Even When the Universe Hates Us...

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.

DDELC Week #5

Meal #1: Ok, this doesn't totally fall into my guidelines for local-ness, because we had a lot of non-local spices and such, but the bulk ingredient of each piece of this meal was local, so I'm letting it in! The coconut creamed spinach was so good I thought I would die of deliciousness. I've never been a huge fan of creamed spinach, but this was a totally different animal!

Cumin-Lime Tofu: ok so the bulk of this was local tofu (Ann Arbor, MI - 40 mi) and the marinade was totally non-local (cumin, evoo, allspice, braggs, lime juice, cayenne pepper). Oh and local honey (Davisburg, MI - 41 mi)

Dumpling Squash (Capac, MI - 51 mi)
Organic Butter (non-local)*
S&P

Coconut Creamed Spinach
Spinach and Garlic (Yale, MI - 65 mi)
Dried Chilies (non local but soooo old)
Coconut Milk (non local but leftover from another meal the day before)
EVOO, S&P - nonlocal

Meal #2: So delicious! I'm in love with my newest cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. The black bean cutlets (and the black beans themselves), and the broccoli recipes were both from there and totally freaking awesome! I can't believe how easy and delicious the cutlets were. I'm never buying veggie burgers ever again.

Black Bean Cutlets:
Black beans, oatmeal, eggs: Kingston, MI (83 mi)
onion: Yale, MI (65 mi)
chili powder, salt & pepper: non-local
Gravy:
mostly water, with backyard thyme and non-local braggs, cornstarch s&p
Roman-style broccoli
Broccoli: local farm, can't remember where in MI
Garlic: Yale, MI (65 mi)
Chilies: non-local but in the pantry forever
evoo, s&p: non-local

Delicata squash with Honey Butter: Yale, MI (65 mi)
Honey: Davisburg, MI (41 mi)
Butter: non-local organic valley*

Meal #3

Victory is mine! I've been looking for a good vegetarian bean sausage recipe forever - most use soy (which is fine, but highly processed and not usually local). So I took the black bean burger recipe from the other night and paired it with the seasonings of a tempeh sausage recipe I like. The results were fabulous!

Black Bean Sausage
2 cups beans (or 1 14-oz can) drained (Kingston, MI 83 mi)
1/2 medium onion (Yale, MI 41 mi)
2 cloves garlic (Battle Creek, MI 118 mi)
2 T Braggs (or soy or tamari) (non-local)
1 egg (Kingston, MI 83 mi)
1/2-3/4 cup rolled oats (not instant) (Kingston, MI 83 mi)
1 T fennel seeds (non-local)
1 t dried basil (Dirty Girl Farm, ??? MI)
1 t dried oregano (Dirty Girl Farm, ??? MI)
1/2 t dried sage (Dirty Girl Farm, ??? MI)
1/2 t red pepper flakes (non-local)

Put everything in a food processor and pulse until chunky, adding a little water or onion if it's too dry or more oats if it's too wet (to test, just grab a small handful and try to form it into a sausage patty - it should stay formed reasonably well and not be too gloppy).

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add 1-2 T olive oil. When hot, add as many sausage patties as will fit (leaving room to flip over). Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over each of the patties while they fry. After about 5 minutes, flip over and salt and pepper the other sides. Cook until the other side browns, about 4-5 minutes more.

These are so good and easy. IF you don't feel like frying up the whole batch at once, just pop the mix in the fridge and fry it up as you need. The mixture even holds together a little better after it's been refrigerated. Just use within 2-3 days probably.

I'm totally psyched to keep messing with this recipe - different beans, different spices...I really want to add some chipotle pepper next time (dried or canned in adobo?). I love recipes with endless possibilities!

We had these sausages with local scrambled eggs. YUM!


*The butter debate: I was really conflicted whether to buy local non-organic butter of unknown production methods rather than non-local organic butter. At this point, I'm going with the non-local organic valley butter. The whole point of this local thing is that I'm trying to tread more lightly on the earth, and if I have no idea how sustainable the animal husbandry practices are of a particular non-organic farm (and we can probably assume the worst unless I could find it directly from a farmer, which I can't), then I feel good about supporting the farmers that contribute to the Organic Valley coop. From what I've read about it (and maybe it's all just PR), they support small farmers and sustainable methods. Plus, I've also heard that the conventional fallout like pesticides and herbicides are more concentrated in fat cells, so butter is something to really buy organic. So that's my reasoning at the moment. Subject to change.