Archive for April, 2009

Spring Grillin’

April 30, 2009 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

First, since I haven’t had a chance to post my latest CSA deliveries I’m just gonna do it now.  Three weeks ago:

salad greens, collards, rainbow chard, green garlic and asparagus

apples, navel oranges, radishes, strawberries, kiwi and sweet potatoes

And last week:

zucchinis, green chard, parsley, the world’s largest leek, lettuce

more apples, oranges, strawberries and radishes, teensy carrots and Meyer lemons

Now, spring is a great time for grilling. We all know this.   Summer as well.  Really, we grill year round, but I love grilling much more when the sun is out!  This was my first grilled meal after it turned officially Spring.

It was spur of the moment, and mostly from what we had at the house already – half a Tofurkey sausage, potatoes and a salad with grilled mushrooms, soy bleu cheese and balsamic reduction.  A fairly basic meal, but I wanted to share the method for the potatoes, which our friend Tom first introduced to us.  You pre-cook the potatoes, either by boiling them whole then slicing, or slicing then boiling.  The trick is to keep the slices fairly thick and cook them through, but not so much that they can’t stand up to the grill.  Once they’re boiled and drained, oil and season one side.  I think this time we only used kosher salt, black pepper and paprika, but you could go wild.  I think the paprika is key though, paprika makes everything better.  Grill the seasoned side over hot coals until it begins to char a bit (a little burning is good in this case, I think) and while the first side is cooking, oil and season the other side.  Flip, cook, eat.  Very good.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here yet, but baseball season started and we’ve got season tickets for the A’s, so we’ve been going to lots of baseball games.  And when those games fall on Saturdays, we tailgate!

Tailgate number one:  veggie dogs, grilled asparagus and coleslaw with radish and carrots.  We kept it simple for this one, since it was opening weekend and lots of friends came to join us.  The coleslaw dressing was just Vegennaise, apple cider vinegar, sugar and seasonings.

For tailgate number two we made kebabs!  In the past bf has been opposed to kebabs because they’re a little more work to put together, but we liked that they were a deviation from the normal burgers and dogs.  Above are my smoked tofu/pepper/onion/marinated mushroom kebabs, pre-cooking.  Yes, all of those just for me.

We didn’t bring anything to go with the kebabs, but the aforementioned Tom, who is apparently the potato master, brought these amazing garlicky parsley-y potatoes.  At Giants games and A’s games you can buy Gilroy Garlic Fries (Gilroy being renowned for garlic), and these were Tom’s version for grilling.  Did I mention they were amazing?

While we were grilling, this car pulled up across the aisle.

Awesomest baseball car ever!

(By the by, on a search for veggie food at the Oakland Coliseum I found veggie dogs!  They were $2.50 each if I recall correctly, which by stadium prices isn’t too bad.  They also weren’t more expensive than non-veggie dogs, which I appreciated.  I couldn’t tell you which stand they’re at specifically, but there’s something called the food court or food row or something, and it’s in there.  I had to walk almost halfway around the stadium from our seats in the outfield bleachers.  I plan on taking food with me from now on, but it’s nice to know that in a pinch there are vegan options.)

On the weekends we also like to drink a tasty beer now and then, and I wanted to tell you about this one.

This is Dale’s Pale Ale by Oskar Blues, and it comes in a can.  Don’t let this fool you though.  Just pour it in a pint glass and pretend it wasn’t in a can, cause this is one fine pale ale, if you into that sort of thing.

I leave you with Jake, trying to pretend he’s not interested in the fact that I’m sitting on the kitchen floor.

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Food Network Friday Followup

April 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , ,

A few weeks back I posted about “beef-stuffed collards” for Food Network Friday.  Luckily, I received collards in the next two CSA deliveries, so I had the chance to perfect my version.  I think this is as close as I can get to the original, and it’s darned tasty!  Not to mention, much healthier than the meat-filled original.  And they’re really quite easy to make once the ingredients are cooked.

(This batch was made with a particularly stemmy bunch of collards; they’re not always this rampant with stems.)

