Maybe Local Vegan!

Pre-Hawaii Post

2009-08-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, we're going to Hawaii for a week! Woo-hoo! To the Big Island and Kauai, because I know you were wondering. I've never been to either island, so I'm really looking forward to it. We're going with my parents, so we'll have a bit of granny-nannying help, which is such a blessing! Since we all anticipate fairly limited vegan options on both islands, we chose to stay in condos with kitchens, so we can at least cook up our own healthy meals and pack them for day trips.

Anyway, back to what we've been eating lately.

Crazy-Good Balsamic Glazed Tomato Sauce, Brown Rice Spirals, and lightly salted Cucumber Slices

Seriously, this tomato sauce was out of this world!!! It's from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison...I think it was supposed to be a tomato side dish, but mine turned completely saucy (which was good since I wanted to toss it with pasta anyway!)

Basically, it's:
1 1/2 lbs tomatoes (ours were half backyard and half CSA tomatoes!)
2 T butter (EB, of course)
3 T balsamic vinegar
1 shallot, minced (I subbed 3-4 local cloves garlic)
s&p
(I added a handful of torn basil leaves from the backyard for kicks).

Slice/chop tomatoes in wedges. Melt the butter over highish heat until foamy. Add the tomatoes and cook for @ 3 minutes, flipping a few times. Add the shallot/garlic, balsamic and cook for a few minutes, shaking the pan over the heat until glazy. I added the basil at the end and seasoned with s&p to taste. OMGYUM!

Stuffed Eggplant with Salad and Citrus-Mint Vinaigrette

So, this was a major disappointment in flavor. But I will say this: I LOVE my pressure cooker. It is so handy. I cooked the brown rice in it in 12 minutes (probably 20 minutes total with depressurizing). Same with the lentils: 5 minutes of cooking and probably 5-8 more of depressurizing. STILL. So freaking fast, it is the bomb.

This recipe was from Local Bounty, which I've had luck with in the past, so I'm not sure what happened here. It was just totally flavorless. Basically, it was baked eggplant (scraped out of the shell), brown rice, brown lentils, mint, basil, oregano, lemon juice...and I think that's it. I added some salt to try to salvage, but nosuchluck. The leftovers were salvaged by adding balsamic vinegar and some flax oil, so it wasn't a total loss. But it was kind of a lot of work for very little flavor. The salad was great though!

Tempeh Piccata

So I LOVE piccata. And I also love coming home from my meditation group to a dinner of piccata that my husband cooked! So he used green garlic stuffed olives instead of kalamata - who's counting, right?! It was soo good. Local tempeh "breaded" in brown rice flour and fried, served over local mashed yukon gold potatoes (with way too much EB, it was decadent), and steamed local green, purple and wax beans. Oh, and of course with lemony, capery, olivy piccata over the whole thing. OMGLUV.

Oatmeal Pancakes with Celestial Cream and Fresh Local Fruit

This was a yummy summer breakfast treat! The pancake recipe is adapted from Vive Le Vegan and it's so simple: quick oats blended into flour in the food processor, some baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, salt, vanilla soymilk, and canola oil. It needs to stand a bit longer than normal pancake batter, because the oat flour needs a while to soak up the liquid. But they are simple and tasty and cook up just like normal pancakes. The Celestial Cream is out of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan and is soooo good and a fun, more protein-filled alternative to just plain maple syrup (since it has silken tofu in it).

A Few Tostadas

I've been loving these tostadas lately! We have them weekly with whatever bean we've pressure cooked that week (chickpeas above) or sometimes leftover tofu scramble (pictured below). I usually use this recipe from Happy Herbivore for chickpea tacos to season the beans, and we top them with homemade guacamole, shredded lettuce, salsa, and my secret ingredient: Hot and Cool Drizzle. All it is is Wildwood Garlic Aioli mixed with some pureed canned Chipotle in adobo! It is so delicious though and kicks up the whole thing (idea stolen from Taco Bell, although theirs wasn't vegan.) Oh, and the whole thing resides on a corn tortilla.

Chickpea Ragout over Brown Rice

I used this recipe as a jumpling off point, and it was really good! I think almost everything (minus the mushrooms and rice) was local for this dish.

CSA Cucumber Salad with Citrus-Mint Vinaigrette

CSA Lettuce and Backyard Tomato Salad

Let me just say that if you have Vive Le Vegan you HAVE to try this vinaigrette! I ate it on everything for a week at least. It's so fabulous and summery.

Crunchy Tempeh Crumbles, Brown Rice and Green Beans with Miso-Walnut Sauce

This was a Mark Bittman bastardization from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. But it was SO good. We ate it on one of the hottest days of this year, when Seattle was over 100F and we all thought we were in hell because no one has a/c? Yeah, then. Thank the pressure cooker for not heating up the kitchen too too much. The green beans are CSA and the tempeh is local. The Miso-Walnut sauce is AWESOME and I will most certainly be making it again (possibly without ginger next time, but it was nice, too).

Backyard Garden Update

We've been kind of bad about our backyard garden, but it's still providing us with some yummy produce, like fresh herbs (basil, oregano, chives, thyme and rosemary) and tomatoes. There's broccoli that's actually flowering and really delicious tiny strawberries.

Cherry Tomatoes

Late Bloomer Basil

Giant Basil

We pulled three other plants just like this and left them at my mom's in a vase.

Tiger-y Tomato

These guys kind of stay dark green on top. They're smallish and tasty!

Orange Tomato

Have you gathered yet that I have no idea what any of the tomato varieties actually are?! :) These guys are totally orange when ripe and super firm.

3 Broccolis, 3 Strawberries

Quinalt Strawberries

Silas Sampling Strawberries

I think about 5 have made it in the house. We just can't wait to eat them!

Hope everyone is enjoying the fabulous produce that August brings! We are off to pick up a CSA box of Corn, Yukon and Fingerling Potatoes, Garlic, Broccoli, Cherry Tomatoes and Collard Greens, along with Blueberries, Strawberries, Purple Plums and Peaches. Yum!!! And we have to eat all of it before Sunday. Wish us luck!

Long Overdue, Super Productive Update!

2009-08-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

So, it's been two months and I haven't updated. Nor have I probably commented much on my fellow food bloggers' comings and goings lately. Sorry 'bout that. I have a pretty good excuse this time, though:

I'M PREGNANT!

Yes, if all goes well, we'll be welcoming our new addition sometime in Mid-February. Woo-hoo!

I'm into the second trimester now, so I'm starting to feel A LOT better. I wasn't terribly sick like some ladies get (I'm lucky, I know) but I had NO interest in cooking or really in eating or looking at food. Which was ironic, since I needed to eat at least every two hours or I would feel nauseated. Fun times. I was also Exhausted with a capital E. I'm sooooo glad to be in the wonderful world of the second trimester. Where I can eat as much as I want (because my stomach isn't the size of a tic tac like it will be in the 3rd trimester). No heartburn yet. It's all golden until November!!!

Silas is very excited about it all and has named the baby "Cheese." Strange, since we're vegan, but hey, 3 year olds have their own logic. He's requested a sister, and we told him we'd see what we could do. (Aside: the boy LOVES older ladies. By that, I'm talking 4 1/2 or so. LOVES THEM. It's so funny/cute/nervewracking - we have to keep talking about personal space. ;) We'll be trying to see the gender at the 18-20 wk ultrasound, probably in late September.

Anyway, now that I actually can look at food again without crying, I should be able to make it on here a little more frequently.

CSA!
We're in the height of lovely CSA season. I'm really loving our CSA this year - it's one that allows you to choose what's in your box every week, which was seriously a lifesaver the past few months. I can't imagine all the greens I would have wasted from the standard CSA box. Shudder. We also get a small fruit share, which is the bomb! We've been diggin' on fresh local organic blueberries, apricots, peaches, and rainier cherries (the BEST EVER!!!) for the past few weeks. I've also been really into cold cucumber salads lately, and we get some pretty awesome cucumbers from the farm. They make Chad blush, to be honest.

GARDENS!
The gardens have done remarkably well for the first year! Our OR garden has produced quite a bit of turnips (who knew?). We thinned them out several weeks ago and enjoyed a huge bumper crop of turnip greens - had to foist some on my grandmother! We also thinned out our heirloom lettuce and had some great salads! We thinned the pac choi, but I was through with greens at that point, and unfortunately those just got composted. Damn pregnancy aversions!

We also got quite a few snap peas and shelling peas and several tomatoes so far! The tomatoes are doing MUCH better than anyone thought; they're not the easiest crop to grow in the Pacific NW, but they've surprised everyone.

Our single most prolific vegetable so far though? You guessed it, zucchini!
We've had a heat wave last week (really, really hot - in Seattle, we had the highest recorded temperature OF ALL TIME. Yeah. And we have no a/c.) Anyway, the zucchini LOVED IT. My mom picked these from 4 plants yesterday!!! I swear they grow a foot a day, it is crazy.

Still coming up: green bush beans, corn (not sure this will actually be productive, but it's growing!), possibly head lettuce, maybe a second sowing of broccoli, possibly cilantro, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Oh, and maybe pumpkin? Oh, and green cabbage! And carrots!!!

We've had our share of failures, including spinach, kale, swiss chard, broccoli, and cucumbers that failed to germinate. Better luck next time, right? And it might not have been too bad of a thing, seeing how I had a total greens aversion for the past 3 months!

Our Seattle soil-bag and container garden is growing pretty well - we were away for 10 days so it suffered a little without water, but still doing remarkably well. I think the lettuce is done (it looks burnt, but it never bolted...weird?). We are actually getting some real broccoli!!! Strawberries are still growing, amazingly. Tomatoes and basil still pretty good, although the basil is trying it's hardest to flower. Must make boatload of pesto SOON!

Our plum tree is also super productive this year and I think the plums are just about ready. I have no idea what to do with them all! I think we might donate some to the food bank. I wish I had my sh*t together enough to can some jam, but I'm not sure I have the motivation now. Fingers crossed!

MEAL PLAN!
Here's what's on the menu for the week. I'm not assigning days because I'm not feeling like nailing it down. Note: Chad's been feeling wonky lately and had some allergy testing done (suspected it was wheat/gluten). The test results look kind of inconclusive to us, but he'll discuss them with the naturopath on Wednesday. For now, we're trying to avoid wheat. :)

Bean of the Week: Pinto
Grain of the Week: Brown Jasmine Rice

-Green Beans and Crunchy Crumbled Tempeh with Walnut-Miso Sauce, over brown rice (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)

-Soba Noodle Salad with Ginger Peanut Sauce (current issue of Vegetarian Times)

-Brown Rice Pasta Bake (incorporating leftover ratatouille, cashew ricotta), salad

-Gimme Chimis using the pintos and brown rice tortillas(Eat, Drink and Be Vegan), salad

Hope you all are staying cool and eating well! XO

Garden Update 5/31/09

2009-05-31T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty productive day in the OR garden - we got Jubilee corn planted (a little late perhaps, but we've got our fingers collectively crossed), bush beans, cucumbers and summer squash. We also mulched all the paths with cut grass to try to keep weeds down, and we mulched the strawberry plants and peas with it, too. (Read about it in Mother Earth News).

Pictorial updates:

Jubilee corn, 4 seeds per hill

4 hills of cucumbers (far), 4 hills of summer squash

Green bush beans; 1/3rd of row planted. Planting next third in 2 weeks, and the final third the following 2 weeks.

What is eating our Pac Choi? Any ideas on how to handle it appreciated.

Peas! We mulched them today and thinned them a bit (and ate the thinned plants in our salad!)

Turnips! I can't believe these guys are already germinated. They share a row with carrots, although we've got no carrots sprouting yet. :(

One of my dad's 3 peach trees! See the cute tiny furry peaches?

The Growing Challenge: Check-in!

2009-05-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

So, it seems I kind of can't have a challenge to work on. Actually, this isn't true! When I was reading Melinda's great blog, One Green Generation the other day, I saw her two challenges that she is running: The Growing Challenge and The Growing Challenge: Seed to Seed. Go there now and read about them!

I just signed up for the main challenge, although it would be cool to commit to saving seeds - so we just might do that, too! I'm excited to have a reason to document this and share it with others.

I wanted to update on our Oregon garden, which we're doing mostly from seed. With photos!!!

Overview: Right half of garden
Left Half of Garden
Right side, row 1: From left to right, Leeks, Scallions, Spinach (all almost invisible!) I'm a little worried about this row, it's not looking too active at this point.

Here's some spinach, I think...
Right side, row 2: Heirloom Lettuce, Pac Choi, Cabbage

Lettuce!
Pac Choi!
Cabbage!
Right side, row 3 (inside half): Snap Peas, Shelling Peas
Peas, glorious peas!
Left half (just planted yesterday, first 2.5 rows). First row is chard, kale, head lettuce (my dad requested it); second row is 2/3rds carrots, 1/3rd turnips; 3rd row (the wet half) is broccoli. :)
The back row:

Tomatoes! Three plants that we purchased as starts:

Strawberries! We have six plants, purchased as starts.

Look!!!
The tiller/waterer/toddler wrangler, extraordinaire.

So we still have LOT of work to do. Some of it I worry can't go in yet because the soil's not warm enough (note to self: buy a thermometer to check). Things like cucumber, summer squash, winter squash, bush beans, corn (all from seed). Silas and I are actually here in Oregon this week, so I might get some more planting done (if I can con my dad into re-tilling some of the rows). The dirt is SO freaking clumpy - it's like dirt rocks. There are a LOT of earthworms though, so I'm hoping that's a good sign. We did work a few bags of compost into the rows, so I'm hoping that will help a tiny bit. But I know this first year will probably be pretty rough because of the lack of organic matter in the soil. But we had to start somewhere!

Oh, and PLEASE! We are new at this, so if you have any pointers for us, we'd love to hear it!

What's on the Menu

2009-05-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

My menu is abbreviated this week, because we're going out of town starting Thursday afternoon through Monday. Part of the time we'll be staying with my parents and cooking there, but we'll also be attending our first Unschooling Conference, Life is Good - we're so excited! So we'll be staying at the hotel two of those nights for the fully steeped con experience.

Monday: Tofu Pineapple Curry over Brown Basmati Rice (recipe from Vegan Express - new!)

Tuesday: Gimme Chimis (out of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan - one of our faves!) and Mashed Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

Wednesday: African Peanut Soup (from Local Bounty - new specific recipe, though we've had versions of this soup before)

Thursday: Leftover smorgasboard

What I've Been Up To...

I just took that bad boy out of the oven a few minutes ago. Yay, bread! It's half whole wheat and half (local!) white. I made some last week and it was really, really good and probably cost me less than $2 to make.

Farmer's Market, Revisited
This weekend we made it to the local farmer's market, and boy howdy has it picked up since the last time I was there! I was there probably a month or maybe a month and a half ago (it's year-round) but man, was I disappointed. There were so few veggies and they were SO expensive! And tiny. I can't even remember what I bought, but I walked away quite a bit poorer and much more down-trodden than when I arrived. Not so yesterday! Yesterday it was positively bustling with fresh food fervor - people lined up for local organic plant starts, veggies were piled high and inspiring, there was a band playing...and it didn't hurt that it was a gorgeous, sunny day! So I stuck to my meal plan and only bought a few food items, namely, some fresh asparagus, some spring carrots, an awesome mix of salad greens, including baby spinach and pea shoots (!!!), and some spring onions and garlic.

For lunch, I made Asparagus Leek Curry out of Local Bounty.
It was crazy good! I made a few substitutions: instead of leeks I used some of the spring onions and garlic, and I didn't want to open a can of coconut milk (it only called for 1 cup) so I used one of the plain coconut milk yogurts that have been haunting my fridge for a while now. The results were really, really good! I would probably use regular coconut milk next time (the yogurt has a sweetness to it, despite being labeled "plain). The spice combo of this recipe is off the hook - turmeric, cumin, cardamom, cayenne - really really amazing. We ate this over white Jasmine rice. And I was super proud of myself for using some previously frozen homecooked chickpeas instead of opening a new can. Bonus!

Leftover Transformation Shenanigans
I didn't get a picture of this meal, but I gotta say I *LOVE* transforming leftovers (that nobody wants) into new meals that we all do a little dance for! Last night for dinner I was poking around the fridge trying to figure out what we would eat then and what we would be eating for lunch today. The leftover Rustic Black-Eyed Peas and Mushrooms were glaring at me - I knew it was time to eat them or freeze them, and I honestly didn't think that I liked them enough to freeze them. So, to the cookbooks I went. I dug out Passionate Vegetarian and found a recipe for Hillbilly Hummus - and it saved the day!!! I threw my beans, some peanut butter, some of the spring garlic, salt, apple cider vinegar and some sage in the food processor, and voila! Totally new meal. We had the hummus in whole wheat pita pockets with some Chow Chow (also been haunting my fridge forever) and some of the fresh salad mix. What hummus was left over was devoured with the aid of tortilla chips. And my fridge is haunted no more!

Crazy Container and Topsoil-Bag Garden
On our farmer's market extravaganza we also purchased a bunch of plant starts (6 alpine strawberry, 3 (or 9?!?) broccoli starts, and 6 basil). Yay! We planted the strawberries and broccoli in bags of topsoil.

After we transplanted the broccoli, we started to wonder if there were more than one plant in each start...here's a close-up, can anyone weigh in? We think there might have actually been 3 starts in each one...to be continued.

We also had three tomato starts that we planted and I transplanted my perennial herbs (rosemary, oregano, chives) to bigger pots. (The thyme looks bad, but I think it's going to rally!)

Some of the basil went in the tomato containers, others are on their own in other containers.

We even planted some lettuce seed in two bags of topsoil. Oh, and some nasturtium seeds in a weird container left by the former tenants (trellis included!). So we're on our way with our goofy garden. Next up: peas! We just need more dirtbags. Heh heh.

Super Duper Bonus Points to anyone who can tell me what kind of flowers are growing behind the lettuce bags (the red ones). Peonies? I'll get a close up soon. There are a lot of mystery flowers on this property. Bless the former owner, she had a green thumb and we now we are lucky enough to reap the rewards.

Meal Planning: Wicked Awesome

2009-05-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

So I have stuck to the meal plan all week, and I have to say that it pretty much rocks! Here are some (subpar) photos to chronicle our culinary delights this week:

Rustic Black-Eyed Peas and Mushrooms over (Leftover) Biscuits, with Simple Sauteed Kale

This was adapted from Rustic White Beans and Mushrooms from Vcon. I had planned to make it and then when I went to soak my white beans the night before I came to find that I had none. But I did have B-E Peas, so I figured, why not? I always leave the carrots in this dish, because we are big fans of cooked carrots. I had planned on serving this over the leftover Coconut Rice, but biscuits from Sunday were glaring at me from their place on the counter, so I dutifully heeded their call.

Silas had his beans earlier, and enjoyed some apple slices on the side.
Nearly Instant Thai Coconut Corn Soup
This is from Vegan Express, which I checked out the library recently, and it was AWESOME. I was kind of freaked by how much coconut milk was in it, but then I just got over it and enjoyed it. Plus it makes a lot - we froze 3 cups. Oh, and heres a mama tip: I knew Silas would turn his nose up at this because of the sliced scallions and red pepper, so I broke out my favorite kitchen utensil: the immersion blender. I blended his portion up and it was so pretty and orangey pink. He thoroughly enojoyed his "chowder."

Two Grilled Pizzas

I officially love my bread machine. It's so easy to dump in the ingredients for dough and come back an hour and a half later to make it into something delicious. In this case, I divided the dough in what I thought was half but turned out to be more like 1/3 & 2/3rds. I threw the dough on the hot grill while I prepped the toppings. One was leftover pesto (taken out of the freezer earlier this week), local sun-dried tomatoes and sliced kalamata olives. The other was jarred marinara, with sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms, kale and a touch of white wine. OMGYUM! They were both sooooo good.

Silas kept saying, "'Hank you mama, for the dewishus food!" You're welcome, little buddy.
In other news, I took a Thai cooking class last night with Pranee at PCC - so fun! The food was so good - grilled shiitakes, homemade red curry paste made into Phanang Portabello Curry which was served over Grilled Eggplant, Stir-Fried Lemongrass Rice with Tofu and Edamame, some delicious Prik See Ew (a spicy soy sauce condiment - my new love!), and a delicious Pineapple-Lemongrass punch. Pranee was a really fun instructor with lots of good stories. She kept saying, "See? It's so easy," while we looked on in total bewilderment. I mean, it was great to demystify techniques (like how to deal with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves!) but it also looked pretty complicated to the Thai cooking novice. So I had to giggle every time she said that. But I'm sure, like everything, that with practice it will become easy. Just not quite yet. I predict that these recipes will appear on a menu plan soon!

Mindful Home Goals: Update!

So this week I've been really successful at sticking to some new goals. Here's what I decided to officially concentrate on this past week:

1. Keep the kitchen sink empty and shiny - this means dealing with dishes immediately. What a great one this is. It's so simple, and yet so profoundly affects my mood. It's so wonderful to go into the kitchen and have no guilt-inducing dirty dishes staring back at me. It's amazing to have every tool I could need to prepare the next meal ready and clean and waiting. It's just plain groovy to have a clean kitchen. And, like anything, it's easy to do if you stay on top of it. A few times I've wanted to leave a dish or pot in there to deal with later, but I forced myself to just deal with it now. And it only takes a few minutes! Really! Cleaning as you go is so much faster - 2 or 3 minutes here and there over the day instead of 30 minutes at once, where I stand feeling resentful and grumbly. I really thing that this goal (combined with meal planning) can save me a ton of money, because when I have a sinkful of dirty dishes, many times my mind has screamed "GET TAKE OUT!" instead of dealing with them.

2. Make the Beds Daily - another weird one, but like the clean sink, it greatly improves the overall feel of the house. It just feels more peaceful and streamlined to have made beds. And it takes like 2 minutes. It's a good psychic investment.

3. Meal Plan - This has been great. It's so nice not to have to worry what I'm going to make every day, because it's all planned out. It's a great way to use up the stores of frozen food and pantry staples that I have in the house instead of buying more. And I'm tracking my grocery budget really closely to see if we're saving money. I don't see how we won't, since nothing is wasted.

4. Keep the Dining Room Table Clear - we're REALLY bad at cluttering up every surface in the house. To cut down on this, I've implemented a new Inbox for incoming mail - now Chad and I both know where to go to deal with it. I also have to watch my piles of cookbooks and meal planning notecards (more on that another day). But I've been really good about keeping it clear and clean. Another psychic boost.

5. Get on Top of Laundry - sure I do laundry. But I almost always have a backlog. This week I've reduced the backlog significantly. I only do full loads, but this week, I've probably done 8 loads of laundry. I KNOW, right? But the plan is to get on top of it, and stay on top. Take the dirty clothes down every morning, assess to see if there is enough for a full load of anything, and do it. Fold and put away the same day, no excuses. We have been known to dress out of laundry baskets for weeks, so again, this might seem like a no-brainer, but not so much in our case. By next week I predict that we'll be down to laundry 2-4 times a week. And THEN I want to get my clothesline up! Bwahaahahaa!

At first I felt really boring and lame posting all this stuff, but then I reminded myself, "Hey! This is YOUR blog! You can put whatever you want on it!" And it's true, it's not like I'm trying to make money from this thing! So I hope I didn't bore you to tears.

Stay tuned to see if my dedication to a clean house flags! And what will be on the menu for next week! Hugs to all.

Wowza!

2009-05-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. I've been cooking, but very very uninspired. I think it was the winter doldrums, you know? Now that we're getting some sun in our part of the world again (she types as it rains...) I've been feeling very inspired, motivated, and spring-cleaning-ish.

New Direction?
I've been thinking a lot about either starting a new blog or changing and expanding the focus of this one. I'm not sure where I'll end up yet. But lately I've been bitten by the organizing/cleaning/decluttering/money-saving/meal-planning bug...that is to say, sustainable, mindful home management. So you may be seeing more posts on those topics in the near future. Or you may see me linking to a new place where all that stuff will be. Let me know if you have an opinion either way. But there will still be delicious, vegan food. Just, you know, more than that.

Big New Goal: Meal Plan!
And follow the dang thing...
Monday: Honeybaked lentils with coconut rice, baked winter squash with ginger; leftover squash got leveraged into ~~pumpkin~~ Squash Muffins, yum!!! Super double bonus: Made homemade whole wheat bread! (Used bread machine dough cycle, which is the awesome).

