Carrot and Potato Time

Tuna-Free Sandwich Filling from Vegan Planet. I Could Live on this Stuff!

2011-11-29T18:23:00.001-08:00

Lately my favorite cookbook is Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson. I have adored just about every recipe I have tried from this book. My most favorite is the Tuna-Free sandwich filling. It is primarily chickpeas and almonds. Usually when I make a batch I practically live on it until it's gone, because I just can't get enough of it.

The recipe calls for kelp powder, but I have discovered that dulse works just as well. It's a slightly different flavor, perhaps stronger than the kelp, but it works nicely. For some reason I was having a really hard time locating kelp powder, but I had plenty of dulse, so I just tore up the strips of dulse until I had about 1/8 cup of small pieces, then added them in when I pulsed the chickpeas and almonds. Then I finally picked up a container of kelp powder while I was in Southern California for a week, and now I've had the opportunity to try it with each.

A word about the dulse: the package I have says to look out for small rocks and things in the seaweed. Don't skip that step. I have found tiny shells in my dulse. So glad I didn't add those into my food!

Prep for this recipe is easy. It calls for blanched almonds, so you need to plan ahead a bit for that, but it's really simple. Just boil water, and pour it over the almonds, letting them soak until the almond peels can be easily pulled off of the almonds. It takes about 5 minutes of soak time, but you'll be able to tell by testing an almond. If the peel isn't coming off easily, give it a few more minutes.

I use a little less mustard than called for in the recipe. It asks for 1 1/2 teaspoons. I only use about 1 teaspoon. I like mustard but I don't love it, and using the full amount gave the sandwich filling too much of a mustard flavor for my taste.

If you are a fan of pickles, try putting some finely minced pickle into your batch. It'll be lovely.

You don't need to limit yourself to putting this stuff between two slices of bread, either. You can put it on top of crackers, or wrap it in a tortilla, or even just put a couple of heaping spoonfuls on top of your salad.

I've been really big on integrating various types of seaweed into meals lately (the health benefits are tremendous, plus I always feel great after eating it!), and this sandwich filling is just one awesome way to do that.

Tuna-Free Sandwich Filling

Ingredients

1 can (drained) or 1 1/2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup blanched almonds
1 Tablespoon juice of freshly squeezed lemon
1 teaspoon kelp powder or 1/8 cup shredded dulse
1 or 2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
1 or 2 scallions, finely chopped
1/4 cup vegan mayo (I used Vegenaise)
1 teaspoon or more Dijon or stoneground mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Pulse the chickpeas and almonds in a food processor, adding in the lemon juice and kelp or dulse until desired consistency. The recipe says "coarsely chopped" but I let it get a little more chopped than that because I find it easier to chew the nuts when they are in smaller pieces. When those ingredients are well combined, transfer the mix into a large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and then check to see if it's moist enough. If not, add a little more vegan mayo. Cover and pop the bowl into the fridge for 30 minutes or longer before serving.

By the way, here are some other recipes I've tried loved from this cookbook:

Teriyaki Glazed Tempeh
"Drunken" Noodles
Tofu and Vegetable Lo Mein

Lonestar Plate - Meet a Texan Vegan

2011-10-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

Though I hesitate to call myself a "Texan" (I'm really a pretty recent transplant), I'm quite flattered to be featured on Lone Star Plate's most recent post for a series on the blog called "Meet a Texan Vegan".

There, I talk about my experience as a vegan in TX, and share some thoughts about food. :)

I'm looking forward to reading about other vegans in this neck of the woods!

End of Summer, and Analog Accessories Mention in a Vegan Magazine

2011-09-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

Hey there, I'm still around, dreaming up new ideas for things to share with you here. It's still summer in San Antonio despite the arrival of the fall season everywhere else. But we have started getting a tiny bit of rain here and a tiny bit there, a couple of really nice electrical storms that just dazzled us, and a very slight chill in the very early mornings, so that's good news. It's not cool enough to go tend my poor neglected garden, which amazingly still has some living plants in it despite my blatant neglect these past several months. My rosemary does not seem to mind any old weather at all. There's one rogue tomato plant that must have been from a seed from our CSA tomatoes because it has had some real gusto surviving these drought conditions. My basil plants all went to seed but stayed alive. I've just let them do whatever they wanted and they've expanded to use up a good amount of the garden space. Originally I had eight Swiss chard plants and now there are probably 4 remaining that aren't looking exactly happy, but they are, amazingly, still growing and producing leaves. I miss my parsley plant that went to seed this year and then dwindled to nothing, and will need to replace it when I can. I don't feel like my garden is the same without it.

I was really happy to learn that one of my handmade items was featured in the first issue of this new vegan magazine, Chickpea. The magazine is lovely, really nice photos, lots of content, some recipes. Have a look!

Chickpea

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 4

2011-08-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 4

Mexican Cuisine

I'll tell you right off the bat that I have expectations when it comes to Mexican food. Growing up and having spent most of my life in San Diego, I have learned how to make vegan Mexican meals at home and if a restaurant dish isn't at least equal to what I can prepare, I'd rather make it myself. This dining guide has needed a Mexican section. We're in Texas! We tried a few Mexican restaurants when we moved here a couple of years ago but I was not at all impressed with the dishes I was served. Not wanting to post negative reviews, I won't mention where we went. I will just say that once you removed the dairy and meat from the dishes there was practically nothing left but a pile of bland veggies. Now, I love vegetables, but these were bland, bland vegetables. Ok, got that out of my system, on to the happy news.

Vegeria: Vegan Tex-Mex & American Cuisine
8407 Broadway Suite #1
San Antonio, TX 78209

Now, with the recent opening of Vegeria: Vegan Tex-Mex & American Cuisine, we not only have a Mexican restaurant to enjoy, we have an entirely vegan Mexican restaurant! We visited Vegeria during their opening week and were so pleased with the meal. It was brilliant with color, piled with fresh vegetables, and full of flavor. [Update: Now that I've dined at Vegeria a number of times, I will say that the quality is somewhat inconsistent. Some meals have been fabulous, some were a little lacking in the flavor department. But the owners are very open to constructive criticism and I still hope that people will continue to support this restaurant.]

We asked for the Nachos, the special for the day, and received a plate piled high with corn chips, pico de gallo, a delicious cheesy sauce, guacamole, soyrizo, shredded veggies, and a sprinkle of quinoa. We couldn't finish it, but it was so good that we packed the leftovers in a box and devoured them later at home. Vegeria sold out of the Nachos special shortly after we ordered our plate, so I was glad we made it there in time.

I ordered a tamale, which came with a salad, refried beans, and Mexican rice. I could have cleared the plate myself, but my three year old son fell under some kind of tamale spell and ate almost half of the dish. "Mommy's tamah-ee!" he chanted. This is the child who is very difficult to get sitting still at a table for a meal, but he was so focused on the delicious food that we were able to sit and enjoy instead of chasing the little one around the establishment.

Tamale Plate

That tamale was such a success, I'm now thinking I should go pick up a dozen tamales as the menu offers.

My husband ordered a plate of chalupas, which I tasted and deemed delicious. He also got a Peanut Butter Cup Smoothie and seemed to enjoy it.

Ansel was enchanted by the dessert case, and spent some time pointing out all of the cupcakes. There were at least six flavors of vegan cupcakes in that case. I was too stuffed to order any of them, or to try the mini Carrot Cake Cupcake that came with our Nacho plate. Husband and son shared that one. The dessert case also displayed some heart-shaped gluten free vegan brownies.

Enchanted by the vegan dessert case

I accidentally overheard the people at the table behind ours as they were tasting their cupcakes say, "Now, shouldn't this have dairy in it? How is this vegan?" What a great opportunity for people to discover that vegan baking can be beautiful and delicious without animal products!

Mini Carrot Cake Cupcake

The restaurant resides inside Viva Bookstore Complex, so if you have any interest in books about spirituality and religion, take stroll around the rest of the building while you are there.

The dining atmosphere is relaxed and the prices are affordable. I was excited to see so many people dining at Vegeria while we were there, I do hope they continue to pack their tables with customers.

If you go to Vegeria, be sure to check their hours first. The restaurant closes at 3:30 each weekday and 5:00 on Saturday. They are closed on Sunday. [The restaurant's hours have expanded and they are now open for dinner some days. Check their website or give them a call to find out.]

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 1
Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 2: Thai and Indian

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 3: Pizza, Mediterranean, and More

Cucumber Stars and other Parental Food Adventures

2011-07-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

My 3 year old eats 90% more cucumber if I slice them into stars. He also appreciates it if I put the stars onto carrot sticks.

Getting this young man to eat fruits and veggies is strangely difficult lately, which sort of baffles me, because we have always eaten lots of fruits and veggies in this household and most of his first foods were things like yams and carrots and apples. Maybe it's a 3 year old thing. Maybe it's a phase. But he not only tolerates the cucumber stars, he loves them. The other day I tried putting small slices of my homemade "cheese" on his cucumber stars and that was a hit as well.

I've had lots of success with slicing up leafy greens like kale, chard, and spinach and putting them into muffins. He will eat those with gusto.

Also, an occasional Daiya quesadilla with little bits of veggies tucked inside will often do the trick. If I slice up yellow summer squash really small and saute it with some spices, it works nicely in a quesadilla.

Most of the time, Ansel will eat a whole forest of broccoli trees. So I guess he's not doing so badly. I can't wait until our weather becomes cool enough to get back out to the garden. He does love eating parsley right off of the plant.

Summer Veggie Scrambles

2011-07-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite dinner dishes to prepare is tofu scramble. It doesn't take long to cook, and it's quite easy to alter the recipe according to which vegetables you have on hand. Our summer CSA provides us with a number of vegetables that harmonize in a scramble, so it's really nice to be able to use whatever the weekly share of vegetables happens to be. Perhaps my favorite thing about a tofu scramble is that it makes delicious leftovers that you can enjoy for breakfast or lunch the next day with little effort. We like to eat our scramble with toast in the evening and then the next day, wrap it up in tortillas and garnish with salsa for wonderfully satisfying tofu scramble burritos.

My recipe is so flexible, it really more a method. So I'll just describe my method and approximate measurements. I generally just toss things in until it looks like a good, varied mixture, not overbearing with vegetables, but colorful and balanced.

Something I have discovered is that one specific spice can turn an ok scramble into a scrumptious scramble. It's not commonly used in American cuisine as it hails from India and Iran, and to be honest, I'm not so sure I pronounce it correctly when I speak of it. It's called asafoetida, or hing. Asafoetida is a powder that has been extracted from a root. When you first encounter it in raw form, you may be taken aback by the odor. It's strong and not actually very pleasant! But don't worry, once it's heated in a bit of oil it affords a dish with a most lovely flavor. It can function as a stand-in for onions or garlic if you are cooking for someone who abstains from either of them. Asafoetida is also quite good for digestion, as well as being an antimicrobal. I just love it when a delicious food also has such beneficial health properties. I like using asafoetida in tofu scrambles because it helps distinguish them from most of the other tofu dishes I make. I may have heard somewhere that the asafoetida contributes a vaguely "eggy" flavor to the tofu, but to be honest, it's been so long since I ate egg that I wouldn't actually know if that is true.

I always use a block of fresh, organic extra firm tofu when I make this dish. I do press the tofu to remove excess water, but you can also just sort of squeeze it for a few minutes. The wetter it is when you add it to your pan, the longer it will take to achieve the consistency you want, so I do wrap it in paper towels and let it sit between two large plates for about 20-30 minutes to extract the water. If it still seems pretty wet, I'll squeeze it at that point to get more water out. It's ok if it starts to crumble as you squeeze, because it's going to be crumbled up anyway. Just try to do it carefully so the crumbles don't fall into the water you just squeezed out.

Begin by chopping up all of your vegetables so that everything is ready to toss in when the pan is ready. In the pictured scramble I used half an onion finely chopped, a small red sweet pepper also finely chopped, about 3/4 cup sliced mushrooms, 1/2 cup zucchini squash finely diced, 1 cup yellow summer squash finely diced, and one diced tomato. Notice that all of these veggies are fairly soft and cook in roughly the same amount of time. If I were to add a harder veggie like carrot, I would need to proceed in a slightly different manner, allowing the carrots to cook for a longer time before adding any of the other veggies into the pan. I tend to avoid having to do that. There are so many other great vegetables to consider, like spinach, finely chopped celery, even pre-blanched broccoli. Or, go with beans. Black, pinto, or white beans will work perfectly.

When your prep is complete, pour about 2-3 tablespoons of oil into a large skillet. Add 1/2 teaspoon or so of asafoetida and 1/4 teaspoon of mustard powder and turn your burner on to medium-low. By the way, if you like your scramble to be yellow, just add about 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric at this point (I didn't). When the oil has begun to warm, add the onion, if you are using it. Here I also added the sweet red pepper and let that cook until the spices became aromatic and the onion and pepper were looking slightly soft. Next I added the mushrooms, zucchini, and yellow squash. I let this all cook for somewhere between 5-10 minutes.

Next crumble your tofu into the pan, and stir it well, breaking up any large pieces as you do so. I leave a few larger clumps here and there, but generally no larger than about 1 inch by 1/2 inch or so.

This is the point where I add sodium, usually in the form of tamari. Alternatively you can use soy sauce, Bragg Liquid Aminos, or just plain salt. Another fine idea is to add about 1/8 cup of small strips of dulce, a very nutritious seaweed. It will give your scramble a nice distinct salty flavor. You'll be adding your sodium to taste, which for me entails shaking the tamari bottle over the pan until most of the tofu is lightly sprinkled. Not precise by any means. After that is well mixed, add your diced tomato.

At this stage I like to sneak in some sunflower seeds (shelled of course!) or some sesame seeds, or sometimes even pumpkin seeds. The sunflower seeds are my favorite. All that remains is to wait until all of your veggies are soft and and your crumbled tofu pieces are beginning to brown a little bit. I garnished this scramble with a few shakes of paprika. If you want a Mexican twist, add about 1/4 cup of fresh salsa in the last 3 minutes of cooking.

Enjoy!

Store Sale

2011-07-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Sale!

Get 20% off of any purchase in my shop on Sunday July 3rd and Monday July 4th only. does not apply to shipping or (Texas residents) sales tax Sale ends at midnight on Monday July 4th, Central Time.

Use coupon code JulyFun2011

The shop is at http://AnalogAccessories.Etsy.com/

Have a wonderful holiday weekend! Next entry will be about food. :)

Homemade Vegan Yogurt

2011-06-05T09:18:00.000-07:00

Homemade Soy Yogurt with Cinnamon

I love yogurt, but I have yet to find a store-bought non-dairy yogurt that lives up to what I think a good yogurt should be. I've tried soy and coconut yogurts, but they are always too sweet for my taste, even the so-called plain flavors. Or, to be more specific, the plain yogurts aren't tangy enough for me. Store-bought yogurts are also expensive and contain lots of added ingredients. It's impossible to know if the live cultures are still viable by the time the yogurt is in your hands. I thought about making my own for years, but the recipes always looked so complicated and I didn't have a yogurt maker, so I hesitated and stalled and dreamed of the perfect vegan yogurt.

At last I bought a yogurt maker a couple of months ago, and set to work. Happily, I discovered that the process is not as complicated as I thought it would be. It takes a little planning to get the timing right, and it's critical that you keep all of your attention on the yogurt in the mixing and getting the temperature right stages, but the actual business of making the yogurt is fairly simple. You don't have to have a yogurt maker to accomplish the task, but it does simplify the job, and if you get one like this one, a $30 item I got on Amazon, Euro Cuisine Yogurt Maker - YM80, you get some awesome little glass jars for your yogurt.

The Yogurt Maker

What does a yogurt maker do, anyway? It's basically an incubator that keeps your yogurt at the proper temperature for a long duration of time. And for yogurt making, the temperature is key. If it's too cold or too hot, the beneficial bacteria (they're responsible for the nice tart flavor, and the digestive health benefits of yogurt) that populate the yogurt will not be able to thrive and they could be killed off entirely.

Side note: if you are thinking "Wait! Stuff in yogurt is alive? Is that vegan?" Well, the answer is yes, it is considered vegan to eat bacteria because bacteria is not part of the animal kingdom. Furthermore, bacteria is everywhere and in everything, and some of it is really good for humans. Here's a nice bit of information all about bacteria.

Ok, back to our yogurt maker. If you don't want to buy one, there are lots of suggestions online for alternative incubation methods for yogurt-making. Some people use a crock pot, others use an oven, and I recall my mom incubating her homemade yogurt by wrapping the jar in a comforter and stashing it in a dark closet for a while.

Thickeners

I've never made dairy-based yogurt, so I can't tell you how it gets its texture, but as far as I know, animal based milks thicken up on their own during the yogurt-making process. Non-dairy milks, however, need a little help. I've seen suggestions to strain the yogurt before serving. I can't be bothered to try that, plus it seems wasteful because inevitably you'd be straining out liquid. There are several vegan thickeners that I've seen in yogurt recipes: pectin, cornstarch, carageenan, xanthan gum, and the two that I've been using with good success, tapioca starch and agar powder. I followed the advice of Bryanna Clark Grogan and was satisfied with the results, so the recipe I'm sharing here is an adaptation of hers. She has a wealth of information on her site about yogurt making and her extensive experiments, well worth a read. I'm only providing a simple outline of the one method I have used, requiring store-bought soymilk and live cultures that are *not* from store-bought yogurt.

If you decide to use the agar powder, make sure it is the powder and not the flakes or any other form of agar. If you use any other form, it will not dissolve all the way and you will end up with chunks of agar in your finished yogurt. I had trouble finding agar powder, so I know from experience what happens if you use the flakes. In the end I had to buy a bottle of agar powder online.

I know someone else who makes a combo soymilk and coconut milk yogurt, and she uses cornstarch and brown rice syrup in her recipe. So, there are lots of paths to success, and I think it comes down to what exact texture you personally like. It may take some trial and error to figure it out.

The Cultures

There are a number of ways to get the live cultures (bacteria) for your yogurt. The simplest way to acquire it, though probably the least dependable, is by buying a soy or coconut or rice yogurt from the store. I didn't do that because as I mentioned before, you have no way of knowing how viable those cultures are after that container of yogurt has been trucked from place to place and then placed on a store shelf for who knows how long. If you try it anyway, just make sure the container lists actual bacterial cultures in the ingredients. Common ones are: L. Acidophilus, B. Bifidum, L. Bulgaricus, and S. Thermophilus. If you are vegan and have concerns about how the cultures were originally grown, check with the company that made the yogurt. WholeSoy states on their website that they grow it on a vegetable medium, so it's suitable for vegans. When you make your yogurt, you use a small amount of this store-bought yogurt to populate your batch. I didn't try it, so I'm not going to get into more detail about that here (you can find specific instructions online pretty easily).

