quick and easy

No, I'm not talking about that girl or guy you met at the bar last night.  I'm talking food here.  Summertime food.  Food that says, 'Hey, it's hot outside and you're hungry, but tired and sweaty...  come eat me.'  Because, if you're like me (but not, necessarily, like Michael, who remains relatively ambitious in the food department year-round), you get a little lazy when the temperature goes up and there are things to be done outside and the kitchen just loses its draw on you...a bit.

Hence, you shall now be submitted to some of our solutions to this problem.  Creative and tasty solutions, methinks.

First up is the ever popular summer salad.

not just your gramma's iceburg

This, my friends, is the Greek salad from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking (henceforth so named the idiot cookbook, because this is another one I hate typing out).  It's chock full of radtastic veggies to fill you up, but not weigh you down when you're ready to go out for a nice bike ride after dinner.  As a former Greek salad addict, I fully approve of this rendition, right down to the dressing.  Add some tofu feta from the same book, and you've got a winner:

my first tofu feta attempt

Here I will admit: feta cheese was the last thing I gave up when I made the transition from vegetarian to vegan.  I snubbed my nose at all tofu feta recipes this past year (because, in fact, this past week was my veganversary!).  However, when Michael brought up the idea this time around, I thought, 'What the hell, lets give it a go'.  Ok, so it didn't taste like feta.  But it was tasty!  I have a feeling that if we'd cut it into smaller cubes and let it marinate for a day rather than half an hour, it would be even better.  In fact, I used some of the leftovers to make a weird breakfast one morning, and it was pretty awesome.

This next meal was made forever ago, but it's also a nice quick staple, and a bit heartier (but not too much) than a salad.

easy peasy baked tofu

Originally, I got this idea from The Accidental Vegan cookbook, but their recipe was so salty it made me gag.  Still, I liked the simplicity of the recipe, and decided to adapt it to better suit my needs.  Basically, just cut some extra firm tofu really thin, mix together tahini with whatever else is around (my usuals: nutritional yeast, a little soy sauce, hot sauce, garlic powder, etc), dip tofu in, put on a baking sheet, and bake it at 350F for about 30 minutes.  It gets this nice brown crust on it, and it's nice and chewy.  Plus, you don't have to press and marinate your tofu.  Plus, it's really versatile to whatever spices you have on hand or want to incorporate to a side dish you have a craving for that night.  

Oooooh, I'm excited about this one: 

fabulously easy tempeh and roasted veggies

Ok, so roasting veggies may not be something you feel like doing when it's hot out and your kitchen gets to be about 5 million degrees...  But you have to admit it's easy.  And you don't have to be in the kitchen the whole time they're roasting.  Go out and drink some lemonade on your porch or water your plants or play with your cat.  Then, just hop on into the kitchen when the buzzer goes off, fill your plate, and get the hell outta there.  See?  Not so bad.  So the roasted veggies here were super good, especially with that gravy Michael mixed up.  But what I'm really excited about is the tempeh.  Michael's mom brought us some wild rice tempeh the last time she came in from Evansville, and we've been trying to figure out how to use it so that the flavors shine through, but still doesn't taste like plain old tempeh.  The solution came, oddly enough (ha) with the recipe on the package.  That I didn't use, but did base my own recipe from it.  It's so excitingly yummy and easy, I'm even going to share it in its entirety with you.

Dill Macadamia Crusted Tempeh

1 package of tempeh (prefferably wild rice, but any will do)

1.5 ounces macadamia nuts (about an 1/8 cup, chopped)

1 heaping tsp dried dill

1 scallion, white and green parts, minced

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbs water

spray oil for the baking sheet

First up, cut and simmer your tempeh.  We cut ours so that we get 14 pieces out of it...  So 7 pieces (that's six cuts you'll make) widthwise, and then cut each of those in half, lengthwise, so they're pretty darned thin.  Toss it in some boiling water, reduce heat, and cover for 12 minutes, then drain.  While all that's going on, preheat your oven to 350F and make the macadamia crust.  For that, place the nuts in your food processor or good blender and process until they are super fine crumbs.  They'll look oily and kinda clumpy, that's good.  Place them in a small bowl and add the rest of the ingredients (except for the spray oil, obviously).  Mix it all up...it should be like a paste.  Spray a baking sheet with the oil and arrange your tempeh in one layer.  Spoon an equal amount of the paste onto each slice and spread it out so that it's completely covering the top.  Put in the oven for 15 minutes, and it's done!  

