Vegan Mofo day 7: get your orange on.

It's getting to be that time of year when I get super excited about all things orange and sweet and fabulous. Pumpkins and winter squash, my friends. This past weekend I attended the Pumpkin Festival in Milton, WV with Michael and our friends Becca and Max. If you remember from last year, we mostly go in order to buy locally made foodstuffs like cornmeal and pumpkin butter and salad dressings and whatnot. This year there were pumpkin milkshakes...everywhere. Michael and I got a little sad that we couldn't have one, so a couple days ago I got the fixings to make them ourselves!

punkin.

Also showcased is some lovely pumpkin butter from the festival. The milkshakes were super easy to make...I didn't measure (of course), but it's just vanilla soy ice cream, pumpkin puree, some soymilk, and a little bit of pumpkin pie spice. Yum! They were especially yummy paired with some vegan gingersnaps we found at the store. Next time I want to make a blizzard-style thing with a thicker mixture and some crumbled gingersnaps added to the whole shebang. This was a perfect treat on an evening where my throat was feeling crappy and sore. And probably healthy too - I mean you never know.

punkin's favorite cousin, butternut squash

I am a huge butternut squash fan. The eating of them, that is. I really hate dealing with the preparation, but luckily, Michael made this dinner for me on the first evening that I was feeling sick. He roasted the squash with some olive oil and just a pinch of cinnamon sprinkled on top. It was perfectly cooked...tender and sweet. Mmmm! He also whipped up the lemony roasted potatoes from Veganomicon and a felafel loaf from a box mix to which he added some chickpeas, peppers, onions, and tomatillos. Luckily, my cold is mostly in my chest (luckily?) so that I can still taste stuff. This was an excellent and filling meal. Those potatoes are spectacular. If you haven't tried them yet, you should!

super sick meal

Another night when I was still feeling icky and Michael wasn't feeling too hot either, we just had a simple supper of storeboughts. That's butternut squash soup from Imagine, some roasted pine nut hummus, and Triscuits. Super easy to make and to eat. Sometimes we just don't feel like cooking. It happens, people.

almost as good as winter squash - sweet potatoes

This is something I made before we got sick, but it is completely worth mentioning and also falls under the category of wonderful orange foods. This is the cumin-lime tofu from VegNews. You guys should totally sign up for their newsletters and join the recipe club, because they send you all these awesome recipes straight to your inbox and they rule! This tofu was out of this world delicious. They suggested pairing it with sweet potatoes, so I made a mash of sweet potatoes and a regular potato or two. That's lightly steamed broccoli with lemon zest in the back. I can't wait to make this one again. So good! I can't link to the recipe because it's only in my email and not on their site, but that's just another reason why you should sign up yourself!

Feel like making something orange for dinner? What are some of your favorite ways to cook these squashes? I need suggestions, so I don't get sick of them by January!

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.

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?

Vegan Mofo day 7: a pretty yummy dinner...and COOKIES!

Last night was a bit of a hodge podge that ended up coming together rather nicely.  And it looked like this:

minted couscous, mashed sweet potatoes w/kale, cajun spiced tofu

The tofu recipe came from Yellow Rose Recipes. It was pretty good...  Not as flavorful as I would have liked, but the texture was lovely.  I think my new favorite way to make tofu is to broil it.  It comes out all chewy and lovely, but in so much less time than baking!  But you really need a flavortastic coating for it to chill in because the less time it cooks, the less time it has to soak up yumminess.  I guess I could marinade things.  But I didn't think of it last night.

it almost looks like breaded fish here...weird!

The minted couscous was based off a recipe from my new Linda McCartney cookbook.  I changed it though, for ingredient availability and the fact that couscous does not need 2/3 cup of olive oil..  EVAR!  I'll put in my revised recipe for this at the bottom of this post.  It was pretty tasty.  I had the leftovers for breakfast and lunch today...   mostly because I'm lazy, but also because it was good.

there is just something about couscous...  maybe it's the way it gets stuck in my throat when i eat it too fast, or maybe it's the delightfully flufftastic texture.  tossup.

