And now, may I present...

the yummiest sandwich ever. I cannot express how much I love it. Here it is in all its glory:

Tempeh reubens have to be my favorite sandwich. I never had a real reuben with meat, though supposedly that is my dad's favorite sandwich and my mom made it for him all the time back in the day. Anyway, you can barely see the marinated baked tempeh underneath the homemade vegan Russian dressing and delicious sauerkraut on the toasted organic whole wheat bread. I was looking forward to this sandwich all day. I use the recipe in the Candle Cafe Cookbook, which I don't actually own. A few years ago when I was super broke and working 2 jobs just to scrape by, I spent a lot of time photocopying recipes from all the cookbooks I couldn't afford, since the Nyack library had tons of them and I could get free photocopies at the library I was working in at nights. I've only made a couple of the recipes I copied from the book, but this one is definitely a repeat.

It certainly doesn't hurt that an important ingredient is sauerkraut; it makes just about anything better. I guess it's my German blood shining through but I love sauerkraut and I always have. It sounds sacrilegious but I prefer it from the can. Why? It's more sauer! The stuff you boil in a bag just hasn't been sitting in the juices enough to get sour. I also love that there's a stand at our farmer's market that sells pickles and sauerkraut; they let me try it to make sure it was sour enough for me, and it is delish. When I was younger and my family would have hot dogs for lunch, I would just eat the sauerkraut (since I didn't eat meat); sometimes I would eat nearly a whole can of it, kind of making myself sick in the process. Who am I kidding, I still do that. For every bit of kraut that went on my sandwiches, I ate an equal amount on its own. Usually Danny walks in and takes it away from me before I get a chance to really gorge myself, and he reminds me how nauseous I'll feel later if I eat it all. Sigh. Since I still have leftover kraut, I plan on trying to make a seitan sauerbraten. I can't remember if I ever ate the real version as a child; I'm sure I did, but I honestly don't remember what it tastes like at this point. I do remember loving leberkase (though when little we called it 'livercase') smothered in mustard. I don't think I realized it was actually liver. I have a feeling that's not really veganize-able, nor am I entirely sure I'd want to try.

I made more VwaV muffins Wednesday night. This time the carrot raisin ones, since I had an abundance of carrots (oopsie at the grocery store). Unfortunately I forgot to bring my raisins home from work, so I just made them without. I brought some muffins to work with me and just stuck some raisins in there, which isn't the same, but tasty nonetheless. Not as good as the other 2 muffins I've made from VwaV, but I take pride in the fact that there's about 1/3 of a carrot in each muffin. You can see the lovely orange specks and all:

Since I'm only one person (well, I also bring some in to Aleksei at work), I freeze a bunch of them to eat at my leisure. Is it weird that I share more food with my friend in the cubicle next to mine than I do with the boyfriend I live with? Oh well. I can't help it if Danny has bad taste in food (he likes easy cheese!).

lazy already

Yes, it's sad. I'm slacking on the posting already. I'm sure I'll get tired of this soon. I think I'm only going to post the interesting food from here on out.

I've been trying to figure out ways to spice up all the tomato soup I made and froze so that it doesn't get boring. The soup is good on its own but something extra is nice. Over the weekend I bought some pre-packaged mexican style baked tofu to throw in my soup, which I did yesterday:
Unfortunately, the mexican tofu was NASTY. I forced myself to eat some of it, just to get some protein in me, but hot damn, I'll be staying away from that stuff in the future. If you were wondering, it's the Whitewave brand baked tofu. My verdict: yuck. At least it didn't affect the yummy flavor of the soup itself too much.

Tonight I made one of my favorite easy weeknight meals: rice noodles & broccoli with the Thai hot and sour sauce from The Saucy Vegetarian. Really it's a hot and sour peanut sauce. To be honest, I haven't used this cookbook for much else besides this recipe. But I love it. The sauce is quick and easy to make, and as long as I have limes in the fridge, I have all the ingredients in the house.


