Food, food, and more food

I'm terrible at writing titles for these posts. Anyway, I have neglected this blog for over 6 months now. Life has been busy, crazy, all those things that distract you from blogging. I have intermittently been taking pictures of my food, so without further adieu...

After having an amazing veggie burger with teriyaki sauce & grilled pineapple in Maui last summer, I decided to try something similar at home. Here I used my go-to Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomican, some delicious teriyaki, and fresh pineapple that I grilled myself. Of course, anything with pineapple is probably delicious, as you'd expect, but I really enjoyed this.

I had leftover pineapple, and I remembered once having pineapple mushroom pizza and liking it. So, I made it happen, with a whole wheat crust & FYH vegan mozz. Yum. I actually made 2 of these, all for myself, bwahahahaha.

Lentil Sloppy Joes. No idea where I got the recipe from. They were very tasty, even if I did overcook the lentils a bit. No biggie, I still ate these for lunch for basically a whole week.

Cauliflower, peas, peppers & soy curls in some kind of Indian sauce I made (I forget! this was ages ago!) over jasmine rice. Yummmmmmmm.

I believe this was vanilla poundcake with a lime glaze from... Veganomicon? I made it twice, it was tasty-licious!

This is one of my favorite dishes EVER! I actually make it quite often. It's from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, and while I forget the exact name, it's something like Polenta bake. It's just so easy and delicious and I never tire of it.

Hm. I don't quite remember what this was. I do recall thinking everything looked very pretty all chopped up, and I remember eating it (vaguely). Maybe Pineapple Cashew Stir fry? As you can see, I went on a huge pineapple kick. Okay fine, when am I NOT on a pineapple kick...

No clue what exactly this is... whole wheat pasta & peas in... vegan alfredo sauce? That's my guess at least.

And now, for my most recent dish, which was absolutely delish...

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Gratin, adapted from a NYT recipe that was featured in their series on eggplant recently. Really I just subbed a bunch of nutritional yeast for the parmesan cheese. I am sad that I only have 1 serving left, but I will definitely be making this again. I'm sure it didn't hurt that I used eggplant and tomatoes from my CSA share, and homemade breadcrumbs, either. I'm going to go eat more of this right now!!!

...And we're back! (again)

Finally! This will just be to catch up on things I've made since the last time I posted, which was in (gulp) November. I really did have every intention of updating, but life frequently gets away from me. Unfortunately I have very little recollection of the order in which I made things at this point =P

First up, Winter Squash Stew with Pinto Beans & Corn, a la Fat Free Vegan. My pictures will never be as beautiful as hers, but Susan's recipes are always perfectly delicious. I have yet to be disappointed!

Next up, Pumpkin Spice Bread from the PPK. I kind of wish this had been more pumpkin-ey and more spice-y, but now I know what do adjust for the next time. It was tasty nonetheless and I had it for breakfast for a few days.

This is an absolutely amazing cake that I made 3 times within 2 weeks for different functions (well, one just for myself) - and no one cared that it was vegan! It was that damn good. It's the Cranberry Upside Down Cake recipe from the Urban Vegan. The photo is the first one I made for myself; you can see that I had a bit of trouble getting it out of the cake pan, but that never happened again. This cake was just wow all around - tangy cranberries, a slightly lemony cake... how can you go wrong?

But I had some cranberries left over... what to do? Add them to the pumpkin spice muffins (VwaV) that you've been having a love affair with for months! This added a whole new dimension of awesomeness to these muffins.

I made them multiple times, actually, since I made the cake multiple times and kept having a small amount of cranberries left. I brought a giant batch of them to the final exam for my evil class, figuring we all need something tasty in our bellies, and boy did these go quickly. Naturally I was procrastinating by making the muffins instead of studying, but that's just what I do.

