Irish Stew with Seitan and Potatoes

This was yummy. It's a basic stew with potatoes, carrots, green beans, and seitan standing in for the meat.

This was the first time I've used store-bought seitan since I made my own and I have to say, it is nowhere near as good as homemade. And the store-bought is way more expensive, too! So I guess from now on I'll be making my own seitan all the time.

Chickpea Piccata

This is chickpeas in a shallot/garlic/lemon/white wine sauce with capers, poured over mashed potatoes and arugula. Next time I will wilt the arugula first.

I can ride a bike!@

Video Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEX3x8r-rJ4

Weekend Lunch

A local company, Delight Soy, makes this fake chicken stuff that's so good I always worry it's actually made of chicken. I've been wanting to try it as chicken salad, so I did that today, mixed with Vegenaise, probably the best known vegan mayo. (Vegenaise, incidentally, is made by Follow Your Heart, one of my most-missed LA restaurants). The vegan chicken salad turned out great! Very realistic.

I also like to make a variety of salads on Sunday that I can eat throughout the week. Today it was a sesame corn-edamame thing and black bean/tomato quinoa, and since my plan was just the chicken salad pitas, we ate them both as side dishes.

Pizza!

We eat a lot of pizza. I do 95% of the cooking in our house, but the pizza is all Ben. He's a huge snob and insists on making the crust himself from scratch. He takes care of the whole process, really, except for the toppings on my half.

I eat normal pizza. Tonight mine had the standard tomato sauce, field roast italian sausage, broccoli, shallots, and daiya vegan cheese. Ben, on the other hand, always makes a paste of the following: crumbled blue cheese, ground nuts of some kind, barbeque sauce, honey, and cayenne. Tonight he added dried cherries for some reason. This entire concept totally disgusting to me, hence the big line down the center of the pizza where our toppings don't touch.

Seitan-Portobello Stroganoff

Okay, now bear with me here. This stuff looks horrifying, I know. Like brains, kind of. It is my first attempt at homemade seitan, which is a meat substitute made primarily from wheat gluten. I made it this morning and was a little scared at the end product, but I put it in the fridge anyway and sliced it all up for tonight's dinner, seitan-portobello stroganoff.

And DUDE. It was GOOD. I wish I was a better photographer because this stuff was really, really delicious. It was pretty involved and took a good hour, but it was definitely worth it. Perfect comfort food for a wintery day.

LOOK AT MY CUTE BABIES.

Banana is a good helper.

It's hard to get good pictures of Papaya as she hardly ever sits still, but she gets pretty lazy in the afternoon sunshine.

Sausage, Lentil & Kale Skillet

I've had this recipe bookmarked forever, and realized this morning I had some kale to use up, so I made it for lunch. I used Field Roast Italian Sausage, which is probably the best of the fake sausages I've tried.

It turned out great!

Garlicky Roasted Chickpeas & Broccoli

This doesn't sound (or look) like much but it's one of my new favorite things. All you do is roast a can of chickpeas, some broccoli, and about ten cloves of garlic with lemon zest, oregano, and salt & pepper. It makes a good pasta topping but this time I just ate a big bowl by itself.

Sushi!

Sushi is one of my favorite things, and missing it was my biggest concern when I quit fish a year and a half ago. I never cared for sashimi, though; I just liked sushi rolls, and it turns out veggie sushi works just as well.

For these rolls, I used avocado, cucumber, and this tempeh:

Tempeh is fermented soy bean cakes, which sounds horrific but is actually delicious when prepared properly. Normally it comes in unseasoned blocks, sort of like tofu, and I add my own seasoning. I saw this at Whole Foods, though, and decided to try it out. It's good!



And here's a bonus picture of my little angels.

Kiddos

I love being Aunt Molly! Mira and Griffin are a lot more work than kittens but I GUESS they're worth having around.

Mira is quite the ham.

Griffy wasn't very compliant about having his picture taken so I had to sneak it in.

Mac & Fake Cheese + Brussels Sprouts

Ben is out of town this week, so I'm making things that he doesn't like. He will eat almost anything, but at the top of the No Way list is Brussels sprouts, so naturally they're first on the menu for this week.

Tonight I made shells & cheese with cut up hot dogs! Except the "cheese" sauce is made primarily with nutritional yeast (I know, weird) and the hot dogs are Tofu Pups. Tofu Pups are not great on their own, but do very well in something like this. Doesn't it look real?

It tastes really good, too. Nutritional yeast is not like the yeast you bake with - it's yellow flakes that do a good job of imitating cheese in sauces, and is also good sprinkled on cooked veggies or popcorn. I swear.

The Brussels sprouts are sliced into thin strips and sauteed with garlic and shallots - mmm mmm good!

Eden Alley, Kansas City

I was in Kansas City this past weekend and drug my mom and sister to Eden Alley, a weirdish vegetarian place in the basement of a church on the plaza. It was good!

I had the special, which was tofu fillets over drunken orzo, mushrooms, and fingerling potatoes. The sauce was a touch too winey, but overall it was tasty.

Mom had the sweet potato burrito.

And Hillary had the Ultimate Garlic Grilled Cheese. Four cheeses!

I would definitely recommend this restaurant if you want a low-key vegetarian meal. And you can't beat the location!

Clarification

I am not vegan. Vegans don't eat or use any animal products - they don't eat dairy, eggs, or honey, won't wear leather or wool, and pay very close attention to bath & body products to make sure they also don't contain any animal products and aren't tested on animals.

I'm vegetarian. I don't imagine I will ever quit eating honey; I don't really care about the rights of bees. Call me crazy, but I think they're probably perfectly happy even if we take their honey away. I also have a hard time imagining that I will stop buying leather shoes and bags, and I certainly won't quit wearing wool. Those things are just better than their synthetic alternatives; there's no denying it.

I also will continue to eat eggs and dairy in restaurants or at other people's homes. They're just really hard things to avoid if you aren't paying close attention, and it feels like a lot of work to worry about it every second of every day. I like to eat good food and I love to go to restaurants; if I limit myself to strict veganism my restaurant options will be very, very limited. I'm just not willing to go there. If there is a vegan option at a restaurant I generally take it, but if not (or if something containing cheese sounds particularly delicious), I don't feel bad.

However, the things I cook at home are easy to control. It's easy and fun for me to cook vegan food, and it makes me feel good that I'm relying much less on animal products than I ever have before. So I'm going to keep that up, and do the best I can the rest of the time.

Chinese Takeout!

Today I am lazy. There's a new Shanghai-style Chinese place near our house so I picked up some takeout.

Ben's twice-cooked spicy tofu:

My braised garlic sesame eggplant. This looks like mush but I assure you, it is FANTASTIC. We're so glad to have found this restaurant.

Kitty!

Ben got a new synthesizer and Banana loves it!

Baked Falafel

over chopped romaine, cucumber, and tomato, with toasted pita and homemade lemon tahini dressing.

Chipotle Seitan & Potato Tacos

This was very easy. Roast some cubed potatoes while seitan is marinating, then saute them together in the marinade and top with chopped vegetables (mostly cabbage) and cilantro.

Seitan is a wheat-based meat substitute, probably the meatiest of all fake meats. This was "chicken-style", but most that I've had are chickeny.

I usually would have made some kind of side here as well, but we're trying to get through Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica by Thursday night so I'm in a time crunch.

Beginning: Blackened Tofu & Coconut Butternut Rice

In October of 2010, I started cooking completely vegan at home. And now everybody wants to know what it is we eat. Well, now you'll know.

Here's what we had for dinner tonight: broiled blackened tofu, coconut-butternut rice, and a big pile of sauteed kale.