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.)

randomonster

So I haven't even been on the internet since that last post. Being away from work, one of the last things I want to do is get online...mostly because it reminds me of work. And oh, I hate my job. Today was especially mind-numbingly terrible. Probably because it's Monday. And I've been away from it for 4 days. And the fact that my bosses are jerks and my work is boring. You know. The usual. So anyway, that means that I have a lot of catching up to do. Starting with that exciting thing that I told you I've been doing that Blogger is miraculously letting me upload photos of today. Look!

i'm learning to knit!

Michael got me a basic teach yourself to knit thing for xmas! He also got me loads of yarn and a more advanced book on slinkyrad sweaters for when I get better. And despite not understanding the instructions at all at first (I'm a learn by seeing/doing person), I really have a knack for it, somehow.

growing growing

finished...potholder?

My first knitting creation! I've gotten loads better since then and have been practicing different pattern stitches. I want to make little animals, like...really bad. For some reason. The cats would just commandeer them and hide them if I did make them, but that might just be part of the fun, yes? Anywho, now I get to participate in W.I.P. Wednesdays (brainchild of shellyfish)! That stands for Work In Progress, in case you are not in the know. I really enjoy making things with my hands that I get to see growing and improving as I do them (hence my love of ceramics). I did not at first think that I had the patience for knitting, but it turns out that I was wrong. It's a methodical, calming process, surprisingly enough. So, while other 20-somethings go out every night and drink themselves stupid at the bars and are generally not acting like 80-year-old women, I am content to act just that way. Let's not call it 'old'. Let's call it 'settled'. K?

Alright, on to the food. Here is what we ate on new years day. I've heard it's lucky to eat cabbage on that particular day, though I'm not really sure why. I couldn't find any decent collard greens at the store, so that one was out. And I was going to make something out of black-eyed peas, but...didn't. So, sauerkraut it was! I've had it in my mind that sauerkraut and sausage are awesome together (which they are) and wanted to make a pizza from this thought, but Michael deemed that idea icky, so we tried this instead:

not as pretty as a pizza, but still, it was good

This is sauerkraut cooked in some veggie broth with seitan sausages and dumplings. The dumplings were the star of the meal, by far. Little doughy bits of savory awesomeness. The kraut got a little watered down from the broth and the sausage got a little...soggy. But the dumplings were great! Michael found the recipe for me here. These are not the dumplings of my youth, which were more like doughy clouds sitting atop stew. They are compact, more like noodles. A nice, chewy noodle. That recipe calls for cornstarch, but it never says where to put it in, so I left it out. I also lacked the patience to roll them out to 1/8 inch thick and cut them all into 1x1" squares, so I just rolled them out to an acceptable (to me) thickness and used a spoon to cut out little oddly shaped noodle-biscuits. It turned out pretty good.

Next up is last night's dinner:

angel hair with garlicky oyster (mushroom) sauce

So here's the deal. I used to make linguine with clam sauce a lot as an omni. It's pretty much the only dish I made that had meat in it. I was good at it, and it tasted awesome. I decided to recreate it last night, with pretty decent results. The key? Oyster mushrooms. Also known as the only mushrooms that I like to eat. And I like them a lot. Too bad they're so expensive, jeez. Like, more expensive than tempeh. What! Anyway, I totally have a recipe for you because I wrote it down right after making it. I'm so on the ball. This is not a pasta that has loads of sauce on it. It's one of the ones where the sauce just coats the noodles and there's bits of yumminess here and there to chew on. Mmmmm... Served up with some olive bread (we found like a million artisan loafs of bread on crazy cheap sale at Kroger and put them in the freezer - score!), it's juuuuust right.

