Archive for November, 2008

Sweet Potato Chili & Thanksgiving

November 29, 2008 at 7:52 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

All my posts as of late have an “&” in the title.  I will try to find time to post more often and avoid the “ands”!

Last week I wanted to make a big pot of deliciousness.  It’s definitely chili weather here and it’s been at least a year since I last made chili, so chili it was.  I use this as my basic veggie chili go-to recipe.  If you follow the recipe you’ll have a tasty, meaty omni-friendly chili, and it’s great for variations.  It’ll taste good pretty much no matter what you do to it.  I’m trying to stay away from processed food though, so instead of faux meat I diced a huge sweet potato and tossed it in.

To go with the chili I made my whole wheat cornbread and wilted some arugula.

On to Thanksgiving!  This was my first Thanksgiving with bf’sfamily, so I didn’t want to get to crazy with the “weird” vegan food and I stayed fairly traditional.

When I made the cornbread above I doubled the recipe so that I could make cornbread stuffing, using this recipe from Vegan Chef.

This was very tasty!  Everyone else kind of looked at it funny, but that’s fine – more leftovers for me!  The only thing I might change next time would be to use a little less parsley and green onion, and a bit more broth to make it all mush together.

The best green bean casserole, from Fat Free Vegan.  This was a hit with everyone.  Well, at least everyone who likes green beans.

Robin Robertson’s Cranberry Relish.  I’m not a huge cranberry sauce person, but I got two bags for 99 cents, and this recipe looked really interesting, with additions like shallots and red bell peppers.  I liked it a lot, but it’s still not something I can eat a lot of.

My cashew miso gravy.  So good.

It’s very hard to get a decent picture of just gravy.

My plate.  BF’s mom left some potatoes on the side for me to mash with Earth Balance and soy milk.

For my “entree” I made seitan cutlets from VCON.  I have to say, I’m not digging them very much.  It might just be that I left them too thick, but the texture turned out so rubbery I have a hard time eating them.  For this meal I cut one in half to make it thinner, coated it in flour and pan-fried it.  It was pretty good this way, along with gravy and everything else on the plate.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of them that are currently stashed in my freezer though.

Here’s another view of my plate, just because I think the picture turned out better.

For dessert I made Pumpkin Pie Brownies from The PPK, which I have been wanting to try for over a year.

They were really easy to make and the texture turned out great, but I thought they weren’t sweet enough, which is odd for me.  Normally I think desserts are too sweet!  The recipe called for bittersweet chocolate and I used unsweeted, so I’m sure that took a little sweetness away, but I was very surprised.  They were kind of an “adult” dessert, where the bitterness of the chocolate comes through.  If I make them again I will definitely add more sugar, maybe some chocolate chips in the brownies and whipped cream for the top.  Then I think they will be stellar.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am holding my very first contest!  Well…it’s not really a contest…more like a giveaway.  I am approaching 1000 approved comments, crazy!  To thank you all for continuing to come back and read (even when I’m only posting once a week), I will send a package of sweets to whomever posts the 1000th comment!  I won’t say how close I am – it may not even happen for this post.  But I will announce the winner when it happens.

Lastly, I only took two lunches for last week’s shortened workweek, so here they are.

11-24 better than cream cheese & pumpkin butter sandwich on wheat,
celery & carrots sticks, banana pieces, candy cane jo jo’s

11-25 sweet potato chili, cornbread, wilted arugula, a clementine

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is getting into the holiday spirit!

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Weeknight Meals, Laptop Lunches & A Meme

November 22, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I never thought I’d be the type of person who got home from work in the evening and made whatever would get in my belly the fastest for dinner, but that has been my situation lately.  Right now we leave for work at 7:20AM and usually get home around 6:15-6:30PM.  During the day I get it in my head that I’m going to get home, exercise, make a nice dinner, do some chores or poke around on the internet and still maybe have time to watch tv or read before going to bed at 10.  Right.  What happens lately is that I cook up whatever is quick and satisfying and try to check a thing or two off my to do list, and before I know it the night has gone by.  Hopefully in a few months bf and I will be able to align our work schedules and I’ll gain another thirty minutes to an hour which will ease things a bit, but for now it’s all about fast, effective dinners.

