Cheesy Potato Chili Gratin

Yet another recipe from Vegan Planet. I liked this one, but it sure isn't pretty to look at. That's Follow Your Heart cheddar-style on top. I knew it wasn't going to melt in the oven since it was set at 375, so I heated some soy milk on the stove and melted the soy cheese into it, then added a bit of flour to thicken it up. One day I'll try this again with homemade sour cream and chili. This time I used the non-hydrogenated Tofutti sour cream and a can of Amy's chili that had been hanging out in the pantry for awhile. I hear that a lot of people can't stand the Tofutti sour cream, but I really don't mind it. Maybe that's because I never ate the regular stuff except in a blintz casserole my momma makes, so I really don't have anything to compare it to.

Not-So-Dirty Rice

This may be our favorite recipe yet from Vegan Planet. It was pretty simple, and the only change I made was to use Gimme Lean "sausage" instead of vegetarian burger crumbles. I thought faux ground beef sounded odd in dirty rice. My boyfriend took the leftovers for lunch and came home saying how much he liked this dish, so I think it's a winner.

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!

Black Bean and Corn Enchiladas

That enchilada sauce look so unassuming, doesn't it? Don't let it fool you, though; it is fiery hot and takes no prisoners. It's my fault, though. I have never bought the store-bought enchilada sauce because I've never found one that doesn't contain refined sugar or corn syrup, so I went looking for recipes and came up with this one from vegweb: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=7103.0. I really want to write a sarcastic reply to the person who commented and asked why it has peppers in it, as it wouldn't be called "chipotle enchilada sauce" without the chipotle peppers. I will refrain, though. Anyhoo, I really should have added the chipotles one at a time to test the spiciness, but I did not and foolishly added all three at once. I am not exactly sure what qualifies as a "small" chipotle pepper, so I will keep that in mind for future reference and proceed with care.
The idea for these enchiladas came from a recipe title I found in Mastercook (I recently downloaded all of the vegetarian recipes from Mad's Recipe Emporium), but instead of following the recipe, I made up my own.

Ingredients:
Enchilada sauce
1 large onion (white or yellow), diced
2 ts olive oil
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups frozen corn
1 ts oregano
1 ts cumin
1 ts chili powder
8 tortillas (6-8" in diameter)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat.
Sauté onion until soft. Add black beans and corn, stirring occasionally until hot. Stir in oregano, cumin, and chili powder.
Spoon some of the enchilada sauce (from the vegweb recipe, or whatever you choose to use) on
the bottom of a 9x13" glass baking dish.
Warm the tortillas in the microwave (or oven, since it's already on) for 45 seconds to soften them up.
Spoon some enchilada sauce onto a large plate. Dip a tortilla in the sauce, spoon some filling onto the tortilla, then roll it up and place it seam-side down in the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining tortillas.
Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Raspberry-Chocolate Chip Blondie Bars

Yet another recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. You know, as often as I use this cookbook, there are still a ton of recipes I have yet to try. With this one, I took the shortcut and used raspberry jam instead of making the raspberry sauce. This was really because I already had the jam on-hand and did not have any frozen (or fresh) raspberries. It was still very good, though, and with the shortcut I took, it was a cinch to make!

Tempeh and Red Bean Jambalaya with Chipotle Chiles

I bought Vegan Planet a few days ago and this was the first recipe I tried from it. It was really tasty and I look forward to trying more recipes from the book. Instead of the bell pepper that the recipe called for, I used some frozen gumbo veggies (okra, corn, red pepper, etc.) that I had, as I was out of bell peppers and didn't want to go to the store for that one ingredient. My only "complaint" with this recipe is that it said this made 4 servings...it actually was more than 6! Granted, I eat fairly small portions, but my boyfriend doesn't. It's not a huge deal, but I am trying to scale down recipes so that we only have one day of leftovers.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Okay, so I neglected to actually take any pictures of all the food I made for Thanksgiving. I wasn't a huge fan of the field roast, though. It was a little salty for me. I didn't just want to throw it out, though, so I decided to make it into a pot pie. And then I decided to turn my pot pie into miniature pot pies using muffin tins. The recipe (both for the crust and the filling) is loosely based on the recipe from the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. Their biscuit crust recipe calls for 2 friggin' pounds of butter/margarine, though! I didn't use NEARLY that much and mine was still tasty. The filling contains onion, celery, carrots, peas, and chopped up field roast. I didn't add any extra salt (or soy sauce like the recipe calls for) because the field roast was already a bit salty, and the recipe used vegetable broth, which also contains quite a bit of salt.

