Food P0rn Catch-up

I miss blogging and reading everyone else's blogs. How are things going with you all? I'm having a blast at work, and I don't mind doing schoolwork either. I've been making food, but I don't get time to blog about it, so I have a build up of food pictures. Enjoy them!


The lighting was bad for this one, so it's a little blurry, but it's a salad of romaine lettuce, tomatoes*, and Sharp Classic Vinaigrette with a Bite (from The Passionate Vegetarian). I subbed hemp oil for the extra virgin olive oil it called, but Rachel and I didn't like it as much as we have in the past. Also, this was the first time I made it in the food processer (as opposed to the blender), and it was much thinner than all the other times I've made it. I still liked it a lot though, it was just different.


This picture is blurry because of bad lighting as well. It was Artichoke and Lima Bean Ragout in Lemon-Garlic Sauce, served over artichoke penne pasta*. It's from The Passionate Vegetarian. I loved this dish, but everyone else seemed to think it was too sour. I guess you can't win them all!


This is baby romaine lettuce*, golden tomatoes*, and Cumin-Lime Dressing from Ecological Cooking.


This is my version of The Zen Platter, a combination platter found at a vegetarian restaurant semi-close by me. It has steamed kale*, carrots, zucchini*, and summer squash*; arame, pink beans simmered with golden tomatoes* and parsley*; tofu* marinated in soy sauce, garlic powder, ground ginger, lemon juice and sesame oil and then baked; millet, and finally tahini sauce to pour over everything and anything. This meal was very satisfying.


West Indian Rundown from you guessed it, The Passionate Vegetarian. It's a Jamaican Curry, and it's yummy. It was actually a wee bit too spicy for me, but it was still yummy. It had oil, onion, garlic*, scallions*, curry powder, coconut milk, vegetable stock (homemade from vegetables brought home by Rachel), seitan*, carrots, potatoes, acorn squash*, allspice, thyme, half a habenero chile, and tomatoes, and I served it over brown basmati rice. Everyone really liked it.


Sliced Brisket of Seitan, Jewish-Style, (from The Passionate Vegetarian) right in time to celebrate Rosh Hashanah (even though I'm not Jewish). Oh my goodness, I don't even know how to start describing this! I made this about 2 years ago, but this time it was much better. (Maybe because I had all the right ingredients and didn't have to make any substitutions? Just a thought.) I also used the variation listed, adding steamed potatoes* and cabbage to make it a one dish meal. Even my dad liked it!


This is Horseradish Tofu Sour Cream (part of the brisket recipe). No one except for me ate any though. Boo.


Here's the brisket plated and ready to be eaten. Just thinking about it makes me salivate.


I love making homemade bread. This is Sweet and Sour Swedish-Style Rye-Buckwheat Bread from The Passionate Vegetarian. I had a little trouble with the dough being too sticky, but I worked things out by adding a cup more flour than the recipe called for. It made two loaves, but I demolished the one not shown in the picture by trying to take it out of the loaf pan too soon. Anyhoo, I made this 100% whole grain by using whole wheat pastry flour when it called for unbleached white flour. The flours used were: rye flour*, ww pastry flour, ww flour, and soy flour. It also had caraway seeds, orange rind, and buckwheat groats, besides other things. I've been eating a huge amount of this bread; it's heavenly when spread with Earth Balance.


So since no one ate any of the horseradish tofu sour cream, I thought I would make an Eastern European sort of meal and use the sour cream up. Well, things didn't exactly work out as planned. I made Beet-Root Soup and planned on putting the sour cream on top. I'm the only one who ate the soup though, since Rachel wasn't home. Everyone else was eating a certain food group that will not be named (hint: it rhymes with eat). I enjoyed it thoroughly, although I have an enormous amount of soup leftover. It will be going in the freezer tomorrow, so I can just defrost it and eat in on a busy night. On the side of the soup is the aforementioned bread spread with Earth Balance, and some slices of pickles*.


These are the lovely Carrot-Raisin Muffins from Vegan With A Vengeance. I used spelt flour and turbinado sugar, and they came out so light and fluffy you never would have guessed it was spelt flour. I'll be making these again soon.


Pepper Steak. The peppers and seitan were free, as was the steamed broccoli shown on the side. The recipe for pepper steak is really easy to make, and it's so tasty. It's actually one of my favorite meals.

Okay, you may be asking yourself two things.
1. Why is Veronica using The Passionate Vegetarian so much?
2. Geez, why is Veronica eating so much seitan? I bet she's going to develop a wheat intolerance or something.

There are plausible explanations for everything. The answer to # 1 is that I'm trying to go through my cookbooks so that I can remember what I have. Whilst I was going through my cookbooks, I happened upon my beloved The Passionate Vegetarian. It's one of my favorite cookbooks, and for a good reason. This book is huge, and it's jam-packed with awesome, flavorful recipes. Anyway, I haven't been using it as much, but when I looked at it, I saw a ton of recipes I hadn't made yet, so I marked them and I'm trying to work my way through them.
As for # 2, I hit the jackpot (so to speak) last week! Rachel works at a health food store, so she brings home a lot of produce and other foods, but we also go to another health food store, and they give us free food as well. So last week, I got home from work and was told by mom that the other health food story (not the one Rachel works at), gave us some tofu and seitan. I was not expecting to see 2 lbs. of seitan and 4 lbs. of tofu. Imagine my delight! How glorious free food is. So yeah, we ate a lot of seitan recently, but hopefully not enough that we become gluten intolerant. :)

So there you go, the answers to your questions.