Poblano-Potato Casserole

This is a lasagna-type thing, except with mexican flavors - layers of corn tortillas, roasted poblano peppers, a mixture of potatoes & kale, and tomato sauce, topped with pine nut crema. I have to admit that the recipe didn't call for kale at all, but I had some sitting around (big surprise) and I felt like I should mix in some vegetables if given the opportunity.

Here's another cheesecake picture, too - I had some local peaches that were starting to go bad, so I made a sauce out of them so they wouldn't go to waste. I'm going to mix some into my oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow, too. Mmm mmm good! I only added about a tablespoon of sugar, so mostly this is just peaches.

Weekend Project: Spice Cabinet Reorganization

My spice cabinet has been a stressful scene for me since I've been cooking so much over the past year or so. It's a jumbled mess, with some things in plastic bags, bottles stacked on top of each other, 2 or 3 of the same spice because I would buy more after not being able to find the one I already had, etc. I needed some other kind of solution but I don't really have the wall or counter space for one of those fancy spice racks.

Then someone on my vegan message board posted this idea of putting everything in little plastic baggies, organized alphabetically. I can totally get behind some alphabetical organization! So this afternoon my spice situation went from this:

To this!

I actually ran out of space in the box, and may get another one. The cabinet is very user-friendly at this point, though; I can actually see what's in there!

Look at all those empty bottles! No wonder I could never find anything. And here is my confession for the day: I threw all those suckers in the trash. I just couldn't face rinsing them all out for the recycling.

Portobello Salad with Spicy Mustard Dressing

I've been wanting to make this salad forever, mainly because the picture of it in Veganomicon is so pretty. Mushrooms are hard, though; they seem to go bad almost instantly so if I'm not planning to use them the day I go to the grocery store, I don't even bother to include them in the weekly meal plan. Today, however, was grocery day and I needed a light dinner so it worked perfectly.

I've made this salad dressing before - it's just spicy mustard, red wine vinegar, maple syrup, and olive oil - and it is fantastic. The salad is romaine, thinly sliced red onion, chickpeas, and avocado, topped with marinated roasted portobello mushrooms. It was really, really good.

And then we ate dessert. Did you know July 30th is National Cheesecake Day? Well, now you do. I finally made my first vegan cheesecake (recipe from Vegan Diner), and also made a sauce of fresh raspberries and blackberries to go on top.

It worked! It tasted like actual cheesecake! And I know this for a fact, because Ben is not completely vegan and just ate dairy cheesecake on Friday. He was very impressed. Hooray!@

A New Car!

Friday night Ben and I went to Carmax and bought a new car! His Altima needed about a thousand dollars worth of work, and despite the fact that "the engine runs great!" I convinced him it was time to let go.

We had decided on a 2010 Ford Fusion, but once the salesman ran the Carfax report we saw that it had been in an accident at some point, so we went back out to drive more cars. We pretty quickly settled on the Mazda6, which I liked better than the Fusion anyway. It's shiny!

Carmax offered us $150 for the Altima, but we politely declined. The next morning Benjamin sold it on Craigslist for $750 to some guy who responded to the ad within 20 minutes. Score!

Chile Cornmeal Tofu Po'Boy

One of the most annoying things about being vegan is that it's hard to find a good sandwich, and sometimes you just want a big huge sandwich! I've been craving one lately, so today for lunch I made one of chile crusted tofu and chipotle cole slaw. It was terrific!

Miso Udon Stirfry with Greens and Beans

Yet another Appetite for Reduction recipe tonight - a superfast noodle stirfry with collard greens, broccoli, adzuki beans, and tons of garlic in a miso sauce.

This dinner is ultra nutritious to the point where I felt virtuous eating it. But it tasted good, too! So that's a bonus.

Eggplant-Chickpea Curry with Cranberry-Cashew Biryani

I made this once before but didn't post it, possibly because curried eggplant does not look too appetizing.

It's great, though. I always wondered how Chinese and Indian restaurants get eggplant to be so smooth and velvety; the answer, apparently, it to cook it at low temperature for a long time (in this case, about 45 minutes).

Normally I would just serve a curry like this over plain rice, but Appetite for Reduction suggests pairing it with Cranberry-Cashew Biryani, so that's what I did. It's rice cooked with Indian spices, onion, and garlic, and with peas, dried cranberries, and cashews stirred in at the end.

Goddess Nicoise Salad (Take 2)

I feel like we've been a bit heavy on the frying lately, so I'm going back to Appetite for Reduction for most of our meals this week. I made this once before and remembered it fondly, but it's been a while. One taste of that dressing tonight and I was kicking myself for waiting five months before making it again.