I checked the packaged yogurt starters that our local Whole Foods carries, but they were all dairy-based, so I ordered a package of Vegetal vegan yogurt starter from an online company called Cultures for Health. This particular starter is a "direct set" starter, which means you cannot use the resulting yogurt to populate your next batch. Some starters allow you to do so, which is nice.

There are a couple of other brands I've seen mentioned around the web, and I haven't tried them yet, so I can't review them. Yolife Yogurt Starter is one, but I noticed the reviews aren't very good. GI ProStart non-dairy yogurt starter looks promising, though the Vegetal has more healthy bacterial strains in it.

Here is an intriguing method of creating your own yogurt culture without having to buy any, using the stems of chili peppers! I had never heard that before, but this is the kind of thing that makes my DIY admiration meter go off the charts! Apparently the chili stems contain wild yeast that perpetuate the right kind of bacteria for yogurt.

The Process

First, get out all of your supplies and ingredients so that you have everything available when you need it.

What you need:

Ingredients
room temperature soymilk - 5 cups
tapioca starch - 1/4 cup
agar powder - 1 teaspoon
live active cultures - measure depends on source, I use 1/8 teaspoon as suggested on my package of Vegetal
sweetener of choice - agave, maple syrup, sugar - 2 tablespoons *Note* if you are using soymilk that already contains sweetener of any kind, you don't need to add more. The sweetener is only added to this recipe to give the yogurt starter some fuel, not to create a sweet flavor in the finished yogurt.

This is everything except for the sweetener (I used maple syrup)

a closer look at the ingredients I'm using

Tools
large pot, heavy bottomed and large enough for 5 cups of liquid with room to stir
whisk
large spoon
ladle (optional)
candy thermometer
measuring spoons and cups
stovetop burner
funnel
yogurt maker
refrigerator (clear out a space large enough for your pot to fit)

1. To begin, make sure all of your tools and instruments are very clean. Most recipes recommend scalding everything in boiling water. I'll be honest and tell you that I didn't do that, most of my tools came straight out of the sanitize cycle of the dishwasher. The rest, I just washed really well and made sure that I never set anything down on a dirty surface. You don't want unhealthy bacteria growing in your yogurt.

2. Put 1/2 cup of your room-temperature soymilk in the large pot, and add the tapioca starch and agar powder. Start warming up the mixture on low, and whisk it well until the tapioca starch and agar are completely dissolved.

3. Add 1 1/2 cups of soy milk and turn the heat up to medium. Continue whisking steadily but try to avoid creating a lot of froth. Do this until the mix is thick but are no lumps and the liquid has a shiny surface. Let the mixture get hot but don't let it boil, at least not rapidly.

4. Add the remaining 3 cups of soymilk, mix thoroughly but gently, and then measure the temperature with the thermometer. We want the temperature to be as close to 115 degrees Fahrenheit as possible. If it's anywhere between 110 degrees and 115, that's good. Mine is usually around ten degrees too hot. Getting this temperature right is going to make or break your batch of yogurt, so take extra care in getting it within the right range.

5. If it's hotter than 115 degrees, place it in the refrigerator and check it every few minutes with your thermometer. Set a timer for yourself if you think you'll forget about it.

If it's cooler than 115 degrees (well, let's say below 110), you can use a microwave on low for very short durations of time until it's hot enough (in a microwave-safe container of course), or keep it on the stove and heat it very slowly, checking the temp frequently with your thermometer.

6. Once your temperature hits the right range, ladle or spoon about 1/2 cup of the soymilk/thickener mix into a large measuring cup (you'll need room to whisk) or a smallish bowl and add your yogurt starter and, if you are using unsweetened soy milk, your sweetener. Whisk it up really well, and then pour it back into the pot with the rest of the mix. Whisk it all together until it is very well combined.

7. Immediately pour into your jars. It helps to use a funnel. My yogurt maker instructions say not to put the lids on the jars, to just cover with the yogurt maker dome lid and then start the machine. My yogurt maker has little hour marks on the side, but it doesn't actually appear to time the incubation in any way. I thought perhaps the lid would spin to mark off how many hours had passed, but it doesn't do that. It's not a big deal though. There's no harm done if the yogurt incubates for a little longer than you intended, it just might be more tart, which I like anyway.

8. You can taste your yogurt after about 6 hours to see if it's done by gently opening the cover and using a clean spoon to get a little bit out of a jar. Avoid agitating the jars too much or stirring in case it's not ready. Yogurt likes to be very still while it's incubating. I tend to leave mine alone for 8 hours overnight and it has always been done at that point. If it's ready, you will then need to put the lids on the jars and chill them in the refrigerator. My yogurt maker instructions say to chill for a minimum of 3 hours, but it will likely thicken more if you wait longer.

9. You will want to stir the yogurt before you serve it because there will likely be some separation. There are countless delicious ways to flavor and use it. You can put it in smoothies, in your baked goods, or in Greek or Indian dishes that call for yogurt. You can add fresh fruit or berries, maple syrup, a little bit of jelly or jam, or granola. My favorite way to eat the yogurt is with my granola bars crumbled over the top. I think it's great plain, too!

The Latest

2011-05-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a draft of a post all about my yogurt-making adventures. It turns out there is a lot to say about making vegan yogurt, so it's taking me a while to finish the post. But keep your eye out, it's on the way, with pictures and everything.

In the meanwhile, check out this spotlight on my new Etsy shop, Analog Accessories!

Did you know there are tons of vegan and vegan-friendly Etsy shops? Everything from chocolates, to soaps, to photography, to jewelry, just about everything you could imagine! Try doing a search with the terms "EtsyVeg Team", or even just "vegan" and see what pops up!

Handmade Vegan Accessories

2011-05-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Before my son was born I used to do a lot of sewing when I wasn't at my regular full time job. I made tote bags, handbags, pouches, and purses. I was able to get a decent amount of interest going among friends and coworkers, and before I knew it most of what I made was selling. Not enough to quit my job by any means, but it was great! When I got pregnant I found it too difficult to keep up with the sewing so I took a break. A long, long break!

Well, that break is officially over. I've opened up an Etsy shop for my business, Analog Accessories. It's mostly handbags, tote bags, and pouches, but I'm also making and selling some home decor like throw pillow covers and wall flags. Of course, everything is made out of vegan materials. I'm also using a lot of organic fabrics, some hemp, and some vintage fabric. I've already made two sales and I've only been open a short couple of weeks, so I'm really pleased so far!

I'm not planning to abandon this blog, but my posts will likely be a bit sparse as they have been for some months. I'll definitely share whatever new and great recipes I come across, and I'll still be checking out all of the blogs I follow.

Thanks for continuing to read, even though I'm not posting as much as I used to. I do love having this forum to share ideas and recipes, and get to know fellow bloggers!

Brief Update

2011-04-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

Just checking in to say that I'm making some good things here that I will be sharing with you soon. Like:

fresh vegan yogurt

and

an etsy shop with some handmade vegan items in it...

I'm still experimenting with the yogurt and still adding items to the shop, so I'm not ready to tell you all about either of them, but hang in there, and I'll be back with fun and delicious stuff!

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 3

2011-04-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Read Part 1 of the Dining Guide Here
Read Part 2 of the Dining Guide Here
Read Part 4 of the Dining Guide Here

Pizza, Mediterranean, and More

Fralo’s Art of Pizza

I'm sorry to have to report that Fralo's no longer has their vegan pizza on the menu. Disappointing!

We recently spoke with Fralo's owner and confirmed that their pizza dough is still vegan. It's his mother's recipe and will likely never change. If you find yourself there, you may very well be able to ask for a pizza with vegetarian sauce and Daiya cheese. However, the word "vegan" has been removed from the menu and the restaurant now plans to keep less of the Daiya in stock. Ask lots of questions and hope that your server knows what you are talking about!

Whole Foods Market
255 E. Basse Rd

San Antonio currently has one Whole Foods Market at the Alamo Quarry Market, and a second store in development that will be located in the far North Side at the Vineyard Shopping Center. The existing location does have plenty of seating if you need a quick lunch or snack on the run. The deli and hot foods area of the store offers a number of vegetarian items and a few vegan items as well. Vegan Tofu rolls and mock chicken salad are deli standards. The pizza chefs will now prepare hot pizzas with vegan cheese as well. The Greek pizza can be customized to be vegan, without cheese. It has hummus on it along with several other harmonizing toppings.

The Quarry Whole Foods occasionally hosts cooking classes run by the chefs at Green Vegetarian Cuisine, so keep your eye out for that if you are in San Antonio long enough to catch a class.

Cool Cafe Mediterranean Cuisine & Bar
12651 Vance Jackson
19141 Stone Oak Parkway #507

Cool Café is the place to go for Mediterranean cuisine with two locations serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Standards like hummus, grape leaves, tabouli, vegetable kabobs, and falafel can be ordered here from the restaurant's extensive menu. Lacto-ovo vegetarians have choices ranging from crepes to sandwiches to pastas. Vegans will be happy to hear that although the pasta itself is not vegan, the restaurant will substitute rice in any pasta dish to customize a vegan meal. Cool Café’s smoothies usually contain honey, so vegans will want to request it be omitted when ordering from the smoothie menu.

General Tao's Tofu

2011-04-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

This post is entered in Chez Cayenne's House Favorites: Vegan event.

Recently I've been trying out a number of recipes on VegWeb, and I just have to bring your attention to this mouthwatering dish that I found there. It tastes like a restaurant dish. The flavors are tangy and sweet, not unlike Sweet and Sour.

General Tao's Tofu

We served it over basmati rice, and at that point I was so busy devouring it that I never stopped to take a picture of it on the plate.

Instead of using green onions as suggested by the recipe, I used half of a white onion, and then added in the green and red bell peppers for a beautiful color combination and a dreamy flavor combination. Personally, I enjoyed the bit of crunch from the peppers (I didn't cook them to complete softness).

I didn't use the sherry. I never have that in the cupboard so I just omitted it. Maybe someday I will get around to adding it to my kitchen shelf.

I do recommend, if you aren't practiced in the art of dredging and coating, set up a system for yourself. If you follow the somewhat vague instructions in the recipe and just dump the cornstarch on the dipped tofu, you'll have a big mess on your hands and your tofu coating will cook unevenly.

I had the best results using this system:

1. Have raw tofu cubes all ready in a bowl or on a cutting board.
2. Next to that, place bowl of egg replacer and water.
3. Next to that, place bowl of cornstarch.
4. Next to that, have a flat surface to place coated tofu cubes.
5. Pick up a piece of tofu and dip it in the egg replacer liquid until moist on all sides.
6. Using the same hand, drop it into the cornstarch, without getting cornstarch on your wet fingers.
7. Use your other dry hand to cover the cube with cornstarch on all sides.
8. Using the same dry hand, transfer the cube to the flat surface.
9. Repeat for the remaining cubes.

Using one hand for wet and one for dry helps keep the cornstarch from clumping up and makes it easier to apply the coating evenly. When you place your coated cubes down, try not to let them touch because they will stick together and then the coating will pull off as you move them to the pan. Once you get comfortable with the rhythm you can coat more than one cube of tofu at a time to speed up the process.

Finally, if you haven't used VegWeb before, I highly recommend it. The reviews and comments are so informative, and there are so many fabulous recipes being shared on the site!

Vegan babies and children can be perfectly healthy.

2011-04-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

This is my son, who has been vegan for life.

We've been hearing a lot about the recent death of a child whose parents were vegan, as the media loves to point out. News like this goes around once in a while, yet another story of a vegan baby dying. But when you look a little closer, you realize that there was more going on with the family than just an avoidance of animal products, which in itself is not unhealthy.

You don't need to take my word for it. The American Dietetic Association states that vegan diets are safe, even for infants.

"The issue here was not one of dietary choices, but rather a lack of understanding about nutrition for infants."

I look in the face of health every day when I look at my child. He is spirited, giggly, studious, perceptive, and has met all standards of health that the doctors have held to him.

Anyone, whether they consume animal products or not, can develop a vitamin deficiency as a result of poor eating. It's not a condition that is isolated only to vegans.

Think for a minute about all of the strong, healthy vegan children that never make it into the news. In contrast, consider the startling percentage of obese children and adolescents in the US, an estimated 17%, and that's not just older kids. The statistic for obese toddlers is over 10%. The reason I mention this is that I think it is unfair to make an example of vegan parents, most of whom take it upon themselves to learn about nutrition and feed their children balanced, varied plant based diets. I have known a considerable number of vegans and have found that most of us know a thing or two about healthy eating. We are subject to the firing squad of questions from people all the time about where we get one nutrient or another, and we usually have the facts at the ready.

It always strikes me in the heart when I hear of the death of any child. And when it happens to be a vegan child, I feel doubly struck because I can anticipate what the reactions will be. My hope is that people at least try to take a wider view, gain a little perspective before jumping to conclusions about vegan parents.

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 2

2011-03-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Read Part 1 of the Dining Guide Here
Read Part 3 of the Dining Guide Here
Read Part 4 of the Dining Guide Here

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 2

Thai Restaurants

Mon’s Thai Bistro
4901 Broadway St, Ste 110

Located in Alamo Heights, Mon’s Thai Bistro is a stylish place for vegan curries, noodle, and rice dishes which can all be made with tofu. There’s a little bit of Japanese influence on the menu with a selection of sushi, some of which is also vegan. There is ambient patio seating, perfect when the weather is mild. Most entrees are priced in the $12 - $15 range.

Thai Topaz
9386 Huebner Rd, Suite 101

Thai Topaz is a small, affordable family run establishment in Northwest San Antonio. This restaurant is extremely accommodating for vegetarians and vegans, and meals can be as mild or spicy as you request. There are no frills here, but the food is satisfying and full of flavor without MSG. Ask for a rewards card if you plan to go regularly for lunch, and you can earn a free entrée after purchasing ten. Thai Topaz is closed on Sundays.

Indian Restaurants

Simi’s Indian Cuisine
4535 Fredericksburg Rd, Ste 109

San Antonio has a number of quality Indian restaurants, and it’s not hard to get a satisfying vegetarian meal at just about any of them. It can be a little more challenging for vegans who want to avoid the clarified butter (ghee) that many Indian restaurants use in their dishes. Simi’s in Balcones Heights is particularly good if you are only ordering vegan items from the substantial vegetarian section of the menu. Portions are generous and prices are reasonable.

India Palace
8474 Fredericksburg Road, Suite 100

If you enjoy browsing ethnic markets, you can grab a meal at India Palace and then wander next door to India Bazar. The food at India Palace is packed with flavor and the ambiance is nice. Vegetarian and vegan options are plentiful. Check the restaurant’s website for a coupon before going.

Pavani Express Cafe
575 Evers Road

Pavani Express Café is the only entirely vegetarian Indian restaurant in San Antonio. Pavani is the quintessential hole-in-the-wall and menu items are inexpensive, but patrons rave about the authenticity of the food. The dal (lentil stew) is creamy and delightful. One unique aspect of the menu is its Indo-Chinese section with mouthwatering dishes like Gobi Manchurian, cauliflower in a spicy gravy. Vegans should be sure to ask which items are made without ghee.

Vegan Dining Guide: San Antonio - Part 1

2011-03-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Cowboys aren’t known for their veggie burgers, but eating vegan in the Heart of Texas is easy. At first glance it seems that San Antonio is not brimming with options for a vegan who wants to dine out. But San Antonio is more than just a rodeo town. The seventh most populous city in the US, and home to a rich historical background and several popular amusement parks, San Antonio has dining options to support a healthy tourist influx. Much of San Antonio’s population is transitory in nature due to the military presence, the job market, and the local university, which lends a certain dynamic quality to the face of the city. So if you find yourself looking for a vegan meal in San Antonio, don’t despair, there’s a little something for everyone.

When I began writing this dining guide, San Antonio had only two completely vegetarian restaurants, and no vegan restaurants. It appears that things are starting get a little easier for vegans here, with a new vegan restaurant finally opening! Look for an update about Vegeria soon.

Green Vegetarian Cuisine

1017 North Flores Street

Green Vegetarian Cuisine is located near the city’s downtown, and even if you are not in the neighborhood, it is well worth the drive to enjoy this gem. Impressively, Green’s menu strikes a balance between southern comfort food and healthy choices. The restaurant, residing in a former bakery built in 1896, is known for its dishes like faux meatloaf, vegetarian chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and a tofu-based version of Po’ Boy. If you are craving onion rings, this is the place for you! Even non-vegetarians will be pleasantly surprised. But Green also knows its vegetables: the macrobiotic plate and the kale salad are vibrant and delicious. The menu also includes a couple of raw items like the Raw Deal Wrap and Veggie Platter with Raw Hummus. The restaurant grows some of its own herbs and vegetables which customers can view around the edges of the building.

Green is extremely vegan friendly. Practically every dish can be made without animal products. Vegans will enjoy the ease with which they can order a full meal without hidden animal ingredients. Dairy products are clearly identified on the menu and Daiya vegan cheese can be substituted on any dish. Tofu can stand in for eggs in several breakfast dishes. Every dessert at Green is vegan. The vegan cupcakes and cookies are shockingly good.

Prices at Green are reasonable, the atmosphere is casual, and servings are huge. Green serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but don’t show up on Saturday or any other Jewish holiday for that matter as it is a Kosher establishment.

Twin Sisters Bakery and Café

124 Broadway

6322 N. New Braunfels

Twin Sisters Bakery and Café is another destination for vegan meals. The options are numerous for lacto-ovo vegetarians, and although there are fewer options for vegans, they are still flavorful and fresh. There are two locations, one downtown, the other in Alamo Heights. Twin Sisters offers breakfast and lunch, and the Alamo Heights location offers wine and beer as well as entertainment on Friday evenings. Vegetarian customers can order sandwiches on freshly baked bread, tofu scrambles, Mexican dishes, salads, veggie burgers, sandwiches, and soups. Waitstaff will help vegans identify which meals to choose from, and the chef will likely be happy to make substitutions to existing menu items to craft a delicious vegan entree.

Quicksands Café and Bakery

502 Embassy Oaks Ste 109

If you find yourself hungry in North Central San Antonio, stop by for an affordable meal at Quicksands Café and Bakery. Although the atmosphere is a little bland with a cafeteria style layout, the food makes up for it with the freshness of meals made from scratch. With its spacious and functional interior, Quicksands is a good place to take children. Vegans and vegetarians will find plenty to eat, but vegans should be careful to ask about honey in dishes that seem otherwise appropriate, like the jicama salad. The menu has many unique items along side more usual fare of soups, salads and freshly baked flatbread.

