Baked Falafel Salad

Look how cute these heirloom tomatoes are! I've decided to quit wasting money on crappy tomatoes at the grocery store and just buy the expensive ones. It's only a couple of dollars more and they actually taste good! These were kind of lemony.

I used them in a greek-style salad with the baked falafel from Appetite for Reduction. These falafels look kind of weird, but the flavor is good and you save yourself about 6000 calories (give or take) by not deep frying them. We're spending the Labor Day weekend in St. Louis with friends and I know there is going to be some serious eating going on, so I'm trying to do a pre-tox sort of thing. So anyway, the salad is red leaf lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, and local cucumber tossed in Veganomicon's tahini-dill sauce, thinned with some vegetable broth to turn it into salad dressing. And toasted whole wheat pita on the side.

Chimichurri Tofu, Orange Broccoli, Cilantro-Lime Rice

Now, I know this tofu looks kind of gross with that green sauce on it but it is really, really good.

This is the second version of chimichurri sauce I've tried - this one is from Appetite for Reduction and therefore had very little oil - but it was totally delicious. The green comes from pureed cilantro and parsley, along with lime juice and garlic and some other things. I made stir-fried orange broccoli to go with, and a simple cilantro-lime rice. Everything was so nice and citrusy and flavorful!

Ethiopian Feast!

Tonight I made a trio of Ethiopian recipes from Appetite for Reduction: Stewed & Sauteed Collards, Ethiopian Millet, and Mushroom Tibs. I worried that this wouldn't be very filling since it's mostly vegetables, but I couldn't even finish my plate!

Everything was great. There are a million spices in here and it was kind of chaotic putting it all together, but it still ended up taking less than an hour.

I never thought I would be a person who liked boiled greens - but I love them. There is a little sidebar in the cookbook that tells about how one serving of collards has the same amount of calcium as a cup of milk, with zero fat and tons of fiber. Superfood!

Chickpea Piccata, Revised

The last time I made this I wasn't thrilled with the raw arugula. It was supposed to become wilted by the heat of the sauce but it did not. So this time I threw the arugula in with the chickpeas to make sure it wouldn't be crunchy.

Definite win.

Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Brown Butter Sauce

This is an Eating Well recipe that was easy to veganize - we just used Earth Balance in place of the butter and left out the parmesan. We also left out the parsley because I used it all up on Monday night. Ben made this dinner all by himself! It was delicious.

Last night I made another Eating Well recipe that has been a staple for the last few years - Black Bean Croquettes with Fresh Salsa. I took pictures but it looked gross so I won't make you look at them. But you should make that recipe! It's good.

Pierogies

Pierogies used to be a pretty common quick dinner for us, but all of the ones at the store have cheese in them! So I decided, for my big weekend cooking adventure, to undertake pierogies from scratch. I started at 4:00, thinking I would get everything ready to go so all I had to do at dinnertime was boil them. Haha. Ha. Three episodes of Stargate Atlantis later, I was still in the kitchen finishing everything up. Granted, I also chopped up tons of fruits and vegetables and made salad dressing in that time, but still. This was sort of involved.

However! It was 100% worth it. Plus it made so many that I can freeze half for a quick dinner later! The filling is potato, mushroom, and onion, and the dough is pretty basic - just flour, water, oil, and a little salt. Look how many pierogies:

I caramelized a bunch of onions to go on top, and also served them with Tofutti sour cream, the first time I'd tried store-bought vegan sour cream. It was pretty good. We also had an old school vegetable salad (lettuce/carrots/red pepper/broccoli/sunflower seeds) with homemade green goddess dressing.

The kitchen was an epic mess! We found Banana hanging out with the dishes after we ate.

Linguine in Lemon Cream Sauce

I'm still new enough at veganism to get really excited when I veganize an old recipe and it works out. This one is from Vegetarian Times, and was one of my favorite things - I once made it for my mom & Hillary, but forgot the olive oil at the end so sorry about that, guys, because it adds a lovely creaminess.

The thing about vegan cream cheese is that it's not very good when it's plain and cold, which can be a problem for someone like me who is often too lazy to toast her bagel. So far I've been really pleased with how well it substitutes for regular cream cheese in recipes, though, both savory and sweet. It was great here! Ben won't eat it on bagels but he loved this. Success!

Fruity Pancakes!

