The Life Of A Vegan

Finally back

2010-11-29T00:43:00.000-08:00

So, wow. It's been five months since the last time I posted.

Well, I'm back, I'll probably be posting a few things soon, but I don't know how long I'll stay. I came back because I have some photos to post, I've been asked about it from a few people, and well, I'm trying to procrastinate my homework.

It's a lot more work writing a blog than it is reading a blog, and I often lack motivation, but maybe this time it'll stick.

Anyway. I'm well, still cooking, loving food, et cetera. It's just the photographing and blogging that's sometimes hard to motivate myself to do. But I've got it now, so, here are some photos!

Homemade gyoza with miso soup and edamame. [Click for larger image. The small image really doesn't do the photo justice]

Totally delicious. The gyoza took a while to fill and press them, but they were really, really good. Perfectly chewy and crispy.

They were filled with leeks (From the garden. This year we had TONS of leeks. Several gallon-bags went into our freezer), mushrooms, napa cabbage, basil, garlic, and ginger, with a splash of soy sauce and mirin. I loosely followed this recipe.

Closeup of the Gyoza.

I used pre-made wrappers. Because although gyoza is delicious, even with pre-made wrappers they take a lot of time to make. Worth every minute though.

Closeup of the miso soup.

Tofu, leeks, mushrooms, seaweed, and napa cabbage, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Totally delicious.

Anyway, I'll be posting a few more things soon, including an update about what I've been doing all this time, lets hope it lasts.

And to all you bloggers: How do you motivate yourself to blog frequently?

Summer rolls

2010-06-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

You've seen me make these before, but this time, I have slightly better photography skills. Plus, these are so good that you probably need a reminder to make them.

These are filled with vermicelli noodles, tossed with a curry sauce (Curry paste, preferably green, thinned slightly with coconut or soy milk), grated carrot, avocado, fresh basil, cucumber, chives (From the garden!), and bell pepper. For instructions, check out this post.

I think using curry paste to add flavor rather than sweet chili sauce is really a lot nicer! Much more flavor and spice.

How do you like the new look of the blog?

Raw wraps

2010-06-22T01:54:00.001-07:00

It's really easy to make tasty raw wraps. All you need is a pate, spread, dip, dressing, etc, for some flavor. Some collard greens or other large flexible leaf or a dehydrated wrap, and some other veggies for extra flavor and texture.

Many people apparently do not like raw collard greens, I have no idea why, because personally, I think they're terrific raw! But that may be partially because that was how I was first introduced to collards. If you give me a salad dressing or a dip and some collard greens, I will happily munch it all up. Whereas others may refuse to have an innocent raw collard filled with veggies and a dip.

Anyway, in my personal opinion, these wraps are amazing.
I make this nut pate, but as I said before, any spread, dressing, et cetera should do.

Then whatever veggie fillings you like. I like some combination of sprouts, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, mushrooms,(Fresh or marinated) fresh herbs (Basil, chives, parsley, etc) grated carrot, and avocado (Avocado is a must!)

All wrapped up in some sort of dehydrated wrap (Which I have yet to be brave enough to make) or some destemmed collards.

All done with my ramblings about my love of collards now. Have a nice week!

PS: Once I'm all caught up on my postings, I will share something REALLY tasty with you all.

Baked falafel

2010-06-22T01:41:00.001-07:00

I used this recipe. I'm pretty surprised, but I think I actually followed this recipe.

These were really great. Or as my mom puts it "Really f***ing delicious!". And she told me that I needed to make it for dinner the next day. And also hundreds to go in the freezer.

So we made a deal, that I would make her lots more, if she made me some homemade pitas.

And she agreed. And let me tell you. They were "F***ing great!" But also, really amazing. So amazing, that I forgot to photo them, because I was too busy eating them.

This one is of some store bought pitas. Not NEARLY as good as homemade. So really, you should make some pitas. And also some falafel. And some lemon tahini sauce!

Lemon tahini sauce:

Mix together to taste:

Tahini

Lemon juice

Cumin

Coriander

Garlic powder

And thin with water to make it easily drizzlable onto pitas.

Black bean & yam quesadillas

2010-06-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

No more apologies for not posting, because that is one of the things that is annoying about posting. And I'm sure you don't really care for it, either.

