Wheat and Potatoes, et al

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. :/

Dark Days ELC Meal #4

The star of this week's local menu was Curried Butternut Squash Soup! I got the idea from Laura of Urban Hennery, the lovely hostess of the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge.

I started with a winter squash soup recipe out of How to Cook Everything and then "currified" it, adding 1 tsp of curry powder, 1 tsp of freshly ground coriander and a splash of lime juice. Other than that and 1/4 tsp of marjoram, the soup was allllll local, with apples, squash, onion, milk and butter all from well within 100 miles. The soup turned out sweet and tart and mysterious. YUM!

Other local fare that we enjoyed this week included Maple Baked Beans, with the star of the show being local navy beans from Hampshire Farms in Kingston, MI. The recipe came out of Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson, and although I've been generally happy with the book as a whole, I was NOT a fan of this recipe. They were sooooo sweet that it made my stomach turn as soon as the beans hit my tongue - blech. I tried to tame the cloying beans by adding different vinegars and even some liquid smoke, but nothing really saved them. I'm not sure what I'll do differently next time - probably abandon this recipe altogether and try a different one. Any good veggie baked bean recipes out there than you could recommend darling readers?

Although it was probably only 50% local, we also enjoyed some Chickpea Noodle Soup this week, where I substituted leftover cooked navy beans for the chickpeas. This is a great vegetarian faux-chicken noodle soup recipe, I highly recommend it! In addition to the local navy beans, this soup also starred local carrots, onions, mushrooms and garlic.

We also made a fairly mediocre Gingerbread Apple Pie featuring all local apples and butter, from the cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance. It was just really bland! And the gingerbread crust kind of burned, even though we followed the directions. Oh well. The local cinnamon ice cream helped to ameliorate my disappointment.

And, of course, we've been having lots of local breakfasts featuring local eggs and bread. And speaking of bread, I'm feeling bitten by the bread bug, so some fresh homemade bread may make an appearance on the menu this weekend. Whether or not I use the bread machine will all depend on the terror known as Silas, the toddler.

I'm hoping that this next week's meals are a little less disappointing....wish me luck!

ELC Day 5 Food Musings

So the local chickpeas cooked all night long in the crock pot and are now cooling on the counter (I read somewhere that a good trick to keep the cooked beans intact is to let them cool in the cooking water). The kombu strips have been pulled out, and the beans are pretty much ready to rock.

I made another great batch of homemade granola last night (recipe adapted from La Dolce Vegan's Simple Crunchy Granola). I can't believe how freaking easy it is to make granola, especially when considering what people will pay for it at a store (easily $6-8 per pound!). It is crazy. Although it's not 100% local, it is about 60% local by volume. I used organic local oats, butter and sunflower seeds, with oats being the biggest ingredient in the whole recipe (4 cups). Next time I could improve the local-ness by using local honey, but right now we are still trying to use up a giant bottle that we bought from Costco a year ago, so that was out. The other stuff (pepitas, sesame seeds, coconut, wheat germ, cinnamon) - I'm not so sure we can find local, ever. I've seen brans at the Farmer's Market, but not germ. Possibly pepitas will show up during pumpkin season? But I think we're out of luck when it comes to sesame seeds, coconut and cinnamon. Maybe over time we can replace these with other local ingredients. If anyone has any good recipes to share, please let me know!

Today at the local health food store, I restocked my supply of Vital Wheat Gluten, which I use when I bake bread. When reading the box later, I realized I can make seitan with it. Cool! I've never made homemade seitan before, so I'm anxious to try it out. I think we're going to do eggplant parmigiana tonight, but seitan will soon make an appearance on the table. After trying it out the easy, mostly instant way via the VWG, I'll be more willing to give it a whirl from scratch, hopefully using local wheat flour. Stay tuned for that.

This challenge is so great because it's making me try lots of new things: freezing tofu for chicken fried "steak", making homemade seitan, looking into making our own cheese, yogurt and kefir. It's also making me do stuff I should do all the time anyway: use our crockpot more, use the bread machine more (or just make bread totally by hand). Also, really appreciating our local farmers, both from the CSA and the farmer's market - they work their butts off year round so that we can have this bounty. Around this time of year every year, I start to get tired of the CSA share - it seems like we get the same stuff every week, and I get sick of trying to come up with new ways to use it all up. But this year, due to this challenge, I'm really appreciating the magic that is food like never before. It's amazing that tiny seeds can spend time in dirt, and magically become fuel for our bodies, sensory experiences for our minds. So, I may smirk when I see yet more green peppers in my box, but it turns into a grateful smile a few seconds later when I remember how hard won they are.