I had some kale in my fridge and a big bunch of sweet potatoes from the farmers market, so I whipped up another batch of Mashed Sweet Potatoes w/Kale.  I know I posted a recipe for this once before, but I don't feel like looking for it, mostly because the recipe pretty much IS the title, except for the addition of some garlic, shallots, and a little margarine.

best way to trick myself to eat kale

Finally, I stumbled across a recipe for Cashew Butter Cookies on Cupcake Punk's blog last week.  I had recently bought some cashew butter and loathed it in sammiches (it was just...wrong for some reason) and this seemed the perfect use for at least part of my jar.  That crap is too expensive not to use!

these adorable cookies are a big hit with omnis too!

That's right, I took some to work today.  They gobbled them up and were practically begging for more.  Unfortunately, the recipe only makes about a dozen cookies, so I had only brought in enough for 1 each.  I'm going to make these again soon, though, because they were ultra easy to make, taste fabulous (so much more...sophisticated than peanut butter...not to knock the ol' PB...but sometimes you want a grownup cookie, and this is it), and is a good way to use up the remainder of that cashew butter just hanging out in my cupboard.  Go make some!

And now, for my recipe:

Minted Couscous

1 cup couscous

2.5 cups water

drizzle of olive oil

juice and zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup diced sweet pepper (bell or otherwise, preferrably not green..go red, yellow, or orange)*

4 scallions, finely chopped

4-6 Tbsp chopped fresh mint

2-3 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Boil the water, then add the couscous.  Remove from heat, cover, and let sit until water has absorbed (about 8-10 minutes).  Add olive oil, zest and lemon juice; stir.  Stir in peppers, mint, and parsley, then add salt and pepper to taste.  I like mine salty.

* i used 2 sweet fresh banana peppers (red and orange), but 1 bell pepper would be about 1/2 cup

Simple!  Delicious!  You have no excuse not to make it!

My apologies to Linda McCartney for not wanting to be a fat fuck and add almost a cup of expensive ass olive oil to my side dish.  what!

Oh, and finally, as promised, the ingredients on the pumpkin butter: Pumpkin.  Brown Sugar.  White Sugar.  Lemon.  Water.  Spices.  'spices?'  yes, 'spices'.  So I guess you're on your own for that one!  

Oh, wait again.  Someone in my comments asked what cheese sauce I use on my nachos...  I start with this recipe, then add lots of cumin and chili powder to make it mexistyle.  It's even better if you blend in some diced tomatoes!  Oh, and you'll have to cook that on the stove to thicken it up.

That is all for now.  No dinner plans tonight, but I'm sure we'll think of something.

a variety of dinners and some semi bad photos I took of them

So I have this problem where I drink a little bit before and during cooking so that by the time I need to take pictures of the food, I'm too tipsy to hold the camera steady. Since I eat dinner at like 11 pm every night (ugh!) the lighting is bad too. Therefore, if you ever wonder why sometimes my photos suck hard even though I have a masters in photography, now you know. Plus, I'm still not an expert at digital photography and the fact that the shutter doesn't click as soon as I want to, although my dad's camera is much better than the OTHER one I was using. Anyway. I just uploaded a bunch of craptastic pictures and wanted to explain ahead of time. On the plus side, there is someone who is happy about the fact that Michael and I drink a lot of beer:

ghostface's new home

And so he won't get jealous, here's Bill Murray, looking particularly evil:

Ok, so first off, a few photos of random stuff I've made that haven't fit into other posts so far. This one is a nice salad with calendula flowers (edible!). The petals are kind of buttery tasting. But don't eat the middle parts, they're just there for show for the photo.

mmmm flowers

This is one of our favorite, junky, go-to meals when no one feels like cooking. CroissantDogs! It's highly processed and not good for you. Best served with lots of ketchup and spicy mustard.

