Chickpea Broccoli Casserole and White Bean and Roasted Garlic Soup

Both of these recipes are from Vegan With a Vengeance. I really really really wanted to like this chickpea broccoli casserole. I love chickpeas, broccoli, and onions, so what's not to love? I don't know....this just didn't do it for me. It was too dry, but that part might have been my fault. I cooked up some dried chickpeas for this. Maybe using those rather than canned ones meant I should have added more broth to the recipe. I'm not sure. This recipe doesn't call for much of anything in the way of spices. The blurb above the recipe recommends trying it as is first to see if you like it, before doctoring it up. If I make it again, it definitely needs to be doctored up for me. I later put some cheesy sauce on top just to add a little something. I suppose it had to happen sometime that there would be a recipe in VWAV that didn't rock my world.

P.S. I still love you, Isa. No hard feelings.


White bean and roasted garlic soup is SO good...and easy, too! I love roasting my own garlic, as our apartment smells wonderful now. After I had my wisdom teeth removed about a year ago, I was really burned out on soup for awhile. I am glad I am past that now. Now the problem is that it's starting to get too warm here for soup. I chose to pretend that it wasn't 60 degrees out today, as I really wanted to try this soup.

Jewish Cookies!!!

I was at Ross recently, just wandering around, and I spotted these awesome cookie cutters on clearance. They were only 99 cents! There is a Chai (Hebrew word for living), Star of David, Torah, menorah, dreidel, Kiddish (prayer over wine) cup, and a shofar (ram's horn...I like my vegan version much better).


With my new cookie cutters, I just HAD to make some sugar cookies. I used NoWhey's recipe from the PPK. I used Ener-G as the egg replacer. Normally I use flax seeds as my egg replacer, but that doesn't work for sugar cookies (unless you like little brown flecks in your sugar cookies). Later I dipped these in a chocolate ganache, but somehow I never got around to taking pictures of the chocolate-covered cookies.

Lots O' Food

Valentine's Day dessert. Brownies from theppk.com and caramel sauce from the Vegan Chef (the recipe is on there as Vegan Caramel Sauce...the site doesn't let me directly link to the recipe). I've made the caramel sauce before and really like it. This time I used dark brown sugar by Wholesome Sweeteners. I think I liked it a little better with a lighter brown sugar, but it was still good. The brownie recipe was a little too cakey for me, but I am generally a fan of fudgy, non-cakey brownies, so that doesn't mean anything was wrong with the brownies. And I could ignore the cakey-ness with the sauce on top!


Jerk Seitan, from Vegan With a Vengeance. Not a pretty picture, but a tasty dish. Green peppers + onions = mmmmm. I made the seitan from scratch. I used the other half of the batch for spring rolls on Valentine's Day. Why I didn't take pictures of said spring rolls, I don't know.


Stuffed Shells. We love these and I've made them several times, but just as I was about to eat this last night, it occurred to me that I've never taken a picture. I don't follow an exact recipe. It's loosely based on the Baked Stuffed Shells recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook (well, I follow the baking instructions, at least). We like soy cheese melted on top, but this is only baked at 350 degrees. It's hard to get soy cheese to melt at that low of a temperature. I heat some plain soymilk on the stovetop, whisk in the grated soy cheese and whisk until it is melted (I also added in a bit of nutritional yeast, since the soy milk tones down the soy cheesiness a bit). Once the soy cheese is melted, I add a couple of tablespoons of flour and whisk until the mixture thickens. I then pour the mixture over the stuffed shells. You can see some of the cheesy sauce on the left side of the picture.

Black-Eyed Pea and Quinoa Croquettes with Mushroom Sauce

Yet another fabulous recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance. The mushroom sauce is particularly awesome. The croquettes were fun to make, and I like how the bread crumbs on them make them look like toasted coconut-covered marshmallows. I hadn't made quinoa in a longgggg time, but this recipe reminded me of how much I like it. It has much more protein and calcium than most other grains, so I definitely need to start using it more often.

Teriyaki Tofu (Take 2)

This is more of a product review than anything else, as I've posted a teriyaki tofu stir-fry on here before. This time I marinated the tofu in Soy Vay's Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce, then baked it according to the instructions for the Asian-marinated tofu in Vegan With a Vengeance. Please ignore the veggies underneath the tofu; that's certainly the last time I buy the Kroger brand of mixed veggies! Anyhoo, we've been wanting to try the Soy Vay teriyaki sauce for quite awhile and finally bought a bottle last weekend. It's not bad, but I found it a little too salty. There is also quite a bit of sugar in it. You could really tell how sugary it was after baking the marinated tofu, as a lot of the sugar caramelized on the tofu and the pan. I liked all of the sesame seeds in the sauce, but overall, I don't think this was really worth the money and don't plan on buying it again. They still get credit for a cute brand name, though.

Brooklyn Pad Thai and Quiche....I think

This is the Brooklyn Pad Thai from Vegan With a Vengeance. Sorry the tofu looks kind of weird. We have established that my boyfriend likes the texture better of tofu that has been frozen (and then, of course, defrosted), but clearly I have not gotten the hang of this. I can't seem to do it without the tofu getting all crumbly. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Despite my crumbly tofu, this was good. Spicy, but not too spicy. I halved the recipe and it still made a ton (way more than the 2 servings that half of the recipe should have been).

This is the quiche recipe from Celine's blog, but with mushrooms added (and green onions instead of chives because apparently the cultural mecca that is Knoxville does not choose to recognize the existence of chives). Hers is much prettier to look at than mine. I've never had quiche before, so I really have no clue, but I think it should have firmed up more than it did. This wound up being really rich. Is cheesy quiche normally so rich? There's nothing wrong with rich food, it's just not my cup of tea. If I try to make a vegan quiche again, I will probably try it with tofu. It seems like it would be firmer that way. Oh well, new recipes are fun to try anyway!