Weekend Cooking

Tonight's dinner was a Tater Tot Casserole from American Vegan Kitchen. The filling was vegetables (carrot, celery, onion, mushrooms) sauteed with TVP, which I'd never cooked with before. TVP is a super old-school meat substitute that is very cheap. It comes dried, in bulk, and has to be rehydrated before use. I've been sort of scared of it but it worked out really well! This was really like a shepherd's pie except with tots on top, rather than mashed potatoes.

I also made a new muffin recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance - cherry almond. Looking forward to trying these for breakfast tomorrow morning.
Dessert was killer: Mint Chocolate Truffle Pie from Vegan Diner. The crust is made with mint Oreos, and the filling is silken tofu mixed with an entire package of melted chocolate chips, plus mint extract and some confectioner's sugar. It was GREAT. I couldn't believe how well it set up after only a few hours in the fridge.

A Little Trip to the Mountains

Ben and I took a little overnight trip to the mountains for Memorial Day. Our first stop was at Chimney Rock State Park. It involved LOTS of stair climbing to get to the top of natural rock formations with great views of the mountains. My legs are sore today!

Tired after all those stairs!

The town of Lake Lure in the valley below:

I was SO SWEATY by this point, at the very top of the whole park.

The last scenes of The Last of the Mohicans were filmed here.

This waterfall was apparently also used in the "I WILL FIND YOU!" scenes in the Last of the Mohicans but they must have done some crafty editing because it wasn't nearly as big as it looked in the movie.

And then we drove on to Asheville. Asheville is a hilarious place, a mountain college town, which makes it full of a wide range of weirdos. Hippies everywhere playing hackey sack and bongos in the park, etc. Surprisingly, these people rocking out in the square downtown were evangelical Christians. They were pretty into Jesus.

We ate dinner at Rosetta's Cafe in downtown Asheville.

I got a baked tofu and avocado sandwich with some kind of herbed/spiced Veganaise. This was AMAZING. Nice and greasy, too.

Ben got a vegan reuben.

And, naturally, if someplace has vegan cheesecake available, we're going to go for it. I got cherry chocolate and Ben ordered NY style with blueberry sauce.

Um, I don't know. We saw this thing and thought we should take a picture.

This morning we stopped at a bookstore with a coffee shop for an hour or so. Salted caramel soy latte and a maple banana walnut cookie! Asheville is one of those rare places where you can you ask, "Are any of your baked goods vegan?" and they will not only know what you're talking about, but answer, "Yes!"

Then we met my friend Amy and her son Carson at the Laughing Seed Cafe, one of Asheville's best known vegetarian restaurants. It totally lived up to the hype.

Ben ordered hot and sour soup to start:

And then strawberry almond waffles.

My blue plate special - scrambled tofu florentine, rosemary roasted potatoes, seitan sausage, and a biscuit with vegan gravy. It was perfect.

I LOVE Asheville. It's a vegan's paradise! There were a ton of other restaurants I want to try there that we couldn't fit in on this quick trip. Hopefully we'll be back soon!

Sloppy Joes!

This is kind of a gross picture, but sloppy joes aren't supposed to be pretty!

This is a Veganomicon recipe (and is also online at Isa's blog). It was really easy and the sauce really does taste like the canned stuff I grew up with, minus the high fructose corn syrup and other weird chemicals. Success!

Mexicali Seitan

This is my second effort from American Vegan Kitchen, a super easy chipotle-flavored stirfry of peppers, onions, and seitan in tomato sauce.

I ate mine over leftover rice from last night's dinner, and Ben had his in tortillas. Yum all around.

Caribbean Curried Black Eyed Peas, Plantains, and Kale

This coconut milk based jamaican-style curry is from Appetite from Reduction, and took less than 30 minutes start to finish - one of the (many) reasons it's my most-used weeknight cookbook.

The kale is my own addition; I've made this once before, pre-blog, and thought it needed some green. It worked really well!

