A yummy tempeh meal

I forgot how much I love tempeh! I haven't had marinated tempeh in a while (however, I've had tempeh bacon, but that's not as satisfying as marinated tempeh). I was planning on making 5-spice marinated tempeh tonight, but they don't sell 5-spice powder where Rachel works, so I had to make a different kind. Pooh. Here's what we had for dinner tonight:


Mostly freegan: Baked butternut squash* with a wedge of lime* to make it look fancy shmancy, sauteed kale* with garlic*, tempeh marinated in tamari, brown rice vinegar, minced ginger*, minced garlic*, apricot marmalade, ground coriander, and black pepper, and then wasabi smashed purple potatoes* with scallions*. So almost everything was free (the asterisks are what Rachel brought home), and one (of the two) tempeh packages was super cheap at 80 cents (including Rachel's 20% discount), reduced because it was expiring soon. The tempeh was the best part of the meal; I didn't put enough wasabi in the potatoes, the butternut squash was old so it wasn't very sweet, and the garlic in the kale was very pungent because I got kind of side tracked when I was making it and I wasn't thinking so I put in the garlic after the kale was done and didn't cook the garlic. Garlic breath anyone?




This is a kind of crummy picture but it's a picture of Pomegranate sorbet found in the Millenium Cookbook. All it calls for is pomegranate juice and maple syrup. It was so delicious! We like to make fun of Susan because she has what we call an over-developed sour taste bud (a long time ago Rachel and I used to get sour patch kids, and once we gave one to Susan and her eye started twitching, haha). Anyway, she thought the sorbet was too sour, so she couldn't eat all of hers. More for us is what I say.

This was the first thing I made out of the Millenium cookbook, and I hadn't really taken a good look at it until today. My goodness, the recipes are exquisite! I can't wait to make more stuff from this book.

P.S. Dilip, if you're reading this, I can't comment on your blog now that I've switched over to Beta and you don't allow anonymous comments, but I think your top 5 is fabulous!

Attack of the food pictures!

I'm not sure if it's because I'm switched over to Blogger Beta or not, but I uploaded 17 pictures for this post! Woo hoo!

These are all food pictures of what we've been eating over the past few weeks:


Rachel made these pancakes; they're the Apple Pie Pancakes found in La Dolce Vegan. They were just okay because 1) I have a love-hate relationship with raisins, and right now I can't stand them. These had a little too many raisins for me, and 2) they were too salty because of the Earth Balance Rachel used for oiling the frying pan. We agreed that whoever makes them next time should cut down the amount of raisins and also cut down on the amount of salt in the recipe (if Earth Balance is the grease of choice).



This is a completely freegan sandwhich: Organic sourdough bread*, peanut butter*, and an organic tomato*. I had heard of this sandwhich combination before, so I wanted to try it. It was just alright, nothing to write home about though.



Yum, this was so good! Starting from the top right and moving clockwise we have: sauteed kale* with garlic*; mac and cheeze casserole, steamed cauliflower*, and sliced garden tomatoes from our neighbor. The mac and cheeze casserole I made up. It had Tinkyada brown rice elbows, homemade faux ham (made from seitan), frozen peas, Wolffie's Nutritional Yeast "Cheese" Sauce from La Dolce Vegan, and then I topped it with (homemade) breadcrumbs that had garlic* and minced parsley* mixed in. Then it was baked for about 30 min. till the breadcrumbs were crispy. Delicious!



These were Jelly dot spice cookies. They were divine! I had some trouble with the cookie dough though, so if you make it just be prepared you might have to make some minor adjustments.



Short grain brown rice, canned adzuki beans*, grated carrot, sauteed kale* and garlic*, soy sauce, and lemon juice.



This is Amma's Stove-top Bread Masala Pudding from The Passionate Vegetarian. Very simple and very good.



This is original foolproof flaky pie dough from Great Good Desserts Naturally. It called for ww pastry flour and unrefined white flour, but I used all ww pastry flour and it came out heavenly. I used to hate the crusts on pies, but my tastes have changed and I love them now. This was so good I'm tempted to make another one and eat it plain.



I filled it with peaches that were simmered on the stove till they softened, then pureed in the blender, then simmered again to thicken.


Unfortunately, it didn't thicken. This is what a slice looked like after it was baked and chilled. This was just an experiment, so next time I'll add some kind of thickener to it.