The Cove

606 W. Cypress

The Cove, located north of downtown and touted by many locals, might not have made it to this list just a year ago because it has generally focused more on local and organic omnivorous meals rather than vegan ones. When we tried eating there soon after we moved to San Antonio, the chef was confused about what we wanted in a vegan meal, and was mistakenly convinced we meant gluten-free. In recent months it seems they are more aware, having added more vegan options to the menu. Enjoy the Vegan (tofu) Bacon Cheeseburger, or the Vegan BLT. The Cove’s motto is “Eat Well, Live Well”, and you can truly follow this advice if you show up on the first Thursday of each month for Vegan Night when vegan specials are highlighted. The Cove has a relaxed atmosphere complete with coin op laundry and carwash (no joke!), beer garden, and an outdoor playscape for children. The restaurant regularly hosts live entertainment. The Cove is open later than most restaurants with the exception of Sundays when they close at 7 PM and Mondays when they are closed all day.

Read Part 2, Thai and Indian Restaurants
Read Part 3, Pizza, Mediterranean, and More
Read Part 4, Mexican Cuisine

Granola Bars! Let's make them!

2011-01-04T11:20:00.000-08:00

I don't remember how I got inspired to make my own granola bars. It probably had something to do with my quest to supply our house with snacks for my son, and not just any snacks, but the kind that provide good solid nutrition and have enough appeal to keep him interested.

I wanted to minimize the sugar, and I also wanted a chewy granola bar rather than a crunchy one. I scoured the internet for a couple of days and decided that I would select a recipe that used brown rice syrup. The store-bought granola bars that I liked the most all seemed to use it. I think it contributes to a nice soft texture but it also helps to bind the ingredients together. I knew that I wanted to incorporate nut butters and puffed brown rice cereal as well.

Well, I only tried one recipe, and I hit the jackpot. I am not kidding, it is great!

First, this recipe is really simple. There's no baking involved. The sweeteners do get brought to a boil on the stove, but that happens in a flash. Other than that it is all dumping ingredients into a bowl and mixing and then flattening the mixture into a baking pan.

Okay, if you don't have your flaxseed ground up, you'll need to do that. However, I used ground chia seeds right out of the bag recently instead of flax and it worked out. I liked the flax better, but it was fine. One friend of mine just used wheat germ instead, and it worked out for her. Also, if your nuts are whole, you'll probably want to chop them. I do chop up some of the fruit as well. Even so! It's not time consuming or difficult, and I am oh so grateful for that.

Second, these granola bars are amazingly good! I just love them. My son loves them. Can I say my husband loves them? He might love them too! I know he was very pleased.

Third, have you seen how expensive granola bars are? And how fast they disappear? I can't speak for your home, but in mine, a box of granola bars vanishes in a blink. I admit, nuts and nut butter are expensive. But the recipe only calls for 1/4 cup nuts and 1/3 cup nut butter, so that actually doesn't amount to much in cost.

So, this is the recipe, as adapted from here.

Ingredients

1 and 1/4 cups crisp puffed brown rice cereal
1 cup uncooked oats
3 tablespoons ground flaxseed
1/4 cup finely chopped dried fruit (e.g., raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries, etc.)
1/4 cup finely chopped nuts (preferably roasted or toasted)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
generous pinch nutmeg
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/3 cup nut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

In a large bowl, mix together the rice cereal, oats, flaxseed meal, dried fruit, nuts, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Bring the brown rice syrup and maple syrup to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Stir in nut butter and vanilla and mix well.

Pour nut butter mixture over cereal mixture, and mix well. The syrup/nut butter/vanilla will start to solidify and then will stiffen.

Press mixture firmly into a lightly oiled baking pan, 8-inch square or similar. Use wax or parchment paper to press it down into the pan. Cool in pan and then cut into bars.

You can wrap the bars individually and then store in the refrigerator, or be lazy like me and just leave them in the original pan and put that in the fridge.

My granola bars contain a mixture of nuts and seeds: almonds, cashews, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds, lightly roasted. For the fruit, I used raisins, dried cranberries, and two chopped dates. For the nut butter I used a mix of almond butter, cashew butter, and tahini. For the puffed rice cereal, I used Barbara's Brown Rice Crisps.

I'm exited by the possibilities: peanut butter, walnut butter, sunflower seed butter, hazelnut butter, macadamia nut butter, pecan butter, pistachio butter, soybean butter. Yum. I'm also planning to throw a few tablespoons of hemp seeds into the mix sometime.

Let me know if you try it. I'd love to hear what ingredients you use in your granola bars!

Back on a Sourdough Kick

2010-12-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

I'm still here! It's been mighty difficult for me to post lately. More sleep deprivation (shouldn't that be over by now?), and very simple meals. A lot of my meals have been a pile of rice with a pile of sauteed greens and a pile of beans. Oh, so delicious but not interesting to write about. Especially with my mind feeling like a pile of mush.

I have, however, produced a sourdough starter from scratch. For the first month I was afraid to try making anything with it because I wasn't sure if it was active enough. It was definitely showing signs of life, expanding some after each feeding, but it wasn't expanding more than 2/3 of its volume and I kept reading that it was supposed to double. I tried several things like adding a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, feeding the starter with rye flour instead of all purpose, placing the jar in different parts of the kitchen, and changing the feeding ratios. At last I had results by storing it in the oven with the oven light on. I guess it just wasn't warm enough in here for it, which surprised me because we like to keep the chill out of the house.

Here's my initial loaf:

It turned out pretty well. It tasted really great, and the crumb was perfectly moist, but I do need more practice with the shaping of the loaf. It's hard to tell by looking at this picture, but it didn't have a lot of spring in the oven. It did pop up some, but I know the best loaves do more.

If you want to make your own starter but you aren't sure where to start, here are the instructions I followed at The Fresh Loaf. This site has a ton of information about starters and baking sourdough.

When I was ready to bake I used my old standby, the Northwest Sourdough website's First Loaf recipe. Personally, I love to bake bread on our pizza stone so I didn't follow the instructions for baking it in a bowl. I finally learned how to transfer it to the stone without having a shaping disaster. I just put the shaped dough on a sheet of parchment and the parchment paper can just go right on top of the stone with the bread loaf. Awesome.

My other posts on the subject of sourdough are here, here, here, and here.

Cheeseish Tofu-Cashew Block for Slicing or Cubing

2010-10-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

In recent posts I've been talking about my experiences making uncheese from Joanne Stepaniak's The Uncheese Cookbook (the book has now been replaced by the The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook ). I still don't know what to call this stuff. But I'm finally happy enough with the result to share it after fiddling with the recipe after about five different productions. Ansel still likes it and asks for it. And I'm definitely a fan.

Now, if you are looking for a cheese that melts and stretches, it's better to go buy some Daiya. This isn't going to do any melting or stretching. But, if you are looking for a creamy, savory, cheese-like substance to slice for sandwiches and crackers, or to cube onto salad, this will satisfy. It's also got a lot of great nutritional qualities, especially if you add the pumpkin seeds and ground chia seeds. You can still make the recipe without those ingredients and have a perfectly fine tasty result. But I think the pumpkin seeds especially make for a richer flavor and the chia seeds are just great for your health.

One block lasts us for about a week, and that's while we are eating at least a couple of slices every day, usually more. I've noticed the flavor improving over the course of days.

Ingredients

1/2 cup raw cashew pieces
1/2 cup organic silken tofu, crumbled into pieces for measurement
3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 1/2 Tablespoons raw pumpkin seeds
1 teaspoon ground chia seeds
2 Tablespoons tahini
1 1/2 teaspoon stoneground mustard or mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder or granules
1/4 teaspoon ground caraway seeds
2 Tablespoons olive oil, or coconut oil but only the flavorless variety
1 teaspoon quality salt, I use Himalayan
1/2 teaspoon tamari or soy sauce
5 Tablespoons agar flakes
quality water, about 1 1/2 cups plus 1/4 cup

Instructions

In a food processor or quality blender, blend all of the ingredients except for the agar flakes and the water. Slowly pour, in very small amounts, up to about 1/4 cup water into the mixture until the mixture is about the texture of hummus, or even a little thicker. Be careful not to add too much water. You want enough to aid in creating a creamy consistency but you do not want the mixture to be flowing. Blend or process until the mixture is fairly smooth with no large pieces of cashew or pumpkin seed remaining.

Let this mixture remain in food processor or blender while you complete the next step.

Lightly grease the container that you will use to chill the mixture, the mold. I use a small glass rectangular container. You will probably need a container that will fit about 2 1/2 cups.

Place 1 1/2 cups water in a small pot and add the agar flakes. Heat to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Pour the water and agar flakes into the blender or food processor with your other mixture and blend or process. Keep blending for several minutes until everything is very smooth and well combined. You may need to scrape the sides. The mixture will be pretty thick. It is ok if the mix is speckled with bits of seed or caraway, just make sure it's generally smooth.

Immediately pour into the mold.

Cover and chill in the fridge. The mixture solidifies quickly, so you can actually slice your block within a couple of hours. However, the flavor and consistency do get better with time, so I recommend waiting at least overnight before sampling it. When it is ready you can turn the block out of the mold and slice. Lately I have been just slicing it right in the container as needed and pulling out pieces.

He says "Cheeze" and he also eats it!

2010-09-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

Alright. In my last post I was complaining that my son was completely uninterested in the uncheese I made for him. But then I tried again.

I made a sandwich with some organic multigrain bread, some Vegenaise, mashed avocado, and sliced uncheese.

And he ate it.

And he ate more. And even more.

Success!

I have since tried a second batch, making some changes to the recipe. I omitted the lemon juice completely and used a little less nutritional yeast. I added two new spices and some coconut oil. It wasn't bad! I feel as though I've gotten closer to what I'm seeking, but I'm not there yet. Next batch I will try a different oil because I wasn't entirely happy with the coconut flavor. It was very subtle, but detectable. Maybe sunflower. The original recipe doesn't even call for oil, but I do like to get some healthy oils into our diet whenever I can, and I think it also complements the texture.

I was originally wondering why the recipe in the book calls for lemon juice because I didn't think it really tasted as though it belonged. I was doing a web search for lemon juice substitutes to see if there was anything I hadn't yet considered. I noticed that people were using citric acid for their homemade (dairy) cheeses as a flavor enhancer. Lemons of course contain citric acid. Then it crossed my mind to check the ingredients in Daiya cheese. I pulled the package out of the fridge and sure enough! Citric acid. Briefly I considered finding some citric acid and putting some in my recipe, but you know? It's almost perfect already as it is. I'll just keep adjusting the spices and I'll probably end up with something great. No real need to bother with citric acid.

In the few weeks that I've been playing with the uncheese recipe, Ansel has had a language explosion. He is adding so many new words to his vocabulary that I'm starting to lose track. It's very exciting. I love hearing him talk! He has also learned the alphabet. He doesn't really sing the song, well, he tries but really doesn't know the whole thing yet. But he can identify any letter that is pointed out to him as long as the font isn't too confusing. He picks up anything with writing on it and starts spelling out the words. His dad started teaching him the letters of the Greek alphabet as well. All of this to say that when I made the first batch of uncheese he had never said the word cheese/cheeze before, but by the time we were eating the second batch he was pointing to it and saying "cheeze!"

In a way, I wish we weren't calling it cheese. Even the altered spelling (with the z) feels awkward to me, as does the cumbersome word "uncheese". I am not sure what else to call it, though. It's mostly cashews and tofu. I could call it something different like cashoy or whatever, but it's hard to break the habit of calling it cheeze. I would love to separate it from it's dairy inspiration, but maybe I should let that go and just be pleased with having such a delicious new thing to eat.

Experiments with Uncheese

2010-08-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

Long time no see! I sort of let blogging sit on the back burner in recent months. I'm not sure why. I suppose it was a combination of factors, but mostly because I've really been keeping it simple with the cooking these days. I'd say the majority of my meals lately are just me throwing together a bunch of veggies along with a grain or bean. Delicious, sure, but not really worth writing about.

Another factor has been my own exhaustion, due to some wild and unpredictable sleep schedule that my son has been following. He turned two in June and he's still working on those last four teeth, the two year molars. I think that must be making sleep difficult for him, but it's got to be more than that. First it was constant waking and aggressive nursing all through the night. I have mostly been able to get him past that, but that problem was replaced by a refusal to actually go to sleep, lasting for many hours, *or* sleeping only a few hours and then being up, and I mean wide awake, for many hours in the middle of the night. Exhausting. Like most things toddlers do, it's probably a phase that will work itself out in time. I've tried a lot of things with varying levels of success. One thing that I'm doing to try to facilitate a better sleep for all of us is encouraging him to eat more before bed just in case hunger is playing a role in his nightwaking.

So, I brainstormed different snack ideas, taking his preferences under consideration. I was looking for high-calorie foods without sugar, hopefully something he can hold in his hand while he runs around the house, because he's very busy, you know. Omnivores always talk about cheese sticks, and I remember loving those string cheeses as a kid. Well, there are no vegan products that parallel those. As far as vegan cheeses go, we have access to Follow Your Heart, some kind of yellow vegan cheese slices--I can't remember the brand--that really don't taste good, and shredded Daiya. If the Daiya were in blocks, that could possibly be sliced into snack size pieces and be palatable enough for our purposes. But we don't have the blocks here.

Then I rediscovered our copy of Joanne Stepaniak's The Uncheese Cookbook (the book has now been replaced by the The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook ). This book contains several recipes for blocks of dairy-free cheeses. So, I gathered the ingredients together and tried my hand at the "Monterey Jack Cheeze".

I'm not going to post the recipe here (I happen to know that Ms. Stepaniak is vigilant in maintaining her copyright protection), so I'll just say that the cheeze is primarily made out of silken tofu and cashews. These are flavored up with nutritional yeast, a few spices, tahini, and lemon juice. The thickening agent is agar flakes.

The preparation is simple, and requires stirring agar flakes in a simmering pot of water for about 5 minutes, and then combining all of the ingredients into a blender (I used a food processor), pouring into a mold and chilling. It makes about 2.5 cups or so.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed. I am mostly surprised and pleased by the texture of this cheeze. It holds its shape extremely well. It slices beautifully. It works as finger food and is nice and smooth in texture when you bite into it.

My main complaint is that the cheeze is too flavorful. Too lemony. I have never tasted a dairy cheese that tasted of lemon, so I'm not sure why there is so much lemon in this recipe. Also, the nutritional yeast is pretty overbearing. At first I thought it was the mustard powder, but when I tasted it again it was pretty clearly the nutritional yeast. I like the flavor of this cheeze, actually. But it is very strong!

Unfortunately, I have been unable to get Ansel to even take a nibble. I'm not sure why he finds it objectionable, perhaps he can smell the sourness of the lemon. He did examine it quite closely, poking it with his finger and even rubbing a slice between his hands before putting it back down. So, no luck. But I'm kind of intrigued by the possibilities and would like to make another batch sometime soon with less lemon and less nutritional yeast. Hopefully I can do so without destroying the nice texture. If Ansel won't eat it, I will.

Wheat Free Chocolate Chip Cookies from Veganomicon

2010-06-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Melissa from the Papaya Chronicles recently posted some of her thoughts about Veganomicon and some of the recipes in the book. She posted a picture of some really delicious looking cookies and it just so happened I had all of the ingredients already, so I baked a batch last night. And can I just say, YUM!! They were a huge hit, and I am pretty sure that this will be a recipe I return to many times.

A couple of notes:

I only had about 1/4 cup of chocolate chips left in the bag. So my cookies were not bursting with chocolate, but it seemed to be enough. The cookies didn't suffer for the lack.

These cookies have a wonderful texture! I usually only like soft cookies, and these cookies have a little crisp to them but they are not hard on the mouth.

These are wheat free cookies, but they are made with oat flour, which means some people who are gluten sensitive may be able to eat them and others may not. So, if you are making these cookies to serve to someone with a gluten sensitivity, definitely check with them first to see if they do indeed eat oats.

Oopa Moussaka revisited!

2010-06-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

A long while ago I wrote a post about the Oopa Moussaka from the The Native Foods Restaurant Cookbook. At the time I didn't have pictures and I said I'd post some the next time I made the dish. Well, one and a half years later I have finally followed through.

Feast your eyes on this!

Averie's Coconut Oil Chocolate Bars

2010-06-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

I have a new favorite treat. And it is amazingly easy to make. Fellow blogger Averie from Love Veggies and Yoga posted the recipe way back in February and I made a mental note but didn't get around to trying it out until this week. I guess I move slowly sometimes.

Coconut Oil Chocolate Bars.
You'll need to scroll down a bit to get to the recipe.

All you need is some coconut oil, agave, vanilla extract, and cocoa powder. A spoon, a bowl, some plastic wrap, and a freezer. A microwave or a small pot and stove for melting the oil and agave together. That is all you need! The result is smooth, fudgy, cold, and rich. It's sweet and dense.

I'm not sure how long Averie freezes her batches before eating them, but mine remained a little soft even after several hours. So, maybe don't expect a brittle, firm bar like chocolate bars you'd buy at the store. It holds its shape, but it's almost like a very very thick, firm pudding. I left mine to freeze for about three hours.

Another note: For the first batch I used parchment paper and the chocolate did stick to it a little around the edges, so I just ate the chocolate with a spoon. For the second batch I used the plastic wrap and the chocolate was easy to remove and I could hold it in my hand. Here's what it looked like after I poured it into the bowl, before putting it in the freezer.

Up above you can see that I also placed a strawberry slice on the top before putting it in the freezer. I had some extra strawberries left over from yesterday when I made crepes.

The recipe only makes a small amount, so after I had tasted the incredible result I made sure to double the recipe the next time so I could share it with my husband. Because I ate the entire first batch in one sitting. It was that good!

We Love Fresh Rolls!

2010-05-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

We are all fans of fresh rolls in this house. Even Ansel will grab one and gnaw at it until he gets through the rice paper wrapper and the filling starts to spill out. I'm cleaning up bits of noodle from the floor and his chair for days after we have these.

It's a great time of year to start making foods like this that don't require a lot of standing over a hot stove. It's been in the 90s already and I'm in no mood to stand with my face over the pots and pans!

