Sunday, April 23, 2006

A weekend of cooking and my new favorite place to shop

It's been a busy weekend cooking. ( I got a lot of cooking done.) First off, yesterday I steamed kale, broccoli, and swiss chard, made Southern Braised Collards, and made Banana Split-Tea Bread from Vegan Planet. Here are two pics of the banana bread:



The banana bread recipe called for dried cherries, chocolate chips, crushed pineapple, and peanuts.
Well, I didn't have any dried cherries. Dried cranberries would have been second to the cherries, but I didn't have any either, so I settled on raisins. All was well with the chocolate chips, but for the pineapple, this was a different story. I went down to our pantry to get a can of pineapple, went back upstairs, opened the can, and realized it was chunked pineapple. Down to the pantry I went, and to my horror, their was no crushed pineapple. (Okay, okay, so I'm overdramatizing it.) I just chopped the pineapple chunks and it was fine. As for the peanuts, I used pecans. I didn't eat any because braces+nuts=disaster. It also called for 3/4 cup sugar which seems like quite a lot, so I cut it down to 1/2 cup. I don't normally use sugar in my baking, but I have a lot I need to use up and nobody in my family (except for me) minds sugar.

We were planning on going up to Albany tomorrow to drop Susan off at her apartment and to go shopping at Honest Weight Food Coop, but this morning we decided it would be better if we went today, because tomorrow I'm helping my flamenco teacher with an after school program and it would be to much of a rush. It was our first time there, and ohmygod, I died and went to heaven! I haven't made up my mind about their produce department yet, but their bulk section is sooooo amazing. They have so much stuff in bulk! All of the other health food stores I've been to come nothing close to it. They have (you can go to their website and read about what they have, but I have to list it here because I'm so excited) all different kinds of flour (barley, quinoa, teff, amaranth, millet, etc.), so many different kinds of beans (I had looked for black soy beans and Anasazi beans all over and couldn't find them, so I gave up hope, but they had them!), so, so, so, many different kinds of bulk pasta (whole wheat spinach lasagna noodles, corn pasta, tricolor quinoa rotini, all the different kinds of pasta a person can dream of). They have seaweed, many different kinds of miso, oils and vinegars, different flavored extracts, molasses-all in bulk. I've never seen such a sight in my life! Anyway, I'm kind of ranting now, but I'm just so darn excited. This month the almond milk is ridiculously cheap (3/$5), so we bought 4 cases and we're going back on Friday to get more and to ogle the bulk section. :O

I'm getting off track, so I'll get back on track. Because I thought we were bringing Susan up tomorrow, I was counting on having all day today to cook some food for Susan to bring back , but since plans changed, I had to hurry up and cook it all in a smaller time period. Before I started cooking, I ate my breakfast. I know it sounds gross, but Lightlife Fakin' Bacon+peanut butter+toasted whole grain bread+a cold glass of ricemilk=deliciousness. All right, now the pics of food:

Rachel's breakfast. (I didn't make her breakfast, but it looked so good I had to include a picture.)
Gee Whiz Spread (I did make that a few days ago) from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook on
oat bread with tomato slices, sprinkled with garlic powder and broiled. With *gasp* a glass of cow's milk. ( I'm the only vegan in my family.) Oh well, it's better than seeing it go to waste (she brought it home from work).




This is a picture of oatmeal bars. Everyone (including my dad) loves these, so I make them quite often. Today I turned them into tropical oatmeal bars by using pineapple juice, dried mango as the fruit, and shredded unsweetened coconut in place of the sesame seeds.)



Hmmm. I not quite sure why, but blogger won't upload any other pictures of mine, so I'll just have to describe them and upload the pics at a later date. I made a curried lentils and rice recipe and stuffed it into a portabello mushroom, and I also made the recipe for the Faux Egg Salad from How It All Vegan. That reminds me, my Amazon order came the other day (or, at least half of it came.) I'm so excited about it! La Dolce Vegan, The Millenium Cookbook, The Voluptous Vegan, Vice Cream, and Vive Le Vegan all came. I'm almost embarresed about how many cookbooks were ordered. And by the way, my mom is paying for them. :)

I'm getting sleepy now, so I guess that's it.

7 comments:

Freedom said...

YOu're soo lucky - all those cookbooks must have cost your mum a fortune! I don't own a single vegan cookbook and I found two in the library for the first time ever about 2 weeks ago! But I guess not having any cookbooks forces me ot be more creative!

primaryconsumer said...

Freedom-I am really lucky to have all these cookbooks, but I also go online a lot to look for recipes. If you want any web adresses, just let me know.

Kristie-thanks! :)

Dori said...

I love huge coop's like you describe also. Hope your competition entry goes well, your picture below looks very nice and I can see your extra presentation detail.

Braces are hard to deal with, KUDOS (extra soft and tastey) to you for your cooking even when you don't eat it because of achey breaky teeth. Bless your little cooking heart.

jess (of Get Sconed!) said...

oatmeal bars! awesome , I need to keep up with my blog viewing. I made banana bread last night, I have been craving it! Is your bread made with tea water, I assume?

primaryconsumer said...

Jess-No, it's not made with tea water. (I goofed up the title, it's called banana-split tea bread), It's banana bread with banana split ingredients. I guess it's called tea bread because you drink it with tea. :)

jess (of Get Sconed!) said...

Ah! thanks. I'm glad to hear it, I like tea but have not had a tea-flavored cake yet that I've liked.

primaryconsumer said...

Hey Jess, check out www.catteacorner.com, they have some recipes that sound really good that call for tea.