If I'm in the kitchen, I'm probably procrastinating.

There's nothing like midterms to make me want to get in the kitchen. It's a productive way of procrastinating. And at least if I fail out of grad school, I will have delicious food to eat.

I've been seriously abusing the deliciousness of spaghetti squash lately. I need to find something new to do with them, but they are so yummy as is. My organic CSA has an orangetti variety, which I like better for no particular reason. I've been putting together different sauces to top the shredded squash with, like the arugula pesto and tomato sauce below (I couldn't decide which to have, so I made both toppings). I think I might try spaghetti squash pancakes next.

Not one to waste things, I've been taking the seeds from all the sqashes I've cooked and roasting them in the toaster oven. Most people think you can only do this with pumpkin seeds, but almost any squash will do (pumpkins are squash too! Yay curcurbitaceae!). Once you've cleaned, washed, and dried off the seeds, toss with a scant amount of olive oil - just enough to coat - and some salt. Then you spread them on a baking sheet or piece of foil and stick them in to cook for ~30 minutes at 300 degrees, or until slightly crunchy. They're great just with the bit of salt, but I've also been adding some curry before roasting, which is so, so good, and also what is pictured below.
I've been doing a lot of baking as well. I made the chocolate chip cookies from VwaV (thumbs up all around, including those who received some as birthday gifts), which I forgot to photograph. They were eaten too quickly (mostly by me). I tried to make some peanutbutter cookies from VwaV for a coworker's party, but something went horribly awry and the result was not fit for human consumption. Believe me, I tried to eat them. I still have no idea what went wrong. But sometimes you just have to get back on the horse, so I made these tasty but not overly impressive chocolate thumbprint cookies with strawberry preserves.

I got some tat soi (or pak choi, depending on your mood) in my CSA share last week, and I had to figure out what to do with it. I looked at a bunch of different recipes for cold tat soi salads and came up with this cold sesame tatsoi, pictured here with quinoa pasta and more homemade tomato sauce. Yes, I know they totally don't go together, but I tend to eat my foods one at a time, so it worked out.




I marinated the tat soi in a bit of tamari, rice wine vinegar and an eensy bit of sugar. I let it sit too long though (overnight, oops), so the saltiness of the tamari was too much for me. Anyway, then right before serving, I mixed in a little sesame oil and sesame seeds. If it wasn't for the saltiness, I'd have given this a big smiley face or whatever you give yummy things.

I've also been excited by all the varieties of apples coming in to the farmer's market. A special treat my mom used to make is baked apples. I still make them her way: get as much of the core out without breaking through the bottom, fill the hole in the middle w/ a pat of [soy margarine] and a lot of brown sugar, then sprinkle with cinnamon and bake until soft. My brother and I used to douse these in whipped cream, which I kind of miss doing, but it's still tasty.

Before and after pictures. The apple shouldn't um, explode like that, but you get the idea. It was really strange though, some of the juice got on the pan and as it starting getting crispy it seriously smelled like marshmallows roasting!

I also made my first attempt at making applesauce from scratch, and it was AWESOME. I kind of winged it after reading a few recipes, but it came out perfect; hopefully I can replicate it in the future, since I plan on freezing a load of this stuff. Basically I peeled, cored and sliced the apples, put them in a pot with ~1 cup of water, ~1/2 cup of brown sugar, a bunch of cinnamon, the juice of half a giant lemon, and some long peels from the lemon (to be taken out later). Cook until the apples are soft, pick out the lemon peels, and put through the food mill (I did it on the chunkiest setting). Then taste and see what it needs; I put in a teeny bit more (white) sugar, a splash of vanilla, and some more water to thin it out because it was too chunky even for me. It is FABULOUS. Okay, I'll stop raving about it now.

[Blogger pictures not working now. Grr.]

And because I am always looking for more ways to add sugar to my diet (HA), my favorite way to prepare butternut squash: load the cavity with brown sugar!

[Blogger pictures still not working. Grr.]

...and we're back!

Oh poor flog, I have been neglecting you. I lost a bunch of pictures and got annoyed with cooking for a while. But there's still a lot to catch up on! Here's what happened in the interim...