Angel Hair with Garlicky Oyster (Mushroom) Sauce

1 Tbsp EVOO

1/4 cup white wine (i just used white cooking wine)

1 cup veggie broth

juice of 1 lemon

2 Tbsp nutritional yeast

3-4 scallions, finely sliced

5-6 (or more!) cloves of garlic, minced

1 package oyster mushrooms, chopped into smallish pieces

1 tsp garlic powder

1/4 - 1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1 Tbsp capers, chopped (optional...i sprinkled mine on afterwards)

1 package angel hair pasta, cooked, drained and rinsed*

Make your pasta, set aside. Heat up olive oil in a medium skillet, then add scallions and cook until slightly translucent. Add mushrooms and garlic (and capers, if using), reduce heat and cook until fragrant. At some point, the mushrooms will start sticking to the pan, so deglaze with small pours of the veggie broth as needed. This will take about 3 minutes. Then, pour in wine, the rest of the broth, and lemon juice; stir in nutritional yeast and garlic powder. Cook, uncovered until reduced by about half. You want it to still be fairly liquid, but not like soup. (I reduced mine too much and there wasn't enough to cover the pasta well, so make sure you don't reduce for too long.) Once this has happened (shouldn't take long, really), stir in the parsley and cook, stirring constantly, until parsley is just wilted. You want to retain that yummy parsley flavor, so don't overcook it. Take off the heat and pour over the rinsed pasta. You may have to dig for the yummy mushroom bits when you serve, because they'll tend to fall to the bottom of the pot. Eat, enjoy!

*the reason you want to rinse your pasta for this recipe is that you don't need the extra starch on the noodles to grab onto your sauce, as you would for a tomato sauce. I usually never, ever rinse pasta, but you really need to for this one, otherwise the noodles will just soak up all the sauce and it will be dry.

Yay, a recipe! I feel like I never post enough recipes. Mostly this is just because I throw stuff in and don't measure and then forget exactly what I did. Maybe I'll start keeping track a little better. Anyway, on to some random food that we ate before new years.

thai coconut green curry

Seriously, the best way to eat kale ever. Ever! Normally, I find kale still just a tad bitter, but after simmering for awhile in this scrumptious green thai sauce, it was tender and sweet and just fabulous. The tempeh in there wasn't so great, though. Still sorta bitter, even though I cooked it from the beginning to the end of the process (about 45 minutes). Bummer!

gnocchi with okara pesto

Now this was amazing. I completely forgot what I did, except this: I had some basil, but not enough for a proper pesto. I had some pine nuts, but not enough for a proper pesto. In order to fill it out, I added about half a cup of okara to the mix, in addition to some nutritional yeast and lemon juice. And possibly other things, but alas! This dinner happened so long ago that I truly am at a loss. It was very delicious though.

crabbycake casserole w/sesame quinoa

I keep forgetting not to use frozen tofu in this recipe. It won't allow for the cakes themselves to stick together properly. In the midst of utter frustration and cakes falling apart left and right, Michael suggested we just make it into a crabbycake casserole. It worked and tasted delicious. By the way, I don't really follow that recipe above, I just use it as a guideline (mostly to remember how much Old Bay and nayonaise to add). That quinoa was cooked with tahini, nutritional yeast, spinach, tomatoes, lemon juice, and oregano. It was creamy and wonderful and tangy. I've come to really love the taste of tahini with lemon juice. Which isn't a great thing, since it's so fatty. Oh well.

ceasar salad

This is the ceasar salad from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, which my brother and sister-in-law got me for xmas. Loads of awesome recipes in that one, by the way! This ceasar dressing was...nothing like what I remember ceasar dressing tasting like, but it was still totally delicious. I used to love love love ceasar salads back in the day (which went on to become a greek salad obsession when I went vegetarian) and this is a nice reminder of them. Greek salad, you are next! I must master tofu feta (feta was the last thing I gave up before becoming vegan and I've been to scared to recreate it...I'm waiting until I fully forget what it tastes like first so I won't be disappointed haha). Anyway, we added some tomatoes to our salad because it looked a little bare with just lettuce, which tasted awesome, but added way too much acid. The dressing has a bunch of lemon juice in it, and apparently, I've developed a sensitivity to overly acidic foods. My mouth feels all scratchy and sore when I eat them. Sad. But most likely, worth it. Moving on...

the best tempeh i have ever eaten

And which of course, I forget what I put in the marinade, except that I know it had some of that sweet and hot mustard I'd just bought. I did boil it, then marinate it for like an hour, then fried it up (with the marinade) in the cast iron skillet. Delicious! That's mexi-millet and some green beans with it. Oh man, I have been craving tempeh ever since we had this. But I'm afraid I can't remember how to do it again!