Here’s one from last week:  grilled eggplant and zucchini on whole wheat flatbread with hummus, pickles, lettuce and tomato.  The eggplant and zucchini were from the farmers market, and the tomato from my backyard, where the tomato plant is STILL producing new tomatoes.  In November!  This is before I piled on the lettuce.

Rolled up, with cucumbers and tahini dip.

Tuesday night I was planning on a simple stir-fry with leftover veggies and frozen-then-thawed tofu, then while perusing The PPK I saw this post on dry frying tofu with a link to these instructions and became very intrigued.  I also decided I wanted a “real” sauce with my tofu instead of just a plain stir-fry, so I found this recipeon Vegweb and modified it a bit.  I was going to post the recipe because it turned out really good, but I’m not at home right now so I don’t have it.  Will post it next time!

Here’s the dry-fried tofu.  It took just about forever to do because I was using my wok which doesn’t have much flat space so I had to fry the tofu in three batches.  With a griddle or wider pan it would go much quicker.  I really liked the texture of this tofu and will definitely be preparing it this way again.  I also liked that I didn’t have to use any oil!

This orange tofu & broccoli was incredibly good, even served with overcooked, mushy instant brown rice.  The sauce has a very intense flavor, with lots of acidic quality, but it tastes great if you can get past that.  I was kind of afraid my stomach was going to get upset afterwards, but on the contrary:  I got the happy tummy, bigtime.  You know how sometimes you eat and you’re still hungry or unsatisfied, and sometimes you eat and it was a bit too much and you don’t feel so well, but sometimes you eat and it’s just perfect and your tummy is sooooo happy.  That’s what this dish does.

Wednesday night I got home with no exact dinner plan and went straight for comfort.  Organic veggie soup from a can and a grilled cheese with pickles and tomato on whole wheat.  Hot, crunchy, slurpy and good.  And I tell you, pickles on grilled cheese is the way to go.

And here’s my Thursday dinner made from what I could find in the house.  Whole wheat spaghetti with broccoli, garlic and some tempeh sausage crumbles that were hiding in the freezer.  It would’ve been better with pine nuts and almond parmesan, but I’m still working on fully stocking my kitchen.

It doesn’t look nearly as nice as I had thought it would, but it did the trick.  And, because I couldn’t decide which picture I liked better:

I think tomorrow when I get back home I might come up with a food plan for the week and get my grocery shopping done.  I was reading yesterday that Jessy from happyveganface plans all her meals for the week ahead of time and I think that’s adorable.

I only took three laptop lunches this week.  Thursday I was in a mega hurry and grabbed some instant pad thai and a salad, and Friday my office held a Thanksgiving potluck for our students which was really interesting because most of them are from other countries and didn’t really get the whole pot luck concept.

11-17 beanie weenies, veggies, homemade ranch, dried apricots

11-18 veggie dogs w/ ketchup & mustard, pasta salad, veggies, dried cherries

11-19 orange tofu & broccoli, brown rice w/ extra sauce, cauliflower, kiwi & blueberries

Last week Miss Bianca of Vegan Crunk tagged me for a meme, and now is the time.

  1. Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
  2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
  3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links.
  4. Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before on this here blog, but I’m a musician.  I started taking piano lessons when I was five, played flute in middle school band, picked up trumpet in ninth grade, and was a total high school band nerd.  During my third semester in college I switched majors from civil engineering to music (smooth move) and hold a BM.  Seriously, it’s a Bachelors of Music.  I have a BM.  I’ve played trumpet, guitar and sang in ska punk bands, fronted a pop-punk band and switched off on bass and drums in an all girl punk band.  I sang harmony and played trumpet and flute on a couple recordings for local bands when I was in Gainesville, including one release that came out on Epitaph.  I’m kind of a big deal.

