Brunching, making chutney, crispy cookies, and fudge-hearts!

I've been raw for 5 days now!!  I'll save writing about that for the next post, but in the meantime here's a whole bunch of photos from the past few weeks I never got around to posting but are kinda making me hungry right now...

Allright, we've got up there... chili cashew dosas (my favourite recipe so far from Vegan Brunch), with a notably amazing chutney I made from the back of Indian Cookery, ie: this book ------>

Which is basically my favourite indian cookbook ever, even for the chutney chapter alone, which covers pretty much anything you'd want to stew and preserve in a super authentic, full of interesting tidbits kind of way.  Like, that peach chutney I ate with the dosas had paprika, poppy seeds, cloves, green chiles and cashews, oh my!  Totally easy to make, too.

Another perk of making chutney is that you get to re-use little jars and give them away after they've sat for a month on the shelf looking very pretty.  On the right is the peach, and in the middle is a pineapple chutney with about a ton of ginger and garlic in it, yay!

Okay, what else - this was astoundingly good.  It looks kind of grey, I'll admit, but so so so good.  Velvety corn creamy chinese wedding soup, or something like that, with bits of savoury tofu floating in it and fresh peas.  It's Bryanna's recipe, and incidentally my introduction to creamed corn (I'm a fan, it turns out).

Oh, and Singapore green beans from Tropical Vegan Kitchen in the background.  Once that stuff marinates it's addictive!

East Coast Coffeecake for an omni BBQ!  Plus adorable sign. :)

I loved how I could even make this in my dad's kitchen - it's the sign of a perfectly adaptable baked good.  (flour, sugar, oil, check!)

My favourite PB cookies ever, are the Crispy PB Cookies from Extraveganza with the cereal flakes inside.  They crackle like pop rocks and have that perfect dense chew, and are so easy to make.  I usually quarter the recipe and make them into the size of quarters, and have them as little pick me ups throughout the day.

Polenta Rancheros from V.Brunch, with noticeable flecks of toasted coriander that perfume the whole thing, it's really nice, especially when made with fresh tomatoes cause that's all I had.  Surprisingly light for a bean dish!

White bean, mango and rosemary tacos!!!  My surprising invention that worked, plus some leftover Tempeh Wingz made with tofu, cold and chewy out of the fridge.  (That red sauce is illegally finger-licking.... wow.)

Fresh organic vegetable pasta spirals with a sauce made from tomatoes, raisin-sage sausages, capers, zucchini & basil, NOM.

 

Banana Rabanada!!!  Not only is this delicious but no refined sugar, either, so it's perfectly viable to eat for lunch!  Isa was spot on about the syrup & cinnamon-mopping, too.

(Heart-shaped) Fudge-pops from How It All Vegan, since I found my ancient copy in my mom's garage a few months ago and figured I'd give it a whirl again.  These were sooooo good, and almost exactly like fudgesicles, which is no mean feat!

Sausage and eggplant quiche from V.Brunch with a homemade crust I put too much EB in but was still okay.   And I think that's about it for cooked stuff!  Phew, sorry for the cursory writing about it all, too.  Somehow I think the pictures speak loud enough that it's okay I don't remember the details, plus this raw food thing is making me spacey... zomg.  It's great, but I'll be glad to bring it down to maybe 60% raw after the next few days.  Can't wait to show you what that's been like, though! 

part 2 of Eats Gone By ~ crepage, whizzed up avocado, and unseasonably warm pie

Wee!  So - I'm here drinking my mint & mushroom tea with large slices of ginger dropped into it because I was a little too brave this afternoon and added some (a lot of) questionable sauerkraut to my hummous wrap.  It was worth it at the time... but now I need the tea.  Yeah, white stuff in a sauerkraut jar is no good... 