There are lots of veggies in here - red leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes, green beans, potatoes, roasted red pepper, and then chickpeas mashed with capers. It was a really hearty salad, plenty of food for dinner.

Chipotle Lentil Burgers & Guacamame

It's so HOT and it's been hot forever and there's no end in sight. Ugh. Today was our fifth day of 100+ degrees, an all-time record for Raleigh, and tomorrow's "cold front" is only bringing the high temp down to 95. So anyway, I'm having a hard time coming up with things to eat, because it just doesn't seem appetizing to put hot food in my belly.

Tonight I played it simple and made some chipotle lentil burgers and guacamame (half avocado, half edamame) from Appetite for Reduction, along with a black bean/corn salsa thing that's one of our summer staples. Nice and summery. We also ate the last of Ben's homemade buns that had been in the freezer. Hopefully I can convince him to make some more soon!

Coconut Rice Salad with Tofu & Vegetables

I made this up. We were supposed to have corn chowder but we're in the middle of a week of 100 degree temperatures and nothing sounded less appealing tonight than soup. So I diced a block of extra-firm tofu, doused it in sesame oil and soy sauce, and put it in the oven. Then I put some rice on the stove to cook, and chopped up all the vegetables - zucchini, red pepper, corn, green onions - that were supposed to go in the chowder. Then I mixed everything together and added coconut milk, agave, lime juice, and a little salt and pepper. Viola! A light summer dinner.

Panko-Crusted Italian Sausage Seitan Cutlets

Man, you guys, Vegan Diner. Every single thing I've made from this book far exceeds my expectations.

I kind of couldn't believe how good these seitan cutlets were. The dough is seasoned with oregano and fennel to make it sausagey - you would be shocked at how easily the addition of a little fennel seed turns weird vegan meat substitutes into sausage. I made the tomato sauce and seitan last night - mixed up the dough, formed it into patties, and steamed it for about 45 minutes - so tonight all I had to do was bread and fry them and cook the pasta. This was very, very much like chicken-fried steak, which to this Missourian equals AWESOME.

Indonesian Tempeh with Green Beans & Peanuts

This recipe is one of our weeknight standbys, very quick and easy. It's a Vegetarian Times recipe that I've changed up a little - I steam the green beans separately, leave out the cloves and water chestnuts, and cut the oil by skipping the tempeh-searing step. Instead I crumble it raw and steam it in the water & soy sauce, add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes once the water has all been absorbed, then add the remaining sauce ingredients.

Corn Nuts - Chile Picante con limon Flavor

Corn Nuts brand fried corn kernel food product is a delightful taste treat for the vegan couple on the go.

When we drove to Boone last weekend we stopped for some snacks and got a package of Chile Picante con limon flavored ones. This is what the packaging looked like:

This package contained 4 servings, so we each had about 2 servings of Corn Nuts during the drive. That's 9 grams of fat and a full 25% of our daily sodium requirement.

They are very delicious. My favorite thing about them is that Tomato Powder is one of the ingredients. When you suck on a mouthful of Corn Nuts before biting into the "Ultimate Crunch," you are rewarded with an authentic Tomato Powder flavor, in addition to the other interesting flavors that are going on (Citric Acid and MSG being most prominent).

As you can see from the photos of the one Corn Nut I saved to photograph upon our return home, the detailed enlarged pictures of Corn Nuts on the front of the package are accurate depictions of the product.




A strongly crunchy texture with plenty of grainy crystalline flavor particles adhering to the outside of the Nut. I ate this last one after photographing it.

So if you find yourself in a snacking situation and don't need to stave off hunger for a long period of time, but want to eat something delicious, get some of these Corn Nuts and share them with a loved one.

Heart Attack on a Plate: Vegan Version

I've been craving fried zucchini forever, and while you have the deep fryer out you might as well make some onion rings too, right?

I also made a new (to me) mac and not-cheese recipe from Vegan Diner - the sauce here is made from cashews, nutritional yeast, onion and garlic powders, salt & pepper, and water. Magically, it tastes like mac & cheese. I don't really understand it, but it sure is tasty.

I'm sure this comes as no surprise, but this dinner was awesome.

Arepas

Continuing last weekend's theme of corn-based Latin things stuffed with filling, we made arepas today. Arepas are Venezuelan, made with a special kind of cornmeal (masarepas), and look like little English muffins. We fried them on both sides to make a crust and then baked them for another 15 minutes. Instead of trying to eat them like a sandwich, we split them and put the filling - tempeh salad + avocado - on top.

I guess it doesn't make sense to serve corn as the vegetable side for a filled corn-cake-style thing, but too bad, because that's what we ate. It was a good dinner.