This is obviously fairly simple... Just wrap up some soydogs in croissants and bake them according to the croissant package. It's a nice twist on pigs in a blanket (ew!) with the flakiness of that croissant. It's better than it should be, actually. This time, we used Worthington's Linketts. WHAT! They are so good. Even better than Yves, despite their creepy light pink coloring. Michael says that's how real hot dogs look, but I'm not so sure.

croissantdogs

Oh, and this is a chocolate pie I made for my grandmas' (plural!) birthday party. My one grandma used to be like... a baking expert and somehow I managed to catch this gene in my DNA. Yay! The only problem is that her best best best recipe is a chocolate pie that mostly consists of cook n serve pudding and butter and milk. And I veganized it, much to my family's surprise. I even made the crust. I suppose you want the recipe....

TOO BAD! It's a family secret, sorry. Well, the orginial recipe was a secret, and this is based on the original and tastes just like it. So... if you want to come over for dinner, I'll make it and you can taste it for yourself. Oh...maybe someday I'll post it. But not right now.

grandma's chocolate pie. VEGANIZED. check!

Ok, what's next.... *sigh*

(I can only upload pictures in batches of 5 so I might need to take a break here)

Remember how I got even MORE swiss chard at the farmers market? In a valiant effort to eat more leafy greens...this is what I keep doing. I buy them, and then have no idea how to make them edible. I can't stand the kale that's sold in our grocery stores (it's so bitter!) and the one time I tried just cooking chard, I made it really vinegary, and I kind of hate the taste of vinegar by itself, so for some reason that scared me off from cooking it like that. Anyway, so we stuck to stuffing it for this round. Also, Michael did saute some up that was really good, so maybe he should be the one who cooks it from now on. But this time, we went south of the border with Mexi Swiss Chard Rollups! Um... all the photos I took of prep turned out terrible, so you'll have to just listen to how we ate them with and what's inside them.

more creative swiss chard solutions

We put some brown rice with cumin in our rice cooker and let that cook up. After it was finished, we mixed in a can of kidney beans and seasoned to taste. Again, blanche the chard to make it easy to work with. Then, just a spoonful or two of the rice and beans went into the leaves and we rollllled em up and baked them at 350F for maybe 30-40 minutes. That's Follow Your Heart mozzarella on top. By the way, it only melts truly when you cover it with foil. We did not know this until this point, so foil yours. Served it all up with some homemade salsa and guacamole on a small bed of tortilla chips.

Next is something I AM SUPER PROUD OF!!!! No really, after I made this, I danced around the kitchen in complete ecstasy for about 10 minutes. And me dancing is like a combination of Elaine and Michelle Tanner. Bad. But humorous! Anyway, this is Sausage, adapted from Vegan Dad's recipe. I used a little less fennel, because I'm not a huge fan of the licorice taste, and added some thyme. Oh, and we didn't have pinto beans, so we used butter beans instead. Um, but, seriously.... amazing. You won't know what hit you. And it was so easy! Ok, enough gushing. We used these in a stew that was delicious, but photographed like babypoop, so I'm not showing it. There were lots of veggies, the sausage, a lot of soymilk, 'beef' broth, and Earth Balance. Rich, to say the least. But delicious.

better than any sausage on the planet

When we went camping, we took one of these links and sliced it very thin, left it in the oven on about 100F for around 2-3 hours and ended up with jerky! Which we took camping. Mmm.

Zucchini Bread Muffins

My buddy AllyChristine from VegWeb gave me this recipe. She sent me these muffins when we had a package exchange a couple months ago, and I literally needed the recipe. Like, I needed it. And you need it. She dusted hers with cocoa powder, which was awesome. But I was lazy, plus I don't have a sifter, so I didn't do that.

