Raw Week, RawR!

Ani Phyo-style goji coconut almond cookies

I'm almost done my raw week.  It's been easy in a lot of ways (the food is just as delicious as any "normal" food), and in other ways a bit of a challenge (detox symptoms, having to throw out lots of food that spoiled unexpectedly fast, the whole nut soaking thing, the whole raw food extremism thing)...

It's actually going to be bittersweet easing back into regular food, I think.  I don't feel any huge inclination towards it at the moment, even though I know that someone as flighty and spacey as me really does flourish better on the standard vegan fare.  But that said... I should get onto the food of this week, more or less a meal by meal replay of all the lego-bright dishes I got to have the time of my life constructing.

Okay, so this is technically a pre-raw warm-up (haha, warm up, is that a pun?).  I made a carrot/tomato/miso soup to see how I'd feel about it all, thick with pumpkin seeds and bowl-licking good, and so....

I jumped in headfirst.  Would you look at that?  It looks like a deep-sea fish it's so pretty.  A lot of green, but worth it.  The sprouted chickpea hummous in those wraps kept me going for snack times for the first few days, and the minty cucumber dressing from Vegan World Fusion doubled as a salad topper and a soup, before spoiling way too fast as these enzymic dishes are wont to do.  Alas, alas!

Avocado was also a life-saver, as I never felt warmer or more satisfied than after a meal that incorporated it.  I mashed this one up with rice vinegar, soy sauce and ginger, and made showy crunchy (astoundingly good) sushi rolls.  And a fruit salad with loquat and date syrup beside it.

Breakfast of day 2: the incarnation of my oatmeal habit!

Raw oats ground up in a spice grinder, with a heavy pinch of ground flaxseed, half a mashed banana, berries and lots of salt and cinnamon, left to soak overnight.  I'm keeping this one!  I'd been getting tired of regular oatmeal and this is perfect for summer and very laid back.  You have to choose fairly soft fruit for best results, but again - peaches, berries, tropical things - all available right now!  It's very nutty and satisfying to have for breakfast.

Lunch day 2: Zucchini bites with spicy hummous, a salad of shredded carrot, red pepper, soaked walnuts and red wine vinegar (yum!!), and broccoli tossed with cucumber dressing.

Dinner that night was my first green smoothie.  I will admit I thought it the concept very strange at first, at least before I took my first sip.  Is it totally an unabashedly weird that I love the taste of green things in my smoothie now?  It adds a neat texture and a resonant kind of garden note that makes it more of a meal to me.  Especially wonderful with banana and pomegranate juice, I might add.

I'm skipping breakfast reports because they're all variations on the raw oat groat thing, but...

Lunch day 3: A curried miso carrot dressing on spinach with avocado chunks and dried pineapple pieces - ZOMG.  Genius.  And some cucumber dressing in a bowl trying to be soup as I attempt to slurp it all up before it goes bad.  

Dinner 3: My attempt at flatbread without a dehydrator resulted in (of course) a lot of prematurely fuzzy food, but there was a small grace period where it was semi-firm enough to eat as bread and I made little sandwiches with homemade sumac tahini cheese, and some green beans tossed with organic stone-ground mustard and lemon.

Dinner day 4: pizza!

(lunch seems to be missing from the record)

The pizza is topped with sage-y sundried tomato marinara, green pepper, onions, pineapple, almond cheese, and artichoke hearts.

Lunch day 5: Possibly in the top 5 sandwiches I've ever eaten, is this Haiku Wrap from Juliano's contribution to The Complete Book of Raw Food.  It has avocado mashed with garlic, ginger and lemon topped with wakame, mustard, pickle, burdock, bell pepper, onion, corn and shoyu - and it's a magical, magical combination.  (carrot slaw with sprouted peanuts keeping the sammiches upright on either side).

Dinner 5: Another one of those raw standbys I never understood (like the green smoothie), was the zucchini pasta thing, but you know what?  It's pasta-like, and not salad-like as I thought it would be!  Really good, actually, enough to repeat it later.  And the things that look like eggs are crunchy turnip slices topped with nut cheese.

