Veggie-a-gogo!

I'm leaving you, BlogSpot.

2009-07-16T22:30:00.002-05:00

Well, this is it.

I'm leaving BlogSpot and heading to Wordpress. I have a new blog, a new mindset, and it's time to say goodbye. So come find me at my new blog and say hello!

Ciao for now,
Kelly

CCV in a Box!

2009-04-09T16:18:00.002-05:00

Hello, all my nonexistent readers! :P I returned from spring break and was promptly thrown right back into the crazy world of compsing. I took my big annoying exam first weekend, so I am now done with my comprehensive senior integrative exercise (if we're going to get fancy with titles here) and, barring failure of my exam, am free and clear to graduate college in June! Yikes/yay!

But now back to your regularly scheduled programming... food! But not really. In case you haven't heard, Katie, AKA CCV, over at Chocolate Covered Katie is giving away an amazingly awesome "CCV in a Box" - basically, it's all her favorite stuff combined in a package of tasty delight. You can enter to win by sending Katie an email with the answers to her fun little bloggy scavenger hunt, and if you have a blog you can earn extra entries by linking to the contest and/or making a CCV recipe and blogging about it. Fun, no? So head right on over to this page and enter!

Breaking for Spring Break

2009-03-18T20:20:00.003-05:00

I'm just popping by to say that I'm on a brief hiatus. It's spring break, and I'll be home in RI for a week before heading to Chicago to visit friends during the last week of my break. I didn't bring my laptop home so that I can get lots of studying done for my comps exam, so I'm trying not to waste too much time on the internet. I will catch up with blogs eventually though!

Catch you all at the end of March!

"Cauliflower is NOT my name!"

2009-03-06T09:01:00.003-06:00

A few years ago, a certain sibling of mine decided it would be hilarious to start calling me "Cauliflower." Apparently, "Kelly" and the "Cauli" part of cauliflower just sound sooo much alike. I still think "Kellyflower" would've been cuter, but I guess you can't pick and choose the nicknames your siblings give you - and hey, it could've been a lot worse! Smelly Kelly, Kelly Belly... my name lends itself to some unfortunate rhymes. Oh well! Cauliflower really isn't so bad, especially since I happen to be a cauliflower fan.

Cauliflower isn't (just) broccoli's albino cousin - it's a healthy cruciferous vegetable in its own right, loaded with vitamin C and respectable amounts of vitamin K and fiber. And it's downright delicious when roasted, covered in "Indian Barbecue Sauce" from VegWeb, and paired with cumin-y pan fried tofu and baby carrots.

Do I really need to say anything else? That all tasted as good as it looked. I halved the recipe for the barbecue sauce and further lessened the amount of oil, and there was more than enough for me, but I don't like lots of sauce on my food, so take that as you will. Oh, and I omitted the ginger just because I, um, don't have any. :P Anyway, I highly recommend that recipe and think you should all go out and stock your veggie drawer with cauliflower if you haven't done so already. Now go!

Picture Post: Sunday Breakfast

2009-03-01T20:03:00.006-06:00

Pancakes from VWAV with a strawberry topping - the perfect way to start your Sunday. :)

P.S. I need your help! Let me know your favorite way of eating yams/sweet potatoes at this post. Thanks!

The Crinkly Nose Chronicles: Yams

2009-02-28T13:40:00.005-06:00

I've never considered myself a picky eater. I like to think that if someone were to make me a meal, no matter what was on the plate (well, y'know, as long as it wasn't a big bloody steak or something, obviously!), I'd eat it willingly and gratefully. And I suppose that's true. But then I realized that there are certain foods that I just won't purchase or cook on my own because, well, I don't really like them! So I've decided that I'm going to try and overcome these food aversions - thus, the Crinkly Nose Chronicles were born. Why the name, you ask? Well, what facial expression does a child make when you ask her to eat a food she doesn't like? Yup - she crinkles her nose and pairs it with a disdainful look that leave no confusion as to her meaning. And the questionable food I'm dealing with today is the humble yam.

Now, the food I really have an issue with here is the sweet potato. I know that's weird, and I know that yams and sweet potatoes are not exactly the same thing, but my local grocery store had yams on sale last week - with no sweet potatoes in sight - so I decided to just pretend that once I learn to like yams, sweet potatoes will naturally follow.

I think my dislike of sweet potatoes stems from childhood. I've always had an issue with tastes - I don't like my dinner to taste sweet, and as I've mentioned before, I am not a huge fan of the savory breakfast. So, while regular ol' potatoes are just fine with me, the sweet ones have always tripped me up. As a kid, I'd watch the rest of my family enjoying baked sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar and wistfully wish I could learn to like them, but I just couldn't. Not only did their taste not fit with my conceptions of what dinner should entail, but their general flavor, quite honestly, just did not do it for me. I also have issues with texture - I hated yogurt as a kid and bananas still make me gag - and the texture of sweet potatoes was always slightly off-putting to me. As I've gotten older, I've grown more tolerant; if yams or sweet potatoes are part of a side dish at Thanksgiving or Christmas, I'll force down a small helping. But buying them and cooking them of my own volition? Not on your life!

...until last week, that is. I came home from the grocery store with two big ol' yams last Monday, and decided that the best way to trick my taste buds into enjoying them was to make baked yam fries - and yes, that's probably the same approach I'd take with a child, hehe! In search of some appropriate seasoning, the very first result from Googling "sweet potato fries" led me here. Hmm - her husband hates sweet potatoes but loved these fries?! Sounds good to me! So I chopped up my yam into some strangely shaped pieces, mixed up some olive oil (way less than the 1/4 cup in the recipe, goodness!) with some paprika and cinnamon (a spice mixture that sounded just crazy enough to work) and popped 'em in the oven.