Well, there was my birthday, first of all! We had a little party at my brother's in Connecticut. The fam had burgers and dogs while I had a grilled portobello. And this delicious pineapple upside down cake that my mom made. I'd never had this cake before, despite my ridiculous love of pineapples! The six candles are for the number of years past twenty... now starts the downward slope to thirty!!!As a birthday gift, I begged my brother to get me popcorn, like he had for Christmas. He gave me a small sampler pack of gourmet popping corn for my air popper, and I loved it so much I wanted to try all the varieties. Here they are in all their colorful glory:
Then I had a plethora of blueberries because I can't stop buying them when they are in season. So, I decided to make the Blueberry Coffee Cake from VwaV. It made WAY more than I figured it would... I have a habit of not reading recipes all the way through (I just read the ingredients to make sure I have them) and didn't notice it required a 9x13 pan! So I brought half of it in to work, where it was positively DEVOURED within two hours, and some went to Danny's parents, who asked him to bring over more the next day. I think that solidifies the omni-approved rating for this recipe, yes? :) Here's how I had it after it cooled:

Last week I decided to try the VT Chicago Diner mushroom veggie burgers that I saw on Eat Air and Don't Get Mad, Get Vegan. There's no way these would hold up on the grill, but they sure were tasty. A lot of them fell apart, usually in half, so there were a lot of halves matched up on some wheat toast. I made up my own sauce to go on them because I didn't want to make the red pepper aoli; it was veganaise, ketchup, mustard, onion powder and a lot of hot sauce to give it some kick. I call this Condiment Sauce, and it goes on many things when I can't figure out what else to use.

I was trying to figure out what to do with some of the goodies from my organic CSA share, and decided I wanted to use the cauliflower and peas for something Indian flavored. I found this recipe on the fatfree vegan site and it sounded perfect to serve with some basmati rice. Well, the spices needed some major adjustment and it just wasn't saucy enough for my liking, but it wasn't terrible. I probably won't use this recipe again.
That brings me to tonight, where I still had to confront a lot of my CSA share veggies. We got some basil this week, so I knew I had to make pesto, so that meant pasta, but what else? I have a ridiculous amount of zucchini, so that went in, as well as a CSA onion. Why an onion? Because these are the best onions EVER. I ate a bunch of the sauteed onions before they even made it to the pasta. Here's the end result - I cleaned my whole plate tonight!
I was so happy to have an almost exclusively organic and local meal (the pasta sadly wasn't) - the zucchini, onion, basil, and garlic all came from good old Farmer John from Starbrite Farms! I've still got lettuce, swiss chard, tons more squash, fava beans and kale to use before the next delivery on Tuesday! Unfortunately I'll be away at a wedding tomorrow and Sunday, which makes it difficult, and then I am off to Maui for a week, so Danny's parents will be getting all my veggies!

it's been a while...

No, I have not forgotten thee, dear food blog. The end of the semester just threw me for a real loop and I didn't get around to much cooking, much less posting.

Once, several years ago, I made a seitan pot roast - the one in Vegan Vittles. I had never eaten seitan before and didn't really know what I was getting into. That pot roast came out less than stellar, though edible, and I stayed away from seitan for several years after that. However, I didn't know until maybe a year ago that seitan comes prepackaged! No muss no fuss! But it's expensive. At least I figured out that I enjoy it and it is not always like that funky pot roast; in fact, it can be quite tasty (e.g. the seitan portobella stroganoff in VwaV).

But reading all the vegan food blogs let me see that many people make it themselves and find it tastes better that way. What the hell, I thought, I'll give it a shot. So I did, using the recipe in VwaV:
It came out... okay. I don't know if it's the recipe or if I did something wrong, but I just don't like it the way I like the storebought stuff. And hot damn, it sure made a lot. I should have gone into this seitan-making thing with a plan!

One thing I made with it was the tangerine seitan mentioned on Eat Air a while back. This too was just okay, mostly because the seitan was odd tasting:


Luckily the broccoli in the sauce was delicious. Sadly, I think I'm pretty much a sucker for almost any sauce if it's on steamed broccoli. Sigh.