I had a wee bit of dough leftover after I rolled it out, so I shaped a peach out of it. I think it looks more like an apple.


Okey dokey. In the bowl we have Carrot Bisque from Vegan With A Vengeance. The bisque was the first thing I made out of the cookbook, and it was nummy. On the side is falafel (from a Moosewood cookbook) stuffed into a sprouted grain pita with steamed swiss chard*, tomatoes from our neighbor, and tahini sauce. I used organic bottled lemon juice for the tahini sauce, but it had a really weird aftertaste, so it kind of ruined it. (I thought since it was a higher quality product it would be better, but I won't ever buy it again). Also shown is some more steamed swiss chard and tomato, since you can't really stuff to much into pitas or they'll break.


Canteloup sorbet. All it had in it was canteloupe*, agave nectar, and lime rind and juice. Very delicious.


Rachel brought home the eggplants (aren't they beautiful?) and the cilantro. What are all these ingredients for?


Masala Stuffed Eggplant from The Passionate Vegetarian. Oh, how I love Indian food.



Curried Split Pea Soup from Vegan With A Vengeance. I forgot how much I loved split peas! I don't use them nearly enough.


A modified version of Abruzzi Celery Soup. I was going to use tempeh bacon, but I didn't have time to make any so I decided to add a can of white beans to the soup for protein. I basically followed the recipe- I even used white rice! (I'm trying to clean out foods from our pantry and we still have a lot of parboiled rice, so I figured what the heck, once in a while it won't kill you.) It was really good.

Last but certainly not least:

Homemade pizza! I made pizza dough (100% whole wheat) in the food processor. It was so simple to make! The toppings were organic tomato paste, pesto, tomatoes*, Buffalo Mostarella cheese from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, and sliced black olives. It was so good, and very satisfying that indeed, I had made pizza completly from scratch.

Blogger Beta......................

Rocks!!

Yes, I was uploaded to Blogger Beta. It's so much nicer and also much easier to organize. I am loving it! I'm making some changes to my blog (as everyone seems to be doing these days), and right now it's a work in progress. I still am adding on some lists and such, but what do you think so far? I'm very interested in your feedback!

*Edit* Apparently Blogger Beta still has some kinks that they're trying to work out. Darn. It won't let me add html/javascript, it keeps saying "we're sorry but we cannot complete your request" or something like that. Hmmph. Maybe if I keep trying I can add what I want.

Just bear with me!

My top 5 foods

I was tagged by Jennifer C. over at Muddling Towards Frugality for a meme that's going around (it started over at The Traveler's Lunchbox- you can see the original post here). You have to pick 5 things you think everyone should eat before they die, so I thought for a long time about what my top 5 foods would be, and here's what I came up with:

(In no particular order)

1. Pesto-There is nothing as wonderful as the scent of fresh basil, and when you combine basil with garlic and nuts (my personal favorite is walnuts) and oil you wind up with quite a bit of heaven on earth. My favorite recipe for pesto can be found here. (When I make it, I substitute hemp oil for the olive oil, and instead of processing the garlic and oil first I just buzz everything together.)

2. Garlic-Maybe this is my Italian ancestry, but I think even if I wasn't part Italian I would love garlic. Anyway you eat garlic, it is delicious (I'm curious, am I the only person to eat roasted garlic plain?). I'm lucky because each year there's a garlic festival a few towns over from me, and there's always loads and loads of different varieties of garlic to smell and buy. Okay, I lied. When I said anyway you eat garlic it's delicious, I was not including the garlic ice cream they sell at the garlic festival.

3. Fruit sorbet, preferably grapefruit-There is nothing more refreshing on a hot summer day than eating some fruit sorbet. Don't you agree? During the summer I enjoy eating Jane's sorbets.

4. Fresh from the garden, big, juicy tomatoes. I have a very hard time eating under-ripe tomatoes. That's right, only the biggest, juiciest, look-at-me-I've-never-been-refridgerated summer tomato will do for me.

5. Peanut Sauce- Peanut butter, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, maybe a few other ingredients, that's what it's all about. Peanut sauce can make anything taste better (well, maybe not everything, but you know what I mean). I adore it over noodles or over broccoli or over rice.