Anyway.  More old pictures (I swear I'm getting through them, I do!)  I made crepes!  I made buckwheat versions of Veganomicon crepes, and stuffed them full of Columbian red beans with plantain (from Terry's Vegan Latina), some broccoli too, and an avocado-corn-cream sauce that is essentially this recipe that I'd had mentally bookmarked since I went vegan in high school.  Seriously that long ago. (*oouuuuuurrrrrgh.... waveof nauseau happening......RIGHT NOWurg*)  XPPP

cough.  ok better.

Anyway.  avocado cream sauce!  I ate in on pasta first, but it's way more economical to show it here, even if it does look a little like ralf.  tee hee.  I swear it was tasty.

And then I had leftover crepes with sauteed peaches, coarse raw sugar, cranberry jam, and some malted soy drink mixed with enough water to make a sweet cream.  Oh, frugal AND delicious, and even maybe healthy, how 'bout that?  I love dinners that revolve around fructose.

Speaking of which, I made a tiny sweet potato cashew cream pie with a lone spud, because it's just been so damned cold it seems not very weird to make food like this.  Plus, it has a pumpkin seed crust a la Extraveganza, which in my weird mind makes it kinda summery.  And when you pop it in the freezer and eat slices of it cold like spiced ice cream...... *drooooolz*.  Also gives me a chance to use the tiniest fork ever imaginable that I picked up at a garage sale for specific things just like this.  Fairy pie technique!

From now on I make my own thai green curry paste.  Has anyone tried the yellow variety?  I almost did but then I chickened out and returned it for a jar of the classic green, and while it resulted in a slurpily good skillet of hyper-spice, well... I'm still curious about the other variety.  Maybe next time I'll get the yellow (which boasts coriander and white pepper, yum) and just grind up lots of green chiles into it myself.  I ended up throwing like, 3-4 extra thai peppers into this one anyway, cause I kind of like my thai curries to practically send off sparks into the atmosphere.  Anything less and why bother, I say!

Speaking of skillets -- I made the Vcon leek & bean cassoulet finally.  That's how cold it's been around here!  It's mid-June and I'm still checking my bag for extra gloves, just in case... ack.  So on a particularly blustery and charcoal-grey day I decided snap it I'm just gonna make a big old comforting stew and I am SOOOOO glad I did.  It was the perfect antidote to my standard rut of cooking with loads of citrus & spice --- the cassoulet is all.... comfy like a big herbal pillow.  And far too easy to pleasantly spoon down while cuddled up in a blanket reading school work things.  Very very nice...

(oh, and peas/leeks/white beans were replaced with corn/extra onion/black&red beans to good effect)

Enough for now?  Probably... there's red velvet, kittee muffins, cold soba, successful souvlaki rice to come, though.  *phew* 

Oh, what the heck, one more -- I made Scotter Muffins, yay!  I don't remember what variety at all, probably apple and banana and cinnamon swirl.  Gosh, I love muffins, don't you?  They're so balanced, like the medium spectrum between the best of all baked goods.  Or maybe I'm just a fan. ^_^b

3 ways to get protein in your system, and 1 way to make a day sweeter

I'm a huge advocate of switching around protein in any given recipe. As (I believe) most Canadians can tell you, tempeh is a little bit dear up here in the north, so I almost always substitute tofu and that usually works just fine. A little less... fermenty, but more sproingy*. In this case of the VwaV Sausage Crumbles I think it may have needed that extra bit of tempeh pungency, but anyway it was nice in a pita for lunch. Fennel is win, all the time.

(*look up "sproingy" in the dictionary and I guarantee there will be a nice block of tofu pictured there!)

Second favorite is for sure chickpeas, and I've even started to eat them out of cans, I love them so much. I should probably start soaking some now, actually... anyway, I was sick and in dire need of vegetables and honest food, and Dreena's Sweet Potato, Tomato & Chickpea Curry (real name?) was soooo tailor-made for the job. I added a dried chili for heat, replaced the zucchini with loads of kale, and sopped it up with some only slightly burnt brown rice. (my nose wasn't working very well and anyway, I like it crunchy! :P). I actually felt at least 63% healthier after eating this.