Lunch 6: Cabbage burrito-wraps with cumin and chili sunflower pate inside (along with corn and tomatoes and green onions and things).  With a side of Pringle lookalikes (but really it's delicious turnip) and nut cheese again for my new favourite take on nachos.  Soaking the slices in cold water gives them the perfect chip shape and makes them sweeter, too!

And that's not to say there were no sweets!  I made some tahini-geranium cookies, that I could upload but they look pretty much like little brown discs.  The brownies are gorgeous, though!  I ground up some sprouted and dried buckwheat into flour and combined it with dates, ground almonds, walnuts, carob powder, salt and vanilla and proceeded to nom NOM NOM them up because they were so amazing!!  I highly recommend the buckwheat flour thing, I have a container of the sprouts in my freezer right now and it gives things a more cake-like texture than the usual wodgy raw dessert texture.

And here's a plate full of desserts I took to a raw potluck last night.  Clockwise from the top left are salty sunflower seed cookies, then those buckwheat brownies with a banana-fudge frosting, then coconut-cashew-agave crusted pear tarts with gojis on top, and finally like orange & clove oatmeal raisin cookies!  So much fun, and so easy to just make a few servings of anything, and experiment all over the place!  I definitely got into the habit of whizzing up just a single cookie for after lunch sometimes when I needed something for my sweet tooth.

Potluck food itself was possibly the BEST vegan thing any non-vegan has ever made for when I came to dinner.  It was a sundried tomato-cashew romesco sauce over marinated eggplant and it was mindblowingly good.  I think it was from a book by the same people who did Raw Food/Real World, if you wanted to try it, and you might want to add extra orange juice like my friend did and eat every indulgence-soaked aubergine triangle with additional gusto for having done so.  :)

Day 7....

....   it's day 7?  It's the end of the week?

Do you realize I didn't realize that until about halfway through writing this post and counting up the dates?  Oh my goodness, I suppose that means I'm done and I should ground myself now.  Part of me wants to keep going, and in fact... *goes off to buy bananas for a few minutes*

* a few minutes later *

Well... on the way down the stairs to the market, oh what do I smell but buttery wafts of rice and faint hints of curry? and whoa-p, there goes MY 100% raw convinction!  That, and charred hot dogs on the street as I walked... and I'd like to feel like myself again, I think. :D

A few things I noticed, though, to sum up the week...

* it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive at all to eat raw.  I stuck mostly to almonds and sunflower seeds for nut protein, which can be relatively cheap.  And I didn't indulge in the condiments like nama shoyu and special apple cider vinegar or anything.  If anything it might have been cheaper due to me not buying coffee all the time.  OH YEAH I QUIT COFFEE FOR A WEEK.  !  Craziness.

* nut soaking liquid is super mucilagous and gross, and I'll probably soak most things now if I think of it beforehand.

* white wine was okay to drink, as was whiskey (although I'm pretty used to whiskey).  Red wine on the other hand, made me terribly achey for a whole day after drinking it, and then the ache turned into a kinda "detox ache" that I've still got in my calves when I bend over too far.  

* a couple drying racks set in front of a sunny window was my dehydrator, and it worked pretty well for cookies and buckwheat sprouts.  Terrible for bread though, and I wouldn't even try crackers.  Oh yeah, and sun tea!  Tasty stuff!  And not even that long to make, maybe a few hours in the sun for amber-steeped liquid.

* I caved once, for a bunch of artichokes I got for free, but wouldn't you?  All succulent and dipped in lime & olive oil???  I'd never tried artichokes before and it was my chance right there, so I don't feel bad.  And they are, by the way, not nearly as hard to make and eat as advertised and mysteriously sweet and I ate the stems too, YUM.

* Guess that's it!  And I'm so making pizza, man, like, soon.

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! 

Blueberry bliss, pea pancakes, and mousse.