It's so good.  The dill adds a nice summery flavor and it's just salty enough.  I suppose if you wanted to coat the whole pieces of tempeh, just double the recipe.  But there's enough flavor in just the top coating, that it's really not necessary.

Lastly today, is this lovely chickpea stew from some Turkish cookbook that I got at Borders about a million years ago: 

simple, nutritious, and delicious

Ok, well, it turned into a chickpea and white bean stew because we only had one can of chickpeas on hand, but it was still super fabulous.  It's mainly 2 red onions sauteed in oil and margarine with cumin and coriander and fennel seeds and paprika (except we didn't have enough red onion, so we added a bunch of scallions in a later step), add a can of drained diced tomatoes and a teeny bit of sugar, add the chickpeas (and scallions, if you're us) and some cashews (not in the recipe, but a nice addition), and a whole bunch (the literal sense here) of chopped parsley.  Garnish with lemon wedges and salt to taste.  The lemon makes this meal.  You really need that burst of acid to bring out the flavors in the spices.  You could serve this over rice, but we were lazy and just ate bowls of it, as is.  It all came together in about 20 minutes.  I know that's not really a recipe, but I don't remember exact measurements.  Just add spices to taste and whatnot, if you'd like to try it out.  Oh, it also called for whole spices, but we didn't have cumin or coriander seeds, so we just used the ground versions of both, and it turned out fine!

I have more to catch up on (like commenting on all your lovely blogs, I know, I know!), but it's noon and I'm getting hungry now...  Time for a quick and easy meal! 

busy week!

This has been an awesomely busy week, and am I ever glad to see the weekend!  Between friendly hang-out times, work, and new haircuts (for Michael and me both), it's been a whirlwind.  I don't have a lot, foodwise, to show for myself right now, but I do want to show what I ate at my parents' house for Easter and a couple lovely meals in between then and now.

Once I got back to the old home on Saturday, I learned that my parents had a fun and easy meal planned out - burgers!

i know i'm not the only one eating veggie burgers on easter.

Mom and Dad got me the original vegan Boca burgers (yum!) and I whipped up fries for all of us.  Three kinds: regular potato for my dad, sweet potato with bread crumbs and parmesan cheese for my mom, and sweet potato with cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, salt and pepper for me.  I don't know about the other two, but mine were awesome and went perfectly with my burger.  I could definitely just eat veggie burgers and sweet potato fries for just about every meal...  But that wouldn't be very interesting, would it?

In the morning, my brother and his family came over and we all had a nice brunch together.  The only thing I couldn't (and obviously didn't want to) eat was the turkey.  Long live my awesome family for being so darned accomodating!  My mom made some asparagus with olive oil and lemon and Dad made mashed potatoes with soymilk and no butter, which I mushed up with an avocado for me (so, so good).

asparagus heap

I made a tofu scramble that everyone seemed to like, and these freaking amazing pancakes from Veganomicon:

could eat one million of these, please

They're the blueberry corn pancakes, and if you haven't made them yet, please.  Please.  Do it.  Everyone in my family thought they were fantastic, and really, they were.  The only thing is that I found I needed to add an extra 1/4 cup of flour to the batter because it was really watery.  I don't know if this was a typo in the book (like it should've called for 1 cup flour instead of 3/4 cup) or if I messed up, but I was being pretty careful, so I don't think it was me.  But you never know.  Anyway, if your batter seems too watery, don't be afraid to add in that extra bit of flour.  They were perfect.

As if that wasn't enough - my lovely Mom and Dad made an Easter basket for Michael and I to share that was full of vegan candy and other awesome stuff!

jealous much?