Lentil & Tempeh-Stuffed Collards

1 bunch collard greens, at least 12 leaves
8 oz. tempeh
3/4 c lentils
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Tbs vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs ketchup
1 1/2 tsp Ener-g Egg Replacer powder
2 Tbs warm water
1 c veggie or faux-chicken broth

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Put three pots of water over high heat: a large pot with salted water, a medium pot with water, and a small pot with 1 1/2 c water. Bring each pot to a boil.
3. Add the lentils to the small pot, stir, turn down the heat to medium-low, and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes, until lentils are tender. If there is any water remaining, remove the cover and continue to cook until water is absorbed.
4. Cut the tempeh into 8 pieces, and add to the medium pot. Turn the heat down to medium and simmer for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
5. Add the collards to the large pot of salted water. Using a spoon to submerge them occasionally, boil 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
6. Transfer lentils to a medium mixing bowl, and use a fork to mash them. It is okay to leave some whole lentils. Crumble the tempeh into the bowl with your hands. Add the dry spices (cumin through nutmeg) to the bowl and mix well to combine. In a small bowl, combine the Ener-g powder and warm water, and whisk until frothy. Add this mixture, and Worcestershire sauce and the ketchup to the lentil-tempeh mixture, and stir very well.
7. Divide the mixture into four, and use your hands to form each fourth into an oblong patty. Wrap each patty in four collard leaves, using the natural curve of the leaves and alternating the direction of the stems. Place seam side down in an 8 x 8 inch baking dish. Pour the broth over the collards and cover baking dish with foil.
8. Bake for 25 minutes.

Serves 4.

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Care Packages, Laptop Lunches & Works In Progress

April 22, 2009 at 4:31 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We successfully broke all the internets at our house (wireless AND non-), and with no solution in sight I am bringing you this post from my work computer.  So, I’m gonna jam a bunch of stuff in and keep it brief.

Firstly, I have been receiving a lot of love in food-related form lately, and I wanted to share the love with everyone!

I participated in my third PPK care package swap, and this time my partner was from Japan and sent me all manner of awesome Japanese stuff.

some sort of seitan stars (“fu”), a sushi mat, cooking chopsticks made of bamboo, shiratamako and red bean paste for attempting daifuku, and candy from Kyoto

candy closeup

Bento toys!  nori stamp machine that makes faces, onigiri molds, small containers, flag picks, a small monkey bento box int he back, little utensils, soy sauce bottles with animal heads, chopsticks in a case and monkey mayo holders.  I’m definitely going to have to go Japanese in some upcoming lunches.

I felt kinda bad when I got all this awesomeness because I mostly sent my partner Mexican food supplies and junk food.  That’s what we do well here!  Although he said he ate the Tings and Eco Planet Cheddar Crackers in one sitting each, so I think those went over well.

A few weeks ago I got a completely unexpected box in the mail from my mom.   She had read my blog post about having difficulty finding grits out here and sent me a “box of stuff Erin can’t find in CA”.

Satchel’s secret salad dressing, quick grits, yellow grits, a cute Publix tote bag, a cute notecard, and Southern Living.  Yeehaw!  Unfortunately, Satchel’s dressing is NOT vegan (which I only learned after eating it many times and falling in love…it has honey…sorry mom!), but fortunately a friend of mine who also recently moved out here from Gainesville loves it, so I’m going to pay the dressing forward.

This same friend gave me some love too!  Although she sent this over the day after I mentioned the dressing…hmm…Anyway, she’s an amazing gardener and lives in a house that already had some goodness growing in the backyard.  Thanks Hope!

lemons, mint, rosemary, thyme, keffir lime leaves, oregano and parsley

But I don’t just receive, I also give!  Remember back in November when I celebrated my 1,000th comment by promising to send whomever posted it a package of sweets?  Anybody?  No?  Well, Megan from The Sisters Vegan happened to win, and she happens to live in Berkeley, which is where I happen to work.  So we agreed to meet up for dinner one night after work, at which time I could give her her goodies.  She’s been testing for the upcoming cookie cookbook, so she was all cookied out and requested no cookies.  And said that it would be nice to have something she could grab for breakfast on the way out the door to work.  Enter muffins!

Full Meal Muffins from Vegan Lunchbox.  These have zucchini, pomegranate juice (subbed for the apple juice called for), bananas, walnuts and raisins, and I subbed in some quinoa flour for a bit of extra protein.  They’re completely sugar-free, sweetened by the bananas and juice and raisins.  They turned out sweet enough, I suppose, but next time I make them I’ll probably add a bit of sugar or stevia.