sweet potato n brussels sprout chili

I kept hearing people rave about Isa's recipe for chili with brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes. At first, I was like 'meh'. But then all of a sudden, I was all 'hmmm!' instead. Naturally, instead of actually trying her recipe, I just added sweet potato chunks and brussels sprouts to my normal chili recipe (minus 2 cans of beans) because I couldn't be bothered to look at yet another chili recipe. So, I have no idea if Isa's actual recipe for this is any good, but I can tell you that chili with brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes is awesome. Hint: the sprouts hold onto all these juices that when you bite into them totally explode in your mouth! Try resisting that!

where i got the idea that sausage is good with kraut

Ohhhh yeaahhhh...I had forgotten I even ate this. That's a Tofurkey beer brat with some Ezekial bun action. Add a little kraut and some sweet hot mustard (I love that stuff!) and you are in heaven. Oh, and because you can't get enough cabbage (apparently), brussels sprouts are a key side dish.

french onion soup

Last, but not least, we have this stuff. Another recipe from the Uncheese book. I must say, I have never before in my life had french onion soup. It always seemed gross to me. Beef broth...onions as the main component...bread...cheese...blegh. But without any of those grossy things (well, bread still, not that bread is gross, but soggy bread in soup?) I decided to give it a whirl. And it, too, was really good! I got a little freaked out by the 'cheese' eventually because it kind of just made me think of wet dough that I was eating, but had I followed instructions and schmeared the 'cheese' onto french bread instead of using croutons and plopping the stuff in the soup itself, I wouldn't have been bothered by it. I know because the next day, I spread the leftover cheesy stuff onto toast and it was delicious.

Wow. That was a long post. Now it's time to start cooking again. Happy (hellish) Monday, kids. Hope you survived. I barely am, with the help of some PBR and LOST on tv. Thank goodness.

i like food, food tastes good

Get outta my way or I'll eat you!  Oh wait, no, that's a Descendents song.  I'm not gonna eat you, I promise, come back!  I'm vegan for goodness sakes.

Speaking of food though, here's some I've eaten in the past couple of days:

tofu and veggie stirfry w/soba noodles

I made this Monday night because we had some sugar snap peas and baby bok choy hanging about that really needed using up.  I made the sauce up all on my own, and hello was that stuff spicy.  Probably half of the sauce ingredients were sriracha and garlic sriracha.  It was good though.  However, I didn't remember until the moment I finished making the whole thing that we were going to have Japanese food with my brother and his fam the next night.  Oh well, they were entirely different, and both were awesome (in my humble opinion).  As for the rest of my sauce, there was ginger and garlic and sesame oil and rice vinegar and rice wine and tamari.  A bit of a hodgepodge, but that's how I roll.  No pics of the food from Hibachi.  Go find Michael's birthday post and look at that food, because we can only get one thing when we go there, which is really tasty, but not worth photographing every single time.

Did I say Michael?  Yeah, he made some good stuffs this week too.  First up:

chili on the fly

I swear he made this in 15 minutes from start to finish.  I texted at 11:40 to ask what was up for lunch and he says he's just getting out of bed (oh great, I'm thinking).  But by the time I got home at like 12:09, this shit was finished!  How?  Who knows.   He may be magical.  Anyway, I put a bunch of scallions and nutritional yeast on mine.  And it was so wonderful.  

The reason I say he may be magic is right here, really:

what!?

Yeah.  I was having a bad day at work yesterday and then I come home to this.  Ooey gooey peanut buttery, caramely, chocolatey, sweet and salty goodness.  I don't know exactly what recipe he based this off of, but it came from VegWeb and when I find out, you shall know.  But I mean, just look at it.  The heart?  The chocolate?  The wonderfulness of a sugaryawesome treat after a terrible (yet again) day at work?  This boy is priceless.  

Since he was so nice, I made him BBQ tofu for din.

bbq shmarbeeque, i just wanted brussels sprouts and polenta

The tofu was tasty, indeed (it's just a bottled sauce that got doctored up by Michael, M.D.), but the brussels sprouts and polenta were stellar.  Just steamed sprouts with EB and seasoned salt.  The polenta got worked on a bit, though.  I wanted to do soft polenta because there is no other comfort in this world so great as soft polenta.  Of course, today it was just regular polenta because it was set up, which was also fine.  I usually do the soft poppy seed polenta from Vcon, but didn't.  I made it with veggie broth, a little thyme, onion powder, smoked paprika, and some (really awesome) chili powder.  The flavor was subtle, but definitely had a southwestern feel to it, which complemented the bbq tofu nicely.  What was really great was putting some tofu on the fork, spearing a sprout, then sopping up some polenta with the whole mess.  Does anyone else do this?  When I was a kid, I was insane about keeping my food separate and only eating one item on my plate at a time before moving on to the next (saving the best for last, of course).  I still do this sometimes, but I've learned that mushing things together can be great too.  