They printed the candy list off Peta and were able to find such radness as: twizzlers, jolly ranchers, ring pops, cracker jacks (omg omg omg!), and these little sour bunnies that are like sour patch kids, but way better.  They also got me these little prep bowls that RULE.  They have measurements on the insides of the bowls so I don't even need to use my measuring cups (if they're dirty and in the sink, which is often the case).  Those are all the food/cooking related gifties, but you can see if you look close that they extended their radness into gaming territory.  Plus some stuff for my skin that's great, too.

Soooo that was Easter.  All in all, it was filled with fun, food, and hilarious children hopped up on so much sugar that I definitely did not envy my brother's drive back home.  2 hours of pure insanity, I'm sure!

So this week, we've extended our pantry challenge, but I did break and go buy some vegetables after I realized one day that all I had eaten the day before was basically bread.  And now I'm trying to not eat so much bread in order to detox from it (though I broke on that last night as well, but not too bad).  Therefore when I got soydogs on sale to surprise Michael with, I needed to figure out what to eat mine with, since I didn't want a bun.  I came up with this:

sauteed veggies and brown rice

I cooked a giant mass of brown rice to eat with dinner and as leftovers throughout the week with various things.  The veggies are some yellow squash, zucchini (both on sale really cheap, yay!), onions, garlic, and cherry tomatoes, plus a bunch of dried dill.  They made a perfectly filling side next to a couple bunless soydogs.  

Then I used the leftovers the next day to made these bad boys:

collard wraps, what what!

I got this totally rad idea from our good buddy Melomeals over at her blog which showcases her and her family eating for $3.33 a day.  She's doing something really great over there, by the way, so you really need to check it out.  Her food is amazing, it's super inexpensive, and you have to admire her for making the best out of tough times.  As far as I can tell, there is not a specific post about her using collard green leaves for wraps instead of bread, but she does it quite often for her lunches.  It's such an awesome idea!  And delicious, I might add.  The bitterness of the collards is cut by all the fillings you put inside.  I did blanch my leaves for about 30 seconds to make them more bendy, but I guess you don't really need to do that.  Try it out!  

Also at the grocery store, I found some pasta shells on the super cheap since their box was dented (um...who cares?!  but thanks for the discount, Kroger).  I made a nice little mac n cheeze with them, plus frozen brussels (thank goodness for Kroger card savings, seriously).

yurm yurm yurm

I based my sauce off the nacho sauce recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes...  except for some changes.  I subbed in unsweetened soymilk for the water, took out the jalepenos, realized I didn't have any turmeric so added paprika and mustard powder instead, then decided that it wasn't sweet enough so I added about a teaspoon of agave nectar.  It was kind of haphazard, but turned out pretty great.  We were watching LOST anyway, so it's not like we were paying too much attention to our plates.  

This next one was from before the grocery shopping this week, and is pretty impressive as such, I think.  Sesame baked tofu from Accidental Vegan with peas 'n' corn (woo frozen veggies last forever), and some couscous that Michael had made over the weekend while I was gone.  

unfortunately, that tofu looked better than it tasted

Well, let me correct that...it tasted fine - it was just way, way too salty.  The recipe calls for 1/2 cup soy sauce, and next time I make it, I will absolutely sub in water for half of that.  Or use reduced sodium soy sauce or something.  The flavor was really great though...  lots of tahini and nutritional yeast.  But we ended up scraping off the outside crust and just eating the baked tofu goodness inside, because we simply could not handle all that salt (and I'm usually a salt-lover...it much have been unbearable then).  Still, the veggies and the couscous were yummy.  All in all, it was a decent, and very quick, meal.