Leftover rice became little baked rice balls, from Extraveganza. They have tahini, ground almonds and dill, and I messed up by stirring the almonds right in instead of coating the balls, but fixed that with bread crumbs. Mmmm delicious breadcrumbs...

I had a hard time keeping these shaped - the mixture was very very sticky and err... ricey, but the flavour was really nice, and went super well with Tangerine Chipotle-Basil Hummus (my own special favorite concoction these days, and inspired by Mel, for sure).

I promised sweet, aaaand ---- here's the white flour I bought! Say "Hi," White Flour! ("Hi White Flour"). SO YUMMY. Dreena is cookie queen, they always come out with that great chewy bakery texture, and Anise Almond 5-Spice really *was* a nice break from chocolate, which was her selling point in the book. I think she needs to write a cookie book, because they're not giant fussy affairs to make, usually healthier than most, and always taste like something a bit more special than a mound of sugary dough. Mmm, I wish I had another one right now...

happy heart day. post heart day.

You know what? I like when muffins sink in the middle. It kinda makes you want to lean your head in right up to the pan and wonder... is it berry? Is it chocolate? Some other wondrous dark goo from the deep of the muffin? Okay, in this case I'll fess that it's blueberry, and I think you can even see the lavender flowers under it's chewy crust. I totally bombed making these muffins correctly; they had sunken middles, gooey middles, "over-done" edges, and the aforementioned mysterious depths - BUT I called them blondies and just let the yummy work itself out. Actually these are fantastic, my baking skills notwithstanding. (lemon blueberry lavender muffins from Extraveganza, for the record)

I've also been greatly enjoying an open can of coconut milk. Why didn't anyone tell me coconut milk was made of bliss? Man... it made teaching my little brother how to make tofu very very easy. And honestly, I think he may be better at it than I am! Those tofus in that thai coconut curry are succulent tofus - properly breaded and evenly browned. And I know that I'm not alone in considering the ability to make bean curd taste awesome is a necessary life skill to anyone, vegan or otherwise. I kinda felt like I had the 'good sister' hat firmly on.

Sorry I have to interrupt with an entry into the Liz Holding Food gallery.

MUFFIN VISION! SEE THROUGH!

I am horribly amused. :)

Entry number #2 in the gallery: Vietnamese spring rolls, which I've decided to live off of from now on.


Mostly because I can't imagine anything that sits better in my stomach. I haven't figured out why a handful of lettuce and noodles is so gosh darned filling, but there you go. It also could be that they're a thinly veiled excuse to eat loads of peanut sauce, which might be indeed why they are so filling. But seriously... favourite food ever? Rolls are close.

Reality though? This is what I eat every day. Practically these days. Hummus and salad, basically. And can you even believe I'd never made tabouli before, ever? I'm a VEGAN, I'm not sure how that's at all possible, but I managed to make it taste right, or better than right, because I put raisins and toasted walnuts on top and bulgur > couscous in my mind.

All right. I am obviously scattered today! I could blame the light food! I could blame Valentine's day! I might be in love. But that's another story! :D

when the weather looks like this...

I came home to this sight the other day. It was kind of funny, actually - I'd just trudged home through a blizzard with visions of hot stew in my head and what do I find but the storm decided to join me in my kitchen!

Ha, it was okay. I managed not to step in any of the puddles and was very very thankful for the crockpot stew I had put on the night before. Yeah, I actually used my crockpot! *shock* my mom would be proud. I had actually been so busy that I acted the great cliche and took it down off the highest shelf I have to put some veganomicon cholent-style ingredients together the night before.

I'm actually not sure if I'm sold on the tarragon + caraway thing... but it was warm and hearty and perfect at the time. (ie: full of potatoes). I added tabasco and corn, too.

Earlier than that (or later? oh I don't remember. sometime!) I made vcon lemon & pea risotto with roasted red peppers.