This is what our fresh rolls usually look like:

We used cabbage, tofu, vermicelli noodles, peanut sauce with chopped peanuts, green onion, and carrot. Other favorite ingredients are cucumber and cilantro. We loved the last batch we made but found the cabbage to be a bit chewy, so next time we'll probably use basil instead. There are so many ways to fill these rolls and you probably have your own idea of what you'd like to have in yours. One thing that we did that was a little different from the norm was that we put the peanut sauce inside the roll instead of hand dipping them. As you can see, I still dipped mine with a generous amount of red chili sauce. Other than the chewiness of the cabbage, eating these rolls was like eating them in a restaurant. Awesome.

Speaking of vermicelli noodles, here's my confession. I love them. For some reason I feel compelled to eat massive quantities of them whenever we have some, even if all I'm putting in them is a bit of oil and a bit of vinegar. I don't know why, I mean, they are just little rice noodles. We didn't put anything in them before adding them to the rolls. Just plain, freshly cooked noodles.

Before adding the tofu strips, we lightly sauteed them in some toasted sesame oil and a bit of soy sauce.

The rice paper wraps can be found in the international section at almost any grocery store. We got ours at Whole Foods but I know for a fact that the local mainstream store also stocks them. They are easy to use. Just dip in warm water, let the excess water drip off, and spread out on your assembly surface. Then fill and roll. There are instructions for rolling all around the web if you need some tips.

To wrap up, no pun intended, this is a great dish to make with other people. So if you want to get together with some friends and make food, give these a shot. Your veggies will get chopped in a flash and you can trade off rolling up the rolls. I enjoy the process of making these with my husband. He's really good at assembling and rolling them. Have fun!

Sister Soup, or Faux Near-Pho

2010-04-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

The other day my sister and I had a telepathic moment of sorts on the subject of noodle soup. I was craving vegan pho, and updated my Facebook status to that effect. About thirty minutes before that my sister in California was eating noodle soup and remarked to her husband, "if you leave the fish sauce out of this it is vegan, we should have it when Anna is in town"!

So, after that I just could not get the idea of noodle soup out of my mind. Sister had supplied me with a summary of her recipe, so I got myself to the store and put together something delicious. Sadly, I forgot to pick up limes, so it was one item short of my dream soup. But don't get me wrong, it was oh so satisfying. And quite simple to prepare.

Ingredients

2 cubes Edward & Sons Not-Beef broth cubes
5 cups water
1 teaspoon ground ginger or 1/2 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 cups shiitake mushrooms, sliced
2 cups Chinese cabbage or bok choy, thinly sliced
1/8 cup mirin
1 package Asian noodles
splash of toasted sesame oil (optional)
optional additional salt to taste

For garnish (add whatever you like, omit whatever you don't):
sliced jalepeños
sliced lime
basil leaves
mint leaves
cilantro leaves
mung bean sprouts
Sriracha Sauce

The mint and cilantro are both from my garden!

One of my cilantro plants is now over 18 inches high, so I'm using any excuse to eat massive amounts of it. We're having weather in the 80s already so I'm hoping I can keep it from going to seed too quickly.

Directions

Put the broth cubes in a soup pot with the water and bring it to a simmer, making sure the cubes dissolve. Add ground ginger, soy sauce and mushrooms. Let simmer for about 10 minutes and then add your veggies. I used Chinese cabbage, but bok choy is great, too. Simmer for another 5-10 minutes, until veggies are at desired tenderness. Add mirin and mix well.

Meanwhile, prepare your noodles according to the package instructions, leaving slightly al dente. They will continue to soften when added to your soup. You may want to add a tiny bit of toasted sesame oil to them.

Ladle the soup over noodles as you serve. Garnish as desired. Enjoy!

Here's another version of vegan pho by Rita of Pink Bites that came highly recommended by Claire of Chez Cayenne. I'm sure it's amazing with all of those spices in it. I'd love to try it sometime soon!

Field Roast with Kale and Pasta.

2010-03-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

You may have already come across this piece from the Huffington Post featuring a Field Roast recipe. I have made this dish twice already and it is so delicious that I'm already looking forward to making it again sometime soon.

I made a couple of minor changes:
sliced the Field Roast sausages into coins instead of crumbling
used kale instead of chard and stir fried it together with the sausage instead of steaming
omitted the water suggested at the end

I love that the sausage and kale make one box of pasta turn out about twice the servings that it usually makes. We ended up with tons of leftovers.

It's amazing. Seriously great. Thank you, Laura Beck!

I'm in love with fresh bread.

2010-03-14T15:11:00.001-07:00

You can tell by the use of a flash in this picture that I finished baking these loaves late at night.

I've had really great luck with bread lately. I've finally learned enough about breadmaking from reading The Bread Baker's Apprentice and a couple of good sources on the web that although I think my loaf shaping could use some work, the flavors and textures of my last two batches were superb.

I've been using the guidelines for "My Daily Bread" on The Fresh Loaf site and I'm extremely happy with the results.

The night before baking day I prepare the poolish, or the preferment, using organic all purpose flour, water, and some yeast. I was unable to find instant yeast at the store, so I have just been using dry active yeast. It works just fine, but I do increase the amount called for in the recipe by about 20%. I just eyeball it. It's such a small amount that I don't think it really makes a lot of difference if it is exact or not.

The next morning the poolish is really nice and bubbly.

When mixing the rest of the ingredients, I use 1 cup of organic whole wheat flour and about 3 or 3 1/2 cups of organic bread flour. This amount is not always the same because the recipe itself uses the weight of the flour instead of the cup measure. I don't have a kitchen scale (I really should get one!) so I just have to go by the feel of the dough. This recipe is meant to create a very wet dough, so I try to keep it as wet as possible while still being handle-able. The only other change I make to the recipe is that I add about two teaspoons of agave to it just because I like a touch of sweetness. But it's hardly noticeable. And those of you who are anti-agave, just ignore the fact that I said it.

Rising times have been inconsistent for me because I have to juggle my breadmaking activities with parenting a very active toddler, so I sort of have to wait to find windows of time in the day when things sort of line up...dough looks like it rose enough and the boy is either napping or otherwise engaged in something. Actually, I use the refrigerator to do an initial slow rise which takes most of the day. But that is a good thing. I have learned that a slow rise allows the more dynamic flavors to develop, and after a couple of experiments I have been able to taste the difference.

Next I shape the loaves and rise them again on the countertop, and finally bake the loaves after Ansel has gone down the for the night.

I use the baking stone instead of loaf pans and to keep the crust hydrated I spray the inside of the oven down with water during the first five minutes of baking. I've also tried filling a bundt pan with water and placing it at the bottom of the stove, but I haven't decided which approach I like better. I need to play around with that a little more. I start with a temp of 450 F and after the crust is golden I turn the heat down to 425 F.

This bread makes amazing toast and wonderful sandwiches, but my favorite way to eat it is with lots of Earth Balance while it's still warm from the oven. I know I'm supposed to let it cool before slicing it, but I just can't help myself!

Almond Milk is Easy to Make! And a bit about the agave battle.

2010-02-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

I made almond milk for the first time recently. It was really pretty easy and it tasted great! The most difficult part was straining the almond meal out of the milk, but it was only a pain because I used a little tea strainer. A bigger sieve is going on my shopping list.

There are tons of recipes online. I just poked around and picked one sort of randomly. I wanted to start small in case it didn't work out, so I just used one cup of almonds. I used raw organic almonds and I did not blanch them.

Step 1: Soak
Soak your almonds in water for at least 24 hours. I think I soaked mine for about a day and a half. I used 1 cup of almonds. Just cover them with plenty of water in a bowl and put it in the refrigerator. They will get nice and plump. Be sure to change the water out if you are soaking them for more than one day.

2. Drain and rinse.
After draining, rinse the almonds several times.

3. Put in blender or food processor with water.
Use whatever kind of water you like to drink. I added about eight cups. Once you make the almond milk you can get an idea of how creamy it will be with the amount of water you used and you can adjust it to your liking the next time. I found my almond milk was nice and creamy, perfect for my taste.

4. Blend well.
I blended mine for a good long while. I didn't keep track of how long (I'm sure it depends on the kind of blender you are using anyway), but once it started looking pretty creamy I blended it even more just to be sure it was really nice and smooth. It will get very foamy on top and you'll see the bits of almond and almond peel sitting near the bottom.

5. Strain, and strain again. Consider straining a third time.
I think this step along with the long soaking time contributed to a wonderful beverage texture. You can use a bag strainer or a tea strainer or a larger sieve. Just make sure the weave is fine enough to get a lot of the smaller bits of almond out.

Refrigerate your almond milk and be sure to stir or shake your almond milk before serving. The almond particles will have started to separate from the water.

You can see how much almond meal I strained out of the milk (that's a 20 oz container that holds 2.5 cups). I saved the almond meal because I was planning to try some of the many things that can be done with it, like using it in muffins, making flour out of it, making a crumble for coffee cake out of it, and so forth. But then Ansel and I both got some kind of bug and since I was sick I never got around to using it. It's still in the fridge but I'm afraid it's not fresh enough to use any longer.

6. Sweeten (Optional)

I added a very small amount of agave to my almond milk to sweeten it. You can use any sweetener you can think of...dates, maple syrup, stevia, or even just plain old sugar.

By the Way...

Speaking of sweeteners, have you come across any of the recent claims that agave nectar is actually really unhealthy? Fascinating. Someone drew my attention to an article that made very dramatic statements about agave being toxic. Well, as I was reading the article I had this funny feeling about the style with which the information was being presented. It seemed familiar. It reminded me of articles I'd come across by the Weston A. Price Foundation, most of which are vehemently anti-vegetarian and anti-soy. Acting on that hunch I looked up the author of the agave article, and sure enough, the author is affiliated with the WAPF. Without really having enough scientific knowledge of my own to evaluate the claims in the article, I was already suspicious because so many things I have read from the WAPF are, in my view, inaccurate and full of misinformation, not to mention vitriol for my chosen food choices and lifestyle.

What motive would the WAPF or its affiliates have for demonizing agave? I have no idea. Are they so infuriated by the fact that some of us eschew the use of honey? It's quite strange to me.

The producer of the agave brand that I buy has since published a rebuttal and asserts that the WAPF claims are completely false and misleading. After having read both sides, I've decided to continue using agave. I already use it in moderation, as I would do with any other sweetener.

English Muffins from The Bread Maker's Apprentice.

2010-02-10T17:00:00.001-08:00

Vegan Dad's recent blog posts describing his ongoing project of baking each of the recipes from The Bread Baker's Apprentice reminded me what a lovely book that is. I was flipping through and decided to give the English Muffins a try. The recipe was extremely simple and the time involved was not very significant.

Overall it worked out nicely. My husband enjoyed them, and I was happy to take a break from my breakfast standby: toasted bagel with Tofutti cream cheese. That's what I eat just about every single day. I try to branch out and have cold cereal or oatmeal once in a while, but I have blood sugar issues in the morning and nothing grounds me quite like a gigantic bagel. The six large English Muffins that the recipe yielded were not as big or filling as bagels, but they were substantial enough for me, and so much more fresh than store bought bagels.

Actually, there's a bagel recipe in the book and I've been dreaming of trying that out. Someday...

Somehow my muffins didn't develop the nice big air bubbles that you'd usually see in an English Muffin. I'm not sure if it's because I over-mixed (I used my KitchenAid for all of the mixing and kneading), or if it's because I substituted active dry yeast for the instant yeast that this book recommends for all of its yeasted breads, or maybe the soy milk I added was still too cold (it was supposed to be room temperature but of course I didn't plan ahead well). The muffins did rise and stay puffy during cooking, and whatever happened didn't seem to harm the flavor.

I used Earth Balance in place of the shortening, soy milk for the milk, and as I mentioned, I used active dry yeast. The book gives a ratio for substituting one yeast type for another, so I followed that guide. The recipe also calls for corn meal, which is sprinkled on top and bottom, but I didn't have any so I used a bit of oat bran.

My husband made this sandwich using vegan rice cheese and a Boca Burger patty:

I'd love to make these English Muffins again! It would be fun to make fake egg and fake sausage sandwiches with them. And of course they're great with peanut butter and jelly on them. Tons of possibilities.

Winter Garden, South Texas Style

2010-02-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

From left to right, front to back:

Row 1: lettuce mix (not showing, just sprouted), 3 cilantro plants
Row 2: lavender plant, much of it dead from the freeze, two lacinato kale plants (not showing, too small), carrots and mustard greens (not showing, too small)
Row 3: Small broccoli plant, lacinato kale
Row 4: 2 broccoli plants, carrots

I started my square foot garden back in October I think. I had filled it with veggies, herbs, and marigolds. I also had six tomato plants in containers next to the garden. Well, winter here in San Antonio was much more dramatic then I had expected, and since I'm such a novice gardener I was not careful enough about covering my plants correctly when the first freeze hit. My tomato plants had just started producing fruit when that happened. It was kind of devastating to find them black and dead.

Many of my other plants seemed to be stunted. I may have been overwatering in the first few months. Once I eased up on that, some of the plants started doing better. I might need to amend my soil as well, but I haven't tested it yet to find out what it might need. I've heard that mustard greens are really easy to grow, but all of the ones I've planted have sprouted and then stayed about that size indefinitely. So there must be something off.

I received some broccoli seedlings from someone I met on the local API (Attachment Parenting International) forum and those plants just started producing heads of broccoli in the last couple of weeks. One of them has really taken off!

A little over a week ago I planted some lettuce mix seeds and they've already come up. Can I tell you how excited I will be when (if?) I don't have to buy lettuce at the store? It makes me giddy to think of it. It has been raining almost every day for what seems like forever, so I hope they can take all of that moisture.

I do have a few square feet free after having pulled up the plants that died in the freeze and I plan to plant more tomatoes, marigolds, and basil. Hopefully with the change in season I'll have some better luck.

Even with the losses, I absolutely love the garden. It's thrilling to watch things grow, and just being near the plants is a simple, wonderful joy.

Vegan Sushi

2010-01-31T12:36:00.000-08:00

Vegan sushi is definitely way at the top of my list of favorite foods. It's pretty fun to make, and although there are places to eat veggie sushi here, they aren't in very convenient locations for us. Anyway, I like that I can ensure that most of the ingredients are organic when I make it at home. And what can beat the satisfaction of rolling and slicing the rolls, revealing the colorful, healthy, and delicious spirals?

There are so many incredible things you can use in your sushi (pumpkin, squash, spinach, tempura veggies, mushrooms of all kinds, tofu, even fake meats if you really like those), but mine are pretty standard with avocado, carrot, and cucumber. I just love the basics, and almost nothing makes me happier than a sushi roll stuffed with avocado.

I put umeboshi paste inside half of the rolls. I love the flavor, my husband does not so much, so I made plenty of each type.

To make sushi, decide what fillings you want and complete any prep work you may need to do, like slicing veggies in long narrow strips.

Make your rice. The rolls above were the product of one cup of sushi rice (before cooking). It was about 22-24 pieces when sliced. I used organic sushi rice and followed the package instructions for cooking, but you could just as easily use brown rice or regular white rice. The sushi rice will most approximate what you'd see in a restaurant and might be a tiny bit easier to work with due to its amount of stickiness.

The package instructions suggest to add brown rice vinegar and brown rice syrup to the cooked rice. I substituted a little bit of agave syrup for the brown rice syrup because I didn't have any, but I was careful not to use too much because the agave is so much sweeter than brown rice syrup. It seemed to work fine.

Once the rice is cool and the fillings are prepared you are ready to start rolling! I picked up a bamboo sushi mat at the local grocery store for pretty cheap. You'll want a bowl of salted water nearby to wet your fingers to help keep the rice from sticking to you. You can also use it to moisten the nori when you're ready to do that. You may also want some napkins or paper towels handy.

Lay a sheet of nori on the bamboo mat and spread a layer of rice on it, leaving about 2 inches uncovered on one edge (I left the right edge uncovered because I was rolling them left-to-right). You want the rice layer to be about 3/8 inch thick. Next, add your fillings. I placed them close to the left edge in a tight pile.

Next, wet the edge of the nori that you left uncovered. Immediately start rolling from the other end, using the bamboo mat to ease everything into shape. Use some pressure to seal the moistened edge and then place your roll seam side down on a cutting board. Moisten your knife and slice the roll into whatever size pieces you wish. The rolling process might feel a little awkward at first, but it gets easy pretty fast.

Here's a list of ingredients that I used. Your list may vary!

1 package nori sheets

1 package organic sushi rice
water for cooking rice
brown rice vinegar
agave nectar or brown rice syrup
salt

1 avocado
1 large cucumber
1-2 large carrots
umeboshi paste

soy sauce or tamari
wasabe (I bought a container from Whole Foods. It's in powder form and you just add warm water)

You may also enjoy using a sprinkle of sesame seeds, or a garnish of pickled ginger!

Spicy Thai Tempeh with Cashews from Clean Food by Terry Walters

2010-01-17T16:45:00.000-08:00

I recently picked up Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source with More Than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You. I was originally really excited about it because it looks so down-to-earth with its seasonal foods and nice wholesome ingredient lists that exclude highly processed products. But for some strange reason, the recipes I wanted to use each seemed to require things that I didn't have around...like parsnips or kudzu or shiitake mushrooms...and I didn't feel like making special trips for them, and well, it took me a while to make anything from the book. To be honest, I don't know what kudzu is. So I'm off to look that up in a moment.

But I finally overcame whatever ingredient obstacles I had and started with a recipe for Spicy Thai Tempeh with Cashews. The ingredients seemed basic enough and the flavors looked really appealing. It turned out that the recipe, though it was not especially difficult, had me all over the kitchen doing what seemed like a hundred different processes. The tempeh needed steaming. The red bell pepper needed roasting (by the way, this was my very first experience roasting a pepper! And it went well, thank you very much.) And since I had purchased raw cashews, the nuts needed toasting and chopping. Some mixing up of sauce ingredients and chopping of green onions, and at last everything came together in the skillet.

Oh, I also made a pot of basmati rice to accompany this dish.

The recipe called for "roasted red chili paste", but unfortunately I had to substitute a sweet chili sauce because the only red chili paste I saw in Whole Foods had animal ingredients in it. It wasn't so unfortunate, though. The dish was mighty delicious, and plenty spicy. I may not make this dish again any time soon just because of all of the busy little tasks involved, but I do hope to make it again someday.

Quick Quinoa Snack

2009-11-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty good with the mealmaking lately, but not so good with the blogmaking. Ansel and I were sick again, not as badly this time but enough to throw all sleep expectations asunder.

