Chocolate being a subtle theme...

Liz Holding Food Gallery: entry #27 - BROWNIE-STYLE

I tried T'ai Chi today for the first time!  That's got nothing to do with chocolate, sure, but I feel really good right now!  Like a natural chocolate high.  Or a, uh... non-sugar induced high, yes.  Seriously though, I feel like a dancer, I bounced all the way home in my high tops, and then  threw together the roasted vegetables I'd made that morning into some whole wheat penne and home-soaked chickpeas for a really attractive dinner.  It needed something parmesan-y, but I have leftovers to subject to ground almond & lemon zest, there is always tomorrow.

So back to cupcakes!

I made the Brooklyn Brownie cupcakes for a friend's 25th birthday in the park.  We played duck duck goose, Stella Ella Ola, a fun game called Sheep... I love being a nonkid, it's so natural to be.  And the cuppers were a big hit!  These are dense dark weighty cakes with a huge woodsy whiskeyness that probably needs refreshing milk around for maximum enjoyment, but definitely brownie-ish and definitely good.  Super moist, too.  I think I like the regular chocolate VCtotW recipe better, but hey, I got to bake with whiskey, and I've been wanting to do that for, like, ever!  

Then something a little more virtuous... I made the Mole Roasted Cauliflower from the Swell cookzine that involved - of course! - cocoa powder.  REALLY good preparation for cauliflower, I had to resist buying another whole head and roasting it up the exact same way, which says something, that I would repeat a recipe so soon.  Not that it was hard to eat a whole giant head of this, it's pretty addictive like better than popcorn good.  It was the star of the plate next to the mango slices, and some creamy mint & basil polenta I made, but actually the whole combo worked really well and I recommend it - mango with dinner I mean.  (what?  mango with everything!!  of course!)

Oh yes yes, I made some luncheon meat, via Vegan Dad's recipe.  It is a bit dry as he says, but the flavour and texture is eerily spot on and I made some really satisfying sandwiches and I froze most of it into little single-servings for later.  Next time I thaw out a packet I'll be sure to have some cheap yellow mustard around, because it would just work with this stuff, mmmm yeah.

What else?  Tofu nuggets!  I saw the Tofu Skewers with Espresso BBQ Sauce on Vegan Appetite and knew exactly what to do with the half pound of tofu I had in the fridge.  I'd not skewered food before, and you know, it actually does make a difference to the flavour!  The leftover tofu-bobs I cooked sans-impalement were less succulent and fun.  Like, you couldn't gnaw on them at all, boo, I like skewers now.  Oh, and the sauce was great!  I added cayenne cause I can't leave well enough alone and insist on mouth burning when it comes to anything BBQ.

Right, and finally, this is definitely the result of my new love affair with my wonderful freezer.  Never could have concocted something so specific without being able to freeze tiny bits of things throughout my cooking.  The whole door is filled with single cookies, 1/4 cups of icing, cake shavings, and other fun detritous I collect, mwahaha.  For this little cake that I made for a dinner on friday, I started with a disc of leftover Brooklyn Brownie cupcake (the recipe really does make a LOT of extra batter).  Then I made a base cheesecake cream in the blender, divided that into two and stuffed one with melted chocolate and the other with peanut butter.  I layered and baked that at 350 for 45 minutes, then I made a quick chocolate agar-gel for the top and was really really pleased with myself for rocking agar finally.  And then!  Crushed-up peanut butter cookies for the sides.  You know the awesome kind that are essentially just peanut butter and sugar?  Yeah, those kind.  And I almost forgot - star dollops of leftover chocolate cupcake frosting!  PIMPED.  OUT.  

Now I just need to get myself a cheesecake tin that's bigger than 5" across. ^_^;

zombie jesus probably wanted mango, not braiiinnnnssss....

