I'm a slacker about posting, but not cooking.

While the veggie burger recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance is still our favorite, I just had to try the black bean burger recipe from Veganomicon. These turned out very well, and the flavor of the burger wasn't overpowered by the bun and condiments and whatnot, which is always a plus. These were also much less time-intensive than the VWAV recipe, so when I want some veggie burgers but don't have much time to devote to making them, I'll definitely turn to this recipe again.

And yes, those are baked beans that you see on the plate along with the bean burgers. I was having a rather forgetful day. See, I made these burgers and even went so far as to make the buns from scratch. In all the time that I was opening and closing the fridge that day, I never once noticed the leftovers from the evening before sitting on the top shelf of the fridge just waiting to be eaten. I'm the one that made dinner the night before, so how I could so easily forget about having done so, I don't know. It wasn't until I went to put away the leftover burgers after dinner that I noticed the other leftovers. Woops. And the baked beans were because I was going to serve broccoli with dinner, but forgot to cook it until it was too late.

While we were in Portland, I got a copy of Yellow Rose Recipes. This crispy beer-battered seitan was the first recipe I tried from it. It was messy to make, but very good. I actually liked it better the next day, but I think that was because I like seitan better after it has been in the fridge overnight. I made the seitan for this recipe (also from YRR) the earlier in the day, so it didn't sit in the fridge for all that long. I look forward to trying more recipes from YRR. Right now I'm eyeing the mustard-crusted seitan, since I still have more seitan to use.

The new issue of VegNews contains a macaroni and cashew cheese recipe. I don't usually get VegNews (I'm not really big on magazines), but I saw some pictures of the recipe in the Food Porn section on the PPK and really wanted to try it. I found a variation of the recipe here. I'm so glad I tried it. This might be my new favorite vegan mac and cheese recipe. And, for those of you that don't care for nutritional yeast....don't worry, this recipe doesn't call for any!

These are the jelly donut cupcakes from Veganomicon. Sorry, no inside pictures. These are so neat. You put a spoonful of jelly on top of the batter and it sinks down into the middle during baking. Apparently a lot of other people have trouble with this (the jelly either doesn't sink at all, or it sinks down to the bottom), but they worked just fine for me! I also like that they don't have any frosted. Granted, I like frosting, but it can be a lot of work, so it's nice to have cupcakes that are delicious and pretty without it.

Tofu Paprikas

When Isa posted this tofu paprikas dish on her blog the other day, I just had to try it. I'm not even sure why, since I had never heard of the dish before and I don't normally care much for cream sauces. Nevertheless, she somehow sold me on the idea. This was really tasty. The sauce wasn't too heavy, which I think is what I normally dislike about cream sauces. My version didn't have much spice to it, which I suppose means that my Hungarian paprika wasn't very spicy. I'd like to try this again with a hotter paprika. I think I should join Spicy-Food-Eaters Anonymous.

Neverending Baked Ziti

I got it in my head last week that I wanted to make bazed ziti. I don't know why, since I'd never had baked ziti before (and neither had my boyfriend) and I didn't have a particular recipe in mind. The results turned out really well, but dear gosh what was I thinking when I made a whole box (16 ounces!) of pasta. I thought we were never going to finish this.

Baked Ziti
Serves 8-10 (so you might want to cut this in half if you're not cooking for a small army)

16 ounces ziti pasta, cooked according to package instructions
1 jar of pasta sauce (might want a bit more if you like your Baked Ziti on the saucy side)
15 ounces extra-firm tofu, drained (or however much one thing of tofu weighs)
1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
3/4 ts dried basil
3/4 ts dried oregano
1/2 ts garlic powder
1/4 ts onion powder
1/4 cup plain, unsweetened soymilk
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced
Mozzarella soy cheese, shredded or grated

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Place tofu in large bowl and mash with fork. Mix in the vegan mayonnaise. Stir in nutrional yeast, basil, oregano, garlic powder, and onion powder. Add soymilk and stir again.
Place a few tablespoons of pasta sauce on the bottom of a glass 9x13" baking dish.
Add mushrooms and remaining pasta sauce into the bowl and stir everything together. Stir in cooked pasta, then pour the mixture into the baking dish. Top with soy cheese and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and broil for 3-5 minutes.

Hurry Up Alfredo

Last night I served the leftover seitan nuggets with another lolo test recipe, Hurry Up Alfredo (so named because the dish hardly takes any more time than it takes to cook the pasta). The sautéed mushrooms weren't part of the recipe, but we both love mushrooms so much, so I tend to add them wherever they work. This was good, and I don't even normally like cream sauces. I'm not usually a fan of really rich food, but this was creamy without being too rich for me.