Ben made pancakes this morning and we topped them with peaches and kiwi instead of syrup, in order to make them healthy, you know. They were cinnamony and delicious.

Portobello-Seitan Stroganoff

I made this once before, months ago, and I thought it was basically the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life, but at the time I was trying new recipes every night so I thought I shouldn't make it again right away. And then it was summertime and too hot for stroganoff. But now I am tired of summer food, so I decided to go for it again. It's from Vegan With a Vengeance. It is GOOD. And it's freaky how much the seitan looks like beef.

Orange Mojo Tofu & Yuca with Zesty Lime Sauce

The last time I cooked with yuca I decided it was too much trouble, but my cookbook ladies talk about it in such glowing terms that I got sucked in for another attempt. It's coated in a thick waxy skin that you have to pare off with a knife, and then it's super hard to cut into pieces, and then there's a stringy core that you have to peel out. I was annoyed all over again dealing with it tonight. And then I took a bite and was like, "Oh. Dang."

Really, though, it's the sauce that makes the dish, and it would be perfectly awesome on mashed potatoes as well. You saute onion and lots of garlic in olive oil until they're soft and browned (the recipe calls for 1/2 cup(!) of olive oil but I cut that to 1/4 and still felt guilty about it), then mix in some lime juice, cumin, and salt. It was reeeeally good. And I figure, with mashed potatoes you put lots of butter on there, right? So a little olive oil really just stands in for the butter and is better for you anyway because of the monounsaturatedness.

ANYWAY I also made Viva Vegan's orange mojo tofu for the second time, and steamed some red kale. Great dinner!

My Funny Little Angel

Papaya is sick. Did you know that some cats can have a delayed, long-lasting illness as a result of their distemper vaccinations? WELL, THEY CAN. And I didn't find out until afterward, naturally. She's running a fever and is lethargic and irritable - it's sort of like she has mono. She's still eating and drinking normally, so the vet doesn't seem too concerned, but it's really stressing me out to the max. I feel so bad for her! And poor Banana is so confused about why she won't play with him. Pfizer, the vaccine manufacturer, says this normally runs its course in a week or two so hopefully we are on the uphill side.

Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show the internet how funny she is.

What a little weirdo! I've never had a cat sit with their legs crossed like that but she does it about 80% of the time. Just chilling out, being cool and casual.

Chicken Fried Seitan and Mac & (not)Cheese

This is kind of a trashy little dinner but it's what I felt like making. I put some chopped chives on top to class it up a bit so that helps, right?

The seitan recipe is one I hadn't made before, from American Vegan Kitchen. It was pretty good but I think I prefer the panko-crusted ones from Vegan Diner.

Spring Rolls

Spring Rolls has one of the largest vegan menus in town, and is delicious. They can make virtually anything on the menu vegetarian by using what they call "soy gluten," which may be made from soy but tastes a lot like seitan. They also have "soy protein" and "soy something else I forgot" and also just tofu, but I always get something with the gluten because it's really good. Ben and I went there for lunch today.

I got the vermicelli bowl with veggies & soy gluten, and a vegetable spring roll on the side.

Ben got what he always gets, which is General Tso's Gluten. Even though the meat substitute is apparently made from the same stuff, the texture is totally different in these dishes. Mine is more like stir-fried chicken breast pieces, and his is like breaded and fried sweet & sour chicken (probably because it is, indeed, breaded and fried).

Breakfast for Dinner

Ben has a general objection to breakfast for dinner so I always have to kind of sneak it by him. He caught on pretty quickly with this one but he was generally okay with this concept, because there were no pancakes or french toast or anything similarly sweet. So high maintenance, he is.

This was kind of a monochromatic dinner but don't worry, there are plenty of vegetables in there. I made more fried potatoes with onion & purple bell pepper, the tempeh bacon from Vegan Brunch, and a recipe called Summer Squash Burgers from The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet. She has a lot of things in that book that are not actually burgers, and this is one of them. They're more like summer squash fritters - a mixture of mostly shredded squash and flour, formed into patties and pan-fried. She says you can make them burger-sized if you want, but I did them in little bite-sized versions. They were good!

Pad Thai

We loooove pad thai and pad thai is not even vegetarian, at least not in the traditional way. Fish sauce ruins everything! But this version (from Vegan With a Vengeance) is vegan and it's great. I've made it several times but never posted it for some reason.