ZPizza

ZPizza is one of the only chains that carries vegan cheese - and fortunately, there is one within delivery distance of our house. Last night we got home late from a Future Problem Solving Board Meeting in Boone, so we went with pizza for dinner.

I got shiitake mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and zucchini. It was delicious!

Pho Cali House of Noodles

Pho Cali is one of my favorite places to eat in Raleigh. Here it is.

HA. It is the holiest of holes in the wall, and it is perfect. When I worked in the San Fernando Valley, every Friday practically everyone from my office would go over to this little Vietnamese area and eat pho at a place exactly like this. The service was terrible, the decor like a high school cafeteria, our food never came out at the same time, and it was glorious. I was very, very excited to find that Raleigh had a Los Angeles-style pho house.

At Pho Cali, the bathrooms are horrifying and there's a huge TV blaring Vietnamese variety shows. They used to have a bunch of people smoking in there all the time, too, but that's stopped since North Carolina finally banned smoking in restaurants a couple of years ago. The food, though, is awesome. I love to go there for lunch especially, because it's just a couple of miles from my office.

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup made with beef broth, so I can't eat it anymore. Now I order rice paper rolls and a big bowl of rice vermicelli with tofu and vegetables. It is so, so good. Here are pictures, including one of the condiment tray with the pepper shaker clearly labeled "salt."

Asian Broccoli Noodles

This is a serious oldie - I remember finding this recipe on the internet when I first decided to be a pescetarian in 2000. In the beginning I made it as written, with only noodles and broccoli and sauce, but have since branched out to add tofu and whatever other vegetables are lying around.

I can't find the recipe on the internet anymore, sadly, so I will post the sauce, which is great:

- 1/4 cup soy sauce

- 3 T water or vegetable broth

- 2 T peanut butter

- 1 T sugar

- 3 cloves garlic, grated

- 1 T fresh ginger, grated

- juice of one lime

- 1/2 tsp salt

Whisk it all together and mix it in with the noodles and vegetables and tofu and that's that!

EDIT: Er, I just googled "Asian Broccoli Noodles" and the recipe came up as the first result. HMPH. I guess my google-fu was broken yesterday.

Potato & Chickpea Enchiladas

This is a pretty basic enchilada recipe from Viva Vegan. The filling is potato and chickpeas, with a delicious tomatillo sauce poured over the top. I've made them before but substituted seitan for the chickpeas. This time I stuck to the recipe, with only two changes - I used flour tortillas rather than corn, and left off the pine nut crema because of my pine mouth issue.

I made cashew creme separately and also served with shredded lettuce.

Bacon Cheeseburgers and Kale. Lots of Kale.

I bought The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet recently but hadn't yet gotten around to trying any of the recipes. (I'm going to stop buying cookbooks now, I swear). The buns Ben made on Sunday were from this cookbook and seemed very promising, and tonight I made the "bacon cheeseburgers" to go on them. Did you know Bac-O's are vegan? IT'S TRUE.

Anyway, these things were not very bacon cheeseburgery, to be honest, but they were quite good regardless. There's peanut butter and maple syrup and BBQ sauce mixed in with TVP, wheat gluten, bacon bits, and nutritional yeast, so they have a nice sweetish flavor. This picture is crooked but you get the idea.

Naturally, we had kale on the side. I was going to make fried zucchini until I figured up the calorie count for the burgers and buns. They're not health food, that's for sure.

Last night after dinner I started getting kind of panicky about using up that huge bag of kale so I steamed some up to take for lunch and also baked two pans of kale chips.

Even after this, plus the kale we ate tonight for dinner, there's about half the bag left. Eep.

Black Bean & Plantain Pupusas

Pupusas are small stuffed corn tortillas, popular in El Salvador. Or so Viva Vegan tells me. You make a simple corn dough and then stuff it with whatever you want that might be tasty. The basic recipe in Viva Vegan is for a mixture of plantain & black beans, so that's what we went with on our first pupusa attempt.

They look kind of like big chocolate chip cookies! The filling isn't supposed to poke out like that but it was kind of tricky.

Then you fry them up. They didn't do a super good job of sticking together, but upon review we've decided we didn't have enough water in the dough. They tasted great, though! Served along side Latin-spiced tomato sauce and a basic El Salvadoran slaw called curtido.

Yum!

Sunday Cookery

Sunday is always the Food Day - I almost always do the grocery shopping and major cooking for the week. Today was no exception. Ben helped today, though! Instead of solo cooking with Stargate: Atlantis, we worked together and watched Arrested Development. Pretty good tradeoff.