Smoky Jalapeno Corn Muffins.  Made from my Buttermilk Cornbread recipe, with added jalapeno, roasted corn from TJ’s (freezer section), and liquid smoke.

These were the real star, to me at least – Butterscotch Scones.  I had a bag of butterscotch chips in the pantry screaming to be used, and I wasn’t too keen on the idea of butterscotch muffins, so I decided on scones.  Even though I’ve only made scones once, and they turned out just okay.  The first time I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, and while it’s entirely possible that I botched up the recipe, I wanted to make more “authentic” scones, using the pastry cutting method that most biscuits call for.  So I looked in the good ol’ Betty Crocker Cookbook where I was sure I would find a scone recipe, and lo and behold, there it was.  Veganized very easily, and these babies turned out beautiful.  I typed out just the general recipe, so obviously you can add whatever extra ingredients you want, like nuts or fruit, but I would highly recommend the butterscotch chips if you have ‘em.

Vegan Scones

1 3/4 c flour
3 Tbs sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 c Earth Balance, cold
6-8 Tbs soy creamer
coarse sugar
1/2 c add-ins (butterscotch or chocolate chips, fruit, etc.)

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. Cut in the Earth Balance using a pastry cutter until there are no large pieces of margarine and the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in 6 Tbs creamer, just until the flour mixture is moistened. If there is still unincorporated flour, add creamer by the tablespoonful, just until mixture comes together. Gently fold in any additional ingredients.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll in the flour to coat. Knead gently 10 times. Pat into an 8-inch circle on an ungreased baking sheet. Cut into 8 wedges with a knife dipped in flour, and do not separate wedges. Brush the top with additional soy creamer, and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
4. Bake 15-18 minutes, until the scones are turning golden and the tops don’t give in to the touch. Immediately remove from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack, using a knife to separate the scones if needed. Serve warm.

Makes 8 scones.

On to the lunches!

4-6  lentil & tempeh-stuffed collards, dill pickle cashews (Archer Farms brand), pretzel nuggets, rosemary foccacia, boiled beets, strawberries

4-7 sandwich (multigrain toast, tofurkey, tofutti cheese slice, baby greens, gourmet mustard & red onion jam), broccoli & carrot sticks, goddess dressing, dried apricots, raisins & sour gummies

4-9 garlic crusted grit cakes, succotash, mango-habanero sauce, snapea crisps, lime cucumbers, prunes & dried cherries

4-13 tofusteak sandwich on ezekiel bun with greens & mustard,
bbq crisps, coleslaw, strawberries

4-14 salad stirfry, brown rice, clover sprouts, cucumbers &
sesame seeds, tangerines

4-16 lentil & tempeh-stuffed collards, pasta salad, corn muffin,
kiwi & strawberries

4-17 lentil & tempeh-stuffed collards, multigrain crackers, apple pieces, carrots with goddess dressing, cookies

And finally, I’m very fond of the W.I.P posts on Musing From The Fishbowl.  It stands for work in progress, and they’re crafty works which are posted on Wednesdays.  Other bloggers have joined in too – one who stands out for having super cute crafty posts is Amanda from Walking The Vegan Line.

I wish I could join in on these posts, but the problem is I’m just not crafty.  I’ll sew or make something every once in a while, but the craft is not in my blood.  However, I have a few food projects that I’m working on, so I thought I’d share them as works in progress.

I first posted a picture of this dish that I’m working on for a cooking contest here, asking if anyone could identify the triangles, and giving the hint that they’re not tofu.

The most popular guess was polenta, and that’s really SO close!  They’re grit cakes.  This is Garlic-Crusted Grit Cakes with Succotash Hash, Mango-Habanero Sauce and Quick Pickles.  BF says it’s too complicated, but the contest rules say that you have to prepare it within two hours, and I can do that, and sometimes complicated is how I roll.  I need at least one more run at this one and the contest deadline is the end of this month, so I need to get moving on it.

Another one I’m working on for a different contest is Creamy Corn Pudding.  My mom makes this for almost every family holiday gathering and it’s so good, but it’s full of butter and milk and eggs, so no corn pudding for me.  No more!

It’s not perfect yet, but it’s darned close.  I also need at least one more go at this one.

