You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2007.
I started hardcore veganing in august, and yes I have a computer full of pron so I’m leaking it out!! Happy Mofo everybody!!!
an overly crispy attempt to recreate Garibaldi Biscuits (british, delicious, very discontinued ;_;). When I was little my mom called them “squashed fly cookies”, and apparently that wasn’t just her twisted and humorous mind — that’s actually what they go by in britain! awesome.
creamy cauliflower soup, with turnip, white beans, potatoes, onions… pretty much anything white I could find. *excellent* with toasted pumpkin seeds on top.
eggless egg salad (from the ppk), with homemade crusty rolls.
The aforementioned crusty rolls (and crusty breads)! My first time using a poolish/starter, and soooooo worth it. Depthful, crunchy chewy yeasty best-bread-ever kinda worth it (I changed the recipe to be mostly whole wheat, and I can only imagine that made it even more flavourful).
Banana oatmeal chocolate chip bars from The Garden of Vegan. These are a throwback to the LAST time my oven died, as it’s a microwave recipe, and actually I think nuking them makes them chewier and more brownie-like (a billion thumbs up on this recipe).
White bean and escarole soup with rye-garlic croutons. Kinda bland, but that’s my fault for getting the recipe off of the internet, from among about 7 or 8 nearly identical versions. The croutons helped a lot.
Graham (gwam) crackers! Very very very good. I used raw coarse sugar instead of regular white and it made the texture really interesting and gave them a burnt caramel flavour. I love how they’re not very sweet, these are probably actually my favourite cookies ever.
Broccoli-almond-tofu stir fry. Okay, super basic, but extremely nommish. (and it’s a pretty picture!)
Black-eyed pea patties with sunflower sprouts and limeade. And barbecue sauce, cause that stuff is liquid yum, and have you ever tried sprouts with bbq sauce? Made for eachother, I swears.
And, as recently as last night – banana-chocolate pudding! I am so loving this pudding-for-dinner business I started doing recently. It’s really no worse than a plate of creamy noodles in terms of nutrition (actually probably better), and there’s something so fabulous about throwing a huge bowl of pudding in the fridge, going out for a night of what-have-you, and knowing you have velvety chocolate spoonlove to savour when you get home. (although last night it was so cold by the time I got back I nuked tomato soup with beanballs + broccoli in it instead – I could easily live off of tom-soup with a rotating roster of guest vegetables/grains).
more bonanza laterz! I still have a lot of pictures. :D
If there had been anyone else around me 5 minutes ago, they’d be picking flecks of tomato sauce off their shirts and wondering what snarfing demon had momentarily possessed my sammich-hoover face. And it’s all cause of these bean balls, which are like fluffy-beany-savoury-mushy balls smothered in my favouritest of all multitasking sauces – marinara – and piled on a chewy pita with a bit of nayonnaise, nooch, extra sauce, peppers and toms – YUM. V-con has done it again! I actually made a full recipe of something for once and I am SO glad I did, I just have to figure out how to pack something like this for lunch tomorrow without it turning to soup before I get to it (delicious, delicious soup…… *droooools*). I also added worcestershire and black pepper, cause I like those things. :)
(right now they’re being extra cooperative and frying in a pretty pattern, but in reality they take a bit of time to brown and it’s nice to have a movie playing on a computer next to you while you roll them around with your hand cause it’s a much better tool for the job than any utensil)
(I’ll also concede that my balls (ahahaha!!) may have had a different texture than intended cause I used homemade beans and then I didn’t even measure them. I am lazy queen. :)
So this is my kitchen, taking advantage of the wee bit of sunlight it gets in the afternoon hours. It’s teeny tiny, the oven is about a foot wide and breaks constantly (it’s currently broken. *weep*), the overhead light only works when the hall light is on, it faces a lovely adjacent apartment building and I’m running out of storage so badly I had to move my canned goods to a shelf in the living room. BUT, I love it!
Maybe because it’s mine, and I’ve really stocked up a pantry of wonders over the past year (I was raised in house that bought ketchup by the crate and froze everything rather than throwing it out. Hording tendencies? Not surprising). And I really do like my tiny stove with the volcanic hotspot that turns cookies to char in mere minutes – once you know where the spot is, you can broil stuff right quick! Yay getting to know your appliances!
I don’t have a picture of my beloved spice rack (made of two bricks and a piece of wood I found on Mont-Royal street = McGuyveriffic!), but I’ll snap one tomorrow if I wake up before the sun sets. :)
Oh yeah – here’s my dinner from last night: Italian breaded tofu, braised leeks & zucchini, marinara and almesan sprinkle). Not too fancy or difficult to make, (and my homemade breadcrumbs were too gigantic to stick to the ‘fu very well), but yummers. I just learned how to braise the other day, and, ummm…. I had a giant bowl of leeks for dinner tonight and that was it. So good.
( Horrible picture, but bear with me… )
YUM! Best dinner ever! I think I can get away with calling this dinner due to the amount of protein, yes? It kind of reminds me of yogurt.
Low-Cal & Luscious Banana Pudding
1/3 cup non-dairy milk
3 tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 cups of silken tofu
1 banana (3/4 of it mashed, 1/4 sliced for garnish)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
stevia to taste
pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon (optional)
1. Whisk together the milk and cornstarch until it’s smooth, then heat in a saucepan over med-low until it thickens into a gel-ish paste.
2. Stick-blend the milk with the remaining ingredients (except the banana slices and spices), adjusting the amount of stevia to a sweetness you like. Transfer to serving dishes, garnish with banana, and chill for an hour or two before serving. Top with spices if you want them; eat, smile.