The Local Dairy Hunt
So after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and how impossible it is for small dairy farmers to sell their wares directly to consumers, I've been feeling pretty discouraged about finding good sources for local dairy. I mentioned this to our next door neighbor, Rick, and he said, "What about Canada?" DUH! Of course, Canada! Right over the bridge from Detroit, 14 miles from our house, is Windsor, Ontario. I checked out their Farmer's Market website, and although there was no specific mention of dairy products, we're going to check it out tomorrow, just for the experience. I'm psyched! It never would have occurred to me to check it out if Rick hadn't mentioned it; just another reason why it pays to be friendly with your neighbors.

ELC 9/07, Day 4

Breakfast
Ok, not so local, but we're using stuff up!
Organic Yogurt (from TJ's - package says MA)
Organic Banana
Local blueberries (purchased at RO Farmer's Market)
Homemade granola (local sunflower seeds; everything else non-local that we know of)

BUT! I now have oats, sunflower seeds and honey to make more granola, now that we used up that last batch. I think I'll still add the non-local pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, although I'm not 100% on this yet; it would be really cool to have 100% local granola....except for the cinnamon anyway.

Lunch
I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now (so good!) and I was reading the tomato chapter while nursing the baby down for his nap and starting to think about lunch. We had 3 plum tomatoes left from our Farmer's Market bargain box purchase, so I made the same marinated deal as the pizza last night (local garlic and basil, non local EVOO, S&P). We cut a baguette in half (from 11 miles away) and spooned this over the baguette and topped it with the TJ's cheese again. AAAGH! It was the most delicious thing ever. And even though my husband did set off the smoke alarm while broiling (something to do with a bamboo skewer being used to prop the bread up), it didn't wake the sleeping child, so all was right with the world.

Dinner
I braved a new recipe from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, Chicken Fried Tofu. It was a big hit! We served with "Good Gravy" from the same book, and it was delicious. Super simple ingredients (local tofu, plus a little flour, baking powder, oil, and s&p), the trick was freezing the tofu, thawing it, and then refreezing the whole mixture for another 1/2 hour before you can fry it. So just a little planning.

We also had some garlic toast with local sundried tomato bread, and a simple tomato salad that I read about at cooking vintage. Delicious!

Silas stuck with dried apricots, local apple, local cheese and some tomatoes. He's a good eater, that kid.

Preserving the Harvest
So we finished up the homemade tomato sauce yesterday, and it is sooooo good! After letting the sauce simmer for most of the day, I added 3 6-oz cans of tomato paste to thicken it up and blended it alllll together with my handy dandy immersion blender (how I love that thing!!!!). Oh, wow. The sauce is a light orange-y color, almost like vodka sauce, creamy and beautiful. After letting it cool down for several more hours, I bagged 2 quarts for the freezer, jarred another quart for the fridge and jarred another 3 or so cups to send home with Magnifico. Yay!

I can't tell you how wonderful it was to look lovingly on my beautiful crockpot of tomato sauce last night. My husband and I were positively mooning over it. We did some rough calculations and figured that although the tomatoes themselves were a deal, with all the other ingredients and electricity that went into it, it wasn't "cheap" sauce. But hey, that fancy Rao tomato sauce is like $10 per jar, so I think the effort, time and money are worth it. To see gorgeous heirloom tomatoes that are about to be chucked into the compost bin magically transform into a ton of delicious sauce that will feed my family (and our friends) for several meals? Priceless.

Random Musings
I'm on the desperate hunt for local dairy items. I have a source for (non-organic) butter, milk (which we don't drink), and ice cream, but not so much for cheese, yogurt and kefir. After having read A, V, M and about how easy it is to make homemade mozzerella and other soft cheeses, we defnintely want to give this a try. I know one can make their own yogurt and kefir, but I have no idea how complicated this is, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. But it would be pretty cool to make all this stuff myself. After the high of making tomato sauce, I'm anxious to find my next fix...