More Cornmeal Tofu, plus Muffins

This week I'm finally starting to repeat things. I've made this cornmeal tofu before and knew it was good, plus I still had some of the breading mixed up in the fridge. It took about 5 minutes to throw together and into the oven. Then I (Ben) chopped up a sweet potato and tossed it in some salt, sugar, and chili powder. Also into the oven. Then when they were almost done baking, I steamed some asparagus with salt and lemon. Super easy and healthy dinner.

And then I ruined it by making muffins. Lemon poppyseed!

No-Tuna Noodle Casserole

This could also be called TuNO Noodle Casserole. GET IT???

This worked well as a stand-in for the standard tuna/egg noodles/cheddar cheese/cream of mushroom soup casserole. The recipe is from American Vegan Kitchen, another new cookbook I got last week. In this recipe, cashews are blended with some vegetable broth, dijon mustard, and artichoke hearts to make the "cream" part of the equation, and chickpeas are roasted in a million delicious spices for the protein. Then I just sauteed up some chopped leeks, mushrooms, and red pepper, mixed it all together with some fusilli pasta, and topped with some herby panko bread crumbs. Totally hit the spot!

BBQ Seitan Sandwiches & Dill Potato Salad

Um, holy crap. This meal was amazing. Both recipes are from Vegan Diner, which I picked up last week. If anything else in the book even comes close to being as amazing as what I ate for lunch today, I will be a happy camper.

I thought this would be sort of a quick lunch, but unfortunately I procrastinated and hadn't yet made the seitan. So I did that, and while it was steaming I also had to make garlic mayo and the bbq sauce to serve as bases for the potato salad and sandwiches, respectively.

I've never done homemade barbecue sauce before and it was both easy and far, far better than anything I've had from a bottle. Seriously. Yet another thing I won't be buying pre-made again. The garlic mayo (silken tofu based) was fantastic as well. I mixed it with one of those bags of mixed baby potatoes (red, white, purple) and some chopped fresh dill to make the potato salad. I would serve this vegan potato salad to anyone without reservation. I don't think there's a person in the world who would be able to tell it wasn't real mayonnaise.

I also suspect the sandwich itself could be passed off as real meat and no one would be able to tell unless they really thought about it. The sauce was so flavorful and the texture of the seitan is so meatlike... it basically blew my mind. Get this cookbook!

Vegetable Korma

I forgot to take a picture of last night's dinner (tofu pad thai) and I had eaten half of my dinner before I remembered tonight!

This is an indian-spiced curry of cauliflower, zucchini, and carrots in a mixture of vegetable broth and light coconut milk, over brown rice. Yum.

Quesadillas

Daiya pepperjack is now available at our Whole Foods and I've been wanting to try it out. Daiya is by most accounts the best vegan cheese available and it's certainly the best I've tried, but it's not super fantastic or anything. I'm so-so on the cheddar flavor and I like the mozzarella on pizza, so I thought I would give the pepperjack a go in a quesadilla with seitan, refried beans, and peppers and onions.

See how it gets melty?! I thought it was fine, but Ben hated it. And honestly, this doesn't even come close to those enchiladas we ate Sunday. The longer I'm vegan, the less I like store-bought vegan products. I really just prefer my own cooking, with real food that doesn't pretend to be meat or dairy.

Pasta e Fagioli

Garlic, tomatoes, white wine, pasta, white beans, spinach. Easy, hearty, and great!

Potato & Kale Enchiladas

I've been wanting to make these enchiladas (from Veganomicon) for a long time, mostly because I didn't really believe potato and kale enchiladas could be very good. I've only been completely vegan for a few months, you know, and I have a hard time believing things I've always considered cheese-based can be as good in a non-cheese format. So far, though, I've not been disappointed at all. These were delicious!

They were also complicated, but that's okay. There is not much more I love than spending a couple hours in the kitchen with some crappy TV show streaming on the computer. Today I got to watch two episodes of Stargate: Atlantis while these came together.

First I had to roast some Anaheim chiles. Every time I roast peppers under the broiler, I forget about them completely until the last possible second. Every single time! Fortunately they're sort of hard to screw up. You broil them until the skins are crispy, let them cool, then peel and chop.

While they were roasting, I made this cilantro sour cream (main ingredient: silken tofu).

Then I put the sauce together.