In other news, apparently there was a squirrel hanging out on the kitchen windowsill today.

found this picture on my camera

Michael gets to have so much fun while I'm at work all day.  Darnit.  I wanna hang out with squirrels.  Of course, I'm home now and having a blast (ha) while he's at work, so I guess it works out.  Speaking of which...

I worked out today.  Can you believe it?  I can't.  I don't know where I found the willpower.  It sucked, but I'm glad I did it.  30 minutes on the elliptical (at level one, go me) during which I thought that surely I would die, and really almost for real thought I was going to during the last 5 minutes, but I hung in there.  Then I did like 20 crunches and 10 leg lifts and looked at some weights and decided I wasn't ready for that just yet.  Anyway, it's a start.  I'm counteracting this accomplishment by noshing on carrot sticks and hummus.  Which ordinarily I wouldn't care about, but I got the hummus from the deli and I can just TELL that there's a shitload of tahini in it, which makes it creamy and tasty but also way fattier than I usually make mine at home.  Oh well, there was only less that 1/4 cup left in the container anyway.  It won't kill me.

One last thing:  When buying gifts for people on etsy, the hardest thing about it is repackaging everything in the lovely wrappings that they came in after you had to sneak a look.  I'm getting pretty good at it actually.  I recommend, if you go this route, to invest in a razor (for cutting without messy scissoring) and some scotch tape (for flawlessly covering up your cutting).  Oh, and work on your ribbon tieing skills.

thanksgiving photo essay

Well!  Michael and I just rolled back into town today and I have lots of pictures from my family dinner to show you.  After one somewhat major (at the time) disaster, I managed to pull off a pretty decent dinner, with the help of my mom and Michael and maybe a little luck.  Here's what we ate:

green beans (by Mom)

mashed potatoes with EB and soymilk

gravy (by Michael)

cranberry sauce (by Mom - she used agar agar!)

steamed brussels sprouts w/seasoned salt and pepper

upside down pear cake

seitan roulades w/stuffing #1

stuffing #2

sweet potato casserole w/pecan topping

place setting with salad

thanksgiving plate (Mom made biscuits too, they're on here)

Michael set the table :)

dessert table (Mom made us a vegan pumpkin pie, it's the smaller one)

Looks like we made out ok, right?  And now for some recipe linkage (all recipes are linked from the website name):

Seitan Roulades idea came from Vegan Yum Yum.   However, I ended up using the seitan recipe from VWAV because when I first tried to make these, the seitan fell apart into a million pieces, triggering a major breakdown in my kitchen the night before Thanksgiving.  The re-do turned out fine, but needed to be baked longer than that recipe calls for...they were a tad mushy.  Also, in the stuffing, I used pistachios and oyster mushrooms instead of crimini mushrooms and chesnuts.  That stuffing was oh. so. good.

Stuffing #2 recipe came from VegWeb.  And seriously, can you ever have enough stuffing?  Mom kept saying that she really thought that we only needed one, to which I scoffed mightily and disagreed heartily.  Results?  I got massive stuffing leftovers to take home with me (which I get to eat for dinner tonight).  I think we all know who was right.  (me.)  Anyway, I didn't use all those nuts it called for.  Or apples, or raisins.  I used about 1/4 cup of pecans and 1/4 cup of dried cranberries instead.  This stuffing was also good.  In a different way.  I never realized how easy it is to make stuffing.  Jeez.  I'd make it for every meal if it wasn't for the fact that we really only eat it on holidays for a reason.  (hey - it's not that good for you apparently.)

