hey, good lookin'...what you been cookin'?

Yes, I've been gone for a long while. Yes, I do have a legitimate reason or two. You will most likely figure out this reason within the next two sentences, but I'd rather not go into detail just now.

Ok, so as most of you probably know, going from cooking for two or more to cooking for just yourself can be difficult. At first it's all like, 'Why bother? It's just me. I can live off Taco Bell burritos for a period of time.' But then you get tired of eating crap and you start cooking again. Still, cooking for one kind of blows. I'm still in the mode where I cook for an army, only to find myself with leftovers for at least 3 days afterward. Solution to depressing problem? Cook with friends! Recently, I have been cooking with my lovely and talented friend Becca about once a week or so. It's an excuse to get out of the house and socialize, yes, but it's also a reason to bring some joy back to the cooking process. We started off simple for our first kitchenventure: Indian food.

ladies in action

Becca whipped up an exquisite chana masala whilst I slopped together the curry potatoes from the 500 Vegan Recipes cookbook (which is amazing, by the way). I added about twice as much garlic as it called for and used red curry paste since I didn't have any green.

my girl stirrin' it up

lots of stirring action

The potatoes didn't require nearly as much stirring. (Above photos are courtesy of Becca's manfriend, Max, since I forgot my camera.)

end result

Paired with some fluffy basmati rice (and some whiskey), it was a deliciously awesome meal. And I only had to take home one little container of leftovers. Not to say it wasn't yummy enough to take home more, but I probably had like 3 tupperwares of pasta in my fridge already.

This next kitchenventure occurred last night...and I remembered my camera, so there's loads more photos. Also, I broke my ankle last week so I had pretty much nothing better to do but mince the garlic and onions and take an annoying amount of pictures. We decided to make a risotto...lemon brussels sprout risotto, to be exact. It started out with lots of garlic and onions (yeah, we doubled [or tripled] the amount of garlic...we love the garlic).

the woman knows how to pick out a good head of garlic

which turned into this

mincing queen

I told you, that was all I was good for. The rest is the work of the wonderful Becca. She blanched some brussels sprouts:

And then she sauteed them:

And then she cut them in half:

Waiting for the rice to 'separate and crackle' (much confusion ensued):

And this is about when Becca realized that risotto is really frustrating to make:

The lady owns the most awesome kitchen crap I've ever seen, but she does not have a ladle (we superwomen know how to improvise, however):

"I strongly suggest that you take a picture of this right now":

if only i could have taken a video so you could see it bubbling away

If you clicked on the link for this recipe, you'll see that Becca has the same lemon juicer thingamabob as the one in the picture (she's my real life Betty Crocker):

And, at long last, this:

tasted way prettier than it looked, i promise you

We both agreed that the risotto was heavenly. We added an extra squirt of lemon juice on our individual portions, which contributed a lovely tang. The brussels sprouts were sweet and tender and paired nicely with the creaminess of the rice. Upon asking Becca if it was worth all the effort, she replied, 'Yes...but I'll never make risotto again.' I warned ya, girlfran.

So, the moral of the story is this: If you're feeling a little down in the dumps or your cooking has gone into a rut, I recommend that you cook with a friend once in awhile. You're more likely to try challenging recipes that you wouldn't bother to make just for yourself, and it's just plain refreshing. (Next up, I think we might try seitan en croute...which I would never attempt on my own, but with my ladyfriend there for moral support might just be achievable.)

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!

weekend food and my vegan weight gain

As I sit here huddled in front of a space heater drinking a huge mug of hot tea, I must finally acknowledge that winter has come to my town.  It snowed today.  Snow!  The thing about winter is this:  I combat cold weather with heavy meals.  And It's starting to show.  Michael calls this my winterfat.  It's time for me to admit to myself though, that I've gained 10 pounds in the past 6 months and most of it has been since October.  Bummer!  My fattypants are now just 'pants'.  Which honestly, it doesn't look that bad.  But I don't have any work fattypants and I can't afford to buy new ones.  So I think it's time for me to tone down on my winter eating, haha...  Seriously, guys, I popped a button on Saturday.  I take this as a sign.  