(ps. sorry about the font in some parts of this post.  not sure why it went so wonky)

So if my blog tags are any indication at all (and amusingly, they often are), I'm more than a little mad for blueberries.  Dunno why exactly... it could be the bursting qualities... or the way they're so purple and freeze perfectly and are also called starberries?  And when you stick them in things people go "oooooooh" without fail, it's kind of funny!

When I saw this recipe for pea pancakes with blueberry basil dressing I knew knew KNEW I had to try it, it sounded the thing little fresh-showered elves would eat over tea and the latest forest news.  Lo and behold, it even looks like that sort of food, too!  Call me bowled over with technicolour, batman.  I wanna cook chromatically so much now!

Here's the veganization of it all.  The pea pancakes are almost perfect (I'd consider leaving out the cornstarch to keep the flavour brighter perhaps?).  The blueberry dressing is also pretty good, but I could do better probably and another kind of vinegar would probably work nicer, I just haven't figured out which one.  Still really good though!  (If you wanted lemon I'd never stop you, I just wanted to see if I could use something besides citrus.  Balsamic would probably be nice, too, come to think of it).  

Blueberry Basil Sauce

2/3 cup blueberries

1/4 cup water + 1 tbsp

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cornstarch

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar

1 tbsp fresh minced basil

cracked black pepper

- In a small bowl, whisk together 1 tbsp of water with the cornstarch, set aside.

- In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the blueberries, 1/4 cup of water, sugar and salt to a low boil until the berries start to pop and bleed their juice.  Remove from heat and stir in the cornstarch mixture, oil, vinegar, basil, and pepper.  Taste for salt and cover to keep warm.

Green Pea Pancakes (serves 2-3 as a snack or side)

4 oz. snap peas, strings removed

1/2 cup green peas

1/2 cup milk or cream

1 tsp melted buttery spread

1/2 tsp cornstarch

1/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

- Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil.  Blanche the snap peas for 30 seconds, then rinse in cold water.  Do the same with the green peas, until they're tender (2-3 minutes maybe).

- In a blender, combine the cooled peas with the milk, butter, and cornstarch, and blend until pretty smooth.  Move to a mixing bowl.

- Sift in the dry ingredients and gently fold until totally incorporated (shouldn't take much effort)

- Melt a bit of buttery spread in a nonstick and fry thin little 2" pancakes until golden brown on both sides.  Serve warm with a bit of blueberry sauce and some basil leaves on top.

Right.  And.

AND.

It was Pomme's birthday time this weekend, and that meant I was required to out-do myself again, inspired by love to fling culinary handrail-holding out the window and concoct some sort of artistic masterpiece that'll never have a recipe written down (but I'll always remember how to do).  In this case - a 2-layer Morrocan Mint cake with generous inches of Blueberry Mousse and a Pomegranate Glaze, topped with sugared pine nuts and mint leaves.  !!!!  For the record, I did a billion new things in the kitchen for this (well okay, I played with agar), and it turned out like some patisserie's jazzed star, in shades of aubergine, gold and lavender, and I *wish* I had a slice shot, but it was enjoyed by candlelight in the company of lots of vegan restaurant coworkers, so I'll just have to make another layer cake soon to make up for that! :p

Officially, the entire thing doesn't have a recipe, but I'll post the adaption I made to the matcha cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes because it made a damned fine joconde and the vegan world can always use another attempt at that, I think.  Pretty simple, actually... (it was the simple part)

Vegan Morrocan Mint Joconde

1/2 cup soygurt

2/3 cup strongly brewed green tea with 10-12 fresh mint leaves in it (strained, of course)

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup canola oil

1/2 tsp almond extract

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

3 tsp matcha soymilk powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

- Preheat oven to 350 and line an 8" cake tin with nonstick spray and parchment paper.

- In a large mixing bowl combine the soygurt, tea, extracts, and oil

- Sift together the dry ingredients, then slowly add it to the wet bowl in installments, gently folding with a whisk until it's smooth.