Um, consider me chastened! These fries were delicious! I liked the ones where the skin had gone all crispy, but I was even able to eat the ones with mooshy insides without having texture OR flavor issues! In fact, I actually enjoyed the yammish flavor. I liked these fries so much that I made them again last night when I wasn't particularly hungry for a big dinner.

As you can see, I had the fries with some asparagus I needed to use up. The asparagus looks really shiny, but it's just flavored with a little Earth Balance and some squeezes of fresh lemon juice. Yum all around.

I've made progress, I think, in my journey towards becoming a yam/sweet potato fan. But I still have a ways to go. I've got to graduate to actual sweet potatoes, and I need to stop eating my yams as fries (or do I?) and try another way of eating them. In fact, I bought two more yams at the store today, and I promise that the next time I see a sweet potato, I will purchase it and try to enjoy it!

So - what's YOUR favorite way of eating yams/sweet potatoes?

Cupcakes, Pancakes, and Soup, oh my!

2009-02-24T20:42:00.009-06:00

My cooking rut has ended, but my time crunch has begun, giving me a new reason not to post, alas! Carleton has a trimester system, so we have three 10-week terms per year. It's eighth week of winter term right now, and things are getting hectic. I've got all my regular work to finish, plus my huuuge comprehensive exercise exam for which to prepare. So that's my excuse for this boring, mostly picture-less post!

I tried the VWAV recipe for pancakes last week, and they were yummy! I added lots of cinnamon to the batter, because I love a little spice in my pancakes, and ate them with maple syrup and the applesauce and apples topping I blogged about here.

After picking up some canned pumpkin at the store, I made the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes from VCTOTW. Mmm! They were like a cross between cupcakes and muffins, though the chocolate chips definitely pushed them towards cupcakedom. I thought they were *slightly* bland, but that might be because I'm so used to eating pumpkin based baked goods that use lots of pumpkin pie inspired spices.

This weekend, I made a big ol' pot of the Curried Split Pea Soup from VWAV. I'd had a bag of split peas sitting in my cupboard for weeks, so I was glad to finally use them up. I've never had curried split pea soup before; in fact, I'm not sure I've had split pea soup at all since going vegetarian just about four years ago! Weird, huh? I altered Isa's recipe slightly for lack of certain ingredients, namely onions, ginger, and cardamom. If I'd had them, I bet the soup would've been even tastier, but I really loved it as it was, especially since I chopped up a couple of baby carrots and added them. The curry flavor was mild, but I thought it worked well that way; the soup wasn't overpowering at all. I froze about half the batch, and tonight I ate my last not-frozen leftover bowl with some "sweet potato" (read: yam!) fries that might show up in a post soon. It was the perfect comfort meal on a cold night when I had a headache and generally didn't feel too well.

I did make one recipe from VWAV that wasn't a success, however. I decided to depart from my standby burger recipe - a variation of the Black Bean Burgers from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen - and try the TVP-based Veggie Burgers instead. I was not impressed. Granted, my substitution of chopped olives for the recipe's chopped mushrooms could have altered the taste, but I thought the flavor overall was just not good. I find that many of the recipes from VWAV are really salty, and this one was no exception, especially if you cook the TVP in vegetable broth, which is loaded with sodium. That plus the 3 T soy sauce, the Dijon mustard, and the optional liquid smoke (I didn't have any) equals waaay too much salt for my tastes - and I even halved the amount of soy sauce! I just wasn't impressed with the taste; there were too many flavors going on - Dijon mustard, peanut butter, soy sauce, and all the spices... bleh. I like the idea of a TVP-based burger, but I won't be making this particular recipe again.

That's all I have for now on the food-related front! I will leave you with a cute photo of my little Mistletoe as a thank-you for reading all this boring, picture-less food blather. This is one of her favorite positions, with her head resting between someone's legs - mine, in this case. Enjoy the doggie cuteness, and check out this post for a photo of my other baby.

Spinach Gnocchi, or, A Monochrome Meal

2009-02-17T23:26:00.007-06:00

With a word like gnocchi, the temptation to make some sort of horrible pun is almost irresistible. A large number of such puns ran through my head the other day in a cavalcade of groan-inducing wordplay, yet tonight I feel braindead - none of those hi-laaarious titles will condescend to return to my memory. Maybe that's for the best, however, so I'll skip the silliness and get straight to the food.

It was my turn in the three-week cycle of house dinner making, and I felt like going all-out and going crazy in the kitchen. Obviously that meant making my own pasta. Potato pasta, but pasta nonetheless. For a first gnocchi-making experience, it went quite well. I followed the recipe from VWAV, and added spinach, as per one of Isa's suggestions. I ended up with a large batch of minty-green gnocchi speckled with darker bits of spinach. Kind of pretty, in a strange way, even in their misshapenness - they were certainly not all exactly the same size, and the little riblike lines that scream "GNOCCHI!" were not entirely noticeable. But they were certainly tasty, if perhaps ever-so-slightly gummy. Definitely not a light meal, that's for sure. I served them with a spinach thyme toss from Vegan Visitor and some marinara sauce, along with a side of green beans sauteed with garlic and - of course - garlic bread. Yum yum yum.

Without the marinara sauce and the bread, that meal would've been entirely green! Hmm... I think I know what to make on St. Patty's day! :)

Ethnically Diverse Toast (aka French toast made with Italian bread)

2009-02-12T13:52:00.014-06:00

My lack of posts lately may hint in a fairly obvious way that I've been in a bit of a cooking rut for a week or so. I just haven't felt inspired, I guess. But luckily that all ended last night, when I journeyed into the land of pasta making and whipped up (cough, cough) a batch of homemade spinach gnocchi. Yeah, you heard that right. ;) But more on that in my next post, because this morning I made something you'd think really shouldn't be veganizable, since the original relies almost solely on animal products. Obviously I'm talking about French toast!