The sweet potato casserole came straight from FatFree Vegan Kitchen.  This was really good, which came as a surprise to me, for some reason.  In my omni days, I never ate the sweet potato casserole.  Mainly because it had marshmallows on it and that seemed...weird to me.  Like...why would I want to eat something sweet with my Thanksgiving dinner?  Now I get it.  You eat a little bit of it at a time and it's wonderful.  Actually, I might eat the leftovers of this for dessert tonight.  You know.  Just to shake it up a bit.  Because it's actually sweeter than either of the desserts I ate at dinner.

I don't have the recipe for either the vegan pumpkin pie or the cranberry sauce.  But rest assured that they were both totally awesome.  And so were the biscuits.  My mom's a helluva cook.  We're alike in that way (ha!).  Oh, by the way, the consensus is that agar agar thickens like the dickens.  My mom was a little apalled at how well it worked in the cranberries and was even afraid that they would be too hard to eat!  However, they were very nice.  And cruelty-free.  I didn't even ask her to do that, she just did.  Taking culinary risks is FUN, isn't it?

Finally, the upside down pear cake.  This came from a recipe that I veganized from Body & Soul Magazine.  I can't find the recipe online, but I doubt that Martha Stewart is trolling vegan blogs to find people to prosecute for sharing veganized versions of her recipes, so I'll share it with you.  Because it was really, really delicious.  And actually, easy.  Here, go make it yourself:

2 Tbsp vegan margarine (I used EB)

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 Bosc pears, cut in half and into 18 wedges (I used those big, red pears...I'm not sure of their name.  also, you'll get more than 18 pieces out of your pears probably, just use the nicest whole slices)

1 cup AP flour

1 cup WW flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp EnerG Egg Replacer mixed into 4 Tbsp warm water (or whatever equivalent for 2 eggs you'd like...the energ worked really well here though)

1 cup soymilk with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar mixed in (buttermilk replacement)

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup walnut oil (i used canola)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract (recipe calls for 1/2 tsp, but since i didn't use the walnut oil, i upped it to 1 full tsp)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Melt margarine with 1/4 cup of the brown sugar in a 12 inch cast iron skillet over medium.  Arrange pears in a circular fashion, around the edge of the pan.  (Michael did this part for me, since I'm inept.  We used 2 layers of pears because 1 didn't seem like enough.)  Cook, without turning pears, until pears are golden underneath, 18-20 minutes (rotating pan as necessary for even browning).

2. First, mix vinegar into the soymilk and set aside.  In a large bowl, combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt; whisk to combine.  In a medium bowl, combine remaining sugar, egg replacer, soymilk mixture, applesauce, oil, and vanilla; whisk to combine (seriously, martha...i used a fork for all my 'whisking').  Add wet mixture to dry and WHISK until just combined.  What is with this whisking obsession.  Your fork works just fine if you don't have a whisk.

3.  Pour batter over pears, spread to cover.  Transfer to the oven;  bake until a toothpick comes out clean, 25-30 minutes (mine took exactly 27 minutes).  Allow to stand for 5 minutes.  Run a knife around the edge and turn out onto a serving platter.

We didn't need to run the knife around the edges because it just came out beautifully.  You all know how to turn out an upside down cake, right?  Put your plate on the cake and THEN flip the pan over, so that it's nicely nestled against the plate instead of just trying to flop it down onto one.  That could equal disaster.

Anyway, the cake is good.  Not too sweet, nice and moist, very yummy with a scoop of Rice Dream (vanilla of course).

Michael and I spent the following day at his sister's house for an after Thanksgiving get together.  She was very accomodating and made us some lovely pumpkin/bean burgers that were really good and also some gnocchi with a zesty veggie tomato sauce.  Oh!  And an apple crisp that was seriously delicious.  The prize winning food of the day though, was the giant trashbag-full of chex mix that we all made together.  This chex mix involved 3 big boxes of cereal, 1 giant bag of pretzels, a can of nuts, 2 sticks of margarine, hot sauce, soy sauce, and seasoned salt.  There was plenty left over for us to take some home (yay!).  I don't have the recipe for the pumpkin burgers just yet, but when I get it from her I will share it with you.  They were a nice mixture of savory and sweet.  Also, I was being really lazy and didn't take any pictures.  I was exhausted from the day before!

Anyway, I hope you all had lovely UnTurkey Days as well.  Mine turned out very nicely.  But I'm glad it's over, yeah?