Tuesday: (frozen) Pesto with spaghetti, chopped leftover celebration roast, and sun-dried tomatoes, steamed broccoli with lemon, red leaf salad with chopped Pink Lady apples and local hazelnuts with homemade balsamic vinaigrette

Wednesday: Rustic Black-Eyed Peas with Mushrooms, (leftover) coconut rice, garlicky kale and more of the red leaf salad combo from Tuesday

Thursday: Nearly Instant Thai Soup with Corn (from Vegan Express), more salad combo!

Friday: Pizza night with pesto, broccoli or kale (depending what's left!), sun-dried tomatoes

Saturday: Breakfast: biscuits and gravy, grapefruit. Dinner: Burrito night out with friends

Sunday: Breakfast: Pancakes! Dinner: Indian Night! Chana Masala (with extra gravy to freeze), cumin rice, salad

Monday: Mac and Cashew Cheese, [whatever fresh veggies I buy at the farmer's market Sunday]

Tuesday: Gimme Chimis (from ED&BV), Guac & Corn Chips

Wednesday: African Peanut Stew, bread

Thursday-Monday: Out of town; play by ear

Garden in the Works!

Did you know my parents have a mostly empty 2 acre field behind their house? Well, they do. And we are lucky enough to use some of that field for an awesome kitchen garden! This is a little tricky, because, well, they live 3 hours away. But we visit about every other weekend so the little dude can get his fix of grandma crack, so we're hoping that we can keep it going and maybe bribe my parents with produce to water and weed occasionally.

This past weekend Chad went out to roto-till the sod into our garden. And that sucked. A lot. So my dad went across the street and asked if his friendly neighbor wouldn't mind using his tractor to dig up our beds. $40 later, voila! Garden. We measured 3 foot beds and figured out our paths, and altogether, we figure we have about 700 square feet of actual gardening space. Woo-hoo!

So far we've planted:

6 Quinalt strawberry starts
3 Tomato starts
Snap peas
Shelling peas
Leeks
Scallions
Spinach
Cabbage
Pac Choi
Heirloom lettuce

And we have a LOT of space to go. My dad insists we grow completely insane and not-of-this-climate things like corn. But we'll also have lots of bush green beans, carrots, kale, chard, summer squash, broccoli, and possibly potatoes and bell peppers (although we have to start peppers inside and I'm not really sure I'm that ambitious this year.) We also hope to put in some perennial herbs. Oh! And we convinced my parents to plant 6 fruit trees! Woo-hoo! 3 apples (gala and honeycrisps) and 3 peaches. I'm so excited! Our plan to transform their land into Post Peak Oil readiness is underway, bwaaaahaaahaaa!

We're also planning on container gardening at our place. We've got three tomato starts ready to plant, and some chives and oregano to re-pot (who knew they were perennial? Not me until they came back to life recently!) And our thyme is coming back. Our rosemary never died, but might need a larger home. I'd also love to do some salad greens and some kale in some half whiskey barrels. But we'll see how far we get.

The raspberry canes are starting to look leafy and productive! I can't WAIT until fresh raspberry time!

Ok, off to rid my kitchen sink of dishes. It's another new goal of mine - empty, shiny kitchen sink. Dishes washed and dealt with immediately. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but man, it really improves my mood and encourages me to spend more time in my kitchen.

Smelling the lilac blooms from our backyard is a big incentive, too.

7 Randoms Meme Time!

2008-12-15T09:40:00.000-08:00

So here is the first, most neglected meme I was tagged for by Bethany over at Spotted Devil Cat and His Vegan Assistant...Because who doesn't love random!?

Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links.
Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I have lived in most regions of the U.S. - I was born in the South in Winston-Salem, NC. I moved to the NE to NH when I was 4 and lived in two towns there until I graduated high school. I moved to the NW for college in Oregon, lived in the SW for a summer in Tucson, AZ (who moves to AZ in the summer?!?), and then was banished to the Midwest for 4 years in MI. So, at least all four corners of the country and one spot in the middle.

2. I'm an only child. I share well with others and I'm not totally selfish. It can happen.

3. I had 5 wisdom teeth, they've all been removed. Yep, I had an excess of wisdom.

4. I'm really really good at replicating animal noises. I've had doves want to mate with me in the pet store because of my cooing (seriously) and I fully engage squirrels in conversation. One of our friends dubbed me a "mimic." Sounds like a Hero Superpower! I'll take it.

5. I'm a feminist who defaults to traditional gender roles accidentally. Take out the trash!?!? That's so not my job. Cooking? You bet, love it. What can I say.

6. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm kind of a science fiction geek. I've even been to two conventions (both last year in MI). The first was SO FUN and the second was weak. It's actually very refreshing to be surrounded by mass amounts of nerd energy.

7. My husband and I are very seriously considering Unschooling our son. We were both straight-A students who loved school, but I think it taught us both some really bad habits that we'd like to avoid. Couple this with the fact that teachers are pretty much forced to teach to a standardized test nowadays AND the fact that my kid is a super kinesthetic learner and I just think this is a recipe for disaster. So unschooling, here we come!

I'm too lazy right now to tag people so I kind of fail this meme. So let me say this: everyone loves talking about themselves. Recognize this fact right now and react accordingly by posting some random stuff about yourselves. Just do it. You know you want to. :)

Dark Days Week 4

2008-12-13T14:17:00.001-08:00

So let me just say that it turns out I left my real camera in Portland, and we're not going to back there until Christmas Eve. So cell phone pictures until then, sorry! They really are so bleak, but in my opinion they're better than nothing.

Dark Days Meal of the Week

Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes and Celeriac, Smoky Braised Greens and Hot-Sauce Glazed Tempeh

Ok, so this meal is a little bit of a cheat, because the Tempeh originates from 229 miles away. What can I say, I meant to make beans but I ran out of time. I thought I'd post anyway! Here are my sources:

Potatoes and Celeriac
Yukon Gold Potatoes - Helsing Junction Farm (86 miles)
Celeriac - Willie Green's Organic Farm (43 miles)
Splashes of Almond Milk, Earth Balance and S&P - non local

Smoky Greens
Braising Greens - Willie Green's Organic Farm (43 miles)
Yellow Onion - Helsing Junction Farm (86 miles)
Garlic - Helsing Junction Farm (86 miles)
Spices and seasonings (Molasses, Chipotle pepper, smoked paprika, tamari) non-local

Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh
Tofurkey Tempeh - Hood River, OR (229 miles)
Garlic - Helsing Junction Farm (86 miles)
Seasonings (Frank's Hot Sauce, red wine, tamari) - non-local

The celeriac was really delicious mashed with the potatoes! I will defintely buy celeriac again. Next time, however, I will start boiling the celeriac earlier than the potatoes, because the celeriac didn't really mash completely, being a little underdone. It was still really tasty!

The sauce you see over the potatoes and celeriac is the potlikker from the smoky braised greens - it ended up being a little saucier than I thought it'd be, so I figured, Yay! Instant gravy. It was delicious!

And the tempeh has become a standby for us (recipe in Veganomicon). The recipe calls for just any wine you have, red or white (but not sweet) and we had a bottle of open red, so I used that. I didn't care for it as much as the white we usually do. But still a hearty, comfort food type meal all in all. :)

Now, with more recipe testing powers!

Yep, I'm super stoked to be doing some recipe testing for Robin Robertson's new cookbook 1,000 Vegan Recipes, due out Fall 2009! After some funny e-mail mishaps, I finally got my recipe list and I'm so excited!

So I'm obviously not allowed to talk too much about this, but let me just say that this dish, which features pasta, seitan, mushrooms and peas, is so delicious I just know I'm going to be making it regularly for the rest of my natural life! It was so comforting and satisfying, and the toddler even had seconds. A win all around!

Brunch Success!

Hazelnut-Pear Pancakes with Tofurkey Breakfast Links

This was a first try with these pancakes from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan, and I'm happy to report they are AWESOME. I had a little jar of local hemp-hazelnut butter we got in Portland so I used that and some perfectly ripe local pear for these babies and it was amazing! The hazelnut flavor was so wonderful and for some reason reminded me of cappucinos, as I sipped my Dancing Goats coffee. Next time I will dice the pear slices, because the long slices made pouring the batter a little unwieldy. But they were inhaled by all participants of brunch.

The breakfast links were new to us and are interesting. Neither my favorite nor disappointing, we just agreed that they have a very distinctive flavor that was very forward at first, blank in the middle, and then finishes well. We'll probably only get these every once in a while, but I do so love to have a little easy peasy protein with our breakfasts.

spud!: So Far, So Good
So this was our first week using spud!, a local grocery delivery service. I really like it so far! Here's why.

I really like that they highlight which products they carry are local - although their definition of local is within 500 miles of the warehouse, which is a pretttty long way. But, you can find out how many miles each individual local product traveled to their warehouse, so that's a pretty cool feature for those of us who are trying to buy closer to home. I also really like that I can add and subtract items from my order up until the day before delivery. This is great for meal planning! It kind of forces you to come up with a plan, and cuts down on that whole wandering-around-the-store-aimlessly-looking-for-inspiration-to-strike syndrome (because I'm almost never inspired in the store and usually end up spending more money on stuff I don't need).

While they don't have everything I would like, the prices seem really competitive for the things they do carry (which is a lot, don't get me wrong!). For instance, I think field roast sausages are something like $5.75 at the local Thriftway; I got them through spud! for $4.42. Also, you know how organic red peppers are like $5-6/lb? I got 2 good sized reds for $3.66. And before you jump all over me about those not being local, blah blah blah, let me just say: They're for recipe testing! They weren't going to be local at the store either, so I might as well save a few bucks and some miles driving to the store, right? Right.

So the avocados I got are like little rocks and the bananas are underripe, but I'm happier getting them underripe than overripe. It just adds to the anticipation. :)

Oh, and it's free delivery for orders over a certain amount (like $30-40? I can't remember exactly).

So, stay tuned! There will be more recipe testing going down this week, accompanied by sub-par cell phone photographs! We do what we can, thank you.

Local Booty Report: 12.7.08

2008-12-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

So I haven't done a local booty/bounty report in a loooong time, and since I got to go to the West Seattle Farmer's Market today ALL BY MYSELF (thanks, mom!!!), I thought it was a good time to do it again.

So starting in the front left:
Rock Island Red Dried Apricots ($4) - Pipitone Farms, 160 miles
Celeriac ($3.25?)- Willie Greens Organic Farm, 43 miles
Tall Grass Bakery Bread ($5.25) 13 miles
2 bunches Collard Greens ($5) - Willie Greens Organic Farm, 43 miles

Back row:
1 bunch Baby Carrots with tops ($2.50) - Whistling Train Farm, 25 miles
1 (lb?) bag braising greens ($4) - Willie Greens Organic Farm, 43 miles
2 Heart of Gold Winter Squash ($3?)- Whistling Train Farm, 25 miles
1 12 oz bottle Hazelnut Oil ($13) - Holmquist Hazelnut Orchard, 118 miles
Total: $40

Not a bad local haul! I'm forecasting some smoky collards in my future, probably with some biscuits and gravy. Because, you know, it's been a while.

I've never had celeriac before, so I'll be researching some recipes on that one. Any tips or recipes would be mucho appreciated!

I'm totally stoked about the bag of braising greens! I used to buy an non-organic Trader Joe's product like these almost weekly, back when we lived 2 miles from TJs. Even though they need some washing, it's totally nice to have all the greens stemmed and chopped already. Gooooo, greens!

The dried apricots are sooooo good! In the past, we've purchased their dried peaches and sun-dried tomatoes, which are also awesome. But dried apricots will always have a special place in my heart as my favorite dried fruit. I'm forseeing some appearing in my hot cereal this week!

Oh, and this is the first time I've ever purchased (or eaten?) hazelnut oil. It is divine! I love hazelnut flavor, and this stuff is delicious. I ate some (a lot) of the Tall Grass Bakery bread dipped in some of this golden goodness, and although the first bite is kind of aggressive, it really mellows with repeated application. I can't wait to try cooking with it! I'm thinking the braising greens would do just fine with it. And it will probably make an appearance as part of a salad dressing as well.

Some Foods I've Eaten...

Curried Acorn Squash Soup

Ok, remember a few posts ago when I was dissing all squash soups? I decided to take it as a personal challenge to make one that was actually satisfying. And I think I did it!

2 cups of roasted acorn squash (scooped out of the shell)
2-3 C stock
1-3 tsp madras curry powder
1/4 C cashew cheese
Juice of 1 lime
salt to taste

I had leftover roasted acorn squash from the other night, and I threw that in there with water and the curry powder and started heating it through. But it was too thin and boooooring...so I threw in some lime juice and more salt (and more curry powder). It was better and brighter, but still thin. I almost added coconut milk, but I was afraid that a) I would waste the rest of the can and b) that it would thin it out too much. What to do?!? I finally settled on stirring in some cashew cheese. And it was totally the right thing to do! I pureed it with my immersion blender and tasted it: It was creamy, spicy and sooo comforting. My curry powder is Madras style curry powder, I bought it at Market Spice at Pike Place Market. Your mileage my vary, depending on the type/age of your curry powder, so, you know, add it to taste like the salt. :)

I don't have a picture (which is probably a good thing), but I also made a Chocolate Bundt Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking and topped it with Chocolate Hazelnut Frosting (using the Chocolate Peanut Butter Frosting recipe from JoVB). It got off to a rocky start, because the cake stuck to the bundt pan and thus looked reallly crappy once reassembled. It was super soft and luscious, but didn't hold together all that well. When I got the cake cut and put on plates, it was NOT at all aesthetically pleasing - kind of like garbage on a plate. BUT! Don't judge this book by it's cover! Because it was soooo unbelievably delicious. The chocolate hazelnut frosting was crazy delicious. I used some oregon-made hazelnut-hemp butter instead of peanut butter, and it was fabulous. Make it! Now!

Butterfly Award and Yummy Asian Food!

2008-12-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

So one of the memes that's been on my backlog has been accepting this Butterfly Award from the lovely Bethany of Spotted Devil Cat and His Vegan Assistant. Thank you, Bethany! I am so glad we have found each other (at least virtually) in this wonderland that is Seattle. We have to get together soon to plot our pantry stockings, discuss SF and break down the latest PCC Cooks Class. (BTW, I saw that the new catalog of classes comes out December 27!!! I can't WAIT!!!)

Anyway, Thank You Bethany!

(1) post about the award,
(2) link back to the person that nominated you
(3) place the award on your sidebar
(4) choose 10 blogs that you think are really cool, link to them, contact each person and talk about why you think their blogs are cool

Ok, since I'm kind of late in the game and my blogosphere tends to be a somewhat closed loop, I'm only going to nominate five bloggers. Without further ado:

Adventures in Vegetarianism - To my MDC buddy, Carrie. I think we started down the road to veganism around the same time and I loved seeing how your family transitioned to it! I love the kid-friendly recipes you provide and most especially your gorgeous CUPCAKES!!! :)

happyveganface - I think she's already been nominated, but I'm still saying Jessy is rad and hilarious and uber enthusiastic and ALWAYS puts me in a better mood! Thanks for the inspiration, Jessy!

One Green Generation - I don't often comment on this blog, but I am always learning amazing things from Melinda. She is also in Seattle, and she's compiled a wealth of information on eating locally here. Thanks so much for your words of wisdom, Melinda!

Vegan Food; More Than Tofu and Sprouts! - To Tofu Mom, another Seattle-ish (vegan!) blogger. I love reading about your delicious recipes and about your fabulous kids! Keep it coming! I'm so glad to have found your blog!

Vegetarian Adventure - Another fellow blogger that I found just as I (and I think she) was going vegan! I'm so happy to share your journey! Your food is always gorgeous and I can never thank you enough for that black bean quinoa salad! I miss your posts! But I completely understand the need to take a break.

That's all for this installation of meme-catch-up!!

Oh, I did want to mention that after picking up my parents from the Amtrak station we checked out this restaurant called Moonlight Cafe. I had read reviews of it (thank goodness - I never in a MILLION years would have tried it just by driving by) and it sounded awesome - separate vegan menu, but with a full meat-y menu for my crybaby dad! It couldn't have been more awesome. The food was delicious, the service was fast and the price was right. The sesame "beef" and vegan eggrolls were outrageous. I can't wait to go back and try a million other things! So local folks, take note: Try Moonlight Cafe!!!

Dark Days Post #2 (week 3)

2008-12-05T14:21:00.001-08:00

Yep, I'll be up-front: I've been slacking. Sick. Sick with sick kid. Bitter. Tired. Semi-depressed. And blogging has not been my number one priority. You know how it is.

So I missed last week's Dark Days Challenge, mostly due to the fact that I was with family all week and my dad is the WORLD'S BIGGEST CRYBABY about food. So much so that it's almost impossible to find a place that we can all eat in comfortably. So there was a LOT of eating out at random places and no cooking in, except for T-day, where despite my best efforts, almost nothing we ate was local. I actually kind of missed 4 years of thankgsivings alone, just because then I had total control over the menu. Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy being with my family(they went out of their way to veganize a LOT of standards) and everything was delicious, but I made almost none of it (just vegan pumpkin pie and the soy-seitan roast and some mushroom gravy) and none of it was local. Or if it was, it was completely accidental. Arg.

And that's the end of this installment's complaining. I told you I've been in a bad mood! Here's the food.

Dark Days Meal #2:

(Starting at 7 o'clock): Balsamic Roasted Tofu and Veggies, Kale Chips, Yukon Gold and Purple Potato Squashers, and Roasted Acorn Squash with Roasted Garlic

Sorry for the pathetic photo, but I couldn't find our camera and this was taken with the cell phone. Awesome.

So this meal was ok. We have a LOT of local squash left, and I've been looking for innovative ways to eat it, but I'm just not inspired by what I find. And am I the only person on the planet who is 100% bored by squash soup? It's like there's no there there. So, this acorn squash was roasted, mixed with roasted garlic cloves, some Earth Balance and some cinnamon and salt. It needed a LOT more salt, but I for one was too lazy to remedy the situation.

The tofu was good - it was local tofu (from Vashon Island, woo-hoo!) that had been frozen and thawed, rendering it super spongy and meaty. I mixed it with some sliced onion, shallots, garlic and mushrooms and poured over a combo of balsamic vingear, olive oil, sugar, basil and salt. Note to self: when tofu is frozen and thawed it SOAKS UP MARINADE LIKE A SPONGE. So be sure to evenly distribute it, k? I was not so careful last night. That's ok, we gave the blander pieces to the toddler, because we know that toddlers like bland.

The kale chips were salty and oil and crispy and delicious and I had to stop myself from eating them all, as usual.

The squashers were baked for 45 minutes (with the squash/garlic) then squished, drizzled in olive oil and salt, and baked for 15 minutes, flipped and baked an additional 10 minutes. They were good, if a little cold when I got everything else on the table. Silas liked the yukon golds but not the purple potatoes. WTH? What kid doesn't like purple food!?

Anyway, this meal was not a total loss, but nothing I'd necessarily try to replicate. If anyone has any good (vegan) uses for leftover pureed acorn squash, I'm all ears.

Other Random Foods

This was a curry I made several weeks ago using Soy Curls for the first time. I have to say, I'd give them a 2.5/5 stars. I don't know, I may have made too many, but the flavor was just not that great. Any ideas, fellow vegans? Should I have marinated them?

The curry consisted of peas, potatoes, mushrooms and some curry paste from Portland - this was Panang flavored. I like it but I want it to be MORE - I used about 3x the recommended amount and it wasn't even hot. I don't get it. Can being depressed make everything bland? What about boredom? Can that make everything bland?

Ugh, I'm putting this post out of it's misery. I promise to be in a better mood next time. And memes. More memes. Really. Don't forsake me now.

Dark Days 2008 Post #1

2008-11-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Did I kick off the week with something unbelievable? Creative? Brand-new to my palate?

No.

I made Honeybaked Lentils, which I've made about 100 times before, including my Dark Days Meal #1 for 2007! Ha! They are just so delicious! And easy, easily adapted, healthy, etc. I'm a honey-eating vegan, but you could soooooo easily substitute agave or maple syrup or rice syrup for the honey. Or sugar. Really. It's that kind of recipe.

We were amazingly able to find a bunch of washington grown legumes this summer at one of the farms we visited for the King County Farm Tour. Black-eyed peas, white beans, pink beans, 2 kinds of lentils, some pearled barley - I'm kicking myself for not buying more when we were there! And I know that Washington is a big place and it might be more than 200 miles away. But you know - I'm vegan! We need legumes!! And these were grown in my state. I don't know why more local farms don't grow affordable* legumes, but they don't so far. Something we will investigate further as we look for land to start our commune! Bwahahahaha!

*I've seen some legumes for sale at my local farmer's market but they are $6-8 per pound! OMGWTFBBQ?!?! I think we bought the others for between $2-4 per pound. Not sure if its the yuppie mark-up or what, but I can't afford that, folks.

Back the meal - So the lentils, delicata squash, shallots, and garlic are all local and with the exception of the lentils are from our CSA share (we got a storage share, woo-hoo!). And did you notice that bread there, in the bowl? Didya? I made it! Woo-hoo! And it rose and everything!!!! I'm counting this as 90% local, since the flour is locally sourced (Stone-Buhr, for those in Washington).

Here's a gratuitous shot of my first successful bread experiment in months:
It was soooo good! I can't believe we ate it all in under a week. Eesh. There are only 2 adults and 1 2-year-old in the house, just for context.

I think my success was attributable to these factors: 1) I used a sponge method for the bread, something I've never done before 2)I used leftover grains in the recipe, in this case brown rice (not local, eeks!) 3) I preheated my oven briefly and then turned it off, and let the bread rise in there. Since we keep our thermostat set at 62-64F, it's just not warm enough for the bread to rise in this century.

Local Food Meal Honorable Mentions

Chile-Cornmeal Crusted Tofu Po Boys

So here we have some local tofu dredged in some liquids (non-local) and then locally purchased cornmeal (from when we lived in MI) and some spices. That was baked and then combined with homemade crazy pickles (from cukes from the CSA), some homemade coleslaw from local cabbages and carrots, and the aforementioned homemade bread. Soooo good!

Sloppeh Joes with Smoky Collard Greens

Ok, so the tempeh is NW produced but 229 miles away - still within my local foodshed bullseye. That was combined with some local onions and garlic, ketchup and spices. Over the magic homemade rolls. The smoky collards consisted of local collards, shallots, garlic, non-local mushrooms and a host of spices. Still, the bulk of this meal with local, so I'm pretty psyched about that.

I know I've promised you memes, and now I have TWO to catch-up on! Bethany, you're killing me! I'm kidding. I swear I will do them soon, along with some other non-local food catch-up. My parents are coming this weekend and as our levels of cleanliness are not exactly matched, we have a lot of cleaning to do. Wish me luck!

Dark Days Intro and Catch-Up Food

2008-11-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

So I took some time off after VeganMoFo to gear up for my new latest fun challenge: The Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. The idea is that of course (almost) anyone can eat local in the summer, but you kind of have to make an effort to do in in the late fall and winter. So here is a challenge to motivate you! It's way less daunting than VeganMoFo, rest assured. Just cook at least one meal per week using 90% local ingredients (or some other percentage that you determine for your location/ability, etc), blog about it and any challenges and post pictures if you can. Easy peasy. For a full list of rules and regs, check out this detailed post by the host of the challenge, Laura, of (not so) Urban Hennery.

The challenge begins yesterday, November 15th. But I have a couple of meals to share with you that helped me get in the mood for dark days. And I just have some regular old vegan food to show you, too. Yay, food!

Spaghetti and Tofu-Balls

These balls were from the oldskool Tofu Cookery by Louise Hagler. They were ok. The semi-deep-fry action kind of skeeved me out, they were pretty greasy. And not dense at all like meatballs should be. They were tasty in their own right (and I LOVE spaghetti and red sauce) but they were not like meatballs. I will definitely try making Vegan Dad's version next time.

Chickpea Noodle Soup

From Vcon, but the recipe can be found here. I added some kale and we were out of soba noodles, so I subbed some spinach ribbons. It was tasty! I love noodle soups. They're kind of the only soup I like. Other than lentil.

Mac, Oh Geez!

I just get in these undeniably moods for mac and cheese and nothing else will cut it. I've been wanting to try this recipe from Dreena Burton for a while, but I always forget to buy Brazil Nuts. Well, that didn't stop me this time. I subbed a few macadamia nuts and called it good. It was really tasty! The macadamia flavor came on way too strong, though, so next time I would use all cashews. It was really tasty and creamy and another great nooch-free mac and cheese recipe. Make it! I'll be making again very soon.