Garden Notes
We're growing 4 different types of tomatoes this year (Yellow Pear, one called Sunbeam, a Beefsteak variety, and a patio variety). They are all doing really well. The Yellow Pear is absolutely crazy! We're growing everything in containers, because we weren't sure about the trustworthiness of our soil (we rent, and we heard that it has a high mercury content). The pear is in a small garbage can, like the kind you'd use in the bathroom (with holes cut in the bottom for drainage). The sunbeam and beefsteak are in half of a barrel, and the patio is in a 12 " planter. There are 10 or so tomatoes on the patio plant, one is just starting to get ripe. There is one red tomato on the beefsteak plant, with about 3 green ones still growing. Nothing's turning on the sunbeam plant, but there must be 6 or 7 good sized green tomatoes ready to ripen. And I can't even tell you how many cute little pear tomatoes there are! About 4-5 that are just about ready to pick, and about a gazillion green ones (ok, maybe like 30?)

We've also got 5 basil plants (2 genovese, 1 opal, 1 ruffly opal, and 1 pesto - little green leaves with white edges). The ruffly opal almost died earlier in the season because it was too shaded by the tomato plant, but I transplanted it and now it's trying its darndest to make a comeback. The other varieties are all delicious and doing well, as long as I remember to water enough. ;)

We are also growing thyme, oregano and rosemary successfully. Cilantro was not such a success. That thing bolted straightaway and then just stopped. Lame!

We're also growing 4 types of mint: Peppermint and chocolate mint are growing well in a bucket together, 2 pineapple mint plants are growing successfully in another bucket, and the orange mint is in a cheap plastic planter off in the shade by itself (it's the only variety that wants more shade than sun).

It has been so fun to have a garden this summer. We also had several sugar snap pea plants that we grew from seed, and they produced really well for the first half of the summer. We planted them in a half barrel with petunias, and holy moly, the petunias were out of control crazy about them! I think they add nitrogen back to the soil and the flowers were diggin' it.

Other than the peas, nothing else was grown from seed, but next year, that's going to change! Watch out, seed catalogs. I'm comin' for ya.

ELC 9/07, Day 3

I really love this challenge so far. I know, I know, this is probably what Sharon Salzberg describes as "bright faith": falling in love with something in the very beginning. But I love learning about where my food comes from and thinking all of my food choices through a little more fully. Do we eat 100% locally? Hell no! Not yet anyway. But every time I make food now, I'm thinking about the origin of eat ingredient, which, in a way, makes me appreciate each one so much more.

Day 3 Eats

Breakfast:
Berry Smoothie Pancakes with local eggs, raspberries, blueberries and butter (non-local flours, baking soda, salt, yogurt and banana).

These pancakes were delicious! Super fluffy and subtle. We had them with honey but maple syrup would be good, too. Silas pretty much stuck strictly to berries and a few pieces of tomato.

Lunch:
Scrambled local eggs (non-local s&p) - OMG Silas was in love with these today!
Rotini pasta with partially cooked slow-cooker tomato sauce with local heirloom tomatoes, onions, green peppers and garlic (non-local pasta, EVOO, sugar, salt and spices and parmesan)

The pasta sauce is cooking up nicely. I think the tomato paste is really going to thicken it up a bit, which is good, because right now it's pretty watery. But tasty!

Dinner
We had a friend over for dinner (Magnifico!) so we made homemade pizza, yum! I made whole wheat pizza crust (with the help of my trusty bread machine), and marinated sliced local tomato wedges in olive oil, garlic (CSA), 3 kinds of chopped basil (backyard) and s&p. Then we spooned this over the partially cooked crust and topped it with TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend (the BEST cheese blend in the world for pizza, I swear!).

We also had fresh watermelon slices from our CSA, and some local bread for an appetizer, dipped in the remaining tomato marinade. YUM!

Oh, and locally made Peppermint Ice Cream for dessert. OMG.

Sunday Stuff and Things

So we're leaving for Oregon for 3 weeks this coming Saturday. This forced us to be very very mindful of using things up before we go! Because of this (and because I'm on this crazy declutter/budget/simplify-your-life jag) we made up a weekly meal plan! And I'm going to try to stick to it, by gum!

What we've had so far:

Saturday
Breakfast:
Tofu scramble
Herb Roasted Red Potatoes
Toast with Earth Balance
Juice
Coffee/tea

Lunch:
Leftover pizza from Friday night (doh! not vegan. They were out of soy cheese and we were des.per.ate.)

Dinner:
Peanut Red Curry with onions, peas, and carrots over brown rice
Spinach Salad
Edamame

Snack/Dessert:
Newman's Ginger-O's (those things are the DEVIL! but vegan!)