It was an unexpected surprise, to hear my mom suggest driving up for the weekend along with my sister, carrying pantry reinforcements of cocoa powder, vanilla extract, organic beer, sprinkles, and BC golden syrup!  Easter obviously isn't an epic day on my calendar, but it is gorgeous to celebrate anything with family, and so I made a ton of fresh summer rolls with two kinds of dipping sauce to remedy whatever fast food travesty they'd had to eat on the drive to my place.  Which totally worked!  And I made lime & poppyseed cupcakes, filled and topped with mango compote and swirled with vanilla frosting, and star sprinkles on top, because hey, it's the time of year for excess sugar and pastel colours, I think.  So yummy!  I think they're actually improving with age, too, flavours melding... I had one for breakfast today, shhhh! :D

We also hit that store with the crazy sales, whereupon we filled our recyclable plastic bags full of fresh udon packets and coconut cream powder and nori seaweed AND these beautiful little herbal tangerine candies I found.  All for a dollar!  I like the tin especially.

Brunch at Aux Vivres, which makes maybe only my third time there, ever.  The hot spot vegan spot of hot vegan dining, and I've barely gone --  I know!  Anyway, I got to see their take on a vegan brunch plate, which my sister ordered, piled high with melt-in-your-mouth tofu scramble (they use medium firm and load it with nooch), maple-y tempeh bacon strips, sweet potato fries, an excellent salad with dressing I forgot to identify, and cornbread with jalapeno in it.  Yum!  Not to mention pretty as a painting if anyone ever wanted their breakfast to cheer them up with sheer resemblance to flowers alone.

Mom ordered the chickpea masala on fresh chapati with apple chutney inside - this one I've had before and it is sweet slurpy savoury delicious, as well as MORE than enough food for two people, with a salad alongside.  If you're ever so devoid of protein that only a total refuel will do, order this thing and you'll be set like superman!

And I?  I was the lucky one.  At the bottom of the menu I spotted a new item, something special... a Montreal smoked meat seitan sandwich, piled all high up with mustard, mayo, pickles and creamy coleslaw on the side... OMG.  It was *crazily* like the roast beef sandwiches I used to eat sometimes, *utterly* delicious, *such* a treat.  The bread was soft and awesome, too.  I think the neatest thing was pulling the second half out of the fridge the next day and almost feeling like I was in my teens again, just eating any old thing I found around. :p

Witness the lovvvvve!!!  They done seitan right, they did.... really soft and spiced perfectly.

cake!  only slightly dented after a trip in a to-go tray 

And!  Should I mention some huge news?  If anyone remembers my old roommate and vegan chef extraordinaire P, well... she's moved back to the city and become... the primary baker at Aux Vivres!  The whole pastry counter - that's her!  So I had to sample a massive decadent slice of chocolate apple cake.  Don't let the apple thing steer you wrong on this cake, either, it is dense and rich and iced with an epic ganache, studded with just enough apple to make the flavour nuanced, with a raspberry sauce served on the side... you should go for this.  Or for any of the desserts!  I am certainly going back to sample other things, I consider it my duty as a friend.   To eat... sugar and chocolate.  My duty!!  As a friend!!  WEll, it is.  :D

it's never too wintery for shmores

Ahhhh! So cute! They're like koala bears! Except s'more flavoured! Mini-sizing these was SO perfect, it made them actually s'more sized. And unlike last time (of which we speak nothing and try maybe to forget the day-glo blue frosting on essentially my first batch of cupcakes ever), my painting class loved them! I only had three to take home from the critique, which I gladly invited to my belly. Oh, and I even put a bit of caramel syrup in the frosting for that burnt sugar thing, plus did I mention the grahams were homemade? Anyway, my teacher looked one moment at the tray I put on the table and declared my paintings A-worthy, sight unseen. Ha!

Sometimes I fry up leftover mushroom millet mash (mmm) into a crispy fritter of late-night eating, and it is good.

I was also blown away by this spicy rutabaga fava bean soup recipe from Tofu for Two. It's so bloody tasty, I had it for breakfast, snack, dessert, hot, cold, with harissa yogurt, with pomegranate arils, with basil, and now it is gone and I am sad. I'm such a sucker for pureed soups, especially ones that taste like fanciness and comfort at the same time. And fava. Fava is specially good.