Based off of this recipe.

I replaced the boiled sweet potato with baked yam, and the kale for spinach. (Just what I had on hand, I have absolutely nothing against kale)

These were great! The baked yam gave it a nice roasty flavor, and it held together surprisingly well for having no cheese or cheesy stuff.

And although yam in quesadillas may sound weird, they actually go really well in these.

Tabouleh

2010-05-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I could have posted this on Monday, buuuut, I didn't.

I made some tabouleh! (Also spelled tabouli) We've had a lot of bulgar sitting on the shelf for quite a while, and it's never been used, and I decided that I wanted to use this unusual grain. And what's the first food that comes to mind when you think of bulgar? Well, at least for me, it's tabouleh. I'd never made it before, so I looked at a couple recipes, and mixmatched them together, and made some tabouleh!

Tabouleh: (Make a big serving bowl, I'd suggest halving it, probably)

3 cups bulgar

3 cups boiling water

1 cucumber

A few handfuls of cherry tomatoes

A good sized handful of fresh mint

Handful of fresh parsley

A few green onions

Garlic powder

Salt and pepper

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Put the bulgar in a large bowl and add the boiling water. Let sit for a while, stirring occasionally until the water is all absorbed.

Meanwhile, chop the cucumber, quarter the tomatoes, mince the herbs, and slice the green onions.

Once everything is chopped, and the bulgar has absorbed all of the water, and is cooled, (If the bulgar is fully cooked, you can drain any excess water) toss the vegetables into the bulgar, add a generous drizzle of olive oil, and season to taste with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

I also made three kinds of hummus!

For hummus, I always just throw chickpeas (Warmed through!), tahini, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, paprika, and olive oil together in a food processor, and adjust to your taste. And for some variations, you can add sun-dried tomatoes, olives, or roasted red peppers.

I made regular, olive, and sun-dried tomato.

And then I had some sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, with some olives, to go on top of the bread spread with hummus! Sorry the cucumber looks pretty yucky, it's just the lighting, the cucumber was perfectly healthy.

The whole spread. Bread, hummus, veggies, and tabouleh!

Catching up on the last two months...

2010-05-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Okay. Sorry for not posting for two months. At first I was just too busy to really post, and then as the photos and catching up increased, I just wanted to do it less and less, and procrastinated it. But I'm finally in the mood to blog, so lets hope I can keep up somewhat.

So, since it's been two months, I've got tons of food to post. Unfortunately, I did not get photos of all of it.

Oh, and guess what! I've had my blog for a whole year now! I don't think a little over a hundred posts in my first year of blogging is too bad.

Raw wraps from who knows when. Some kind of nut pate, marinated mushrooms, grated carrots, tomato, red bell pepper, and avocado wrapped in collard greens. Yum! Very fresh and yummy.

(New birthday present plate)

Mushroomy soup. Mushrooms, leeks, onions, kale, garlic, and barley. WIth homemade vegetable broth! (More on the broth later) Delicious! Earthy and comforting.

Tomato soup with onions and leeks. On the side is toasted bread filled with avocado. Mmm!

My birthday cake. It was a lemon pound cake with an almond-lemon glaze. The glaze was great, but, well, the cake tasted pretty bad. Lets just say there was too much baking powder... Luckily, I have a friend who really like baking that happened to make me one as well! That one was a delicious chocolate cake with a chocolate-mint frosting.

Gena's DELICIOUS lentil-walnut pate (WIth extra onion and garlic!) with veggie sticks (Carrots, red bell pepper, zucchini). DELICIOUS DELICIOUS DELICIOUS.

(New squiggly three-sectioned plate thing)

Mushroom-lentil soup. Lentils, mushrooms, onions, carrots, yam, zucchini, bell pepper, and spinach.

This reminded me just how much I love lentils. And why I should eat them constantly.

Tomato soup with chickpea "Tuna" salad sandwich on toasted bread.

The "Tuna" chickpea salad is made of chickpeas, kelp powder, shredded nori (Optional), vegennaise, and whatever else you like in your tuna salad. I like sweet pickles! Based off this recipe.

Vegan frittata! Somewhat based on this recipe.

Potatoes, onions, spinach, zucchini, olives, and probably some other veggies I don't remember at the moment.

