Mojito Beans & Rice

One thing I'm in love with lately is making a batch of beans in the crockpot while I'm at work, and then having them over rice with tons of chopped avocado and tomato for dinner.  These are the mojito pinto beans in Vegan Slow Cooker, which necessitated me making a trip to the state-owned liquor store for 2 airplane bottles of rum.  If there is anything that makes me feel seedy, it's going to the state-owned liquor store.

I roasted some broccoli for extra vegetables.  Super healthy, delicious dinner!

Empanadas

I sure don't know why we never break out the deep fryer because we fried up some empanadas the other night and they were amazing.  I did Viva Vegan's orange mojo seitan as the filling and made a big salad on the side with ancho chile dressing.

Since this dinner we are plotting all sorts of other things we could deep fry - and this is probably why I don't break it out more often.  Too dangerous!

Creole Tempeh and Grits

Oh, look, I got another cookbook: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry.  Although I'm a little annoyed by the style and presentation of the book, the recipes look pretty great across the board, and that's the important part.  One thing I really like about the book is that he gives you good ideas for where to start - at the very beginning, he groups his favorite six recipes into one introductory section.  This recipe, Creole Tempeh and Grits, is in that section, and is a vegan takeoff on the southern standard shrimp & grits.  I made some smoky collards to go on the side.

Yeah, it was amazing.  Tempeh is a genius substitution for shrimp, because the texture is actually pretty similar, and the flavors were just fantastic.  I'm impressed and excited to try more from this book.

Beans and Greens and Pasta

This is a recipe from Bean by Bean, but really it's more like a general guideline: greens sauteed in olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes, with some beans and lemon juice thrown in at the end to heat through, served over pasta.  She offers up a lot of different combinations of various greens and beans, but I went with the basic suggested one here - chickpeas & chard.

It was really easy and quick, and tasted great. I had some walnut "parmesan" in the fridge so I sprinkled that over the top.  Good for a fast weeknight dinner.

Tempeh Salad Sandwich

Here is a sandwich I made the other day.  I always really loved tuna salad and egg salad sandwiches, but have been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to mimic those flavors and textures with non-meat products. Tofu is a perfect replacement for egg salad, especially if you add black salt, which has a distinct eggy flavor.

These are tempeh mixed with veganaise and diced sauteed onion, garlic, and red pepper, with some spices like cumin, coriander, etc.  It is loosely based on the Ultimate Tempeh Salad Sandwiches recipe from American Vegan Kitchen, but she calls for some extra stuff (jalapenos, chopped dill pickle) I didn't feel like dealing with.

I added tomato and avocado and it was a delicious and hearty sandwich.  Sandwiches are #1!

Evening o' Gluttony

On Saturday night Ben and I went to Lilly's Pizza.  They have a pizza with rosemary roasted potatoes and garlic that I've been craving like crazy lately.  Ben is against pizza with potatoes on it, so he got a pesto and  cheese one with pistachios instead.  I took a picture of it but it has disappeared from my phone!  So you'll have to use your imagination.  He reported that it was great.

Here's mine with the potatoes and roasted onions and red peppers.  It was perfection.

So then we went around the corner to Hayes Barton Cafe, which has completely insane desserts.  They are $8 each, which seemed crazy to me the first time we went, but then I realized that each portion would easily feed three people.  They are enormous.  Way too big to eat in one sitting (unless you are Ben).  We always get ours to go.

Look at those cakes!

Ben got a piece of key lime pie that is 1/8th of a three-inch-tall pie and ate the entire thing in one sitting.  Then he whined around the rest of the night that he felt like he was going to die.

I got this peanut butter and chocolate thing which turned out to not be regular cake - the chocolate part is a layer of brownies - thick, dense, chewy brownies.  I couldn't even eat half this thing at once.

(Ben's hand for scale.)

The Lilly's/Hayes Barton thing is fun but must be limited to about once a year.  I'm still recovering.  Maybe because I ate the rest of that peanut butter brownie last night.

Adventures in Vegan Ice Cream

One thing that really sucks about vegan food is that all non-dairy ice cream is expensive and most of it is not very good. The exception to the rule is Trader Joe's, which sells Double Rainbow's product under its own label at a reasonable price. The So Delicious coconut milk ice creams are good, but at Harris Teeter they are $6.79 a pint.  A PINT.  Come on.  That's crazy talk.

So, we've had this Cuisinart ice cream maker since we got married ten (!) years ago.  I'm pretty sure I used it a total of two times to make regular ice cream at some point in the distant past.  A few months ago, I tried a Veganomicon recipe for vanilla ice cream but I doubled the recipe and it was too much for the ice cream maker and never froze.  Then I tried another vegan vanilla ice cream and it was really icy, very disappointing.  This left me sort of turned off to the whole idea.  I kept seeing all these references to people supposedly making delicious vegan ice cream, though, so I decided to give it one more chance.

The recipes in Vegan Diner call for xanthan gum, which you can buy in a tiny bag that costs $9 at Whole Foods.  This is another reason I'd been avoiding homemade ice cream.  But finally I bit the bullet and picked some up - it's supposed to help with the creaminess factor, which can be difficult to achieve with vegan ice cream. Once I got it home I figured out that there's enough xanthan gum in the package for 480 batches of ice cream - you only need 1/4 tsp per batch.  So that will probably last a while.

Anyway.  The first kind I made was the Vegan Diner recipe for peanut butter chocolate chunk ice cream.  And then I completely freaked out because it was AWESOME.

Creamy and rich and so, so delicious.  You would never know it was vegan, which is a major goal of my ice cream quest.

The next kind I made was Vegan Diner's vanilla.  Except not, because there were some issues.  She calls for full fat coconut milk and I got it all ready to go and discovered I only had lowfat.  So I substituted soy creamer, but I didn't have quite enough soy creamer and had to use extra soy milk to make up the difference.  Also, I forgot to add the xanthan gum.  I did mix in some cherries and it was pretty good the first day, but once it froze up it was icy and not worth finishing.  Fail!

I learned my lesson, though, about playing around with ice cream recipes before I actually know what I'm doing.

The next recipe I tried was the Mean Green Pistachio from Hannah Kaminsky's book Vegan Desserts (which is beautiful and full of amazing things, by the way).

This one was excellent.  It's pistachios ground into butter, an avocado for greenness and creaminess, tofu, soy milk, agave, vanilla... maybe some other things I forgot.  She didn't call for xanthan gum but I put some in anyway - what else am I going to do with it?

So far the common theme in the two we've really liked have been the addition of nut butters (and the avocado in the pistachio one), which I think have helped to keep it creamy.  I'm going to try a different recipe soon that is more basic - I want a good vanilla! - so we'll see how that goes.