It was with a certain amount of, well, apprehension that I tried the recipe for "Fronch" Toast from VWAV. Isa says that chickpea flour possesses the magical ability to transform the egg- and milk-free version into one that tastes amazingly close to the real thing. Well, truth be told, I don't really care for the taste of chickpea flour. I learned this the hard way after I made a batch of pudla (Chinese scallion "pancakes" made with chickpea flour) based on this recipe. But since I was halving the VWaV recipe (I'm only cooking for one, here!) and it therefore only needed 1/8ish cup of chickpea flour, I figured I'd give it a try. Oh, and please excuse the questionable quality/composition of this photograph - my camera was having focusing issues, and this was not an exceedingly aesthetically pleasant food. It's rather... beige.

So - the result? Tasty, and surprisingly like "real" French toast (why does she call it "Fronch" Toast, anyway?), but not indistinguishable from the original. I added some cinnamon into the mix, because I don't have any maple syrup for a topping and wanted to sweeten it up. Unfortunately, I could taste the chickpea flour. That was a little disappointing, although I think I might've used too much flour, since I was just eyeballing it. Next time, I'll definitely be stingy with the chickpea flour. I'll also use slightly stale bread (mine was leftover Italian bread from the night before) and let it soak in the mixture for a longer period of time.

Oh, and that topping on my French toast? That, my friends, is a yummy, sweet, apple topping based on something my dad used to make when he'd cook up a big batch of pancakes for my family on the weekends. It's pretty simple - first, you pour about 1/4 or 1/3 cup of applesauce into a small pot and heat it up on the stove. While that's getting nice and bubbly, chop up an apple into small cubes and add it to the pot. Since I use unsweetened applesauce, I like to add a sizable sprinkle of cinnamon and a little sugar, but you can definitely leave the sugar out. If you have maple syrup, that works nicely too; Dad liked to use it. I bet you could give it a nice apple pie type flavor by adding nutmeg, allspice, etc. Anyway, once it's bubbly and the apples are nice and soft, just spoon it right over your French toast or pancakes and enjoy! I sure did. :)

Veggie Chorizo Brekkie Burrito!

2009-02-02T17:02:00.004-06:00

Like many Americans, I am a cultural mutt. My mom's side is French-Canadian, English, and Scottish, while my dad's side hails from Portugal, Ireland, and Russia. While I can't say that any one culinary tradition was prevalent in my immediate family's kitchen during my childhood, special occasions were often an excuse for my extended family to make foods following those traditions. French-Canadian meat pie, or tourtiere, is a New Year's Day tradition on my mom's side of the family (and no, we're not talking about the Sweeney Todd type of meat pie!). On the other side, my grandmother always buys traditional Portuguese sweet breads - complete with the hard-boiled egg in the middle - on Easter and makes a variety of Portuguese dishes for family dinners or her annual Christmas party. Some sort of pepper and chorizo dish is usually present at these types of gatherings.

I've got to be honest - even when I did eat meat, I was never a fan of chorizo or any type of sausage. It seemed like the epitome of everything that was wrong with meat to me, all sorts of unidentifiable bits of animals thrown into a grinder and labeled edible. And the few times I tried it, I didn't care for the taste. But I was willing to give chorizo another try... in its vegan form, at least. :P

So I made the Breakfast Veggie Chorizo from VWAV. As usual, I didn't have a couple of the ingredients (bay leaves, fennel seed.) But it ended up being really tasty! It was sweeter than I'd expected, which was probably a good thing - I'm not really a savory-breakfast type of person. Nope, I'm a sweet-breakfast girl - I'll take pancakes/smoothies/cereal/waffles/oatmeal, please! But I tried something different with the veggie chorizo and was pleasantly surprised, especially because it tastes really great in a breakfast burrito mixed up with sauteed green peppers, onions, and potatoes! I even went so far as to top it off with a smidgen of ketchup, which is totally against my sweet-breakfast nature, but it was really the perfect topping for the burrito.

Tasty AND filling! And for a first experience using TVP, it really could not have gone much better. I'm sure this doesn't taste anything like real chorizo, but hey - I'm fine with that. :)

Peanutty Yumminess Part Deux, or, Making Do

2009-01-28T23:23:00.008-06:00

I've been feeling a little under the weather today, with various aches, pains, and an overwhelming desire to go to bed that hit me a little while ago. So I was going to skip posting tonight until I remembered that I'd already typed out most of this entry a few nights ago. Well! That changes everything. ;)

Apparently my peanut inspired dinner on Monday didn't fill my daily peanut quota, because later that night (after dutifully finishing my art history reading) I decided to break in my new copy of VCTOTW by making the Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

Now, one of the downfalls of going to school far away from home is that I am sadly unable to bring my family's well-stocked kitchen along with me. I live in an on-campus townhouse this year with B & E, my two best friends here, and although we're slowly stocking our kitchen with necessary utensils and whatnot, those things ain't cheap, and inevitably we find ourselves lacking certain items. So my Peanut Butter Cupcake making journey was a lesson in making do.

First, I don't have any molasses. I know, I know. So I substituted a little of the brown sugar for some of the white sugar and added a bit of applesauce, since molasses is sort of liquidy, right? And my lack of crunchy natural peanut butter led me to crush some peanuts instead. And because we don't have a sifter (I know, I know!) I sort of used a whisk to make sure my cocoa powder was lumpless. And since we don't have cupcake liners (...), I just (unhealthily) greased the muffin tins with shortening. Oh, and for once I don't have soy milk - just the almond milk about which I rhapsodized in my previous post.

When it came time to make the frosting, I used the same sifting... trick... to make sure my powdered sugar didn't have huge lumps. And then my lack of a hand mixer compelled me to beat the frosting with a fork, a strenuous process which has left me with a rather sore right arm.

Somehow, though, everything magically worked out in the end. The cupcakes themselves, to be honest, sort of straddle that line between cupcake and muffin, but they are still yummy. I wouldn't call them sweet though; they have a mellow, rich taste that doesn't hit you until you actually begin chewing on the bite you've just taken. I bet the molasses would've added just the right depth of sweetness.