I posted a picture of this Swiss Chard Risotto two posts ago, and I thought I would have it perfect this time, but alas I didn’t have any white wine and subbed in with white wine vinegar and it was a little too much.  Luckily, I’m getting chard again in my CSA tomorrow and I think with one more try it will be perfect.

That’s it for now.  I don’t know when I’ll be able to post again because we’re cheap and refuse to pay to fix our internets.  Until then!

update:  BF fixed the internets, hooray!  He is now a wireless router reconfiguration master.

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Product Reviews

April 15, 2009 at 1:27 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

The main purpose of this blog is to feature food that I make at home, as evidenced by the name Vegan Homemade.  And for the most part I do eat homemade food.  I am human though, and I don’t always have the time or energy to make absolutely everything from scratch.  Especially now that I live close to both a Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, I’ve been buying quite a few packaged vegan products, and I’d like to share my thoughts on some that I have had in the past months.

I tried these GoodBelly probiotic drinks because they were on sale and I was intrigued.  I eat soy yogurt with probiotics pretty regularly and don’t have digestive issues, so I normally wouldn’t have bought them.  I also take a multivitamin every day and eat a balanced diet, so I’m not worried about getting my vitamins.

But, if you’re in the market for an easy source of probiotics or vitamins, GoodBelly might be worth a try.  I try not to drink my calories, and these little guys didn’t do much to fill me up so I felt like I was adding calories to my day, which to me is not a good thing.  They taste quite nice though.  Fruity, not too sweet, and tangy, the drink is made from mostly fruit juices and purees and some oat flour.  So in addition to being vegan they’re soy-free and wheat-free, great for people with intolerances or allergies.  I probably won’t buy them again, but I would tell anyone who might be interested to give it a try.  It comes in four flavors, and I’d be willing to bet that they’re all good.

Speaking of probiotics, I gave this fairly new brand of dairy free yogurt a try.  It was just…okay.  Good, not great.  Silk soy yogurt is the standard by which I judge other yogurts, and I really love the Silk yogurt so it’s a tough competition.

I also tried one of the So Delicious coconut milk yogurts, and for me it was much too coconutty.  For those who like coconut flavor it might be alright, but not for me.  I also thought it was too thick.

I dont’ dislike all Turtle Mountain products though – far, far from it.  Let’s talk about their ice cream.

A few days ago at work we were talking about sweets.  (I work with three other women, so we have certain things in common.)  We were discussing what our favorite types of dessert are, like cookies or cake or what have you, and I couldn’t really name a sweet that I can’t resist.  Sure, I have a cookie here or there with my lunch, and I’ll eat a vegan cupcake if it’s in the same room as me, but I don’t eat dessert very often.  Most of the time if I want something sweet after a meal I’ll have fruit, dried fruit or non-caffeinated, sweetened tea.  But I digress…

It occurred to me a few days after this discussion that my weakness is ice cream, which I don’t keep in the house very often for this exact reason, which is why I couldn’t put my finger on it.  If I open a pint of ice cream I’m probably going to eat half of it straight out of the container, so I just don’t buy it very often.  But geez Louise there are about a billion kinds of vegan ice cream available at Whole Foods and sometimes a girl can’t resist.

I love peanut butter and I love chocolate, so I don’t really have to tell you how much I like this Peanut Butter Zig Zag ice cream.  I like to have a lot of stuff in my ice creams, like chunks and swirls and whatnot, and the pb in this ice cream is fantastic.

I went back to the Purely Decadent but wanted to try something different, so I went with Chocolate Brownie Almond, because I like all those things.  I like them all together for sure.  In fact, I’m eating this right now as I type.  My singular complaint, and it’s a small one, would be that the almond pieces are soft and there aren’t enough brownie pieces, but I’m not really complaining.  This ice cream is so rich that I can open the container, eat just a little bit, and put it back in the freezer.

For the times I do want cookies, I really like these Peanut Butter Cremes by Back to Nature.  (As well as TJ’s Jojo’s and Newman-O’s.)  They are salty and sweet and not too high in calories.

Another sweet and salty treat is these Peanut Butter Granola Bars by Nature’s Path.  I take two snacks with me to work every day, and some mornings I don’t have time to put anything together.  These are perfect for grabbing, and also perfect for those times you want to tuck something into your purse in case you find yourself ravenous with no other options available.  They’re tasty and chewy and chunky and all around good.  I also tried the Peanut Choco’ version and while they were just as good, the chocolate flavor wasn’t that prominent, so I’ll probably stick with plain ol’ pb.