And toasted some pumpkin seeds, which were chopped up and mixed into the potato/kale filling.

Here's a shot in the midst. I had a lot going on.

And here is the final product! My one complaint about enchiladas is that they're hard to get out of the pan without mushing them all up. They taste the same, but the pictures don't turn out very well!

Nevertheless, they were super tasty and a good way to wrap up my weekend of food.

Seitan with Mushrooms & Spinach, plus Cake

I thought this sounded like kind of a light dinner but it ended up being really hearty. And easy to put together, which is always a bonus. I already had the homemade seitan on hand, so I just cut it into strips and sauteed with onion, garlic, and mushrooms, then added some white wine, vegetable broth, and spinach at the end. Served over mashed potatoes, of course!

The star was dessert, though. I made my first vegan pound cake, and topped with strawberries and blueberries from the farmer's market. It made a perfect spring dessert!

Sesame Tofu Scramble with Kale and Sweet Potatoes

Technically I was supposed to crumble the tofu into bite sized pieces to make it seem like scrambled eggs, but I like it better when it's cubed and a little crispy on the edges.

This was a really fast, simple, and healthy dinner - I baked the sweet potato the night before, so all I had to do was let the tofu cook for a little while in sesame oil, add the seasonings (garlic/ginger/red pepper flakes/soy sauce), let the kale cook down, and stir in the sweet potato to heat through. That's black sesame seed on top. There's no specific reason to use black sesame seed; it was just the first kind I found in my cabinet.

Gnocchi with Vodka Sauce

Quick weeknight dinner - I made a vodka sauce out of canned crushed tomatoes and served it over toasted gnocchi. Most non-vegan vodka sauces have cream in them, but this one is made creamyish by the addition of slivered almonds, which are then pureed into the sauce. It was tasty! I felt so seedy going to the state-owned liquor store to buy my airplane-sized bottle of vodka, though!

Cornmeal Crusted Tofu, Southwestern Corn Pudding, and Green Pumpkin Seed Mole

This meal was awesome. The corn pudding is the type of thing that would normally have a bunch of cheese in it, I think, but of course that's not the case here. The creaminess came from pureeing some of the corn with a cup of light coconut milk, and it was really perfect. The tofu was coated in a cornmeal/chili powder crust and then baked - it turned out all spicy and crispy. The green pumpkin seed mole really took it over the top, though. Roasted pumpkin seeds pureed with parsley, cilantro, green onion, garlic, and a couple of lettuce leaves. I have a ton left over and I'm already trying to figure out what else I can eat it on!

Jambalaya

Rice baked with vegetables, various beans (from the freezer - kidney, black, and black-eyed peas), and seitan. This recipe made a ton so we'll be eating it all week for lunches, too!

Creamy Mushroom Fettuccine with Seitan

I never know how to spell fettuccine. My browser says two c's is correct but it looks weird. ANYWAY.

This is from Appetite for Reduction, a very simple recipe that makes use of a lot of garlic and a box of creamy portobello mushroom soup. I added seitan for protein.

Tempeh Helper

As a lifelong superfan of Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper, I've wanted to make this recipe since the moment I got Appetite for Reduction. I had the vague idea Ben would be against it, but for someone who still eats real cheese, he's turned out to be a surprising fan of nutritional yeast-based "cheesy" sauces.

This looks amazingly like the real thing, doesn't it? (If you imagine the tempeh is ground turkey in there rather than ground beef, anyway.) It continues to amaze me how closely nutritional yeast sauce can mimic cheese. The taste was a little bitter, though. I used Trader Joe's tempeh and I think it has a stronger flavor than the brand I usually buy. I'm going to try this again but using Boca fake meat crumbles instead of the tempeh, so that the flavors in the sauce will be more prominent.

Seitan Saltado

This is another Viva Vegan recipe, for a Peruvian-style stirfry of seitan, onions, and tomatoes. I added some chiffonaded spinach because I'm a fully indoctrinated vegan at this point and feel anxious if there aren't any green vegetables on my plate.

The especially exciting thing about this stirfry is that instead of serving over rice or noodles, you serve it with FRENCH FRIES. Genius.