Dark Days Test Run: Savory Lentils, Roasted Delicata Squash and Smoky Collards

This was sooooooooooooo good. If local eating could be this delicious all the time, I would eat local all the time! The Savory Lentils are from a recipe in Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. If you haven't tried Delicata Squash, you are missing out. It is so sweet and creamy. And easy. And I think I have extolled the virtues of these collard greens in the past. Make them! They are so good. I can't wait to eat them again.

Gratuitous Biscuits and Gravy Pic

This was kind of hard-core biscuits and gravy, because instead of using Gimme Lean sausage for the gravy, I made tempeh sausage using the recipe from VWaV. It was a great substitution. And I feel better about it, since the tempeh is local and the sausage is not. Not to mention the tempeh is a fermented food, and the gimme lean has soy protein isolates, which I try to avoid. Go Team B&G!

Lazy Supper: Local Bread with Olive Oil and Smoked Salish Salt

And Panfried Tofu with Chipotle Cashew Cheese for Dipping

The tofu was from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan - the original recipe uses tempeh, but this time I subbed firm tofu. It's basically marinated quickly in tamari and brown rice vinegar, dusted with cornstarch and fried in coconut oil. The combination of the crunchy, coconutty tofu dipped in the hot-sweet chipotle cashew cheese was OUTRAGEOUS. Yum. The cheese was just the normal cashew cheese with 1-2 Tablespoons of pureed chipotle in adobo stirred in. It was sooooo good. It's also killer as a sandwich spread with avocado on baguette.

Dark Days Test Drive #2: Panfried Sunchokes (left), Braised Lentils and Winter Squash (right) and Kale with Raisins and Almonds (center)

So I had never had sunchokes before (a.k.a. Jerusalem artichokes). I panfried them in olive oil, with some garlic, s&p, then added a dash of lemon juice at the end. They were pretty good - kind of like a potato-artichoke heart combo flavor. They were a nice change from regular potatoes, but I wouldn't want them all the time.

The lentils was a combo of local roasted delicata squash, mixed with local shallots, carrots and garlic, some white wine, salt and pepper. Really tasty and pretty easy.

The kale was just braised in some water and oil, then added some raisins soaked in hot water and some sliced almonds. The almonds, raisins, oil, s&p and lemon juice were the non-locals in this meal (the lentils were locally purchased while living in Michigan - so even though they're not local here, they were purchased locally, so I think they count.) ;)

New Favorite Breakfast: Sweet Couscous with Pistachios and Raisins

I got this idea from an episode of The Minimalist, by Mark Bittman (love him!). The recipe can be found here. It is simple and sweet and delicious. A REALLY nice change from oatmeal, if you're getting burnt out.

Stay tuned for another meme I got tagged for (I'm talking about YOU, Bethany!) and of course, my official first Dark Days posting.

Why My Mom Rules: VeganMoFo

2008-10-28T18:44:00.001-07:00

We visited my parents this weekend for my Dad's (55th) birthday.
Much to his eventual dismay, my mom made a Vegan German Chocolate Cake (!!!!) for the cake - woo-hoo!!!

It was freaking awesome.
And because my mom is the uber-bomb, she also made Silas (and Chad who's allergic to chocolate): Awesome Scary Vegan Spider Cupcakes!!!!

I especially like how the red eyes glow menacingly.

But beware: when a two-year-old runs out of frosting,
Unexpected consequences may result!

BATBOY!

Field Trip and Food Catch-Up

2008-10-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

My energy level and amount of patience has been significantly reduced this week. Not sure what that's about, but we're driving down to the Portland suburbs tonight to hang with my P's so I'm super stoked about that. Have I mentioned that Silas is obsessed with my mom? She's like a rock star in his eyes, or a messiah. It is truly amusing. When they're hanging out he doesn't want to have anything to do with me or Chad. It's all "bye-bye, mama." As in, you've just been dismissed. I love it. I just hope he doesn't wear my mom out too badly.

photo by wheelo50411

So I forgot to mention our wicked fun field trip that we took last Sunday: Pike Place Market. I don't think that I'll ever feel bored with that place, it is truly magical. One of my favorite spots in there is MarketSpice, this spice and tea shop. It is seriously like you've turned me loose in a candy store, I just go crazy! They sell all their spices in bulk, which if you haven't been clued in yet, is THE most economical thing you can buy in bulk, I swear it's crazy cheap (anywhere, not just at MarketSpice). I just love the variety, I could spend all day there! They don't just have "curry powder" - oh no. They have Madras Curry Powder and other variations. They don't just have chili powder - they have Ancho Chile Powder and Chipotle Chile Powder and probably 5 other kinds. And salt - SALT! I got my hands on some locally produced Salish Smoked Salt! It's black! It's smoky! Am I in heaven? No, I'm in MarketSpice. They also have a ton of coffee and tea varieties and I'll be honest with you - I haven't ever made it that far. I always get waylaid by the spices. Some day I'll wade in and try some fabulous teas and coffees, I'm sure. Right after I'm done humping the spice counter. Oh, did I say that out loud? Oops.

So what did I come home with? I'll tell you:
1 oz Sage
1 oz Thyme
1 oz Peppermint (for tea, duh!)
1 oz Madras Curry Powder
1 oz Granulated Onion
1 oz Salish Smoked Sea Salt
1 oz Smoked Paprika
1 oz Sweet Paprika

And I think that's it. I was like $10 for the whole lot. Yay!

Food Catch-Up
Some less than stellar looking meals we've had this week:

Indian Spiced Potatoes and Cauliflower with Garlic Toast

Red Curry Dal: Nice F-ing picture, right? Seriously. But it tasted good.

The potato and cauliflower recipe was from The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook by Robin Robertson and the dal recipe was out of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen by Peter Berley. Both good, solid recipes. Neither changed my life.

Mexican Fiesta Burritoes

The burritoes were a last minute dinner last night: enchilada tofu recipe out of Tofu Cookery, using previously frozen and thawed tofu. That was sauteed with 1 bulb of fennel, chopped and about 4 chanterelle mushrooms, sliced from our mushroom CSA. Topped with VegNews vegan mac and cheese sauce (or as I like to think of it, salty mashed potatoes of love) and then some avocado. Which we all know, makes EVERYTHING even better.

I'll be blogging out of Portland all next week. My mom has made my dad (the ultimate in manly omnivores) a VEGAN german chocolate birthday cake!!!! Bwahahahahahaha! My total world domination plan is in effect!

Freezer Fun (VeganMoFo)

2008-10-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, I was tagged by Bethany of Spotted Devil Cat and His Vegan Assistant to do the freezer meme! And how can I refuse?

So if it's not obvious, I have one of those "underneath" freezers that pulls out like a drawer. I kind of like it. It just makes more sense to utilize the above space for the fridge, since we open the fridge about 100x as often as the freezer.

ANYway. So on the bottom right in the plastic grocery bag is our ice cream maker thingy that I keep frozen and ready to churn at all times. To the left of that you have some TJ's frozen blueberries and peas, some frozen local tofu, and in the Kerr jars is homemade tomato sauce made from local organic tomatoes. Yeah, I should have canned it, but I made kind of small amounts every time and it was never worth it.

On the top shelf is ice (duh), and to the left we have yet 2 more jars of tomato sauce and a big ziploc full of free organic thyme and rosemary from my gardening class.

Some things you can't see are some Luna and Larry's Dark Chocolate Coconut Bliss (which is the best thing in the UNIVERSE) and some coconut sorbet (so good, too!). Some frozen home-cooked garbanzo beans, and some pinto beans. A vegan Amy's pizza, some frozen TJ's roasted corn, some edamame, some tomato paste (best trick ever: freeze tablespoons of tomato paste on a cookie sheet and then bag it). Some ginger and galangal. And some tortillas and flat bread.

Ta da! My freezer. It's like that.

Emergency Food Storage, Vegan(MoFo) Style

2008-10-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Are you guys freaked about the impending apocalypse? Not the religious one, I'm not feeling that one. No, I'm talking more like peak oil stuff, or even just really bad weather. I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but it's hard to sit down and organize my thoughts about this.

So let me just say that I'm a big fan of science fiction. BIG NERD, right here. I've been to (two) conventions and everything - it's true. You know what my favorite subgenre is? I'll tell you: it's utopia/dystopia stories, or stories with a post-apocalyptic setting. And if they're feminist, all the better. The scariest book in the universe, in my opinion, was Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. It's just too damn realistic. You know how it it goes, society is in decline, some uber-conservative whack-job gets elected to office, people live in walled communities to try to remain safe but violent crime is rampant, etc. The narrator is a young woman who sees where this is going and starts to make preparations, even while her family and friends think she is a little out there for doing so. And what do you know, she was right to do it, the shit hits the fan, and more stuff happens, but you're just going to have to read the book. It's good, I promise. And scary!

So anyway, what the fuck does this have to do with being vegan and food? So I try to temper my paranoid tendencies with strong doses of reality. But when the stock markets start to crash and burn, it makes me think that you know, it probably wouldn't be too bad of an idea to have enough food in the house to sustain my family. For at least a month. And with no power available.

You might be thinking, geez, where is her partner in all this and doesn't he think she's crazy? Oh, no no no no no. If anything, he is more paranoid. I won't go into it here, but trust me, he's more paranoid.

So what are we doing right now? We're following this plan. That's right, we're going to stockpile approxiamately 40 lbs of oats, 90 cans of beans, 90 cans of fruit and 90 cans of tomato products. Oh and multivitamins. And lots of water. For my family of three, this is approximately what it would take to sustain us for one month, with no power. The trick is that you can eat all of these things without a heating source and none need to be refrigerated, although of course most would be improved with heating. But you don't have to. You can eat raw oats as muesli, beans and fruit and tomatoes straight out of the can. And you would, if you were hungry.

The trick is, we eat these foods already, all the time. So I'll be using my stockpile constantly, and replacing it as needed. We'll have a system where the oldest gets used first and the replacement food gets put to the back of the shelf. It's just a nice little insurance policy that lets me sleep better at night.

Luckily, we have many quarts of peaches already canned, and lots of tomatoes already (thank you Costco, for carrying organic tomatoes). We stocked up on 20 cans of organic beans from Trader Joe's this weekend (at $0.99 a can, it seemed like the thing to do!). We're hoping to stock up a little more each weekend.

Now if I could just figure out where the hell to buy 40 lbs of oats in Seattle....

Anyway, what about you? Are you storing food? Do you think you should? How are you prepared for an emergency, long or short-term?

VeganMofo: Weekend Edition

2008-10-20T13:14:00.001-07:00

So maybe this would be a good time to talk about my serious addiction to biscuits and gravy?!? Seriously?!!? I think I need a support group. Maybe you do, too. Let me know, we'll talk.

+
=
Love.

We also enjoyed some pretty swank vegan pizza - a refrigerated crust from TJ's topped with some marinara, leftover roasted veggies (carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, garlic, cherry tomatoes and onion) and some leftover field roast sausage, crumbled. Topped with a packet of Chreese sauce. It was really good! Quick and easy, just what I was in the mood for.

It was a "use-up-all-these-aging-leftovers" kind of weekend, so I transformed my leftover pumpkin puree (from making VWaV Best Pumpkin Muffins) into pumpkin pancakes. They were wicked, wicked good. They reminded me of when we used to get pumpkin pancakes all the time in Michigan at The Original Pancake House. Topped with tonnnnnns of whipped cream. I need to work on the vegan whipped cream angle. Maybe next time we'll try some coconut milk whipped cream, been meaning to give that a go. Anyway, try these pancakes, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Pumpkin Pancakes of Powa!
Serves 2 adults and 2 kids

1 3/4 cup ap flour (or some combo of ap flour and ww pastry flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg (or 1/2 tsp already ground)
egg replacer for 3 eggs (4.5 tsp egg replacer mixed with 6 tablespoons water)
1 1/2 cup nondairy milk
3/4-1 C pumpkin puree
4 T canola oil
1 T molasses

Combine dry ingredients. Combine wet ingredients. Mix toghetha. Cook in a skillet. EAT IT! Yum.

***************

Continuing with my southern comfort food addiction, last night we had fried seitan chicken, smoky collard greens, and some crazy good pickle chips and radishes that we made. I made the seitan the day before, using the recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes - I've been digging that recipe a lot. I think next time I make fried chicken, though, I would probably try to carefully slice my cutlets in half. They were a little squishy in the middle. But serioulsy, it was wicked good anyway, this is a minor thing.

Another Vegan Southern Feast

I used the Jay-Lo's Fried Chicken recipe from La Dolce Vegan! and I think this is the best it's ever worked. It was almost eerie how convincing it looked on the plate!

The collards I've talked about before here, and they were as magical as ever, even without mushrooms. Quote from Chad, "If you would have told me a year ago that I could love collard greens so much, I would have laughed in your face. But I want to eat these every day." Seriously, try this recipe! It's soooo good.

The pickles were kind of a last-ditch effort to save some aging cucumbers and some radishes that I had no use for. Oh and a red banana like pepper. I used a recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and they've been in our fridge for quite some time. They are so sour and awesome and addictive! It's really hard to stop eating them. Silas is a big fan of the radishes, what a freak child! I think the texture of the cucumbers is weird for him, but the radishes remain crispy. In fact, I have some radishes from the CSA that I need to slice up and throw in the dwindling jar...

Another Survey! VeganMoFo!

2008-10-19T13:15:00.004-07:00

Sorry, I know I'm seriously falling off the wagon here. I've been uninspired as of late. I think it's because I need a new book to read. Or coffee. Or sleep.

Enjoy and fill out as you like! I got this from Get Sconed!

1. What was the most recent tea you drank?
Earl Grey

2. What vegan forms do you post/lurk on? If so, what is your username? Spill!
I'm on the PPK forums occasionally as chessakat, and more frequently on the Vegetarian & Vegan Living forum at mothering.com as Keeta.

3. You have to have tofu for dinner, and it has be an Italian dish. What comes to mind first?
Lasagna with tofu ricotta and pine nut cream sauce on top

4. How many vegan blogs do you read on an average day?
Probably 5-7 per day, via Google Reader.

5. Besides your own, what is the most recent one you’ve read?
I think Awesome. Vegan. Rad.

6. If you could hang out with a vegan blogger that you haven’t met, who would it be, and what would you do? I think Jessy of happyveganface, because her postive attitude is very addictive.

7. If you had to base your dinners for a week around one of the holy trilogy – tofu, seitan or tempeh, which would it be? Probably seitan, because once it's made, I think it's the fastest and most easily varied among
the three.

8. If you had to use one in a fight, which would it be?
Big tubs of soft tofu - smooshed in your face!

9. Name 3 meals you’d realistically make with that tough protein of choice!
Sheesh, should have read this question first. Um, a smoothie for breakfast, a pumpkin cheesecake, and miso soup? Kind of a stretch, there.

10. What’s a recipe in vegan blogland that you’ve been eyeing?
This pasta carbonara

11. Do you own any clothing with vegan messages/brands on them?
I don't personally, but we bought the toddler a Cowhugger t-shirt from Herbivore.

12. Have you made your pilgrimage to the 'vegan mecca' yet? (Portland, duh)
My parent's live in the vicinity, so yes, we go down about twice a month (from Seattle).
13. What age did you first go vegan? Did it stick?

18, for about a year and a half (dorm living with no access to kitchen makes veganism hard). Then again in 2005 for a while, but SE Detroit is *shocking!* not so vegan friendly. This time, we've been vegan since February of this year.

14. What is the worst vegan meal you’ve had? Who cooked it?
I tend to block bad food from my memory, so I'm not really sure...

15. What made you decide to blog?
I wanted a place to remind myself of what food we like to eat. To document good and bad recipes, to develop my own, and to communicate with other people with LOVE food like me!

16. What are three of your favorite meals to make?

Um, anyone who reads my blog should know I seriously need a support group to deal with my biscuits and gravy addiction. Preferably with some smoky collard greens on the side.
I am also verrrry fond of the piccatta recipe in Vcon. I've made it with tempeh and seitan, and they're both good.
Agave baked lentils, something green (broccoli, kale, etc) and baked winter squash. Preferably when everything is locally sourced.

17. What dish would you bring to a vegan Thanksgiving-themed potluck?
Depends on what was needed - a pumpkin cheesecake or cornbread stuffing probably.

18. Where is your favorite vegan meal at a restaurant? How many times have you ordered it?
Since I've started cooking a lot more, I have to say that I kind of prefer eating at home. But probably the Herb Crusted Tofu with Mushroom Masala at The Farm in Portland. I also had a very fab experience at Nutshell before it went unvegan (so disappointed it's not vegan anymore!)

19. What do you think the best chain to dine as a vegan is?
P.F. Chang’s or Chipotle.

20. My kitchen needs a………
Funnel (I need to transfer stuff to mason jars for storage). Then, a soymilk maker. Oh and mini-muffin tins. And rimmed baking sheet. Can you tell I have a list in my head?

21. This vegetable is not allowed in my kitchen…..!
Hmmm...celery. Although I do buy it very rarely if it seems like a recipe can't survive without it.

22. What's for dinner tonight?
Beer Battered Seitan with a red cabbage coleslaw (with carrots, leeks, garlic aioli and cilantro)

23. (Make your own question question!) What vegan product do you desperately want to try?
Dr. Cow's Aged Cashew Cheese

Cabbage Isn't Scary At All, VeganMoFo

2008-10-17T14:17:00.004-07:00

So I'd had this head of napa cabbage in my fridge for nigh on three weeks. It taunted me with the nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah song "You don't know what to DO with me! You don't know what to DO with me!" Everytime I opened the fridge.

Well, yesterday, I decided I was sick of that goddamn thing and that it was time to set it's silly punk ass straight.

I cored that motherfucker (it sounds violent, and believe me, it was). I chopped it up. I threw it into the sizzling enameled cast iron pan with the two sauteed yellow onions, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Because when in doubt with a vegetable, I repeat these three rules:1) onions, 2) olive oil and 3) salt and pepper (which seriously count as one ingredient/rule). These three things will enable you to eat any other vegetable, I'm convinced.

I covered that shit up for half an hour and it mellowed into this delicious, tame, tender vegetable, without any hint of attitude or bitchiness.

And it was good!

To round out the punkass cabbage we had some smoked apple-sage field roast sausages, which are arguably the best sausages on the planet, and possibly the solar system. Oh, and roasted acorn squash. Because it's freaking autumn, duh.

And in my CSA box last night? Another goddamn head of cabbage, only this time it's red. And it's got some serious attitude already. But I'm not afraid anymore. No, no. I know just what to do with it.

Why Does Yeast Hate Me? VeganMoFo.

2008-10-15T18:03:00.004-07:00

No, yeast doesn't hate me because of VeganMoFo...It hates me for being green. It hates me for being cheap AND green - and by keeping my heat at 62 degrees. I think that's the reason that yeast always lets me down. I don't really know, it won't speak to me no matter how much I implore. Luckily, other bread ingredients are more forgiving so even though my bread is the most unfluffy thing in the universe, it still tastes pretty dang good.

So I made that No Knead Whole Wheat Bread I was talking about and it tastes really good - just don't look at it. Ever! I think next time we're going to have to do some kind of preheated, oven door open kind of situation in order for it to rise. Cuz it's just too dang cold.

Onto the food photos! Keep an eye out for the very embarrassingly low-profile bread.

Butter Lettuce and Arugula Salad with Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

With a lemony oregano-y caper-y viniagrette.

OMG-Roasted Vegetables with Garlic (No-Knead) Toast

The veggies in question were parsnips, carrots, cauliflower, onions and garlic. With the magically transforming powers of olive oil and salt and pepper.

Salad, Gimme Lean Sausage and Garlic Toast Lunch

Yum.

Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh, Roasted Rice & Leeks, Corn on the Cob

Yes, it's the hot sauce glazed tempeh made with something labeled "hot sauce." It is good. The roasted rice and leeks were crazy good, too! That was out of the Lorna Sass book Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way. It's just brown rice roasted at 400F for about 8 minutes then combined with sauteed leeks, thyme, salt and boiling water and baked for 35 minutes (let stand for 10 minutes). Really good! The roasting/toasting of the rice makes it crazy buttery and popcorn-like. Definitely recommend it!

Ok off to a parent ed class related to our co-op preschool called Rituals. I hope no animals are sacrificed.

Is Anything Better Than Biscuits and Gravy!?!

2008-10-14T13:00:00.008-07:00

The answer to that question is yes: Biscuits, Gravy AND Smoky Collard Greens!

I've been super under the weather lately. So please excuse my tardiness.

We got home from a long drive on Sunday and I was feeling super tired and wonky and not in the mood for anything. Until I thought of biscuits and gravy. And collards. OMGYES.

So I cooked up a batch of the collards (and biscuits and gravy) from my cooking class the other night. Verdict: Complete, freaking awesomeness. The instructor was totally anti-liquid smoke (I'm fine with it, but definitely willing to experiment). So instead she uses smoked paprika and chipotle in adobo to lend a smoky and a tinge of spicy elements to the greens. But the real, over the top trick to this recipe? Molasses. Black-strap molasses. Yes, I said molasses.

I forgot to ask the instructor for her permission to post this, but I'm pretty sure she's cool with it. It's her recipe, not mine!

Miss D's Smokin' Collards
by Dawnula Koukol
Serves 4-6, Prep time: 30 minutes Cooking time: 45 min-1 1/2 hrs

1/2 C olive oil
3 C chopped yellow onion (about 2 onions)
6 oz or 2 cups mushrooms, sliced
2 T garlic, sliced
1 T chipotle in adobo
2 1/2 T smoked paprika, divided in half
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
1 T soy sauce
3/4 C vegetable stock
4 T molasses (black-strap)
5 lbs (or about 4 bunches) collards, cleaned, stemmed and chopped

In a large stockpot, heat oil on medium. Add the onions and mushrooms, saute for about 6 or 7 minutes or until the onions are wilted. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the chipotle, half of the paprika, vinegar, soy sauce, vegetable stock and molasses.

Stir in the greens, a third at a time, pressing the greens down as they start to wilt. Cook the greens, covered, for about 45 minutes. Ad the last half of the smoked paprika, salt and pepper and cook for another 5-10 minutes.

*****

I halved the recipe with mucho success. In fact, I only had 1 bunch of collards when I made this, so I cooked it as stated, but then added a bunch of cleaned/stemmed/chopped kale when I added the last of the smoke paprika - because kale doesn't need to cook nearly as long as collards do. It worked really well!

Try this recipe - it is soooooo good! The smokiness, the sweet of the molasses, the savory mushrooms and the pieces of sliced garlic - it's just tooooo gooood! And I'll have you know that I ate this meal combo for three meals straight - and would have kept going but ran out of leftovers. And I want it again. NOW! Alas, too many other vegetables to deal with in the fridge right now. Why do you taunt me, cabbage, parsnips and cauliflower?! Why must you aggravate me arugula?! Blarg!

Oh yeah, and in order to try to tame my overabundance of leeks (?!) last night I whipped up a quick simple batch of Potato Leek Soup. I used Mark Bittman's recipe, cuz I lurve him. We also had some garlic toast to dip. YUM!

VeganMoFo: Meme Time

2008-10-11T14:38:00.004-07:00

You know I don't do a lot of memes around here, but I don't have a ton of time this weekend (wedding to go to, etc). So here's a fun little vegan meme that I got from Jessy at happyveganface, who got it from Liz at Food Snobbery is My Hobbery.

1. name a song that involves food in some way.
I like to eat, eat, eat Apples and Bananas! (can you tell I have a 2 year old!?)

2. what criteria do you use when choosing a new cookbook to buy?
It has to have some goddamn photos. I’ve let perfectly good cookbooks fester because of bad layout, bad quality paper or no photos (Vegan Mediterranean Kitchen comes to mind – checked it out of the library and never used it because I couldn’t get beyond this issue).

I’ve been more interested in buying really great, test of time cookbooks to veganize lately (just checked out The Gift of Southern Cooking). If it’s a vegan cookbook, then there better be some major innovation or something specific I want to learn – like specific cuisines, etc.

3. what did you eat today?
Homemade biscuits and jam for breakfast, then Burgerville for lunch – this is what happens when we are with the In-Laws. We're going to scare up some good vegan yummies for dinner in portland before the wedding - probably at Proper Eats.

