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.

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...