Pizza stones are awesome!

I finally got a pizza stone. It's official: I'm in love. This made the most perfect pizza yet. Instead of the usual quick pizza dough recipe that I normally use, I made the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. It was awesome. It made enough dough for two pizzas, so I froze half of it and we'll have another pizza soon. I'm not actually a big fan of the faux pepperoni on here, but we had some to use up. I never ate pepperoni (or any other pork product) growing up, so one day recently when I had a coupon, I decided to try the fake stuff. Now, I have absolutely no idea if this tastes anything like real pepperoni, but I really don't think it adds anything special to the pizza. It also tends to burn, which my boyfriend says is because the real stuff is much fattier (yuck!). The soy cheese melted soooo much better on the pizza stone than it ever has before. Yum!

Sparkled Ginger Cookies and Orange "Chicken"

These are the sparkled ginger cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance. They are absolutely awesome and you should immediately drop what you are doing and go make some. After you do, you should probably hide most of them from yourself because you will want to inhale them in just one sitting.

And this is orange "chicken" (those are green peppers mixed in...I was running low on vegetables that day). The faux chicken are TVP chunks. This is a bastardized recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Authentic Chinese Cooking. I was supposed to fry the TVP chunks before adding them to the sauce, but I wanted to go lower-fat (and less messy) so I baked them instead. That probably would have been fine, but I still battered them as per the frying instructions. They ended up kind of gooey. Oops.

I have cooked lots of food for Thanksgiving, but haven't taken any pictures yet. We are leaving for Nashville in a little while. I'm bringing a field roast (this will be my first time trying one--I'm really excited that we were able to find one at Earth Fare), cornbread stuffing, sweet potato latkes, gingerbread apple pie (from Vegan with a Vengeance), and pumpkin muffins (also from VWAV). I also have a can of cranberry sauce that I got from Whole Foods when I was visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago. Momma said that the kind I got would not be the jellied kind (which I don't like), but now I'm not so sure. I guess I'll be finding out for sure tomorrow.

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.

I've been slacking on posting

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Funny story....I bought the book right after it came out, only I'm trying really hard to control my spending, so I kind of neglected to tell my boyfriend about it. I figured he would figure it out eventually, though, especially when I suddenly started making lots of cupcakes. Apparently guys do not think the way I do, though. Instead of analyzing where the cupcakes came from, he just thought "mmmm cupcakes." So, one day he went to the front page of theppk.com and noticed that the cupcake book was out. He asked me if I was going to get it. I am a horrible liar and don't like doing it anyway, so I fessed up that I'd had it for a couple of weeks already. Turns out he didn't care that I spent the money and, in return for not getting upset with me for hiding the book, he got to pick out the next cupcakes (but the Tiramisu ones got vetoed by me because I don't do coffee).
The mint icing on these just wouldn't stiffen up for me, and there was a bit of an incident with my makeshift pastry bag, but I think everything turned out just fine. I kind of like the mint icing being smooth like it is because it reminds me of a mint filling from a peppermint patty.

Asian-marinated baked tofu (Vegan with a Vengeance) with sauteed green beans and onions over yellow rice. I just love yellow rice. Even though it's really just turmeric added to regular rice, I think it is tastier and much more visually appealing. Hey, I'm easy to please.

Baked BBQ seitan with mushrooms, black beans, and (I think) onions over rice.

Homemade bread. It's shiny because I brushed it with oil after coming out of the oven. Although I have a bread machine, I did this one all by hand. Non-bread machine bread is so much easier to slice, plus there is no hole in the bottom from the paddle. I think I'm going to start using my bread machine for the kneading and rising, but then shape the dough and put it in a loaf pan. It might take some practice to get that right, though, as I'll have to figure out what temperature to bake it at.