UNLESS I find their Chocolate Chip Granola Bars, which I know exist but I have yet to find.  When I was younger I ate about a ton of those Quaker chocolate chip granola bars, and I think I would go nuts for the Nature’s Path version.

Speaking of Nature’s Path, I would like to give them a special mention, as I have enjoyed every product of theirs that I have ever tried.  It’s just good stuff all around.  I pretty much always have a box of their cereal in the pantry, my favorite being Optimum Slim.  Their Raisin Bran is great too.

Crackers to me are like ice cream in the way that if I open a box I could easily eat half of it if I’m not careful.  I usually have a box of crackers on hand, but try to reserve them for rounding out lunches and an occasional snack.  These crackers are like my crack.  They have much the same effect on me that Tings do, meaning that I just want to eat them all, all the time.  I can’t NOT buy them though, because they’re so flipping good.  Eco-Planet also apparently makes cookies and pretzel crackers, but I’m pretty sure I’ll always only buy these cheddar crackers.  If you can’t find them, I would say they’re worth ordering online and paying shipping for.  But beware, you will want them again.  And again.

Another brand of crackers I really like is Mary’s Gone Crackers.  They’re gluten free and super crunchy, and I love eating them with faux-egg salad or “cheese” slices, or just by themselves.  I’ve had the original flavor as well as this black pepper flavor and they’re both great.

I’ve been looking for a way to add some protein to my breakfasts, so I picked up these sausage patties last time I went to Whole Foods.  I’ve tried many kinds of frozen veggie sausage links and patties, some good and most not-so-good.  These fall somewhere in the middle.

I like that each patty is only 80 calories, and the flavor is pretty good.  The texture is odd though, I would describe it as spongy.  And the patty is hard to cut with just a fork.  These are okay, but I’ll probably try a different brand next time I’m in the market for sausage.  If anyone shops at Publix, I seem to remember that they had a Greenwise brand veggie sausage patty that was good.

Every time I run out of tea I seem to buy a new kind.  I like almost every tea I’ve tried from Tazo.  (I think Tazo used to have an apricot white tea that was absolutely AMAZING, and they don’t seem to carry it anymore.)  I happened to be shopping in TJ’s when I was out of green tea, so I decided to try this Blueberry Green Tea.  It’s very good, and I think it was only $1.99 for the box which is probably what drew me to it in the first place.  It smells like a blueberry donut!

Whew, that’s it for now.  I think that I’ll document new products as I try them in order to share my ever-important opinions with you all.  Although you can still expect the majority of my posts to be homemade food, I think product reviews can be fun!

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Piccata, Risotto & Focaccia

April 13, 2009 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Time for some fancy foods!  Piccata, risotto and focaccia are all restauranty-sounding dishes to me, things that a few years ago I would have never thought I’d be making for myself.  They also all have double letters that I have a hard time remembering where to put.

Let’s start with the CSA delivery that brought me some of the ingredients:

leaf lettuce, chard, artichokes, collards, asparagus & rosemary

tangerines, beets, shallots, kiwis & apples

It was a lovely coincidence that I saw Lindsay’s post on piccata the very same week I received asparagus, which everyone knows is good with piccata.  Even those of us who’d never tried it before, like me.  She made hers with her chickpea cakes, which I’m sure are good, but I decided to go with the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, because I love them and it had been a very long time since I made them.  I followed Lindsay’s sauce recipe exactly though.  Like all of her recipes, the sauce is fat-free, so I feel like the end result might have been lacking a little bit of richness you might get from a “normal” piccata.  The sauce was definitely not lacking in flavor though.  In fact, I was quite happy the sauce was fat-free, because I used olive oil on the asparagus and earth balance in the mashed cauliflower.

Yes, I know that mashed potatoes go with piccata and asparagus.  But I like to use cauliflower instead of potatoes sometimes to lighten up a meal.  I chopped up a bit of fresh rosemary to go in the cauliflower, and it lent just the faintest hint of delicious rosemary flavor.  I was suspicious of using fresh rosemary because I’m not a huge fan of dried, but for serious:  fresh is awesome.  And it lasts a lot longer in the fridge than I thought it would.