Last night, Michael got a sweets craving.

and made these

'These' being the white chocolate macadamia cookies from Eat, Drink & be Vegan...  except with cashews and peanut butter instead of macadamias and macadamia butter.  They're really great!  And apparently, fast and easy, because he basically had them in the oven before I even realized he was making them.  Treats and surprises!  What more could you ask for?

please excuse this post full of pictures of awesome food

I'm so far behind!  Really, this is just going to be mostly pictures from meals that I barely remember eating.  It's been way too long since I've posted, so here's my catchup work:

There's no rhyme or reason to the ordering here...  I'm just going down my list in alphabetical order, then Blogger is going to switch them around backwards for me (hey, thanks, Blogger).  Therefore first up is our dinner from last night!  Michael and I have been doing a bit of a pantry challenge due to some lack in funds for ...well, everything.  Earlier this week I cooked up a pot of kidney beans (my first dried bean experience!  I overcooked them!...oh well).  From the leftovers, I made these kidney bean burgers.

it looks like it's going to eat me instead

These were a concoction of beans, a little wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, bread crumbs, onions, garlic, spinach, basil, oregano, dill, and tahini.  Baked for about 30 minutes on each side at 350F.  They were downright tasty!  Though I could have added more salt to them, for sure.

Next up we have some Indian food that I made based on a cookbook recipe.  I have this cookbook that's all curries that I hadn't looked at in forever...then a friend wanted to borrow it, but left it at the house and, flipping through, I realized that not only could I veganize a crapload of the recipes, but there were also many that were already vegan.  Doh!  This is one of them...  It's chickpeas with lots of cilantro (I do like it in Indian food, after all), cumin, dried coriander, tomatoes, carrots, soy yogurt (my addition), peas, coconut milk (also my addition)...  

also good for breakfast 2 days later

Those are supposed to be spiced potato  pancakes in the background, but they fell apart in the skillet and became fried mashed potatoes instead.  This was really delicious...and I can't wait to revisit this cookbook!

Oh...haha....  And here is something I veganized from Paula Deen.  Yeah, you read that right.  

waffles with chili

See, except she put butter in every single waffle hole, then put chili on top, then added cheese and sour cream.  We got a waffle maker from Michael's parents a few weeks ago and this was our first (and so far, only) endeavor.  I used the lemon corn waffle recipe from VWAV, except without the lemons.  They tasted nicely like cornbread in waffle form.  Except the recipe made so much batter that we basically just ate waffles all day long in various forms.  

Here we have a pasta salad that we added Boca chicken patties to:

creamy and fabulous

We used my basic awesome pasta salad recipe, and it was rad.  I'll get you that recipe at some point, but not today, my loves.

Oh, here's some of that cashew cheese (the blue algae kind) with crackers.

happy snacky

Seriously, Dr. Cow cheese is the best fake cheese ever ever ever.

Now for some seitan.

steamed to perfection

I generally use the basic seitan recipe from VWAV, then tweak it here and there.  And I steam it instead of simmering it, because I just like steamed seitan better.  And so does Michael.  So there.  Anyway, these we tried to make like steaks and used some steak seasoning on both sides before steaming, so that it kind of got embedded on the outsides.  

Then we did this with them:

proper awesomeness

After grilling them on the Foreman, these were perfect sliced super thin and served with lemony couscous and green beans.  I did make the seitan a tad too salty, but I cured that with the leftovers...  I sliced up another and put it in a pita with some sweet poppyseed salad dressing.  The sweetness balanced out the salt perfectly.  

And now for a sausage overload.

oh tofurkey

As you can see, some of this is from before our pantry challenge.  We went on a sort of Tofurkey sausage binge a couple weeks ago.  For this one, I made a tofu scramble with kale (awesome!) and Michael roasted some potatoes and baby sweet peppers.

And here's more:

sausage sausage sausage

These were a different flavor, but I don't know which.  Roasted all together with fingerling potatoes and more baby sweet peppers.  All of this was stuff Michael brought back with him from when he was out of town.  We can't afford the fingerling potatoes here!  It's weird, one of those sausage flavors reminded me of a food from my childhood...  My family used to go to Christmas dinners at the house of my Polish godparents.  They always had stuffed clam shells.  The sausages tasted identical to whatever was inside those clam shells.  Weird!

Oh, here's some canned minestrone that I took a pretty picture of:

slurp

Ate that with the cheese and crackers you saw earlier.  Nice little lunch, really!