And the Chocolate Buttercream Frosting? Well, let's just say that the next time somebody disparagingly calls vegan fare bland, boring, and waaay too healthy, I'll just whip up a batch of this frosting and in one fell swoop topple all those stereotypes! This stuff is super rich! Tasty, but heavy. VCTOTW suggests topping the Peanut Butter Cupcakes with a drizzle of ganache, but my lack of chocolate chips led me to make the buttercream instead. In retrospect, the buttercream is probably too heavy for this cupcake - it almost overpowers the peanut butter's flavor. Ah well. Live and learn and in the meantime eat lots of delicious cupcakes!

...or not, since later that night I had a very unpleasant stomachache which can really only be attributed to the rather large quantity of fat in the frosting. I've never been able to tolerate too much fat, so I think it did me in this time. Alas!

Anyway, now I'm going to curl up in bed with a comps book - Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which is one of those books that gets better and better each time you read it - and read 'til I'm ready to fall asleep. Ciao!

Nutty Milks - Who Knew?!

2009-01-27T23:33:00.012-06:00

I have a new favorite thing, and its name is Milk - Almond Milk, that is. I've been trying to cut down on my soy intake, not necessarily because I've been frightened away by all the rumors about its possible health effects, but because I believe in a balanced diet. As veg*ns, it's all too easy for us to rely on soy-based products, so I figure that if I can use a non-soy based milk instead, it'll sort of balance out my consumption of tofu and such. As my momma always says, quoting my incredibly wise grandpa, "Everything in moderation." :)

But I'm not gonna lie - I'm having a hard time using this almond milk in moderation! The Blue Diamond brand was on sale for $1.79 a carton at the co-op, so I bought the unsweetened original and the sweetened vanilla varieties.

One sip and I was sold! The vanilla is so much creamier than vanilla soy or rice milk, but it's not at all overwhelmingly nutty. I will say that I think it's *just* bordering on being too sweet, so next time I'll get the unsweetened vanilla (the sweetener is evaporated cane sugar.) As a testament to how much I like this stuff, let me just say that I actually drank a glass of it with my dessert tonight. This is meaningful because I pretty much drink only water (and tea, I guess). I don't drink soda, I don't buy juice all that often, and I don't really count smoothies as drinks. :) As a kid I was never fond of drinking glasses of milk, and I don't like soy or rice milk enough to drink it plain, but I actually enjoyed this by itself. Pretty sweet. I haven't tried the original variety yet, but I'm optimistic about it and will probably use it mostly for baking/cooking.

You know, I'm lucky that I can drink this at all - nut allergies run in my family; my dad's allergic to almonds and my sister is allergic to all nuts. So when I am home (not at college, where I live at the moment) we can't keep stuff like this in the house. I think I'll try to explore other milk alternatives, like oat and hemp. :)

Tune in next time for part two of my peanutty yumminess series, wherein I will share my first experience with Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! The dessert I mentioned earlier, which went so well with a glass of almond milk, will be featured prominently. Well... solely, actually. Hehe.

Peanutty Yumminess

2009-01-26T20:38:00.006-06:00

Last fall, I made a food discovery that rocked my world and changed my life. Ever since this delightful spicy, salty, nutty goodness first danced across my taste buds, they've craved it at least once a week. What is this culinary creation, you ask? Two words: peanut. sauce.

...okay, so maybe I was the last person on the planet to realize that peanut sauce was even possible, but somehow I spent 21 years of my life in a peanut sauce-less flavor wasteland. The fact that I'd never encountered it before is odd, because I love peanut flavored anything and I love noodle-y dishes with exciting sauces in general. Possibly it has something to do with my younger sister's nut allergy; if she weren't allergic, I bet my culinarily gifted dad would've made something like it at some point. But anyway, I discovered it last fall and after I mixed up my first batch, I was hooked.

That right there is heaven in a dish, folks. I like to serve a large helping of peanut sauce over udon noodles and some veggies. I nearly always use broccoli, and in the past I've used snow peas with great success. This time I used some edamame, and then I topped it all off with some raw peanuts. It's such a simple dish, but it's so flavorful and delicious.

I don't really have a set recipe for my peanut sauce, but the key is to mix equal parts peanut butter (natural, duh!) and water and then spice to taste. I like to add soy sauce, garlic, chili powder, and enough cayenne pepper to give it a real kick. It's pretty simple, but so awesome over the noodles and vegetables.

Ah, peanuts. I can never decide if I like them in sweet dishes (mmm, peanut butter & chocolate flavored anything!) or in a savory, spicy incarnation, like this sauce. But hey - who said I have to choose?! :D

Kale Soup on Sunday

2009-01-19T18:51:00.005-06:00

It was my turn in the rotation to cook Sunday dinner for my lovely housemates this week, and since I've been craving my mom's kale soup, I asked her for the recipe and set about recreating one of my favorite dishes from home. She varies her recipe based on what's in the house, so I tailored it to my friends' tastes. I was proud that my first attempt at making Mom's soup came out so well, and even though my friends had never had kale before (shocking, I know!), they enjoyed it and E had a large second helping. :) Anyway, I'm going to share the "recipe" here, although I'm guesstimating on some of the measurements because I pretty much winged it for most of the ingredients. It's pretty simple - but oh so yummy.

Mom's Kale Soup

2 quarts vegetable broth (I used 1 qt Imagine veggie broth and 3 cups water with a bouillon cube, just because that's less expensive)
1 bunch kale, shredded into smallish pieces
1 1/2 cans beans - I used a mixture of kidney and great northern; Mom suggests cannellini
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped carrot (I chopped up baby carrots; I like the small rounds)
1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes
A couple shakes Tabasco sauce
Spices - I used dried basil and a bit of cayenne pepper; Mom suggests basil, rosemary, and red pepper flakes, but I didn't have the latter two in the cupboard
You can also add corn or a finely chopped potato or two, but I left them out because neither E nor B particularly likes corn, and I prefer the soup without potatoes

Pour a little broth into the bottom of a large soup pot; add the onions and garlic and cook until they begin to get soft. Shred up the kale and add it to the pot, adding a little more liquid as necessary. Once the kale has softened and cooked down, add all the other ingredients to the pot and let simmer for about an hour.