I don't know why people complain about leftover risotto! I actually thought this was tastiest cold out of the fridge, slurped up like cold lemony pudding. I'm weird, yes. I tried Risotto al Salto too, to try it (basically fried up like a fritter), which was fine. But nothing on the ice-cold stuff!

I posted about hoecakes before, so there isn't much to say about the big yellow thing on the plate - except maybe to amend my recipe to stress than fine cornmeal should be used in a hoecake. This one was coarse which did NOT work anywhere near as well, but ah you learn. The interesting bit, at least to me, is that grayish dip-like blob in the corner. It was very tasty! It's black bean & orange dip from ED&BV, and it's a little sweeter than a regular b.bean dip and really great on wraps and things.

In the midst of being busy I made some muffins to take to school. I wonder why I decided to make jammy muffins to put in my bag? Ha ha, anyway, they're hearty jam-dot muffins from Fran Costigan's second book. They're okay... I like that there's lots of toasted oats and sesame in them, and my mom's homemade plum jelly. A wee bit heavy, but I subbed some stuff so it could have been my bad.

Over christmas my dad bought me some veggie burgers for christmas eve Burger Night (woohoo!), which happened to be Amy's California Burgers. They're soooooo good! They don't taste a blessed thing like fakey meatstuff, but they DO taste like toasted bulger and mushrooms and loads of other great all-natural things. I had some on buns, and some on salad with tahini dressing and both ways were awesome. I had the last one today though, and I don't know what to do because I never buy pre-packaged food for myself but I think I've fallen in love!


And finally... we call this an economic birthday, or a belated one, or whatever. It's a full moon tonight and though it's neither of these boys' birthdays (although it's close), it's definitely always a good time for a chocolate jalapeno cake with ganache topping and strawberries inside. Yeah, I know!! It's another Extraveganza cake recipe and holy schlamoli, it's SO tender and delicious and soft peppery perfect, I tried a whole bunch of it that stuck to the cake tin. ^_^;

Word to the wise: the recipe mentions nothing about de-panning this cake, and in fact implies that it shouldn't be, I think, at least when you read the icing recipe along with it. I did anyway and it was a total headache cause it was so fluffy and sticky (and criminally delicious. did I mention that?), but I think it came through the operation 97% intact. Minus the chunks I ate. (I'm starting to think that being able to fix cake disasters is as useful as baking one that tastes good... :P)

Anyone else notice how the stuff on top kinda looks like a crab? Not planned! But I like it.

a fresh start involving beans

Happy new year everyone! Did you get kissed last night? I got a hug! :)

Maybe it was due to eating those lucky black eyed peas everyone goes on about. I've got no problem with an excuse to them, though, being all mushy and sweet and darned adorable with that little black spot. I found out later that the collards they're traditionally eaten with in the south symbolize paper money, so I missed out on that part, but do you see those basil leaves? Looks leafy and green to me! I even ate this all on lettuce, I'm probably set on the symbolic moolah front. Oh, and the beans themselves were a vegan version of Jukut Murab - a Balinese salad with coconut, tamarind, chile and lime and very very delicious - it's going into bean salad rotation and will definitely be gracing the table of a potluck sometime in the future. It's exotic and wonderful on the tongue and easy and healthy and cheap = win!

And speaking of inconceivably delicious food being actually very healthy - stuffed zucchini globes, Isa-style definitely qualify. How had I not made these yet? The millet here is basically a delivery device for tomato-y, olive-y, caper-y superflavour, which doesn't get any further up my alley. I ate the leftover millet rolled up in steamed red cabbage with a squish of lemon, which forgive me, may have been even tastier than the squash, and um... I even put this stuff on crackers. Recommended!

Oh Extraveganza, shall you be in all my posts and will I never mind? Yes. :)
Especially when you offer recipes like pear and cardamom pudding, zomg. I doubled the cardamom and I shouldn't have done that, because it became somewhat impossible to NOT have perfumed vanilla sweetness for dinner two night in a row. I am considering making more...

