Chocolatey Crinkle Cookies

I almost forgot! Ben made these cookies (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) while I was cooking dinner and they were fantastic.

Banana likes to have a supervisory role.

Lentils & Rice with Caramelized Onions

This hardly counts as a World Vegetarian recipe because we have been making it consistently for close to ten years. It's kind of a McClure recipe at this point. It is so, so good, though, that I couldn't have a week of Madhur Jaffrey without including it. And even so, every time I make this, I doubt the recipe - how can rice and lentils and onions genuinely be as delicious as I remember? BUT IT IS.

The key is the caramelized onions, cooked for a long long time over low heat until they get all sweet and crispy and perfect. Look how the onions go from raw and boring to caramelized perfection:

And the final product, served with a side of kale. Yum.

Chili Glazed Tofu with Sesame Rice

I'm failing at World Vegetarian week!

I was supposed to make sweet & sour tempeh tonight but I just couldn't deal with a new recipe plus I didn't feel like going to the store for kale. If we hadn't gone out for lunch today I probably would have ordered takeout, but I felt like I should be somewhat financially responsible. So I threw together an old standby: Chili Glazed Tofu. This is the recipe that helped me finally figure out how to make tofu taste good, and I still make it all the time. The recipe calls for serving the tofu over asparagus and rice, but I will often throw in some sort of frozen vegetable instead (edamame is good) if asparagus is out of season.

Tonight I located a box of broccoli in the freezer and chopped it up into tiny bits, grated up some carrots, and mixed that into the rice for vegetables. This whole thing took about 15 minutes. So easy and so delicious! I can't believe I haven't made it in the entire life of the blog up to this point. Anyway, here it is.

Israeli Couscous with Asparagus and Mushrooms

Day two of World Vegetarian week: this is a pretty basic mushroom & asparagus saute in a sauce of white wine, garlic, and shallots, served over Israeli couscous. I used a little package of mixed mushrooms to fancy it up, and also added some seitan for protein.

Persian Ratatouille

Since I went vegan I've been cooking almost exclusively from vegan cookbooks and basically ignoring everything else. This week I decided to change that and have a week devoted to cooking from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, a cookbook I've had for at least ten years. I've made a few things from it over the years but not nearly enough.

Tonight I made her Persian "Ratatouille", a layered baked dish of lots of different vegetables and fruits: onion, eggplant, carrots, apples, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes... I think that's all. There are chopped dried apricots and prunes on the top, and then seasoned tomato juice is poured over the top before baking.

The pictures are extremely unimpressive, but the flavors in this thing were amazing. Definite win! Looking forward to the rest of the week.

Appetizery Dinner

When we were little, my favorite dinner was what my dad called a Platter, which was cold cuts and sweet pickles and Chicken in a Biskit crackers. Honestly, we thought it was heaven. Tonight I decided to make a vegan version of Platter. It was slightly fancier, and with more vegetables, but the same basic idea.

I make stuffed mushrooms at the slightest opportunity. I remove the stems, chop them into tiny pieces and saute them with garlic, then mix that with cream cheese and salt & pepper to fill the mushrooms caps. I topped these with some chives from our "garden" (which is 1 chives plant and 1 basil plant, in pots on the porch). This is the first time I've done them with vegan cream cheese but they were the same.

I also roasted some asparagus with jerk seasonings (I am all about the jerk seasonings lately), and then we had water crackers, sliced cucumber, vegan sausages (homemade, naturally), and spreadable garlicky cheeze (ditto).

Here is a little cracker sandwich thing.

This dinner totally hit the spot. I'm easy to please.

Dinner for One

Ben had a work meeting tonight, so I threw together dinner for myself in about 10 minutes. Earlier this week, I roasted half a cup of chickpeas (leftover from the cutlets) and some cherry tomatoes because both were going to go bad soon. So, for tonight's dinner, I boiled up some macaroni and mixed it with that roasty goodness, topped with some chopped green onion.

Just some good, old fashioned macaroni and chickpeas. Ha. But seriously it was really good.

Jerk Seitan, Coconut Rice, and Collards

The marinade for this seitan (from Vegan with a Vengeance) was out of this world, made with pureed onion and garlic and ginger plus jamaican jerk spices like allspice and cinnamon. I left out the called for nutmeg because we hate it, and also - wisely, and for once - left out the cayenne so it wouldn't be too spicy for me. I put it together last night and let it marinate all day long. YUM.

Wet Bean Burritos

I chose this recipe (from American Vegan Kitchen) largely because I knew Ben would be super grossed out by the idea of eating something called a wet bean burrito. I'm a fun wife. And: success! He looked horrified when I told him what was for dinner. But really, these are just black bean & spinach burritos baked with an enchilada-type sauce on top.