That's it! Super simple but really delicious. You can mess with the spices to taste; I think the fire roasted tomatoes and a few dashes of Tabasco sauce give this just enough of a mild kick to keep it from being boring. It wasn't really spicy to me at all, but E, a native Wisconsinite known for her aversion to spicy foods, said she could taste it.

I served the soup with a batch of Baking Powder Biscuits from VwaV. B loved the biscuits and couldn't stop eating them! They definitely rose nicely and were a great compliment to the soup, but they were too salty for my taste - I definitely won't put in a whole teaspoon of salt next time I make them!

That was my Sunday night meal. Simple, healthy, yet filling and yummy. And the night got even better when B and I returned home a little later from our comps meeting (comps are the big senior project type things we have to pass to graduate, eek) to find that E had baked a big ol' chocolate cake - and it just happened to be vegan and delicious! Best night ever. :)

Lentil Soup on a Frigid Night

2009-01-14T23:13:00.003-06:00

Look at me - posting two days in a row! It's a record! ...aaand you know it's a bad sign when two days is a record. Oh well. :)

Tonight I was musing aloud and wondering if I should make some curried split pea soup from VwaV for dinner when one of my housemates, B, suggested I use up her lentils and make lentil soup for both of us. Works for me! I threw together a soup from the limited ingredients we had in the house. See, the arctic tundra has come to Minnesota this week, with temperatures in the negatives and windchills making it feel like -30ish. So, needless to say, we're avoiding leaving the house for anything other than classes. That means no grocery runs this week (since we walk to the store). Luckily I stocked up on Sunday, anticipating this week of being practically house-bound. Brrr.

Anyway, on to the soup! I kept it simple and sauteed onions, garlic, and sliced baby carrots in a bit of EVOO (good gracious, did I just use that acronym?!) and then dumped that mixture into a big pot of about 4 cups of veggie broth. I used about a cup of lentils, and then I added some leftover fire roasted tomato chunks for good measure. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar, and spiced it with oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, black pepper, and some cayenne pepper powder just because it was there. :P Oh yeah - I also added a potato, chopped into small pieces. I let it simmer until the lentils were soft and nearly all the liquid was absorbed/evaporated.

And then I devoured a large bowlful. It was surprisingly tasty, if slightly salty due to the veggie broth, which I made from a bouillon for availability/frugality reasons. But I was well pleased with it, and it was pretty much the perfect meal for a freezing cold winter night. :)

The return - for real this time!

2009-01-14T00:20:00.004-06:00

If my lack of bloggage led you to believe that I have spent the past three months not eating, let me assure you, that is not the case. I am just phenomenally lazy when it comes to food blogging. BUT THAT WILL CHANGE. Even though I'm crazy-busy with classes and studying for my impending big ol' senior comps exam, I will post here IF IT KILLS ME. I just will have to give up on the idea of writing really long, elaborate posts filled with lots of pretty pictures. That can wait 'til after I'm all graduated and have entered the "real world" of unemployment and binge eating. Just kidding. Or am I?

Anyway, for Christmas this year I asked for some food/cooking related paraphernalia, and now I am the proud owner of Vegan with a Vengeance and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! I know I'm pretty much the last vegan/aspiring vegan on the planet to have these, but whatevs, man. Last night I made the Black-eyed Pea and Quinoa Croquettes from VwaV, served on a bed of quinoa with a side of baby carrots. I still don't know exactly what a croquette is supposed to be, other than perhaps the female version of croquet (ha ha ha), but my little croquettes were like small, crispy-on-the-outside meatballs. Except flattened, like decidedly non-vegan marshmallows. They tasted... well, not bad. Not bad at all, but sort of bland, to be honest. If I make them again, I'll definitely add more spices. I also cheated and made mushroom sauce from a package, because I had to buy like 934 comps books this week and my checking account suffered a severe dent, so I didn't feel inclined to spend the extra money on stuff to make the sauce from scratch. Oh well. I guess this meal was sort in the B range. Acceptable, but not stellar.

Tonight I made curried chickpeas, served over cous cous and again with a side of baby carrots. The curried chickpeas were actually really quite good; they were simmered in veggie broth, lots of garlic, a curry powder mix, extra garam masala, and a bit of chili powder for some kick, which may've been gratuitous. I also added a bit of cornstarch when nearly all the broth was absorbed/boiled away to keep a bit of sauce. The whole meal was quite tasty and just spicy enough, but it was one of those heavy meals that just sort of sat in my stomach all night long and made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. :( I tried to remedy the lingering curry taste in my mouth by eating some (non-vegan) chocolate, but then I just felt even more icky.

So that's pretty much the rundown of my meals so far this week! Well, not Sunday, because my two housemates and I alternate making big "family" dinners on Sundays, and this week my roomie, E, made yummy stir fry with tofu, veggies, and rice. Oh! Last night I made Susan's Pineapple Coffee Cake because I had half a can of pineapple rings, and it was really yummy and a welcome warm treat in the subzero temperatures of the frigid Minnesota tundra. Not that we were eating it outside, but you know what I mean. :)

Okay! I am done for now! I don't have any relevant food pictures so I will instead post an old-ish photo of my adorable chihuahua, Tamale, being uncharacteristically sweet and demure.

Scraaamble, Scramble, Scraaamble!

2008-10-13T00:00:00.008-05:00

I'm alive, I swear! Not that anyone missed me, because the readership of this blog is pretty nonexistent. But, whatever; I can pretend that somebody has been anxiously checking here every day to see if I'd update, right? Yeah.

