on the road again

Well, not literally on the road, more like in the air... Through a happy coincidence and proper alignment of the stars, I managed to finagle a budget friendly trip to Maui, which is where I will be for the next week. If it's anything like Oahu, I will be eating a lot of the Luna bars I brought and cereal. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised!

See you when I get back!

...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!

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::

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.