Archive for March, 2009

Food Network Friday

March 27, 2009 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

First, my CSA delivery from two weeks ago.

Green stuff:  parsley, broccoli, leaf lettuce, pea shoots that went bad before I got to use them, and collards.

Red-stemmed stuff:  beets and chard.  To show how big the beets were:

As big as my fist!

Other stuff:  mushrooms, grapefruit, red onions, carrots, and tangelos.

I also went to the farmers market to supplement.

 Red and gold potatoes, yellow onions, grapes, fuji apples, garlic, asparagus, a sweet potato and a turnip.

I happened to make two Food Network recipes recently, so I thought I’d join Tami from Vegan Appetite’s Food Network Fridays.  She’s been veganizing a Food Network recipe and posting every Friday for a while now.  I could be considered a fan of Food Network;  I don’t love any of the shows in particular, but I love that it’s a network dedicated entirely to food.  Many a Saturday I’ll turn the tv on FN and just leave it on all day while I go about my business.  Even during the shows I don’t really like, which is how I came to make this first dish:  Sunny Anderson’s Pork-Stuffed Collards.  It was a dish she first had in Hawaii I think.  I just so happened to have a bunch of collards that needed using, so I decided to make it.  Thing was, the pork really was the main component of the dish.  My first thought was to replace it with tempeh, but the “meat” really needed to be able to hold itself together in a patty.  So I decided to use Gimme Lean Sausage, until they didn’t have it at the store and I bought the beef instead.

On the side I made a simple steamed root veggie soup from carrots, a sweet potato and a turnip.  I couldn’t decide how to season it, so I threw in a little of everything and the flavor ended up being confused.  Bay, sage and curry just don’t go together.  Don’t know what I was thinking!

Luckily I liked the Beef-Stuffed Collards much more than the soup.  Although the “beef” was really well spiced and the recipe was very easy to make, all together the meatiness was a little much for me.  I would’ve enjoyed it much more with the sausage.  If I make this again, which I may, I think I’ll try to make some sort of mixture with tofu or tempeh, veggies and bread crumbs and see if I can get it to hold together.

The next FN recipe I made, I actually searched for on foodnetwork.com:  Michael Chiarello’s Roasted Beet Salad with Bleu Cheese.  There were many roasted beet salads, but this one looked the best and allowed me to use up some of my tangelos.

So, the thing about great salads is that you use different flavors, textures, temperatures etc…The components of this salad somehow found a way to dull each other.  I couldn’t figure it out, because on their own the ingredients were all good – roasted beets, Sunergia soy bleu cheese (which I like a lot), baked tortilla strips that I subbed for the almonds called for, lettuce instead of spinach, and the tangelo reduction dressing which was the best part.  It had the texture of honey, which I thought was pretty neat.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a nice salad as salads go, but…I’ve come to expect a good salad to be a flavor explosion of sorts, and this one didn’t meet the mark.

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Vegan in Reno

March 25, 2009 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Food, vegan

Ever since bf & I moved out here we’ve been talking about jaunting off to Reno for a weekend.  Reno was described to me as an older, mini-sized Vegas.  The drive from here to Reno is about five hours shorter than to Vegas.  And everything is cheaper than Vegas too.

As any good travelling vegan does, I searched for “Reno Vegan” before we went, looking for any sign of food that I would be able to eat.  Things didn’t look so good, and the verdict is that Reno is MUCH less vegan-friendly than Vegas.  It’s to be expected though.  I did find stuff to eat and come back alive, albeit a little bit poorer.

We left at 8AM on Saturday and got to Reno just before noon.  Our hotel check-in wasn’t until 3, so we started off with some video poker and walked around a bit.  We got a pretty good deal at Silver Legacy hotel, which is a good location because it’s connected to both Eldorado and Circus Circus.  No need to go outside, which was nice because it was really cold.  When we started to get hungry we headed to The Brew Brothers in Eldorado.  I figured I could at least get the old standby of fries and a salad, as well as a beer.

We started with beers – I the Wild Card Wheat and bf the Pale Ale.

The beers were tasty, very fresh and high quality.

There was the ubiquitous veggie pizza on the menu, so I asked about the crust and found out that it’s vegan.  Cheeseless pizza for me.