The sauce was super fast and easy - it called for rehydrated dried chiles but I just used a couple of chipotles from the freezer instead.

I used some of the ranch from last night and a big pile of shredded green leaf lettuce to cool it down a little bit, because I'm a pretty big wimp when it comes to spice. This was a surprisingly quick dinner!

Burgers & Onion Rings

We've had a deep fryer for nearly 2 months and have only used it once! Unacceptable. So tonight we made two kinds of onion rings - one beer-battered, one with a crispy chickpea flour base. Ben was in charge of the frying, which actually isn't nearly a big hassle as I thought it would be. Aaaaaaand the whole thing was a total, awesome success.

The burgers were the extra Incrediburgers I made and froze a few weeks ago, and I also made a vegan ranch to go on both the burgers and to dip the onion rings into. Yummo!

Buckwheat..... Somethings

I wasn't going to post this but Ben said I had to.

HAHA. Um, yeah. This was supposed to be buckwheat waffles with tarragon mushroom red wine gravy. Unfortunately, the waffles stuck like crazy to the waffle iron so we were forced to make them into pancakes. But then the pancakes were super thin, so they were really like crepes, almost. And then they turned out to be the exact color of the gravy, which makes for a sort of horrifying photo.

We also ate some sauteed kale, out of bowls in the kitchen as we both stood there watching the "pancakes" cook, wondering if we would need to call and order Chinese food.

The thing is, though, the flavor of this meal was very good. It's just a shame the whole waffle part of the equation didn't work out. I made the batter about an hour before we cooked them, and I'm wondering if that was the problem? I might try again sometime soon. What else am I going to do with a bunch of buckwheat flour?

Here are some pictures of the my cute babies to cleanse the palate.

Sunday Brunch

I'm proud of what I cobbled together from leftovers this morning! I sauteed tempeh (the other half of the package was used in yesterday's sushi) with garlic and roasted vegetables from last night's dinner, and served it over roasted potatoes with tahini-dill sauce.

STUFFED.

Saturday Dinner

Chickpea cutlets are a dependable McClure household favorite - I think they're Ben's all-time vegan favorite, actually. I made a tahini-dill sauce to go on top, and attempted the broccoli millet croquette recipe from Veganomicon for accompaniment. They didn't really croquet up, however, so it was kind of just like fried broccoli millet mush with tahini-dill sauce - which, fortunately, tasted fantastic. Then I roasted some asparagus and roasted red peppers in olive oil, lemon zest, and salt & pepper for extra vegetables.

It was a kind of complicated dinner, even for me, but ended up being worth it. I have leftover cutlets and millet/broccoli mixture for lunch tomorrow, and I'm going to use the asparagus and red pepper in a tempeh scramble for breakfast. I'm all about the efficiency over here.

Spicy Tempeh Nori Rolls

I made sushi rolls for lunch today. The filling is avocado, scallion, and tempeh mixed with vegenaise, crushed red pepper, and sesame oil. Every time I make sushi I realize why it costs so much for rice and vegetables; this is time consuming and takes skill! I'm not very good at the rolling part, and our knives are apparently crap because it was a chore cutting them up. But! They tasted great and we didn't have to spend $50.

This is not a very good picture but look! There's Banana!

Tofu Lettuce Wraps and Fried Rice

I love this hoisin-mustard tofu - it has the honor of being my most-made recipe (so far) from Appetite for Reduction. I made a little basic fried rice to go on the side. I tried to convince Ben we could do without the carbs for dinner in order to eat more cookies for dessert, but he thought that wasn't a very sensible plan.

The hardest part about this dish is getting the dang lettuce off the head in one piece. It's hard!

Pizza and Cookies!

I went to the store after work to get sesame oil and came home with all the ingredients for pizza. I don't know what happened!

I made pesto for the base, some tofu ricotta to spread on top of that, and then added some Lightlife Veggie Pepperoni and shiitake mushrooms. I also made the dough for the first time ever! Ben usually does it but he wasn't home yet and I thought I could probably figure it out. MMM, PIZZA.

Then I decided to try another batch of ice cream, since my attempt over the weekend failed. And, naturally, since I was making ice cream, I might as well make some cookies. This chocolate chip recipe is from Vegan Diner, and is the best of the (er, three) vegan chocolate chip cookie recipes I've tried in the past few months. They were perfect!

The ice cream worked, too, which was a relief. I kind of made the recipe up and it is VERY sweet, but I don't really care because a) we like sugar and b) my main goal was just to make sure the machine could actually make ice cream. I've had it since we got married but I think I'd only used it maybe twice. I plan to put it to good use now, though, because good non-dairy ice cream is really expensive.

Oh, and I made this thing on Wednesday and it was good.