I haven't been updating because I'm back at school and blogging has sort of slipped from my mind. Things like comps (senior project-type dealio) proposals and classwork and Life After College planning have pretty much taken over, and even though I'm cooking for myself for every meal of every day, I don't really feel like photographing my food because I'm usually pretty darn hungry when it's done! That and I haven't made too many photo/blogworthy meals, I guess, even though I have been experimenting with lots of new types of foods (for me, at least) and figuring things out for myself. I LOVE the fact that my tiny college town has a natural food store/co-op, and I have established a sort of Wednesday afternoon co-op ritual that is very nearly the highlight of my week. I just really love the availability of organic and local foods, as well as veg*n friendly stuff - I tried soy yogurt for the first time, and it's fantastic! Now, if only the dairy-free ice cream weren't so expensive... ;)

Anyway, there is a food-point to this post, I swear! Namely, scrambled tofu, a la the PPK. And when I say "a la the PPK," I basically mean that I took that recipe and bastardized it because I didn't have most of the ingredients. I sauteed some baby bella mushrooms and minced garlic, then added the tofu and some spices - namely turmeric (I was so excited to find this at the co-op!), paprika, and some garlic salt. I let it snap, crackle, and pop on the stove as I got dressed, and then I enjoyed a surprisingly tasty egg-free breakfast scramble.

So it's not the most photogenic food, but hey, it was actually quite yummy! And if I'd had more of the ingredients Isa recommends, I bet it'd be even better! Also, I learned an important lesson - a little turmeric goes a long way. I definitely overused it this time around, so much so that my toothbrush's bristles turned yellow when I brushed my teeth too soon after eating. :X Oh well, I was due for a new one anyway.

That's all for now, I suppose. I promise I'll be better about posting and actually share some of the tasty stuff I've been making lately! And if you, random person, are reading this, leave me a comment! Please?

Ciao!

Failbread

2008-09-06T17:12:00.007-05:00

I like recipes. Generally, they yield successful and tasty results that are enjoyable to eat. That said, I'm the type of person who loves creative pursuits of the crafty nature, and my creative side often begs to be set free in the kitchen. After a nearly sleepless night spent alternately freaking out about grad school applications, pretending I was a character in a novel that's been percolating in my head for some time, and thinking about inventing a recipe for apple bread, I woke up the next morning determined to try said recipe.

Well.

There may be a reason fresh - not dried - apples aren't generally used in bread-based baked goods. I have a feeling that the inclusion of a large, locally-grown Macintosh apple - cut up into cubes and doused with a cinnamon-sugar mixture - did something weird to my bread; y'know, something to do with the moisture level or, um, something. Maybe. Cough.

Either that or my recipe was really terrible. Cough, cough. I mean, I thought I was being smart by kind of looking at a few different bread and muffin recipes and going from there. I thought I'd included some of every ingredient generally used in similar recipes. I thought it would work out. I thought that since I'd freehanded a rather delicious recipe for a sort of cross between scones and oatmeal cookies when I was studying in Ireland and needed to use up excess food before heading back to the States, I could do the same thing with this bread. I also thought the batter seemed slightly, well, sticky, but I figured that wouldn't actually matter too much.

I guess I thought wrong, however, because the result wasn't really a bread; it was a sort of sticky, dense, glutinous - yet pleasantly spiced - bread-shaped loaf that was rather chewier than any bread I've ever tasted and had a strangely tough crust. At least the apples were juicy and nicely spiced. Overall, it wasn't terrible; I just would never make it again in that exact way. Hah. I wish I knew exactly what led to the bready breakdown, but I think it might've been a combination of many factors that combined to create this failure. I didn't include eggs or oil, so maybe the "substitutions" I used didn't create the correct chemical mixture to produce a breadlike substance. Perhaps if I'd let it bake longer, it would've been slightly less sticky. Maybe the apples screwed with the liquid content. At least it tasted decent; my sister actually liked it, and the other day I sort of crumbled it up and heated it with a little Smart Balance, and it was like a weird kind of breadish pudding. At least it didn't go to waste, right? Right?

Ah well. Apple bread for the fail!

P.S. I'm not sharing a picture of the innards because the photos didn't really do its strangeness justice... hah.

Vegan Lip Gloss: Smells So Good, I Wanna Eat It!

2008-08-28T23:47:00.008-05:00

I have a guilty pleasure. I can't get enough of the online version of window shopping. One of my absolute favorite sites is Etsy - "your place to buy and sell all things handmade!" The crafter in me goes crazy when I hit up Etsy and I can spend ages ogling all the gorgeous handmade crafts there, from amazing one-of-a-kind jewelry to unique DIY clothing to all-natural handmade soaps. I've made a few purchases in the past and have never been disappointed, and my sister and I have our own shop, although we haven't got much in it at the moment. Anyway, recently I ran out of lip gloss/chapstick and decided that the time had come to find something vegan to use instead of one with a beeswax base or any sort of animal-based ingredients. But where to find such a product? Why, Etsy, of course!

After searching for vegan lip products and comparing scents/flavors, ingredients, and seller ratings, I decided to purchase from YouStinkSoap, deciding to ignore the outright insult in the shop's title. Sandy, who runs the shop and makes her products, has this to say in her shop's description: All my soaps are vegan (no animal products) detergent and cruelty free. Made in small, cold processed batches the bars retain their natural glycerin and are super-fatted with shea butter for extra moisturizing benefits. Pretty sweet, huh? Well, not as sweet as the Dulce de Leche scented lip gloss I chose!