- Pour into cake pan and bake for 35-42 minutes (my oven is really slow, so take these times as approximations).  A toothpick should come out clean, and the top should be glossy and flat.

- Let it cool almost completely before turning it onto a parchment lined cooling rack.  Once cool, cut it carefully into 2 layers, and soak each layer (as you construct your moussey cake) with Mint Syrup.

Mint Syrup

2/3 cups strong Morrocan mint tea (made the same as before)

1/3 cup sugar

some extra mint leaves if you want

- Bring everything to a boil in a tiny saucepan over medium heat and let it bubble until it's reduced slightly and thicked.  Cool completely before spooning over your cake layers.

(it all tastes of exotic and meltaway sweet sand and herbs..... very very very - needless to say - delicious)

chromatic sausages for Canada!

red white and umami all over

Happy July 1rst, that is to say - Canada Day!  It's the nation's birthday and I'm celebrating in Quebec, which means a certain amount of gusto is required to make any noise at all, what with everyone tired from St Jean Baptiste Day just about a week before.  It's not quite the party that it is in Ontario, but by golly if I can't make my lunch about as patriotic as a waving flag, at least in colour scheme anyway (and association to good old BBQ food... yes I SO do love the taste of char).

For lady Canuck's 142nd, I dived into the sausage section of Vegan Brunch and couldn't even approach deciding one recipe over another, so I made 2 batches at once - the Italian Feast and the Cherry Sage, done up into smaller links so they were hot dog sized.  And after discovering that the grocery store had no (NO) hot dog buns (and even if they did, they would probably be terrible because they usually are), I just had to make a little batch of my own.  Which I TOTALLY recommend, it makes a huge world of difference.  So much so that I'm gonna post the recipeeeee, taken from this blog, taken from King Arthur flour......

Hot Dog Buns

(chewy, wheaty, soft, dense in a good way, stands up to condiments - ie; perfect)

(makes 8)

1 tbsp sugar

2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

1 cup warm milk

2 tsp vegetable oil

2 tsp salt

3 - 3 1/2 cups flour (I used 50% whole wheat, still came out fluffy and soft)

Directions:

- In a large bowl, combine water and sugar and let it sit for 5 minutes so the yeast gets foamy.

- Mix in the milk, oil, and salt, then add 3 cups of the flour and knead until it comes together into a dough ball.

- Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, until it becomes a bit like plasticine.  The dough isn't as soft as in some recipes, and it shouldn't be sticky (add up to 1/2 cup more flour as needed).  Move to an oiled bowl, cover and let it rise in a warm spot for 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size.

I'm just building anticipation for chewy perfect grilled bun-bite here :)

- Once it's risen, turn onto a lightly floured surface and cut into 8 equal pieces.  To shape a bun, make a piece into a rectangle, then starting at the end closest to you, roll it up tightly like you would roll a cigarette, folding in the ends on each side as you go.  Pinch the seam when you finish, then place it seam side down on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  Repeat with the rest, then cover with a piece of plastic wrap sprayed with nonstick spray and let them rise for 30 minutes. 

- Preheat the oven to 400F

- Bake for 20 minutes, then move to a rack to cool

INNARDS !!!!

Unrelated to photo above, but that's what scrolling is for ------------ the beautiful red and white salad next to it all was from the Tropical Vegan Kitchen and ab-solutely scrumptious.  I'm going to post the recipe, too, because I just saw a great video concerning appropriation and culture (and breakbeats) and I figured heck why not, share the love, share the coconut dressing ---

Thai-Style Romaine Salad with Creamy Coconut Tamari Dressing

(serves 4)

10 oz. of romaine leaves

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup red onion, thinly sliced and soaked in cold water for 10 minutes, drained well

1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and thinly sliced

2 tbsp basil, rolled up and thinly sliced

Coconut Tamari Dressing:

6 tbsp coconut milk (full fat works best here)

2 tbsp fresh lime juice

2 tbsp tamari

2 large cloves of garlic, minced fine

2 tsp palm sugar, or brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp red thai chile, seeded and minced superfine

Directions:

- Whisk, let it sit for at least 10 minutes.

