Vegan Mofo day 1: i'm back.

I figure the best way to get back into blogging is to start up with Vegan Mofo again. I know I've been a terrible bloglady as of late, but I do have a reason or two. September was a bit insane. My birthday was at the beginning of the month and I got...engaged! Yep, Michael popped the question and I said yes and ever since, the wedding (ok, mostly the food) is all I can think about. We're getting married next October, I have a year to plan, and it is consuming most of my waking thoughts. So...excuse my little absence from the blogworld last month. I've still be cooking and eating and farmers marketing, so let's jump right in with a quick overview of some tasty things that have been brewing in our kitchen.

Might as well start with my birthday foods.

what better way to begin a post than with cake?

Excuse the crap photo of my lovely birthday cake. This is our family's (accidentally vegan) wacky cake that I have been eating since my very first birthday (presumably). My mom dutifully makes this for me every year, even though I'm 27 years old and living 3 hours away. I think it's because the last time I tried to make it, I royally screwed it up, thus disgracing my family name. Anyway. She now tops it with the chocolate buttercream icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World...and it is even more divine than ever. We also found some sorbet (raspberry and lemon) to go along nicely. And she made two cakes, so Michael and I ate on this for over a week. (My mom rules.)

That evening we went out and I forgot to take pictures of my Mexican veggie pizza, but Michael and I made a trip to Athens, OH a few days prior and I remembered to bring my camera.

best balls on the planet

We traditionally go to Casa Nueva for my birthday dinner, as they have nice vegan food and a great beer selection and prepare local and seasonal fare. This year we started with tofu albondigas meatballs in their housemade bbq sauce (which was fantastic) atop a bed of jasmine rice. I could have eaten a couple plates of these and been done with dinner and it would have been just fine. They were amazing. Stayed together perfectly. The sauce was sweet and tangy, with some flavor that reminded me of my mom's Christmas molasses crinkle cookies, which sounds weird, but was in fact awesome.

adorable little salad

Next up was a salad comprised of baby greens and sprouts and a terrific lemon-basil vinaigrette. Perfect.

yum yum

Our entree was a stacked enchilada with seasoned tofu and the veggies of the day (tomatillos and green beans). It also contained a vegan queso cremosa (uh...fake cheese sauce) and was topped with some smoky salsa. The tofu was, as always, delectable, and the addition of those two strangely compatible vegetables was a huge hit. The beans lent a nice crunch while the tomatillos were smooth and nicely sour. I could barely finish this, but finish it I did. We took a nice, long walk afterwards.

Sometime before or after that, I made these things:

sweet and sour chipotle tempeh with sweet potatoes

This recipe is from Eat, Drink, and be Vegan...and I didn't really like it. Michael loved it, don't get me wrong, but it was just a teeny bit too sweet for me. I've never really liked the main part of my dinner meals to be sweet, so this isn't too surprising. Still, it was delicious in its own right. Just not the right that goes up my alley.

this looks like an octopus

But it's not. I made some seitan cutlets (my own concoction) and layered it all up with some couscous and steamed spinach. Michael made a lovely little mango salsa to top it all off. This was a delicious and relatively easy little meal.

goddess garbanzos

Another recipe from ED&BV. The true hero of this mixture is the apples in the salad. They add this lovely little crunch and just a hint of sweet. I'm assuming this is supposed to feed a family of four for 2 days of lunches, but we polished it off in one sitting.

lemony garlic pasta

Gosh, another ED&BV recipe. I had forgotten I made so many this past month! This one was stellar. Absolutely amazing. It wasn't overly saucy, but there was plenty of sauce to stick to the noodles...incredibly garlicky...and some walnuts added a good crunch and some protein. That woman is amazing.

And that's it for me today. I have to be at work in a little bit and Michael is nursing some horrible sickness that has been going around (and somehow I haven't caught it yet). I need to force some soup into him (some impromptu thing I made with fake chicken bouillon, scallions, garlic, ginger, chili garlic sauce, and noodles...and it's pretty tasty for the non-sick, too). I still have backup food to show you, so expect to see me back here tomorrow!

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!

back to the books

It's been awhile, eh?  I'll give it to you straight: it's been beautiful here this past week.  This basically means that I never know what I'm going to be doing in the evenings because it's finally comfortable enough to go outside, out and about.  This could include trips to the park to fly kites (hi, Dad!), impromptu croquet games, a day at a friend's house doing laundry, random walks, and/or learning how to play shuffleboard (rules!).  I've been enjoying the weather and my life to the fullest, in other words.  That also means less planned meals and just grabbing easy stuff that's not really worth blogging about.  However!

