Chipotle Basil Corn Chowder and Outrageously Easy Big Bread

This Chipotle Basil Corn Chowder is another test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. I can't believe that I grew up not liking corn. When I finally did start liking it a little tiny bit, I only liked it on the cob. My, how times have changed. This soup was wonderful. It had just the right amount of spice in it. I thought it was a great summer soup, but it would be great in cold weather, too.

To go along with the corn chowder, I made the outrageously easy big bread from VegWeb. Sometimes I'm a little leary of the recipes on VegWeb (particularly because so many of them are hardly recipes at all), but this one got such good reviews that I figured it was worth a try. I didn't follow the directions for how to shape the bread, as I thought it would turn out nicer the way I did it. I found this recipe to be a little odd, mainly because of the instructions to sprinkle the yeast over water first, and then add that into a partial dough. I like recipes that call for proofing the yeast first, as I like to know early on whether my dough is going to rise or not. This recipe worked out just fine, though, so I guess I shouldn't be too picky. We have so much bread to eat up before we leave for a week-long beach trip.

Creamy Tomato Barley Risotto...and Boston Cream Pie for dessert

This creamy tomato barley risotto is a test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. I don't often like creamy non-dessert things, but I am absolutely in love with this. I think I want to have it at least once a week for the rest of my life. Seriously. Recently I have noticed that we eat a heck of a lot of rice, so it's nice to have some other grain recipes to use. I served the barley risotto with baked Italian-marinated tofu (and mushrooms) from Vegan with a Vengeance.

This not-so-pretty-to-look-at (but yummy to eat) Boston Cream Pie is half from Damn Tasty and half from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I didn't have all of the ingredients for the cake recipe from Damn Tasty, so I used the golden vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTOW (I doubled the cupcake recipe and baked it in two 9" cake pans). The pudding layer and the chocolate ganache are both from the Damn Tasty recipe. This was my first time both making and eating Boston cream pie. It was indeed damn tasty.

Peach Pie

This peach pie is another test recipe for Julie Hasson at Everyday Dish. The lattice crust wasn't actually a part of the recipe, but I recently saw them make one on America's Test Kitchen and I wanted to try it for myself (they used a ruler when cutting the strips on ATK, so theirs came out a bit neater than mine). Peach pie just seems like a perfect summer dessert, although using my ancient oven that heats up the whole apartment probably doesn't seem like the perfect thing to do in summer. I had to use frozen peaches for this because we don't have much to choose from in the way of fresh peaches around here this year. Sadly, there was a late frost that killed off most of the peach crops in Georgia and South Carolina. The only peaches I've found in stores around here have come all the way from California. I tried one anyway, because I really love peaches, but it just wasn't the same. *sigh* Maybe next year....in the meantime, I'm good with this pie made from frozen peaches. It tasted great, and I imagine it would be even better with fresh peaches.

Fresh Blueberry Waffles with Lemon Icing

These blueberry waffles with lemon icing are another test recipe for lolo at VeganYumYum. This was my first successful attempt at making waffles. Woohoo! My previous attempt was with a recipe from some Peta cookbook that I checked out of the library. That recipe clearly had too much leavening ingredients in it, as the batter started rising even though it hadn't sat very long. I was a little scared to try my hand at waffle-making again, but I am so glad I did! I made the full batch of lolo's recipe, so I have several waffles waiting for me in the freezer. Yum! The lemon icing was a very nice touch. Lemons and blueberries go so well together.

Samosas and Pie. Mmmm pie.

On Saturday night, we were running kind of low on groceries. Normally when we are running low, dinner centers around tofu, but we were out of that, too. I decided on samosas. Rather than following a recipe, I just sort of made this up as I went along. Unfortunately I didn't write down the ingredients, which is sad because these wound up turning out really well! I was feeling gluttonous, so I fried these. The dough was flour, Spectrum shortening, and either water or plain soymilk...I can't remember which, but I'm leaning towards water. I put the dough in the refrigerator while I made the filling, which was potatoes and green peas and some spices (brown mustard seeds, cumin seeds, coriander, garam masala, chana masala (spice mix that came in a box), and salt....I think that's it). I boiled the peeled (and chopped) russet potatoes first for 12 minutes, then cooked everything over medium heat in a couple of tablespoons of oil. Once assembled, I fried the samosas for a few minutes on each side, until golden brown. The tamarind chutney I served the samosas with was store-bought. Our health food store had it on closeout. I'm glad we bought it because it turned out to be very good.


This is a bumbleberry pie with an oat crumble topping, which is a test recipe for Julie Hasson. This pie turned out absolutely awesome. I made the crust from scratch per one of her recipes, too, and it was so simple and tasty! I often eat the filling out of pies and leave the crust for my boyfriend, but this time I liked the crust so much that I ate my whole slice. In case you aren't familiar with bumbleberry, it is a mixed berry pie. I used a bag of frozen mixed berries, so this had strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries in it. The filling thickened up so nicely, too. I am so excited to test more pie recipes for Julie!