Just blend a block of extra firm silken tofu, half to a full block of extra firm tofu (Not silken this time), pepper, nutritional yeast, turmeric, and soy sauce pureed in a blender. Meanwhile saute whatever veggies you want in it in a castiron pan, then add olives, or whatever, and pour in the tofu mixture, sprinkle with more pepper, and bake at 400 degrees F for about an hour.

And I got a late birthday present! A WAFFLE IRON!!!! I've been wanting one so much for so long! I've had so many waffles in the few weeks since I got it. I've even memorized the recipe.

This one has a strawberry compote. Just some hand-picked frozen strawberries, a little sugar, and cornstarch. Simmered until thickened and not very chunky. (If you use frozen, mashing is not necessary. If they're fresh you might want to get a food processor to help you out)

More strawberry compote, this time with fresh strawberries. The reason they're not as red is because the other ones I picked myself. These were from the store.

Getting fancy now. Strawberry-Marionberry compote, a few chocolate chips, and powdered sugar.

And here's lunch today. I'm not totally sure what to call it. Sauteed carrots, onions, mushrooms, and chickpeas with a sauce of peanut butter, curry powder, basil, ginger, soy sauce, maple syrup, and rice vinegar. All on a bed of quinoa. Not the most attractive food ever, but certainly tasty!

That's it for a the photos, but I've also made the following:

Lentil balls

Kind of like meatballs, but if you know me well, you'll know that I make "Meat replacements" but by that, I don't actually mean that it will taste anything like what it's "imitating". I just want something tasty to put in similar dishes. But anyway. I made them with cooked lentils, vital wheat gluten, mushrooms and spices. You can use absolutely any spices you want. I used sage, thyme, oregano, cumin, soysauce, and balsamic vinegar. Then just slowly cook them in a pan for as long as possible. Baking them might even work better. They were great!

Homemade vegetable stock

I just collected cooking scraps (Thoroughly washed skins, peels, tough bits, stems, tops, and bottoms of onions, carrots, yams, celery, leeks, herbs, mushrooms and potatoes. No greens, squash, peppers or broccoli, because they'll get yucky tasting after boiling for a while) in a plastic bag in the freezer until the bag is filled up. Then just add in some garlic, bay leaves, and let it boil for a good while. Then drain it thoroughly after it's cooled, and there you go!

Potato leek soup

I had actually never made potato leek soup before. and didn't even look at recipes. I just boiled some potatoes, and pureed that. Meanwhile, sauteed some leeks and red onions in plenty of margarine. Then mix them up, add some vegetable broth, sage, thyme, and lot of pepper. I think that was it. It was really, really good! Buttery, potatoy, savory, and delicious!

That's all I remember right now.

For a very vague recipe for any of this, just ask! All of it was just stuff I threw together, so I didn't post recipes for most of them.

Okay, goodnight everyone! Have a great week! I should be back within a week.

And maybe, in honor of my blog being a year old, I'll play with the layout a bit.

Really late Valentine's post

2010-03-01T21:19:00.000-08:00

So for Valentine's day, I had a few friends over to hang out, and make truffles.

I served mini bowtie pasta with pesto, and halve cherry tomatoes, not particularly Valentine'sy, but delicious none the less.

Along with a salad. Mixed baby greens, carrots tomatoes, canned beets (I was going to use whole, and slice them, and cut them with a heart shaped cookie cutter, but somehow that can disappeared right when I needed it!), green onions, toasted sunflower seeds, and supremed oranges. It was really pretty!

Then I hallowed out a mini watermelon, and filled it with heart shaped watermelon, sliced strawberries, supremed oranges, and starfruit. We learned that day that although starfruit is very pretty, it's really not very yummy.

Then later in the day we made the truffles.

We made lemon, orange, and mint truffles, chocolate peanut things, and chocolate covered strawberries, and candied ginger.

Also! A giveaway!

Stir fry

2010-02-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

Usually my mom and I go grocery shopping together, and we divide the list and both go separately to get whatever is on our list. I always get the produce, but this time I decided to let mom get it. She got SO MANY VEGETABLES. Which is really cool, but we had trouble getting them in our fridge, we had to use the other fridge in the basement to fit it all. I just hope none of it goes to waste. I think we're doing pretty good considering. But anyway, I made a very nice stir fry with all of it.