At the beginning of last week, Michael and I decided to utilize more of our cookbooks and shopped for specific ingredients to do so.  We chose a few recipes out of each book we felt was gathering dust.  This went strong for exactly two meals, both from Yellow Rose Recipes, strangely enough.  You get to see those first, then a couple of randoms that were pretty darned good.

First up is the tamale pie:

oh so mexi

There were parts of this that I loved and parts that I was pretty 'meh' about.  Loved: the cheesy nacho sauce.  Holy mother nature.  I almost didn't make the recipe for this from the book (opting to make my own version) because it seemed too simple to be good.  Which is dumb.  Because it freaking rules!  Michael and I decided that it tasted identical to the nacho sauce from various snack bars of our youths such as the pool (for me) and the bowling alley (for him).  And I know the recipe only says to use 1/2 cup of it, but I just poured the entire batch on top.  It was that crazydelicious.  Oh, here's my plate, by the way:

showstopping avocado love

I will admit that I put this in a bowl and ate it with a spoon after this shot.  It's total bowl-food, guys.  Ok, so...meh: I made the chicken style seitan from the book for this.  The flavor was good, but, as is the case with every single batch of seitan I've ever simmered, it had the texture of wet bread.  In fact, I tried making a sammich out of a cutlet of it the next day and it just became one with the bread and was a complete soggy mess.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'm finished with ruining my seitan.  I'm gonna stick to steaming, no matter what the recipe says.  It just always, always works that way.  Also kind of meh: while this was a yumtastic casserole, overall it really just tasted like mushy nachos.  Not that that in and of itself is a bad thing, but it was an awful lot of work for something that tasted like nachos.  Next time I might just use certain elements and pile it up on some chips, because that would be way easier.  And crunchier.

Next up was the butternut squash lasagna.  This was so easy to make, with a little teamwork.  Once we divided up who was doing what, it came together in a flash.  On a Wednesday, nonetheless.

beigeness

So, it's not so pretty.  So what.  I put the end of our Teese on the bottom bit (which was awesome, btw).  I really have no complaints about this recipe, honestly.  It was even better the next day after the flavors had concentrated.

such a looker

It's prettier once it's sliced.  And garnished.  We ate this with slices of roasted garlic bread (it has whole cloves of garlic in it!  what!).  Michael and I have picked up a new habit: perusing the day old bread section at Kroger.  We get like 5 loaves/baguettes/whathaveyou for like 89 cents apiece and put them in the freezer.  Anytime we need or want some bread, just pop it in the oven for a few minutes.  It's never tasted stale or off.  Bargain shopping rules the school, kids.  Back to the lasagna...it's the perfect combination of salty and sweet.  Comfort foodiness.  

Oh, bonus shot of the squashes after they were roasty...

sexay

Ok, so that is it for planned meals.  The rest of this stuff was good, but definitely came together in a hurry.  First is a wonderful lunch that Michael and I made together on Sunday that includes everything I love (his idea, so sweet!).

fabulosity

That's some bowties with Morningstar Chickn Strips (they were on sale, come on), peas, capers, sherry, balsamic vinegar (I don't like this, but it was good by the end), lemon juice, grape tomatoes, parsley, artichokes, shallots, garlic, and oyster mushrooms.  We had it for lunch, then ate it again for dinner since it was so rad.  This was probably my favorite meal this past week.  Simple and heavenly.

Oh!  I had almost forgotten about this one.  My mom called me last Sunday (a week ago) and told me that it was St. David's day and he's the patron saint of Wales and leeks are the official veggie of Wales and that I needed to eat a leek today.  Mom.  As if I need an excuse to eat leeks.  But thanks for letting me know, regardless.

probably not the best use of leeks, but whatever

I had meant to make the lasagna Sunday and add the leeks into the sauce, but by the time dinner came grumbling at my tummy, I was exhausted.  And I just wanted something easy and tasty.  Solution?  Sauteed leeks with green beans and vinegar and salt and then some boxed couscous mix that Michael likes.  Don't let the grossness of that picture fool you - it was nummy.

Do any of you other food bloggers get tired of trying to think of alternate words for 'delicious'?  I'm out of synonyms.  Time to find my thesaurus.