2.  I’ve been afraid of sharks for almost as long as I can remember.  I know when I was a little kid I liked the beach and swimming in pools, but somewhere along the way I became terrified of sharks and ocean creatures in general.  I think it came about because there was a science museum my summer camp visited, and there was a stuffed hammerhead shark hanging above the staircase that you had to walk up to get to the exhibits.  I didn’t want to walk under it.  I also think this brought about my phobia of taxidermied animals.  I can’t go to natural history museums.  I don’t much like being around mounted deer heads and things of that nature, but I REALLY can’t do whole big animals like bears or panthers.  At one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. there is a taxidermied elephant in the lobby and it’s kind of my worst nightmare.  Although, in recent years I have been facing my fears and getting better about it.  I’ve gone to a few aquariums and planted myself in front of the shark tanks, and I went to that museum in D.C. and looked at the elephant from the second floor.  I still couldn’t stand right next to it though.

3.  Although it’s not another phobia, I can be very uncomfortable around certain large things.  Like cruise ships for instance.  I don’t mind being on one, but standing next to one in a harbor can get to me.  Airplanes too.  Dinosaur skeletons also freak me way out, but I’m not sure whether they fall under this category or the dead animal fear.

4.  I was kind of obsessed with Alice in Wonderland for a while.  I collected all sorts of memorabilia and books, whatever I could get my hands on.  I had a large collection for a while, and sold it all off a few years ago for the money.  I still have the pictures and the memories though.  If you’ve never actually read Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”, do so.  They’re fascinating.

5.  I don’t like olives or licorice.  Disgusting.  Or Jagermeister.  Barf.  Those are pretty much the only flavors I can’t stomach.  I’m coming around on olives, but only if they’re mixed in with other complimentary flavors.

6.  There are a few tv shows of which I refuse to miss an episode:  Top Chef, The Office, Project Runway and The Biggest Loser.  We just got DVR so it’s making my life much easier in this respect.  Other current shows I really like are What Not To Wear, Law & Order (SVU or Criminal Intent – love Vincent D’Onofrio), and Top Design.  I like reruns of Gilmore Girls, King of Queens, Frasier, Full House, Golden Girls, Friends, Seinfeld and Family Guy.  These things comprise most of the tv I watch other than sports.  I know way more about Full House than any person should.

7.  I don’t do scary.  Can’t watch scary movies, especially if it’s about supernatural things like ghosts or monsters.  Real life scary I can sometimes do, such as murder mysteries or thrillers.  Thing is, watching these kinds of movies I get too worked up and my heart beats to fast and I end up with a headache and generally I just don’t enjoy the feeling of being scared like most people do.  I kind of like true crime books though.  I’ve read Helter Skelter and Danny Rolling’s biography and while they were intensely interesting, they scared the living crap out of me.  I thought Charles Manson was hiding in my apartment every day I came home from school during the time I read Helter Skelter.

Huh, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be!  Guess I’m a fairly interesting person.  I tag anyone who hasn’t done this yet and wants to, or better yet, tell me something random or weird about yourself in a comment!

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Another Saturday & Laptop Lunches

November 18, 2008 at 1:21 am · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Another weekend, another excuse to invite everyone to our house for football and the fight.  I’m exhausted, so I’m gonna keep this one as short as possible.

Our guests included two vegan friends (yay!) so I made sure to offer plenty.

Veggie tray with homemade ranch.

Fiesta Macaroni (except not) Bean Salad, one of my favorites from La Dolce Vegan.  This was vegan AND gluten-free and nobody suspected a thing.

Cheater Baked Beans from VCON.  I like to add a bit of sugar, hot sauce and liquid smoke or worcestershire.