It was a good pizza.  Nothing super outstanding, but it filled me up for quite a while.

We spent the afternoon napping, watching sports, walking around and…playing more video poker.  We wanted to play black jack, but we couldn’t find a table with a low minimum and decent payout.

For dinner we headed to the buffet at Eldorado.  You can’t go to a casino without eating at the buffet.  At least that’s my rule.  There wasn’t nearly as much for me to choose from as the times we buffeted in Vegas.  (Yes, I just used buffet as a verb.)  But I found some good enough food.

First plate:  salad with spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, chickpeas and vinaigrette, pasta salad, quinoa tabouleh and a roll.  The salad bar itself was pretty pathetic – I was hoping for at least broccoli or carrots or something.  I was impressed with the quinoa tabouleh though.  It wasn’t the best tabouleh or quinoa I’ve ever had, but the fact that they had quinoa at all was great.

Second plate:  green beans and carrots, steamed white rice, squash, beets, and a cold antipasti mixture that I did NOT eat because what I thought was red onion or something turned out to be meat.  I hated to waste it, but I was also upset with the fact that the buffet seemed to put meat in EVERYTHING!

(There was a third plate with a bit more pasta salad and chickpeas.  Gotta get my money’s worth!)

Dessert:  fruit.  There was a case of ice cream, some of which may have been sorbet, but there was a line and I didn’t feel like asking.

We went to bed relatively early (we’re getting old) and checked out early the next day to go see The Peppermill and Atlantis, which are not within walking distance from downtown.  I was hungry, and after looking at multiple menus for anything I could eat other than an eight dollar fruit cup, I ate the granola bar and banana I had brought just incase.  I didn’t want to eat them – I wanted to eat out, cause that’s a fun part of vacation for me.  But I was getting cranky and needed food in my belly.

On the way out of town we passed by The Black Bear Diner and decided to stop so that bf could get a good breakfast.  I figured I could at least get coffee and OJ.  After perusing the menu and noting that they welcome special requests, I decided to try and order.  The waitress confirmed that their country potatoes could be made with just oil (no butter), so I ordered potatoes and a fruit cup.

The potatoes were good, made with fresh peppers and onions, and while the fruit wasn’t perfectly ripe, it was definitely good enough.  I left full and much more satisfied than before.  I thought The Black Bear Diner was really cute, the kind of place you’d find in Tennessee, which made me all nostalgic.  There was even a person going around the restaurant in a full on black bear outfit, sneaking up on people and being nice to kids.  Should’ve taken a picture.

So, if you’re looking for glitz and food options, go to Vegas.  If you’re looking for a quick, cheaper getaway, go to Reno.  Although, I will say that the drive back home took about three hours longer than the drive there.  It snowed the night we stayed, and the only road back was covered in snow and ice.  We were forced to buy chains for my tires, which is something I had never dealt with before.  People went nuts.  People seriously don’t know how to deal with snow and having to put on chains.  Not that I did either, but I like to believe that I act sane under stress.

I wanted to take pictures of the snow covered mountains, which were actually beautiful, but I felt it more important to let bf concentrate on driving.  Here’s one I snagged when we stopped for a bathroom break.

The good news is that we’re planning another trip to Vegas.  I will have Ronald’s Donuts again.  Oh yes, I will.

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St. Patrick’s Day, Observed

March 23, 2009 at 7:39 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , ,

For about ten days before St. Patrick’s, I thought it was on Wednesday.  Even though I had it on both my home and work calendar, and even though I knew that Tuesday was the 17th…for some reason I thought it was Wednesday.  Until boyfriend informed me Tuesday morning just before leaving for work that it was St. Patty’s.  I was so confused.  Sometimes I get discombobulated like that.

I don’t go too crazy for St. Patrick’s, but I like to think that I’m part Irish, so I celebrate just a little.  I was planning to wear a green sweater and make a green dinner.  I was already dressed for work, so the sweater was a no go, and I had way too many leftovers to cook dinner Tuesday night.  So I went with my original plan and observed St. Patrick’s on Wednesday.