I'll have you know that it was very hard for me to come to my decision. Runners-up included cornbread, focaccia, and freshly baked apple pie, among other things. However, I did make up my mind, and that's what matters. Now I pass on the agonizing to 5 other bloggers:

1. Spice Island Vegan
2. Rae over at Bunnyfoot
3. Dilip over at Dinner with Dilip
4. Brokevegan
5. Vegan Cyclist

I'm very curious to see what's on their lists.

Goodbye all!

Cookie Swap

I am taking part in a cookie swap over at . Nikki over at I Love Heeze was paired up with me, and she sent me the most amazing cookies. They're called Mathildes, and they're so delicious. Here are some pictures:


It was a long, busy day at work and I was so happy to come home to the cookies. Here they are packaged up. I loved how they were packaged up, they came wrapped in a Trader Joe's bag! How cool is that?


The money shot! She put little stickers on each side of the containers, and I wanted to take pictures of each one of them but my camera batteries were too low.


Oh wait, this would be the money shot.


Rachel's hand going "me want cookie".


These were my cookies I sent her. The lighting wasn't very good when I took the picture, so they're very blurry. They're Gold Chip Cookies, and they're from The Healthiest Diet In The World.

Here is the recipe for Mathildes:

Dry ingredients
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Wet ingredients
1 cup orange marmalade
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 banana (pureed)
1 tsp vanilla

1 cup vegan chocolate chips

Sift together dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients in separate bowl and mix well with dry. Add chocolate chips and mix until well incorporated. Drop by teaspoon on cookie sheet at least 1" apart. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes or until brown.

Now here's the recipe for Gold Chip Cookies

1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chopped almonds, hazelnuts, or filberts (I can't eat nuts because of my braces, so I use the same amount of ground flaxseeds)
3/4 cup chocolate or carob chips (I sent Nikki carob)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a blender or food processor, grind the oats to a coarse flour. In a large bowl, combine the oat flour, whole wheat flour, salt, and baking soda. Mix well. Add the nuts and chips and mix again. In a separate bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, applesauce, oil, and vanilla extracat. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry, mixing until thoroughly moistened.
Drop the dough by the tablespoonful onto oiled baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between cookies. Flatten gently with your hands or the prongs of a fork (I usually wet my hand and roll them into balls, then flatten them between my two palms). Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned on the bottom. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Have a good holiday weekend everybody!

My cookbook list: a work in progress

As I've said before, I have a ton of cookbooks. It's kind of sad, but one of my favorite past times is reading cookbooks. I know other bloggers read cookbooks too, so that makes me feel a lot better. Anyway, some of the cookbooks I own are definitely not vegan or even vegetarian, but I like modifying the recipes to be vegan (I'm always up for a challenge!). I'm not going to list the unvegan ones, because if I did this list would be about 50 pages, but I am going to list the vegetarian and/or vegan cookbooks that I own (although I'm not going to go into descriptions). If you own any of the ones on my list, I'm curious about your opinions. I know that the books by Sarah Kramer, either by herself or with Tanya Bernard, have very mixed reviews, but of course I'm talking about all of the books on my list. Please note that this is a work in progress, so I'll be adding others on to it as I A) get more or B) find them (because as you cookbook junkies know having a lot of cookbooks is not so orderly. Or wait, is that just me?). Also, the ones with the asterisk next to them are ones I own but haven't yet used. Since this is already a long list, I don't want to make it longer by adding descriptions, so I'll do individual posts about each book in the future.

My list:

*American Macrobiotic Cuisine by Meredith McCarty

*A Vegan Taste Of North Africa by Linda Majzlik

Cooking With The Right Side Of The Brain by Vicki Rae Chelf

Ecological Cooking by Joanne Stepaniak and Kathy Hecker

*Everyday Vegan by Jeani-Rose Atchison

*Dairy-Free and Delicious with Brenda Davis, Bryanna Clark Grogan, and Joanne Stepaniak

*Fast Vegetarian Feasts by Martha Rose Shulman

Flavors Of The Southwest by Robert Oser

*Flax The Super Food! by Barb Bloomfield, Judy Brown, and Siegfried Gursche

*Fresh From A Vegetarian Kitchen by Meredith McCarty

*From The Tables Of Lebanon by Dalal A. Holmin and Maher A. Abbas

Good Time Eatin' In Cajun Country by Donna Simon

Great Good Desserts Naturally by Fran Costigan

*Hemp Nut Cookbook by Richard Rose and Brigitte Mars

How It All Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer

La Dolce Vegan by Sarah Kramer

*Lenore's Natural Cuisine by Lenore Baum

Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen (by uh, let's see, Lorna Sass)

*Lorna Sass' Short-Cut Vegetarian (ditto)

*Made with Love (stories, recipes, and crafts from Greatful Dead Fans) by Elizabeth Peace Zipern

*Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian (who could that be by? Oh yes, Madhur Jaffrey!)