It's got carrots, onions, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, broccoli, bok choy, mushrooms, and lots of garlic, ginger, and basil. Maybe one or two other things. I was going to add tofu, but then I realized that there was PLENTY. It was served over white rice, which I usually try to replace with brown rice, but that day I just felt like eating white.

And my next post will be my Valentine's post!

Yam sandwich

2010-02-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

For this sandwich I used my panini press, which I rarely do, because it's constantly covered in cheese and butter. But I gave it a very good cleaning and made myself a sandwich.

First I sauteed some slices of yam with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and agave (All out of maple syrup) while caramelizing some onions.

Once those were done I put them on the sandwich with some tomato and fresh spinach, and put it in the press. Which wilted the spinach slightly, and made a delicious sandwich!

Sushi

2010-02-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Here's some quinoa sushi filled with carrot, avocado, and green onions. With a bowl of rice noodle soup.

Peanut sauce

2010-02-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

Pretty simple meal here. Just some quinoa, peanut sauce, and steamed broccoli for dipping. Simple, but definitely yummy. And healthy!

I'm not sure if I've posted how I make peanut sauce before, but in case I haven't here's how:

Saute some minced garlic and ginger until getting slightly browned, turn down the heat and add lots of peanut butter, some soy sauce, lime juice, vinegar, water, chili paste, curry powder, and sometime's I'll add some dried lemongrass. All to taste. Once it's hot (Be sure not to burn it!), and tastes just how you like it, turn off the heat, and tada! You have peanut sauce.

Catching up

2010-02-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

Eek, over two weeks since I've posted! I've been really busy! First I skied up to a cabin with lots of snow, and stayed there for two days, then I went to something called Non-Con, which is like a big gathering of homeschoolers, pretty much, and then after that, I had a friend over for an entire week! Unfortunately I didn't get many photos, and I was a little too busy to try many new recipes, but I did think of one!

I even found some old photos in figuring out what I have and have not posted about yet.

A little treat I've been enjoying recently: Chocolate covered marzipan (Basically delicious almond paste) Not even made to be vegan, just coincidental. Yay! Also, it's delicious.

Some soup and caesar salad from forever ago. Next time I make some caesar salad I'll share the recipe.

In case you haven't noticed, when I cook, I generally just throw some stuff together and it ends up tasting good, which makes writing recipes or remembering how I made something a while ago difficult.

The soup wasn't very good, nothing to really mention.

The chocolate chip-pumpkin-oatmeal cookies I made for Christmas presents.

A meal from a while ago just using up what I had on hand. A simple stir fry, some quinoa, and some Daiya quesadillas with salsa.

Here's a heap of sauteed veggies. Broccoli collards, carrots, peppers, mushrooms, onion, garlic (Maybe some other veggies as well?) with just a small splash of balsamic vinegar and teriyaki sauce. Nom nom nom. Simple but delicious.

Some kind of soup that I don't remember? Brown rice, kale, carrots, peppers, and onions is what I see.

Sandwich. Sauteed mushrooms, onions, and spinach with vegenaise, mustard, tomato and avocado.

Cuppy cakes. Made quite a while ago. They're the gingerbread cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. They were delicious!

Lemony quinoa-vegetable soup.

Some of my mom's coleslaw. She makes it pretty often, and is really good at it. I know there is some vegenaise, lemon juice, flax seeds, and chopped dried cranberries, but I don't know the rest. Maybe she'll be nice enough to share a recipe, or at least the ingredients in the comments. ;)

Some of her broccoli slaw. A bag of broccoli slaw, balsamic vinegar, halved cherry tomatoes, flax seeds, and some other things that she might also be willing to share.

Some curry from a while ago. I see potatoes, tofu, broccoli, carrots, onion, and maybe zucchini? Along with some brown rice. It was delicious, but then again, I'm not that picky when it comes to curries, they're all amazing.

Miso soup! I was eating a lot for a while. It's a really nice comfort food or light Winter meal. And super healthy, too!