I have always been intimidated by the thought of making risotto.  You hear about having to stand in front of a pot, stirring forever, and all for some flavored rice?  But I kept seeing risotto pop up on the internets, and it didn’t seem to be such a big deal.  So when the CSA newsletter came with a recipe for Red Chard Risotto, I gave it a whirl.

I had to figure out what “dry white wine” is to make this.  (Google it.)  And I learned that you don’t actually have to stir constantly; just a lot.  It turned out pretty well, but the rice could have been cooked more, and the flavor could use a boost.  So I will rework this soon and have a recipe.  The good news is that I am no longer scared of arborio rice.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the majority of my fresh rosemary, and the only idea that came to mind was focaccia, so I went with it.  I followed the recipe in Veganomicon, subbing half whole wheat flour.

This was very easy to make, and the rosemary flavor is awesome.  I have one question though:  What makes focaccia different from regular ol’ bread just shaped into a disc?  The texture seemed like normal bread.  Not that I’m complaining…I just want to know.

To go with the focaccia, I remade the stuffed collards that I first tried here.

My filling of choice was lentils and tempeh, and the flavor of the filling was great.  It didn’t quite stick together enough to recreate the original though.  I think I have a solution, and I happen to have collards in the fridge, so hopefully with one more tweak I will have a recipe to share.

Speaking of recipes that I’m working on, here’s a sneak peek.

It’s going to be my first recipe contest entry.  It’s fun to be working toward something instead of just cooking whatever I want sometimes.  Can anyone guess what the triangles are?  Hint:  it’s not tofu.

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Laptop Lunches

April 4, 2009 at 8:32 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged ,

This’ll be a big lunch post, it’s been three weeks!

A commenter posed a question about my lunches:  Do they keep me full, especially since sometimes there’s not a distinct protein source, and do I find myself needing an afternoon snack?

They do keep me full for a few good hours.  The calorie, fat and protein content varies from day to day since I don’t pay that much attention.  I try to make sure I’ve got protein, good carbs, veggies and a bit of fat in each lunch, and a little something sweet like chocolate or fruit.  But I’m not that scientific about it, so depending on the day it might be carb heavy with little protein, et cetera.  After eating my lunches I normally find myself satiated but not overfull, which is exactly how it should be.  Regarding the protein issue, I do try to make sure that I get a good serving of protein at least a few times a day from varied sources – soy, beans, nuts/seeds, quinoa.  There are also amounts of protein in all other foods except fat (I think), so I’m getting plenty.  When I first became vegan I was concerned with including a specific protein component in every meal, but as I’ve grown more comfortable with it I’ve given myself permission to have all grain and veggie meals when I want to, so that is why you may see some lunches with no discernible protein.

I do eat an afternoon snack, as well as a morning snack, and this is how I prefer to eat.  Usual eating times are breakfast at 7, snack at 10:30, lunch at 12:30, snack around 4-5 depending on when I get hungry, and dinner whenever I get it made – it varies from 7 to 9.  Typical morning snack is a piece of fruit, and for the afternoon it’s usually soy yogurt or nuts.  I throw in crunchy snacks like pretzels or sesame sticks here and there because I am a crunchy snack monster and this keeps me from gorging on chips or something like that.  I eat snacks because I get hungry in between meals, and I couldn’t jam more food into my breakfast or lunch without feeling overfull.

Hope this helps explain my eating tendencies to anyone who might be interested!  On to the lunches.

3-16 “beef” stuffed collards, gherkins, cheese crackers,
root veggie soup, grapes

3-17 roasted beet salad with soy bleu cheese, baked tortilla strips &
tangelo reduction dressing, dark mint chocolate

3-19 mini crustless tofu quiches, parsley mashed potatoes,
raw chard salad with grapefruit, grapes

3-20 roasted beets, mini crustless tofu quiches, parsley mashed
potatoes, raw chard salad, gf crackers, grapes

3-25  broccoli-cheese grits, black eyed peas with mushrooms, parsley mashed potatoes, carrot sticks, pb cookies

3-26 quinoa spaghetti with marinara & toasted pine nuts,
steamed broccoli, vanilla soy yogurt with blueberries,
sweet potato-pecan-choco chip muffin

3-31 pizza with caramelized onions, artichiokes, roasted red peppers &
fyh mozzarella, broccoli, tahini dip, prunes

4-1 chickpea cutlet piccata, mashed cauliflower with rosemary,
roasted asparagus, tangelo, strawberries

4-2 assorted “cheese” and crackers, broccoli, radishes,
tahini dip, dark mint chocolate

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Cheesy Meals

April 3, 2009 at 8:07 pm · Filed under Food, vegan ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I just did NOT feel like blogging all this week.  I had very low energy for whatever reason and decided to take it easy.  I have been cooking though, so here are some cheesy meals.