Just now I made something so simple and so fulfilling.
I had some cooked quinoa in the fridge. I put two heaping spoonfulls of fresh salsa in it and sprinkled on a generous amount of roasted sunflower seeds. I heated that up, and then put a couple of dashes of Bragg Liquid Amino Acids in it. Yummmmmmmmmm.

Even if you don't already have cooked quinoa on hand, it only takes about 15 minutes to cook so it's still very quick.

This was inspired by a veggie loaf I made a couple of nights ago which used quinoa and sunflower seeds. Hope to share that experience here soon.

The Magical Loaf Studio- Create your own veggie loaf!

2009-10-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, just a couple of days ago I was trying to find the Magical Loaf studio, an online loaf generator founded by Jennifer McCann of Vegan Lunchbox, that allows the user to make selections from lists of ingredients and then receive a customized loaf recipe using those ingredients. At the time it was nowhere to be found. But today I just saw this post announcing that, hooray it's back online!

I used to use the loaf generator all the time. I found my notes from the loaf I made most frequently and these were the ingredients I used:

millet
ground sesame seeds
olive oil
onion
carrot
mashed tofu
bread crumbs
vegetable broth
spices
nutritional yeast
salt

I think the measurements I used changed according to what I had on had at the time, but these were the basic components. I'm going to try my hand at some new varieties soon.

Aloo Palak (curried potatoes and spinach) from the Vegetarian Times

2009-10-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I made Aloo Palak. This was fantastically easy to make, and turned out pretty good. When I make it again I will make some changes to the spices because I found it a little too heavy on the curry powder and needing another dimension of flavor (perhaps ginger), but I love that the ingredient list is short and the spices are easy to come by.

I added a lot more coconut milk than called for in the recipe. I think I used about 2 cups in the end. Also, when my spinach thawed it had almost no liquid in it at all. There was maybe a teaspoon of liquid in the bowl. Hmmmm, weird! So I made 3/4 cup veggie broth with about a third of a bullion cube in some warm water to use in place of the spinach water.

My husband said that cashews would be good in it, and I think that would have been delightful. We didn't have any this time, though.

I served this over brown rice with a splash of Braggs Liquid Amino Acids. It was really delicious warmed up as leftovers the next day.

What about Soy? John Robbins weighs in.

2009-10-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent article by John Robbins about soy. In this article he examines the popular criticisms of the consumption of soy, but he does so much more than that along the way. It is a long article, but it's worth the time.

John Robbins' book Diet for a New America was hugely influential in my decision to become vegan. In a way, he is responsible for my husband and I having met each other. My husband also decided to become vegan after reading John's work, and it was through veganism that we met. When we were planning our wedding we had hopes that John Robbins could serve as officiant. It wasn't possible because John had made a commitment to his family to do less traveling, but he did take time out of his busy day to make a personal call to us, and during this call he shared his thoughts about marriage and weddings. What a nice gesture!

Broiled Tofu with Melissa's Biscuits and Gravy

2009-10-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

We had a stormy day today so I was ready to make something cozy for dinner. I made Melissa's Biscuits and Gravy from the Papaya Chronicles and served them with some Broiled Tofu from Veganomicon. Not much to say, (other than YUM!) about this dinner because the recipes weren't mine, but we were very satisfied and the house was nice and warm from the oven. Thanks, Melissa!

One thing I did differently was that I sprinkled a little bit of nutritional yeast into the gravy at the very end. I try to use that stuff wherever I can!

This was the first time I broiled tofu and now I'm not sure why I hadn't tried it before. Well, one problem is keeping the little guy away from the oven. That can be pretty treacherous. It's not as hard to do when I can go spend time with him while something is in the oven. But I notice that if I'm standing in front of the oven standing watch to make sure something doesn't burn, he just wants to be right there with me grabbing the oven door handle. But the tofu was so delicious and tender, I loved it.

I generally like to buy soymilk and soy creamers that are not flavored. So I tend to steer away from vanilla soymilk and hazelnut creamer, that sort of thing. But I don't do all of the shopping, so we do end up with the flavored stuff in the fridge. Tonight I was reminded of one of the reasons I prefer the plain, besides the fact that I just like the flavor of plain old soymilk. We did have a container of plain soymilk so I thought I was all set to make the biscuits and gravy. I had enough for the gravy but ran out as I was measuring it out for the biscuits. (Actually, I should have made the biscuits first and then whipped up the gravy while they were in the oven, but that is another story.) I was going to just use creamer to make up for the lacking soymilk but when I pulled it out of the fridge I discovered it was French Vanilla flavor. I had to use mostly water for the biscuits. What I'm getting at is that I like the flexibility of the unflavored soymilk. I like it in my cereal and I can use it in recipes. And it would have been nice to have the plain creamer so I could have used it as a sub. I think they would have been much better with the soymilk, but the recipe worked out ok despite my poor planning. So, no big deal, just a passing thought that came up while I was cooking tonight.

Does the Loaf Generator still exist?

2009-10-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

There used to be this awesome webpage that would allow the user to create veggie loaves by picking ingredients from several categories. The link I have is no longer working. Does anyone know if it is still out there on the web somewhere? The link I had was on Vegan Lunch Box.

Ah well. Time to search my recipes to see if I wrote down the loaf I was making via the generator.

Curried Chickpeas and Spinach

2009-10-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

This dish was the product of an adapted recipe for curried chickpeas from a cookbook called Great Vegetarian Dishes by Kurma Dasa, a Hare Krishna chef. Though it is not a vegan cookbook, most of the recipes are very easy to veganize.

I added spinach and I omitted the hot green chili (instead using a very small amount of crushed red pepper) to make the dish mild enough for Ansel. If I were ever to make this dish again I would definitely add fresh ginger. I didn't have any on hand so I left it out, but I think that would have made the flavor, which was already very nice, absolutely perfect. So I'm going to add a note to that effect in the recipe.

Ingredients

4 cardamom pods
1 Tablespoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
generous pinch of black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup cooked chickpeas for puree
chickpea cooking liquid (or sub vegetable broth if not available), about 1/8 cup
1/2 green bell pepper, finely chopped
4 Tablespoons coconut oil
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
2 cups chickpeas
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
chickpea cooking liquid (or sub broth if not available), about 1/4 cup
2 cups shredded spinach (I used frozen after briefly thawing it in boiling water, but you could easily use fresh)
cilantro for garnish, if desired

Instructions

Use your coffee bean grinder or a food processor to grind the cardamom seeds and the cumin seeds to a powder. Then add the cloves, black pepper, and cinnamon and pulse to combine. Set aside.

Puree 1/3 cup chickpeas with about 1/8 cup chickpea cooking liquid or veggie broth. Set aside.

In a deep pan, heat oil and saute the bell pepper with the red pepper flakes for about two minutes in hot oil. Remove the pot from the heat and add your ground spice mix from earlier and the cayenne, asafoetida powder, turmeric, paprika, ground coriander, and ginger.

Return to heat and add all of your chickpeas (the pureed ones and the whole ones), as well as the salt, lemon juice, and enough of the chickpea cooking liquid to make a sort of gravy in the pot. Allow this to simmer and then add spinach. I was using frozen, so I had already brought the frozen spinach to a boil in some water and then drained and pressed most of the liquid out. I then stirred the spinach into the dish and cooked this on medium-high heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve over your rice of choice. I used white basmati.

Austin, you will see us again.

2009-10-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

Oh my. I don't even know where to begin with telling you about all of the vegan things we found to eat in Austin while we were there this past weekend.

First we had dinner at a raw restaurant called Beets Cafe, but sadly I forgot to take a picture of what we had there. I had Pizza Rustica, Ansel had the kid's serving of zucchini noodles, and Mac had the E.L.T. The dessert was the star of the meal (why is it that raw desserts are always the best part? It seems to happen that way every time!). We had a most delicious chocolate cake with some almond ice cream topped with a raspberry compote. I don't think I've stopped thinking about that dessert since.

We visited the HUGE Whole Foods later that night, and although it was gigantic for sure, we felt a little underwhelmed. I guess we just aren't such great fans of Whole Foods even though we shop there a lot. Not too many other options for organic produce in these parts. Personally, I much prefer stores like O.B. People's Co-Op in San Diego. People's does not even sell meat. I'd love to be able to shop in a place like that again.

That evening we made a run to Mr. Natural and went crazy with pastries and other baked goods. Whoooo! Check this out. I think it's safe to say we did not hold back. This is only a portion of what we got...some of it didn't get photographed.

The next morning we had brunch at Mother's Cafe and Garden. I had tropical pancakes topped with strawberries and Mac had some tofu tacos. We shared some new potatoes and Ansel had a little of everything.

Excuse the mess. It's unavoidable.

We spent a couple of hours at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden enjoying the beautiful weather and the calming ambiance. Here's our Ansel walking in the garden.

Then we stopped at Wheatsville Co-Op for lunch. Oh man, I wish we had one of those in San Antonio!

The Popcorn Tofu Po'boy we shared was totally yummy. We also had some sesame noodles and some tahini broccoli.

The vegan desserts we brought home were awesome (pictured below are banana cake with chocolate frosting, a Mexican chocolate brownie, and an oatmeal creme cookie).

Yes, all of this is vegan.

After Wheatsville we took our loot and zoomed back home!

Basic Hummus

2009-10-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Hummus topped with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkling of paprika and cayenne pepper. Just how I like it!

Here I am! I'm trying to get my MoFo back on track. You know, when there's a toddler in one's care, there's really never any dependable planning and never enough time in the day.

BUT...I made hummus for the first time, yum. I used the Veganomicon recipe as a guide (I made some minor adjustments), making it a little on the thick side for spreading. It is delightful.

Ingredients

3 cups chickpeas, well cooked
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/8 cup tahini
3 cloves garlic, crushed
ground cumin, pinch
ground coriander, pinch
salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon paprika
about 1/8 cup water (use as needed/desired)

Instructions

Use food processor to puree 1 1/2 cups of chickpeas, leaving it just a bit chunky. Then add the remaining chickpeas and the rest of the ingredients except for the water. Puree well, adding water gradually until the hummus is at the desired consistency.

Be sure to refrigerate before serving.

Weekend plans for lots of vegan eating! And thoughts on cooking dried chickpeas.

2009-10-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

We are planning a trip to Austin tomorrow! I think we will be staying the night and driving back on Sunday. It's not too far (about an hour and a half?) but my son can sometimes be really unhappy in the car and it would be nice to not have to do both directions in the same day. Also, we'd be in Austin for more meals, which is great because there are so many vegan-friendly places to eat! Yes, I'm taking my camera, and Yes, I'll post pictures.

I've been prepping some chickpeas so that I can make some homemade hummus. The first and only other time I used dried chickpeas, I was not very pleased with the result. I just could not get those beans to soften up! Well, if you haven't used dried chickpeas before and have plans to do so someday, be prepared to give them a little extra TLC for Tenderness. I just finished cooking today's batch and oh my, they are soft and very tasty!

First, I picked through and washed them several times. Then I soaked them for about six hours. I dumped the water, added fresh water, mixed in 1 tablespoon of baking soda, and soaked them for another four hours (I just read that baking soda may destroy the B vitamins in the beans, but it shortens cooking time, so take that in consideration. As a vegan, I like to get my B vitamins from the foods I eat.). Next, I drained the beans and washed them really well. Then, I brought them to a boil in lots of fresh water with a couple of strips of kombu and a bay leaf in the pot. Finally, I simmered all of this for 1 hour and 20 minutes, stirring a few times during cooking. I think the bay leaf really did its job here. Yum.

It's late now, almost midnight, so I'm not going to make the hummus until tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes, but I may not get around to it until we get back from our trip. Have a great weekend!

Tostada Bowls

2009-10-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

One thing that is very nice about being in San Antonio is there are always lots of good tortillas to be found. I love tortillas. I snack on them often, sometimes just heating and topping them with Earth Balance. Today I picked up a package of tortillas at Whole Foods that were prepared but not cooked. I decided to give them a try. They were pretty good, maybe a little more fresh tasting than the cooked tortillas. I have made tortillas from scratch before, but I usually don't feel like going through the trouble. Maybe if there were more time in the day I'd make them more often.

Right after taking them out of the skillet I placed them in our serving bowls and they got that tostada bowl shape, but they stayed fairly soft. Maybe if I had kept them in the skillet for a little longer they would have become more crisp.

Our tostada bowls were filled with brown rice, pinto beans (cooked with kombu, cumin, garlic powder, and chili powder), pico de gallo, soy sour cream, mixed baby greens, fresh avocado, and hot sauce.

Until Tomorrow

2009-10-14T20:38:00.001-07:00

So, I'm thinking ahead to tomorrow and soaking some pinto beans. I have yet to figure out what I'll do with them. Maybe some Cuban style beans and rice? I'll sleep on it.

I found one white bean among my pintos. I guess that's the charm of the bulk bin. :)

Lazy Night Sloppy Joes

2009-10-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

We were going to have veggie burgers tonight (from a box), but it turned out there was only one left.

Fortunately, we usually keep a bag of Nate's Meatless Meatballs in the freezer for nights like this when neither of us feels like cooking. Sometimes we use them on pasta, but tonight we used them to make sloppy joes. Actually, we thought we were going to make meatball sandwiches, but then the meatballs mostly fell apart so we just called them sloppy joes and were pleased.

We warmed some hamburger buns in the toaster oven and put about eight of the Nate's in a small sauce pan with about 1 1/2 cups of pasta sauce. We also added a generous amount of vegan Parmesan, about 1/4 cup diced soy cheese, and about two teaspoons of olive oil. We let that warm up until the cheese was partially melted and the Nate's were plenty hot.

We both spread Vegenaise on our hamburger buns and piled on the sloppy Nate's and some mixed baby lettuce leaves. I also put pepperoncinis on mine.

The waffle fries really rounded out the meal. Delicious, fast, filling. And Ansel loved it, too.

Udon Noodles with Sesame Umeboshi Sauce and Tofu

2009-10-12T18:01:00.002-07:00

This was a great diversion from my usual onion/garlic/sesame udon standby. The sauce is tart due to the umeboshi paste, so if you have any aversion to tartness or the taste of vinegar, maybe try this or this dish instead.

I made a few alterations to this recipe. I added agave to tone down the sourness a tiny bit, and I added some toasted sesame oil because I love that stuff. I also put tofu in the dish.

I recommend that you don't omit the onion, and use a sweet one, because it is a wonderful complement to the sourness of the sauce.

Ingredients

2 teaspoons sesame seeds for toasting

1/2 lb extra firm tofu, cubed
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
a couple of dashes of soy sauce or tamari

1 package udon noodles
a bit of olive oil to add to cooked noodles

1/4 of a medium purple onion, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced

1 Tablespoon umeboshi paste
2 Tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil

Instructions

Toast sesame seeds in a skillet over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and grind in a mortar and pestle, food processor, or coffee grinder. A course grind is fine; it's okay to have some whole seeds visible.

Using a medium skillet, lightly brown your tofu cubes in sesame oil and a couple of dashes of soy sauce or tamari. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Brown your onion and garlic in the same skillet using whatever oil is left there after removing the tofu. When it is soft and slightly browned, remove from heat and toss it into the tofu.

Meanwhile, cook your udon noodles according to the package instructions. After draining cooked noodles, be sure to rinse in plenty of cool water to keep noodles from getting extra sticky. Then stir a bit of olive oil into the noodles.

Make your sauce by combining umeboshi paste, ground toasted sesame seeds, toasted sesame oil, agave syrup, soy sauce or tamari, and lemon juice with a food processor or blender.

Mix sauce into your tofu and onions. Serve noodles with this mix on top.

Tofu Kale Soup

2009-10-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

It's soup weather in San Antonio! It was in the low 60s when I left the house today. I was out in the yard for a while getting rained on and I was so happy.

Tonight I made a wonderful soup with a few simple ingredients. You can omit the bulgur if you wish, or substitute noodles if that appeals to you.

Ingredients

1/2 lb extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes and cubed
2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bouillon cube
1 carrot, chopped
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1/8 cup olive oil
5 cups water
4 1/2 cups shredded kale
2 Tablespoons mirin
1/8 cup tamari
1/2 cup bulgur wheat
squeeze of lemon juice

Instructions

In a skillet, heat toasted sesame oil and then brown tofu cubes in it until golden. Don't worry about getting every side, just roll the cubes around every couple of minutes until you start to see a lot of the tofu looking golden-brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a soup pot, warm garlic, carrots, bouillon cube, and mustard powder in olive oil until everything is well combined and garlic is soft and fragrant.

Add water and bring to simmer. Then, add tofu, stir, and simmer for five minutes. Next, add kale, mirin, and tamari. Stir, and simmer for five minutes. Add bulgur, stir, and simmer for 12-15 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

I served this with a bit of white basmati rice.

Working on the Guac

2009-10-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

ETA picture. Which doesn't even show the guac. But there's my salad with the Golden Chia Salad Dressing on it. I do think the chia lends a nice body to the dressing and it adheres more nicely to the vegetables than the Liquid Gold Dressing usually does.

I made guacamole tonight...but it was so-so. My onion was way too strong! (I only used half, but still.) I had to use all of the avocados I had to make it more palatable, I think it was four of them. I also added some vegan sour cream. I'm thinking another problem was that I am used to eating California avocados that have not had to leave California. Tonight's avocados were just not as flavorful. Ah well, it wasn't terrible and we did eat it on our vegan quesadillas.

I love that I don't have to chop the onions by hand any longer. I usually can't even keep my eyes open after chopping onions. With the food processor I just have to be careful not to put my face over it with the lid open.

Golden Chia Salad Dressing

2009-10-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

This recipe is adapted from the Liquid Gold salad dressing recipe from Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina's Becoming Vegan: The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-Based Diet.

Liquid Gold is probably my favorite salad dressing. Have you tried it? It's tangy and a little mustardy. The nutritional yeast gives it a lovely color and it's big on B vitamins and omegas. When I put this dressing on my salads I seriously want every last drop in the bottom of the bowl, it is that good. And I can't think of any other salad dressing that I'd be scraping the bowl for.

Tonight I adapted the recipe using chia seeds and olive oil instead of flax seed oil (with other minor changes). Here is a nutritional comparison of flax and chia. But I wouldn't worry so much about comparing number to number. I think it is more important to mix things up, eat a variety of foods.

I was entirely pleased with the results. I'm wondering if I'll find the dressing has thickened in the refrigerator overnight because of the properties of the chia seeds. I'll let you know what I find!

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons ground chia seeds
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup Bragg Liquid Aminos
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
2 teaspoons Dijon or stoneground mustard
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Blend well and refrigerate. When adding water, check the consistency and add more if too thick.