Unreal, eh?

august in ottawa, pt. 1 (the parade of yellow food)

I lost my camera cord! And I lost the internet due to crazy summer storms and their ease at destroying routers! So I'm sitting on a lot of pictures... will you bear with me? I have forgotten which are worthy of blogation, but I assure you, most 94% of it was delicious. Highly chewable. Well... I guess you can't chew jam. But doesn't it look pretty? Lame peaches became perfect ice cream topping, even though I pouted and danced all the while my mom made this, because I wanted to eat them raw. But I'm an annoying daughter like that. Yep. :D

And I invented a pizza! Which I would bet anything has actually been done before, but if you get the chance, you MUST try making a batch of samosa potatoes and laying it over pizza on a bed of pureed pineapple. It's my new absolute favourite.

Oh, and speaking of pizza, I've been introduced to Ottawa's gourmet pizzeria, Pavarazzi's. It sounds so much like paparazzi!! Paparpizza? They have good taste in vegetarian toppings, though. No lame soggy mushrooms/green pepper combos. Sesames and roasted red peppers, artichokes and olives are the standard. Good show!

**note: I avoided the cheese bits encroaching on my nice side like the absolute plague, and am I the only vegan who takes pleasure in an increasing dislike for the smell/accidental taste of animal products? Cause cheese kind of tastes like fermented fluuuuuuuid to me now. *cough*
Appetizing! You can keep your squishy olives, sis!

Speaking of good taste (haha) and vegetarian accommodations, mum and me broke out this cast-iron grill pan that magically appeared in the pantry sometime between this visit and my last to grill up everything in sight, and some fennel besides. I also get to take the pan home! (vcon grilled tempeh tacos, here we come!). Simple dinner, yes, but I was raised on the good art of arranging a sandwich spread, and forgive me for my stereotypical tastes, but I SO do love a grilled vegetable. I think I ate 3 dinners worth of food here. It was worth it for the rosemary bread. The rosemary bread that was made of olive oil. Droolular.

Bit o' baking. Ever tried a flapjack? I um.... hadn't. But I was mad curious, I mean - golden syrup, margarine and oats, plus major associations to my UK heritage, I had to at least try. I succeeded at making floppy oat chews? The fat content alone is scaring me away from attempting this again... but if anyone else wants to try, I CAN highly recommend adding some lemon or lime juice to the mix, cause it makes it all lip-smacking more-ish. Too bad about the melty texture, though...

Banana bread is friendly. It shall redeem me. (yum)

As will peach right side-up cupcakes with toasted candied almond slivers on top (I should think). Which are perfect from the fridge, cold... teeth sinking through the cold fruity layer to moist almond-y crumbs.... acklejackarggggg.... s'good. I got the coveted "vegan baked goods are soooo much better than normal baked goods" comment from not one, but three separate eaters of cake. Suke-sess!

To make thine own, take one pineapple rightside-up cupcakes recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, replace fruit with appropriate fruit, add almond extract, and enjoooyyyyy. With joy! Man, I love that book, it should be renamed the Little Vegan Cake-Creation Sourcebook.

More to come in part 2!

a berry-copia, a watercolour garden, and yuba, OH yuba

So it's been 10 days, and I was all going to post this picture and be like, "well, dinners like this are pretty much the reason I haven't had anything blogworthy to mention all week. Simple and summery and involving a lot of corn, nothing terribly new." But then I realized I was sitting on a whole bunch of pretty photos! (It's funny, I also swear I've been living off of miso soup, but it's so perfect for end-of-term eating - quick and cheap and energy-giving for late-night drawing sessions).

Okay, okay... so at the beginning of last week I thought I'd recreate that magically fermenting sesame slaw I made before, to much success. And I managed to get a photo of it before all the colours bled and muted out, too! (and like my new bowls? I so do!)

They also came with an awesome rectangle plate that I fell in LURVE with and had to buy (so frivolous, and SO matching my grey spiral plate, it had to be done! :P)

And Pomme surprised me with freaking spring rolls! It was in thanks for her birthday dinner, and they're pretty much my favourite food ever, I ated so many of these it's a wonder I didn't roll around myself afterwards, but they were sooooo good, with mango and red pepper inside and peanut dipping sauce, egads. I even bought a thing of brown rice vermicelli to make them even healthier the next time I make them (and thus even more like a perfect food).

I love summer and farmers' markets! A big basket of random sumptuous berry-things! Plus ground cherries, teeny grapes, figs, flowers and tart little red dots-on-the-vine, all for $5. I made the oatmeal of kings from this basket.