Here's a bread success:

not dense

I splurged on some white whole wheat flour.  King Arthur makes damn good flour, but it is hella expensive.  Kroger brand flour is like a buck and this kind is around 4 bucks.  Alas, flour is apparently the one thing that Kroger doesn't make well.  For bread anyway.  (You should see our cabinets.  Everything that isn't a specialty item is Kroger brand.  I mean...it's cheaper and their stuff doesn't suck.)  Blah blah, so I've made some sammiches with this bread and they didn't suck, either.  And the flavor is pretty good, too.  Woo!

A not so successful bread attempt were these hot dog buns:

flat

They were doing great until I uncovered the formed buns before putting them in the oven and they deflated like it was their job or something.  There was an upside, though!  The outsides got crispy, so when we cut the slits for the dogs, the buns made these awesomely sturdy shells for holding loads of condiments.  Any excuse to put more mustard on something is fine by me.  

This meal was Michael's idea and was made on the first really nice day this past week.  Summer food.  We'd got that corn on the cob (just...corn?) for 50 cents apiece at the store expecting it to be terrible, but it ruled pretty hard.  Nice and sweet.  The potato salad is an invention of ours that is based on a recipe from The Accidental Vegan, but we put too much red onion in it and it hurt my mouth.  That's pretty easy to pick out though.  Once summer hits, I'll post the recipe, but I'm not feeling it right now.  We make this potato salad practically once a week once it gets warm.  It's that good.  You're just gonna have to wait and come back to find out how to make it.  That's some incentive if I've ever heard any.  

Hey, have a good rest of your weeks.  It's almost Friday, but as everyone that works a crappy job knows, each day lasts like a millenium until the weekend, and then every day is like 3 seconds long.  So...here's hoping that your days are more like 24 hours long this week.

PS - one of my brothers and his wife are going vegetarian for Lent.  For Lent, I gave up Veganomicon.  So they could use it, you know.  Wish us both luck.

good to be back, plus a hotdog rant

I have had more internet woes.  Nuff said.  Anyway, here's I be.  Superbowl Sunday!  I have a lot of work to do today.  I haven't watched much football this season, but I am sort of excited to see Pittsburgh in the bowl.  And that requires much food to be made...and a lot of cleaning to do before I start cooking!  It's been kind of a weird week, a lazy one, which I don't always like, but maybe I needed a week of lazy.  I've been kind of tired.  Anyway, I have my first bit of news to reveal!  If you noticed in the sidebar, I have a new little icon that means I am now a featured blogger on Wellsphere in the vegan community!  This is a site dedicated to healthy living, and yeah, I was probably as surprised as you are that they contacted me to be a part of their community.  Still, I must remind myself that I do try to live a healthy lifestyle and that if anyone can learn anything from my ramblings about how awesome vegan food is, then I'm happy to be a participant!  Head on over to their site and check out other vegan bloggers.  Most of them seem to be doctors and experts, so I feel priveleged to be considered among them.

Food time.  I have a lot of catching up to do here!  We haven't cooked anything groundbreaking this week, but there have been some interesting meals.

teese quesadilla

So maybe quesadillas aren't really that interesting, but they are when you have Teese!  This was my first teese encounter, and it's pretty good.  That's the newish cheddar flavor, and I found the flavor itself to be better than FYR cheddar.  The texture is still a little weird, but at least it melts!  You see, I used to be quite the quesadilla addict back in my vegetarian/omni days.  It's a super quick lunch and it's gooey and comforting.  This pretty much hit the nail on the head under those criteria.  Still, I honestly think I like the flavor of my own cheeze sauce better, but it's a helluva lot less work to use teese.   Anyway, I had this for lunch twice this week, so it couldn't have been too terrible, right?

soycurl fajitas

Can you tell I recently  made an order from Vegan Essentials?  This was my first soycurl experience as well, and I have to say that I love them.  I was a bit suspicious of their crusty appearance at first, but they really soak up a load of flavor and have a great texture!  Plus, they cost waaaaaay less than Morningstar chickn strips and don't have a 'flavor' to begin with.  These fajitas (made by Michael) are made with peppers and a red onion.  Michael read somewhere that traditional garnishes to Mexican burritos/fajitas/etc are radishes and green cabbage.  I have never heard this ever in my entire life, but it was delicious!  I was worried that they would taste too...  well, radish-y and cabbage-y, but somehow they flavors complemented the fajitas really amazingly well.  They add just the perfect amount of crunch without getting soggy, like regular lettuce does.  If you would like to attempt this, make sure you drizzle the radishes and cabbage with some lime juice and then salt & pepper them.  That makes them extra yummy.