Back in November I gave the Veganomicon Chickpea Cutlets o' greatness a try, after seeing them appear on so many of the other vegan food blogs. I made a portobello mushroom gravy to go with them (some fried, some baked, just to experiment). Sadly, I wasn't impressed this first time, but a month or so later I gave them another shot and figured out what I was doing wrong: not kneading enough! You really need to beat the crap out of the "dough" (or at least I feel like I'm beating the crap out of it!). Then they come out much more tender and tasty. I now keep chickpeas permanently stocked in my pantry, just in case I get a craving.

I continued baking in the weeks before Christmas with this Vanilla Pound Cake (Veganomicon). It was nice and moist, and had a good flavor, but it just didn't do for me in the "pound cake" category. I'm still trying to figure what would make it pound cake-ier in terms of texture. The flavor works well though, and it was very good warmed up with some blueberry sauce.

Since I had more time to cook once classes were over, I went for Veganomicon's spicy tempeh and kale (I think that's where the recipe was from??). The flavors were good (how can you go wrong with kale?!), but I think I'm having issues with tempeh because its texture was just bleh to me. I think I'll try it with tofu next time.

Then Christmas came rolling around and I needed a gift for my landlords downstairs and our upstairs neighbors. I absolutely did not want to go out shopping, so cookies it was! I gave them a dozen each of VwaV ginger snaps (which I've made previously), Veganomicon Almond Cookies (so good! very German tasting), and chocolate chip cookies (I think also Veganomicon?). Naturally I made a few "extra" for me to nosh on. I neglected to tell everyone that they were vegan (I think they'd have ditched them if they knew), but they got rave reviews from the recipients (and me!)!! It was worth all the effort baking them the weekend before Christmas.

Now, these were a total impluse buy at Whole Foods and really expensive, but it was soooooo worth it just to try them once. These are Sweet & Sara vegan marshmallows!!! I haven't had marshmallows since I went veg at 13, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But oh my heavens, these are almost exactly how I remember marshmallows! A little denser, but the flavor is spot on. Pathetically, I kept roasting them over a burner on my gas range; then the texture and flavor were absolute perfection. I just wanted to stuff them all in my mouth! They were a really great one time treat.

I hadn't eaten brussels sprouts since probably middle school. One day I decided it was time for the sprouts and I to have a reunion, but how? Someone gave me the brilliant idea to roast them, and they were FABULOUS. I'm actually about to have them again this week (the last time I made them was January). Just cut the suckers in half, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper to coat, throw on a pan lined with parchment, roast, and bingo! Sprouty awesomeness! Who'd have thought that such a detested veggie could be so succulent and delicious?

And finally, random meals that I threw together:

Quinoa pasta with lemon herb sacue, Temp-teh from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan (my impulse gift to myself while Christmas shopping!), and lemony steamed kale.

The use what you have dinner: spinach & mushrooms with tofu feta (storebought - didn't love & had to use up somewhere) and Tamari Chickpea spread from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan (which I am absolutely obsessed with... probably because it has vegan mayo in it, mmmmmmm).

Obviously there were many more things made over the last few months (I lost my pics of my Thanksgiving extravaganza!), and even more delicious things consumed, but alas, this is the only photo evidence. Well, not all, I've already started amassing more pictures on my other memory card :) Stay tuned!

coming soon...

I do realize that I haven't posted in quite a while. I have, however, been taking pictures of my food to share! They're just still on my camera. The end of last semester nearly killed me, and let's just say I wasn't eating all that well or interestingly. Then came winter break (though I was still working full time) and I enjoyed not being forced to do anything I didn't want to do. I did quite a bit of cooking though, including Christmas cookies for my upstairs & downstairs neighbors (I didn't tell them the cookies were vegan, hehe; and they LOVED them! I'm so sneaky). In addition to trying out new Veganomicon recipes, I also bought myself a little giftie while Christmas shopping: Eat, Drink & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I've been enjoying it so far, and there are pictures to come (I think). I know I didn't photograph what I call Mexican Lasagna, but it was great and my coworkers said it smelled delicious too. Anyway, eventually I will get around to posting my pictures soon - the new semester has started and that means more time for procrastination! And procrastination now includes going to the gym :)