INGREDIENTS

3 tbs ground flaxseed or 4.5 teaspoons (tsps) ener-g egg (I used ener-g)

.5 cup water or 6 tbs if using ener-g

1 cup neutral oil or 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I actually used 3/4 C applesauce, 1/4 C canola oil)

1 tbs white distilled vinegar (I used redwine vinegar here cause i didn't have white and it was fine)

2 cups gran. sugar (I used Sucanat here)

2 cups grated zucchini (no need to peel)

2 tsps vanilla

3 cups unbleached AP or whole wheat pastry flour (I use the latter)

2 tsps cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

one tsp salt

Preheat to 325. Lightly grease 8x4x2 loaf pans, 4 mini loaf pans, or 2 muffin tins. In food processor or bowl (I just use a whisk), combine flaxseed and water...or ener-g and water. Whip until thick and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add oil, vinegar, and sugar, and combine. Stir in the zucchini and vanilla. If using food processor, transfer oil/vinegar/sugar mix to large bowl before stirring in zucchini and vanilla.

In separate bowl, sift flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Add nuts and raisins if using. Stir dry into wet until just combined. Divide into prepared pans, and bake 60-70 for standard loaves, 40-45 for mini, 30-35 for muffins (I did like 25). Check with toothpick!

Last night we made lasagna. The sauce is sauteed onion, zucchini, squash, and crumblers with some of our homemade marinara and some storebought as well.

oh yum.

So the noodles are layered with the sauce, some spinach, and my basil/spinach/tofu ricotta (huge bunch of basil, 3 garlic cloves, package of spinach, extra firm tofu, salt blended in a food processor) with a little Follow Your Heart mozzarella on top. This time, we foiled the top so the cheese would melt. But halfway through cooking I wanted to unfoil it in order to brown the cheesiness, but when we looked only half of the cheese was melty. I said it would be fine. It turned out just like the cheese on the mexi chard rollups. So guess which side of the lasagna I got to eat, since it was my fault? haha...I don't care, it was still delicious.

Ok, and finally I have a little Indian food for your tasting happiness. I was in a curry mood. And I had a lot of beets and sweet potatoes. This resulted in sweet potato and beet curry salad. Which was not good until the next day, but the next day, it was sooooo good. So if you make this, make it a day ahead and refrigerate until you're ready to eat it. I needed something to go with it, so I whipped up a quick Chana Masala to go over some brown rice. Chana Masala = chickpeas, onions, garlic, tomato paste, curry powder, soymilk, and salt. You can find a recipe you like online, yes? It's really simple.

Indian food does not photograph particularly well. especially when the photographer is a tad tipsy. oh well.

Here's the recipe for the Sweet Potato and Beet Curry Salad:

sweet potatoes (cubed)

beets (peeled and cubed)

tahini

plain soy yogurt

scallions (thinly sliced)

dijon mustard

red curry powder

a tiny amount of garam masala (optional)

I know there are no amounts up there. But this is pretty versatile, and you can just use as many beets and sweet potatoes as you like, then adjust the rest to fit. Ok, so cook your beets and sweet potatoes first. Note that it takes longer to cook beets than cubed sweet potatoes, so adjust your cooking time for this. I boiled all mine together and my potatoes were a tad mushy and the beets were a tad crunchy (they went on the stove for about 25 minutes, so I'd say 15-20 minutes for the potatoes, around 30 for the beets). Once the beets are cooked, peel them and cut them. To the lovely root veggies, add your tahini first. You will want to have like... a 2:1 tahini:yogurt ratio, however much you use. So, more tahini, ok? Then just add your mustard, scallions, curry (I used around 3-4 Tbsp here, but remember that RED curry is spicy, so be careful - do it to taste [and remember that the flavor will intensify and get better the next day]). Salt to taste, give it a really good stir, and plop in the fridge for several hours.

The sweetness of the sweet potatoes and the beets (and the earthiness of both) goes really well with the curry flavoring, while the tahini and yogurt make this creamy creamy creamy. You will be pleasantly surprised, I promise!

I'm done for now. I will (i will i will) post about our camping trip next, as I'm pretty much caught up on our meals now. I might even do it later tonight. But my hands are a little tired right now. Go make dinner! But don't drink so much you can't photograph it...