As such, I am trying to eat a little lighter.  The meals you are about to see are the end of my overindulgence.  Yeah, I'm still probably going to be cooking warm winter meals, but my goal is to eat smaller portions of the heavy stuff and fill up on veggies.  Plus, I really have to start exercising, even though I hate it.  Great!  Please gimme some love on this front, because I need motivation.  Pronto.  I mean, I'm weighing more now than I have in about 3 years, and I really just wanna tone up.  And fit into my pants again.  What are exercises that you guys do at your houses (sans equipment) to stay in shape?  There is a gym in my office building, which I will use about 3 times a week, but what else can I do at home?  Is there an exercise video that you swear by?  One that is sort of fun and will trick me into wanting to exercise?  Just curious.  

Anyway, this being a food blog and all, you probably wanna see some food.  Here you are:

First up is some biscotti that Michael made last week:

cookies...one thing i'm not going to be eating for awhile

They were so good.  I didn't help him at all, either.  'Cause I'm a jerk like that.  No really, I get really pushy in the kitchen sometimes, and this was one of those days, so I just left him to it, and he did a wonderful job.  The recipe is from Vcon, but I really can't be bothered to look it up right now.  It's supposed to have macadamia nuts in it, but he put almonds in there instead, which was a wise (and less expensive) choice.  Chocolate + almonds = bliss, yes?  Especially lovely when dipped in a cup of coffee.  

Next is evidence that I do eat salad:

i love veggies.

Except that this was totally cancelled out by eating an excessive amount of croissantdogs.  Bah.

And then!  I got a request last week for a curry!  I haven't made a curry since before October, because we were a little burned out on them.  This one has loads of spinach, carrots, peas, and tofu.  Oh, and coconut  milk.  Foiled again!

Served with brown basmati rice:

creamy yummy yum yum yum

Saturday I cooked dinner for my 2 brothers and their families.  Before I show you the food, let me show you what was on the fridge at Jimmy's (my oldest brother) house.

broc!  hilarious!

No, but the truly crazy thing is that my nephew, Charlie, drew the picture on the left on Election Day (Nov 4, as if you didn't remember).  The photo on the left was in the paper on November 15.  What!  My nephew is psychic!  Cool.

So anyway, this is what I made.  It's the casserole with a gross name that tastes totally delicious.

i made way too much food.

I don't know why I made so much, but Michael and I ended up taking almost an entire casserole dish of the stuff home with us, which we ate.  Believe me, this stuff never goes to waste.  And it was a hit, I think!  My oldest brother seemed a little skeptical about the 'brown bits' and the 'white stuff', and weirded out by the amount of soy in the thing, but nobody could deny how totally rad it tasted.  I don't know if any of the kids ate it.  They were in a separate room with open access to a trash can, so it's anybody's guess.  So...all in all, success!

My sisters-in-law contributed some loverly bread rolls and a totally rockin' salad with homemade dressing.  Here it is all plated up.

you'd think our family was italian, no?

Look at my brother's supercool beer glasses.  That's his name, Jimmy.  Awesome!

Last night, I found a stuffing recipe.  We based a meal around it.  The rest of the meal was great!  The stuffing kind of sucked.  But I admit to that being my fault since I added excessive amounts of fresh sage to it.  Bad idea!  Oh, also, it was mushy.  I like a dry stuffing.  So at least I know what not to do on Thanksgiving.  Practice makes perfect.  The veg with dinner was yummy though.  We found baby artichokes on sale at the store on Friday ($1.49 for a HUGE package of them, whaaaat?).  These were fun and tasty, but the instructions on the package as to how to prepare them freaked me out.  It stopped calling them 'baby artichokes' and just started calling them 'babies'.  Weird!

vegtastic

Sauteed up with some onions, spinach, grape tomatoes, and white wine.  So good.  We were also feeling in the mood for tempeh.  I didn't feel like inventing a marinade, so I used the basic broiled tofu recipe from Vcon, but used tempeh (boiled first) instead.  It was seriously good.  It's amazing to me what soy sauce, garlic, and lemon juice can do to something.  So easy!  So good!  So...yeah!

sunday dinners are the best

So now I'm off to reheat my tea (it goes from boiling to ice cold in 10 minutes in my apartment) and think of what I can eat for dinner that isn't going to make me any fatter.  I really want some lentils.  And squash.  Those are ok, right?  Jeez.  Now that I actually cook things from scratch, I have no concept of how much fat and calories are in things anymore.  I used to know the calories/fat of everything in my cupboard when I was omni.  Not that that was healthy either, you know.  I'm just saying...sometimes I miss knowing what the hell I'm eating, dietary info-wise.  And no, I'm not going to spend an hour on some website feeding in every ingredient of a recipe to find out the nutrition breakdown.  I'm just gonna use my common sense, ok?  Word.