4. name a vegan food that you know exists but you have never tried.
I have soy curls in my cupboard that I’ve never used. I’ve also never tried cheezly or sheese.

5. the Food Network just called and needs you to start your new show tomorrow. what will the title of the show be?
Vegan Comforts – veganizing everything your grandma used to make! Yum.

6. favorite hot sauce or other spicy condiment?
I like anything with chipotle flavor, so Chipotle Tabasco or some kind of homemade chipotle mayo (YUM!)

7. how old were you when you became vegetarian/vegan?
I went vegetarian for the first time around age 13 or 14, then vegan for a while at age 17-19 (dorm living made vegan reallllly hard for me and no vegan friends made it harder). Back to veg for ages 19-27, fell off the veg wagon during pregnancy around month 4, back to veg 5 months post-partum, vegan again at 29, or February of 2008. I’ve been all over really. I am almost certain that were I to get pregnant again I could remain vegan. I just wasn’t finding the information I needed and my providers, though not unsupportive, were not particularly helpful either.

8. favorite vegan cheeze?
I’m still waiting to find a great commercial vegan cheese, they all just creep me out a little. Right now I’m in love with the VegNews cheesy sauce for their veganized mac and cheese.

9. cutest baby animal?
sea otters!

10. favorite type of jam/jelly/marmalade/preserves?
apricot

11. do you take any vitamins/supplements?
yeah, at the direction of my naturopath and some pretty detailed blood work I take 10,000 units of vitamin D a day (for 3 months, then down to 2-5,000/day), evening primrose oil (protects against breast cancer - my mom's had it twice), iron+B12 supplement, vegan DHA, and a vegan multiple.

12. what food/dish most embodies the Fall season?
Hot apple cider and vegan pumpkin donuts!

13. what food would you have a hard time living without?
I guess it would realllly suck to have nut allergies – I would hate to live without almond milk, peanut butter, cashew cheese, pine nut cream sauce, etc.

14. coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?
Ohgoodlord, give me coffee.

15. it's 10PM and you're starving. what do you eat?
Probably some organic but still not good for me commercial cookies like newman ginger-os or trader joe’s joe joes. Or there’s always the chocolate coconut ice cream calling my name…

16. if you have an animal companion, what is his/her favorite food?
no more kitty. But she loved the tuna. And human earwax. Go figure.

17. worst injury you've gotten in the kitchen?
probably a burn, but nothing really ever very serious.

18. when you have a food-related question, who do you call?
Depends on the question. If it’s vegan related, I usually go to the internets, either MDC Vegetarian and Vegan Living Forum or The PPK forums. I’m trained as a librarian, so I’m also all about doing the research myself.

19. summer is ending- what food will you miss most?
Raspberries! Tomatoes! God, it felt like here in the PNW we never really had that glut of tomatoes that I usually associate with summer. Blueberries, too.

20. what snacks do you keep in your purse/backpack/desk at work?
Larabars, fruit leather, Tofurkey Jerky, granola bars (these also double as Silas Snacks)

21. favorite soup to make on a rainy day?
I’m a big fan of mushroom barley, UnChicken Noodle, or Split Pea.

22. what's your favorite combination of fresh vegetable and/or fruit juices?
Carrot Ginger is always zingy!

23. favorite brand of root beer?
Hmmm, Thomas Kemper? I also love when brew pubs brew their own!

24. make you your own question: What’s your favorite vegan breakfast, whether you make it or not?
I LOOOOVE biscuits and gravy. I think I could eat vegan sausage gravy every dang day!

So, go on! MEME IT UP!

VEGANMOFO: Why Jessy Is My Hero!

2008-10-10T15:03:00.005-07:00

So we're down in Portland visiting my parents (and for those of you in Portland, we're actually in a teeny tiny town called Warren, in between Scappoose and St. Helens on Hwy 30 - it's about 35 miles West of Portland, way past Sauvie Island). And I was hungry. And in this tiny outlying area of Portland there are still a few vegan options - a mexican place that does a pretty good job with the no cheese and lots of veggies, Burgerville, the best fast food in the nation, and well, that's about it. But we're figuring we're going to be eating out a lot over the next few days just because of the schedule (relative's wedding, random relatives, blah blah blah) so I wasn't inclined to go out for lunch and even declined the lure of the aforementioned delicious Burgerville.

So my parents are not vegetarians but my mom is good about trying to keep a pretty well stocked pantry for us, which is nice. So I started snooping around in there, trying to see what was on hand, what she had going in the land of vegetables (bag of lettuce, some onions, shallots, garlic, carrots, a stick of celery), scoped out the fake meat options, and finally decided that it was going to be a mexican fiesta.

Black Beans
+
Can of Ro-tel Mexican (lime and cilantro tomatoes)
+
Some Canned Green Chiles
+
Cooked Brown Rice
+
Homemade Whole Wheat Tortillas (!!)
+
Cheesy Sauce from VegNews Mac and Cheese
=
WICKED AWESOME!!!

I recently wrote about the awesomeness that was the nooch-free, salty mashed-potato-like cheesy sauce from the VegNews mac and cheese recipe and I really really wanted that cheese, but not necessarily mac and cheese. So I started my brown rice cooking, and peeled and chopped my onion, carrot, shallot and potatoes for the cheesy goodness. Opened the cans of beans, rotel and chiles and dumped them in a frying pan to heat through. After blending up the cheesy sauce I moved onto the freakishly simple task of making my own galldanged homemade tortillas (!!). So. Freaking. Easy. And delicious!!!!

And Jessy told me how. Which is one of the reasons she is my hero. She is also my hero for making so many other things on her own that I would never try my hand at - such as these amazing potstickers! OMGWTFBBQ!!! Amazing. I want those potstickers, NOW!

But anyway, back to MY lunch - it was really freaking super fantastic. Lunch construction went:

Slather a fresh tortilla with cheesy sauce, spread on some brown rice, top with chili-bean-tomato mix, and dab on some more salty cheesy goodness.

Life would have been even more perfect with an avocado, but we were working with pantry supplies, so you know.

My mom was really impressed with the food (she's a good sport) and ate her whole tostada-like pile of food, while exclaiming, "This is so good! And I never eat this much for lunch!!!" Silas sat still long enough for like 4 bites, and Chad was a huuuuuge fan and even said that this combo might just replace his usual gruel-like go-to meal (which is too disgusting to even describe, but this is a huge concession on his part, so yay!).

We will definitely be making cheesy bean tortilla madness again so. And you should try it too. Go pantry challenge! And go Jessy for being an inspiration!!! superw00t!

VeganMoFo: Tempeh boring, Tempeh BLAM!

2008-10-08T18:19:00.006-07:00

Talk about a weird progression.

So this afternoon I was all chicken-fried steak-y inspired by Jessy's comfort food spread from the other night. So I decided to fry up some tempeh (dredged in flour, dipoed in almond milk-cornstarch slurry, dipped in coating). I used the Jay-Lo's breading recipe from La Dolce Vegan, but added about 1/4 cup of panko. Then I fried it up in olive oil this afternoon and set it aside. I was dreaming of mashed potatoes and fried tempeh...then I tasted the tempeh. It was good, but NOT chicken-fried anything. It was kind of...well...bland. NOTE: this was NOT Jessy's tempeh recipe! I'm sure hers is superwickedawesome! I went out on a limb here and fell flat on my face.

What to do?!?

And then it hit me: PICCATA!!! Of course. If they made piccata-flavored lollipops, I would buy them. The Veganomicon recipe for piccata might just be worth the price of the book. It's salty and lemony and winey and savory and olive-y and OMGYUM. It was the perfect thing to save my drib drab tempeh.

All over fingerling potatoes we dug ourselves at the farm. Wicked fun! And I meant to make carrots but instead I found myself fending off a feral two-year-old from my olives - that kid could eat a whole jar of kalamatas in about 5 minutes if I let him. But I don't. Cause I want to eat them, too! I'm a really bad mom. Plus, he's still in diapers. I'll just leave you there.

More MoFo-in'

2008-10-07T13:33:00.005-07:00

Curried Tofu Sandwiches on Homemade (!) Bread, Cheezy Gingered Apple Gratin and Coconut Chard

So I have been meaning to try the curried tofu from Vcon for a while now, so I did. I even pressed the dang tofu, which I often skip - I'm still not convinced it makes a difference with extra firm tofu, but whatevs. I baked that stuff up and threw it between some really good homemade Dave's Killer Bread, whipped up some curried mayo and slapped some lettuce on those bad boys for sammiches. YUM. The tofu was good, not my absolute fave tofu of all time, and another bummer - the little dude did not care for it at all. So it probably won't be making another appearance for a while, because little dude is usually a tofu hound.

The gratin did pretty well reheating, and was a nice combo of flavors with the curry. Chad and I both decided that it might be better next time if it were in some kind of pie shell, for added texture. But really, isn't everything better in pie shell? Right.

The chard was kind of a weird substitution for a spinach dish I make out of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian - it was ok. A little overcooked.

Overall - not my best effort. And the kitchen is still TRASHED. I should be washing dishes RIGHT NOW!!!!

About the Dave's Killer Bread - this was a pretty easy recipe, and it's great that it's 100% whole wheat. I think I might have yeast issues, because it didn't rise nearly as much as it did in the video - but then again, I don't have a stand mixer, so I subbed by food processor and a dough blade. I also don't have two loaf pans, so I have no idea why I made two loaves of bread at once. I was just following the recipe, I guess. Moral of the story: Halve the recipe next time, and get some new yeast, you cheapskate.

Although I have to admit that this is the next bread recipe I'm trying!

And finally, a question for you, dear reader: What the hell should I do with my head of napa cabbage that the CSA gave me? I'm pretty much a cabbage novice. Help a vegan out.

Last Night Photo Catch-Up

White Bean and Rosemary Soup

Skillet Cornbread

VeganMoFo: Weekend Roundup

2008-10-05T15:38:00.008-07:00

A cooking class! Mac and Cheese! Gardening class! Such weekend!

Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh, Take Two

This time I used something labled "hot sauce." Much deliciousness ensued, much less hotness than last time. Still a weensy bit hot for the toddler, but I LOVED it. The moral of the story is to never substitute any ingredients in Veganomicon. Ever.

Grilled corn on the cob was awesome, again.

Cooking Class: Southern Vegan Comfort

So I took this class at our local co-op natural food store, PCC. It was awesome! This was only the second (vegan) cooking class I've ever been to, but I just love them. It wasn't like I'd never made biscuits or vegan sausage gravy or collards before - I had, and I love them. But it's just so great to learn from other cooks. Because I don't get a chance to cook with a lot of people. My mom, my husband, occasionally a grandmother maybe. But you really can learn a lot by just cooking with other people, and in this case, we were watching an actual chef who had a lot of experience, both vegetarian/vegan and omni. Little tips I picked up that were new to me:

In the summer when you have bunches of fresh herbs, save the bunch of stems and use it as a pastry brush to baste stuff on the grill or to get oil into a pan. Yummy herby goodness!
Save woody stems from thyme or other herbs in a ziploc in the freezer for stock
Our instructor also saves scraps from onions, carrots and celery together in a freezer bag, and in a separate bag she saves mushroom stems. Because sometimes she wants all-around veggie stock, but sometimes she just wants a mushroom stock
A touch of blackstrap molasses can take collards from good to OMGWOW!
Thinly slicing garlic instead of mincing can provide a delicious shake-up to meals and gives more of a surface are to get that delicious bite to garlic in your mouth

One of the best things I came away with from this class was the idea of NOTHING GOING TO WASTE in her kitchen. She really did save everything for another use. She also talked about how she likes to make big batches of food but hates leftovers - and I can so relate. So in her case, she transforms them into something different everytime. So a big batch of collards will get eaten in soups or stews, or thrown in wraps, etc.

Another great thing I came away with from this class? Confidence. I have a tendency to over-rely on recipes, and sometimes you just don't have a recipe for making over the leftovers in your fridge. That's where creativity - and some confidence - come into play. And I put them to play the next morning!

Leftovers + Biscuits = Biscuits and Gravy!

So here we have some leftover hot-sauce glazed tempeh crumbled up and fried in some EVOO, then some rustic white beans with mushrooms thrown in there, and some leftover mushroom gravy from a few nights ago. I thinned it out with a little almond milk and added some fennel for that sausage-y flavor. And you know what? It was freaking awesome. Seriously, some of the best vegan sausage gravy I've ever had. Over really freaking fantastic biscuits (used Yellow Rose Recipes for that one).

VegNews Mac and Cheese: OMGYUM!

So The PPK boards had been all a-chatter a while ago about this recipe, and I LOVE me some mac and cheese, so I had to give it a whirl. Verdict: AWESOME. I can't believe I finally found a nooch-free mac and cheese!!! (I like nooch and all, but come on. Not every single time). The combo of cashews, lemon juice and the cooked veggies was amazing. I tasted it pre-baked and after baking, and I have to say that Chad and I both really liked it better pre-baking. The breadcrumbs were a little much and somehow there was a weird fishy aftertaste post-baking. But I will most certainly be making this recipe again, soon. I might cook just a bit more pasta, because it was pretty saucy pre-baked - maybe bump it up from 8 oz to 10 oz. If you love mac and cheese, try this recipe!!!

Oh you wanted to take a picture of that? Uhhh....

The reason I don't have a pic of the mac and cheese in the baking dish. Thanks, dear.

Rustic White Bean Soup with Rosemary + Southern Lovin' Cornbread

So some more leftovers were magically transformed into something new and delectable last night for dinner after gardening class (which is so awesome! I heart Seattle Tilth!) So I took the remaining Rustic White Beans and Mushrooms, threw it in a pot and put it on low while I cooked me up some fantastic southern style cornbread (veganized the Sour Milk Cornbread recipe from The Gift of Southern Cooking). I used a mix of white cornmeal and yellow (I LOVE real southern style - read: NOT SWEETENED - cornbread, and they tend to be made with white cornmeal). It was sooooooo good! And had so few ingredients. I need to get some more white cornmeal because I want to eat it everyday.

So back to the beans - I pureed them with my immersion blender, added some fresh chopped rosemary and a splash or two of lemon juice and then when it was served I drizzled some olive oil in each bowl. It was SOOOOO GOOOOOD!!! Sorry no pic, I can't find my camera cord and I'm not making too much noise looking for it cuz the dude is sleeping. Thank dog.

VEGANMoFo: Iron Chef Challenge!

2008-10-03T22:01:00.008-07:00

What the heck is that up there? Well I'll tell you. In a minute. (Ha! I'm so like crappy network news!)

So fellow vegan blogger Katie (aka mrsbadmouth) from Don't Eat Off The Sidewalk came up with the brilliant idea of doing an Iron Chef-style challenge for this weekend. Read about in detail here. But anyway, she picked 2 ingredients that we have to cook with this weekend and post our results (by Sunday noon). No prizes, just good ol' blogger glory.

What are the two ingredients? I'll tell you - right now!

Apples and Ginger! What an awesome autumn choice, right?

So of course like 9 gabillion sweet ideas come to mind: muffins, scones, pancakes, pies, whathaveyou. But I was like No Way, Man! I'm going against the grain, cuz I'm a Vegan and that's how we ROLL!! So what did I make?

Cheezy Apple Gratin with Gingered Cream Sauce

Yep. So here's what's in this thang:

1 lb(ish) of apples - I think I used 5-6 medium sized (that we picked ourselves at Fall City Farm!)
3/4 cup of breadcrumbs (mine were mixed with some EB - leftover from Mac and Cheese topping)
3/4 cup of chopped walnuts
11/2 C plain soymilk creamer
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/2 - 1 inch of grated ginger (mine was frozen)
s&p
1 C of Swiss Melty Cheez from The Uncheese Cookbook (or your own fave cheezy sauce)

What I did:

Preheat the oven to 375F. Put the soymilk creamer and almond milk in a saucepan over lowish heat. With a microplane or very small-holed grater, grate the ginger straight into the pan, stir and fagettaboutit.

Core and slice your apples (peel if you want, but seriously who wants to peel?!). Mine were medium-thin slices, I was kind of in a hurry.

Combine your breadcrumbs and walnuts in a small bowl. In a casserole dish (I used enamled cast iron) layer about half the apples, sprinkle with salt and pepper, follow with half the nut-crumb mixture, the rest of the apples, s&p, and the rest of the nut-crumb mix. Finally, pour the warmed ginger cream over the whole shebang (it should cover the apples about 3/4 of the way up the dish).

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until very soft. About 10-20 minutes before it's done, remove the dish and pour on (or sprinkle on you grated) cheesy sauce. Return to oven for remaining 10-20 minutes, or at least until the cheesy sauce is bubbling and has baked in.

Commentary 'Bout It
At first I wasn't planning on the cheezy sauce. Then I tasted the gratin 10 minutes before it was done and I was like, "Hm...this tastes like an apple crisp that got all mixed together." And I really wanted savory! What to do?!? Cheesy sauce, of course. And it really made the difference!

The first taste is POW! Noochy cheese. Followed by sweet, mellow, soft apples. Than finished up with POW! Garlicky-onion nooch cheese. It's a pretty good combination of tastes. I think it would be great on the side of any dinner plate, especially chickpea cutlets or oooh! curry baked tofu.

I think I would grate more ginger in next time, just for fun. So increase if you want!

For full disclosure's sake, I got the idea for this gratin from my main man Mark Bittman, in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Because I love it. I whisper sweet nothings in its invisible ears.

VEGANMOFO: Day 3

2008-10-03T17:35:00.005-07:00

Rustic White Beans and Mushrooms
from Veganomicon

Was wicked. We picked up a TON of 1 lb bags of local beans when we went on Farm Tour 2.0 last weekend and I thought it was a great time to break out the white beans for some beans and mushrooms and Vcon. And since there was no hot sauce called for in the dish, I felt it would be a relatively humiliation-free dish. Yay!

We used up our whole share of CSA Mushrooms for the week on the dish, and it was a worthy use indeed. We really loved the huge hunks of veggies throughout the dish, carrot in particular. I think next time I would double or even triple the amount of carrots, just we are really big cooked carrot dorks. So soft and orange and delicious! This made a TON of food, which is nice for lunches and whatnot. I think I may reheat the leftovers with the sage breadcrumbs from the pumpkin ziti recipe for lunch tomorrow.

We had these beans over very last minute "Oh crap what should we eat with these beans?" couscous cooked in veggie broth. Oh and some lemony broiled green beans, because seriously, we like to load up on all types of beans possible. And salad with sesame dressing from Vcon, which was also really good and easy to make.

Apple Caramel Peanut Butter Bars
From Veganomicon (name of dessert approximate, I am beyond lazy)

Ok I realize this looks like your dog had a potty emergency all over something in a 9x13 pan. I'm not sure why my peanut butter caramel came out so gloppy (and I even added more maple syrup to make it more liquid) but it sure tastes good anyway!

Here's the profile view, kind of weird, I know. Layers of graham cracker crust, apples, crumb topping and peanut butter caramel! YUMMMMM!

Check back tomorrow for a review of a vegan cooking class that I just took on Southern Vegan Comfort Foods! Woo-hoo!

Eggplant Parmesan Supremo

2008-10-02T13:38:00.003-07:00

Welcome back to day 2 of VEGANMOFO!

So we had this eggplant and I was all "maybe I'll just make ratatouille" and then I was like "But that doesn't have pine nut cream and I WANT IT." So, eggplant parmesan it was. And boy did it FREAKING ROCK!

Eggplant Paremsan Supremo
aka, Eggplant Farmesan (according to Silas)
Here's what I did:

1 Medium eggplant*, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
1 Breading recipe from Everyday Dish's seitan cutlets - but you'll need a LOT of panko, just an FYI (1-2 cups, maybe?)
Some Mushroom Marinara(my recipe below)
1 batch of Pine Nut Cream (from Vcon)

Lobster Mushroom Marinara:
1-2 T olive oil
1/2 medium onion*, chopped fine
1 crazy freaking lobster mushroom,* thinly sliced (This was from our Mushroom CSA - replace with whatever mushroom you want, about 1 cup thinly sliced)

1 28 oz can of fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 tsp garlic powder (OMG I was out of fresh garlic! Half of an entire bulb was moldy, and I had already shopped. Rawr).
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2-1 tsp salt
pinch sugar
1 glug (2-4 T) red wine*

Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and sautee until translucent. Add the mushroom (if you're using the lobster mushroom - start to freak out how much like seafood it smells as it cooks! Seriously!) Sautee until soft.

Take your immersion blender to the opened can of tomatoes and puree. Alternatively, throw it in the blender or food processor until smooth. Add the onion-mushroom mixture, tomatoes and everything else to a saucepan and heat through. Taste, adjust the seasonings.

Fry up the eggplant over medium heat until brown and crispy on both sides. Put one layer of eggplant down in a 9x13 dish. Cover with Marinara. Carefully spoon on and spread out the pine nut cream (we had a little leftover, but more will definitely not hurt!). Bake at 350F for 30-45 minutes, or until the pine nut cream looks set and starts to form little cracks, like this:

We served this alongside some brown rice linguine. It was so good! Silas, the vegan toddler wonder, couldn't get enough. Let's just say that between the three of us, it is now completely gone, between dinner and today's lunch. Yeah, like that.

* = local organic

Amaranth Porridge = Notsomuch, thx.

So I checked out Lorna Sass's Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way from the library and was flipping through it last night. First of all the book totally rocks, it has cooking info and instructions for all those obscure grains you want to try at the health food stores (kamut, millet, funky colored rices, wheat berries, groats, etc). It has substituting instructions and she's all about having you cook extra to freeze so you have some wicked fast recipes on your hands for later.

But back to amaranth. So I was reading about how it's like quinoa, in that it has the complete amino acid chain and is a good source of protein, blah blah blah. I also just saw a gorgeous amaranth plant at my garndening class last weekend, so I was reinspired to give it a go. We had some on hand, and I'm not even sure I had ever tried it. So I soaked it overnight and cooked it up for breakfast this morning.

Erg. I'm not usually a texture-phobe, but I just couldn't get into this one. No matter how much agave, cinnamon or coconut oil I added, the runny texture just creeped my gullet out. It reminded me of that glop they have to eat on The Matrix, you know the one I'm talking about? The whole tastee-wheat-chicken conversation? Right, like that. Silas inspired me to try to just drink it like a soup, and that almost caused some hurling on my part.

So I don't think we'll be having that again. Which is too bad, because Chad and Silas both kind of liked it. I'm going to have to try a savory recipe for amaranth; I'm determined to like it, kind of like how I feel about beets (how can they be so pretty and yet taste so much like dirt?!). I'm willing to give it another go. Stay tuned for the Amaranth Chronicles.

VEGANMOFO! It's here!

2008-10-01T13:57:00.003-07:00

That's right, I've been having anxiety nightmares about this day, and here it is despite it all! It's VEGANMOFO, the VEGAN MOnth of FOod, where I swear on my firstborn that I will post at least 5 times a week in an attempt to share some more of the vegan food love. I'm excited! I'm scared! Help/Squee!

I'm not really sure what you can expect from me. Maybe some talk about why I am vegan. Maybe about how I first went vegan at 17. Maybe some food writing review. Maybe some stuff about this awesome gardening class I'm taking, which of course relates to the awesome food I will grow to eat. Maybe some restaurant reviews. Maybe about being a vegan mom to a mostly vegan toddler. But definitely a lot of food. That much I know.

I'm going to ease into this by just talking a little bit about what we've been eating lately. This week over at The Post Punk Kitchen Forums, the cookbook challenge is to utilize Veganomicon. The idea is to focus on new-t0-you recipes, which can be hard for me because that book has so many tried and true faves! So we're splitting the difference here.

Hot-Glazed Tempeh
This was a new to me recipe. First of all, I'm an idiot, let's just get that right out there. We don't keep hot sauce in the house - we just don't. For one thing, we have like 5 kinds of hot things that I typically sub for hot sauce, like chiptole tabasco, chili-garlic sambal, pickapeppa sauce, siracha, chipotle in adobo and a variety of hot spices. Second, I was kind of under the impression that hot sauce was less like ketchup (which always tastes pretty much the same no matter what kind you buy) and a lot more like snowflakes - each one is it's own flava/experience. Apparently, this is not so. After reviewing that this recipe was really hot (and we love the spice) - keeping in mind I DID NOT USE HOT SAUCE, but rather a combo of the tabasco, sambal and pickapeppa - I got about 10 comments on the boards that it's not hot at all you idiot, use real hot sauce (including one from Isa herself! I am forever shamed!). So, now I know. Use something that comes out of a bottle labled "hot sauce," you asshole.