For some reason I always make it with broccoli, no other veggies. I guess I just love broccoli. Even when I was younger and only ate 3 vegetables, broccoli made the cut. Yum.

Just coming out of the oven are some Carrot Raisin muffins (well, without the raisins) from Vegan With a Vengeance. I've loved the other 2 muffins I've made from that book (pumpkin spice and apple pie crumb cake), and I had an abundance of carrots since I accidently bought way more than I needed, so I figured why not. Sadly I forgot my raisins at work, so I will stick them in as an afterthought in the morning. Generally I don't like vegetables in my baked goods, so I'm not sure how I'll feel about these muffins, but it was worth a shot. They look nice and carrot-ey and smell lovely too. We'll see...

I lied.

Yes, I lied about Friday's dinner. I ended up making a giant plate of spaghetti & vegan meatballs with steamed broccoli w/ earth balance soy margarine and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. The only vegan meatballs I will eat are Nate's Brand (or Trader Joe's, which is actually their private label Nate's); even Danny likes them, and he doesn't even like meaty meatballs! I wasn't very hungry but the broccoli had to be eaten or thrown out, so the plate ended up looking like this:

If you know me at all, you know that if you put food in front of me, I will eat it. I have some sort of psychological issue that leads me to do this. Only in the past several years have I learned to stop eating when I am just full, versus oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-hurl full. Whenever I ate out at restaurants I would end up feeling the latter; I have finally taught myself that it's okay to take a doggie bag.

Yesterday I didn't need a doggie bag when we went out to dinner for my friend Veronica's birthday. We were planning to eat at the uptown Carmine's (so, Italian food) but the wait was ridiculous, so we went next door to a Mexican place, randomly named Mary Ann's. I was pleasantly surprised that they had a vegetarian burrito with all sorts of yummy veggies AND tofu! You don't often find tofu on the menu at Mexican restaurants. The burrito came with rice and black beans, but sadly sans tofu. I didn't realize this until I was halfway through, and it was tasty, so I didn't care too much. I was so hungry that I forgot to whip out my camera and take a pic. Oops. But you know you don't mess with me when I am hungry, so...

Today was food shopping day, which means I spent yesterday poring over my cookbooks. I am completely unable to "just wing it" in the kitchen. You'd think after years of cooking for myself, I'd be able to do something, but no. It's the same way with crocheting - I need to have a pattern; I can't just freehand. Oh well. Anyway, there's some exciting food coming up this week. I started tonight with a marinade that I came across on another food blog, Eat Air; they used it on portobello mushrooms, which is what I did as well:

So tonight was Ginger Sesame portobellos, steamed kale with some of the ginger sesame marinade on it (tasty!) and homemade garlicky mashed yukon gold potatoes. I'll be having this again tomorrow for lunch. Everything was tasty, but the portobellos were quite too salty from me. Maybe I need to go easier on the tamari next time, or find some low sodium tamari. I was glad I had the potatoes to ease some of the saltiness. Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite foods ever. I only really discovered them in college; my mom had always made them from the flakes in a box, and I didn't know any better. After talking with a friend about mashed potatoes, I decided to make my own and OH MY LORD there is a world of difference between real and boxed. I like to leave the skins on, since they are nutritious and I like my potatoes kinda lumpy anyway.

The following makes me want to vomit:

Yes, it's just squash, but everytime I cut a squash open, I want to retch. This is because I spent a year working in plant breeding, working to breed disease resistance via strategic crosses. When you breed squash, what you really care about is the seeds. I spent so much time de-seeding squash of all kinds that I can't stand to smell raw squash; I have flashbacks. It was especially fun when you finally get to the squash that has sat out far too long, waiting for you to get to it... there came a point where I had to tell my boss I just couldn't do it, when the pumpkins were collapsing on themselves and smelling putrid. Oh I'm nauseous just thinking of it!!

Anyway, I had a lovely breakfast today...

This is Bob's Mill 10-Grain cereal (whole grain wheat, corn, rye, triticale, oats, soy, millet, barley, brown rice, oat bran, and flaxseed) mixed with organic peanut butter, sliced banana and raisins. Yum!

