Prolific cookbook writer extraordinaire Robin Robertson is back with a new book, Vegan Fire & Spice, and she was generous enough to send us a copy to check out. Her collection of spicy international recipes is organized by geography and we've already bookmarked quite a number of pages. This tofu/broccoli stir fry is probably not the most sexy dish in the book but we started there because it looked like something simple and delicious for a quick weeknight meal. Many of the recipes are about kicking up the heat level, but even so, in most cases it's easy to adjust the spiciness in either direction. In this case Darlene wasn't too into having anything spicy so I just left out the chili paste and then the sauce was just hoisin, soy sauce and water - it can't get much easier. The ginger and scallions give it a small kick and I dashed some hot sauce on top of my portion for good measure.

I'm sure you'll be seeing more references to this new book here in the near future. In the meantime go give Robin's blog some love.

More ED&BV

2008-02-03T20:10:00.001-05:00

Our copy of Eat, Drink & Be Vegan had to go back to the library but we managed to try a couple more recipes before the due date. The Lentil "Sniffle" Soup was excellent and came together quickly thanks to the red lentils. Plus I'm always open to any recipe that uses fresh rosemary since the rosemary bush outside our front door is now about 6 feet wide and 3 feet high. We made bread sticks with store-bought pizza dough and started with a big salad and that was all we needed.

We also made the Cashew Ginger Tofu. Dreena's books all have some inventive baked tofu recipes and this one was particularly yummy. For this one we experimented with the tofu lollipop method (shamelessly taken from here). Darlene's sister is organizing a baby shower for us in a couple weeks but it will be at our house and we'll be cooking the food so we thought something like this would be good party food. Though it was good for dinner too, especially with steamed kale on the side.

Sunday Reading (and listening)

2008-01-27T11:56:00.001-05:00

In a departure from normal I won't talk about a specific meal but I will offer you a few links I've found interesting. (Lately we've been eating a lot of things we've already posted about - pasta, soups, maybe spring rolls tonight.)

So first up is this article in the New York Times about the world's (and especially the United States') insatiable appetite for meat. Bittman doesn't necessarily advocate a vegan diet but I think he at least makes a convincing argument for reducing meat consumption.

I've spent most of this weekend painting what will be our baby's room and while I was painting this morning I listened to the latest Compassionate Cooks podcast, "In Defense of Chickens". Coleen always makes a convincing argument for eliminating meat and dairy consumption and she certainly does so in this episode. The most haunting argument is her reading excerpts from the blog of the late activist Virgil Butler, who was a former Tyson slaughterhouse worker before he became an outspoken activist against factory farming. This post is just a sampling but it's not for the faint of heart.

I'll leave you with something a lot less intense. A while ago Erik Marcus pointed out this article about making your own vanilla extract and I think we're about to order some vanilla beans and give it a shot. A little over a year ago we posted about splurging on vanilla beans when we won a gift card to Whole Foods. We had no idea then that you could buy vanilla beans on-line that are actually somewhat affordable. For about what we paid for those two lonely vanilla beans you can get a quarter pound (about 30 beans) from one of the ebay sellers linked to in the article. If we do get some we'll let you know how it goes.

Potato Pancakes

2008-01-24T21:47:00.001-05:00

This past year we did a bit of canning - mostly pickles and jam. We ended up with some peach and strawberry jam and enough apple jam that we brought some to my parents when we saw them a couple months ago. But what does this have to do with pancakes? Well I talked to my mom recently and she told me they had just finished up the apple jam with some potato pancakes my dad made for dinner. That sounded like a good idea so I filed it away and took it out last night.

I winged it on the pancake recipe and they came out pretty good but they could've been better. I found it a little tricky to get just the right consistency in the batter. Too thin and the pancakes are all over the place but too thick and they don't cook all the way through. Here's what I settled on for the batter if you want to experiment - your results may vary depending on the consistency of your mashed potatoes:

1 c. mashed potatoes
1/2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 c. + 1 Tbs. rice milk
2 Tbs. canola oil
pinch salt

We served these with peach jam, greens and Tamari-Roasted Chickpeas from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. The chickpeas were an afterthought but they were super quick to make and super tasty to eat. If you have this book and you have yet to try this recipe, go do it now! I'd recommend you take Dreena's suggestion and use parchment paper on your baking sheet. I was lazy and didn't bother with the parchment and I ended up with a baked-on mess on the baking sheet (which fortunately came off after a good soaking). Either way, them's some good chickpeas!