My green meal consisted of mini crustless tofu quiches with spinach instead of green peppers, raw chard salad with grapefruit, and parsley mashed potatoes.  So the quiches were more yellow and brown, and the chard was a deep reddish purple color, and the plate gave off a weird glow.  Oh well!  It tasted great.

The potatoes were upset that they were in the background, so here’s their close-up.

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Chicken n’ Beer

March 15, 2009 at 7:40 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , ,

I couldn’t think of a better title for this post, so I’m going with it.

My thinking for this meal went:  I have four tart apples from my CSA that aren’t my favorite type for snacking on, I should make applesauce.  People put applesauce on pork chops, right?  I should put applesauce on some sort of meaty thing.  Seitan cutlets would work, but I really didn’t like the recipe from VCON.  How bout this recipe for chicken-style seitan cutlets?  Okay, and I’ll have baked acorn squash and steamed collards on the side.  That’s a whole lot of sweet in one dinner, what about something bitter to balance it out?  I had good luck with the balsamic reduction for my stromboli, I wonder what a beer reduction would be like?

Thus was born Grilled Chicken-Style Seitan Cutlets with Savory Applesauce and Pale Ale Reduction.

It turned out pretty good, all in all.  You can’t really see the reduction, the color blended into everything else.  The seitan cutlets are great, I would highly recommend them.  Good texture, and rolling them out with a rolling pin is MUCH easier than trying to stretch them by hand.  There are some leftover in my freezer right now, and that makes me happy.  The applesauce ingredients were minced red onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, lemon juice and peeled apples.  It was very, very tasty.  I loved the fresh ginger flavor that came through.  The beer reduction…well…I wouldn’t recommend anyone make a reduction from beer unless they really like beer flavor to begin with.  I used a pale ale, which was pretty hoppy and might not have been the best choice.  It became very bitter as it reduced, so I added a bit of sugar and salt to help it out.  It was okay.  If I try a beer reduction again I’ll use a lighter, less bitter beer, maybe like a hefeweizen.

Speaking of beer, I was tickled to come home one night and find this selection of beer looking out from our fridge.

I have to admit that we normally keep a pretty decent amount of beers in the fridge, but not this kind of amazing selection.  These were all either gifted to us, left at our house by a friend, bought as a single or the remainder of a six pack.  As Homer would say:  Mmmm, beer…

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Laptop Lunches

March 14, 2009 at 1:54 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged ,

Two weeks of lunches, since I didn’t post ‘em last week.

3-2 roasted fennel & portobello stromboli with pea shoots & balsamic reduction, sea salt & black pepper pretzels, carrot sticks, butternut-chocolate chip muffin

3-3 romaine, radicchio & caesar dressing to go in a multigrain wrap that was packed on top, roasted purple potato wedges, prunes

3-5 quinoa-dulse pilaf, steamed artichoke with fennel-mayo, blueberries, gf crackers, dried cherries, piece of dark mint chocolate

3-6 pb & strawberry jam on wheat, roasted purple potato wedges, carrot sticks, tangelo, prunes

3-9 multigrain wrap with hummus, spring mix, cucumber & red peppers, carrots, more cucumber, roasted brussels sprouts, gf crackers, pb cookies

3-11 baked acorn squash, seitan chicken cutlet with savory applesauce & pale ale reduction, steamed collards, strawberries

3-12 multigrain wrap with sliced seitan chicken, cream cheese, steamed collards & savory applesauce, roasted brussels sprouts, cheese crackers, carrot sticks, strawberries

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Arc-tichokes

March 11, 2009 at 9:16 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , ,

Does it make anyone else crazy when people say “arc-tichokes”?  To me it’s almost as bad as saying “nuke-you-ler”.  Yes, I’m the one that points out spelling errors, too.

When I saw that I was getting four fresh artichokes in my CSA delivery, I really had no idea what to do with them.  The only forms of artichoke I’ve ever eaten are from a can, and on my plate at Millennium.  And who knows how they do the voodoo that occurs in their kitchen…

So, I knew that more often than not, whole artichokes are boiled or steamed and served with a dip like mayo or a dressing.  To me that seemed like the easy way out, and I’m trying to push my cooking boundaries a little.  So I searched around the internet and my cookbooks and did some hard thinking on artichokes, and in the end I decided to steam them and eat them with mayo.  These were my first real artichokes, so I figures I should cook them up proper.