Pepper-Crusted Tofu and Mac 'n Cheeze

Last weekend I watched America's Test Kitchen and they made pepper-crusted filet mignon. Now, obviously the idea of filet mignon isn't exactly appealing to me, but I was intrigued with the idea of pepper-crusting something and just had to try it. I marinated the pressed tofu in some doctored-up (vegan Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard) homemade barbeque sauce, then roughly followed the America's Test Kitchen recipe (sorry, you have to register on their site to see the recipes) for the pepper-crust part. I didn't bother trying to pan-sear the tofu because I thought the crust would just fall right off. I baked it at 450 degrees for 15 minutes per side. While the tofu was baking, I heated the rest of the sauce on the stove over medium heat to let it reduce a bit. I liked the sauce, but my boyfriend said that, while it was good, he thought it was better suited for pork. Having never had pork, I'm not exactly sure what that means. Neither of us had ever had anything pepper-crusted before. I don't think either of us ever will again, either. I strongly disliked the texture and after two bites, scraped the crust off of mine. He thought it was too spicy and scraped most of the crust off of his, too. When I served the leftover tofu, I scaped off the crust first. So, the moral of the story is that I don't recommend pepper-crusting tofu. It was a lot of work for something that was kind of gross.

This is macaroni with cashew cheddar cheese from the Real Food Daily cookbook. The actual recipe calls for spelt noodles, but 1) I already had regular macaroni, and 2) spelt noodles aren't very appealing to me. This was good, but the cashew cheddar is certainly not a cheap recipe to make, as it calls for quite a bit of agar. I didn't use all of the cashew cheddar for the macaroni, and I put the rest in a container in the fridge to let it harden into a slice-able cheese. I had some of said cheese with some wheat crackers for breakfast this morning. It wasn't bad, but I found the cheese to be kind of stinky. It also wasn't quite as solid as it should have been, but that's my fault because I didn't have quite enough agar for the recipe.

Pasta Gremolata with Sundried Tomatoes and Garlic Breadcrumbs

This is another test recipe for lolo at veganyumyum. The title of the recipe tells you pretty much all that I can share about it. This is fantastic (assuming that you like parsley...and I do).

I felt like including a photo of the dish I had this in just because I love it. This is an antique serving bowl that belonged to my great aunt. I really have no idea just how old it is.

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.

Tofu Cacciatore

We got some white wine the other day that my boyfriend didn't really care for (and I'm not much of a drinker, so I wasn't going to like it in the first place). I started looking for recipes we could use white wine in and came up with this one from randomgirl.com. I thought I had all the ingredients going in, but it turns out we were out of the diced tomatoes, so I subbed some marinara sauce we already had in the fridge. We also used more mushrooms than the recipe called for since we really really really like mushrooms. I'd never had any kind of cacciatore before, but we both really loved this. Yum!

Earth Fare, why must you taunt me?

I have made this dish before, but with some vegan feta that I found at our health food store. When I went in there the other day, though, said feta was nowhere to be found. There was no longer even a place for it. I'd already planned to make this dish, though, so I just wound up using some grated Follow Your Heart mozzarella. Since it was made on the stovetop, it melted pretty well. This time I was actually able to find affordable fresh basil to use, too.

Sweet Noodle Kugel with Apples and Almonds

For those of you wondering what on earth a kugel is, it is a thick baked pudding, usually made with either noodles (generally a sweet dish) or potatoes (not sweet, as that would be gross). Apparently the word kugel is actually Yiddish for "ball" and I have no idea how it came to be used as it is. This was my first attempt at a vegan kugel. I came across the recipe in Vegan Planet. Of course, I made a few changes: I left out the raisins (call me picky, but I don't like them), used farfalle instead of the broken fettuccine called for (my momma always made noodle kugel with egg noodles, and I thought farfalle looked more traditional), and used peanut butter instead of almond butter (because I did not have almond butter). Overall, this was pretty good, but I personally prefer my noodle kugel a little sweeter. That is an easy fix in the future, though. On the plus side, apparently I don't mind almonds if they're ground up (they're in the topping). I usually don't care for nuts mixed in dishes, but I always wish I did because I know they're so good for you.

Good news: I got a new oven thermostat today. Yay! This was the first dish I made after the new thermostat was put in. Three cheers for non-burnt food!

Cannellini Piccata

I found this recipe on vegweb tonight while looking for a new use for a can of cannellini beans. I've never had piccata before and was worried it would be on the bland side since it didn't call for much in the way of spices. It was pure lemon-y deliciousness, though, and a nice change from marinara sauce. I'm glad I tried the recipe as is before adding spices to it.

White Bean Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta

While I was at my parents' house for Rosh Hashanah, one of the local weekend news shows had a cooking segment where they made this chicken and feta cheese dish served over angel hair pasta. I recently bought some soy feta and had been wondering what to do with it. I never had real feta, so I really had no idea. I decided to make a vegan version of their dish. Instead of chicken, I used cannellini beans. First, I sauteed quite a bit of garlic in some olive oil, then I added a can of drained cannellini beans and a can of diced tomatoes (that way I can get affordable organic tomatoes....and my dicing skills with tomatoes are not exactly up to par). After that cooked for a few minutes, I added some dried basil and red pepper flakes. I really really really wanted to use fresh basil, but for the life of me I could not find any. Where do you get fresh basil if you don't have a garden? Next I crumbled in the soy feta and let it cook for a few minutes more. Served over angel hair pasta, this was a nice change from marinara sauce.

This was the soy feta:

Fettucine with Garlic Cream Sauce

The recipe is from the Millenium cookbook. Sadly, I do not own the book, but we really liked this recipe, so I think I'll add the book to my Amazon wish list. I decided to make the recipe when I found it on guinnah's blog. We have some leftover sauce, so I think I'm going to use it tonight in place of soymilk in mashed potatoes. Mmmm garlicky mashed potatoes.