It's a chilean-style shepherd's pie type thing, except with corn pudding on the top rather than mashed potatoes. I didn't post it because I forgot to take a picture showing the insides (potatoes, carrots, peas, tempeh), so I only have the crusty baked top here. It was a nice hearty dinner, though, something I will make again for sure.

Catalan Couscous Salad

I'm trying to work my way through the last of the Appetite for Reduction recipes I haven't made yet. I've never even considered the idea of cooking an entire cookbook before, so I'm kind of amazed at how close I've come in only six months or so. Mainly what I have left are soups and vegetable sides, but there are a few other things, too, and this salad was one of them.

It's a pretty basic spinach salad with sliced pear and cooked couscous mixed in, but the real star, as always, is the dressing. The main ingredients are toasted slivered almonds and an entire roasted red pepper, and the flavor is really dense and smoky. I topped it the rest of the tempeh cakes that I froze a couple of weeks ago, and the whole thing went together surprisingly well.

More Tacos!

If I were clever, I would have put these on the schedule for tomorrow so then we would have had two consecutive weeks of Taco Tuesday. But alas, that didn't occur to me until about 5 minutes ago.

The "meat" in these is seitan chorizo, from Vegan Brunch, and they're served with a little pineapple salsa, which Ben thankfully put together because my hands have tiny cuts on them for various reasons and the citrus would have killed me. I was supposed to grill the pineapple, but frankly, I was too lazy and I figured it would be fine raw. And it was! These tacos put last week's to shame, actually. They were fantastic.

Eggplant & Artichokes alla Napoletana

This is a Vegan With a Vengeance recipe in which panko-coated eggplant slices are layered with a tomato/artichoke sauce and sun-dried tomato pesto. The recipe calls for the eggplant to be fried but, well, my calorie prioritization is focused on those s'mores cupcakes right now. So I baked them and it worked fine.

I served it over orzo. It was good! And looks fancy.

Little Helpers

Sunday is my grocery day, and this week Banana and Papaya tried to be helpful when I was putting everything away. Papaya loves plastic bags and always tries to climb inside them.

After that they were pretty tired.

S'mores Cupcakes

Today was largely a kitchen failure. I tried to double my batch of homemade ice cream and it never set up. The butternut squash I was going to use for dinner was disgusting mush. I even failed trying to mix up some vegetable broth from a cube of bouillon. I ended up just getting some takeout veggie sushi rolls because I couldn't face dealing with dinner.

BUT!

These cupcakes turned out fantastic.

They more than made up for all the other failures. I'm not a very good icer yet, but this was my first time trying to pipe frosting and so I just need some practice.

Summer Food

It's suddenly 95 degrees every day, which is not awesome, and is also making me realize that I'm a little late breaking out the summer recipes this year. I stopped on the way home last night and bought a bunch of vegetables so I could whip up some nice cool things for us to eat for a couple of days.

Last night I made rice salad primavera for us to take for lunches. This is one of my favorite salad recipes ever, and is super easy - the only cooking required is the rice, and the dressing is just dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. And it's a Vegetarian Times recipe, so it's online! I did cut the oil down to 1 Tbsp. I never like as much oil in salad dressings as recipes call for.

Then for tonight's dinner I made cold rice noodle salad with baked tofu and vegetables. I've come to realize I have an almost pathological need to pack as many different vegetables into one day as I can, and this is a good way to get lots of them at once. Usually I use julienned red pepper, but I forgot to buy one and Ben isn't a super big fan of bell peppers anyway. So, along with the thinly sliced cucumber, I shredded a couple of carrots to stand in for the red pepper (and, amazingly, did not also shred my skin off my fingers like I normally do). I also have some shredded red leaf lettuce in the very bottom of the bowl, an idea I stole from our local Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall. The dressing is just a Tbsp of each of sesame oil and sugar, the juice of two limes, and a finely sliced jalapeno.

Perfect for a hot summer night!

Grilled (Not-)Cheese!

I tried to make a faux grilled cheese one time using store-bought vegan cheese slices (I think it was this brand) and it didn't really work out. The cheese softened up, but it also sort of separated and instead of meltiness it was kind of like oil was leaking out? Anyway, it was yuck.

I really wanted to try it with the Great Smoky Mountain Cheeze I made on Sunday. I was relatively confident it would work out pretty well, since it's already a smooth texture that spreads right onto the bread, and wouldn't have to do any weird melting to imitate the texture of warm cheese. I put some tomato on there for vitamins and added deliciousness, then slowly toasted it up in a skillet so the cheese would get nice and warm.

IT WORKED!! It was great. Ben was extremely suspicious about the whole operation but he agreed that this is a keeper.

I was going to get some prepared tomato soup to go with, but discovered all the brands at the store have milk as the first ingredient. I didn't feel like making a soup from scratch, though, either, so we had it with a can of Amy's minestrone.