At this point things got into crunch time for school, and I had to start whipping out those soups I made and froze over spring break. I've tried to come up with ways to change them up, especially the tomato garlic, which is a little plain (on purpose). Here I added some cooked orzo and italian spices for tomato soup yumminess:

And finally (at least in terms of pictures I have), was tonight's random creation, the portobella cheezesteak sandwich:
It was just some portobellas sauteed and seasoned with salt, pepper & onion powder. Then I took some of Follow Your Heart - Vegan Gourmet's cheddar and melted that over the 'shrooms. Having never actually eaten a cheesesteak, I can't vouch for authenticity. My friend Lisa would probably turn her nose at these (she's a Philly girl and cheesesteak afficionado), but it was pretty tasty. The only other cheesesteak type sandwich I've ever had was a vegan one at Gianna's in Philly (well, I assume it was vegan, there was a scandal about their "cheese" back when...). If I were to make this again, I think I'd make more of a sauce out of the Follow Your Heart instead of just melting it on top. The cheddar flavor was just a little too intense this way. Nonetheless, it was quick, easy and tasty, plus gave me an excuse to eat yummy bread.

sandwich yumminess

I've come to realize that some of my favorite meals are sandwiches. I especially like tofu egg salad. When I was little, I ate peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches every day; the only other one I'd rotate in was egg salad. After going vegan, I needed something to substitute and came up with this:

This is my own recipe, modeled after the way my mom made egg salad:
1 box firm or extra firm tofu, mashed up
1/2 cup Vegenaise (more if you think it's a little dry)
1/4 cup diced celery
seasoned to taste with:
~3-4 tbs nutritional yeast
~1/4 tsp curry
~1/4 tsp ground mustard
enough turmeric to make it nice and yellow
1/4 tsp onion powder
a few sprinkles of parsley, salt, and pepper

The curry & ground mustard give it a nice kick, and I have to eat it with diced celery for the crunch because otherwise I feel like I'm eating mush, plus that's how I always ate it as a kid. I like to eat this version freshly made over toast; this time it was 12 grain. And by the way, Vegenaise is awesome. I can and do eat it right out of the jar.

This week I also made the Maple Dijon Glazed Potatoes and String Beans from VwaV. I got a preview of how it turned out from Eat Air and it looked tasty. And indeed it was tasty:

It was good, but not mustardy enough for me, even though I put an extra tablespoon of dijon in it. Next time I know! It's definitely a good side dish, and a way to get myself to eat string beans. Growing up I didn't like them; I didn't realize this was because my mom cooked the hell out of them. She does this with a lot of veggies because that's how she likes them: mushy. I think this is why I didn't realize that I actually did enjoy many vegetables until I was much older and cooking them for myself to a non-mushy consistency. Anyway, while I don't have an undying love for string beans, I will eat them, and more than the 1 per meal that I was forced to consume as a child.

There's not a whole lot of inspired cooking going on at the moment, mostly due to school finishing up for the semester. Hopefully in the next 2 weeks that will change... I can't wait to show off all sorts of fun things once my CSA starts in June! Though I've heard that it's been a cool spring for the northeast, so it might take a while for things to get going.

Cram it all in...

The title of this post is how I feel about life a lot of the time... I'm trying to cram as much as possible into this little life of mine. Today was about cramming family, cooking and schoolwork into the day (well, laundry too).

After babysitting my cousins and staying over my aunt & uncle's last night, we stopped at the in-laws' on the way home. We've been together since my pre-vegan days, so his parents have had to adjust to my eating choices as well, since they love to feed us. One thing I don't have a picture of for your viewing pleasure are the empanadas they made me. Previously all his parents made were meat or cheese empanadas; when I stopped eating cheese, it was a travesty that I could not take part in the empanadas (they're a big deal in the family). However, this sparked an empanada revolution! Soon eggplant empanadas came along... a cousin who is a chef made some chipotle mushroom ones for New Year's. Other family members have asked, why does she get all the cool empanadas?? Well, why not? There is a world beyond carne y queso!! Anyway, there were eggplant empanadas waiting for me today at the in-laws' apartment for lunch. Yum!

