Swell Vegan Sweet Potatoes #1

Yum! Amazing! Could I gush more? I should! I was fortunate enough to be a tester for the very talented A-K of the Swell Vegan blog, and I've just fallen in love with her Sweet Potato & Black Bean Burgers with Millet and Leeks! They're so delicious, with a sweet note of almond butter, some spicy mexi-kick, a nice meaty bite and very easy to make. I usually douse my burgers in nayo and ketchup, but not this time! Condiments like that t'would be sacrilege in this case, as they're plenty flavourful enough on their own (though her suggestion of guacamole would be verrrrry nice, I'm thinking). They firm up nice, too!

Aren't they pretty? There was much (much) finger licking going on during forming of these things. I can't wait to get on the scone recipe....

And yesterday I wanted lentil soup but also not to work very hard, so I made the vcon Ancho Lentil Soup. Which was good, but I kinda wish it were spicier, or the ancho flavour more pronounced (and I used a huge one). Or even had vegetables in it of any kind? The pineapples were a fun touch, though.

Aaaaand, I promised myself a bar of Terra Nostra Rice Milk Chocolate on Zombie Jesus Day but got sidetracked by florentine'd tofu and other foods that AREN'T CHOCOLATE (insane, I know). So I fixed that and bought a bar, and woah! This is some special milky-mouth-melt action! I think dark is still my absolute favourite, but it's an utter treat to reach into the chocolate drawer (yes, I have one of those - usually 2 or 3 bars open at any given time... for emergencies!) and pull out milk chocolate. *grin*

fresh bread and tofufish

I could so get into the habit of making bread more often... I always dismiss the idea, thinking that chapatis are more of a single girl kind of food. But sometimes it's just healing to the soul, you know? Something about snarfing fresh baked bread with a bit of Earth Balance is such a treat. Better than cake. I'm so serious.

I used the rustic bread recipe from the Freshloaf site, except with more whole wheat flour and gluten flour, and ooooh, was it good! I think I'm still partial to this recipe, but the freshloaf one was easier to work with and made twice as much, so thar ya go.

My oven is really stupid and it jumps all over the dial during the simplest of baking procedures, so the initial rise could have been a bit better. But they still rose like crazy. And smelled like heaven!

Yep. Perfect lunch. (not pictured, copious amounts of EB and some mayo for dipping veggies)

I'm not always suzie simpleton, though. And remember the 3 bricks of tofu? Well, the first one was seaweed flavoured, which I'd never tried before, so I mushed up a batch of asian-style tofu salad that turned out tasting exactly like tunafish! So weird, yet so nostalgically delish.

Forget the plain veg lunch - TOFUFISH is my new favourite. I've had it 3 days running now.
(I'm saving the recipe for a cookzine, I think!)

And brick number two was medium-firm, so I figured I'd give Susan's crustless tofu quiches a go (seeing as everyone vegan with a muffin tin has tried them and professed their awesomeness from rooftops and stuff). They are wonderful! Much like the tofufish, they're shockingly quiche-y in flavour. I had some issues getting them to stay intact (and it turns out I'm not the only one), but I'm pretty sure it was an oven issue, cause the ones that got good time under the parts of the coil that actually work were perfect. I think I can stop looking for a go-to quiche recipe, actually. I'm gonna throw this stuff in a crust next time I go home and seriously please some omnis!

5 Things. Or you know, 10 or 15.

It's friday again! woooooo!

In recent news, I've finally started talking on the ppk (I am upforair, hear me spod!), and I've also been tagged again to reveal 5 things about myself - by S. of The Student Stomach, AND Chelsea from No Whey Jose!, and apparently there's no insisting that I've already done this, oh no - I must bore you once more with the randomest of random me-facts that I can think of. The meme is cumulative! And so I list...

1. I used to have dreads until pretty recently. Loooooooong dreads. (about six years of growth maybe?)

2. As a kid I would eat ANYTHING if it was chocolate. Baking chocolate, waxy wedding favours hidden in the closet, smarties that were most definitely rancid, leftover dried up frosting, and yes, even easter eggs....