Finally, eek, I made saucy asian takeout style food! I can see why people do this now... It's kind of a Gyudon (japanese beef and rice bowl) made with eggplant, as per Vegan Ronin's excellent adaptation, and somewhere between adding a splash of requisite sriracha and licking my bowl clean this was dreamy good eating. Even the rice happened to be purple in aubergine agreement! Goodness, I think now I'm gonna have to make General Tao's tofu and cross that dish off my lifetime list now that I'm all hooked on sweet thickened sauces. YUM!


Bonus picture >>>>>>>>>>>>>
My favourite salad these days involves green apple and crushed up organic Wheat Thins, which was inspired by fatoush, if you can believe it. The crackers are sweeter than the apples, and with a noochy citrus dressing it's a perfect snack.

(can you believe I got organic crackers at the dollar store? madness! I'm not complaining though)

xmas means sugar, right?

(pumpkin oatmeal cookies, molasses snaps, sugar cookie sticks, meltaway shortbread, sugar-plum stars, chocolate thumbprints with cranberry or chestnut, PB and chocolate bonbons, PB-fruit-coconut-almond bonbons, and 12th century nutmeg spice cookies)

Merry season everyone! Those cookies up there are the symbols of festivity I decided to make lest there be no christmas cheer in my heart at all. Not to say I didn't have a wonderful and family-filled trip home, but somehow... I'm feeling distanced from the traditions. No big surprise really... age and a certain mistrust of buying shit will take their toll, making it a very good thing that my heart will always ring with passion for cooking at least. And so, there was the night of a million cookies. Or rather, maybe six or seven batches. It was AWESOME. Just me and a table full of flours and extracts and whisks, neatly and precisely churning out dough after dough, and pulling perfectly browned trays out of my mom's oven (that actually WORKS). I was so surprised it only took me a couple of hours - with the notable exception of the shortbread, which had me up to wee hours with the hand-whipping and chilling and 45 minute baking times but it was worth it in every way a mind can conceive. Move over butter - baking for so long turns EB into something intensely delicious, toasty and redolent and I'm glad I left it unadorned in it's proud "cadillac-of-margarines" glory.

Then I made a cake, inspired in large part by these lilliputian mandarins my mom picked up. It's the mandarin-orange-spice cake that has it's own full colour glamour shot in extraveganza, and it's glossy photo is more than deserved. The cake itself isn't over sweet, instead it's spicy and moist (and very christmas-y!), and a perfect vehicle for rich almond butter citrus icing that tasted a lot like magic. Should have been cashew, but you use what you have. Almonds have more personality anyway!

Giant slice for me? Oh, you shouldn't have! No really, you take this slice, I'll have the rest of the cake...... :D

It's a christmas day tradition at my dad's to have non-vegan belgian waffles with berries and cream, and every year previous I've made myself happy with (actually pretty good) fruit salad and maybe a tofurkey brat fried up with ketchup. But this year I was offered a spot in the waffle maker and I figured why not? I made the ppk apple waffles that were so good my step-mom jumped on the leftovers and I started to seriously consider spending my mall money certificates on a novelty waffle iron. They even picked up a bottle of whippy edible oil topping that in very very small doses (ie: once a year) I actually enjoy.

Later christmas dinner, the photo of which I considered not posting even at all. It's a little smooshy! But yummy. So much so! I made red wine and maple baked tempeh, roasted potatoes with mushroom gravy, sesame broccoli, butternut squash with fresh thyme and garlic oil, rye stuffing, roast parsnip, turnip and carrot, dill and avocado salad, and lime-glazed beets. Just excellent, I was moaning all over the tempeh, which is always a treat to me, and even managed to save room for dessert - an apple cherry crumble with almonds and pecans that I will NOT post because it looks a little like something undergoing surgery but I can assure you was almost addictive with some Vitasoy Holly Nog splashed on top. (Said Nog also made my oatmeal xmasserrific my whole week home, I love that stuff.)

Here's to a new year and to Xmas being through and to all a goodnight (I can't wait to get back to school!!!)