So? So. My bastardization of this recipe yielded supa-spicy tempeh, but I have since begun the mending of my ways and have indeed purchased a bottle of "hot sauce" which I am now to understand isn't at all hot, it's just a clever name. Do I have that right? Good. I will be retrying this recipe sometime soon, as it appears to be a fave of the folks on the PPK boards, and I love a good tempeh recipe. Sheesh. I feel like I just came out of confession.

As an aside, we served this wicked hot tempeh with some really freaking awesome grilled corn on the cob and a green salad with leftover tahini garlic dressing (from VWaV). I lubed the corn up with some olive oil and sprinkled on some chili powder pre-grilling, and then after it came off added just a bit of earth balance and a sprinkle of sumac - YUM! Silas, the 2-year-old, was an especially huge fan of the corn, which I don't think he had ever had in cob form before. Now we know. Handles = fun food for toddlers. Duh.

Chickpea Cutlets, Mushroom Gravy and Rutabega Puree

So we are longtime fans of the chickpea cutlets. I love anything salty and savory and chewy and filled with dense protein-substances. I love how quick they come together. And I love the baking option, which requires very little of my attention.

The Mushroom Gravy was good - I think I would add a little more saltiness next time, because my broth powder (Bill's Chick'nish) is very low in salty flavor. I used a bunch of mystery mushrooms from our Mushroom CSA (how wicked is a mushroom csa? very!), I think they might have been baby shiitakes, but seriously, not sure. It came out great, I would definitely make this again. Who doesn't love gravy?!?

The Rutabaga Puree - ok. It was fine. I don't know, it was a little...rutabaga-y. Duh. I guess the thing is, it looks a lot like mashed potatoes, which are like one of my top 5 favorite foods, but they don't taste like mashed potatoes and the mouth feel is different. And with that cutlet and gravy, I guess my palette was kind of like "give me the mashers, you freaking idiot!" and instead I provided a completely non-sequitor, thai-inspired rutabaga puree. Another operator error. I might try it again if I get another rutabaga in my CSA box, but I can't see seeking out another rutabaga just to make this. But it's really fine, and seriously, anything with coconut milk automatically gets 5 extra points. As you can see, I added the cilantro.

Oh and those green beans in the background? Those are the Lemony-Broiled Green Beans from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. Practically instant and delicious, yay!

Ok, off to prepare the eggplant for some parmesan tonight. I think we're going to use some fabulous pine-nut creme to top that off with, yay! Until tomorrow then.

The Week of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan!

2008-09-29T13:43:00.005-07:00

So last time I posted about how I was participating in ThePPK forum's cookbook challenge of the week, which was to show some love to Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink and Be Vegan! Well, I can honestly say that it was a week of awesome eats!

Pumpkin-Cheese Pie

Well, let's start off with dessert, shall we? Yes, let's shall. Pumpkin cheese pie was a huge success. The only caveat being that I couldn't find a premade graham cracker crust, so I decided to be all DIY and make one from graham crackers. I looooosely followed the recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking but I think my ratios were off, because the crust was reallllllly crumbly and crumb-like - it just basically fell apart upon slicing. Next time I'll either use a tried and true recipe for graham cracker crust (measuring my ingredients, what a pain!) or buy a pre-made regular old pie crust. Those I can find. But the filling was super delicious and wicked easy to make!

Blackened Tofu, Potato Smashers and Sauteed Spinach

Ooooh, love love love! Yay for Blackened tofu! So super easy and tasty. It was a hit all around. The Potato Smashers were super delicious and easy too, a nice change from just roasted in olive oil (and I'm guessing considerably lower in fat). The spinach was actually a curried coconut-milk creamed spinach from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Super big thumbs up to that! It's basically just some garlic and a few dried chilis sauteed briefly in peanut oil, then the spinach is added along with about 1 cup of coconut milk and a teaspoon (or more or less) of curry powder. Fabulous!

Autumn Roasted Squash Rings with Enchilada Tofu and Rice
Just the Squash recipe is from ED&BV, and it was AWESOME! Pretty easy (once you get the squash peeled - dang!) I used a local delicata squash, which I think is my favorite squash of all time. The recipe utilizes lemon juice and rosemary, not things I usually associate with winter squash - but it was delicious!!

The enchilada tofu is my fave recipe from Tofu Cookery and the rice was just some leftover mixed rice pilaf reheated with a little tomato paste. The tofu was delicious as always, but the rice - not all that inspired, really. You can't win every time I guess.

Teriyaki Quinoa, Pan-Fried Tempt-eh, and Sauteed Wild Mushrooms
Teriyaki Quinoa = awesome, easy and FAST! This is probably my favorite quinoa recipe of all time. It somehow manages to cover that weird bitter quinoa taste I shy away from. Perfect in every way!
The tempt-eh was also super awesome! Chad was a huge fan, and he's usually not all super excited about the tempeh (I on the other hand would eat it every damn day). It had a great texture and was free of tempeh bitterness that I think Chad shies away from. Woo-hoo!

How can you not love sauteed mushrooms?!? Olive oil, garlic, wine, a little soy sauce...seriously, is this not food of the gods? We have a mushroom CSA, so we are always so excited to see what kind of crazy mushrooms we have the privilege to try this week. :)

Rice and Beans with Two Tomatillo Salsas, Guac and Salad
We had like 4 lbs of tomatillos to deal with, so it was salsa time! I made one raw salsa and one cooked version, and a quick guac over leftover rice and beans. The cooked salsa definitely wins this contest. Raw tomatillos kind of squeege me out.

I'm getting so nervous for VEGANMOFO!!!! I need to sketch out a bunch of posts so that I don't fall ridiculously behind. I'm scared!

Also this week, ThePPK forums are featuring Veganomicon as the cookbook of the week to use, so stay tuned for some new-to-me awesomeness from the vegan bible!

Roasting Vegetables and Some Savory Lentils

2008-09-23T12:40:00.008-07:00

Last week as I was having that panic stricken moment of "OMG there are too many vegetables in my fridge what do I do, let's just go out to eat instead." I talked myself off of that ledge with the foolproof idea of just throwing them all in a pan with olive oil and salt, roasting them at 400F for about an hour or so, and reaping the deliciousness afterward.

This incarnation of OMGVeggies includes:
Cauliflower*
Yellow Onion*
Sungold Cherry Tomatoes*
Golden Beets*
Carrots*
Mushrooms*
Chives*
Garlic*
Cubed Herb Tofu**
Olive Oil
Smoked Paprika
Salt and Pepper

I also made some roasted yukon gold potatoes*** with rosemary* and garlic* and some Garlicky Kale (Farmers Market) with Tahini Dressing (from VWaV). Yum! The cherry tomatoes burst during the roasting and mixed with the olive oil for this sweet tomato-y fantasticness. All of the veggies turn into golden love nibbles. Seriously, I'm not really a huge fan of beets or cauliflower, but roasted like this, everything just tastes luscious and juicy. Mmmm.

This week I'm participating in a "Giving Our Cookbooks Some Use" challenge over at The PPK Forums - this week the cookbook in question is Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I have this cookbook, and I've made several recipes, but I love a challenge and I don't use this book as much as I should. So I'm challenging myself to make:

Lemon-broiled green beans
Blackened Tofu
Savory French Lentils
Roasted Winter Squash Rings
Pan-Fried Temp-teh
Teriyaki Quinoa
Pumpkin Cheese Pie

Seems kind of psychotic, but I have all this stuff in the house already, so it's just a matter of making the time.

I started off the week right by making the Savory French (Puy) Lentils and Lemon Broiled Green Beans last night. YUM! Both were super easy and very tasty, and I would recommend them to all. I will definitley be making both again. I freaking love lentils, don't you? They're just so dang good.

To round out the meal I made a (huge) batch of this rice mix I bought at Trader Joe's - I think it has red, wild and brown rices mixed together, and I cooked it with some garlic powder, oregano, evoo and salt, so it had some flava on it's own. It went great with the lentils. I also made some quick pickles with our gabillion cucumbers and some radishes, red wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The rest are actually pickling in the fridge in jars, woo-hoo! Oh and we had an arugula salad topped with sungold cherry tomatoes and some of the tahini dressing leftover from the kale the other night. It was like a feast, I tell ya! I love fall, so many good things to eat.

* = CSA, Organic!
** = NW/Local Product
*** = Picked it ourselves! Organic.

We went apple and potato picking this past weekend, and also picked up some winter squash. I'm feeling a combo soup coming on...stay tuned.

Mini Meatloaves, Wicked Good

2008-09-17T18:43:00.005-07:00

So tonight we had Vegan Dad's Best Ever Vegan Mini-Meatloaf. It's pretty much the best ever, it's no lie. I don't know why this time, though, the bottoms of the loaves were burnt to a crisp! Luckily the burny part peeled off pretty easily, but strange. I think my oven racks are all whacked out and that the rack was too close to the heating element. That's what I'm going with anyway.

We also had some delicious Smoky Kale & Chard (Vcon Collard recipe; both were local!) and some fabulous mashed taters that We! Picked! At! The! Farm! this past weekend. So fun!

I just realized that all the major parts of this meal were local - even the tempeh is a NW product. Yay!

I also just want to give myself a green pat on the back for two things.

1. Silas and I rode the bus to Pike Place Market today. I love the bus! Every time we ride it, I'm put in a good mood. It's so mellow to be able to just sit back and relax, look out the window and be right next to Silas instead of feeling so far away in the car. Yay public transportation! And we purchased local produce at the market to boot (kale, blueberries). We saw fun musicians and danced. A great outing.

2. I remembered to bring containers to the store today for bulk!!!! Yay! I've been meaning to do this and kept forgetting. But today I brought plastic and glass containers for my bulk dishwasher detergent, oatmeal and peanut butter. Super stoked to remember.

Photos galore

2008-09-16T17:55:00.010-07:00

I am so hopelessly behind on the blog, that I've decided to just do an uber-photo post. So here it is: what we've been eating at home the past month or so.

Vcon's Seitan Picatta!
So freaking delicious. I actually used the seitan recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes, which might just be my favorite. But mmm, what's not to love about lemony-white-winey-capers-and-olive sauce?! OMG, I want it every day. Served over a bed of mashed taters.

Down Home Summer Supper

This meal was actually kind of disappointing. No matter what I do to BBQ tofu, it's just always bland. And it's not the BBQ sauce, because this was awesome (jarred, but we LOVE it). I even froze the tofu first this time, but still, just not very BBQ-y. Anyway, also featured is smoky-garlicky kale (Vcon collards recipe) and a tomato cobbler - kind of a flop. Wedged tomatoes topped with a cornmeal-biscuit type cobbler crust. Just no there there. At least the kale was great!

BBQ Pizza

Kind of another flop! The crust was frozen, from our natural foods co-op. Not sure why, just wasn't lovin' it. Too wheat-y. The other problem is that I made the sauce in the crockpot, but when I was ready for pizza the sauce hadn't reduced enough and was too watery*. This made for very dry, wheat-y pizza. Topped with sauteed mushrooms, patty-pan squash and basil.

*Just wanted to note that after cooking in the crockpot all night with the lid off, the sauce was reduced and perfect! We froze almost four quarts of sauce. Yay, local food for winter!

Tofu Tostadas
This we made so long ago that I'm a little sketchy on the details. But I think it was the enchilada tofu from Louise Hagler's Tofu Cookery (best! tofu! ever!) on a corn tortilla with some sauteed garlic, mushrooms and squash, topped with chopped butter lettuce and guac. YUM!

Lentil Pancakes of Joy!
This was a hit! Have you ever made lentil pancakes? No, me either. But it's easy! This recipe was from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, one of my faves. It's brown lentils soaked for a while then food processed with some other spices (and water) to pancake consistency. The ultimate glory of this meal was the FABULOUS pear onion chutney that our friends and former neighbors, Rick and Mary, gifted to us on our way out of town. It is SO GOOD I want to eat it on everything. We're currently rationing it. I need to get the recipe and then finally conquer my fear of actually canning something! Oh, and those are some steamed roma beans on the side. YUM.

Ratatouille + Pesto = Bliss
Ratatouille is the answer when you have so many vegetables in your fridge that you would rather go out to eat than deal with them all. It's easy - just slice, toss with copious amounts of olive oil, garlic and salt and roast for an hour and a half or so, stirring every half hour. Pesto on top is seriously the bomb, but it's not strictly necessary. This incarnation we had over brown rice pasta.

More ratatatouille, this time on it's own with a salad. It's versatile, in my opinion.

Olive Oil Veggie PastaThis was a stovetop pasta aglio olio, with sprouted whole wheat noodles. Nothing fancy, just veggies, evoo, garlic and some Parma!

Curried Tofu and Nuts Over Noodles
This was AWESOME! From Tofu Cookery, one of my new favorites! It's reignited my love of the 'fu. I've sort of been a tempeh girl, but this book may just change all that. I'm loving the previously frozen tofu lately, it's just so chewy and fabulous! The tofu is marinated in a combo of peanut butter, agave nectar, curry powder, soy sauce and some other good stuff and served over noodles with almonds and in this case, broccoli. So GOOD!

Blueberry Plum Crisp
With plums from our backyard tree. Delicious! Incidentally, our plum tree didn't produce nearly as much as I thought it would. I think it's missed several years of good pruning and doesn't get enough sun. We were just happy we got any at all! :)

TLCCT
That's tempeh bacon, letuce, cashew cheese and tomato for y'all who didn't know. Some rice pilaf and carrot sticks on the side.

The Ubiquitous CSA Stir Fry
With tofu. Need I really say more?

Chili Mac
Courtesy of Susan V. I liked this recipe, but I wanted it to be something more...not sure what. More pungeant, more intense, something. It was good and saucy, but kind of forgettable. I didn't want to eat the leftovers, ykwim?

Polenta Pancakes
From Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. These were just ok. Polenta (preprepared) sliced, dipped in cinnamon and sugar and fried up quick. Eh. Just not enough something. Just ok. I prefer the regular pancake. Oh, and that's an apricot up there on the plate. For, you know, garnish. :/

Chickpea cutlets?
I swear I can't remember what this is. I think it's chickpea cutlets, not sure. With Good Gravy from Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. Oh, and sungold cherry tomatoes. ;)

Dal over Indian Spiced Potatoes and Cauliflower

This I know, because we ate it tonight. :) The Dal recipe was from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison - it was good, but I like my dal a little spicier. This one did utilize coconut cream, though, and how can you go wrong with that?! We had it over Indian Spiced Potatoes and Cauliflower, a recipe from The Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook by Robin Robertson. Realllllly good. I was a little freaked, because I can count on one hand how many times I've cooked cauliflower, but this was delicious. The cauliflower kind of mushed into the potatoes and you almost didn't know it was there. I used the potatoes we dug ourselves (!!!) at the farm this past weekend - it was so fun. If you get a chance to pick your own potatoes (especially with a toddler) - do it. It's just fun. You get to use a pitchfork!

Ok, y'all. I've signed up for VEGANMOFO, which starts Oct. 1. I'm dedicating to blog every freaking weekday for the month of October. I'm nervous. I really hope I can do it! Wish me luck!

I'm Famous!

2008-09-12T13:52:00.006-07:00

photo by heisler, via flickr

Ha ha, just kidding. But I was interviewed recently for local radio when I took a (free!) canning class in town. It was a great class! Took the fear and uncertainty out of the process for me.

Check out my freaking awesome 10 seconds right here. Oh, and I'm Chessa Hickox, in case you were wondering. ;)

I swear to dog I have like 5 gabillion food photos and meals to post. It's just been so _____ around here lately. I promise to be back soon with mucho fabulous food posts.

Some Food, Some Challenges

2008-08-05T13:44:00.006-07:00

It's August! Woo-hoo! That magical time of bounteous produce, that gateway to the wonders of autumn (by far my favorite time of year), the days grow just a little shorter but the nights are still warm. Hooray!

And so it's a time for challenges. I'm participating in two challenges this month - Jennifer's Quit Now Challenge and Chile's Discretionary Eating Challenge.

I'm Quitting: Bananas and trying real darn hard to quit paper towels. So far, so good.

For the Discretionary Eating Challenge I'm in for 50% BUZZ (trying to have no more than 1 cup of coffee OR alcohol a day; ideally having no alcohol and very few coffee drinks in a week and only purchased during Espresso Happy Hour for half off!!!). I'm also in 100% for LITE (eliminating "white", refined products, except for sweets) and SOW (seconds only when hungry).

I'm doing well on this challenge so far, EXCEPT for this past weekend. We unexpectedly went to visit my parents in Portland and I ended up cooking a fair bit (blueberry muffins, biscuits) with white flour, because that's all my mom had. Like I said, last minute trip. I will say this as a consolation though: I made my blueberry muffins from scratch and my mom made non-vegan ones from a mix. There were 6 adults (2 were vegan) and one toddler (vegan). At the end of the meal, all 12 of my scratch muffins were gone but only FOUR of the mix muffins were eaten! It's clear that homemade (and vegan!) totally kicks Betty Crocker's ass.

It's fun to challenge yourself! And it's not too late to join, so if you haven't already, check them out and sign UP!

And now back to our regularly scheduled foodiness....

We've been chowing down on some fabulous eats this past week. It was the first week in a while that I PLANNED MY MEALS. Holy crap, but it's true. I don't know why I ever stop planning them, because everything is infinitely easier/better/amazing when I do. Even when I don't stick to the list, having the list there is a life saver. Because I forget things. I'm scatter brained. You know when you used to walk into the video store and stare and the movies blindly like here are all these movies and I can't remember the ones I really wanted to see? So you walk out with nothing or something really crappy? Yeah? Well the meal plan saves you from that feeling, seriously. Even when you decide to eat (or rent) something else instead, the list is good to have for when you feel uninspired.

The Ubiquitous CSA Stir-Fry Extravaganza!
Local: tofu, snap peas, green onion, mushrooms and garlic. Yum! Over rice. I thickened the sauce with some cornstarch this time, which I will do again. It was glossy and tasty!

Chickpea Sensation Patties with Balsamic Maple Sauce (And oven roasted potatoes!)
This meal was FABULOUS. The roasted potatoes were just thinly sliced yukon golds from our CSA share, tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper and roasted at about 400F for 30-40 minutes. During the last 10 minutes or so I added FRESH (from the backyard) rosemary and it made them crazyOMGdelicious. The husband was almost frantic with his worship of the potatoes.

I love experimenting with veggie patties, so I dove into this one from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I made a LOT of substitutions and they were still amazing. Especially with Balsamic Maple Sauce!

Spicy Italian Cutlet Parmesan with Fresh Peas and More Potatoes!
Sorry for the sucky photo. I NEVER claimed to really know how to use my camera!

Anyway, this recipe utilizes Julie Hasson's recipe for spicy italian vegetarian sausages, only instead of sausages you make cutlet patties for steaming. Then you bread and fry those puppies up and (in my case anyway) with the aid of a half-used jar of marinara sauce and the hunk of Teese that is begging to be used, you transform them into something magical AND thrifty!

These were so great. Not a terribly fast recipe, but not hard either if you know what I mean. I will definitely make them again, they are great. And who can deny the wonder of freshly shelled peas? Or more rosemary potatoes?!

Perfect Pasta with Peanut Sauce and Green Beans
This is a recipe that I tested for Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's new cookbook, and it's tasty AND easy. It's just noodles, fresh lightly steamed green beans and a peanut sauce. YUM! Silas is a big fan.

Refried Bean Burritos with Funky Salsa Verde
Last week's bean was the chickpea. This weeks? The Pinto!!! I'm always kind of "eh.." when I think of pintos, but when I make them and eat them I remember why my husband always wants them - they're so good and creamy!

This was just a refried bean recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, with this amazingly delicious "salsa verde" - recipe courtesy of my CSA. I can't imagine that this is authentic salsa verde, but I don't care - it's soooooo good! I want more! I want to eat it on eveything! Anything is a vehicle for this delicious sauce! And in case you were wondering, that is a WHOLE WHEAT tortilla - I'm totally doing well on my challenge!

This is taken from the CSA's newsletter:
Salsa Verde:
We have made this sauce with marjoram, basil and cilantro so far and all have been incredibly yummy! The amount/variety of herbs doesn’t seem to be that important, but the lime zest and juice is! Serve with quesadillas, tacos, or roasted potatoes.

-Roughly chop up 1 bunch of dill and ½ bunch of chives and put them in a blender.
-Add the zest and juice of 1 lime, 2 TBS olive oil, 1 clove of garlic and a big pinch of salt.
-Blend until smooth.

That's all for now! Hopefully this week's meal plan will hold and I'll have some more goodies to showcase soon. :D

Food and Mindfulness

2008-07-27T19:18:00.004-07:00

I went on a meditation retreat this weekend. I was totally, utterly freaked out that I wouldn't be able to "handle" it. But I did! I lived through it, it was awesome, and I recommend it to all. The retreat was led by Sharon Salzberg, who is one of the most amazing teachers and writers that I know of. Her book Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience is so well wrought, that I can't even do it justice by describing it. Especially for someone like me who grew up very uncomfortable with the idea/word/feelings associated with faith, her book is like taking back an idea and making it wholesome and accessible to all. Real. Here in the world. Right now.

What the heck does have to do with food?!?

Good Question.

Here's the thing: it was a silent retreat. When lunch rolled around, everybody pulled out their sack lunches and sat around eating. In silence. Just. Eating. Not reading, playing on the internet, watching TV, talking with friends. Nothing. But. Eating.

My blueberries burst in my mouth. I could taste all the different flavors and textures in my homemade dill caraway rye bread. The garlic and creaminess in my cashew cheese. I noticed just how loud my corn chips sounded as I chomped into them. Just this bite. This taste. This texture. Now this bite, this feeling on the tongue. Don't skip ahead to the next bite (or the next 50). Just this one bite. One bite at at a time.

So my challenge to all my blogging friends out there: Just for one meal this week, try Just Eating. Run the idea by your loved ones and see what they think. Or sneak away and eat by yourself in the closet where no one will bother you (or better yet, outside!). Just eat. See what happens.

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear about your experiences!

Bread and Other Awesomeness

2008-07-23T18:23:00.005-07:00

This was an awesome food week!

We started out with some Brown Rice Cereal with Raspberry Coulis. Sounds fance, doesn't it?

It's just leftover short brown rice with some almond milk, agave nectar and pureed fresh raspberries. But it was soooooo good! And a great way to use up leftover rice. Here's a link to a general recipe if you want proportions, etc.

Dinner #1!
I also tackled one of my fears this week - barbecuing pizza. It just always sounded so weird - like why doesn't the dough fall through the cracks?! I just didn't get it. Until I watched this Everyday Dish episode and was shown the light!
We made 2 smallish pizzas - one (pictured) was topped with leftover pesto, leftover grilled portabello mushrooms, sliced tofurkey sausages and fresh garlic. The other was similar but used marinara sauce. They were awesome! I will definitely BBQ pizza again in the future. A great way to enjoy pizza in the summer.

A note on pizza dough: I have been cutting out all the white flour in recipes in a test run of Chile's Discretionary Eating Challenge - and it's been going well so far. Which is why I made this ALL whole wheat flour pizza dough! I basically just replaced the white flour with half bread flour (locally bought when we lived in Michigan!) and some whole wheat pastry flour. I also added a tablespoon or so of vital wheat gluten, but otherwise I just followed a regular old pizza dough recipe with great results. Try it!

And a little dessert...
I also made a batch of Snickerdoodles (from La Dolce Vegan) using all whole-wheat pastry flour. Straight out of the oven they tasted a little wheaty, but the next day I really don't think you could tell a difference at all.

Another dinner - asian style!

Another fabulous stir fry using up bits from our CSA box and farmer's market purchases. This one utilized fresh peas (shelled myself, woo!), piopinno mushrooms, green onions, garlic, ginger, broccoli, fresh noodles and our favorite of all time local Small Planet Garlic & Herb Tofu. A little bragg's and sesame oil and we were good to go.

Dinner #3! Mexican-asian-italian fusion!
So another one of my own challenges to myself is to start utilizing the dry beans we have on hand. They are just so much cheaper than canned, and we are a bean loving family. So I made a batch of adzuki beans, but I seem to always mess them up. I didn't soak them this time (because I read adzuki's don't need to be soaked) but I overcooked them. It was like bean mush; the beans pretty much lost all their integrity. They tasted fine but it annoyed my sense of aesthetics. Grr.