I also made pretty awesome vanilla-vanilla cupcakes for my drawing group, 'cause waking up early on saturday to go downtown and muck around with pencils is just that much more enjoyable with frosting. :)

I love how R on the left spontaneously drew a garden, with a mole in it and everything, and a Mr. Potato head! He couldn't remember what radish leaves looked like, and I so knew exactly, having just eaten a salad of them the night before... so houray for the new kids knowing about their foodstuffs (there were discussions on the relative frumpiness of potato leaves and how appropriate that is to their taste, hehe).

And uh... I ran out of li hing mui yesterday, so I went to chinatown and picked some up for 85 cents..... and then totally couldn't resist buying a wack more goodies, cause that place is pretty much like my idea of culinary disneyland. This was all under $20, too! Clockwise from the left is some wakame, black rice, abalone flavoured wheat gluten in a can (can't wait to try that one!), yuba/dried tofu skin, cornstarch, brown rice vermicelli, regular rice vermicelli, mangoes, a mysterious package of some sort of pickled vegetable for 10 cents, wonton wrappers, assorted sesame/peanut/cashew brittles, sweet pickled radish, really cheap tofu, bean sprouts, and (of course!) the li hing mui that started this whole debacle.

I had to HAD TO experiment with that yuba, so stir fry it was, and WOW is all I can say - I love this stuff! It's so chewy and soaks up sauce like a chewy soyfood of long-pantry life and pure awesome! And for the record... pickled turnips are delicious but pretty much 92% salt, so serve with caution (or at least a lot of water).

And is this related? Oh, I dunno. Girls and bugs living in symbiotic vegan harmony sounds okay to mention! And plus one-shot zines are super cute and everyone should try their hand at making one, be it full of manifestos, sketches, goth poetry, bread recipes, or like... everything in your apartment listed alphabetically.

That, plus walking around across the city and back all day today made me totally and completely go into SANDWICH MODE. Gallery-hopping is fun but hunger-inducing, and I even took some extra detours to get the perfect soft baguette-bread to make the Vcon cornmeal-crusted tofu Po'boy and it was SO worth it. What a perfect damn sandwich, I mean seriously. Dude. DUUUUUUDE. Anything involving chipotle mayo has to be good, but this was a major synthesis of happy components making perfect lunch science in my mouth. Making this again! With even more mayo! Bwahahahahaha. So evil, yet so delicious...

I also hope next week is similarly uneventful so I'll have nothing to post about again.
/sarcasm.

I'm thinking of making bread with sprouted wheat berries soon!

ottawa foods (or how I loved an oven that actually works)

I had the best time in Ottawa with the fam, having free reign of flours and sugars, and access to an oven that's probably 4 times the size of my own. Not to mention plenty of eaters of baked goods! I have a hard time justifying sweet recipes at home, as all I really need is a cookie here and there. But near the end of my stay I was just churning out sugar-soaked excellence everywhere and it was actually getting eaten (and quickly!). Kinda heavenly. I'm also considering taking a pastry course after uni or something... I'd like to take some culinary classes too but I don't know how the veganism will factor into that... are there vegetarian culinary schools (with prestige) at least? Anyway, the cookies up there are the oatmeal raisin cookies from the Veganomicon. They smelled like skinned knees and school lunches, and even replace Larabars nicely as travelling rations! (half regular thompson raisins and half organic flame raisins).

I like to think of this as clash of the transitory seasons - spring and fall duking it out! It's the 101 Cookbooks roasted butternut and farro salad making time with those strawberries. But it worked!

And then I made Vcon red and white bean seitanic jambalaya with Old Bay-spiced Julie Hasson sausages, sauteed collards and french bread --- ooooooh, if only I could eat like this every night! It's funny, cause I loathed sausages as on omni (they tasted like grease and salt and ACK, parts), but I'm a nut for the gluten kind. Everyone got sick the day I made this so I was a little aghast at the mass amount of food left over, but it made killer leftovers all week, and people kept pulling it out of the fridge as if seeing it for the first time with renewed interest in the smoky goodness.