I've been eyeing the huge bag of kale at Whole Foods for the last few weeks. We eat a lot of greens, and it's more cost-effective than buying individual bunches, so I went for it. It's HUGE. This is going to be a challenge. I made Papaya be in the picture for scale. (Note: she's a big cat. She weighs 14 pounds.)

I actually made this cinnamon swirl bread last night. It is so hard to find decent vegan bread, and even harder to find decent desserty vegan bread. This recipe was super easy and it is AWESOME. I really need to make a habit of bread-making. Look how swirly!

This is photoshopped, obviously. Nobody would ever allow their cat to lie on the counter three inches from the cinnamon swirl bread.

This was kind of a gamble. I bought Vegan Desserts a few weeks ago and was too overwhelmed by all the options to decide on something to try first. Then someone on my vegan message boards raved about the avocado creme pie. It was fate! I had just spontaneously picked up some avocados at the Mexican market. Ben was suspicious, but we've also been discussing how it's hard to make vegan dessert truly creamy, so it seemed worth a shot. In this pie, the avocados are blended with lemon juice, vegan cream cheese, sugar, some coconut oil, brown rice syrup, and lime zest. It's chilling in the fridge right now so I can't say for sure how it's going to turn out, but it tasted pretty good when we licked the food processor bowl.

And Ben made these all by himself - plain hamburger buns. If it's hard to find good vegan bread, it's virtually impossible to find vegan hamburger buns, at least ones that don't cost a million dollars. I wasn't planning on eating burgers for a few days, but these look so good I may move them up in the rotation for this week. Stay tuned!

We also made tomato sauce, curtido (el salvadorian slaw) & green tomatillo sauce, and I have some plantains roasting in the oven. It was a productive afternoon!

FAILURE.

Tonight I tried to make the Green Thai Curry from Vegan With a Vengeance. I've made thai coconut milk curries for years and years - it might have been the first thing I ever learned to do with tofu - but I've always used jarred curry paste. I thought it would be a fun challenge to make my own curry paste, and since I trust Isa implicitly I went with her recipe. But OH MY GOD something was terribly wrong with it. I think maybe my shallots were too intensely flavored? The result was inedibly bitter, even after I kept adding more and more maple syrup to sweeten it (before finally realizing: I am wasting very expensive maple syrup for no reason).

Sadness.

I had already cooked the rice and sauteed the tofu, peppers, and onions separately, so at least we had something to eat. I made a little glaze of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, and sriracha, and it was fine.

In over nine months of vegan cooking, this was the first complete failure. I guess it had to happen sometime! Really disappointing, though. I hate wasting food and the worst part is that I'm too gunshy to try that recipe again, since I can't definitively figure out what the problem was. Oh, well.

Tofu Kale Peanut Wraps

I made these last night for dinner and didn't bother to take a picture, because all wrapped up it just looked like a burrito and who cares about that? But then I ate one and it was super amazingly delicious, so when I wrapped up the leftovers for lunch I took a picture.

Now, normally I am strongly opposed to tortillas except in mexican food. And this stuff was actually supposed to be inside a pita, but we ran out and it's too hot to go to the grocery store after work. So I bent my rule and was very pleased with the result.

The tofu is cut into large matchstick shapes, marinated in some various spices (it was actually a complicated marinade but in the future I'll just do some basic soy sauce & vegetable broth) and then pan-fried to get a little crispy edge. Kale is steamed. And then there is a little chopped cucumber and shredded carrot and fresh basil thrown in. The whole thing is topped with a totally delicious peanut sauce made from ginger, garlic, peanut butter, soy sauce, vegetable broth, rice wine vinegar, and I think that's all. It was EXTREMELY TASTY. This is going into the regular rotation for sure.

Weekend in Kansas City

I went to KC last weekend for the 4th of July, to meet my new nephew and celebrate my sister's 30th birthday. It was a very busy weekend - we didn't even have time for a bike ride! Lots of family activities.

Here's Mira at the grocery store.

Mom & Charlie with an unhappy Sullivan at Lake Viking.

Tiny smile?

There is a rumor that Griffy peed on Grandpa Charlie during this nap. I'm sure we'll be using this story to embarrass him in future years.

Little model!

Griffy does not like it when I try to take his picture.

4th of July spread - this is all vegan! Garlic dill potato salad from Vegan Diner, a corn-tomato salad, black bean & corn salsa, pickled cucumber salad, guacamole, hummus. We also made vegan cupcakes but failed to take a picture.

Look how patriotic everyone is!

Mira is quite the pouter. She gets over it quickly, though.

Sparklers! I worried that someone would catch themselves on fire but nobody else seemed concerned about it.