PS: I LOVE BANANAS!!! mmmmmmm… that’s yesterday’s lunch down there.
PPS: I’M INDIFFERENT TO SILKEN TOFU!!! … but I have to eat it up. XD
This is great non-food! Every so often I get busy with art projects or just life distracts me from going shopping and all of a sudden it’s 12:30 at night and not only do I need protein, but an actual protein-ish meal (and preferably one that I can whip together faster than you can say “just make peanut butter toast, girl!”). At least, that happened one time, and I happened to have a can of lentils around (which I don’t even usually have, lucky night!), and I realized I had NO fresh produce, except an onion and some garlic, if you count that as fresh produce which I don’t… ANYWAY, this tastes really really really good! Cheap as a button, ready in 5 minutes, savory and filling, good to eat while watching the Colbert Report and making mental grocery lists filled with green leafy vegetables. I’m sure you could all whip up something similar in your sleep, but hey, here it is.
Lentils a la Pantry
1 can of lentils, drained and rinsed
4-5 large roasted cashews (almonds would be good too, I bet)
2-3 tbsp tamari
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried red chile flakes
1 tsp maple syrup
a drizzle of sesame oil
1/4 cup onion, diced fine
1 tbsp dried wakame seaweed
1-2 tbsp dried shitake mushrooms (soaked in a bit of hot water with a splash of tamari, then diced)
1. grind the cashews into a rough paste in a mortar and pestle or food processor (or, just chop them really really fine), and whisk in a bowl with the tamari, ginger, garlic, syrup, and oil.
2. toss together with the onion, wakame, shitake, and lentils, let it marinate in the fridge for an hour (optional, for non-starving people) and serve.
(I like raw onion and garlic, but you could definitely saute them a bit for a warmer kind of salad)
(this recipe would also benefit from sprouts, shredded carrots, some radish, snow pea, etc, if you’ve got it. But then it wouldn’t be a la Pantry. ;)
(Star’s phenomenal baked veggie pâté, guacamole, v-con caesar salad)
(wakey-wakey muffins (recipe pending), v-con cornbread, more pretty pâté, sesame-spelt bread, and somewhere around here were these delicious dill pickles, cut like ruffle-chips)
The second of our moon-based potlucks, this one was a small but cozy and fairly jumping affair. Despite over-garlicking the caesar by a LOT, the omnis were devouring it down, as well as raving about the wakey muffins and okay, everything else! In fact, it kinda went like –
omnis: “Ooh, potluck!”
veggies: “Yep, vegan potluck.”
omnis: “OOH, POTLUCK!”
Nice to see that kind of reaction, like the vegan revolution is actually gaining headway!
Star and I started Lunch Crew — every Wednesday we’re gonna make something delicious and then eat it. These were suitably delicious!
especially with applesauce. ;)
Am I doing the one post a day thing? I don’t think I’m even indenture–*ahem*– on the VeganMoFo Grand Official List of Obsessive Posting. No matter, I’ll play along. Here’s a cake! I made it for Star’s 22nd, out of your standard wacky cake recipe (x2) with extra almond extract, most of the oil subbed for applesauce, and half the water turned to almond milk. It also features a double batch of that gooey pudding-y icing (that I like WAY better than buttercream), a layer of 4-fruit quebecoise jam, and homemade raspberry truffle chocolates on top. Oh, and a little bit of buttercream writing on top, because hey buttercream ain’t so bad (in fact it’s pretty delicious in small amounts). Nomanomnomnom.
I just got the V-Con!!!!!!!!
I rode the bus home with this silly stupid grin on my face, poring over everything like a kid at christmas, and within 2 seconds I found the perfect recipe for a quick after-school dinner that would pair with a fiesta grapefruit/bell pepper/lime salad I’d made the day before. So I whipped up the Chile Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu in about 2 minutes (the only snag being my oven deciding to die – alas I had to pan-fry), and had the best dinner I’ve had in a while. I’ll admit I’ve been craving just those kinds of flavours, but the breading is so light, and paired with some limeade (and extra hot sauce) I was totally at a picnic table watching a june afternoon go by (never mind that it’s freezing outside).
This is my first Isa/Terry book! I feel like dancing! *dances all over kitchen*
……now I just have to somehow forget about reading it cover to cover tonight, and work on things that are due tomorrow. Phooey. (You won’t be seeing the last of me, beautiful V-Con! I’ll probably cave and make cookies from your pages, in oh, about 3 hours of boring drawing. mwahahaha!)
I really have to admit, starting a blog has changed my outlook on cooking for myself a LOT. I went for a few weeks just eating a muffin + vegetables for dinner, and not really bothering to cook anything beautiful or fun. So this past week is kind of like me revving my engines, and who knows, maybe I’ll break and go play with some tempeh soon!
Most proud of this one – stuffed cremini mushrooms (with spinach, walnuts, tofu, dijon, tamari, lemon juice, thyme, marjoram, whole grain bread, and YES SWEET, extra nooch sauce. oh ya, and my baby-own lentil sprouts on the side.)
Miso soup (brown rice miso, tofu, carrots, cubanelle peppers – weird, I know, but good! – soba, wakame, shitake, hot sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds). This one’s actually a staple for me.
Spicy kale on toast. Blog-worthy? Dunno, but it was tasty! Plus, I got to carry home the hugest bunch of kale in the whole world, and when it started to spill out of my bag like a particularly healthy upside-down mop, the flaming bag-boy who wears pink and has better hair than I do helped me re-bag so I could actually get the thing home and wilt it up. huzzah!
Kamutflake Girl 