Sunday

Breakfast:
Toast with Cashew Butter (YUM!)
Juice

Lunch:
Bow Tie Pasta with Broccoli, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Kalamata Olives and Garlic Olive Oil
Ginger O's

Snack:
Berry Berry Juice from local juice joint (vegan) - Chad and I split one

Dinner:
Almost Irish Stew (from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker) - uses up the navy beans I made last week, the chicken style seitan we needed to use, baby carrots, red potatoes, a can of green beans, onion, garlic, broth and spices. My house smells soooo good right now!

Coming up this week:

Monday: Magical Loaf Studio Loaf, Leftover Roasted Potatoes

Tuesday: Chilli Con Bulgar from La Dolce Vegan!, Garlic Toast, spinach salad

Wednesday: Tofurkey-Avocado Reubens, bread and butter pickles, spinach salad

Thursday: Either Biscuits and Gravy or Tempeh BLT's

Friday: EAT OUT

Lunch for each day will be leftovers from the day before or Cashew Butter and Apricot Jam sandwiches. We also have the fixins for some smoothies, cuz we need to use up our jug-o-juice!

Can she actually stick to the meal plan? Will this change her life forever? Stay tuned!!!

Some catch-up

Well, the baby's been keeping me busy lately and I haven't had time to post. But I've still been cooking up a storm! Some highlights from the past few weeks:

From Vegan with a Vengeance:

-Breakfast Potatoes - sooo good! The onion in the recipe turns caramalized and in some cases black which looks scary but is so tasty. Chad was avoiding them until I clued him in on the delicious factor. Takes some forethought because they take about an hour in the oven, but worth the effort.

-Maple Walnut Cookies - OMG OMG OMG I think I peed a little these are so good! Will definitely make these again. And again. And again! The only oddball ingredient you need is maple extract, which we luckily had on had for the pumpkin "cheesecake".

-Tofu Scramble - So I make tofu scramble all the time, but I decided, what the hay, I'll give this "recipe" a try. Really glad I did, because yumm-o! It seems to take a teensy bit longer than I would normally take with a scramble, but the flavor was fab.

-Baking Powder Biscuits with White Bean Tempeh Sausage Gravy - YUM. YUM. YUM. I make these biscuits all the time, they are so easy and so tender and delicious. The gravy has such amazing flavor, with fennel and sage and basil and marjoram - and a little red pepper flake for a kick in the pants! This recipe takes a little longer than my normal get-food-ready-before-baby-freaks-out time limit (about 45 mins-1 hr) but so worth it.

-Coconut Heaven Cupcakes - Holy crap, so tender and light and fluffy! I want to eat these everyday. Easy to make, too.

Other stuff we've been eating:

-Tempeh Avocado Ruebens - we can't get enough of these things! I even made homemade (well, bread machine) Rye Bread for them. I love fresh bread! Serve these babies with bread and butter pickles and some Tings.

-Slow Cooker Navy Beans - Yes! I finally made beans in the crock pot and it was not such a long tedious process as I previously thought. I soaked the beans all day the day before, cooked them overnight and they were ready for a recipe the next morning! Yee-friggin'-haw! These beans so far have been transformed into the white bean gravy and:

-Maple Baked Beans - From Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker. Pretty good overall! We had these with veggie hotdogs cut-up (Polka-Dot Beans) and it was good, but the hot dogs had a stale taste to me. Maybe we'll try different dogs next time.



-A new incarnation of the Magical Loaf Studio loaves we've made in the past. Tasty, as always!

In other news, we tried some of the Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourment "cheese" - cheddar style. EWWWWW. So wrong. I took a tiny taste, gagged and spit that gunk out. I had previously read really good things about it, but alas it was not to be.

This week I acquired a new toy: The Braun Multiquick Hand Blender/Chopper. I've had my eye on one of these things for a while. I've always wanted to be able to "cream" soups without getting the blender (and usually my kitchen floor) dirty. Also, it's going to come in verrrry handy when I make my own baby food - just blend right in the cooking pan instead of getting the food processor dirty! Way easier to clean than the respective blender or processor. Yay! I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll report back after testing.

Some goals for the future week:

• Make more fresh bread
• Make more slow cooker beans
• Make pizza dough in the bread machine
• Make split pea soup (mostly so I can try my hand blender!)