Another perk to cooking at home - there are always random things around that need using up that I can be happily surprised by. Like a half tin of peaches! I had to make the Fatfree Vegan peach upside-down cake of course, which CAN be quartered, it can be done! I admittedly put a splash of canola in this, but that was a teaspoon maybe, and it came out like almost like a peach donut, if that makes sense. Really really good! I'd want to experiment with cornmeal I think, when I try again with real peaches.

Yummmm, Vcon curried carrot dip made my crackers sing! It should be called pâté, really, it's that good. Especially with parsley on Ryvita.

And a barbecue came up, I wanted to make margarita cupcakes, but I'm SO glad I made mini jalapeno-onion corn muffins instead. Portability-wise, much better, and much more casual. I think I described the heat of the peppers as "haunting" and I stand by that. I wasn't sure if they would work out, since I used rinsed pickled jalapenos instead of fresh (+ sugar / - salt to make up for that), but they DID work and the end result was pretty addictive.

We had zombie day dinner very late this year so here's the holiday plate! Steamed fresh asparagus, black bean and mango salad, rosemary roasted potatoes, salad with lots of fruits and toasted hazelnuts, and leftover tofu scramble, yum!

Aaaaand.... I did in fact make the cupcakes! The orange and redcurrant ones! OMG SO MOIST AND DELISH. wee! (ha ha, as my memory fades so does my ability to articulate). They were springy, poppable, juicy and tender-good, ya.


Phew, backlog of photos done, hurray! It was a bit of a week!

sweet teeth, mexican sammies and salty things

Eek, I have a bunch of photos and the memories are fading by the second, I should get right into my ovening activities for my last few days in Ottawa --

I was actually sick of baking when I threw this together, but can you possibly guess why one would make a batch of ppk graham crackers if not for something spectacular in the future? Those with an eye for pie will like the final destination of these cookies! (also these ARE in my top ten favourite cookies ever and might have made them anyway, even if I did have zero luck finding honey-less graham crackers in the store).

And a dinner at my dad's is not complete without a tray of mysterious cupcakes carefully towered on a pretty tray and ready for omni appraisal (usually, "oooh, something frosted!!"). I wanted to make the orange pudding cupcakes from VCtotW, but I didn't have orange juice, so I decided to be intrigued by the apparent roll of the dice that is the V-con Jelly Donut Cupcakes.

Turned out well! Only 2 craters and I kinda thought they were cute. Tastewise they were nutmeg-y and very sweet, maybe heavier than I like normally, but definitely donut-esque. Sis liked them enough to eat 3 and tell me to make ones with frosting next time. :P

Oh yeah, she also requested a cake. In the middle of a jigsaw puzzling session, I offer (as I do) to make her something to eat, and she says cake. SUCH A GOOD REQUEST. And I refuse to use a recipe, and throw flour and oft-used ingredients around in such a way as to come out with.... a damned good teeny tiny cake thing. That I eyeballed. So cool. (that's peanut butter swirl on top and a tasty carob-chip dome in the middle. We all agreed it would rock the universe with a fudge layer, too bad I can't recreate it, haha)

My last morning we hit the Wild Oat bakery for breakfast and I shoot this terrible photo of the mmmnummy El Oxuaca sandwich. Yes, I pronounced the X when I ordered it. No, I haven't been to Me-hee-co. For absolute certain I melted for the combination of sundried tomato tapenade + black bean spread + avocado, tomato, cilantro and greens on nutty multigrain bread that had travelled about five or six metres from the oven to hit my table. Good stuff.

Having filled our bellies with sound food and zinging with health, it stood to reason that a trip to Sugar Mountain might be just the thing to ruin all that sprout-eating. Yay! I got aniseed balls (my favourite) and salted licorice. But I couldn't eat the licorice! Yes, I checked at home and there's our old friend beeswax stuck on the outside of that lovely salty sweet like a microscopic force-field of candy denial. It's a very good thing I discovered that the chinese salted licorice-y plums I bought the other day (called Li Hing Mui apparently) are infinitely superior to regular salted licorice, so I don't mind so much now and I just suck on dried fruit. :)

Also, I made the Smlove. (graham cracker speculation can be laid to rest now).

I didn't like it as much as I thought I would... It was kinda like chewing on a big wad of baking chocolate... but I AM weird and have been known to dislike fantastic things. Am I kicked out of veganism now? :D