Yes, that's right, Dulce de Leche. In a brilliant move, I decided to opt for Sandy's three lip gloss dealio for $7.50, plus the bank-breaking shipping cost of $1.69. So that boils down to an individual price that's slightly more expensive than the normal Bonne Bell stuff I used for years, but less than something like, say, Burt's Bees, that while probably more natural and environmentally friendly than a Lip Smacker is decidedly not vegan. But handmade, vegan, and cruelty-free? Works for me! And with scents like Coconut Lemongrass, Strawberry Tart, and Toffee Macadamia Nut, how can you go wrong? I eventually chose the aforementioned Dulce de Leche, Mango Mango, and Vanilla Velvet Buttercreme. Yeah, I know - decadent, utterly, utterly, decadent.

My lip glosses arrived today, and let me tell you, uncapping these suckers was like opening up a little tube of heaven! Dulce de Leche is sinfully sweet. The scent reminds my mom of maple syrup; I smell caramel and sugar and it is oh so rich and delicious. Vanilla Velvet Buttercreme smells like a rich, almost buttery yellow cake smothered in vanilla frosting, and Mango Mango... well, I think the name speaks for itself, but this scent gives me cravings for the sweet, juicy flesh of a ripe yellow mango. Oh baby. Plus, this is quality stuff. It glides on nice and smooooth, the scent lasts for quite a while, and it doesn't seem to wear off easily. Plus, my lips feel moisturized and happy and slightly shiny. I've been rotating through my three flavors all day, and now I can't wait to try more of Sandy's tempting scents. Oh, and did I mention that she threw in a handwritten thank-you note and a little sample of her handmade [vegan] Bamboo Rain Garden soap? Cuz she did, and it smells fresh and clean and wonderful and I think I'm totally sold on this whole natural body care thing.

Hah, and you thought this was a food blog!

Seriously though, I'm cool with leaving out the food porn in order to promote ways to live an all-around cruelty-free lifestyle, and I do like to rave about things that tickle my fancy. Plus, this Dulce de Leche lip gloss is practically food - close your eyes and you'd think there was something gooey and caramel-covered being held under your nose. Mmm mmm good.

Streusel-y Blueberry Muffins

2008-08-24T22:28:00.006-05:00

Confession time... I had all four wisdom teeth removed a week ago, which means I've only just graduate to semi (and I do mean semi) solid foods, which means that I made these muffins ages ago and was just too lazy to post. Oops. Oh well, the blog must go on.

So. In a slightly more season-appropriate fit of baking, I trolled the web for vegan blueberry muffin recipes so that I could use up some of the 20+ pounds of blueberries my mom, sister, and I picked from a local farm last month. We're freezing bunches of them, of course, but it's still lovely to bake with fresh, local, seasonal produce. When I was a kid, the Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin recipe had celebrity status in our house, but lately the gobs of butter it requires are a bit of a turn-off to most of us, so I went for a vegan option when I made this batch of muffins. This is the recipe I eventually chose. I know that the streusel topping negates some of the healthiness, but come on - I only used two tablespoons of Smart Balance spread out among all twelve muffins, so it's a small price to pay for the delicious, sweet chewy-crispiness of the streusel topping!

I followed the recipe pretty exactly, although we just have plain old refined white sugar (not specifically "vegan sugar") in the house, so that's what I used. Just like I did with the Pumpkin Spice Muffins, I used 1 T cornstarch and 3 T water in place of the Ener-G Egg Replacer. But when I'd mixed all the ingredients together, the batter was waaay too thick. It was barely pourable. I added a few extra tablespoons of water until it became a more liquid-y consistency, poured it into my muffin tins, added the streusel topping, and baked.

Now, before I continue, I should mention the little flour problem I had. See, the recipe calls for whole wheat flour, and since we had some sitting in the freezer, I figured I would just use that up and everything would be hunky-dory. But when my first sneaky taste of the batter yielded a rather strange taste, I began to suspect that something was amiss. It wasn't until I tried the finished product that I realized that the whole wheat flour must've been sitting in the freezer for waaay too long, because it had acquired that distinctive and unpleasant "freezer taste," that strange aftertaste that lingers in your mouth and makes you scrunch up your lips slightly as you try to figure out why your food tastes slightly off. If you know what I'm talking about, you understand, but if not, I don't think I can properly describe the flavor of freezer burn. Honestly, I had difficulty eating the muffins because of this unwelcome extra flavor, but my mom couldn't notice it at all and enjoyed them.

Bottom line? This was a decent recipe. I wasn't too thrilled with my results, but the nasty freezer taste may have had a little tiny something to do with that. Aside from that, I did feel that these muffins were quite dense; maybe if some regular white flour were used in place of some of the whole wheat they'd be a bit lighter. I'd also probably double the streusel recipe in future, because it was sort of sparse, and in this particular case the streusel was what saved these Freezer Burn Streusel-y Blueberry Muffins. Ah well - live and learn!

Putting the Spice in Pumpkin Spice Muffins

2008-07-30T18:24:00.011-05:00

Ahh, summer - the season of beach visits, swimming pools, and summer produce. I just love summer produce... watermelon, lots of fresh berries, pumpkin... wait, what?! To me, any sort of pumpkin food just screams out AUTUMN! Also Harry Potter, but that's another issue entirely. But when I unearthed two cans of pumpkin in the pantry, for some reason I just felt like using them. It's not that I'm eager for it to be autumn or anything; don't get me wrong, I love looong summers that seem to go on forever. But the idea of eating something flavored with spiced pumpkin just appealed to me, so I booted up ye olde laptop and hit the web for a good, simple pumpkin bread recipe.

Then I decided I wanted to try a vegan pumpkin bread, and I figured it would be a pretty easy foray into vegan baking. So I chose the Pumpkin Spice Bread recipe over at Susan's Fatfree Vegan Kitchen blog. Even though her gorgeous photos showed little loafs of pumpkin bread in adorable Christmas-themed loaf pans and wrapped with various holiday-themed paraphernalia, that didn't deter me. I followed Susan's recipe pretty closely, although I omitted the pecans/walnuts since I have a sister who's allergic to all nuts. I also chose to use the 1/4 cup of canola oil and 1/4 cup of applesauce combo instead of doing a 1/2 cup of applesauce, because I didn't mind adding a little extra fat into the recipe. Also, since I didn't have any Ener-G Egg Replacer, I used a tablespoon of cornstarch and three tablespoons of water in place of that. I then decided to make a dozen muffins instead of a full loaf of bread, mostly to cut down on baking time and to save a little electricity. The batter looked lovely - colorful and rich - in the muffin pans.