When I professed my love for grits, my mom commented saying that she had just seen a recipe for Broccoli-Cheese Grits in Southern Living magazine.  I think she suggested it partially in jest, since obviously I don’t eat cheese.  But I got to thinking that I love grits, and I love broccoli, and most of the time I like faux cheese, so what the heck?  I’ll make me some Broccoli-Cheese Grits.

The recipe is online here.  SouthernLiving.com has this odd recipe search system where it takes you to an issue index first, then to the recipe.  Weird.

Anyway, you could probably figure out the recipe without a recipe.  It has, oh, let’s see…broccoli, cheese, grits, salt and pepper.  It tastes really good though, probably mostly because I love broccoli and grits.  For the cheese I made the Chedda variation of the Colby Cheez from The Uncheese Cookbook, which I had made before and liked.  It doesn’t melt like real cheese, but it surprisingly shredded very easily, and provided leftovers for grilled cheese sammiches.

On the side I sauteed onions, mushrooms and black eyed peas and seasoned it with apple cider vinegar and hot sauce.  Boring but good.  And I served it in a mug just for fun, because mugs are cute and taking a picture of two things in two bowls is not so cute.

I got a big head of leaf lettuce in my last CSA, so I wanted to make a salad.  Specifically a huge, giant, filling salad with lots of fun stuff.  I had to make a trip to the Mexican market anyway, so I decided to go for a fajita salad and make use of some authentic Mexican ingredients.

Half a head of leaf lettuce, sauteed onions, green & red bell peppers and portobello mushrooms, sauteed seitan chicken strips, homemade refried beans, nopalitos (cactus in brine), radishes, shredded cheese leftover from above, baked tortilla strips, very hot salsa and guacamole.  You can’t even see the sauteed veggies!  This salad was gargantuan, I tell you.  So much that I couldn’t finish it, because…

BF joined me in the dinner making and prepared a sopa, or Mexican soup, just like his mom makes it.  Except vegetarian (she uses chicken broth).  The ingredients are only oil, pasta, veggie broth, tomato sauce and salt, and we topped our bowls with Tapatio and black pepper, but boy oh boy is this ever good!

I don’t know what it is about this sopa, but if I didn’t also have a giant salad to eat I could’ve consumed many, many more bowls.  When bf’s mom makes it there’s much more broth and much less pasta, but I like it this way just fine.  The soup was done before the fajitas were ready, so it sat in the pot staying warm and the pasta got all mushy and yum.

When I got more fresh artichoke from the CSA, I didn’t really want to eat it plain steamed like last time.  That’s good and all, but I like to mix it up.  I had pizza crust waiting in the freezer, so I decided to steam the artichoke, scrape out the good stuff, chop it up and see if it could hold it’s own on a pizza.

The other ingredients were caramelized red onion, roasted red peppers and Follow Your Heart mozzarella.  Who says FYH doesn’t melt?  When I first had Teese I kind of wrote off FYH because I like Teese better, but to get Teese I have to cross the Bay Bridge or order online, and FYH is a mere 15 minute drive with no traffic, so I think I may buy it more often since I now remember that I like it.

The verdict on the artichoke is that it totally works plain on pizza.  It doesn’t quite have the oomph that marinated artichoke hearts have, but it provided a subtle background flavor that complimented the other toppings very well.

I decided at the last minute to go with personal-sized pizzas, just because they’re fun, and that way I could make one the perfect size to fit in my lunchbox.  Also, my original plan was to make the caramelized red onion sauce from my stromboli recipe, but at the same time I was preparing the pizza components I was also working on my first canning project (to be discussed in a future post), so I went sauceless and added the onion whole, which was quite alright in the end.

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