All of these dishes were a little routine since I wanted them to be “omni-friendly”, but here was the real winner:  Ricki’s Portobello Steaks.  I grilled the mushrooms after marinating, sauteed some sliced red onion, added the remaining marinade and thickened with cornstarch because I’m impatient.  While the reduced marinade was strongly flavored, it was delicious and I’m glad I took the extra step.

These mushrooms were huge!

Here’s my plate, with some sauce on the mushroom.

I was going to make butterscotch blondies for dessert but I ran out of time, so instead I give you two bonuses…beer and cat.

Here we have Stone Vertical Epic Ale, Anchor 2008 Christmas Ale and Piraat Ale.  The Stone and the Piraat were belgians, and while they were good I don’t remember any specifics other than their high alcohol content.  Belgians aren’t really my thing.  The Anchor was really good.  I highly recommend it, especially since it’s seasonal and you won’t be able to get it for very long.  I mean, look at the bottle!  It was so pretty that I felt bad opening it.

Here’s a shot of Mr. Jake on Saturday in a sun spot.  I thought the shadows of the blinds and his stripes made a really nice pattern.  And he actually stayed still long enough for me to get a good number of shots!

On to last week’s Laptop Lunches.

11-10 pizza & salad w/ carrot, celery & goddess dressing

Tuesday was a holiday!


11-12 cauliflower-millet mash, roasted fall veggies, celery sticks & almond butter, grapes

I took this lunch Thursday but we ended up going out, so I ate it Friday.


11-14 wheat wrap w/ hummus, grilled eggplant & zucchini, lettuce,
tomato & pickle, cucumbers w/ tahini dip, kiwi

That’s it for last week, and it for now.  Bianca from Vegan Crunk tagged me for a meme that I was going to do tonight, but for whatever reason I’m too tired to think about anything, much less seven whole interesting things about myself.

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Magical Roasted Fall Vegetables

November 12, 2008 at 1:50 am · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

I finally got around to using some of the veggies I picked up Saturday, and I decided to make some magic.  With a snap of my fingers, I turned this:

into this:

Okay, just kidding.  Between the chopping and the roasting it took about an hour.  But there was something magical about the flavor, and I’ll tell you what it was.  In addition to the olive oil, kosher salt and copious black pepper that I normally add to roasted veggies, on a whim I mixed in just a bit of apple cider vinegar and maple syrup, and I tell you what…it was a good call.  The combination of fall vegetables with the hints of sweetness and tang was so good.  I love the colors too.  They don’t come through too well under the yellow lights in my kitchen, but the colors reminded me of autumn leaves ready to fall off the tree.

Along with the veggies, I made Millet Mash from You Are What You Eat by Gillian McKeith.  I first saw her on the TV show by the same name on BBC America a couple months ago.  I really enjoyed watching her change people’s lives through diet and exercise, so I picked up the book to learn more about her program.  She has a lot of really good ideas about how to be healthy and lose weight, but it’s almost too much, for me at least.  I’m big on everything in moderation, and her plans and recipes have a very plain jane cleansing aspect.  For me it’s a good reminder of how I should be eating, and a jumping off point to expand upon.

I added leeks to the mash just because I could.  The directions tell you to mash with a potato masher.  I don’t know if I have a bad masher or if it’s just me, but after what felt like 20 minutes mashing it was still chunky, so that is how I ate it.

I liked it alright, because I like all the ingredients.  But it was definitely on the bland side.  So tonight when I had leftovers I added nutritional yeast and dill and whizzed it in the food processor.

Much better.  It’s still not the most flavor-packed side dish, but it’s healthy and I know it and sometimes that’s enough.  I don’t usually give out recipes from cookbooks, but I seriously doubt anybody reading this has the book, so here it is with my additions.

Millet-Cauliflower-Leek Mash

Serves 4.

1 cup millet
1 small head of cauliflower, finely chopped
white parts of 1 to 2 leeks, thinly sliced
2 1/2 cups water
pinch of sea salt
nutritional yeast, parsley and dill to taste

Put water and salt in a pot and bring to a boil.  Add the cauliflower, millet and leeks, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat.  Add seasonings and mash well, or blend in a food processor, adding water if necessary.