Wow, this one's really old.

but really good

That's the Thai Chick-un Pizza from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan.  It was uhhhhmaaaaazing.

like, so amazing.

I highly reccommend that you make this pizza.  Right away.  We had loads of the sauce leftover, so a couple nights later I used it to make some Thai peanut veggies over rice.

also really good.

Even if you don't feel like making the whole pizza (which you must be crazy, if that's the case), at least make the sauce.  It's freaking delicious.

Ah, here's the first dinner I made out of the pot 'o' beans from earlier this week.

taco casserole

This is beans and corn with a packet of fajita seasoning layered with mini corn tortillas that I got on sale forever ago, the nacho sauce from Yellow Rose Recipes, tomatoes, and black olives, all baked for about 30 minutes together.

Then, we did this to it:

!

Topped off with lettuce, guacomole, and scallions.  This was seriously so delicious.  You can imagine how pissed I was when I dropped a plateful of it on the floor.

Next up's another little snack that Michael brought back from Indiana.

spring rolls

Well, frozen spring rolls that we baked in the oven.  They were really good.  Gingery.  We ate them with different sauce packets that were in the fridge...duck sauce, soy sauce, hot mustard.  By the way, Evansville, Indiana, has a crapload of vegan food available.  Awesome!

And here's something that was just ok:

falafel from like 3 weeks ago

I used the recipe from VWAV, and...  it tasted good.  But when I went to fry it, the balls literally melted in the oil.  Maybe my oil was too hot.  Anyway, we had to fish out the bits and reform it all into balls and then broil it to get them to stay together.  They were still mushy.  Tasty though.

Last but not least was another on the fly dinner made from the last of the treats Michael brought with him.

wild rice tempeh

We roasted the wild rice tempeh (the only kind we can get here is plain old soy) with carrots, leeks, and potatoes (and some more wild rice) in a fake beefy broth.  I made a stuffing with almonds, dried cranberries, and cayenne pepper (the stuffing bread I used was leftover from Thanksgiving!).  It was a tad too moist, but tasted good.  Brussels sprouts rounded it all out.

And I'm done!  If you've made it this far, congratulations.  I promise from now on to be as prompt as possible with my posts so that they don't drag on quite so much!

when the cat's away...

I finally got together some pictures of food.  It's about time right?  Michael's been out of town this week, so I've been eating stuff he doesn't like or gets tired of faster than me.  Like...falafel!  And capers!  The thing is, I forgot that when you cook for just yourself, if you don't cut recipes in half, you'll have leftovers forever.  So I really only had to cook twice in 5 days.  That's pretty sweet, in theory, but I did get a little tired of eating the same stuff.  Anyway, I guess you probably want to see it, yeah?  Ok.

A few days ago, I got this rad idea from Dreena Burton's blog for braising tempeh with lemon and capers.  She didn't post a recipe, but I got some ideas from the photo.  Besides...I really don't need an excuse to put lemons or capers in my food, so this was a no-brainer.  Still, I had some tricks up my sleeve that I blatantly stole from her.

bubble bubble toil and trouble

Yeah, so those are lemon slices.  They add a really great kick of lemon flavor that juice and zest alone do not.  If you do this though, make sure you don't eat those rinds...they are hella bitter if you bite into one.  They do look pretty though, don't they?  The other thing I ripped off Dreena was to add red onion.  That's not a real big rip-off, but I rarely remember about how awesome cooked red onions are, so I don't normally use them.  The best part about the whole thing?  Braised tempeh absorbs so much flavor that it's unbelieveable.  There was no trace of the bitterness that is associated with...badly cooked tempeh.  You could serve this sauce over just about any grain, but I chose bulgar wheat, which absorbed the sauce nicely.

brussels sprouts a la cart

I really want to post a recipe of this...but I need to think of a new title first.  Here:

Braised Tempeh with Capers, Artichokes, and Grape Tomatoes

1 block tempeh, sliced thinly into 16 rectangles

1 Tbsp olive oil

water, as needed

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 shallot, thinly sliced

1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced

2-3 Tbsp capers, chopped (or more if you like)