Plants in my garden!

2009-10-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

I had another crazy day with taking my cat to the vet and spending time with Ansel's grandparents, but I did have a chance to work on my garden. Here it is!

I received three broccoli transplants (on right) from someone I met through the local Attachment Parenting International discussion board. I picked up some lavender and some basil during my last trip to Whole Foods, and I moved one of my container tomatoes to the raised bed (rear) because it looked like it needed a new environment. I need to get a bigger stake for it soon since I keep hearing that these indeterminate tomato plants can get monstrous. You can't see them but I also put some of my cilantro and mustard green seedlings in the raised bed. And I've planted some carrot seeds and some lacinato kale seeds. All I want to get now for the remaining two empty square feet are marigolds.

I really aspire to have a salsa garden, but I am going to wait until another season because I think things like hot peppers will grow better if I wait.

Vegan Mofo, I'll haven't forsaken you. Stay tuned!

Mofo Pause

2009-10-07T18:02:00.000-07:00

I hate to do this but I have to wimp out on today's Mofo post. My brain is fried from a stressful day. A lot of things happened including a sick cat, so please forgive me. My husband is out with Ansel's grandparents getting takeout right now. We're having Indian food. Maybe I'll take a picture. I hope to have better posts soon, eeegh.

Lentil Walnut Pâté

2009-10-06T11:05:00.001-07:00

Ever since I tasted the Lentil-Walnut Pâté at Real Food Daily restaurant I have been in love with the idea of making it myself. It's not something you can just go pick up a the store on a whim and it's not like I've lived within 2 hours of a Real Food Daily at any point in the past five years. Well, it's really not the kind of item you can make with a plain old blender, and I didn't have a food processor. Until yesterday!

Oooooh, I am so happy. I can now make fresh salsa, pesto, hummus! This is so exciting.

Last night I did make some Lentil-Walnut Paté, but I just kind of tossed together what I had in the house, so I think this could be much better with the addition of some other ingredients like mushrooms or lemon juice. I don't have the recipe for the RFD paté, so I'm going to go on the hunt for that. I should probably have the The Real Food Daily Cookbook, anyway. I saw some tempting recipes that use miso paste and/or umeboshi paste, but I couldn't get to the store for those. I'll have to try it another time. But here is what I did, and it was really quite good.

Ingredients

1 cup walnuts
1 cup lentils
1/2 onion, sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 carrot, chopped into 2 or 3 pieces
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
salt, to taste
pepper, dash

Instructions

Soak walnuts in water for 30 minutes or more. When done soaking, make sure to rinse them off really well.

Rinse and pick through lentils, then cook them in plenty of water for 45 minutes. While the lentils cook, mix the crushed garlic and the onions in a skillet and caramelize in olive oil until they are nice and dark. This takes about as long as the cooking time for the lentils. Make sure to stir the onions a lot and watch that they don't burn. The caramelization of onions is a step that I borrowed from Joanne Stepaniak's paté recipe from Vegan Deli. While onions are caramelizing, add about a teaspoon of cumin and half a teaspoon of ground coriander.

When lentils are done, drain them and place in food processor. You can keep the cooking liquid for soups or other recipes if you like. Add carmelized onions, carrot, paprika, toasted sesame oil, and soy sauce, salt, and pepper (this should be everything) to the food processor and process until fairly smooth.

Chill in fridge until cold. I served it with a dollop of soy sour cream on top. Delicious with crackers, corn chips, or veggie sticks.

Chia Seeds

2009-10-05T18:53:00.000-07:00

I had never heard of chia seeds until recently when I was reading the ingredients list on a package of vegan "feta cheese". Hmmm, I thought, like from chia pets? Yes, chia pets. (Here's where some goofy person makes a joke about eating chia pets not being vegan.)

I checked out the feta and could see them in there; they looked a little like mustard seeds. I wasn't sure why the manufacturer decided to use them or if I could even taste them, although they did seem to add a little dimension to the texture of the feta.

Fast forward about half a year later and my husband brings home a package of ground chia seeds because he can't find hemp seeds at the store. (Chia seeds have a similar abundance of essential fatty acids as hemp seeds, so it kind of made sense.) Well, I wasn't really excited because I wanted that good hempy flavor. Also, the chia seeds were ground and I love to sprinkle hemp seeds on top of muffins for a really pretty look and a great textural contrast to the crumb of the muffin. I mixed about a teaspoon of the chia seeds into the muffin mix for the health benefits but I didn't notice them at all while eating the muffins.

Well, today I decided to figure out what to do with the rest of this package of ground chia seeds. I also decided to taste them solo to see what it was like. Not much flavor, if any. Kind of gritty at first, but then once they were moistened they got really slimy. I was glad I only tasted a tiny tiny bit.

Here are some ideas that I have yet to try, but I will definitely report back as I get around to them. As for today, I just flat ran out of time.

Use as egg replacer (yeah, I believe it. Really slimy)
Add to salad dressing
Add to smoothies
Add to potato salad (I like the sound of that!)
Add to soups to enhance creaminess
Add to vegan pudding recipes
Use to improve gluten free baked goods
Use to bind veggie burgers or veggie meatballs

My google search also suggests using them medicinally for acid reflux. Making a mental note in case that should come in handy some day.

Tomato plants

2009-10-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

My little tomato plants have some flowers on them. You can also see the newly sprouted mustard greens there underneath. I love mustard greens!

We've had a busy day and I don't really time to write more, but I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with a new recipe!

Little Guy Enchiladas

2009-10-03T17:35:00.001-07:00

I was making a big dish of enchiladas last night and I decided to make a special one for Ansel because he has a hard time eating spicy foods and my enchiladas are spicy. Usually he just eats whatever we are eating, but I knew he wouldn't be able to cope with the level of spice in my enchilada dish. He has really been into solids lately, which is fun because I've let him take the lead when it comes to food. He still nurses on demand, but I do try to provide him with plenty of no-pressure opportunities to try a variety of vegan solid foods. These past couple of weeks he has seemed to get excited about what he's served and the amount of food he's eaten has noticeably increased.

He's become pretty skilled with a spoon and fork, too. But don't be fooled by the picture, he still makes a giant mess. I took that picture before he really got going. By the time he was done I was finding enchilada everywhere, including inside the leg ruffle of his diaper. It never ceases to amaze me how far and wide the food gets spread.

I basically used the same recipe that I posted here, but I didn't add any corn or soy cheese and I added some sliced mushrooms to the onions as I sauteed them. When I made Ansel's enchilada (pictured below) I mixed the enchilada sauce with a lot of pasta sauce to cut down the spice. I also reserved some of the bean/onion/mushroom mix before putting the diced green chilies in so his would be chile free. The corn tortillas were the perfect size for this little casserole dish, so instead of rolling them I just layered sauce, tortilla, bean/onion/mushroom mix, sauce, tortilla, repeat.

I put it into the oven at the same time as the larger dish of enchiladas, but took it out after 20 minutes while the larger dish stayed in to bake for 30 minutes. It was awesome to enjoy our spicy enchiladas while he enjoyed his mild ones.

Glazed Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

2009-10-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

This year our moving day happened to fall on my husband's birthday. We couldn't do much to celebrate with all of our stuff having been taken by the movers the day before and Ansel and me having to jump on a one-way flight to San Antonio. It took me a long time to get our new kitchen organized and functioning, and then I got the flu, and well you get the picture, all sorts of things kept getting in the way of making his birthday cake.

Well, I finally was able to make his cake about a month and a half after his birthday. He wanted chocolate, and I know he's a fan of the chocolate/peanut butter combination, so I made a peanut butter filling to put between the layers. It was really good.

Earlier this year, in preparation for Ansel's first birthday, I was able to get a small stash of soy birthday candles. Finding soy birthday candles is quite a feat, let me tell you. We are the kind of vegans who do not use bee products, so beeswax candles were out of the picture, and I did not want to use the petroleum-based candles you normally find at the store. I spent days in search of the perfect vegan candles with no luck. I checked Etsy and although I did not find soy birthday candles, I did find a seller there who agreed to make some as a custom order. He was also local to where we lived, so it was really nice knowing I wasn't defeating the purpose by using lots of transportation energy to get my special candles.

I should say though, one thing about soy wax is it is quite soft. The candles need to be handled more gently than the run of the mill birthday candle. The seller added some extra candles into my order in case of breakage. A few of them did break, but I was able to glue them back together easily. I also want to say that the Etsy seller was great. Super helpful, super nice, great customer service.

Anyway, on to the cake recipe!

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Oil two round cake pans. Place parchment into bottom of each pan and then oil parchment.

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl and mix well. In a separate bowl, combine warm water, vanilla extract, canola oil, and apple cider vinegar and mix well.

Mix wet ingredients into dry until no large lumps remain. Pour batter into cake pans (half in each). Bake for 30 minutes (use the toothpick test to be sure they are done).

Allow layers to cool completely on a rack. Then, place one layer on your serving surface (I just used a plate) and spread a generous layer of peanut butter filling on it, being careful not to put too much near the edges because it will squish out the side when you put the top layer on. Place the top layer on and press down lightly but firmly. Then pour your glaze over the top. Allow the glaze to set and then serve. You can leave it at room temperature to set but I think chilling it in the fridge works best.

Peanut Butter Filling
(spread between layers)

Ingredients

3 Tablespoons Earth Balance
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 Tablespoons soy milk

Instructions

Using a mixer, whip together the Earth Balance, sugar, and peanut butter. Gradually add soy milk until mixture becomes a bit fluffy and reaches a spreadable consistency.

Chocolate Glaze

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar
4 Tablespoons Earth Balance
2 Tablespoons soy milk
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions

Mix all ingredients except for vanilla extract into a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Simmer for about two minutes. Add vanilla and then pour over cake.

New Garden

2009-10-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well hello! Here I am, signing on for my first Vegan MoFo post.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, we just moved to San Antonio in early August. One of the challenges has been learning how to satisfy our vegan palates here in cowboy country.

San Antonio is a huge city (larger than San Diego) and a college town as well, so it is not really all that hard to be vegan here, but it *is* Texas and our house is not so close to the only Whole Foods in the city. So it's not as easy to get our fresh organic produce as what we had been used to. And unfortunately, even the produce we've purchased from that Whole Foods is not quite as fresh as what we used to get in California. There are a couple of farmer's markets, but again they are quite a drive for us. I am looking into joining a CSA but so far have only managed to play phone tag with the guy who runs it.

One delightful thing about living in San Antonio is the cost of housing (compared to San Diego, it's a dream!). This means we have a yard with plenty of room for...a garden!

I dug around in the dirt a bit and then decided to do a raised bed. Just too many rocks, and probably a history of weed-killing chemicals on the lawn, who knows. So I set about figuring out how to build a raised bed and where to get the ingredients with which to fill it. It's taken me a while, but it's almost ready! I just got my final ingredient yesterday and spent Ansel's naptime mixing compost, coarse vermiculite, and coir (shredded coconut hulls). It's about 1/3 full, so I'm hoping I can get it filled by tomorrow. I'm not sure what I can still plant this late in the season. Fortunately, the climate is such that the growing season is quite long here. But I'll need to look into it.

While I was in the process of getting my raised bed materials together, I was able to get some organic tomato seedlings planted in some large containers. Right now they are about 9 inches tall. In one of the pots I planted cilantro (coriander) seeds and mustard green seeds. Those just recently sprouted.

I'm a complete novice to gardening, so I have lots to learn and probably lots of mistakes to make. But I'm excited to be able to show Ansel how food is grown and hopefully to enjoy some fresh produce right out of the ground! Right now he just wants to tear the plants apart and dig them up, but I guess that's normal for a 15 month old. :)

More soon! Meanwhile, here's my kiddo next to tomato plants.

Vegan MoFo III

2009-09-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

Carrot and Potato Time will be joining in with all of the other blogs participating in Vegan MoFo III (The Vegan Month of Food 2009)! I'm looking forward to bringing some energy back to the blog.

Nosey Pesto Eggplant Pasta Post

2009-09-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

This post made me laugh so hard. Thank you, Cyn.

The Day the Mac Made Cookies: Veganomicon recipe for Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-09-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

A while back (I've had this image saved to my desktop for months!) my husband made these delicious cookies. I think he ordered the white chocolate chips from a vegan online shop like Pangea or Vegan Essentials, I can't remember which.

He used the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
but he omitted the walnuts and used the white chocolate chips instead of dark chocolate, obviously.

I like soft cookies, and these were nice and soft. And I really like it when I don't have to make them myself!

Basic Vegan Chili

2009-08-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

This is a great no-frills chili. It's cooked in the crock pot so you can cook it overnight if you like, but I've learned to cook it during the day because the smell of chili disturbs my sleep.

For this batch, I put the ingredients into the crock pot at about 11 am while Ansel was napping and set the pot on low. It was ready by 5 pm.

I've recently decided to use dried beans from bulk as much as possible, which is a big change for me as I was really dependent on the ease of buying and opening canned beans. Part of my motivation is financial. Dried beans are amazingly inexpensive. The other consideration is the cans themselves. By avoiding them I reduce waste, and I don't have to worry anymore about whether the can linings are leaching anything into the food. Yep, apparently a lot of can linings leach BPA. I don't know how much I should worry about that, but it has been a nagging concern of mine.

I've heard people say that the flavor of uncanned beans is better than that of canned, but for me the difference is so slight that I don't really notice much. It takes more planning, time, and dish washing to prepare the dried beans, so I'm still trying to get used to that. One thing I do like, however, is that I can prepare them with seaweed (kombu) for enhanced nutritional content and a general reduction in, ehm, digestive distress (gas!) associated with beans.

I just add a couple of strips of kombu to the pot when I cook the beans. So, in this case, the kombu was already in the beans when I put the beans in the crock pot. I usually remove it before serving, but when I made the chili the kombu softened and kind of fell apart into the chili so it stayed in there for this particular dish.

I used mostly kidney beans for the chili with a little bit of pinto beans mixed in for this batch.

Oh, those crackers? We love those crackers. They are Eco-Planet non-dairy organic crackers. They're in the shape of hybrid cars, wind turbines, the Earth, and the sun to signify solar energy. Better than goldfish crackers!

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups cooked beans, canned or dried and prepared until soft, including 2-3 strips kombu seaweed, about 1 inch long when dry
12 oz meatless ground (I used Yves brand)
28 oz diced tomato
1 green bell pepper, coarsely chopped
1 onion, coarsely chopped
2 Tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup veggie broth or bean cooking liquid

Instructions

Place ingredients into crock pot in the order listed. Mix once and start your crock pot. I use a Rival crockpot and 6 hours on low was plenty of time for this chili to cook.

Here's what it looked like before I put the lid on the crock pot, which I could barely see by the way, because I always cry my eyes out when I cut onions.

It's good to find humor in the failures.

2009-08-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

This post by Whole Food Whole Family was fun to read. I really identified with the experimentation failures. You should have seen my first try at vegan albondigas. Oh, it was a horror to behold. The flavor was okay, but the texture and color were just miserable because the "meatballs" fell apart and made the soup into a thick disgusting mush. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

There are a lot of things I cook that don't make it onto the blog. Sometimes they look bad, sometimes they don't taste very good, and sometimes they are just kind of boring.

A friend requested that I post about our first meal in our new house. Well, my apologies, but that was not a meal I was proud of! It had been an excruciating day in a string of long, disorienting days, and by the time we thought about dinner it was too late to go to the store or get take out. We didn't have a refrigerator yet. I scrounged around in some boxes that the movers had dropped off that day and I was lucky enough to find a box of whole wheat pasta and a pot and a utensil for stirring the noodles. I also found salt and a container of nutritional yeast. I cooked the noodles and, lacking a strainer, I seem to remember my husband finding some way of draining them. We had no oil, no butter, nothing resembling those things, so we ate dry noodles with nutritional yeast and salt. My first couple of bites hung uncomfortably just below the swallowing point in my throat for a good couple of minutes before slowly making way for the rest of my plate.

But we were home. And now the kitchen is almost all settled. I'm looking forward to making my husband a long overdue birthday cake soon. His birthday was on the day we left San Diego, poor guy. Let's hope his cake is good enough to show up here on the blog!

Black Bean and Chickpea Patties

2009-08-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

These patties were inspired by the Chickpea Cutlet recipe in Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. That recipe is one of my favorites from the book, but I felt the flavor could be more dynamic with the addition of black beans. I was really happy with the result and we ate these in sandwiches.

By the way, our new house has a neutral colored countertop in the kitchen. I am so glad I don't have to battle the burnt-orange surfaces in my photographs any longer! I cropped most of it out of this picture, but you can see a little triangle of it (for the last time!) up on the right.

Black Bean and Chickpea Patties

Ingredients

3/4 cup cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup cooked black beans
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon water
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon sage, crushed

Instructions

Put both types of beans into a large bowl and mash until no whole beans remain. Add all remaining ingredients and mix together. Use your hands to begin kneading the mixture until the wheat gluten begins to create a sort of stringy texture. If the mixture seems dry, add a little bit of water. The texture should lend to making patties.

You can really make your patties any shape or size, but you'll want them to be about 1/4 inch thick for ease of cooking. I divided mine into several small balls (can't remember how many now, probably 6-8) and then pressed them down on a cutting board and shaped them into circles.

Brown on each side in a skillet with a small amount of oil, then serve! These can be baked as well, but I haven't done that yet so you'd have to experiment with heat and time. I think Veganomicon has a suggestion in that regard for the Chickpea utlets.

Tie Bib and Birthday Flags

2009-08-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

I found this great tutorial for a tie bib and made one for Ansel to wear to his birthday party. From what I read on this person's blog, I'm pretty sure her family is vegan as well!

I also made this bunting to hang at the party. I love it because I can use it again and again. I was inspired by some that I saw on etsy, but with my overstuffed fabric stash I figured I should make one myself. I was able to use a lot of organic fabrics, too. It was simple.

1. Make a triangle template out of cardboard or similar material.
2. Using template, cut out fabric pieces, two for each flag
3. If you like, stitch or embroider images, letters, words, or numbers onto your pieces.
4. For each flag, sew two pieces together from the bottom point up to about 1 inch from the top, then turn right side out. Don't sew the sides all the way to the top- leave the openings for threading your line through.
5. Use a zigzag stitch or overlock stitch to close tops of triangles. (Or if you don't mind spending the time you can make a nicer hidden seam, just leave room to thread your line through.)
6. Thread a rope, durable ribbon, string, or whatever kind of line you like through the openings you left when sewing up the sides. I used a strong paper ribbon I found in the gift wrap section of a store.
7. You can sew a few stitches in your first and last flags to attach them to your line if they are moving too much. That will help all of the other flags to stay put.