Tempeh Asado Tacos

Tempeh two nights in a row! Usually I try to mix it up but I also try to do something simple on Tuesday and Wednesday, since one of us has somewhere to be on those nights, and this is the way things fell on this week's schedule. This was a completely different use of tempeh, anyway - it was barely recognizable in the chesapeake cakes last night, but much more tempeh-flavored tonight.

This was a very quick recipe - tempeh is steamed, then marinated for 15 minutes or so, then sauteed to brown it a bit. I served it in tacos with cherry tomatoes, cabbage, and cashew cream. Here's all the stuff.

And the messy assembled tacos.

Quick and tasty!

Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes

One thing I've learned since going vegan is that it isn't the meat that gives signature dishes their flavor. Unless you're a fan of a big piece of steak or chicken - which I never was, even as an omnivore - the cravings for most things can be taken care of by knowing how to pair flavors, techniques, and a neutral protein.

So, I was interested to try these faux crab cakes from Isa Chandra Moskovitz's book Vegan Brunch. They're made of a mixture of steamed, seasoned tempeh and panko bread crumbs, plus some Vegenaise, minced red pepper, hot sauce, and a few spices.

I feel like I spend half my life talking about what a genius Isa is, but IT'S TRUE. These things were off the hook. They even looked like crab cakes. Bonus: This recipe is online at Isa's blog, and would be a good recipe to start with if you're curious but a little scared of tempeh.

Per the book's suggestion I mixed up a little remoulade sauce of Vegenaise, dijon mustard, hot sauce, and capers and it was, of course, awesome.

I was going to roast some potatoes alongside the asparagus but I somehow left the grocery store without them yesterday. This is why you should always have tater tots on hand! One of the many reasons, anyway.

I froze half this batch for a future quick dinner and I think they're going to get eaten sooner rather than later. This is one of the best dinners in a long time!

Sunday in the Kitchen

The first thing on the agenda today was to use up some mushy bananas before they went completely bad. I found this recipe for "Banana Breakfast Bars" and thought that sounded like a good idea, because we've gotten used to having baked goods of some sort for our weekday breakfasts. Once I started mixing them up, though, it was pretty clear they are basically just dessert. That's okay, though; they're tasty and they DO contain bananas and ground flaxseed, so that's healthy enough for me.

While those were in the oven, I made Vegan Diner's Great Smoky Mountain Cheeze. I made a faux goat-style cheese once before from cashews and was underwhelmed; this stuff, however, kind of blew my mind. It tastes just like the kind of cheese spread you'd get in a Hickory Farms gift basket. I was very pleasantly surprised and will be eating this stuff all week on sandwiches for lunch.

Then this happened.

Oops! Our big 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup shattered all over the kitchen - and I do mean ALL over. It was behind the computer desk, in the fruit bowl, in the garbage disposal, etc. Disaster! And a real bummer, because we use that thing all the time. Oh, well. The cats were extremely interested in the (extensive) clean-up process.

So, after all that, here is my dinner. I made veggie burgers ("Incrediburgers", from American Vegan Kitchen), the first time I've made a non-bean-based veggie burger from scratch. The main ingredients are TVP and vital wheat gluten, plus about a dozen different spices and herbs, and then they're steamed for an hour to firm up. When you're ready to eat, you can grill or cook them stovetop or even bake them. I did these in a skillet because it's too hot to go outside. Anyway, I was VERY impressed with the burger. I've been toying around with the idea of getting The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet and now I definitely will. I'm excited to try other ingredients and flavor combinations. The good thing about veggie burgers is that they freeze well, so even if they're a pain to put together, it always makes enough for two or even three meals, since there are only 2 of us McClures.

I also made a side dish of sauteed coriander-flavored mushrooms with cherry tomatoes. I'm usually sort of lazy about vegetable sides but I'm going to start trying to mix it up a little.

I put avocado and the smoky mountain cheese on the burger, along with lettuce and ketchup. It was great! A really perfect summer dinner.

Seitan Piccata

HELLO, DELICIOUSNESS.

This is seitan and green beans over mashed potatoes with a sauce of white wine, lemon juice, shallots, garlic, capers... you know. Piccata. It is seriously good.

Gingerbread Waffles

I've been wanting to try these waffles (from Vegan Brunch) for a while and hadn't gotten around to it. Fresh ginger, ground cloves, and cinnamon are mixed into the batter. YUM. Instead of maple syrup, I topped them with some apples in baked brown sugar & cinnamon. Perfect combination! And it felt sort of healthy because of the fruit.

Macaroni and....

....not cheese, but cheesy enough for me. This is a baked mac & non-cheese, made with the usual nutritional yeast sauce plus pureed tofu. And WHOA YOU GUYS it was super good.

I know that picture doesn't look like much but I could eat this every day. Recipes like this make it possible for me to not miss cheese.