Meatless Burgers by Louise Hagler

*Miso Cookery by Louise Hagler

Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen

*Of These Ye May Freely Eat by JoAnn Rachor

Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon

*Raising Vegetarian Children (not a cookbook, but there are recipes in it) by Joanne Stepaniak and Vesanto Melina

*Sea Vegetable Celebration by Shep Erhart and Leslie Cerier

*Sicilian Vegetarian Cooking by John Penza

*Simple Treats by Ellen Abraham

Steven Raichlen's High-Flavor Low-Fat Vegetarian Cooking (By Steven Raichlen)

*Sublime Soups by Lenore Baum

*The Accidental Vegan by Devra Gartenstein

*The Artful Vegan (from the Millenium restaraurant) by Eric Tucker, Bruce Enloe, and Amy Pearce

*The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook By Jack Bishop

The Convenient Vegetarian By Virginia Messina and Kate Shumann

The Deaf Smith Country Cookbook by Marjorie Winn Ford, Susan Hillyard, and Mary Faulk Koock

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen

*The Everyday Vegan by Dreena Burton

The Garden Of Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer

The Healthiest Diet In The World by Nikki and David Goldbeck (not all recipes, there is some nutritional info in it)

*The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein

*The Millennium Cookbook by Eric Tucker, John Westerdahl, and Sascha Weiss

*The Real Food Daily Cookbook by Ann Gentry

*The Teen's Vegetarian Cookbook by Judy Krizmanic

The Ultimate Uncheese Book by Joanne Stepaniak

The Vegan Kitchen by Freya Dinshah

*The Vegetarian Lunchbasket by Linda Haynes

*The Voluptous Vegan by Myra Kornfeld and George Minot

Vegan Deli by Joanne Stepaniak

Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson

Vegan Vittles by Joanne Stepaniak

Vegan With A Vengeance by Isa Charndra Moskowitz

Vice Cream by Jeff Rogers

Vive Le Vegan! by Dreena Burton

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons

3 Bowls (vegetarian recipes from an American Zen buddhist monk) by Seppo Ed Farrey with Myochi Nancy O'Hara

*366 Healthful Ways to Cook Tofu by Robin Robertson

Fin.

Wow, typing that list up let me see how many cookbooks I haven't used. If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go read them.

Vegnic Food Pictures!!!

I dedicate this post entirely to food porn from the vegnic:

In the round container is some kind of salad thingy (I didn't care for it), and behind it is potato salad. I'm not sure what's on the far right.


Another take on potato salad (there was lots of potato salads there)


This was really good. It was beans, avocado, tomato, and sour cream (possibly more stuff but I don't really know).


Mmm, this was really good! It was some kind of Caesar salad with lots of avocado in it.


My contribution to the vegnic: pesto pasta and carrot salad with cumin. To the right of the carrots is some kind of "tuna" salad (not mine).


Oh my lord, vegan donuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The recipe is from Randomgirl.com. Soooo good. There was I think three different kinds: mocha buttercream, jelly filled, and regular creme filled. I will be dreaming of these for a long, long time.


My first taste of vegan cupcakes. I don't know what kind these were because I didn't have any of them. Instead.......


I had two of these. I forget what kind they were though. So good.


More cupcakes


More cupcakes and some awesome peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

All right, I lied. This isn't all about the vegnic. Today Rachel brought home a big load of expired food, so we are now the proud owners of 10 hazelnut milks, 15 grape jellies, and more stuff. I am very excited about the grape jelly! I'm thinking peanut butter and jelly muffins, jelly tarts, popovers with jelly, etc. Also, I was off from work today, and I'll be off tomorrow and Wednesday as well. I'm planning on giving our house a fall cleaning, since I like to clean. I am rambling so I'll say goodnight!