Ansel's Birthday Cake, Not to be Confused with Ansel's Birthweek Cake: Vanilla with Strawberry Buttercream Filling

2009-08-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

When Ansel turned one year old in June I baked a vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream filling for his party. It was the first time I had used that cake recipe, and as it came out of the oven I was really worried about it. It looked too dense and the crumbs I tasted were okay but not great. Well, I had nothing to worry about. Once the cake was put together and frosted it was incredibly delicious! Small slices were sufficiently satisfying, so this medium-sized cake went a long way. I regret that I didn't get a picture of a slice of the cake as it was pretty with the strawberries inside.

I used this cake recipe. http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/veganvanillacake.htm
It cooked all the way through at 30 minutes and had some golden brown crust at that point, so I didn't need to bake it longer as the recipe suggests.

I made this strawberry filling using a pound of strawberries. I didn't measure how many cups that ended up being (probably not four), I just used what I had:

Strawberry Puree

4 cups fresh strawberries, washed and cut into large pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

In a small saucepan, over medium-high heat, place all ingredients in together and stir until the water starts to bubble and the strawberries start to cook and break down a bit. Turn heat to low and cook for about 5 minutes longer. Set aside to cool. Note: the puree must be completely cool before adding to the buttercream. (I chilled it in the fridge for most of the day. Also, I ended up with lots of this left over after using what I needed for the cake, so you could really make it with a smaller container of strawberries and reduce the sugar and water by half or so.)

Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup softened shortening, we use Earth Balance shortening
1/2 cup softened margarine, we use Earth Balance butter substitute
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted if clumpy
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain soy milk or soy creamer (or less, add gradually)

Beat shortening and margarine together until well mixed and fluffy. I used the Kitchenaid mixer. Then sift in powdered sugar and beat well. The mixture will likely look a bit dry. Add vanilla and a couple of splashes of soy milk or creamer and mix for about 3 minutes. The strawberries will add moisture, so you can let it stay on the dry side.

Remove a little less than 1/2 of the frosting mixture from the bowl and combine it with the strawberry puree. I think I did about half and half, maybe a little less puree than frosting. Mix it up really well. Mine looked sort of ugly (things weren't integrating completely) but it didn't seem to matter in the final outcome. This will be your inner cake filling. Set this aside, in the refrigerator if it will be a while before you frost the cake.

Continue adding soy milk or creamer and beating the butter cream frosting that is still in the original bowl until the consistency is fluffy and creamy. This will be for the outside of the cake. I allowed mine to stay fairly thick, not adding the full amount of soy milk so that it would stay firm on the cake. Once the cake was refrigerated, the frosting became nice and hard and then it kept its shape while it sat on the table at the party.

When your cake layers have completely cooled, place one of them on the serving platter. Spread the strawberry filling on it, leaving about 3/4 inch around the edge without any of the filling on it (the filling will spread when you add the top cake layer). Set the top layer down on it and gently press. If any strawberry filling comes out the sides, wipe it clean with a paper towel. Then you can frost the outside of the cake.

By the way, I didn't give Ansel a piece of this cake because I felt it was too much sugar for him. I gave him a cupcake sweetened with agave. Recipe is here.

Next post: the tie bib Ansel wore at the party, and the Happy Birthday bunting I made for the event!

We are in San Antonio

2009-08-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the blog for way too long, everybody. We have been in our new home in San Antonio for a little over a week now, and we are far from being settled. There is still a great deal to do. But my computer is now set up (in the kitchen!) and I have a backlog of pictures of meals past to share with you, hopefully sometime very soon.

We also have tales of being vegan in San Antonio, which is not impossible but not as easy as what we have been accustomed. I'll tell you all about it. :)

'till soon...

Making some other things!

2009-06-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

Well, June is upon us. Things are very busy around here. Next week, my husband will presenting his PhD defense and a few days later his commencement will be held. Some of his family is flying in to be here and there is sure to be lots of celebration.

Then, we'll be in for even more celebration when my baby boy turns one year old on June 17th. I guess he's reached toddler status as he's walking more than crawling now. We're having a party for him on the 20th and I've been working on some sewn things for the party. (I'll post pictures when there's something worth looking at.)

At least four other little ones in our playgroup also have June birthdays, so this is quite a month!

But that's not all! At the end of June we plan to fly out to San Antonio to look for a place to live (we may possibly be buying a house). My husband got a job at a university there and we'll be moving in August.

So, this month is pretty packed and there may not be very many recipe posts here for a bit. But I'm anxious to get back to blogging so I will jump right back in just as soon as the time presents itself.

Befriending Fennel: Fennel Orange Muffins

2009-05-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

There are very few plant foods that I don't enjoy, so usually the inability to select our veggies (we get them from a Community Supported Agriculture farm that supplies us with organic, seasonal, and local produce) isn't a problem for me. I like the challenge of using unexpected ingredients and ultimately I prefer to eat organic and local even if it means I don't get to pick out the items.

But then fennel season comes around. It's not that I don't like fennel. It's that I like it in very small amounts and the fennel plant is SO BIG and the flavor is so pronounced. Bulb, stalks, leaves. It's just too much fennel flavor.

Fortunately for me, someone recommended this Orange Fennel Muffin recipe from a book called From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce. The book isn't vegan, but it looks like it might be a nice book for those of us who are CSA members because it makes it easier to find suitable dishes for the items in your CSA shares. You just may have to make some substitutions once in a while, as I did with the muffins.

I was very pleased with these muffins. My husband really enjoyed them, too. The muffins were sweet, very moist, and the fennel flavor was mild and pleasant. The orange was extremely subtle, almost undetectable. The friend who recommended the recipe said that she adds more orange juice to the batter with good results.

I was able to use most of the fennel bulb/stalks/leaves. I could have used all of my fennel in this batch, but I got tired of grating and chopping, so in the end I still had some fennel remaining. But at least it's a manageable amount that I can put in salad dressing or a veggie bake without being overcome by the flavor.

Here's a shot of the wet ingredients and brown sugar mixed with the fennel. Pretty intense. Even though I left some chunks of the stalk a bit rough, everything baked into a nice soft muffin with lovely green fennel leaves showing through.

Here's the recipe, adapted for those of us who refrain from eating eggs. The applesauce is a lovely substitution. Next time I think I will add a little cinnamon and maybe even a pinch of nutmeg.

Fennel Orange Muffins

Ingredients

1 medium orange, juiced (I peeled and pureed the orange in the blender after removing seeds)
½ cup apple sauce
½ cup canola oil
¾ cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated fennel bulbs and chopped stalks and greens, or more
2¼ cups flour (I used half whole wheat and half bread flour as I was out of all-purpose)
1½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350° F and oil muffin tin.

Combine orange juice or puree with applesauce, canola oil, sugar, vanilla, and fennel in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt, and gently fold into wet ingredients, being careful not to overmix.

Spoon into muffin cups and bake 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Chickpea Hot Pot (Soup)

2009-05-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

This recipe is wonderful. I think it was the photo at the 101 Cookbooks page that initially attracted me to it, but I'm glad it did because we loved this.

The author states that this is not a traditional hot pot, so think of this as a stew or soup. It has a lovely ratio of grain (bulgur wheat) to legume (chickpeas) to veggies (onion, cauliflower, and kale).

Before making this dish I had never used orange juice in a soup or stew, and honestly I was very skeptical when I saw that the recipe called for half a cup of orange juice. I just couldn't imagine how that would taste good. But the orange juice actually gave the dish a dimension of flavor that was surprisingly delicious.

I didn't have any vegetable broth on hand, but I did have bouillon cubes, so I threw two cubes into the pot with 4 1/2 cups of water when it came time to add the broth. I also used more than a splash of olive oil in the initial step. I probably used two tablespoons, because I like olive oil. At the end I didn't bother to garnish the soup with the red onion or the additional oil at the end (but that red onion is pretty in the photo!).

Give it a try, it's a delight!

Udon Noodles with Baked Tofu and Veggies

2009-05-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

I finally have a new camera! What a difference. The old one was a bit of a dinosaur and I had to finesse every shot to make it look better.

Here's a really yummy dish I made last night. It's not fancy, but it's got a really nice combination of textures with the soft noodles, semi-firm baked tofu, and crunchy radish bits. We loved it.

Ingredients

1 package udon noodles
toasted sesame oil, drizzled on noodles

3 Tablespoons safflower oil
2 Tablespoons Bragg Liquid Amino Acids or soy sauce
2 carrots, thinly sliced
2 heads baby bok choy, thinly sliced, stems separated from leaves
1 package baked tofu, chopped into bite-sized pieces
4 radishes, finely chopped
black pepper as desired

Instructions

Prepare udon noodles according to package directions. Rinse with cool water and then drizzle with about a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil.

While noodles cook, pour safflower oil and Bragg Liquid Amino Acids into large skillet and add carrots and bok choy stems. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then, add tofu and bok choy leaves. Continue to cook for about another 8-10 minutes, or until carrots are tender, stirring occasionally. Add black pepper to taste.

Remove vegetables and tofu from heat and mix into the noodles. Add radishes and stir well. Serve.

Birthday

2009-05-06T22:42:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we celebrated my birthday at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas and a friend brought these wonderful pistachio cupcakes from a recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

Happy day!

Potato Black Bean Burritos (Burritos de Papas y Frijoles Negros)

2009-05-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Melissa from The Papaya Chronicles has an oil-free version of this recipe (with other minor modifications) here.

These burritos are wildly popular in my house. I grew up in San Diego where the burritos are plentiful. There are some places where a person can get vegan burritos here, but I have to say that these potato burritos beat any of those. The filling is just packed with flavor.

Ingredients

6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (feel free to use any type of potato, these are just my favorite for this dish), peeled and roughly chopped
water for boiling potato, enough to cover pieces
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
2 shakes crushed red pepper or more if you want a spicier dish
1 cup cooked black beans (I use canned)
1/8 cup Bragg Liquid Amino Acids

tortillas as needed
your favorite burrito accompaniments like salsa and guacamole

Instructions

Cover peeled and chopped potatoes with water in a pot and add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Boil potatoes for about 20 minutes. You want them to be cooked but not completely soft, a little firmer than you would prepare them for mashing. They will cook further in the next step. Once the potatoes are boiled, you can then drain them or scoop out the pieces with a slotted spoon when you are ready to add them to the other ingredients.

In a large skillet, pour the canola oil and add the onions, cumin, chili powder, turmeric, coriander, and crushed red pepper. Cook this over medium heat until onions are translucent, stirring frequently. Next, add the potato pieces and Bragg Liquid Amino Acids, stirring to coat the potatoes with the seasonings.

Continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently and adding black beans after about five minutes.

The potatoes will begin to get softer and the chunks may break into smaller pieces or begin forming a potato-paste as it mingles with the other ingredients. This is all good. I used my spatula to break down a lot of the biggest pieces as I stirred.

Cooking time is about 12 minutes once you get the potato in the skillet, but you can let it continue over the heat for much longer if you like. Just be careful about your potatoes getting brown on the bottom, unless you like a little crunch in your burrito filling, which is totally your prerogative! You could also get a little crunch by adding some shredded lettuce when you build your burritos, which I considered doing but was too excited to eat to spend the time preparing the lettuce.

Fill your tortillas as you like!

Tomato Tempeh over Brown Rice

2009-04-29T20:01:00.001-07:00

This was a lovely dinner that I pulled together on short notice from just a few ingredients. I used a package of Five Grain Tempeh by West Soy.

If you're cooking brown rice, you can start your rice and prepare the Tomato Tempeh while the rice cooks, and everything should be done at about the same time. I didn't write down any cooking times, so you'll just have to go by your own judgment, but there's a lot of leeway here, so just trust your instincts and you'll know when it's ready.

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked rice
2 cups water, or go by rice package instructions
1 cube vegetable bouillon

3 Tablespoons olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 green onion stalks, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1 package tempeh, chopped into 1/2 inch chunks
1/4 teaspoon salt (if desired)
1 can diced tomato, or 1 1/2 cups fresh diced tomato

Instructions

Cook rice according to package instructions, adding the bouillon cube to the boiling water before adding rice.

While rice cooks, pour oil into a large skillet. Add garlic, green onion, bell pepper, coriander, and basil and cook over medium heat until onion and bell pepper begin to look tender. Then add tempeh, tomato, and salt stirring well. Let this simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed or evaporated. I was able to let it simmer on low until the rice was done and it was perfect.

Serve the tomato tempeh over rice.

Sourdough: Cinnamon Rolls, Pancakes, and Conjoined Loaves

2009-04-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

I've been having a great time experimenting with the sourdough starter. I made pancakes and cinnamon rolls, and then I made the sourdough bread from the same recipe I used for my first loaf, but I added some whole wheat flour and divided the dough into two instead of baking one gigantic loaf.

The Pancakes

These were so satisfying, topped with maple syrup, bananas, and strawberries. I used this recipe, Yukon Sourdough Flapjacks, substituting Ener-G Egg Replacer for the egg (and using the Alaska sourdough starter of course).

The Cinnamon Rolls

Again I substituted Ener-G Egg Replacer for the egg. I used this recipe (with raisins but no nuts) and made a glaze from Earth Balance margarine and shortening with powdered sugar, a bit of soymilk, and a dash of cinnamon.

These tasted very good, but unfortunately they were a little stiff instead of soft and fluffy. I'm not sure where I went wrong. I got interrupted a lot while making them, so it could have been something in the timing. Or maybe the egg replacer isn't compatible with this recipe. Or possibly something wrong with the recipe? Next time I'll try applesauce. But aren't they pretty?

Conjoined Twin Loaves!

So this is interesting. These loaves were made from the same dough. I divided the dough into two after the first rise, and then shaped the loaves and put each one in its own bowl for the final rise. They baked on the same stone at the same time (hence the join). But the one on the right wasn't so great. It had an acidic flavor and was hard and dense. The one on the left was nice, fluffier and had a good flavor. How is that possible? The only difference was that second rise. One loaf was in a shorter ceramic bowl with a wider opening. The other loaf was in a plastic bowl that was taller and narrower at the top. The loaf in the ceramic bowl was covered with a thin cloth napkin, while the loaf in the plastic bowl was covered with a thicker dish towel. Somehow with only that slight difference, the result was one good twin and one evil twin.

Okay, I'll give you all a break from sourdough soon and post some non-bread foods. But the sourdough will be back. Oh yes, it certainly will.

New Ansel Pictures

2009-04-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Seems like a good time for some recent pictures of Ansel. He just turned 10 months old, has six teeth, and is on the verge of walking. He's eating almost anything that we eat now, and loves to chomp on carrots!

Alaska Sourdough Bread (Part Three)

2009-04-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

In Part Two I described the process of preparing the sourdough starter after I received it from Cultures for Health. I had just measured out one cup of starter for use in my initial loaf of bread.

There are many recipes for sourdough available on the web. After perusing several of them, I finally settled on one that would produce only one loaf (in case it didn't come out well). The recipe also had nice photographs and extensive detail for the first-time sourdough baker, so I printed it out and got started. The recipe is here. I'll just describe the process briefly. I did stray from the recipe when it came time to bake because it recommends using a dish and I was determined to use my pizza stone.

So anyhow, here is a picture of my ingredients all mixed together. I love how simple a good bread can be. It's just starter, water, oil, flour, and salt.

I was a little concerned because my dough looked so much drier than the one shown in the recipe photos. I did add a touch more water to compensate, but I'm not sure it was enough because my dough remained slightly rubbery throughout the process. It didn't seem to do anything much to my final loaf, although maybe it was a denser loaf than the norm, I'm not certain. I think this is a common issue because the sourdough starter can be more wet or dry than the one used in the original recipe. So it is a variable that you have to compensate for when you get your ingredients mixed together.

Once mixed (without the salt), the dough sits for 10 minutes. Then the salt is mixed in, and mixing continues for 3 minutes.

Next, the bowl is covered and the dough rises for five hours in a warm place.

When five hours have passed, the dough has doubled in size and according to the recipe should be wet and sticky. Mine wasn't very wet and sticky, but it had risen well. I carried on.

The next step is gently shaping the dough into a ball. There's really no kneading in this recipe, just this gentle folding as it is shaped. There were several steps involved in the shaping, including a 10 minute resting period. Finally, the shaped dough went back into a bowl for its final rise. I put mine into a bowl knowing that I'd have to somehow get it onto the pizza stone eventually. I imagined it would be like one of the awkward first times we tried to get our homemade pizza onto the stone- here is the story- but it turned out being much easier because the dough didn't have slippery sauce and a ton of toppings resting on top. I moved it from the bowl to a floured pizza peel and it slid easily from the peel to the stone with a little nudge with a spatula.

The baking process took some attention, with an initial five minutes at one temperature, and then another 12 minutes at a lower temperature, and finally the last 13 minutes at a still lower temperature. Also, the recipe suggests spraying the oven walls with water in that first five minutes, but I didn't have a kitchen spray bottle so I just filled the cups in a muffin tin with a bit of water and put it on the bottom rack in the oven until five minutes had passed. When I went to remove it, I got a sneak peek at the loaf which had already puffed up all around. That was exciting.

At last my bread was done and, though not quite as pretty as the loaf in the recipe photos, it looked pretty nice! The crust was nice and brown, and my bread loaf was kind of gigantic.

I let it cool for a bit and then sliced a few pieces. Super delicious! Not too crumbly, mildly sour, a little salty. The crust remained soft for the life of the loaf (we ate it in about three days).

The starter came with instructions for developing the sourness more, but I think I like it as it is, distinct but mellow.

I'm quite pleased with how my first sourdough loaf came out. I may even be brave enough to try a different recipe that will make more than one loaf next time. Actually, the recipe I used could have been two small loaves since this first one was so huge. They would have been easier to slice. This loaf overwhelmed my pathetic bread knife.

Tonight we had sourdough pancakes for dinner. I'll write about that as soon as I have the opportunity!

Alaska Sourdough Bread (Part Two)

2009-04-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

My first loaf of sourdough bread came out nicely! But there were some things that needed to be done before I could dive into the baking, and I'll tell you about that first.

Cultures for Health offers either dried or fresh starter for most of their sourdough options. The starter I received was fresh, and I imagine there would be additional steps for reviving a dried starter. For the fresh starter, this is what I did as I followed the accompanying instructions:

First, I poured the starter into a one-quart glass jar. Later I wished I had used a larger jar because my starter bubbled over. It's okay to lose some of it, but it created a mess on the outside of the jar that I could have avoided with a larger container. Also, a larger container would have made it easier to stir later on.