3. I like to go to summer festivals in the woods, and camp, and make vegan food, and dance to psy-trance music. The OM reunion festival especially.

4. My favourite band is Depeche Mode. (I'm aware of how awful that is)

5. I'm currently trying to quit smoking - I smoked half a pack a day for 7 years, but I've cut it down to 3 or 4 a day in the last few months. The only problem is stopping entirely, 'cause every time I try I get insomnia so bad I sleep maybe an hour a night. :/

6. I wanna be famous. For art! I used to stress over what direction my life should take (art or food? ART OR FOOD, WOMAN?!). But now I hardly think it matters. Hell, if I work in a bakery to pay the rent and keep my art a pure and personal thing, that's just great with me!

7. I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.

8. I'm currently debating moving out of my 2-bedroom to live in a 20-person coop downtown. They dumpster dive, make collective vegan meals, run workshops, have a bike room, compost room, dj booth, library, meditation wing....... I dunno. Maybe. It's all pretty inspiring, but I'd have to leave Satchmo-cat behind.... and I've been known to REALLY like my alone time. We'll see.

9. My sister and I burst into song pretty constantly. Our favourite is rambling off all the lyrics to REMs "it's the end of the world as we know it" while not breaking a sweat. :)

10. I've never tried vegan cheese!

Whew! Okay, that was fun. Now I suppose I must taggggg... Stonielove, Comfort Food Vegan, Seitan Is My Motor, Rural Vegan, VeganCowGirl, To Live and Eat in LA, rocket ship go!, Hugger Food, Bigmouth Strikes Again, Vegan Deliciousness, and ummm... has anyone tagged Cakespy yet? If I oopsed and any of you guys have already done this, well guess what, you have to do it again just like I did! It's the neverending internet meme of better acquaintance!! ("noooooooo!", she says dramatically)

Er right, sorry. I made Susan's tofu quiches too, but I'll wait for tomorrow to take sunlit pictures. They were so quichey!

tofu tofu tofu... buns!

Just a quick 'fu-centric update -- pictured here is the marinade for v-con spicy tempeh and broccoli rabe pasta. Tempeh around here is about as precious as gold (I've tasted the stuff, oh, maybe once), so I stood in tofu instead. Worked really well, and I'm a sucker for fennel and spice, so I'll probably be using this marinade for other stuff, too.

Yummmmmmy! Probably my favourite pasta dish in recent memory. Chewy, pleasantly bitter from the rabe, spicy and just, well, good.

(I should also mention that the spirally nature of the pasta is oh-so mandatory for getting crumbly bits of fried goodness into every nook and cranny of every bite. OH SO mandatory! :p)

And what goodness could this gooey bowl of fruit-glue be????

Hot cross buns! I used Carla's recipe from But Did They Eat It?, except I used raisins, apricots, currants and candied ginger (instead of raisins, blueberries and cranberries). So much fun to make! I used to adore these things, even more than easter chocolate. You can get chocolate any time, right? But spicy fruited buns were special, even the storebrand kind that we got. I also found out that they're suitably pagan!! The cross was originally a Saxon thing, and it represented the four phases of the moon, so I felt gloriously faithful to my hippie-dippy roots and munched warm buns with my buddies who weren't expecting sunday baked goods at all! (unexpected baked goods are SO the best kind).

And the second half of tofu brick got lovingly transformed into v-con tofu florentine, which made a fantastic Eostre/Easter brunch. I was especially taken with the broiled tofu - I think I've been under-doing my tofu all this time! Granted, I usually like it creamier (rawer?) than super firm, but it was cool to cut it into steaky little pieces for a change. And cheeze + spinach + tomatoes + taters = loooooove.

In other news....

I stumbled onto tofu on sale today and now I'm the proud owner of 3 (!!?) bricks. Oh dear.... ^_^;

hey, this is one of those day-in-the-life posts!