- Toss 1/2 the dressing with the salad components, arrange prettily onto plates, then drizzle with the remaining dressing.  

So patriotic!  (if a little Thai ;)

Part 3! blueberry velvet, minty eggplant, and VEGAN BRUNCH !

So we're finally in the present, now!  That was so weird, being back in time for so long... well, status quo and time re-adjustment has been achieved (thank you Doc!) and I'm the proud owner of not only Vegan Brunch but the Tropical Vegan Kitchen, now, too!  More on those at the end of the post, because I'm such a stickler for temporal integrity... although you'd never never never know it.  So I have to begin with rice.  Oh, but not just any rice...

It was sumptuous, luscious purple rice (yeah, I'm a fan), which I made with a big heaping spoonful of souvlaki spice blend that's been sitting on my spice rack since last summer going "oh oh, make me with tofu, you LOVE greek food, get around to it, with those Vcon lemony potatoes, yeah!"

Which of course I did not do.  

Nah, no, I made this rice instead and actually swished it around in my salad, turning it all warm and tomatoe-y and olive-y, it was really awesome.  I never (never never?) mix my plate up, or at least not that often, so bear with my enthusiasm, haha.

Enthusiasm wanes for this, though!  Too bad... it's from Vegan Fire & Spice and it was only okay... cold soba something or other.  I could have just messed up rinsing it properly, because it was mostly a case of the the noodle liquid rinsing all the nice dressing off.  And I put way too many veggie in, who needs veggies man, not me (at least not when "slurpy bowl of noodle" is the simplicity required at the moment).  Does anyone have any cold noodle tricks?  I bought a pack of soba the size of my head and I was pretty up for doing it cold, japanese-style over the rest of the summer.

Also good cold:  eggplant!  Amazing cold!  I faked up this most excellent wheat berry salad with morrocan spices, creamy eggplant, fresh mint... so good.  Especially in crisp summer lettuce wraps with black bean hummous dolloped on, which needless to say, was my consumption method of choice here.  (I'm especially enamoured of the strange little ears on the hummous blob in the picture there, too :P)

Oooh, and unfortunately there's no slice picture, but I made a red velvet cake!!  It was a bit of a talent exchange and I got a professional (shi-shi, layered and subtle!) haircut from a friend of mine who adores southern stuff.  I even put mint on it, a la Paula Deen.  Oh, and the recipe was of course from Vegan Cupcakes and OMG this frosting if you haven't made it yet MAKE IT it's all whippy like creamy and dangerously low-sweet and HIDE THE SPOONS.  O_O!

*cough*

Right.  Well.  Grounding... let's be sensible here.  There is nothing more sensible than rice salad, not one thing, nope.  (the New Zealand Rice Salad on page 70, to be really specific.  tee hee kiwis).  What else can be eaten right out of the fridge like a miniature complete meal at the end of your snacking fork?  (And that can be hard to remember to eat sometimes!)  Also, what else can incorporate fruit into dinner without seeming weird?  Well, I guess I'm going to find out what else, because the Tropical Vegan Kitchen is full of fruit, it's everywhere.  Which is why I bought it!  That and to figure out how to use up a crate of kiwis I got... I'm looking to adapt the toasted coconut mango muffin recipe in Vegan Brunch too maybe... which finally brings me to -----

Omelet!

La la la, nothing can be said about this I'm sure that hasn't been said before, it is perfect and you want to eat this and your omni uncle wants to eat this (well, maybe), and I ate it with the V.Brunch sesame scrambled tofu with greens and yams ( - tofu, + dandelion greens).  I don't know how she actually managed to do this, but not only does it actually taste like something good (as opposed to Vegan-Omelet-As-Novelty), but the structural integrity is a wonder to behold.  The thing spread perfectly, browned perfectly, held together like a champ... you can even stack them.  Now try that with an egg omelet!

(also, I offically think these taste way better than those egg things.  viva la revolution!)