Seitan Fajitas

Yesterday I made homemade seitan, and then used some of it to make fajitas (seitan, onions, mushrooms, and green pepper sauteed with chili powder, cumin, and garlic powder). I used my Cuisinart to do the kneading for the seitan--it made things SO much easier.

Here's the seitan simmering in its broth:

The fajita mixture sauteeing on the stovetop:

Served with a dollop of salsa:

Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownie Cake

I promise we eat much more "real" food than we do dessert.
Yesterday I bought a quart of chocolate Silk soymilk. I don't know why I bought a whole quart when I'd never tried it before. I didn't like this stuff at all--it tastes almost bitter to me. I would feel awful throwing out that much soymilk, so I started looking for dessert recipes I could use it in. The first one I chose was Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownie Cake from Nava Atlas's Vegetarian Family Cookbook. I just replaced the regular soymilk with chocolate. This was tasty and simple. It only used about 1/4th a cup of soymilk, though. I see a lot of chocolate desserts in our future.

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes with Fluffy Buttercream Icing

I had leftover icing from the last cupcakes I made (actually, I STILL have leftover icing even after this), so I just had to make some more. This is another recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The recipe had a choice to use non-hydrogenated margarine or oil. I went with oil just because it was faster and cheaper. I have a feeling the cupcakes would have turned out fluffier if I had used the margarine. They were still good, though.

Aloo Chana Masala

Apparently I have a thing for non-photogentic food. This was a simple dinner. I mainly followed the recipe on the back of a box of chana masala spice mix. It was a little spicy, so I added some plain soymilk to tone it down a bit. I really want to figure out how to make my Indian food have more of a sauce the way it does in restaurants.

Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting

Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I used black cherry concentrate instead of red food coloring, hence the lack of "crimson" color in the cupcakes. They still turned out really well. I have lots of leftover icing, so I'll have to make more cupcakes soon.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, but took out 2 TB of flour and put in 2 TB of cocoa. I also added some almond milk (it was all I had on hand) since the batter was too dry. These turned out really well. They stayed soft, which, for me, is the mark of a good cookie. I took most of them to a Sukkot party last night (the ones in the picture are the ones I set aside for my boyfriend to eat at home) and they got eaten up.

Chipotle-Kissed Sweet Potato and Red Bean Chili with Sunny Corn Muffins

The chili is from Robin Robertson's Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker and the corn muffin is from theppk.com. I LOVE the muffins. The chili is good, but next time I will probably use less water, as I don't like my chili quite so soupy. I can never get enough sweet potatoes, though.

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:

Veggie Burgers and Fries

Veggie burgers and baked Cajun french fries, both from Vegan With a Vengeance. An all-American sort of meal. Well, all-American with a twist, anyway. I always add some chickpea flour to the veggie burger mix to help it hold together better, and normally I bake them. Today I pan-fried them like the recipe instructs, though. Actually, this is the first time I pan-fried them. They are more delicate this way, but very good.

West Indian Red Beans with Coconut Rice

This is another recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers. The recipe said to use either red pepper flakes or a chile. We had a habanero to use, so decided to be a little daring. The dish wasn't nearly as spicy as we feared, but we really liked it. The tomatoes and onions were a nice touch.

And Another Thing I Don't Have To Miss Out On....

Soy cheese pizza with mushrooms, green peppers, and garlic. The crust is the same recipe I used to make foccacia. I heart that recipe.

Who Ever Said Vegans Have To Miss Out?

Yes, that's right; I'm vegan and I can still make challah. Technically it's called water challah, since there's no egg in it. But it's still yummy.

Hot and Sour Stir-Fry with Five Spice Tofu

The recipe comes from The Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers. It was very easy to make. For some protein, I added baked Chinese five spice tofu (I didn't add the spice--it was one of the Nasoya ones that came that way). I added a bit more red chili paste than the recipe called for because I love spicy food. I'll definitely make this again. I love when recipes say they are simple and actually are (but are tasty, too!).