I have a jar of Vegennaise in the fridge, but I have a hard time using it for anything but a special occasion, i.e. when other people will be eating most of what I’m making.  I remembered that I had seen a lower-cal mayo recipe at My Vegan Cookbook, and so I went with that.  I’ve only made a few of Josh’s recipes so far, but what I have has been really good, so I had no doubt the mayo would be a great complement.

(I must admit that I cheated making the mayo.  I mashed and whisked the tofu instead of blending it smooth, and I microwaved it for three bursts of 30 seconds instead of cooking it on the stovetop.  I was already three dirty pots and pans deep, and I wasn’t going for a fourth.  The mayo still turned out great, and that shows just how good the recipe is.  Oh, and I added chopped fennel frond just because I had some.)

It was much easier to actually eat the artichoke than I expected.  Google “how to eat an artichoke”, read, and that is exactly how it works.

On the side, a quinoa pilaf with onion, carrot, fennel bulb, portobello, white wine and dulse.  I also added some fennel seed, making this a triple-fennel meal.  I really liked the dulse.  I liked the chewy texture and the unique flavor it added.  I had forgotten that I bought a big bag of dulse from the bulk bin last time I was at Rainbow, but I will be using it much more now that I know I like it!

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I <3 Grits.

March 9, 2009 at 8:57 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , ,

This post is dedicated to my love for grits.  I grew up eating them for breakfast, preferably with gobs of butter.  I took grits for granted my whole life until now, as they were readily available at any store.

Not in Northern California!  I looked in every grocery store in the area.  I found one brand of instant grits and gave it a try, but no matter what ratio of grits to water I used or how long I nuked them, they turned out horribly.

(Yes, I’m sure no self-respecting southerner would admit to microwaving their grits.  I grew up making the instant stuff in the microwave, and in the microwave it shall remain.)

Well, I got to missing my grits so much that I decided to order some online.

And by some, I mean twelve boxes with twelve packets each.  It was the best deal by far!  And I will definitely eat it all eventually.

My favorite way to eat grits is for breakfast, with salt, freshly ground black pepper and a bit of nutritional yeast.  Sometimes if I’m feeling indulgent I’ll add a pat of Earth Balance or a sprinkle of Bacos, or make the grits with soy milk instead of water, which makes them so creamy.  I’ve also eaten grits as a side dish with dinner.

Inspired by Stefan on Top Chef, who served gumbo on grits (which Emeril Lagasse said he had never seen before), I decided to take my grits to the next level.  By putting stuff on top of them.

I’m calling this Mexi-grits.  It’s just leftover filling from my cheesy bean and cheese enchiladas on grits.

This is leftover smoky tempeh crumbles over grits.  I <3 grits.  If you haven’t ever tried them, do so!

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Special Stromboli & Caesar Salad

March 8, 2009 at 4:03 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

First, my most recent CSA delivery.

romaine lettuce, fennel, kale, artichokes, pea shoots & collards

purple potatoes, carrots, apples, radicchio, tangelos & red onions

Fennel again!  Ugh.  While it is an interesting challenge to find ways to use all the fennel, I think I’ll be happy when it’s no longer fennel season.

When Cyn mentioned in a comment that fennel was good on pizza, I tucked that info away for the next time I got fennel.  I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how I could go from what would be pretty good pizza to a fancy “wow” meal.  This stromboli took longer to make than I normally like to spend on dinner.  I wanted to coax some complex flavors from the ingredients, and in the end the results were worth the extra time.

Roasted Portobello & Fennel Stromboli with Caramelized Onion Sauce, Pea Shoots & Balsamic Reduction

pizza dough for one pizza (I used the VWAV recipe)
3 small red onions, or 1 large, sliced
1 Tbs olive oil
2 small fennel bulbs, or 1 large, shaved
2 portobello mushrooms, cleaned, halved, and cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cup almonds
1/4 cup water
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 cup white wine
1 Tbs maple syrup
1 Tbs nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 cup balsamic vinegar
pea shoots or other tender, bite-sized greens

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Heat 1 Tbs olive oil in a wide skillet. Add sliced onions and turn heat to low. Cook for 35-40 minutes, stirring often, until onions are browned and caramelized.