BF’s cousin stayed here last night, and this morning we all woke up hungry.  I’m calling this my big brown breakfast.

I pretty much always want to make pancakes even though I have yet to find the perfect recipe.  These were very tasty but still flatter than I want.  BF went to the store and I asked for some sort of potato product that wouldn’t take too long to prepare, and he came back with these hash brown patties that I always see in the freezer section and wonder who buys them.  Well, now we have them in our freezer!  I must say, they were pretty good.  Not exactly healthy, but as long as you bake them instead of re-frying they’re not too bad.

I’m off to enjoy a glass of warmed Silk Nog before bed, definitely one of the best parts about this time of year.

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Good News, Bad News & Laptop Lunches

November 10, 2008 at 12:32 am · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , ,

The good news is that I’m back to work and back to making laptop lunches every day.  The bad news is that my camera died and I had to take pictures of my lunches on my cellphone and I thought it was going to be a while before I got another camera.  The good news is that I got a new camera yesterday, a digital Fujifilm with a good feel and lots of nice features.  Hooray for spending more money I don’t have!

Here are the lunches I took last week, courtesy of my cell phone.

uncheese and crackers leftover from Halloween, spinach salad with apple,
red onion & balsamic vinaigrette, pumpkin cookie

veggie stirfry, wheat spaghetti, cashews for the stirfry, gherkins, grapes

chickpea-uncheese spread, wheat crackers, lettuce, broccoli, red peppers, goddess dressing, grapes

The chickpea-uncheese spread was an idea I had to use up some of the uncheese scraps, kind of like a chickpea no-tuna salad.  I thought it might go horribly wrong, but it was worth a try.  I mashed chickpeas and uncheese together and added dijon mustard and minced celery and red onion.  It wasn’t anything worth raving about, but it was good!  I’m glad I didn’t let all the leftover uncheese go to waste.  Here’s how I served it for dinner.

There are crackers under the lettuce.  I liked this presentation a lot, it was like a nice little bite you’d get for an appetizer at a party.

More good news:  I checked out the other farmers market in San Leandro, the one that purportedly goes year round.  I wasn’t expecting much from a farmers market held in a mall parking lot, but I was so pleasantly surprised!  There was practically every kind of fruit and vegetable you could want, even some things I didn’t recognize.  I think the Saturday farmers market is even better than the Wednesday one that closed down already.  More parking, more vendors, and Saturday is much better for me than the middle of the week.  I got all this for under $18!

Veggies:  zucchini, yams, fingerling potatoes, cauliflower, lettuce, small butternut squash, leeks (huge!), cucumbers, an eggplant, and a daikon radish on the bottom left.  I thought it was a parsnip at first, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a daikon so it suits me just fine.

Fruit:  strawberries, navel oranges, and kiwis!!!!!  These kiwis were the real find.  As much as I love kiwis, I’ve been avoiding buying them in stores since they’re always shipped from New Zealand or somewhere equally far away.  I didn’t even know kiwis grew in California!  Awesome.  I’ll probably try to go back in the next few weeks and stock up so I can freeze a bunch.  I love kiwis in smoothies.

Even with all this amazing produce on hand, I was feeling completely lazy and not up to cooking last night.  In the afternoon I went to going-out-of-business sales at Mervyn’s and Circuit City to hopefully scope out some deals.  These sales are crowded and draining and never as cool as you hope for.  The only thing I bought was my new camera, which is turning out to be great.  By dinner time I was pooped, and embarrassing as it may be, I ordered pizza delivery.

It’s from a local chain called Mountain Mike’s.  It’s so nice to be able to order a pizza and have it delivered sometimes!

And, to prove that I don’t always drink schwag, I decided to take a picture of this tasty beer a la my friend Tom at One Brew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, a fellow recent FL to CA mover.  Although looking now he seems to have stopped doing the whole beer-bottle-next-to-beer-in-a-glass thing.  Tom, are you taking pictures on the floor?  It’s cool.  I take pictures on the floor too.