Prolonged contact with metal is apparently not good for the starter, so it's not recommended that a metal container be used.

Next I added one cup of room temperature water (non-chlorinated, this could be filtered or bottled) and mixed it up well. If the starter is already very wet when you get it, you can use only 3/4 of a cup of water. Then, I added one cup of all purpose flour and again stirred well, trying to get as much air in as possible. The instructions don't say what sort of flour to use, and when I looked into it, it appears that it doesn't really matter what sort of flour it is.

Then, I covered the container very loosely with a plastic lid (a towel also works) and put it in a warm area for 24 hours. Typically, anywhere in my apartment is a warm area because I live in San Diego and we don't have air conditioning. Well, we had a bit of a chilly stretch, so I used my oven. I turned it on for just about one or two minutes on its lowest setting and then turned it off and put my jar of starter inside, after making sure it wasn't too hot. I'd do this every few hours to get the temp back up a little in the oven. You don't have to do that, but a starter stored in a cooler area will take longer to complete.

Pretty easy! At the end of 24 hours, I checked to see if my starter had reached its peak. I had some difficulty here because I wasn't entirely sure. It was definitely active with lots of bubbles. The instructions said that it should be "light and bubbly". But was it light and bubbly enough? I looked around for pictures online. Most of what I saw was more foamy and bubbly than mine, so I fed the starter again and let it sit for another 24 hours (using the same water/flour combo and lots of mixing before stashing it away). The Alaska starter is supposed to be pretty fast-peaking, so I knew it was possible that it was ready but I just didn't have a mental baseline to go by.

It was during this second 24 hours that my mixture bubbled over. No big deal, as there was still plenty for any recipe I would want to try, and I knew I could always feed it and grow it more if I needed a larger measurement. One source suggests that if the starter has doubled, it should be good to go, but I wasn't sure due to the bubbling over.

At the end of the second 24 hours I decided to go with what I had and try baking a loaf. I stirred the starter, pulled out one cup of starter for my dough and put the rest in the fridge, loosely covered. Now my starter will only need to be fed once a week!

In the next post I'll show you what recipe I used and what I ended up with!

Alaska Sourdough Bread (Part One)

2009-04-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

The nice folks at Cultures for Health sent me a sample of one of their many sourdough starters, so I'm learning all about sourdough. I'm trying my hand at my first loaf today, so I'll share my experience here.

Here's what they sent:

Packet of about one cup of starter and instruction sheet.
They sent the starter in a packet with a tiny cold pack (not shown).

It's possible to make ones own starter instead of buying one, but in addition to the benefit of saving time, I'm intrigued by the prospect of making sourdough from strains that have been around for a longer time and are not indigenous to my locale. Cultures for Health sells 17 different sourdough starters including several Italian varieties, French, San Franciscan, Australian, Danish and Flemish!

The Alaska starter boasts ease of use, so I was drawn to it for that reason. Apparently, sourdough was highly prized by the gold prospectors, who sometimes wore their starters in small pouches close to their bodies to keep the cultures at a hospitable temperature. Well, fortunately you and I don't need to do that, especially in the Southern California climate. Although I do still wear my 21 lb baby in pouches close to my body, and probably will for some time yet! Hm, this gives me an idea for a new nickname for Ansel!

Mexican Bulgur Pilaf

2009-04-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

I had leftover bulgur in the cupboard after making Red Lentil and Bulgur Kufteh, so I decided to make Mexican Bulgur Pilaf by roughly following this recipe. I altered it by using only one cup of beans instead of four, and only one stalk of green onion. I served this with baked yam and beet*, and when it was ready I exclaimed "this dinner was delightfully easy to prepare!"

I don't know how anything so easy can taste so good! The beet and yam pieces really looked pretty together, too.

Mexican Pilaf

Ingredients

1 cup bulgur Wheat
2 cups water
1 cup cooked or canned beans
1 cup salsa
1/4 cup cilantro
1 stalk green onion
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

Bring water to a boil. Add bulgur and simmer for 20 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.

*I washed and peeled one large yam and two beets. Then I chopped them up and tossed them with a generous amount of olive oil in a baking pan. I covered that with foil and baked for about 40 minutes in the oven at 375 F.

Tofu Vegetable Lasagna

2009-04-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

My lasagna is way up at the top of my list of favorite foods. I always make it in my largest casserole pan because I know I'll be happy to be eating the leftovers for days.

This lasagna is generous with the tomato sauce and sparse with the soy cheese. I use prepared sauce in a jar, but a homemade sauce would be lovely if you like to make it yourself. I took the pictures before the cheese was fully melted because I was trying to beat sundown! It needed a little extra time in the oven.

The lasagna in the photo has chard in it, but I usually use broccoli. The chard is good, and you could use any number of veggies in its place, but I always prefer this lasagna when it's made with broccoli.

Ingredients

8 oz lasagna noodles
olive oil for drizzling and greasing pan
12 oz OR 1 lb package of firm tofu
1/2 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 Tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
1/8 cup unsweetened soymilk
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
38 oz pasta sauce
1 cup of soy cheese, shredded (or more if desired)

Instructions

Cook the lasagna noodles according to the package instructions, and drizzle with olive oil after draining and rinsing them with cool water.

If using broccoli, roughly chop and steam just until it's softened enough to easily pull apart. If using chard or spinach, steam or saute until well wilted but still bright green.

Drain tofu and squeeze some of the excess moisture out. Blot tofu dry. In a medium bowl, mash it and mix in the onion, garlic, parsley, Italian Seasoning, soy milk, pepper, paprika, and salt. Then add the vegetables and mix together well.

This is a good time to start preheating your oven to 350 F.

Grease casserole pan with a bit of olive oil, and then spread enough sauce in the pan to cover the bottom. Next, create a layer of noodles. Cover that with a layer of about half of the tofu and vegetable mix, and sprinkle soy cheese on top of that. Then create another layer of noodles, covering that generously with sauce. Next, add a layer of the remaining tofu and vegetable mix, sprinkle with soy cheese, followed by noodles and then sauce. Finish with a bit of soy cheese.

Bake until cheese is melted, about 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving.

Garlicky Pasta with Asparagus

2009-04-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

We got some really nice asparagus in our CSA share today, and since I didn't have a lot of energy to make dinner, I opted for this really quick and easy dish. It was scrumptious. The garlic sauce, which took only about 12 minutes to prepare, was adapted from a recipe in How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet and the asparagus was just steamed and tossed on top.

Steam your asparagus, prepare your pasta according to instructions on package, and throw your sauce together. Toss pasta with sauce and fork desired amount of asparagus on top. Sprinkle with vegan Parmesan if desired.

Garlicky Sauce

This is a standard in our house. It's such a breeze and so good. We often use it along with artichokes as a pasta topping. It is just a little spicy, so omit the cayenne if you don't want it to be spicy.

Ingredients

2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons Bragg Liquid Amino Acids (or soy sauce)
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 heaping teaspoon of Italian seasoning or Poultry Seasoning
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of cayenne

Instructions

Heat garlic and oil in a small sauce pan until garlic begins to become translucent. Then mix in water, Bragg, paprika, Italian or Poultry Seasoning, pepper, salt, and cayenne. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Steamed Asparagus

I'm sure many people already have experience steaming asparagus, but if you need a tutorial, here you go:

Wash asparagus and chop into pieces about 2 inches long, discarding the tough sections at the ends of the stems (about 1/2 inch to an inch). Place pieces in steamer basket in a lidded pot with about 2 inches or so of water. Cover with lid, and allow to steam for about 5-8 minutes, or until bright green.

Torrey Pines Walk

2009-04-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a chance to post new recipes lately, so I leave you with this photo of Ansel and me walking at Torry Pines and a promise to get back to posting recipes very soon. Stay tuned...

Sweet and Savory Teff Crepes

2009-03-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

I recently tried making injera, the spongy Ethiopian flatbread made from teff flour, but it didn't work out. I don't know if it was my dodgy stove range, or if my skillet was inadequate, or if the recipe I found online was faulty, but it was a complete disaster. I still had some teff flour left from that experience, so when I got the craving for crepes this week I decided to add some teff into the mixture. My crepes were not the prettiest you've seen (I struggled with flipping and getting them out of the pan), but they tasted great. The teff gave them a wonderful wholesome flavor without making them heavy.

You can make these eggless crepes with just regular all purpose flour if you don't feel like bothering with the teff.

Here is some information about Teff. In short, it's an extremely tiny grain, is gluten free, and is packed with nutrients like iron, calcium, and protein.

Here is a teff & quinoa pancake recipe at Kitchen Medicine Cooking Medicine.

I used the crepe recipe here. I used regular vegan cane sugar instead of turbinado. If you want to eat your crepes warm, it helps to have the fillings prepared before you start cooking them. I made sweet crepes with strawberries, cashew cream, and powdered sugar, and savory crepes with garlicky dandelion greens and tofu (you can use spinach instead), with soy cheese on top. Chilling the batter is very important, so don't skip that part.

Here is my version, followed by instructions for the fillings I used:

Vegan Crepes

Ingredients

1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup melted soy margarine
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup teff flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Blend all ingredients in a bowl. Cover and chill the mixture for 2 or more hours.

Lightly grease skillet with soy margarine. When skillet is hot, pour approximately 3 tablespoons batter into the skillet and rotate skillet to spread the batter. When bottom is golden, flip and cook opposite side. Flipping can be tricky, but it helps to have a thin spatula and to gently unstick the edges first. As you can see from my photo, my crepes were far from perfect.

Strawberry with Cashew Cream

Wash, dry, and slice 1/2 pound of strawberries. Mix in a bowl with just a sprinkle of sugar to bring the juices out.

Cashew Cream topping

I found a recipe for Cashew Cream in this ancient cookbook I have called A Good Cook . . . Ten Talents
(this cookbook deserves a post of its own, really). The batch I made was more like cashew milk, so I've roughly adjusted the measurements to achieve a saucy consistency as shown in the photo above. If yours is too thick or too watery, just add more water or more cashews, respectively, until it reaches the desired thickness.

Ingredients

1 cup cashews
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoons agave nectar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt

Instructions

Combine water with agave, vanilla, and salt in a blender. With blender running, gradually add cashews and blend until the mixture is very creamy, approximately 2-3 minutes.

Generously spoon strawberries onto finished crepes and dust with powdered sugar. Then roll crepe, spoon cashew cream on top and dust with more powdered sugar. Serve.

Garlicky Dandelion Greens and Tofu

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
3 cups dandelion greens, washed and sliced into pieces 2 inches long or shorter
1/2 cup firm tofu, finely diced
1 Tablespoon Bragg Liquid Amino Acids
1/4 cup soy cheese, sliced or shredded

Instructions

Heat oil in skillet and add garlic, cooking on medium heat for about one minute. Add tofu and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add greens and Bragg, mixing well. Cook until greens are tender, stirring occasionally.

Spoon onto crepe and roll. Sprinkle soy cheese on top and serve.

Vegan Cabbage Rolls Stuffed with Rice Noodles and Shitake Mushrooms

2009-03-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Ingredients

1 whole medium or large cabbage

3/4 cup textured vegetable protein (TVP)
3/4 cup vegetable broth

1 package rice noodles
1 Tablespoon olive oil for noodles
1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil for noodles
2 Tablespoons soy sauce for noodles

1/4 cup olive oil for sauté
1 small onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 carrots, finely diced
1 celery stalk, finely diced
2 large shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/2 cup brown rice, uncooked
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
2 1/4 cups water

Instructions

Reconstitute textured vegetable protein (TVP) using vegetable broth (I used a bouillon cube in 3/4 cup hot water)

Remove stem and some of the core of the cabbage and place in a large pot in about 2 inches of water. Cover and steam for 25 minutes. Drain and let cool. Separate leaves and set aside.

Cover rice noodles with boiling water and let sit for 10 minutes. Drain and drizzle a bit of olive oil, toasted sesame oil, and soy sauce on top. Mix well and set aside.

Place olive oil, onion, and garlic in a large deep skillet and sauté until onion is very soft. Add carrot, celery, and mushrooms and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes. Then add rice, TVP, salt and pepper and stir frequently for another 5 minutes.

Pour water into the mixture, stir, and cover. Simmer for about 35 minutes. If you are using white rice, you may not need to simmer for as long. Check to make sure rice is not too crunchy (a little firmness is okay).

Prepare a large baking dish by lightly oiling it. Preheat oven to 375 F.

Lay out a cabbage leaf. Use a fork to place a small bundle of noodles on the leaf, and then add a spoonful of the sauté filling mixture. Fold the top and bottom of the leaf in, and then roll starting from the side. Place cabbage roll in the baking dish, and continue until dish is full or you have used all of your leaves. Pour about 1 inch of water into the dish and cover with a lid or foil.

Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Let cool for 10 minutes before serving. May be served either hot or cold, with sauce or dip of your choice. I used a hoisin sauce, but I think a peanut sauce would be even better.

Makes about 22 cabbage rolls

Kelsey's Chik'n and Stars Soup from The Papaya Chronicles

2009-03-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago I made this soup from The Papaya Chronicles, Kelsey's Chik'n and Stars Soup, but I didn't use stars so mine was more like a standard fake chicken noodle soup with whole wheat noodles. The other difference was the broth, since the only vegetarian "chicken" broth I've been able to find in my local grocery stores is by Health Best Low Salt Vegetarian Chicken Broth. It's a bag of powder instead of a cube, and I found I needed to use about one and a half times what the package said to use to get the broth to taste the way I like it, maybe because it's a low sodium product. I also added salt and pepper at the end. For the meat substitute I used tvp granules.

If I use the noodles again I'll break them into smaller pieces. I just roughly broke them into thirds, but they were still kind of hard to scoop up with a spoon. It would have been better to have pieces about 2 inches long.

This soup was very fast and easy to prepare, and it tasted really good. The other nice thing about it is that it contains several things that Ansel likes to eat such as peas, carrots, and noodles, so I was able to just pull a few bits out for him to nibble on while I had a bowl of soup. I will definitely make it again sometime.

Curried Split Pea Soup from the Post Punk Kitchen

2009-03-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I made the Curried Split Pea Soup from the Post Punk Kitchen, and it was wonderful. The recipe can be found here.

The cooking time is one hour, so that requires a little planning ahead, but the prep is fast and only requires pulling a few spices out, chopping onion, grating carrot (optional), crushing garlic and mincing ginger. It's a breeze.

This recipe uses 16 oz of split peas which turns out to be a giant pot of soup. This is great if you are serving a lot of people or if you want to freeze some for another day.

I found this soup to be perfectly balanced in terms of broth-to-pea ratio, not too thick and not too watery. You can puree some or all of it if you like a creamier soup, but I liked it as it was. It's mildly curried and very gingery. I opted to use the optional grated carrot, which adds a nice subtle crunchy texture. It would be easy to add other veggies if you want, but I was so happy with this soup that when I make it again I'll likely do it exactly the same way.

Peanut Sesame Udon Noodles with Tofu

2009-03-02T22:20:00.001-08:00

This is one of my favorite quick dishes, inspired by a recipe in 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World. The udon noodles cook in a flash, and the sauce is not at all complicated, but it is nice and rich and features gomasio. You can make this with or without the tofu. These noodles are also very good cold, so if you like leftovers that you can just grab out of the fridge and eat, this dish is for you.

Ingredients

1 package udon noodles

1 package firm tofu, cubed

3 Tablespoons sunflower oil
2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 1/2 Tablespoons smooth peanut butter
1 small jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped
3 Tablespoons gomasio
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
cilantro as desired

Instructions

First, prepare your udon noodles according to package instructions, and rinse with cool water to help keep them from sticking together.

While your noodles are cooking, prepare your sauce. In a bowl, whisk together toasted sunflower oil, sesame oil, garlic, peanut butter, jalapeño, gomasio, and soy sauce.

Place tofu in a large dry skillet and cook on medium-low, stirring frequently to keep from sticking. When cubes have begun to turn golden, add noodles (I found myself cutting strands shorter to help make mixing easier) and pour sauce over everything. Stir until well mixed and the sauce and noodles have warmed.

If you are not using the tofu, just combine sauce and cooked noodles in skillet and mix well. Serve when warm.

Serve with a generous sprinkling of fresh cilantro leaves over the top.

Gomasio (Sesame Salt)

2009-02-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

You know, I adore spices and seasonings. Spices can elevate the humblest of foods. When I was eating on a tight budget in college, I never felt like I was deprived when I could turn to my cayenne, basil, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, coriander, curry powder, and more.

Gomasio, which is commonly used in Japanese cuisine and macrobiotic cooking, is a delightful item to have among your seasoning collection. The most simple version is salted ground toasted sesame seeds. Sesame seeds offer a number of health benefits including a high calcium content. They also have impressive amounts of manganese, copper, iron, zinc, and vitamin B1. Gomasio can be used anywhere you might sprinkle salt. If you strive to cut down the amount of sodium you eat, this is one enjoyable way of doing so.

Whole Foods regularly stocks one or two types of gomasio, but you can make it at home for a fraction of the price (and it might even taste more fresh) with just sesame seeds and sea salt. There are a lot of recipes online suggesting different amounts of sea salt, and of course you should rely on your own preferences as to whether you like a lot of sodium or just a little. You can use any type of sesame seed. The black seeds make a really pretty gomasio, but for my latest batch I just used the standard tan seeds because I already had them on my shelf.

All you need to do is toast your seeds, toast your sea salt, add salt to seeds, and grind. You want to toast on a low setting in an unoiled pan for just enough time that your seeds begin to darken and become aromatic, but be careful not to burn. When they begin to pop, remove from heat and from pan. Toast your salt for just a couple of minutes. Let seeds cool before grinding. You can use the traditional mortar and pestle grinding method, or put them in a coffee grinder. Grind for just a short time, leaving some of your seeds whole.

If you're not sure how salty you would like it to be, start low. You can always add salt. The low ratio would be 15 parts sesame seeds to 1 part salt. If you are confident that you want a very salty mix, you can use 5 parts sesame to 1 part salt.

I made a large batch, using one cup sesame seeds and two teaspoons of salt, anticipating that we will use it frequently, but if you imagine you won't use it regularly, try a smaller amount. Many recipes recommend four tablespoons sesame seeds to one teaspoon salt.

You can add seaweed bits to your mixture if you are a fan of seaweed. You can make spicy gomasio by adding crushed red pepper flakes. I added a bit of garlic powder for garlicy gomasio (toasted with the salt). Delicious!