I also made bagels today! I've been on a huge bagel kick lately, but getting tired of rosemary olive oil - the only savory flavor at Bruegger's that's vegan. Plus it's annoying to have to stop for breakfast every morning before work. So I decided to try making my own and it seems to have worked out! Some of them are cinnamon sugar and some have a mixture of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, garlic salt, and onion flakes on them. The stuff didn't stick too well so I have to work on my method for the next time. Excited for breakfast tomorrow!

Baba Ghanoush Burgers with Tabbouleh

This was my second outing from The Best Veggie Burgers in the World, a mediterranean-inspired burger made from (farmer's market) eggplant, chickpea flour, TVP, onion, and garlic. I didn't really believe they would stick together in patties while I fried them up, but they did! I served them in half a pita with hummus and farmer's market tomatoes. I can't believe how amazing real tomatoes are! I never thought I would be the sort of person who would stand in the kitchen and eat slices of raw tomato, but somehow it's happened the last several years.

I made tabbouleh to go with, but am less than thrilled at how it turned out. I followed a recipe despite my misgivings about how much water it called for (3 cups to cook 1 cup of bulgur), and I should have trusted my gut - it was way too much and the bulgur got all gummy. But the flavors were good, so we ate it anyway.

Brunch

I've been a real slacker this year about going to the farmer's market - it's just been so hot most of the time that I haven't felt like dealing with it. I finally made it down there yesterday, though, and got a bunch of weird squashes and baby eggplants (white and purple) and some purple bell peppers! I also got tomatoes (not pictured).

This morning I made a big brunch to start using up my haul. A tofu scramble with some of the squash and bell pepper, and home fries with pepper & onions. I could eat home fries every single day - I don't know if it's the Irish in me or what, but I love fried potatoes like nothing else. I also made a little fruit salad of blueberries, peaches, and banana for vitamin purposes.

It was GREAT. I've been in a breakfast rut lately and I think tofu scrambles might be the answer.

Roasted 40-Clove Garlic Chickpeas & Broccoli

This doesn't actually have 40 cloves of garlic in it, but it does have ten, which is a lot. I made this once before, early in the blog, and this time made some israeli couscous (Trader Joe's Harvest Mix, specifically) to go with. It was a nice wholesome dinner after today's lunch of pizza.

And here's the pizza. We went to the Mellow Mushroom, where they have vegan cheese, but either our waitress or someone in the kitchen was not that bright because when I specified vegan cheese on the Mega Veggie pizza, they replaced the mozzarella but still included the feta. Drat! If it hadn't taken forty freaking minutes to get our food I might have sent it back, but I just shut up and ate it. SIGH. Poor little cow.

It was pretty good, though. I can't lie.

Spring Rolls

Spring rolls are one of my favorite summer things. These have red pepper, cucumber, baked pre-seasoned tofu, basil, and red leaf lettuce. They aren't pretty but they are delicious!

I made a lazy dipping sauce of peanut butter, soy sauce, lime juice, vegetable broth, and ground ginger to go with.

Banana Loves Kale!

Black Beans in Red Velvet Mole

This red velvet mole - a Mexican sauce of onion, tomato, garlic, tons of spices, cocoa powder, raisins, crushed tortilla chips (!) and some other things - was the only recipe from the bean section of Appetite for Reduction that I hadn't made yet. It was worth the wait! I also roasted a plantain and stuffed it with a mixture of walnuts, brown sugar, and salt. Yummmmm. I've been wanting to make those for a long time and they were also worth the wait!

And then, you know, kale.

Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Roasted Potatoes

Soooo....I had a rough time with dinners last week. This ridiculous summer is really starting to get me down - I just don't feel like cooking (or even eating, really) when it's 100 degrees day after day. Last week we ate some leftovers from the freezer, ordered pizza one night... I can't even remember what else. But it was nothing worth mentioning. Then I was out of town all weekend. But never fear! I'm back.

Unfortunately, my camera batteries are dead so I had to take a picture with my phone, which is not the best.

It's sort of hard to tell what's going on here, eh? Someday I will have a real phone like a grownup and will not have this issue. But anyway, this is a tofu scramble with onion, garlic, cherry tomatoes, and homemade pesto. Our basil plant is out of control and I needed to use some of it - I took two cups of leaves off the plant to make the pesto and you can't even tell! I also got some teeny potatoes at the grocery store and roasted them in olive oil and salt & pepper. Quick and delicious!