Pasta with Italian Sausage

I chose the recipe for tonight's dinner by opening American Vegan Kitchen to a random page and going with it. I always mean to use that cookbook more, but the ingredient lists look intimidatingly long so I seem to unconsciously avoid it. I did make a couple changes - I halved the pasta (she called for a pound for four servings - too much!) and I added half a jar of quartered artichoke hearts that I had sitting around in the fridge. It wasn't complicated in the least - I need to make more of an effort to move AVK into regular rotation.

The sausage is a Vegan Brunch recipe I made this afternoon, and exceeded my expectations by quite a lot. I'd tried her sausages once before but I didn't wrap them tightly enough before steaming, so they weren't very firm. This time I wrapped those suckers as tight as I could and they were fantastic. I eat a lot of homemade fake meats and I wouldn't try to convince people that most of it actually tastes like meat, but these sausages could easily be substituted for those fancy packaged chicken ones and I doubt anyone would notice.

A Vegan Thanksgiving!

We had a small Thanksgiving at home, just me and Ben, but we sure did eat a lot.

I made the beer chocolate waffles from Vegan Brunch for breakfast, with a homemade chocolate sauce on top. These were my first successful vegan waffles - the ones I'd tried before stuck to the waffle iron even after spraying it with oil. Someone on the PPK message boards suggested cooking them a little longer than you think you should, and that worked!

Here is the dinner: I made a seitan pot roast with carrots & potatoes in the crockpot (recipe: Vegan Diner), roasted broccoli with garlic in the oven, and opened a can of jellied cranberry sauce because it's Ben's favorite. Even after more than a year of being vegan, I was sort of suspicious that a seitan pot roast would be any good, but it was great. A good thing, too, because we have tons of of it left over.

And then I made pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.

I used the recipe in Vegan Pie in the Sky, which uses a combination of cashews, silken tofu, and banana to stand in for the cream cheese. The consistency was incredible, just like regular cheesecake.

The flavor was not very pumpkiny, though - you could taste the banana and the citrus (orange zest & lemon juice) more than the pumpkin. This is possibly because we don't like nutmeg so I left it out. Regardless, it tasted great and is definitely something I'll make again. I need to try more things from the pie cookbook!

Stewed Tofu, Potatoes & Kale in Miso Gravy

This is a Vegan With a Vengeance recipe I modified by adding steamed kale, because I like to add steamed kale to almost everything.

The broth is mostly white wine & miso and had a nice sweet, hearty flavor.

Sunday Night Ethiopian

I've been jonesing for the Ethiopian restaurant the last couple of weeks, but it's kind of a pain to drive to so we keep putting it off. Instead, I made some Ethiopian things for dinner.

I've made this seitan & peppers (Vegan With a Vengeance) once before, and I thought it needed to be less spicy and more saucy, so I cut the chiles by two-thirds and added an extra half-cup of vegetable broth this time around. But! I tasted the puree before I added the seitan & peppers and it was terrible, super bitter - the exact flavor of the green thai curry disaster! The only common ingredient is serrano chiles. Mystery solved!!! Serranos are hereby banned from my house. I'm thinking the last time I made this recipe, I must have used jalapenos, which I often do out of laziness. I put it in the oven regardless because peppers generally mellow out when they're baked, and it totally worked and was delicious, to my relief.

I also made the Mushroom Tibs from Appetite for Reduction, which we have also had once before.

Good dinner.

Smoky Split Pea Soup

Split Pea Soup does not photograph attractively, but this recipe (from Appetite for Reduction) is so, so good. The secret is a bunch of smoked paprika, which is also what gives the soup a reddish tint.

I also made homemade bread, which was an adventure. I had it all mixed up and ready to rise and realized I'd forgotten the yeast. I figured it was mostly unsalveagable, but I didn't want to waste all that flour! So I put it back in the mixer, dumped the packet of yeast on top, and added a little warm water - so the yeast would have something to activate in, you know. Then I turned the mixer on and yeasty water was flung all over the kitchen. Brilliant! I turned it back off and dumped out some of the water, then mushed the remaining water into the dough along with some flour. Anyway, the result was predictable - it barely rose at all and was very, very dense. Fortunately my husband is weird and he loves bread like that, so he did a pretty good job of eating it up anyway.

Lazybones

I have been the laziest cook ever this week. We've had pizza twice (homemade, at least), gone out for Mexican, and did the fake chicken nuggets/tots/steamed broccoli the other night. Back on track tomorrow.

In the mean time, this is actually from last week - I've been a lazy blogger, too! This is one of my favorite things, a white bean/mushroom casserole topped with sage bread crumbs, with a tomato-caper couscous on the side. Both recipes are from Veganomicon.

Pesto Pasta with Artichokes & Seitan

This looks like greenish goo but was really, really good and took all of 15 minutes. I had pesto and seitan in the freezer, so all I had to do was cook pasta, saute some onion and garlic, add the seitan for a little while, then mix everything together to heat through.

Next summer I'm going to plant as much basil as my porch can hold. I want lots and lots of pesto.

Lemon Risotto with Green Peas & Roasted Red Peppers

Although the flavors here - lemon, parsley, peas, red peppers - seem summery, risotto always feels like a cold weather dish to me. It also seems like a pain to deal with - so much standing & stirring - but I like to do it once in a while and this really didn't end up taking any longer than a usual dinner.

This is another Veganomicon recipe, changed only slightly in that I mixed the red peppers in with the risotto instead of serving them on the side. I usually try to plan the week's food using several different cookbooks, but I really got caught up in Veganomicon's Pasta, Noodles, & Risotto section this week. More to come tomorrow.

Udon with Shiitakes, Greens, and Tofu

This is a Veganomicon recipe, mostly. I added tofu for protein, and used turnip greens because the grocery store was randomly out of the called-for kale. I'd never tried turnip greens but they were basically the same as kale or collards or whatever - maybe just a little flimsier.

The recipe called for serving it with a lot of broth, kind of soupy, but I decreased the liquid and made it more like a stirfry. The sauce is just mirin, soy sauce, miso, and water. Kind of a nice sweetish flavor.

Marbled Banana Bread & Rustic Winter Stew

I put off this stew for three days before I finally convinced myself to make it. It seemed hard in my head, what with peeling the carrots and cutting things up, etc., so basically I was just lazy. And then, of course, once I actually got started it didn't take very much work at all. It's also very good, perfect for a chilly night!

And then I made more bread. It's really no wonder I've gained eight pounds in 4 months. This is "lower fat", but that hardly matters if you eat the whole thing in less than a day. Fortunately, when I make anything dessert-like it's a given that Ben will take care of at least two-thirds of it for me, but still. STILL.

This is chocolate banana bread. I've never done marbling before and it came out pretty!

Tempeh Orzilla

It's a PPK kind of week over here - I made another recent recipe from the website last night, Tempeh Orzilla. (Her picture is prettier than mine.)

I had to replace the anise with fennel, but otherwise did just what she said and it was great.