Experiments and other yumminess

Somehow, in my somewhat short lifetime (26 years on Monday!), I have never made pancakes, vegan or otherwise. I've generally been a cereal/oatmeal eater, though on holidays my dad will sometimes make a fancy breakfast. Yesterday, despite it being 80 degrees and atrociously humid at 8:45 AM, I decided I wanted to make pancakes. But I don't have any syrup, I thought... but I do have blueberries from the farmer's market! To be honest, the pancakes were really a vehicle for the blueberries.

This being my first attempt at pancakes, they came out somewhat mediocre. I used the VwaV recipe, and a blueberry sauce recipe from the Joy of Cooking that I recalled a friend making for crepes a while back. Abominably delicious blueberry sauce over lackluster pancakes still = pure joy. And lots of sweat. I don't know what possessed me to cook when it was that gross outside, but this was the result:

Today I had to have blood taken for some tests, and thus was fasting since 8:30 last night... knowing I had extra pancakes and sauce waiting for me in the fridge this morning nearly killed me. If you tell me I can't eat, all I will want to do is EAT. So when I got home, I had pancakes. And then again for dessert tonight!

Earlier in the week I made one of my favorite sauces, which is an altered version of a recipe in the original Uncheese Cookbook (there's a newer "Ultimate Uncheese" out these days, which doesn't include this recipe). I make it all the time when zucchini is in season, as it is a zucchini fontinella sauce. I had more garlic scapes from my CSA, so I threw them in instead of scallions.

I've had so many veggies from my organic CSA already that I can hardly keep up; I've been sharing some of my bounty with Danny's parents, and they've been enjoying that too. Here's some of the best peas I've ever had in my life with some broccoli (all from the CSA) with some mushroom rice pilaf. I generally like my veggies prepared simply - moderately steamed with a little earth balance margarine, and usually some nutritional yeast. This was accompanied by a giant salad (I've been getting 2-3 heads of lettuce per week!).

mini quiches and burritos

So many people have been raving about these tofu mini-quiches from the Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen. I finally got around to trying them, and everyone is raving for good reason! I didn't use baking cups, since I didn't have silicone ones; I just put the batter in my muffin pan and they came out just perfect. No problems getting them out of the pan.

These had the recommended mushrooms & green peppers (I did leave out the tahini/cashew butter btw). I can definitely see trying this with other veggies like broccoli or spinach. They are very light, not too filling, so you'll need a lot of them for a meal, but they're very, very tasty.

After spending hours with melting chocolate and chocolate molds making the favors for Sunday's bridal shower, I decided to make burritos for tonight, and the future!

These were almost entirely organic; the beans, brown rice, mushrooms, peppers, green onions, and the tortilla. The corn is actually from the farmer's market last August (I love my vacuum sealer!!), and still had that sweet summer taste. I used Amy's Organic refried black beans since they're already nice & seasoned, and a roasted tomato taco sauce (from a bottle) to top it all off. I made a bunch of these to freeze, since I realized I could make yummy burritos like the ones I buy at the store. I was kind of pissed at myself, because after all was said and done (and in my tummy), I remembered that I had also bought some organic baby spinach to throw in these too! Bummer.

Here's a pic before I stuffed it into my mouth:

My organic CSA starts next week! Hooray!

neglect

Oh, dear food blog, how I have indeed neglected thee. Since school finished for the semester, there has been little excuse besides my laziness. Except that I lost my appetite for a period of a few weeks. This often happens to me when the weather begins to warm (and warm it did, with a number of 90+ degree days here!); I simply don't have the desire to eat, much less cook. But my appetite has finally returned, though I've gotten out of the habit of taking photos of my fare.

I also seem to have lost a number of photos in the abyss. I know I had pictures of when I made fiddleheads, as well as of the black eyed pea and quinoa croquettes from Vegan With a Vengeance. I like those a lot, especially with a mushroom gravy. It made everyone at work jealous. I'm sure I'll make them again, and hopefully will take pictures.

In the meantime, I went to the Candle Cafe in NYC with some friends last week, and here is what we ate (all vegan!):

my Indian Plate special - so so... I should know better than to get Indian food at a non-Indian restaurant

The Paradise casserole (I think that's what it was) - sweet potatoes, black beans and millet, very tastyThe spicy Cuban sandwich (wasn't mine and I didn't get to try it)

You can also see that it only occurred to me to take pictures well after we started eating, and I didn't even manage to take pictures of our dessert. I also gobbled up a chocolate peanutbutter rice milk & soy ice cream smoothie ::drool::