roasted tempeh with veggies

Ok, I have to admit that all of the dishes you've seen so far were made by Michael, including this one.  I was in a bit of a cooking slump this week for various reasons, but I think I'm out of it now.  I hope.  Thank goodness I have him to help me out when I feel that way.  Still, a schedule change happened this week that put me a little out of whack, so I had to get used to it.  Next week will be better.  Anyway, this is some marinated tempeh roasted up with red potatoes, mushrooms, asparagus, red onions, and garlic.  It was so good!  I don't know what was in the marinade, I'm sorry.  But it was salty and kind of soy-y and altogether very good.

tempeh with bulgur pilaf

I did contribute something to this meal, however.  That's a bulgur pilaf with leeks, and it was amazing.  We haven't had much bulgur lately, mostly because we ate it so much this summer that I think we got burned out, but I had a hankering for a healthy grain, so this emerged!  I even have a recipe for you.

Bulgur Pilaf w/Leeks

1:2 parts dry bulgur: water (i used a coffee mug to measure, so mine was probably 1.5 cups bulgur to 3 cups water)

2 small leeks, thinly sliced (ALL of them, even the dark green parts)

1 shallot, thinly sliced

1 Tbsp EVOO

3-4 Tbsp red wine vinegar

juice of one small lemon

1/4 cup chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

This was so simple, guys.  First heat up your oil in a large skillet.  Saute leeks first for about 2-3 minutes, then add shallots and continue to saute until soft.  Add bulgur, water, and red wine vinegar.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 12-15 minutes.  Uncover, add lemon juice and parsley, then taste and add salt and pepper until you think it's right.  That's it!  Especially good served with roasty toasty tempeh.

pizza...?

Oh, this was just to prove that we did have pizza again Monday night.  And it was even better this time.  We also had mac n cheeze, but I didn't take a photo.  Just imagine pasta shells covered in yellow.  Yay!  Mac n Cheeze!

buddha chocolate

I just thought this was cute...  It's a buddha shaped chocolate (also from Vegan Essentials) that has hazelnut bits in his belly.  I got this for Michael when I did the order (in addition to other yummy chocolates for us to share...we don't get chocolate much here) because he's very interested in Eastern religions, Buddhism in particular.  So adorable!

skallops

Watching Jamie make scallops all the time on Top Chef and hearing Fabio saying stuff about 'This isn't Top Scallop!' in his crazyawesome accent finally got to me.  I ordered a can of veggie skallops.  We sauteed them with some sesame oil, tamari, sriracha and sesame seeds...  and then...  (I'm almost too ashamed to admit this...)  ....

...   added them to Chinese food that we ordered.  Ok, ok, that is so lazy, I know, but it was really pretty good!  The skallops themselves were mostly just ok (the flavor was great, but the texture was a little strange).  They were just like chunks of seitan, really.  Still, worth the experience, I guess.  And I got some greasy lo mein out of it.  Worth it!

agave spiced cornbread w/beanie weenies

This cornbread is from the testing of recipes for the Cookin with my Craw-Daddy zine.  For some reason, mine didn't rise up and get fluffy, but the flavor of it was amazing!  Slightly sweet and spicy from chilis.  I found it to taste a little like hush puppies, which cannot be a bad thing.  And then, those are beanie weenies.  I've posted about them before...  But I have to say:  vegan hotdogs rule.  They are the one fake meat item that we buy regularly, and I was trying to figure out why that was...  First off, they only have like 45 calories per dog, which is ridiculously awesome because you can eat like 3 of them without even feeling the least bit guilty.  Also, I think it's because hot dogs themselves (omni ones) are such bullshit that they're really easy to recreate.  There must just be some universal 'hot dog flavor' that they add to all hot dogs, be it a cow, pig, turkey, or soy dog.  Granted, the texture of soydogs aren't the same, but..uh...thank goodness!  Regular hot dogs are standardly horrendous in all ways.  I do not understand why omnis the world over don't just switch to soydogs.  I mean, they don't know what's in their hotdogs anyway (nor do they wish to, I'd imagine...blegh!), so why not at least eat one that's good for you?  

In conlusion, soydogs rule.  Except LightLife soydogs, those suck really bad (weird flavor).

Ok, it's noon.  Time to wake up my Michael and start cleaning so that I can start cooking!