Although Susan's recipe said the muffins would probably take around 15 minutes to bake, mine took somewhere around 23ish minutes. Of course, I didn't really mind since that meant I had more opportunities to taste the batter after sticking a knife in the muffins to see if they were done! I've got to say, that batter packs a kick. The combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger makes for a really spicy pumpkin spice muffin! As the muffins baked and I did my clean-up, I tasted the batter (because you OBVIOUSLY are pretty much required to do that so you don't waste the scrapings in your mixing bowl!) and the flavor of the spices really surprised me. But as the muffins baked, the pumpkin flavor seemed to come through, and by the time they were finished the pumpkin and the spice flavors just complemented one another quite nicely. When they came out of the oven, they were a gorgeous color and I loved how they'd risen in nice little dome shapes.

Overall I was quite pleased with this recipe. Susan warns that if you omit the oil entirely and use all applesauce, the bread will be heavier and more "gummy" in the middle. Even though I did use the oil, my muffins have a bit of a tiny gummy center, which you can see in the first picture. I think they actually could have used a minute or two more in the oven. But they're delicious and spicy and made for a really great breakfast on this hot summer morning, and I was pleased that my egg substitution worked out just fine. When my sister saw the muffins lying on the stove, she said "Ooh, these look delicious!" and then, a second later after biting into one, followed up with "Ooh, these ARE delicious!"

Two thumbs up for this vegan pumpkin bread recipe!

Beginnings

2008-07-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

It started with a pizza.

Well, strictly speaking, it started with two or three pizzas. The individual pizzas aren't important on their own, but the fact that they were all sitting there on my aunt's kitchen table, presenting me with a decision, is the important part of the story. Pepperoni or olive? I'd never been a big pepperoni fan to begin with, so it wasn't like I was denying myself something I loved when I chose the olive. But my decision wasn't based on taste that day; I remember consciously thinking, "I want to be a vegetarian." I took the piece of olive-topped pizza and ate it and later that night I wrote a heartfelt post in my online diary of the moment about how I'd like to be a vegetarian and how I'd started researching vegetarianism and how much better it was for the environment and health and OMG YAY! I swear; that's exactly what I said. Maybe. It's not like that was a long time ago or anything.

When I think retrospectively, I realize that in my heart of hearts, I'd always felt guilty eating meat. My mom was never a huge fan of meat, but her dinners typically included something that came from an animal. I remember being seven or eight years old and eating roasted chicken one night and just feeling bad for that poor chicken. Every time I ate a meat product, I felt a twinge of guilt. But I didn't know any vegetarians as a kid, and it wasn't until high school that I actually met a teacher - coincidentally the mom of a high school friend - who had voluntarily stopped eating meat after seeing firsthand the conditions in a slaughterhouse. Her description of the dripping blood and the grotesque hanging carcasses was both stomach-turning and also enough to make me realize that my instincts, perhaps, had been right.

But the pizza moment, which probably occurred during my sophomore or junior year of high school, didn't end up being the moment in which I turned vegetarian. Orlando Bloom did me in. See, I was hugely obsessed with Lord of the Rings in high school, and my friend Elfy* went through a ridiculously intense Orlando Bloom phase in which she (only her, I swear! *shifty eyes*) learned every fact available about Orlando, and one of those facts was that Orlando is, in fact, a vegetarian. So when I tested out my friends by casually mentioning that I was thinking of going vegetarian, Elfy and Trailmix questioned my motives and accused me of just wanting to be like Orlando. Hmph! Needless to say, I was properly outraged as my motives were pure and just and based on compassion and if Orlando just happened to also be a vegetarian, well then, it just showed that he had some modicum of sense and compassion and well-developed morality. Unfortunately, their criticism did me in and, my noble thoughts of vegetarianism deflated for the moment, I gave up... for a while.

Really, though, I cut back on my meat intake for the next few years, consciously choosing to eat only the vegetables and sides when my aunt would make a big roast for a family dinner and quietly beginning my vegetarian slide. And then came Lent of my senior year of high school, and I totally cheated and gave up meat even though the point of Lent is to give up something you actually want and care about and at that point I was pretty disgusted by meat and giving it up was no hardship at all. But those three months without meat convinced me that I could go veggie with no problem, and after Lent ended I just never went back to eating meat.

So that was that. Now I'm beginning my senior year at my beloved small liberal arts college that's super liberal and environmentally conscious and quite vegetarian friendly, so the past three years haven't been a problem food-wise. Plus another aunt and her husband have gone vegan, and then my sister and mom jumped on the vegetarian bandwagon, and now my dad does most of the cooking and even though he's still a meat-eater he's happy to make veggie meals for us and they're delicious and healthy and they're inspiring me to think about food in a creative way. See, two of my best friends and I are going to be living in a townhouse during our senior year, so I'm finally going to have a kitchen and not have to rely on the dining hall, and I'm excited to be able to cook my own meals in my own kitchen. I want to chronicle my attempts to experiment with foods I've never worked with on my own, and hopefully I can grow both as a cook and as a vegetarian. I intend to be quite vegan-friendly, since I'm thinking of going vegan eventually. So here I am, and here I veggie-a-gogo!

P.S. I swear that I'll try to be less wordy in future posts, but I'm an English major and quite verbose and it's haaard! Maybe I'll insert lots of pretty food porn to break up the text... mmm, food porn. ;)

*Names changed to protect the innocent... and the not-so-innocent!