Jalapeno Poppers

My boyfriend's coworker grows peppers, but doesn't eat them. More for us! The filling is made with Tofutti cream cheese (the non-hydrogenated kind), mozzarella-flavored soy cheese, and Bac-Uns. Next time I think I'll add some garlic. I'd also like to find a recipe for baking them--I try to avoid frying things when possible.

These are a few of my favorite things

Okay, actually it's just one thing, but it's really my new favorite toy. I don't know how I lived so long without one. It makes things so much easier. All those recipes that call for a blender to process dry ingredients that blenders just aren't meant to handle? Yeah, now I have something that actually works. I used to lament about how we don't all have industrial-strength blenders. Now I will stop lamenting about that, as I realize I don't need one (I did get a new blender for my birthday, too, though, as I somehow lost my old one in the move).

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.

Relieved to know this internet quiz thinks I went to school for the right thing

You Should Get a JD (Juris Doctor)

You're logical, driven, and ruthless. You'd make a mighty fine lawyer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

But ruthless? Really?

Teriyaki Tofu Stir-Fry

A simple dinner, but tasty. I recently found these Consorzio marinades at Earth Fare. They're all vegan and kosher and oh so good. You know what I love about marinating tofu? I don't have to throw out the rest of the marinade like you do when you marinated raw meat--I can still use it in the stir-fry.

Sloppy Joes and Vegan Cheesecake

TVP Sloppy Joes. I don't have a recipe because I just made it up as I went along, but they actually turned out nicely. Much better than the terrible potato recipe that I shall never attempt again.



Vegan cheesecake with strawberry topping (the topping is homemade). I got to use my new Cuisinart to make the filling. I love my new toy! It makes things so much easier. This is a dessert that I will definitely be making again--it's not cheap, though, so I can't make it too often.

Focaccia

Dinner last night was focaccia topped with caramelized onions. This was my first time making focaccia. I used my basic pizza dough recipe, http://bread.allrecipes.com/az/ValentinosPizzaCrust.asp, but let it rise longer than I normally do after I shaped it. Then I poked holes in it, poured on a bit of olive oil, basil, oregano, and thyme, and topped it with the onions. I baked it at 350 for about 20 minutes. Of course, this means it was really closer to 400 degrees. Oh how I long for a new oven.

Basque Stew

Basque Stew from Marie Oser's The Soy of Cooking. I just got this cookbook at a used bookstore recently, and this is the first recipe I've made from it. I read through the whole recipe before I started, since it was the first time I'd made it, but for some reason I didn't think to look at how much it made. After I'd cut up all the vegetables and stood there thinking, "good gosh that's a lot of vegetables," I looked. TWELVE SERVINGS! We'll be eating this for awhile. Yes, that's right, we're eating stew in the summer. The picture in the cookbook was pretty and I couldn't help myself.

Mmmmmm Cinnamon Rolls

Savory Cinnamon Rolls from the Garden of Vegan. So very gooey. I wish the roll itself was softer, but I choose to blame my oven for that one (we just discovered that it's nearly 75 degrees off!).

I'm sure it looked odd taking pictures of my cruise food

We just went on our first cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We were pretty worried about my finding vegan food to eat, especially since the woman we were told would confirm my special diet request with us never returned our phone calls. Things worked out pretty well, though, as you can see.

Some sort of vegetable patty with tomato sauce on top....in the little pouch on top, there were lentils hiding on there. It was fun, like having a present to open for my dinner!

Stuffed Pepper

I think this was pasta with a pepper sofrito.

Kiwi and grapefruit over a raspberry sauce.

Deep-fried tofu with Chinese pea pods.

Not your typical burritos, but good none the less.


Salad with grilled vegetables. The lettuce all had to be cut up, and once when I was cutting it up, it went flying and landed beside the plate of the man seated next to me (we were doing the shared seating thing). So mortifying.


Eggplant with pistachio-mint sauce.


Champagne waterfall. We didn't actually have any of the champagne. I don't particularly like it, and we left before they finished pouring all of the champagne--it was taking quite awhile.