For lunch I whipped out some of the frozen egyptian lentil soup and added some of the steamed squash (hence the bit about squash). No pictures because I was too busy going bonkers at my desk today.

Nearly every day when I come home, I am starving, so I make myself a smoothie. I tend to always make the same one - frozen strawberries, frozen tropical mix (mango, papaya, banana and pineapple), soymilk and flax seeds. If I'm feeling cheeky I'll do blueberry banana. Today I used rice milk instead of soymilk and it came out a little oddly colored:

At least, that's not my normal smoothie color. It tasted different too. This is why soymilk is good for some things (smoothies) and rice milk is good for others (cereal). I was still hungry after the smoothie but not ready for dinner, so I had some hummus and my favorite crackers, Back to Nature Crispy Wheats. I don't care what I'm dipping in, as long as I'm eating Crispy Wheats. Okay, that sounds wrong (but oh so right).

Dinner is still up in the air... I am feeling quite lazy. It might just be time to whip out the Amy's mattar tofu paneer meal I've been saving for just such an occasion. I just thought of making Thai hot and sour peanut sauce from Saucy Vegetarian for some rice noodles but I realized I brought my peanut butter to work yesterday. Bummer. Maybe tomorrow.

Starting my flog

I intend to use this flog as a way to inspire myself to eat better, as well as gain some accountability for the crap I sometimes eat. Working full time while going to grad school almost full time often leads me to eat poorly. Yes, I take a vegan multivitamin, but I should try to eat actual food sometimes.

Lately I've been craving comfort food, so I bought myself the cheddar flavor of the Follow Your Heart vegan cheeze. I've had and liked the mozzarella (I can only eat it cooked though, cold is blech), but I tried the monterey jack flavor and found it to be super nasty. I'm not sure I ever ate the dairy version of monterey jack, so I'm not a good judge. Anyway, I was a little nervous trying the cheddar style, but it's not too shabby. I don't know if it's cheddar, but it came out pretty tasty as mac & cheeze:

Note that I use whatever pasta shapes are left; this is a mix of rotini and shells. Fun! I had it with an organic mixed greens salad w/ Whole Foods brand organic italian dressing.

For dessert I had some leftover Mexican rice pudding, from Vegan With a Vengeance. It's chocolatey, but not fabulous. I thought I liked rice pudding, but maybe I don't. Or maybe I just messed it up =P I realized that I've only had rice pudding maybe once or twice in my life. I know I did once in a Greek restaurant, but that may have been something else entirely. Anyway, this is edible, though now it has gotten kind of watery...

Last week was spring break at school, so I took the week off from work as well. I desperately needed a vacation. I really missed cooking, so I decided to go wild and make stuff to freeze so I could have decent meals when I went back to school & work. I have a FoodSaver vacuum sealer, which I love. In the summer I buy fresh veggies at the farmer's market and freeze & seal them, and eat them all winter long. Anyway, I decided soups would be easiest to make and freeze and I picked four kinds. I randomly discovered that I have the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special book, which is more than half soup recipes, many of which are vegan or easily veganize-able. I made the tomato garlic (yum - and you can mix other stuff in for variation), egyptian lentil (delish), non-cream of broccoli (eh, okay; there was an incident... I'll tell you some other time), and parsnip pear (not so tasty). So now my freezer looks like this:

Most of the door and almost the whole bottom shelf are filled with packets o' soup. Yum. Is it weird that a picture of my freezer open instinctually makes me want to close the freezer door?

Things I didn't take a picture of (not used to flogging yet):
Breakfast: Oatmeal with peanutbutter; raisins
Lunch: tomato garlic soup with some curried tofu that Aleksei donated to me (went VERY well together, mmmm need to do that again)
Snacks: whole wheat carrot raisin muffin (also donated by Aleksei; he keeps me fed!); homemade smoothie with frozen strawberries & mixed tropical fruit, soymilk and flax seeds

Let's see how long I keep this sucker updated...