I have a thing for seasonal beers.  I love summer ales in the summer and winter ales in the winter.  They’re just so…appropriate.  The Pyramid Snow Cap is a great beer.  It’s got the hoppiness of an ale, with plenty of malt to balance.  It’s darker like a stout but still with the characteristics of an ale.  It has good flavor without being overwhelming.  I like to talk about beer like I know what I’m saying.  The bottom line is, try the Snow Cap winter ale!  Or anything else from Pyramid, which is headquartered in Berkeley.  The Apricot Ale is particularly good too.

I may do an occasional beer review, depending.  This will probably be the only non-cheap beer I’ll drink for a while anyway.

I have plans for my farmers market goods which I will hopefully carry out in the next few days.  I will report back.  Everyone have a great Veteran’s Day!  I have Tuesday off.  Yes.

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VeganMoFo: Halloween Potluck

November 5, 2008 at 1:45 am · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , ,

Yeah, so VeganMoFo technically ended on Friday, but I’m counting this as my last MoFo post cause it happened on Friday and I didn’t have a chance to post until now.

I was very excited to be invited to Melisser’sHalloween potluck party!  I’d seen posts about her parties online before and they looked like fun, so I was looking forward to it all week.  I had a great time, and the food was fantastic!  It was so nice to look at a whole table-full of food and know that I could eat any of it.

(It looks like Melisser just beat me to posting about the party, so go check out her post too!)

I’ll start with what I made:  corn crackers (bats and black cats), wheat crackers (skulls and ghosts), and two kinds of uncheese cut into pumpkins, acorns and leaves.

The corn crackers are from this recipe.  I couldn’t find any blue corn meal anywhereso I used regular corn meal and added black food coloring.  I rolled them out a little bit thick, but they were very tasty.  Kind of like a thick corn chip.  The wheat crackers are from How To Cook Everything (not to be confused with How To Cook Everything Vegetarian), and they need work.  They were lacking in flavor (although the recipe does recommend adding herbs and such), and they puffed up and were chewy instead of crunchy.  Maybe I just didn’t bake them long enough.  The uncheeses are from The Uncheese Cookbook, Gooda and Pepper Jack.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, recipe here.  These were soooooo good.  BF said they are the best thing I’ve ever baked.  Make them!  I used the cream cheese icing from VCTOTW.

Caramel apples and faux Butterfingers (chocolate covered Chick-O-Stics), made by Melisser.

Buffalo tofu and blue sheese dressing, also by Melisser.  The dressing was out-of-this-world good.

Becca’s favorite baked beans.

Awesome molded mound of rice, tempeh taco meat and avocado, potstickers, and eggplant dip.

Mummy dogs!

My plate.

My bowl, also with pumpkin soup.

More dessert:  Candy Cane Jo Jo’s, faux Butterfingers, chocolate covered pretzels and a pb chocolate chip cookie.

Plateful of caramel apple pieces so we could all share.

There were lots of great costumes, but I think Melisser and her husband Ryan took the prize – they were Peter Pan and Captain Hook, and their itty bitty doggie Strummer was supposed to be the crocodile, but she kept shaking off her outfit.

She’s so ridiculously cute.  And small.  After she shook off her costume again, Melisser put on her hat which was knitted by Kittee herself!

Although I was never on the official participant list since I started late, I’m glad I did VeganMoFo.  It definitely got me back into blogging and cooking.  I started my new job yesterday, so I’m not really sure yet how much time I’ll be able to dedicate.  I’ll probably be back to blogging a couple times a week.  But, the good news is I’m back to packing laptop lunches every day.

P.S. Obama won!  Woohoooooo!!!  Now we’re crossing our fingers, waiting to hear the results of the prop 8 vote.  If it passes it will take away the right of same sex couples to marry, and I will not be happy about it.

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