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

But that's life, and this is tofu

Summertime and some are slacking!  That is to say --- oh oh I'm sorry I dropped off the face of the blog-Earth!  I've been pretty busy, writing papers, painting spiders and lettuce leaves, taking t'ai chi, dating someone (yey), still cooking up a storm, and just not really feeling like there's been a good time to blog about it.  But really, it's getting ridiculous... I've lost count of how many photos I have.  Stacks.  And they're getting outdated, I'm forgetting if I used olives or capers in these stuffed tofus for example... at any rate I used Kittee's Method of the Stars to stuff them full of olive-oily spinach, red peppers, and raisins (I think).  Other good things, then breaded them in cornflakes, baked, and ate most of them all chewy-cold out of the fridge - like moment's notice hunger-killers, basically.

Sushi!  But with black rice this time, which is really more of a purple, and taste-wise isn't quite sushi bliss... but it sure is pretty.  I kinda feel like this is sushi with a silk tie on, or something.

And speaking of oceanic treats, my sister and I discovered some fantastic package of salty fried nori in her cupboards.  This stuff is gooooood.  For my money, beats the pants off of potato chips.

Sis thinks so too!

Then for a while I was all in love with med-firm tofu and it's magical ability to become some luxurious (yet low guilt) salad dressing at a moment's notice.  I played around with a few varieties - I tried the Vegan World Fusion Caesar (yum!), I made a kind of ranch, and my favourite was a curried apricot dressing that was very inspired by something from the Millenium cookbook, although I changed it entirely...  I even found the notepad file I wrote the recipe on!  So here it is ----

1/4 lb. med-firm tofu

1-2 dried apricots, soaked well and chopped

1 tsp rice vinegar

1/2 tsp curry powder

1/4 tsp garam masala

1/8 tsp cardamom

pinch of cayenne

1 tsp almond butter

1 tsp canola oil

enough water to thin

Blend!  Blend like yo salad depends on it!  

My favourite part of tofu dressings is putting on so much that you can eat the extra at the bottom with a spoon. :)

Isa's perfect chocolate chip cookies are, by the way, and if you hadn't heard - perfect.  Utterly perfect.  Me and this cookie had a bit of a moment... time stopped outside my window, cars drove softly past and I felt like all the sweet chewy vanill-y mass was just going straight into my heart (forget stomachs).  Good times.  Oh!  And this is only from batch number two.  I made them before, maybe not creaming quite enough so they spread a bit, but obviously still amazing enough to convince me to try again.

Not having ever tried a Madhur Jaffrey recipe I figured I would give it a go, finally.  Her dhal intrigued me in how it has a whole lemon sliced right into it, and it really works!  Totally makes it a different sort of creature than your regular lentil-mash.  I ate it up with --- oh oh oh oh!!  guess what!!!  I got a food processor!  Or at least, an attachment for my new stick blender that my mom got me (love moms!).  I turned veggies into confetti in like, 10 seconds, wow.  Anyway, yeah, I stuffed said veggies (sauted with garlic, mustard seeds, cider vinegar, bit of braggs, maybe a bit of tahini? possibly caraway seeds, too) into a paratha, and then ate the mountain of leftovers too, because it was pretty delicious stuff.  

I also think I'm finally getting the hang of cakes.  Getting the right ratio of textures, flavours, sizes, richnesses, bursts of things, etc.  This was so well-balanced, one of my favourites in recent memory!  It's a chocolate mint cake with minty vanilla buttercream sandwiched between, whipped ganache on top, and loads of little violets, to celebrate spring or some such twee sentiment that surprised me in actually tasting good as well as looking way pretty.  I ended up dipping the extra violet stems in the leftover ganache!  And the cake... was this joyous kind of refreshing melt-in-your-mouth confection that I had (Mwahahaha!) MOSTLY to myself.  Usually I'm the one giving away desserts too soon, but this one was totally mine.  Yum!

*ackdroolzzz*  don't you wish there was taste-o-vision?