I'll level will you guys - I am not a friday go-er out-er. I dunno, just doesn't happen! Mind you, mondays and wednesdays and the occasional sat. will find me sloshed or at least pretending to be witty since that's when my favourite people have their days off work. But yeah, that's why I'm posting about beans on a friday night, for the record, no I'm not self-conscious about it!! (ha ha, maybe). I usually make a special dinner and I watch a movie or read experimental lit, drink insane amounts of tea.... post on my blog. The usual stuff. Listen to the hotspot greek restaurant next to my building entertain scads and hordes of polished, smoking merry people peruse their fish and block traffic whilst wearing crazy things like high heels and 3-piece suits. Which is legitimately entertaining, and I'll probably miss the noise real bad when I move. I also avoid doing schoolwork and awkwardly segue into botany with no warning at all....

My tomato sprouts grewed! This is so so so revolutionary since every plant I've ever had has died a horrible shrivelled death, and I've harboured fantasies of a fire escape garden since the day I got one. A fire escape, that is. It's gonna rule so bad! I love these guys and I've added them to the morning routine, getting water right after Satchmo-cat does. I know they're a little crowded, but I'm gonna wait for some 'true' leaves before I try to transplant them. Whatever 'true' leaves are. I read that somewhere. Anyway, I love my sprouts, they're so awesome. They're gonna have radish, green bean, spinach, carrot and parsnip friends, too, and there are some herb seeds next to the radiator just waiting to unfurl their fineness and be all like, "hello! I'm fragrant! yay!"

Oh boy, I'm a nerd. XD

Lunchtime, and there was some crazy voodoo going on with this soup, by the way. I've made black bean soup before (okay, it's been a while), and maybe it was because this time I saved every last drop of luscious bean-gravy that I could - I used half home-cooked beans that I had in the fridge already (plus liquid), and half canned stuff (plus liquid!) but the velvet awesome that this became... hoboy. I just shovelled and felt loved from the inside by thousands of thick happy beans. Does that sound weird? Oh V-con, the things you make me think....

I don't really want to wonder why this happened. Is it natural? Is it hormones? Are a secret race of frankenberries (hey, wait a second...) gonna rise up out of their plastic boxes and start absorbing nearby fruit around to become MEGABERRIES??????

Only my generous grocer will know, I guess. He was selling these for 80 cents a lb. I know! SO making a pie, maybe kittee's pie, which I've wanted for my ownsome since I saw it last summer. (either that or just buy box upon box of strawberries and eat them like it's going out of style, which is pretty much what I've been doing)

And this is an old photo, but to be fair I did finish these tonight so I guess it belongs in a post about friday eatings, right? Yeah, so leftover pickle juice... if you boil cut up vegetables in it until they're tender and then drop everything back in the jar you get badass custom pickles. Which I eat slathered in harissa, it's like reaching in the fridge for a stick of dynamite. :D

And super healthy soup for lunch requires some balance, ne? I had apples to use up. I like crisp (actually of all desserts this IS my youth). So I made crisp for dinner. I tried to not use so much sugar, but the candied ginger really wanted to join the party, and if I was making this for company I probably would have tripled the amount it was so good in there. The apples could have been tarter, but hey, that's what I had, and I don't think the mushy Macs had ever received better treatment than being baked up with almonds and cinnamon and looooove, nope.

*cue the greeks shouting opa! from downstairs*

Yay friday. XD

vegnomiconstraveganza, pt. 47, 48, 49...

I do have other cookbooks, I swear I do... but somehow I just keep coming back to the Vcon. It's like this personal challenge thing to finish it, and it narrows my weekly grocery ideas down to a manageable level, definitely. Plus it tastes fantastic, like 98% of the time, can't go wrong. :)

The prettiest salad award goes to the black bean, mango and quinoa salad, and also the "makeable in ohhh 5 minutes" award. I rank both factors pretty high, I'll be making variations on this for years to come, I think. (and each subsequent salad will rock more than this one, because I was using up iffy mango and tasteless red peppers in it. and it was still great!)