EDIT: At Joanna's request, and because it's available online anyway, I'm posting the Mandarin cake recipe.

Mandarin Orange Spice Cake

1 3/4 cups spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp each nutmeg, cloves, and allspice
2/3 cup maple syrup
4 tbsp canola or other natural oil
3 tbsp mandarin orange juice, freshly squeezed (about 3 mandarins)
1 tbsp mandarin orange zest
1 tsp fresh gingerroot, grated
3/4 cup rice milk or soy milk
1 recipe Creamy Mandarin Icing

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. In a smaller bowl combine the maple syrup, oil, orange juice and zest, ginger and soy milk and whisk together to emulsify the wet ingredients. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix with a fork gently; do not beat. Pour into a lightly oiled and floured 8x8-inch cake pan, a Bundt pan, or an 8-inch springform pan. Bake 35-40 minutes. Check to see if cake is done by inserting a toothpick into the centre of cake; it should come out clean. Let cool on a rack before removing from the pan. Decorate the cake with Creamy Mandarin Orange Icing and garnish with edible flowers such as tangerine gems or calendula.

Creamy Mandarin Icing

1/2 cup soy margarine
1/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup cashew butter
1 tbsp mandarin orange zest

Blend all ingredients in a food processor on high for several minutes until very creamy and thoroughly combined. Chill icing for 1-2 hours. Spread onto thoroughly cooled cake and decorate with grated orange rind and calendula flowers. Keep cake chilled until serving. Variation: Add 1/2-1 tsp each of beet powder and turmeric to dye the icing an orange colour. Add a small portion of each at a time as you blend the icing, until you reach a desired colour.

from sloppy to dainty and persimmon between

Gorgeous! Floating rice in big white space! It's the hunan fried rice from Vegan Fire & Spice, which is actually pretty fantastic. It actually has flavour, and I especially love how the tofu pellets explode with sherry goodness. I switched up the vegetables completely and can see myself pulling out this basic recipe to accomodate any old veg & rice, cause it's really yum and takes like 2 minutes to bash up.

Equally fast and furious - the snobby joes from the Veganomicon on spaghetti squash with baked paprika yam fries from Extraveganza. I'm so officially hooked on spaghetti squash right now, it's like noodles except refreshing. It had been so long since I'd had it that I forgot you could actually slurp the stuff, and that became so much the deciding factor in my new love for it. Veg! You can slurp! Everyone wins. :)

Persimmon blondies!! As luscious as they sound and look, they're a tester recipe for Hannah's upcoming book. I am super lucky that things like this freeze well, or I'd have polished off the pan already. :p

And I picked up a cool looking bag of assorted herbs in chinatown the other day. It was only 70 cents and I kind of saw it as a taster pack of a bunch of exotic ingredients I might never get around to trying all in one spot. Like... lotus seeds, dioscorea, dried lily bulb, fox nuts, dried longan and polygonatum. And a big pouch of barley!

I assumed it was for boiling with chicken for to make extra-healthified chicken soup (at least according to my book on asian cooking) so I just skipped the chicken part and boiled it for 45 minutes or so. The funny thing is that I went for a quick grocery run in the middle - yes I am that bad and I leave the stove on while I'm gone sometimes ^^; - and when I came back the apartment smelled so nutty and sweet and... quite like chicken soup. Strange! But not bad. I strained it out because the solids were tasteless, added some tamari, green onion and tofu cube and it was strangely very satisfying. Not a taste sensation or anything, but it felt good going down the throat and I could see myself picking up a pack the next time I get a cold.

You're also gonna think I'm weird, maybe, but this salad was a great accompaniment to barley broth. I didn't know that endive, pear and pecan (in my case walnut) was such a classic salad! This is the veganomicon version, but I'm pretty interested in playing around with the components, maybe adding some fermented tofu as a blue cheese element, or tossing in some roasted beets like Emilie did. It's also so pleasingly in season, I love that. So far, winter hasn't been half bad!