Meanwhile, line a baking pan with foil. Add the shaved fennel, portobello, 2 Tbs olive oil and 1 tsp kosher salt, and stir to combine. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes, stirring once after 10 minutes. When vegetables are cooked, remove them from the oven and increase the temperature to 450 F.

When onions are cooked, transfer them to a bowl. Place the almonds in the food processor and process into fine crumbs. Pour almond meal into the pan used to cook the onions, and toast over medium heat for a few minutes, being careful not to burn.

Put the onions in the food processor with the 1/4 cup water, and process until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.

Add the garlic and red pepper flakes to the almond meal in the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds. Pour in the white wine (it will sizzle), and stir, scraping up any bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the onion puree, maple syrup, nutritional yeast and salt and stir to combine. Cook just until heated through.

On a floured surface, roll out the pizza dough into a large rectangle. Spread the onion sauce all over the crust, leaving a 1-inch border along the long ends. Sprinkle the fennel and portobello mixture evenly over the crust. Starting from one long end, roll the crust up tightly. Pinch the crust together to seal. Transfer to a baking sheet, seam side down.

Bake the stromboli for 17-18 minutes, until the crust is brown and crispy on the outside.

As soon as the stromboli goes in the oven, put the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until reduced into a syrup that coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat.

When the stromboli is cooked, slice it, top with pea shoots and drizzle with balsamic reduction.

Serves 4.

Note:  This keeps well overnight.  Just reheat the stromboli in the microwave or toaster, and heat up the balsamic syrup to loosen it up.

As soon as I saw that I had romaine lettuce, I knew I wanted to make the Caesar Salad from Veganomicon.  It’s so, so good and I just happened to have bought a big bottle of capers a few weeks ago.

I LOVE this dressing.  I used store-bought croutons and threw in radicchio, just to use it up.  What a great salad.  I also ate it as a “chicken” caesar salad wrap, in a multigrain tortilla with some cut up soy nuggets.

To go with my salad, I cut the purple potatoes into wedges and roasted them.  While these were good, I think I preferred the first time I ate purple potatoes, when I had them mashed with gravy.

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Corn & Fingerling Potato Chowder, Laptop Lunches

March 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , ,

When my friend Janeen saw that I got fingerling potatoes in my CSA delivery, she suggested this Corn & Fingerling Potato Chowder that she had recently made, which originally came from Cooking Light.  At first I didn’t really consider making it, since I doubt I could get fresh corn around here this time of year, but then it grew on me and I said hey, what the heck?

That’s green onions and hot sauce lending their Christmas colors to the bowl.

The original recipe calls for applewood smoked bacon, which I think kind of makes the recipe since the other ingredients are very simple.  I wanted to use either tempeh bacon or the smoky grilled tempeh from VCON, but didn’t want to wait for anything to marinate.  So I got the idea to try smoky tempeh crumbles; just steamed, crumbled tempeh quickly cooked in a pot with a half recipe of the VCON marinade.  It turne out just…okay.  The tempeh didn’t turn out at all like I was hoping, and I think I used too many potatoes and not enough corn, AND the corn was frozen.  I think fresh corn and a better bacon substitute will make all the difference, so I’ll come back to this one later this year.

Laptop lunches!

2-23 steamed mushroom-pea shoot dumplings with
sweet chili-sesame sauce, edamame, mashed miso-mustard
sweet potatoes, piece of dark mint chocolate

2-24 salad (pea shoots, mushrooms, soy bleu cheese, tahini dressing), kale pesto pasta with white beans, blood orange segments, pb cookies

2-25 grilled soy cheese with pickles & tomato on wheat,
steamed spinach, sauteed mushrooms, snapea crisps,
two kiwis, piece of dark mint chocolate

2-26 kale pesto pasta with white beans, steamed broccoli with nutritional yeast, soy nuggets with bbq sauce, prunes & dried cherries

2-27 the aforementioned corn & fingerling chowder with smoky tempeh crumbles, steamed collards, black pepper rice crackers, half an apple

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