1 Tbsp caper brine

2 lemons, one sliced very thinly into rounds, one juiced

1/2 cup white cooking wine

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

2 cups water with a chickn bouillon (or use veggie bouillon or veggie broth)

1/2 15-oz can of quartered artichoke hearts, drained

couple handfuls of grape (or cherry) tomatoes

1/2-3/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

cracked black pepper to taste

First up, steam your tempeh for about 12 minutes to prepare it.  In a large skillet, heat up the oil, then toss in the red onion, garlic, and shallot.  Cook on medium heat until the red onion starts to soften, then throw in your tempeh slices.  Things will probably start to stick to your pan at this point, so I add splashes of water (kept in a little salad dressing bottle by the stove) to deglaze and keep things moving in the pan.  Once the onion cooks down fully and the tempeh is getting some browned spots on it, add the white wine, capers, caper brine, water + bouillon (or broth), red wine vinegar, lemon juice and lemon slices to the pan and bring to a boil.  Once it boils, reduce heat to a simmer and let that liquid reduce by about 2/3.  You still want some liquid in there, but not over 1/2 cup (so my math is probably wrong here, huh?).  This will take about an hour, by my calculations.  Meanwhile, prepare whatever grain or pasta you want to serve this with, get any side dishes in order, and chop up your parsley.  Before the liquid is fully reduced (about 45 minutes in), add the tomatoes and artichokes.  Continue to cook until the liquid level is where you want it, then stir in the parsley and cook only for 1-2 minutes, so that's it's wilted, but not discolored.  Turn off heat, add black pepper to taste.  Serve with a grain to soak up that saucy goodness!

It's really a lot of downtime, you don't even have to really stir the sauce while it reduces.  I stirred the whole thing maybe twice in an hour.  Still, remember to pick out those lemon rinds!  They will be very soft and look enticing, but you really don't wanna eat 'em.

Next up is dinner last night.  Earlier this week, I made falafel and ate it on a salad that I'd made a hummus dressing for (which was totally awesome, by the way).  All the pictures of it are terrible though (pre-new camera).  Anyway, I made enough to have falafel for lunches and snacks throughout the week.  Last night I ate the last of it and made little flatbread falafel pizzas with it!

falafely goodness

I have these spinach flatbread things for rollups, but they're also great for crispy pizzas.  I just put a healthy dose of the hummus on them, then crumbled up the falafel and covered them with thin slices of tomatoes.  After baking at 400F for about 10-15 minutes, I took them out and added diced pickled jalapenos, avocado, lettuce, and......radish shoots!  Yes, those are shoots from the garden (the radishes needed thinned out and I couldn't bear to just throw out those lovely little sproutlings).  They were delicious, by the way.  As was this whole pizza!  A nice change from how I'd been eating the falafel...and I can never have enough creative pizza in my life.

So that's really all I ate of note while Michael was gone...  It all lasted me a long time, plus I had pizza out one night with a friend (and accidentally ate parmesan cheese on a breadstick, blarf).  I had a nice palate vacay, but I can't wait for him to get back today and for us to cook together again!

Oh, by the way, this stuff is amazing:

dr. cow tree nut cheese

My boss brought these back for me from New York last week (upon my request and payment, of course).  They are freaking tasty, kids.  Made from aged cashews, they taste like what I remember sharp cheddar to have tasted like.  I let my boss taste some and he said that I was crazy and it didn't taste at all like cheese, but that it did taste good (for weird vay-gun shit).  Anyway, I reccommend these to those of you with a penchant for a tasty spread, because these are a hit on fancypants crackers.  It's really rich, and it's also pretty expensive (about $9 for one of those tiny things), so use sparingly.  Thanks, Dr. Cow, for making something so yumtastic.  I'm not sure where all you can find these except in nice health food stores and possibly from food fight, but you can go to their website here and check it out.

I have more pictures of foods we ate last week (or...earlier), but I really need to go do some laundry before Michael gets home.  Hope you're all having a great weekend!