Anyway, I warmed them up later with some sesame oil, braggs, garlic, green onion, and then added julienned chard to wilt at the end. Served over brown basmati rice (which I also kind of messed up. I blame the toddler for this one though!) and topped with chopped fresh cilantro. On the side is a green salad and...

Foccacia! Woo-hoo!!!! I love foccacia and I think I've only made it once before a LONG time ago. It's basically souped-up pizza dough, so I felt pretty comfortable. Again, I used a combo of whole wheat pastry and bread flour with some additional vital wheat gluten and it turned out great. I topped it with fresh rosemary, olive oil and salt, YUM!

Dinner #4: Awesome McAwesome-son!
So I still had the baby fennel problem to deal with. I knew there was a recipe I had made before that called for it (but I had always subbed onions, never being much of a fennel buyer). I found it, switched it up some, and therefore feel ok publishing it here. This recipe is based on one from Entertaining for a Veggie Planet by Didi Emmons.

Isareali Couscous Stew of Joy

2 T EVOO
1 C Israeli couscous (uncooked)
3 baby fennel bulbs, thinly sliced in half moons
6-7 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fennel seeds
3-4 C julienned chard leaves
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, liquid reserved into a measuring cup
Scant 2 cups veggie broth
1 cup boiling water
3-4 T Yumm Sauce (optional but delicious!)
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

In a large sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, fennel, fennel seeds and couscous and sautee for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, see how much tomato juice drained from your tomatoes. It'll be approximately 1/4-1/2 cup. Make up the difference with veggie broth until you have two cups total. Add that and the cup of boiling water and the chard to the pan. Cook, stirring often for about 11-12 minutes.

Add the Yumm Sauce, vinegar and s&p and stir. Taste, adjust seasonings as necessary. Serve hot with crusty bread!

I also made a batch of Parsley-Tahini Vinaigrette that I learned about from the Vegan Brunch class I took a while back at the Detroit Evolution Laboratory (miss them!). It is soooooo awesome. They are cool with publishing their recipes as long as I attribute credit to them. This recipe is under creative commons by Angela Kasmala.

1 c. oil (olive, sunflower, or grapeseed are all good choices)

Juice of 1 lemon

3-6 cloves garlic

½ c. fresh parsley

2-3 tbs. raw or toasted tahini

2 tbs. brown rice vinegar

1 tsp. each salt and pepper, or to taste

Add garlic to bottom of blender and blend. Add remaining ingredients and pulse a few times to combine.

That's all for now! Right now I've got Fresh Dill and Caraway Seed Rye Bread (longest. name. ever) cooling on the rack, and some chickpeas soaking for our upcoming meals. Stay tuned!

I Love Summer

2008-07-18T11:53:00.006-07:00

So we got our CSA share yesterday and guess what was in it? Raspberries! They are coming out of our ears. Our backyard berries are definitely slowing down though, so we won't be reaping the raspberries too much longer. Now when the heck are my apricots going to ripen?

Our CSA share also contained Baby Fennel! I have no idea what to do with it, but I'm super excited to find out. We also got some awesome looking Bibb lettuce, fresh garlic, green onions, rainbow chard, shelling peas, dill, and asiatic lilies. Oh! We also joined an additional Mushroom CSA!!!! So we got some delicious FRESH little Pioppino mushrooms! Yay.

We've been cooking more as the heat hasn't been so, well, hot lately. ;)

My final recipe test for Colleen Patrick-Goudreau came out really delicious - Scotch Broth. Which is actually more like a veggie soup/stew rather than broth - barley, split peas, lentils, leeks, carrots, etc. Oh and potatoes. Very hearty and filling, and subtly flavored. It would be great with something like seitan sausages or something in that neighborhood of strong flavors.

Here's Silas enjoying his portion:

After our first CSA box last week, I made up giant Vegan Dagwood Sandwiches with a side of Simple Chard from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. So easy and so delicious!

The sandwiches consisted of:
Herb and Onion Bread from Great Harvest Bread Co.
Avocado slices (thriftway)
Tomatoes from the farmer's market
Chickpea cutlets
Bibb lettuce (CSA)
Home Sprouted Mung Bean Sprouts
Cashew Cheese

YUM!

We also enjoyed a Tempeh Caesar Salad this week:
I just fried the tempeh with EVOO with a little grill seasoning, savory and tofu scramble spice mix from Yellow Rose Recipes. Then we topped it with Dreena's Living Caesar salad dressing (next time I'll use less lemon - it was very lemony), and some fresh tomatoes and mung bean sprouts and homemade croutons. Awesome!

Upon receiving my CSA bounty last night, I felt inspired to use up some of the older produce as well as featuring some of our new mushrooms - so stir-fry was the answer!
What I Did:
I got out my trusty wok, heated up some peanut oil over fairly high heat and fried up some of our most favoritest of all time Small Planet Garlic and Herb Tofu cubes. After removing those, I added some farmer's market broccoli and carrots from last week's box, as well as about 1/4 cup of water to steam fry. When they were pretty tender, I added about 1 cup of little mushrooms, 3 cloves of minced fresh garlic, 6-7 chopped green onion, and about 1 cup of sliced sugar snap peas. I added a couple of squirts of Bragg's and about 1 tablespoon of finely grated ginger and a bit of our cool new red celtic sea salt. At the very end I added the tofu back in and threw in 2 handfuls of mung bean sprouts (sprouted at home!). It was AMAZING!!!!! Maybe it's because I wasn't using any kind of recipe, maybe it was because everything was so fresh (and local and organic), or maybe it was the bottle of local chardonnay that we were well into.
I don't know, but it was fabulous. We had it over brown rice. (And that bottle was empty when Silas got a hold of it, I promise!)

Fresh Herburgers!

Ok this recipe has it's roots in Mark Bittman's Bean Burger recipe (from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian) but I changed it up enough that I feel ok about posting it here.

1.5 C of Cannelini Beans
1/2 C cooked brown rice
3/4-1 C old-fashioned oatmeal
3 cloves garlic
5 green onions, roughly chopped
1 small handful EACH (approximately 1/4 cup) of:
cilantro
italian parsley
And a couple tablespoons worth of fresh dill
Large pinch of salt
Freshly ground pepper

I also added about 1 teaspoon of Bill's Chick'nish seasoning and a large pinch of my tofu scramble spice mix mentioned above, so just throw in whatever usual seasonings you like - it's an adaptable recipe!

Put EVERYTHING in the food processor, starting out with the smaller amount of oatmeal. Pulse and process until everything is combined. Check out your mixture - does it look too wet to form patties? Add some oatmeal and process some more.

When you are reasonably satisfied with your mixture (taste for seasoning - nothing in there will hurt you!) use WET HANDS to shape it into patties.

Fry up your patties on a pretty hot skillet with some EVOO (I use cast iron). Flip when it gets brown on the bottom, about 3-4 minutes and cook until the other side is browned.

We had ours with HOMEMADE (!!!) wheat bread, cashew cheese, ketchup and lettuce - they were awesome!
Local vs Vegan News

Ok, it's not really a competition, but I just wanted to post these links about greenhouse gas emissions and diet - in the Vegan vs. Local Omnivore Challenge, the vegan wins!

Do Food Miles Matter?

And the original report that is quoted above can be found here:
Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States

What I'm taking from this is that being a locovore is good, being a vegan is better, and being a locovore vegan is best! I'm personally recommitting to sourcing as much of my vegan diet as locally as possible.

Super Duper Over Due Update

2008-07-12T13:21:00.008-07:00

Sit down, pour yourself some sun tea (we've got black tea OR peppermint), and catch up with me and my foodiness!

Geez, it's been forever since I've been here! You know how it is, you keep meaning to update, and then you don't and then the stuff you want to update about gets longer...and longer...requiring more of your time...so you put it off a little more...until more than a month has gone by and you've lost all your loyal readers. ;)

So apologies, all. I have been so busy getting to know and falling in love with my new home that I just haven't had it in me to update. Here I am!

(If you're only here for food, skip down to the end of this post).

Seattle is AWESOME. Did I mention I love it? Because I am like psychotically, sloppily, first-time-crush in love with Seattle.

Could it be the raspberries in my backyard?

(I've picked about a bowlful of berries every day for the last 4-5 days! OMG!)

Or the giant apricot tree?

Maybe it's the cute little (yearound!!!) farmer's market in downtown West Seattle. Or my new (woman-owned, organic) CSA.

On to to food!

I've been recipe testing for a new cookbook by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, which is super fun! Of course I can't share the recipes, but here are some photos of the creations:

Beet Cake

Not-Just-For-Breakfast Banana Splits

And of course, we've been eating lots of delicious things in general.

CSA Tofu Scramble and Salad

This tofu scramble consisted of tofu (duh), mushrooms, fresh garlic, green onions, beet greens, fresh cilantro and avocado. Our salad was butter lettuce with (home-sprouted) mung bean sprouts and a balsamic vinaigrette.

Silas liked it.

Did I mention I bought a new cookbook? When we were in Portland we stopped by Herbivore and I had to buy a copy of Yellow Rose Recipes, which is awesome. This is our new favorite tofu scramble recipe! With some avocado on the side and some awesome whole wheat bread from the farmer's market.
This was a whipped together pasta dish with sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, calamata olives with garlicky olive oil over it all. With some more of that awesome bread, garlic bread style.

We ditched our old grill in MI because it was DONE. Luckily for us, Chad's parents decided to go halvsies with us on a new one. Wicked! Here is some grilled BBQ tempeh over rice with grilled asparagus and smoky collards.We've also been eating a lot of delicious food out and about:

Rice and Bean Burritos from Tacqueria Guyamas
Delicious Breakfasts and Silence-Hearts-Nest
Fabulous Coffee and Mighty-O Donuts at Red Cup Espresso
Unbelievable pizza at Tutta Bella in Columbia City
Very good Veggie Pho at Thanh Brothers

Our little dude Silas also celebrated his 2nd birthday last month, and my mom being the ANGEL that she is ordered him a special Choo-Choo cake from Sweet Pea Bakery in Portland, an all-vegan bakery. It was DELICIOUS!!!!

Silas thoroughly enjoyed it (that's my mom with him).

Oh and I forgot (for SHAME!!) to take a pic of this, but I also made a raw (!!!) raspberry cobbler with our bounty of backyard raspberries. It is delicious. It's unbelievable. It takes like 5 minutes to make. Go make it NOW! Use whatever delicious fruit you have on hand, it takes about 6 cups of fruit. I used Ani Phyo's recipe for Mango Cobble.

So much to do! So much to say! But that's all for now. :D

Up up update

2008-05-25T16:09:00.005-07:00

He Caught Like Three Feet of Air That Time

Sorry for the lack of posting and food-related photos....Silas and I are still in Portland (well, actually 40 minutes outside of Portland in between the towns of Scappoose and St. Helens, OR for anyone familiar with the area). I've been cooking up a storm, but in the heat of the moment I've been very, very bad about taking my food porn fotos. But we've been making great stuff, rest assured. And visiting Farmer's Markets. I want to go like twice a week here, they are soooo awesome! Greens, strawberries, fresh herbs, breads, mushrooms...so much good stuff. Oh, and spam me with your best recipes that use Shiitake mushrooms. I bought some fresh ones, and I don't think I've ever cooked with them before! Weird, I know.

Today I made a Tofu Cutlet Parmesan that was really awesome. I used the Compassionate Cook's recipe for the Tofu Cutlets (it's a recipe you can buy as part of the BBQ, Burgers and Backyard Bites packet), and they were great. Then I layered them with marinara and topped it all off with Vcon's Pine Nut Cream Sauce, except that I substituted cashews for the pine nuts since my mom didn't have any. It was great! I'm super happy we have leftovers. You could totally cheat if you were in a hurry and use a vegan Chick'n patty instead of making your own cutlets.

Did I mention that I bought a copy of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan by Dreena Burton? I did! So please, everyone out there that uses it, spam me with the awesome recipes to try. There are so many, I need some recommendations to focus my energy!

Yesterday morning I made the Tempeh Hashbrown Casserole for breakfast. YUM! I cheated and microwaved the potatoes instead of baking them, which cut down on the prep time by an hour so I don't really feel bad. I used a mix of red potatoes and a big baker russet instead of the yukon golds called for, and I thought it was great. Oh yeah, and spanish onion filled in for green onion. Anyway, it was hearty and delicious, and if my recommendation doesn't carry enough weight let me just say that my psychotically carnivorous father ate it without complaint. Yeah, seriously! I will say that I felt like it needed something, like a tofu scramble or something, pared with it. Today I had leftovers of the has with sliced avocado on top, and this helped ameliorate the "missing" feeling. But what can't a ripe avocado fix?

I also made the lemon pesto from ED&BV and used it for a homemade pizza last night. It was great. My mom does some awesome stuff with pizza crust, very nicely cooked. It was also topped with rehydrated sun-dried tomatoes and some browned Morningstar Chick'n strips and some fresh minced garlic. YUM.

Chad and I used to live a few blocks from this hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant on Burnside in Portland. He used to order so much take out from them that they recognized his voice. Yeah, it was like that. Anyway, they make THE BEST Massaman curry in the entire universe, and we are always always disappointed when we order it from anywhere else. I've always wanted to try to make it myself to see if I could replicate it, but do you know how hard it is to find massaman curry paste?!? Damn near impossible. But I found some! At this tiny little grocery/cafe in St. John's in Portland called Proper Eats. (Which, by the way, has AWESOME food. Go there and order the special, whatever it is.) So I made my mom and I (and Silas) some homemade Massaman curry the other night. It was really good! But it wasn't THE curry. It was missing some pungency...extra lemongrass? Galangal? I'm going to have to experiment, but I'm glad that I have the curry paste to get me started, anyway. Long live massaman.

This past week I also had the distinct pleasure of testing a recipe for Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's new cookbook. It was a peanut sauce pasta dish with green beans and it was awesome! I don't think I've seen Silas clean his plate so fast and ask for more in a long, long time. That kid was a BIG fan, especially of the green beans. I can't wait until it's published so everyone can make it! We had it with oven-roasted kale, which my mom freaked out over.

Oh, and last weekend I made a batch of VCTOTW Peanut Butter Heavencakes: chocolate cupcakes filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with chocolate ganache. Holy flurking snit. They were soooooo good, and my dad was obsessed with them! Go vegan food winning over the toughest critics.

Speaking of which, my mom is very open minded, but I am still so happy that I think I've convinced her to start using unsweetened almond milk instead of cow's and soymilk creamer instead of Coffeemate non-dairy creamer!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!!!!!! She's had breast cancer twice, and I'm just so glad to get her to cut back on dairy, especially after what I've been reading about IGF-I (or watch a video about it here) and it's effects on cancerous cells. And coffeemate is LOADED with chemicals and hydrogenated oils, so, yay!!! Again, yayayayay!

I'm also excited, because my dad, the aforementioned food-wimp, was telling us that he was talking to his co-workers about how he'd been trying all this vegetarian food lately, and it was all pretty good. *sniff* *tear* Who was it that said we just have to win them over with delicious food?! So, so true.

News on the Move
Chad will start driving from Detroit on Tuesday and should make it here by Friday or so. We'll be in Seattle the following Wednesday (6/4) to meet our ABF truck and start moving in. Yay!!!!!

The Seattle Deets

2008-05-10T21:10:00.006-07:00

Life and Whatnot
(skip down for you food-only people!)

So, I'm pretty much convinced that Seattle is the enchanted land that can do no wrong. This is my second trip up this week, and it continues to rock my world!

So, Chad got a job at a local community college here as Associate Dean of Academic Programs or something to that effect. It's a new position for both the school and him, so this should be very interesting and very fun. It's in West Seattle, which is where we'll be living, like 3 miles away from his job! And there's a bus (BUS!!!) that takes him there in like 12 minutes. Unless you've lived in Detroit, the excitement about the bus is probably weird, but after living in a city that buried its public transportation decades ago, it is so awesome to live in a civilized place again.

I found us a house to rent that is great, with gorgeous gigantic flowers (seriously, my dad's in the nursery business and he said that every plant on our property is the biggest one he's every seen of the species!) and this crazy knotty tree that is perfect for climbing. I seriously feel like I'm moving to the enchanted forest! There is an outstanding view of the Puget Sound from the end of our street and our place is like 3/4 of a mile from tons of stuff to do - year-round farmer's market, tons of coffee, restaurants and bookstores, a YMCA...I just can't believe how awesome this moving is turning out to be! If I were anymore thankful I think I would spontaneously combust.

Vegan Eats!
Earlier this week I had the distinct pleasure of indulging in some of Mighty-O Donuts for breakfast, and I can safely say that they rock. The French Toast donut may have changed my life forever. Later that day I dragged my mom (such a trooper!) to Squid and Ink in Georgetown, where I gorged myself on vegan chicken-fried steak and hashbrowns while she enjoyed the french toast, tofu scramble and tempeh sausage. It was a little hard to find, but definitely awesome and we will most certainly be back! We also hit up PCC Natural Market a few times where I was thrilled to discover they sell a bunch of vegan sandwiches, such as the tasty SmartLife Club and Vegan BLT, plus a variety of vegan baked goods (great brownie and I also had some outrageously delicious raw raspberry cheesecake! That is, until Silas woke up and devoured almost the whole thing.)

This trip my dad is along and he is, how shall we say....a less than adventurous eater, which means the wholly vegan restaurants are not on the agenda for this trip. But I'm still hoping to check out a bakery at Pike Place that has vegan cinnamon rolls tomorrow, and we're also going to try to get into Blackbird Bistro for Mother's Day breakfast. I'm so psyched!

This Just In:

2008-04-30T15:09:00.001-07:00

We are moving to SEATTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My head is spinning and I might throw up. In a good way! We are off to celebrate. Details later.

YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!YAY!

Cooking Classes Rock!

2008-04-28T18:12:00.002-07:00

On Sunday I was lucky enough to participate in my first vegan cooking class! You may remember two posts ago when I was spastically gushing about the Detroit Evolution Laboratory? They were at the Meatout, makers of the cashew cheese that has changed everything that I eat, etc, etc. So! Angela teaches cooking classes, and the April classes have been full for a while, but I heard about a last-minute opening for the Sunday Vegan Brunch class, so I signed up.

It was awesome!!

The menu included:
[real] coffee
a grain-based roasted coffee that their friend makes (more about that at a later date)
Tropical Berry Fizz
Spring Greens with Parsley-Tahini Vinaigrette
Grain Salad wih Sprouts, Dried Cranberries and Pumpkin Seeds
Quiche (!!!) with Brown Rice-Stuffing Crust (recipe below)
Chocolate-Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls.

Did I mention that it was awesome?!? Gregg and Angela were so welcoming and such great teachers and all the other members of the class were so fun and inspiring, too. I don't know if I had so much energy when I left from all the healthy delicious food or being around such freaking awesome people, but whatever it was, I need me some more of that!

They are all about transparency and sustainability and I wish I could describe in full detail their whole mission, but I know I'll screw it up, but go check out their web page because it's amazing.

So, hopefully at some point I'll get all the recipes up for you to try out, because everyone should eat this well! For now, please go and experiment with this outstanding vegan quiche recipe.

Quiche with Brown Rice-Stuffing Crust
by Angela Kasmala

Serves 6-8

Crust:
3 C brown rice, cooked with 2 tsp sea salt, 1 T oregano, and 2 tsp garlic powder, then chilled (or any chilled grain works)
2 C bread, cubed or leftover stuffing (in which case you shouldn't add the rest of the seasonings below)
3 T oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 T oregano
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350F.

Place the rice, bread, spices in a food processor. Turn on and slowly add the oil. Blend until the rice and stuffing are completely combined and slightly sticky. Press mixture in the bottom of a lightly oiled springform pan (9" is best I think), using wet hands. Place pan in oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the crust starts to pull slightly away from the sides of the pan. Remove and set aside, but keep the oven on.

Filling:
1 batch of cashew cheese
1 16 oz block of firm tofu
1 1/2 C broccoli florets
1 C cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 C baby spinach, chopped
1/2 C red onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika
1 T vegan Worcestershire sauce, or 1 T apple cider vinegar
1-2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp black pepper

Make the cashew cheese and set aside.

Blend the tofu in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add the cheese to the tofu and blend until smooth. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add the remaining veggies and seasonings, stirring to combine. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.

Pour the mixture into the prepared crust and bake at 350F for 25-35 minutes. Take the quiche out and set on top of the stove to stand for about 5 minutes. Slice and serve!

I don't have a photo yet, but trust me when I tell you that this is gorgeous and impressive looking! And a very happy, sunny, yellow. :)

Even When the Universe Hates Us...

2008-04-22T17:11:00.005-07:00

We still eat well.

This picture of Silas really captures my mood lately:
We have now entered the lovely stage of the spring I like to call "the waiting for him to call nightmare." In this scenario, the "him" refers not to a boyfriend or whatever, but to the imaginary job person who is calling to offer Chad a job. This has nothing at all to do with food or eating, but I thought it might help to explain the surliness that might just come screaming through the computer to eat your faces off, lovely readers. Let's just say we thought we had something in the bag (in SEATTLE!!!) and now it just looks like we are one of 4 lucky candidates who gets to go BACK. Again. For an interview with the president. Because bringing back FOUR of the SIX original candidates interviewed in the first round is perfectly reasonable right? RIGHT!?!???! Who DOESN'T want to bring back 2/3rds of the candidates to interview a THIRD time!?! Not me! Why don't we bring all six back? Why not!

Anyway. We are also waiting to hear back from a Rancho Cucamonga job (I swear to god I didn't make that town up). And there is another interview in San Diego in two weeks. And then we go to Oregon to chew our nails down to the quick and plead with any deity, mineral or vegtable who will give us audience to get us the hell out of this decaying place. Please.

So every time the phone rings we jump. And hope. And every time it's not our ticket out of here we die a little inside. But still, we cook good food and eat it. Because that's what good vegans do!

I will spare you all the rest of my mental breakdown.

Begin Foodiness!

Some catch-up!

Black Bean Burgers with Cilantro-Cashew Cheese, Curried Carrot Dip, Chips and Pickles!So even though I have several bean burger recipes that I like already, I decided to give the black bean burgers out of Vcon a shot. They were good! They didn't change my life, and I think they could have used a hefty pinch of salt, but they were solid. The cashew cheese continues to change my world and is transformed into a magical topping for these burgers by stirring in some minced cilantro. We also had some leftover Curried Carrot Dip out of Vcon - always a crowd pleaser, but it makes a LOT, so sometimes it's hard for us to use it all up in time.

Magical Granola with Sliced Bananas

Chad LOVES some granola. I always want to have made it - the night before. Even though it doesn't take long, I have issues with breakfast recipes that don't require my full attention from start to finish. As in, if it's going to take an hour, I want to be at the stove the whole time doing stuff. I have a problem with stir-it-up-and-wait recipes in the morning. Too hyper I guess! But I made it happen last week. Note to self: double or triple the recipe in the future, because this amount only got us through two days! We are granola hogs.

I got inspiration from Vegan Lunch Box for this granola recipe, but I feel that I've changed it up enough to share with y'all!

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup raw pistachios
3/4 tsp cinnamon
dash of salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/3 cup maple syrup

Preheat your oven to 300F. In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients. In a liquid measuring cup or small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. Add wet to dry and stir to coat. Spread the mixture evenly on a baking sheet and bake until lightly toasted, about 3o minutes, stirring halfway through.

Let it cool if you can wait that long. Stir in dried fruit if you want (we don't, but up to 1 cup works fine). Serve with vegan milk or yogurt and sliced bananas.

Out of Town Vegan Guest!

We had a friend visit for a few days last week (one reason I'm so behind blogging). She is vegan, too, which made things uber easy. We enjoyed some great food out - Pizza at Amici's and Middle Eastern ood at La Pita (thanks for the tip, Jennifer!) and awesome Ethiopian food at The Blue Nile. La Pita sent our guest into a frenzy looking for a recipe to recreate the amazing garlic dip that we found there (and used to get at La Shish) - it's some magical combo of garlic, olive oil and salt, and some people say potato. And a freezing cold mortar and pestle. Still haven't tried to make it, but someday soon because that stuff is seriously garlic crack!