In between paper writing and laundry, I decided I wanted to make some vegan cookies for my class tomorrow, in honor of our field trip on the topic of ecological restoration. I chose the Ginger Cookies from VwaV:
I think some of them came out a bit too molasses-ey, but still tasty. Next time I might cut the molasses a little. I always wonder how cookbooks come up with the numbers of cookies that will come out of a batch; the book says 2 dozen, and I sized them like the book says and I got about 3 dozen. Oh well.

To further avoid folding laundry and writing about NYC's 2030 green goals, I made the orange ginger tofu triangles from The Voluptous Vegan. It's simple because you let the tofu marinate, pour off some of the marinade, and then bake. Easy peasy! While that was going on I even made a smoothie, some rice and garlic-ey spinach to go with the tofu. I only realized I was out of brown rice when I couldn't find it in the pantry, so white rice it was, cooked in my handy dandy 3 cup rice cooker from CVS.
I'll be having this for lunch tomorrow as well. The nice thing about the tofu is that it's pretty good cold as well, so I will throw it on salads and such as well.

Speaking of salads, I found a new salad dressing that I am really enjoying:

Now, mind you, I have no idea if it actually tastes like caesar dressing; I haven't had that since I was a wee lass. But it's very tasty in its own right; it has a nice blend of spices and a bit of a mustardy taste. It tastes like something that I can't put my finger on, but in a good way. Plus it's got omega-3s and is organic! It's good to break out of my italian dressing rut once in a while.

always a hit, sometimes a miss

What do you do when you have some... let's just say 'aged'... kale waiting in the fridge? This!:

Baked kale is my absolute favorite way to prepare this healthy green leafy vegetable. It's so easy too, just tear it up, spray with a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt and garlic powder, and bake. Voila, melt in your mouth crispy kale bits! You can't go wrong. My parents thought I was nuts when I made it at their house a few times, but kale was never a vegetable that had crossed the threshold of the house when I lived there. Mom & Dad are not particularly adventurous with their veggies...

Anyway, the kale was made as an accompaniment to a new recipe I decided to try out: VwaV's fettucine alfreda (but using spaghetti). I started to worry after I toasted the pine nuts and they smelled weird; I'm pretty sure they were fresh, unless the stuff in the bulk bin at Whole Foods was old. Here's what dinner came out like:
Sadly, I can't say that I'm much of a fan of this sauce, which is unfortunate because it certainly made a lot. It just has an odd flavor. It's not inedible, but I think I'm kind of done with it. I'm not sure what I was expecting from it but this sauce just tastes funky. Sorry, VwaV, you know I love you, but this didn't do it for me.

Experimental goodness

I got an avocado on sale at the ghetto Pathmark down the block the other day, and it was perfectly ready today. Naturally I did the only truly respectable thing you can do to an avocado: make guacamole! What I usually make is super simple - mashed avocado, a minced fresh garlic clove, salt and lemon juice. Yes, lemon, not lime, though either is okay; I just usually have lemons in the fridge, less often limes. Today I got slightly fancier and added some ground cumin and dried cilantro, but I almost always stick with the basic. And I never mar my guac with diced tomatoes... raw tomatoes are disgusting! I wasn't really in the mood for chips, so I had two of these babies for lunch:

Toasted organic whole wheat bread, a la whole foods brand. I like cheap & tasty. I also had a baby romaine salad. Oh man, I can't wait until my organic CSA starts in June!!


Tonight I decided to experiment a little by making the Tempeh & White Bean "Sausage" Patties from Vegan With A Vengeance, partly because I had all the ingredients on hand. I was a little afraid because I don't like meaty tasting things, and I never ate sausage in the first place; I was quite picky. But I like tempeh and I like beans, so what the heck. As I was making it up, it seemed kind of icky and didn't smell good, though that may be a result of my allergies (thanks NJ pollen explosion!). So instead of cooking all of the half batch I made (as the mix will keep a few days), I just made two patties:
Despite tasting nothing like sausage, I was pleasantly surprised. These ended up pretty tasty. Yay! I think I need to adjust the seasonings a little b/c I kind of just threw stuff in since I was making a half batch AND using dried instead of fresh herbs. VwaV, I shall not doubt you again; you have not failed me thus far.

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...