Pre-Hawaii Post

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!

Field Trip and Food Catch-Up

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!

Photos galore

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!