I also made some food that I forgot to photograph (or maybe just felt too nerdy to do it in front of our guest). One morning I made tofu scramble (VwaV) and diner potatoes (Vcon). The potatoes were tasty, but kind of a pain. Why do potatoes take so darn long to cook?!? Another morning I made a double batch of pinto sausages and a double batch of powerhouse pancakes (it was a double batch kind of day). Another morning I made Drop Biscuits from Joy of Vegan Baking (awesome!) with leftover sausage. And one day our guest cooked lunch for us, and even though there was a sugar-salt confusion, it all turned out fine (I keep containers of both sugar and salt near my stove. You just have to know that the sugar is unrefined and brown, and the salt, though sea salt, is white. And decidedly not sweet!)

Today to try to reign in some of my sanity while Chad took Silas out to play, I whipped up a batch of these Raspberry Oat Bars:

Kind of a shoddy pic, but they are delicious! So few ingredients, but still awesome (basically, quick oats, flour, brown sugar, salt, baking soda and vegan butter with some raspberry jam layered in the middle. So good!) Perfect with a glass of unsweetened almond milk.

I also made up a batch of Apple-Sage Seitan Sausages, which were really good. They were more involved than the Pinto version, but I wanted to try a new sausage recipe. Next time I would add a little more salt, but otherwise these were a great combo of sweet and savory (and I love the fact that I finally got to bust out the Marmite that's been taking up space in my pantry for a while!). We had them for lunch with steamed broccoli and artichoke hearts topped with a little fresh cashew cheese and leftover tomato-caper couscous (Vcon).

I need advice and/or recipes!!!
So today I went to our local middle eastern grocery (which I always forget is sooooo close) and found myself in the bulk section where I quickly grabbed any random spice that had previously been called for in a recipe that I never had on hand. And this, dear readers, is why I'm looking for recipes that call for ground Sumac or ground Fenugreek. Because now that I have them, I can't remember which recipes called for them! And I know they're out there, and now I have to make them. Because the smallest container I could get for each was huge. So help a vegan out! You will have my undying gratitude.

MeatOut! And Cashew Cheese Changes My Life

2008-04-13T19:12:00.007-07:00

Today was the VegMichigan MeatOut, conveniently held like 4 blocks from my house! I was really looking forward to it because one of my vegan heroines, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau was a speaker. I got to see her give two presentations! It was awesome. I also got her to sign my copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking and chat with her for a few seconds (whereby I gushed like a teenage girl over her favorite New Kid on the Block. I just dated myself, no?) Anyway, her talks were great, and if I haven't beat it into your heads enough already, you should definitely check out her podcast - it really did inspire me to go from vegetarian to vegan, and has kept me there. She does amazing work.

I also got a chance to watch a cooking demo put on by the founders/owners of the new Detroit Evolution Laboratory, Angela Kasmala and Gregg Newsom. I've been hearing a lot of buzz about them from friends (Jennifer took one of Angela's cooking classes - read about it here; and my friend Brooke has tried their food offerings and had great things to report!). Anyway, their presentation was great, they demonstrated how to make some DELICIOUS Artichoke-Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms. The cashew cheese is the secret weapon for this. I've seen cashew cheese around in different cookbooks, but I've never gotten around to trying it (cashews are kind of expensive and I don't tend to have a lot of them on hand). I was pretty skeptical as Gregg described how he went from a "cheesetarian" to vegan with the aid of this cheese - I've just never really been too happy with any non-dairy cheese. That all changed today! This stuff is so good, I can't believe that anyone wouldn't love it. And it couldn't be simpler to make! Since they said they would post it on their website soon, I hope that they don't mind me reprinting it (plus they handed out fliers of the recipe at the demo). This is just the cheese recipe; check out their website for the whole Stuffed Mushroom recipe - I can't wait to try my hand at it!

Cashew Cheese to Die For (my name, not theirs):
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsp sea salt
1 C. water
3 C raw cashews or macadamia nuts

Mince the garlic in the blender, then add the remaining ingredients in the order listed and blend until smooth. Add more water if necessary, but you want the mixture to be thick and creamy.

So as soon as I got home from the MeatOut I told Chad we had to go straight to Trader Joe's to get more cashews, because I had to make this cashew cheese TONIGHT!

So I wanted pasta, not mushrooms for dinner, so here's what I did: I blended up my cheese (which seriously takes 3 minutes, tops!), boiled my pasta, cooked my broccoli in the pasta water for the last minute and chopped up 4 canned artichoke hearts. Tossed it all together with some of the cheese (that recipe makes a lot of cheese! I have a bunch leftover) and served alongside a batch of the Sauteed Collards from Vcon. It was sooooo good! Like super creamy mac and cheese. I can't wait to try this stuff in everything - Angela said that she uses it as ricotta, on veggie burgers, for enchiladas - you can even ferment it and make it into cream cheese or sour cream! So many possibilities. I think our next version of mac and cheese will involve sundried tomatoes...maybe pine nuts...mmmm, food.....

As you can see, this "past-ee" was a big hit with our intrepid food tester, Silas T. He gobbled it UP!

All in all, the MeatOut was great. It provided me with some real inspiration and hope and an infusion of energy that I really needed (Did I mention that it was snowing when I woke up this morning?!?! That is so wrong.) I'm really looking forward to exploring more of what the Detroit Evolution Laboratory is offering, and I definitely am going to sign up for one of Angela's cooking classes! And it was great to see Colleen up close and personal. Good times!

BBQ Beans and Mole!

2008-04-11T09:51:00.003-07:00

So I am officially in love with Veganomicon for giving me my two new favorite recipes: Backyard BBQ Sauce and Chili-Chocolate Mole! I've talked about the BBQ sauce before, but I had to use it up before it went bad (can! not! waste!) so I created this little meal on the fly:

BBQ Beans Over Capered Couscous with Sauteed Spinach and Tomatoes

Every part of this meal owes some part of its creation to Vcon although I came up with the BBQ bean thing on my own. I just used (all measurements are very approximate):

1/2 C onion, diced small
3-4 button mushrooms, chopped
1 cup garbanzo beans
1 cup black beans
1/4 cup Backyard BBQ sauce
4-5 shakes Chipotle Tabasco

Basically, I sauteed the onion in some olive oil for a few minutes, then added the mushrooms. I cooked those for about 5 minutes and then added the rest of the ingredients until warmed through. So easy, but don't let that fool you! They are delicious!

Chili-Chocolate Mole!!!
Ok, so I don't have the opportunity have mole very often, so I get really excited when I do. Chad is out of town (mysterious, I know) so basically that means that everything I cook while he is gone will contain chocolate! (Because he's allergic, in case you missed my mentioning it like 500 times in past posts. It's my cross to bear. ;) ). So my buddy Brooke came over last night with her toddler, because her husband is out of town, too. She is like 90% vegan, so that just made cooking all the more enjoyable, because I didn't have to worry about representing all of veganism with this meal!

So to save myself from extra hassle I decided to prepare the seitan the day before. I used the Simple Seitan recipe from Vcon, which I hadn't used before (my tried and true is the Faux Chicken Seitan from La Dolce Vegan). It turned out really well! I was even able to slice it really thinly for sandwiches (on Chad's request, for plane food. Which he forgot at home and I ate.)

I also made the mole the day before, and I'm really glad I did that. It's not hard, it's just lots of little steps and uses several electronic devices (food processor, immersion blender). I ate some the day I made it (see the photo above) - leftover Chipotle burrito bowl in corn tortillas with mole on top. YUM! It was pretty hot though, and I was a little worried I was going to burn Brooke's taste buds off. Luckily, it had mellowed some the next day. Note to self: the chipotle chili powder I own is as hot as the fiery pits of hell!

So my "dinner party for two vegans" menu was:

Seitan Simmered in Mole (Vcon)
Mexican Millet (Vcon)
Steamed Broccoli with garlic and olive oil
Corn Tortillas on the side

She brought chocolate desserts: coconut cupcakes with chocolate frosting (from Vegan Lunch Box) and no-bake cookies (yayayayay!). She left me like a dozen full-sized cupcakes and like 25 tiny mini-cupcakes. And like ten cookies. Yeah, I'm going to gain like 10 lbs this week. Sigh.

It was all awesome! And she loved it, too, which was awesome. Silas likes the seitan plain and really enjoyed the millet. Her toddler was not such a fan of any food, but he's slow to warm up to most foods. He munched on baby carrots and soymilk. Little vegans, so cute.

Oh, this week I also made up a batch of the Curried Carrot Dip from Vcon, which I love! It's the second time I've made it, and it is great party food. I've brought it to playdates both times and people always love it and want the recipe. If you haven't tried it yet, do. It's tasty and really easy. It's great on crackers, bagels and as a sandwich spread. I have also been known to stuff whole wheat pits with both it and tofu "egg" salad - kind of sounds weird, but it's awesome!

BBQ Cake Sausage!

2008-04-08T03:52:00.002-07:00

Not all at once, though! Haha, I just thought that was a really funny, disturbed image.

We've been enjoying some unseasonably pleasant weather that has me not hating Michigan as much as usual! It's amazing what being outside can do for your psyche.

Backyard BBQ Grilled Tofu, Sauteed Southern Greens and Garlic Toast

That pretty much says it all! This was our first grill of the season. I'm a bad vegan (minus 10 points!) because I never, ever press my tofu. I know, I suck, I just seriously have a problem with planning ahead. So this was extra firm tofu that I pressed myself in a dish cloth (like for 5 seconds per slice), and it was really, really firm. I brushed on the leftover Backyard BBQ sauce from Vcon and we grilled it on aluminum foil on the grill, brushing more sauce on as needed. I thought it was a little bland still on first bite, but brushing on a bit more sauce was all that was needed. This sauce rocks! As the Dalai Mama said, I will never buy bottled again!

Pumpkin Crumb Cake with Pecan Streusel and My Favorite Morning Beverage
Ok, so this cake from Vcon? To DIE for. It is so moist and packed with spicy goodness and the crumbly pecan topping....it's just awesome. I took a tip from Vegan Dad and made a little confectioners sugar icing to drizzle over the top for maximum sinfulness (I just used 1/2 C confectioner's sugar and 2 tsps almond milk). And it rocks. Seriously, go make it now. Especially if you are a fan of The Best Pumpkin Muffins from VwaV - this is basically those muffins, in cake form, with crumbly sugary goodness on top. Yeah, like that.

And I wanted to brag about my new favorite morning beverage, even though it's so weird! So I think I've mentioned that my husband is allergic to caffeine, right? Well, so when I met him he had all these weird coffee-like substitutes in his apartment - like postum and this other one, Pero. They kind of vaguely in some way remind one of coffee - the color, the bitter, the hot - but you really wouldn't food anyone. In any case, I've developed a taste for it over the years (Pero, that is) and this week I stumbled upon my favorite new way of drinking it: I dump about 1-1/2 T of pero in the cup, fill the mug halfway with boiling water, then almost to the top with Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Milk, then a little bit of soymilk creamer and stir. A little sugar, and I swear it's like the best mocha ever. I feel like I'm skipping class or cheating on my "diet" every time I have it, it's that good! Even if you don't have Pero in your cupboard (and if you do, you're my hero), I bet this chocolate almond milk method would be worth a try with the real coffee.

Spicy Chickpea Sausages!
So ever since I saw Julie Hasson's video of how to make your own sausages (like Tofurkey or Field Roast), I've been dying to try it. I was a little worried about how long it would take (with a toddler constantly screaming "Mama! Up! Mama! Play! Mama! Blocks!" you have to be really careful with the time you invest in the kitchen, y'know?!) so I'd been putting off making them. Well, this Sunday morning I did it. And they are easy and awesome! And so ripe for experimenting with. I used Isa's recipe for Spicy Pinto Sausages, but used chickpeas since I had some open already (and it doesn't require a whole can). I love that you can make them any size you want to suit your needs. Next time I make this particular recipe I will probably cut way back on the red pepper flakes - it was really delicious, but Silas thought some bites were too "picy." And that kid loves seitan. It was funny, our vegan friends stopped by the other day on a bike ride, and their 2-year-old, who is not such an adventurous eater, tried some of the seitan - and ate a ton! None of us could believe it, he was like a squirrel stuffing it into his face. Praise seitan!

We ate our sausages pretty much plain on a picnic Sunday afternoon, with some fresh italian bread. Then last night I sliced up our lone remaining sausage and put it on top of pizza with sauteed portabello mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and chopped garlic. Yum!

All Pasta, All The Time

2008-04-04T15:47:00.004-07:00

So apparently I did take a picture of that curry I made the other day! Here it is, a variation of Robin Robertson's Vermicelli, Chickpeas and Vegetables with Creamy Curry Sauce from Vegan Planet.

Recipe:
1 Can of coconut milk
1/2-1 T red curry paste
1 can of chickpeas, drained rinsed
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup green peas
1 small onion, sliced
1 small carrot, sliced on the bias
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 T olive oil
1 scallion, chopped
12 oz whole wheat spaghetti
salt or soy sauce to taste (I would probably do 1/2-1 tsp salt to start)

Heat the water for the pasta in a large saucepan and cook according to package. In a small saucepan, whisk together the curry paste and coconut milk over medium heat. When combined, add the chickpeas, peas, salt and tomatoes and heat through. In a skillet, heat the oil and sautee the veggies (except the scallion) until onions are translucent and the carrot is as tender as you like. Add the veggies to the sauce. When the pasta is cooked and drained, put it back in the large saucepan and add the sauce-veggie mixture. Toss to combine, adjust salt as needed. Top each portion with some sliced scallions (and/or chopped nuts if you like) and serve!

Impromptu Pasta with Olive Oil and Garlic

One of our FAVORITE quick meals around here is pasta with olive oil and garlic. You really don't need anything else except salt and pepper, but we like to jazz it up with whatever we have lying around. This time it was 2 chopped roma tomatoes and toasted pumpkin seeds and I used that protein pasta, Barilla Plus (Angel Hair). It was delicious! We had roasted kale on the side (my new version of crack!) and a tossed green salad with Trader Joe's Goddess Dressing on it (that stuff is seriously good).

Have you tried the roasted kale thing yet? You basically just toss clean (stemmed) kale leaves with a bit of olive oil, salt and sesame seeds and roast at 400F for 10-20 minutes, or until it's crispy like chips. It's awesome! Even the toddler loves the "green chips." Someone brought it to a playgroup the other day and all the moms were apoplectic over it, it's that good.

Vacation and lots o' food!

2008-03-31T16:19:00.005-07:00

So we went out of town for 5 days and before that? Sick. Oh yes.

So I'm going to go backwards and start with vacation! Because it's fresh in my mind and really, who doesn't want to relive vacation?! We went to Phoenix from Wednesday-Sunday because Chad had a second job interview, so we decided to turn it into family vacation time. We were actually in the western suburbs of Phoenix, which was basically all strip malls, all the time. But it was beautiful, the desert, and it was 86 degrees the whole time. And sunny. Did I mention sunny? And 86? In MARCH? I was loving it UP. It smelled like sage and everything just had a crisp spring edge to it. Lovely.

So I was a little worried about being in the land of Mexican food and being vegan, because for all the ethnic cuisines that are vegan friendly, Mexican food is really not one of them. So no little taquerias for us unfortunately. Luckily, we weren't all that tempted because we were mostly surrounded by chains, which can be very helpful to the traveling vegan who has access to the internet! Let me just say that this was the best vegan traveling I have ever done. We had a couple great lunches at Chipotle (fajita burrito bowls with the black beans), and a great dinner at Macaroni Grill (pasta with garlic olive oil, bruschetta with no cheese, garden salads sans cheese and crutons - and a dirty martini!), and some decent bagles with hummus for me and pb&j for Chad for breakfast. We also bought some cereal and almond milk for brekkie to have at the motel, but we didn't have a fridge, so there was a lot of putting the almond milk in the ice bucket in front of the a/c, so after day 2 we decided not to risk it. ;) We also had some of the BEST vegan food EVER at Green restaurant, in Scottsdale. We had the edamame (for Silas) and Spicy Buffalo Wings (OMG!!! Must try to recreate this recipe!), then Chad had the No-Harm Chicken Parm and I had the Texas "moo-shroom" po boy, with unbelievably thin crispy and delicious thyme fries. Then, as IF that wasn't good enough, they also have their own homemade vegan soft-serve "ice cream"!!!!! That they make blizzards with!!! Called tsoynamis!!! Seriously! I had the rocky road with chocolate chips, vegan marshmellows, almonds and chocolate syrup, and Chad just had strawberry, cuz that's the kind of guy he is. It was bliss, pure bliss. I can't get over how wonderful it is to be eating at a restaurant where I can order ANYTHING off the menu and still be true to my ethics! It's amazing.

Whoo. Anyway. We also had some fabulous Thai food, but I have to confess that I'm a bad vegan. I never ask about fish sauce. The first time we had the thai I didn't taste fishiness at all, but the second time I caught a vague whiff of it. I'm going to stop being a lazy vegan and just start asking. Geez! What's my problem anyway? I guess I'm just worried about language barriers and being denied my favorite ethnic cuisine. But I'm gonna do it!

There were also several soy lattes at Starbucks. Good stuff all around. And we even survived the flight home with only access to a regular old grocery store (Fry's) - we found fresh berries, soy yogurt, Odwalla protein shakes and bagels and hummus for breakfast, and made Yves salami and hummus sandwiches on kaiser rolls for lunch. I was pretty proud of our success with vegan traveling.

We also did 3 hikes, visited 2 communities, walked around a couple downtowns, browsed an awesome used bookstore (Bookman's) and generally had a great time.

On to the food!

We had some fronch toast revisted here (with the additions of some vanilla and cinnamon to the VwaV recipe - a vast improvement!), with a side of almond butter sweet mashed sweet potatoes (inspired by Vegan Lunch Box), and some sliced bananas. Good stuff! I love having the sweet potatoes in the morning, it's a great way to get some orange veggies in first thing! The basic recipe is :

Breakfast Sweet Potatoes
1-2 sweet potatoes
1-2 T almond butter
1 T maple syrup (or to taste)
.5-1 T earth balance
salt to taste
cinnamon if you want (I skip it)

I microwaved the sweet potatoes for about 4 minutes , turned them over, and microwaved them another 4 minutes. Let them sit for a minute and then pulled the peels right off. Mashed in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and serve!

Blueberry Coffee Cake from The Joy of Vegan BakingTo DIE for! I made this when we had some omni friends over after dinner out and it was a smash hit! This is a dangerous cake to have around because it is soooo tasty. We finished it for breakfast the next day!

Vegan Pizza Night!

Crust from TJ's, sauteed portabellos, a wee bit of leftover pesto and sliced tomatoes. Oh and just a bit of Follow Your Heart Mozzarella. The cheese was ok - it didn't melt much and didn't taste like much either, but it gave the appearance of cheese, which was fine. Now that I have the cheese in the house, I'll use it, but when we use it up I'm not sure if I'll replace it or not. I'm all about flavor, baby, and not so much for just appearances.

Loafcakes/Loaffins
Do you know the magic that is the Magical Loaf Studio? Created by the author of the blog and cookbook, Vegan Lunch Box, this handy little tool can pretty much make a vegan loaf out of anything you have in your kitchen. Ok, that might not be entirely true, but it's pretty close.

My loaf consisted of pumpkin and sesame seeds, lentils, breadcrumbs, onion, garlic, carrot, and celery, veggie broth, thyme basil, sage, nooch, veggie Worcestershire, ketchup, flax meal, Braggs, and olive oil. I cooked them in muffin tins, and before baking them I brushed on a combo of ~ equal amounts of ketchup and brown sugar with a dollop or two of more veggie Worcestershire sauce. Yum!

We had these with garlicky southern greens (from Vcon - can't get enough of these!) and baked potato with earth balance and s&p.

We had them a couple times, each time with the greens (they sell giant 1 lb bags of greens already washed and stemmed at TJ's! Awesome).

Navy Bean Cutlets with Mushroom Sauce and Roasted Carrots
Can't go wrong with the chickpea cutlets! I made a double batch this time with navy beans instead of chickpeas, and baked them for the first time (wow, easy and awesome!). This meal was a make-up-on-the-fly kind of thing, which is not my usual thing. I sliced up carrots and tossed them with some olive oil and maple syrup and salt and roasted them while I baked the cutlets. While that stuff was cooking I chopped up a portabello mushroom and sauteed it in olive oil with salt and white wine, then added in some flour and soy milk creamer to make it creamy and a little saucy. Oh and salt and pepper. It was really tasty over the cutlets, not really a gravy, but savory and delicious.

Other Stuff I Don't Have Pictures Of

I also baked up a big batch of cornbread from The Joy of Vegan Baking which was deLICIOUS! Like cornbread you'd get at The Cracker Barrel or something, it was really tender and sweet and awesome. Very different from the usual southern style skillet cornbread I make.
I also made a really great impromptu curry loosely following a recipe from Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet. It was coconut milk, red curry paste, chickpeas, green peas, and a can of diced tomatoes, sauteed sliced onion, carrots, and garlic all over whole wheat spaghetti. Next time I would add a tablespoon or two of Braggs, because it needed saltiness, but otherwise it was really tasty and made a LOT of food, AND the toddler was a huge fan.

Yesterday for a toddler playgroup I made a batch of Cornbread Blueberry Muffins from The Joy of Vegan Baking. These were ok - I was really expecting the tenderness of the cornbread, and these were much heavier/breadier. I was out of yellow cornmeal, so I used white, and I used all whole wheat white flour instead of half-white, half-wheat, so that might have been the culprit. I would make them again using less whole wheat flour because the flavor was good otherwise.

And finally, yesterday I made a batch of the Backyard BBQ Sauce from Vcon. OMG, yum! I slathered in on tempeh and fried it up for sandwiches for dinner last night (and lunch today) on whole wheat buns with a little veganaise and bread & butter pickles. Awesome combo! We had salad on the side.

Wheat and Potatoes, et al

2008-03-19T15:09:00.005-07:00

Here's what's been on our menu of late!

Fronch Toast with Leftover Scramble and Potatoes

I can't remember if I've made the Fronch Toast from VwaV before, but I was happy with the results. The garbanzo bean flour gives it that weird metallic eggy taste that's missing from most vegan french toast recipes. But the biggest plus of this recipe? It totally didn't stick while cooking. Bitchin'.

Fried Tempeh with Almond Sauce, with Assorted Salads
So I had defrosted tempeh on Monday without a definite idea of what I planned to do with it. I finally decided on some fried tempeh and some kind of peanut-type sauce. So while I fried up the tempeh in peanut oil, I found a recipe for peanut sauce in Vegan Planet. It was AWESOME! Oh, but I subbed almond butter for the peanut, just to see what it would be like (plus, the toddler could eat it without me worrying). I served this over leftover diced baked potatoes (remind me never to buy a 5 lb bag of potatoes ever again - we just don't eat them fast enough!). On the side is Quinoa Black Bean Salad and a basic green salad with balsamic maple vinaigrette that I made up on the fly. A satisfying meal all around, and I definitely need to copy that sauce recipe before I return that cookbook to the library!

Leftovers Extraordinaire
Do you love to transform leftovers into something totally new? Me too. So this is some leftover quinoa with steamed broccoli and peas and some AWESOME smoked cubed tofu (Soy Boy, I think?) with leftover almond (peanut) sauce. Soooooo good! I'm going to have to buy stock in that tofu, it is outrageous, and so easy to deal with - it's ready to eat out of the package. The toddler is also a huge fan, so yay protein. I had this for dinner last night and lunch today, it was THAT good.

Slow Cooker Seitan Pot Roast

It's been a Robin Robertson kind of week here, what with this meal and the awesome peanut sauce recipe from Vegan Planet! Ok, that picture above of the whole deal IN the crockpot looks a little scary (brains!?!), so here's what the plated version was like:

Much less brain-y. It was soooo good! God, there is nothing like having that warm, secure feeling of knowing that dinner will be ready just by lifting the lid of the crockpot! This took about 7-10 minutes to prepare this morning before Chad left for work, and then voila! It was ready when he got home. This was sorely needed today, because none of us are sleeping well since Silas has a cough and was coughing ALL. NIGHT. LONG. At about 15 minute intervals, so you'd *just* fall asleep and then COUGH! HACK HACK! COUUUUUGH!

But I digress. (It's the sleep deprivation). This was an awesome, hearty meal. I will definitely be making this again. It was my first try at seitan in the crock, and I'm really glad it worked out, because seriously, what could be easier? I think next time I'll try to make the seitan dough more "roast-y," this time I made it kind of flat to cover the veggies so it was kind of thin and disc-shaped. Just an aesthetic thang.