I don't know why I torture myself with risotto-making plans on my off-days. Maybe because on the other side of all that stirring I feel like I've climbed a mountain. A mountain made of patience! And about 1 more cup of water than the recipe called for. So yeah.... this is one tasty concoction. I've never even had regular risotto, but this one (the asparagus and lemongrass risotto) was worth every moment of glazed-over-eyes and stirring, stirring, stirring.......... seriously! Something really nice and exotic about it (and yet comforting like only a big ol bowl of creamy rice can be). It was even good the next day.

And what does one do when the fridge is down to carrots, celery and peas? Make pot-pie of course! This was kinda iffy for me, actually, but I'm not much of a 'beef-style' person normally, and I think the toughness of the crust was my fault since I followed normal crust procedure and not what was written in the book (I added water, chilled, and rolled. Instead of adding water, rolling and chilling). I mean, it was good, but not my usual bag, you know? I'm actually kinda curious what recipes will be left for me to force myself through when I get near the end of the Vcon - I counted today and I'm 1/5th through the book!!! Whew! (and what happens when the cookie and brunch book come out? Liz explodes, basically. XDDD)

EDIT: The crust wasn't tough it just wasn't browned enough! And I dropped a bit of water in the filling before I made the second one, to up the gravy factor, and went mad with the pepper. MUCH better this time. Extremely yum. And oh lordy did I feel like June Cleaver while making this, did I mention that? The novelty of that alone will probably get me to potpie it up sometime again in the future, maybe chicken-style next time though, cause those are the freezer-burnt memories of my childhood. White sauce-y, nutritionally void, gooey crusted toasty gems... zomg I'm getting nostalgia-drool all over! haha, anyway....

happy pats, and some recent food

I have no idea if I got the Isles in me. Me mum says I do, but that could be wishful thinking and a tendency to believe that a british heritage means ALLLL that area had a hand in the genetic making. But yeah... doesn't mean I can't pretend. Although this shamrock charm cookie thing is a one time deal - bloody blasted darned canapé-sized sugar cookies take FOREVER, plus icing time. I had ghostly premonitions of my life as an unappreciated mother-of-two slaving over bakesale wares to limited applause. Never again! (but adorable. very very adorable.) I used NoWheyKatie's recipe from the ppk (I can't find the link, though! ;_;), and added lime juice and zest to make them, um... more green.

Lunch today - I ran out of pita and a little light went off in my head, 'cause I have a few kilos of whole wheat flour sitting in my kitchen and I ought to be making chapati way more often. Not to mention that the flavour and texture are loads better than most storebought pitas. I dumped leftover potsticker dipping sauce all over this and the chapati stayed watertight! Go fresh bread, eh? There's also a leftover kidney bean burger in there, plus sriracha and other trimmings. Oh, and green beans (I added them later). Call me weird, but they absolutely sing on sandwiches. Maybe not the best *shape* for it, but they're all like, "woah, what's that crunchy niceness?"

Veganomicon roasted eggplant and tomato stew with chickpeas, with soft poppyseed polenta - this fulfilled a craving I've had stored away since the last time I made polenta (and kinda botched it). At 17. So I've been craving polenta and roasted vegetables for a long time. The whole thing was awesome, probably so especially good because I roasted the tomatoes along with everything else. I want to make this again, actually. Maybe right now. :P
(Oh, and when you microwave the leftovers for just a bit too long, everything melts together and becomes absolutely LUSCIOUS.)

And this recipe has been at the top of my list since I first got the V-con - the greek-style tomato-zucchini fritters and cashew cucumber sauce! Holy cremini, they are exactly as wonderful as I wanted them to be. They are rich little fritters of awesome, and they have mint in them! (also, the tofu-paste itself is an experience not to be missed --- don't let me put you off the whole idea, but man, did it look/feel like grey cookie dough!) I'm gonna par-bake a bunch and have them in the freezer, I get this feeling they'd sub in for falafal really nicely. Oh, and the cucumber sauce got licked off of every implement that came into contact with it (spatula, spoon.... yes, stickblender. .... unplugged, though! :D)