Random Baking
Oh, and I did make some cookies that didn't last long enough for photos - 2 batches of Dreena's Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies. I think I could eat a batch a day, seriously. I made one with regular chips and one with carob, so the dudes could partake. Chad was very impressed. The carob was actually really good, very malty, not chalky at all. Although now he is wondering if he has a carob allergy because he was getting the fluttery allergy feeling after eating them. ARGH! This chocolate lover can't win. :/

Pizza and some other things

2008-03-15T15:29:00.003-07:00

Pizza night! I cheated a little and used a Trader Joe's regular refrigerated crust, and it was dang tasty. I topped it with leftover pesto (VwaV), sundried tomatoes, sauteed portabello mushrooms, leftover pine nut cream sauce (Vcon) and, obviously, sliced tomatoes. It was a really awesome combo. The pesto was nice and fatty and kept it from seeming dry, and the pine nut cream sauce dolloped on was just the touch of creaminess that was needed to imitate some cheese factor. I would most certainly make this combo again, it was deeeeelicious.

Power Lunch
I thought my lunch today was kind of impressive looking, so I decided to photograph it. The funny thing is, it took about 2 minutes to put together since it was leftovers. This is Quinoa Black Bean Salad that I got from Jenny at Vegetarian Adventure over romaine and baby spinach, with a whole wheat pita stuffed with tofu salad and sliced cucumbers. Oh, and some baby carrots. Cuz you can never have enough carrots. I looooooooove tofu salad, and I don't really follow a recipe any more, just add veganaise, relish, mustard, salt and turmeric to taste. I like it super creamy in these pitas, it's the perfect comb. The quinoa salad was a tasty surprise and used up a bunch of stuff that needed using up. And come on, it just looks beautiful and healthy, right? I felt healthier having just looked at it.

Of course, I had to sabotage that all by finishing the last 4 chocolate chip cookies from the other day. They had become really crispy and required dunking, and unsweetened almond milk is THE ticket for that. I can actually drink that stuff by the glass! I've never really been able to get into soymilk by the glass, it always set my stomach off just a little. Not so with my new love, almond milk - that stuff is smooth and fabulous and just the right consistency.

More Pancakes, Cookies and Eating Out

2008-03-15T06:15:00.006-07:00

So we enjoyed Carrie's Powerhouse Pancake recipe so much that we decided to make it again - with blueberries! This was a major leap of faith for two reasons: 1)Every freaking time I try to make blueberry pancakes, they end up sticking to the pan and basically disintegrating, which results in much swearing, spatula flinging and general tantrum throwing and 2) we only had frozen blueberries, and I wasn't sure how they would work.

So I whipped up a double batch of batter (using only 1 T of applesauce and 3 of oil because I ran out of sauce). I poured my frozen blueberries into a measuring cup for easy access. And instead of mixing the berries into the batter, I used this magic trick: I poured the batter in to the pan to form pancakes, let sit for a few seconds AND THEN added the blueberries, by hand. I know this seems a little crazy or OCD, but it resulted in AWESOME pancakes that didn't stick AT ALL! This is the best trick ever. I remember reading it in that kid's cookbook by Mollie Katzen.

Pancakes a-cookin'

The finished product! I need to work on my garnish skills, they are obviously lacking, but luckily this did not impact the awesomeness of these pancakes. We did have sliced kiwi with these, but I didn't get them in the photo.And since we had a double batch, we got to have these two days in a row! Nothing like waking up and having pancake batter waiting for your loving attention in the fridge. Say it with me: Gooooooooo, Pancakes!

Eating Out
Yesterday we took an impromptu trip to Ann Arbor, because it was a nice day and we wanted to go for an outdoorsy walk AND I've been wanting to go to Seva, a vegetarian restaurant there. So we got to the walking place first (The Matthai Botanical Gardens) and of course, Silas fell asleep like 2.3 minutes before we got there. So Chad went for a walk and I read in the car while Silas slept. Which was fine, I didn't mind sitting in the sun reading and listening to the Canada Geese honking.

Then we went to Seva. I was so excited, it's a cool little place not far from UM campus, and even though I had been once before it was like 3 years ago and I barely remembered it. Everything vegan on the menu is marked, and so many things sounded so delicious. However, it is pretttty pricey. Like lunch entrees in the $9-15 range! I don't know, maybe I'm just cheap, but those seemed more like dinner prices to me. After much hemming and hawing over what to order, we both decided on getting the lunch special, which was half sandwich and a salad and we also each got a fresh juice from the juice bar. I decided on the BBQ Eggplant sandwich with sweet potato fries and salad with creamy dill dressing, and Chad got the Persea sandwich (open faced with sprouts, mushrooms, onion and guacamole - and he forgot to say no cheese, whoops) with regular fries and thai dressing on his salad.

Ok, so overall it was a fairly pleasant experience. My sandwich was tasty and spicy, and it wasn't something I normally would make for myself. Chad said his was ok, and he thought I could have easily made it at home and probably better. That was one of my big disappointments: a bunch of the stuff on the menu that was vegan I felt like could have so easily made myself. Like one was a tofurkey wrap - um, I make those all the time. They also did a tempeh wrap - same deal. And I don't think they're $9 when I do it. I'm exaggerating a little, because the sandwiches did come with fries AND someone else is obviously doing the work, but still. I don't know, I guess I was expecting some more creativity or innovation or something. Alas, we are still in Michigan, so I don't know why I got my hopes up that high. ;)

Second, I wasn't overly excited about our server (ok, if you work in hospitality, would it KILL YOU to crack a smile? Once? I was so excited to be there, and her energy was a total downer). Maybe she was having a bad day, I don't know. It was just kind of a bummer.

But maybe it was a good thing overall to have a mediocre experience - now I won't be jonesing for Seva constantly, and suggesting we take 90-mile round-trip excursions just for a veggie restaurant.

Oh, but I will say this: the dessert we got was AWESOME. We took it to go and had it last night and it was fabulous. It was a vegan cream tart with mixed berries. When I read tart I expected a mini-tart or pie, but it was basically a slice of vegan cheese cake with berry compote. It didn't look like much, but the cheesecake was rich and delicious and didn't have a weird tofu taste or grainy consistency and I don't know what they did to the berries but they were the perfect complement to the creamy tart/cake.

Neeeewwwww Cookbook!
We also stopped by Borders (we have a $50 Gift Card! I know all about independent bookstores, seriously, put the flame-throwers away!) and looked at kid's books, but we couldn't commit to any. So I decided to mosey up to the vegetarian cooking section (heeheehee) and just happened to find this:

Yayayayay! I've been waiting on hold for this book at my library FOREVER. Months. So I just decided, WTF, I'm using this freaking gift card, dammit! I love cookbooks, and as you know, I've been really inspired by Colleen's podcast, Vegetarian Food For Thought, so I was very psyched to try this book.

So when we got home, I made these:Oatmeal Raisin Cookies! Except I couldn't find my raisins, so I used dried blueberries, to the benefit of all, really. Chad doesn't really like raisins in his oatmeal cookies, and the blueberries were really subtle. This made a HUGE batch, like 4 dozen! I sent a dozen home with my neighbor (heh heh, subtly taking over the world with vegan baking!), and we have 2 dozen baked and ready to go (which should last about 2 days) and I also have over a dozen in the freezer, ready to be baked at a moment's notice! They were really tasty. I think next time I might cut back on the amount of oatmeal just a bit, they were pretty oat-y and dense. But really, really good overall.

There are so many delicious sounding treats in this book, I'm sure you'll be seeing a bunch in the future!

Some Food and Stuff

2008-03-12T16:23:00.004-07:00

So we had the east coast flu plague here - in fact, Chad is suffering its effects right now which is why I'm ready to throw the toddler OUT THE WINDOW...but I promise I won't. Seriously.

Vietnamese Seitan Sandwiches with 5-Spice Dipping Sauce
These are my new favorite sandwich. They are so tasty! All the different flavors together - it's seriously like a party in your mouth. The basics are baguette with veganaise (and don't skimp!) then some fried seitan, some cilantro sprigs, some red onion and some peeled cucumber, sliced thin and long (not circles, strips). Then the dipping sauce is some broth, garlic, red chili flakes, ginger and 5-spice powder. It is just so awesome, kind of like having vegan au jus. I love just about anything you can dip, though. Thank you, Veganomicon!!! I never would have come up with this one on my own.

Isa Pizza Turned Vcon-inspired Lasagna

Ok, so the picture really doesn't do it justice, but this was awesome! I was too busy shoveling it into my mouth to take a picture of an individual slice. So I was going to make Isa Pizza - I had TJ's dough to use up. So I made the sauce, pesto and tofu ricotta from Vegan with a Vengeance. I get ready to roll out the dough and I realize it ain't happenin'. I left it on the stove to come to room temp, but it was too hot and the bottom half sort of half-cooked in the bag. Blech! What to do!?! So much work, for nothing! Then I realized I had pretty much what I needed for a lasagna, so I got out my no-cook noodles (god, I love those things) and set up my assembly line. I used a little pesto in the second "cheese" layer, but I have a lot leftover for rice salad or pasta or pizza another night. Then I baked it a while, then added the V-con pine nut cream sauce for the last 15 minutes - the white cracked stuff in the picture above. YUM! That stuff is the bomb. So creamy and delicious. A very satisfying lasagna, I would definitely make it again. I have to remind myself (often) that lasagna isn't really a big deal to make, especially when using those magic noodles. It always feels like it will take 5 hours, but it really takes like an hour and 15 minutes, including cooking time.

Carrie's Magic Powerhouse Pancakes

So I wanted pancakes this morning, but I've struck out the last couple times I've made them. My fellow blogger Carrie at Adventures in Vegetarianism posted a recipe the other day that sounded good, so I popped over there and found it. They were AWESOME! I will definitely make these again, probably doubling or tripling the batch so that I can have ready batter in the fridge for successive days (ever tried that? It's a great trick. The "dough" has time to really relax so the pancakes are awesome and fluffy and magic). We had these with maple syrup and apple slices. Yay for pancakes!

In other news, Chad was able to master the Whatchamyballs recipe and made a batch that we devoured in like 1.2 days.

Oh and just a note - we went to Trader Joe's Today and I got some of those Vegetable Gyoza that I keep reading about over at theppk.com - and they are SOOOOO GOOOOD! That's all.

Tagged?!?

2008-03-11T15:57:00.004-07:00

Ack! I've been tagged.

First, sorry for the no-posts. I got a yucky icky virus, then Silas the toddler got a yucky icky virus so we've been cleaning ourselves up and resting around here.

Second, Carrie over at Adventures in Vegetarianism has tagged me, that wily lass! So basically, I get to share with you 5 things you probably don't know about me. Then I'm supposed to tag 5 people to do the same, but seriously folks, I don't think I "know" 5 bloggers well enough to do it. But I'll do what I can! ;)

Rules:
Link to your tagger and post these rules.
Share 5 facts about yourself.
Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. I sing and play guitar. Sometimes in front of people. Performing at open mics have been known to happen. I started playing when I was 15 and somehow never forgot, even though months can go by where "there's dust on my guitar."

2. I'm a REALLY GOOD burper. Seriously. I can't burp the alphabet or anything, but I've got scary deep, loud burps that would knock your socks off. In fact, I won a burping contest in high school, and I have video footage to prove it.

3. I loooooove science fiction. I'm a total SF geek. I've even been to a science fiction/fantasy conference!!! It's true. It wasn't a trekkie thing, just a celebration of all things geeky and science fiction-y. It was SO FUN. I'm planning on going to another one in April.

4. I was salutatorian of my high school class.

5. I'm naturally very flexible.

Ok, so I tag McMama, even though I think she's recently done a similar meme...and Veganf even though she has no idea who I am...

Seriously, I'm a NOTORIOUS lurker. The blogs I read are either high traffic or I'm lame and never comment, so the authors would be all "WTF? Who is this person?"

So my new year's resolution is to now start commenting on more people's blogs. ;)

Ok, I promise to update soon with food...I have a few new pics to post and I have been cooking despite illness. But right now my services are being requested in toddler form - "Mama! Book! Nigh-nights!" So, nigh-night for now.

Vegan Baking Weekend!

2008-03-02T09:40:00.004-08:00

Homestyle Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Mmm, my house smells like chocolate chip cookies! With no animal products! These cookies are so freaking amazing, I think I might have to make them weekly. And let me say that that is a lot of cookies, because I'm the only one in the house who can eat chocolate! Chad's allergic, and because of that we're keep Silas away from chocolate until he's a little older. Luckily this recipe only makes 11-12 cookies, so it's not too bad. They're sooo good, I might only eat cookies today! Seriously, these are like tollhouse cookies, just perfect. I'm so in love.

So how can you enjoy these fabulous cookies? They are courtesy of Dreena Burton, author of Eat, Drink and Be Vegan and Vive Le Vegan and The Everyday Vegan. She also has a blog, eat, drink and be vegan and a recipe blog, Dreena's Vegan Recipes. It all looks delicious!

You can find the recipe for these cookies here. OR! Even better, you can watch a show of Dreena making these cookies here! They are simple and delicious. Make them!

Dreena's Apple Hemp Muffins

As I'm blogging this I've come to realize that I'm having a Dreena kind of weekend. ;) Friday morning I woke up and whipped up a batch of Apple Hemp Muffins, which are awesome. They are tender and subtle, not too sweet, perfect for the morning with a cup of coffee or green tea. Or a snack in the middle of the day with some chocolate almond milk! The recipe can be found in the Mar/Apr 2008 edition of VegNews. I would definitely make these again. Those little hemp seeds are nutritional powerhouses and this recipe is GREAT for using up applesauce that might be on the verge of going bad in your fridge (it uses a whole cup).

~~Chickpea~~ Navy Bean Cutlets!

So earlier in the week I cooked up a big batch of navy beans (like a whole pound). The original use was for White Been Leek Cassoulet from Veganomicon - which was awesome! But it certainly didn't use up the whole batch of beans, so I've been throwing them in things all week. So last night as I was trying to decide what to make for dinner, I wondered if any other bean would work in the Chickpea Cutlet recipe from Veganomicon....and the answer is yes, navy beans are your friends! I followed the original recipe exactly, except instead of mashing the beans with a potato masher, I blended them in the food processor with the oil - those little buggers kept slipping through my potato masher unscathed. This went a lot faster than mashing, anyway, and I might do this in the future for whatever bean I use. I've also found that these cutlets - whatever bean you use - are improved by being very, very thin. And because they have vital wheat gluten in them you can really pat them thin without the risk of falling apart on their way in to the frying pan. So smoosh the crap out of those suckers, baby! Thinner! Thinner! Yes, really, they can be thinner than that, keep going!

We had these with smashed red potatoes and a side green salad. Oh, and the red wine roux from V-con. Which was kind of a pain to make and not really worth the effort, imho. Although our mediocre results could certainly be from the quality of the wine we used, or lack-thereof as the case may be. It was seriously bad. Undrinkable. I think it was a bargain bin purchase, and now I know why. No legs at all, just so flat flat flat! But other than that, it was a good meal. And some ruby port after dinner was a nice way to quickly forget how bad the wine was.

Oh yeah! One more thing I made that I unfortunately didn't get pictures of....The original title of the recipe was something like Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars, and it's by Collen Patrick-Goudreau out of the Mar/Apr 2008 issue of VegNews. The original recipe is basically peanut-buttery rice crispy treats covered in a layer of chocolate. Ok, sounds awesome, right? Well....Silas isn't eating peanut butter yet, so we subbed Cashew Butter. And Chad's allergic to chocolate, so nix the topping. So after getting everything else mixed together and pressing it into the pan, we realized that they probably weren't going to cut or hold shape without the chocolate topping. So we threw it back in the bowl and rolled them into little no-bake balls instead. OH MY GOD. These things were so freaking good! Chad and I agreed that they taste really similar to the peanutty goodness of the Whatchamacalit candybar. And because of this, we would like to rename our version Watchamyballs. Hahaha! No, but seriously, you have to try them!

Whatchamaballs
2 cups of crispy brown rice cereal, crushed
1 1/2 cups cashew butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup earth balance margarine, melted
1 tsp vanilla

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl. Roll small balls of the dough in your hands to form whatever sized balls you like. Try not to eat them in one sitting. Store leftovers in the fridge!

For some reason Chad convinced himself that they're healthy so we ate these in no time flat. "What, they're all cashew butter and brown rice! What could be better?" And I'm thinking, yeah, healthy....powdered sugar and margarine, part of the four food groups...But really, it's a pretty good compromise.

So now I've got the house to myself for a while. I'm so psyched! I'm planning on hanging out in my sunny kitchen, listening to cool podcasts, planning this week's meals and cooking. What could be more relaxing! :D

Yummy pasta goodness

2008-02-28T15:38:00.004-08:00

Tonight I broke out the Veganomicon to try out the Penne Vodka. Great stuff!

I (obviously) didn't have penne, but Barilla Plus Elbows stood in just fine, and so did dry roasted almonds for the regular almonds. This was tasty, easy and quick, and I will definitely make it again. Just have to make sure that I have fresh basil around, because it is absolutely necessary in my opinion. We also had a green salad with a balsamic-maple dressing that I threw together and garlic rubbed toast with Earth Balance. And Chad and I split a Ruination IPA. Oh the awesomeness abounds!

The State of Affairs of Operation Go Vegan
So I've listened to even more Vegetarian Food for Thought Podcasts, which I'm convinced would change anyone's mind. They're so well-reasoned and straightforward.

I also checked out The Vegan Sourcebook by Jo Stepaniak, and I've been enjoying it a great deal.

Every time I think of cheese, I imagine baby calves crying out for their mothers, and the mothers bellowing for their babies.

Every time I think of eggs, I imagine an emaciated hen that had to endure forced moulting, where she was starved for up to 14 days without food or water.

And I've also been really interested/disgusted to really REALLY comprehend that the egg and dairy industry all rely on the enslavement of the female reproductive system. As a feminist and a mother, I just can't participate in that anymore. I imagine how I would feel in their stead, and I don't know how anyone can think it's ok.

I think of science fiction stories and books where these kinds of things are done to humans and how it takes that kind of mirror for us to see the sickness of the situation. I'm thinking of this one Twilight Zone episode where an astronaut lands on an alien world, and is taken in by the aliens (who appear to be just like humans). They build him a house and it looks just like the house he grew up in, and he is so excited about it and meeting the aliens. At the end of the episode it's revealed that the man is confined to that house forever - he's an exhibit in the aliens' zoo.

The last time we tried this vegan experiment we had all kinds of caveats. We would cook vegan at home but not hold ourselves to an "impossible" standard when eating out. The Midwest is not exactly a bastion of vegan living, after all. We were coming at it from a health perspective, not an ethical one. Now I'm really coming at it from an ethical, health AND environmental angle. It's all encompassing. But this is a hard life choice - this is a non-vegan world, after all. And I'm coming to realize that unless ethics is at the forefront of this choice then it is far too easy to slip, to make excuses. To convince yourself that this one ice cream cone, this one pizza, this one eggplant parmesan isn't going to kill you. And really, it won't kill you. But it will/did sign the death warrant of many, many animals. And the bottom line is that they just don't need to suffer terrible hardships and die just for my convenience. Because that's what it is. My convenience.

I know that this is heavy and annoying, and probably nobody is still reading. I just need to work through these issues for myself. Everything has been rolling around in my head for the past few days, and I just needed to "get it down on paper," if you will.

I just picked up Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail A. Eisnitz from the library. And I have to confess: I am scared of reading it. I've seen the PETA videos, I've heard accounts about how the animals "live" in factory farm conditions. I'm still nervous about this book for some reason. But I'm going to read it anyway.

That's all for now!

Maybe vegan, again?

2008-02-24T17:25:00.005-08:00

Several things have happened lately.

First: I've been listening to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's podcast, Food For Thought. Colleen is the founder of Compassionate Cooks, which she founded to help educate people about the many benefits of a vegan diet. Her podcasts are AWESOME. She is super articulate, well-informed, and like the title says, compassionate. None of that snarky holier-than-thou crap that is so often a part of other vegan podcasts (*coughcoughveganfreakscoughcough*). She doesn't ramble on about her friends or what she did this weekend. These podcasts are professional - she's put a lot of time and effort into organizing her thoughts on the topic at hand. She's no-nonsense, down-to-earth, and I LOVE that her message is to *do the best you can*. It's not about being perfect, it's about doing what you can to live your life and alleviate the suffering of others. I highly encourage you to listen to her podcast, it's just really awesome. I especially like her thoughts about "excuse-itarians" - where she refers to a lot of the popular food writers right now, like Micheal Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters and members of the Slow-Food Movement making meat-eating, not so much more en vogue as trying to cast it as more morally palatable by making weird darwinian arguments or saying things like "we have to eat them in order to protect the breed." I'm not getting into it here, but if you want to read more, check out this article or this article or Colleen's podcast episode "The Rise of the Excuse-itarian" from 10/26/2006.

Anyway.

This eating thing is a journey. I went from being mostly vegan last year at this time back to vegetarianism as I became more interested in eating locally. Because soymilk, tempeh, soy yogurt, egg replacer? Not able to get it locally. And I really, really, REALLY love the idea of supporting small, local farmers and NOT giant corporations. I love shopping at the farmer's market. I love being a part of a CSA. But what I'm coming to realize is that just because I *can* get it locally doesn't mean I should. Because, yeah, those chickens that lay the eggs that I buy might really be free range. BUT, that same farm also sells dead chickens for eating. Duh. Why did I not put this together before?! It's not cool. I think I just fell victim to the ideal of the small, organic farm; I had it in my head that this naturally meant no cruelty, no killing. Or at least no pain. Or they did some magic dance to erase the actual *killing* of another sentient creature that goes on. But. The chickens that they sell? I bet they would have chosen living. And as much as I want to, I'm having a hard time thinking my way out of the fact that the veal industry is THE (not A) natural outcome of the dairy industry. And another image/feeling I can't let go of is the separation of the calf from it's mother, just so we can have the mother's milk. As a nursing mother, I am literally nauseated at the thought. That poor baby, that poor mother, who want nothing more than the comfort of the other...Ugh.

And again, anyway. Another thing that has been coming up is a thread on a message board I frequent (MotheringDotCommune). A woman asked the question "Is human/ethical lacto-ovo vegetarianism possible?" And my first thought was to say, "Yes, of course it is, what a silly question." But the more I tried to think my way - very explicitly - through the set of conditions in which it would be possible, the more I realized how very far from that set of conditions I was living. For instance, if I could have my own hens and provide a place for the roosters to live, I would eat those eggs. Or if I could find a supplier which met those, conditions, no problem. Chickens lay eggs, it doesn't hurt them, it's cool. But the mass production of eggs? It's not cool. I won't/don't need to get into it here, but for a little view of why, check out Colleen's podcast from 1/22/2008 "I Only Eat White Meat." (And I know I'm referring to Colleen a lot, like I've taken her on as my own personal guru - I haven't. I have known all these things in the past. They're just the kind of thing you want to forget so that you can live your life of convenience and cheap, easy pleasures. She's just reminded me of what I've known since I was 18 and chose veganism for the first time.)

My husband is nervous about the prospect of "going vegan" again. Nervous for Silas, nervous that we can't got out to eat here in Meat And Potatoes Land, which is a real concern since going out to eat is part of what we call the "sanity tax" of surviving in Metro Detroit (i.e. this place sucks so much that we have to distract ourselves from it by doing stuff like going out to eat). These are concerns, but they very easily worked around. Silas, thank dog, is a GREAT eater of many delicious, vegan foods. I don't think he'll really miss the cheese or yogurt. And he's always hated milk (except for mama's!) so no worries there. The going out to eat thing? Well, I've done it before. It's a lot of question-asking, going out for ethnic food, and hummus on bagels. It's doable. And it's a lot of cooking at home, which I LOVE to do anyway.

As an aside - Yesterday I got to spend the afternoon partially alone in my house, in my sunny warm kitchen listening to Colleen and cooking up a storm. I can imagine no greater pleasure than educating myself which simultaneously engaging in a creative act that's natural outcome is delicious and nurturing foods for my family to enjoy. It was wonderful. Bonus that a toddler wasn't screaming for my attention every 28 seconds!

I'm rambling. I guess what I'm trying to say is: There's been a shake-up in our kitchen. I'm not sure where all the chips are going to fall, but I think you can see where this is headed. I've dusted off my copy of Becoming Vegan, I've stalked, purchased and practically made love to my copy of Veganomicon, and I've put Slaughterhouse on my to-read list.

Can we have a Maybe Local Vegan? Stay tuned.