Then, I've told you about my rice noodle soup I like to make, this is similar. I wanted some miso soup one day, but wanted something a bit more substantial. So I added veggies and noodles. So it's kind of like a cross between my rice noodle soup and miso soup. It's very good. (Yes, there's wakame, tofu, and green onions in there to make it more miso-soupy)

And some jamabalaya! Same recipe as before, pretty much, but I cooked it in my rice cooker, and added some kidney beans.

And then for Non-Con, the person who set it all up had a birthday recently, so I made her some cupcakes, and mini-cupcakes. All chocolate, as she requested. The recipe was from VCTOTW, along with the peanut buttercream frosting on some, and the chocolate buttercream frosting on others. In case you can't tell, they say "HAPPY B-DAY MARY!" I especially like the little smiley face one. Please forgive the messily frosted ones! (And the little note is just saying what kinds of cupcakes they are, and that they're vegan! In case anyone there aside from me is vegan)

And then, although I don't have a picture, I can tell you about a new sandwich idea I had. I usually just have a sandwich with sauteed mushrooms, onions, spinach, and maybe some bell pepper or zucchini. But that day I was out of mushrooms, peppers, and zucchini, so it'd just be spinach and onions. So I gave up on the idea of a sandwich and rummaged the fridge. Then, I saw some yams in the back of the fridge. So I peeled one, cut it in half widthwise, and then sliced it fairly thin. I then put it in a baking pan with some olive oil, maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and sage, and baked them until soft, but a little crispy on the edges. I put that on a sandwich with mustard, tomato, avocado, fresh spinach, and caramelized onions, and dug in. Aside from how pretty the sandwich was with the pretty bright orange in it, it was absolutely delicious! Maybe next time I'll try using the stove rather than the oven to see if that's better. I'm certain it'll be faster at least. That's a new favorite sandwich filling of mine!

Have a great week!

This week's food

2010-01-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

Lots of posts from this week, so they'll all be compressed into one post, so that they'll actually get posted at some point.

Lots of sandwiches this week.

My favorite sandwiches aren't stuffed full of fake meats and cheeses, but just sauteed veggies and mushrooms.

This sammie has sauteed mushrooms, onion, bell pepper, and zucchini. Along with a good smear of hummus, sliced avocado, and some olives on toasted bread. A little messy, but very tasty.

Almost the same here, but instead of hummus and olives, guacamole and some lettuce.

Then, trying to get some raw in there, I made some raw sandwiches. Romaine for the "Bread", guacamole, mushrooms, zucchini, bell pepper, and grated carrot.

Then cooooooookies. Quite possibly the best chocolate chip cookies EVER. The only thing I changed is I used all brown sugar, and cornstarch instead of tapioca flour. These were amazing. easy, soft, not too sweet, and delicious.

Then, for a brunch, I made a Spanish omelette. It seems more like a fritatta to me, but maybe I'm confused. It was delicious none the less! I also added some mushrooms to it, and a chunk of tofu to the eggy mixture to see if that would firm it up a bit. I was planning on having it for breakfast for a couple days, as I really hate making breakfasts for some reason, but it was all gobbled up before the next morning. Mainly by me, but still.

Then, yesterday I just had a big heap of sauteed vegetables for lunch. Mushrooms, onions, bell peppers, broccoli, and spinach, just with a little splash of balsamic vinegar and a little splash of island teriyaki sauce. Yum!

Then, yesterday's dinner. Pretty much the best stew ever, and the broth was wonderful!

I started off by boiling some parsnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, and garlic in some vegetable broth. (I also cooked some short-grain brown rice in there. But barley would be even better. But I was out) Then I took about half the veggies, (Trying to avoid the rice, but if you get some, no big deal) and some of the broth, and pureed it in a blender, then added it back to the stew and added some bell pepper, mushrooms, and kale. The pureed veggies in the broth thickened the stew to just how I like it, as well as giving it lots more nutrition and flavor. I'll probably be doing this whenever I make soups or stews from now on.

Then, today's lunch.

Another heap of sauteed veggies (Same as yesterday) along with some cheese, another cheese, and crackers.

Delicious week so far!

Have a great day!

Faux cheese

2010-01-16T22:17:00.000-08:00

The other day I decided to take a shot at making a vegan cheese, looking around in the kitchen, and remembering some other vegan cheese recipes, I collected some ingredients, and mixed them together. It tasted pretty good, but it was a paste. The next time I made it, I decided I would mix in some coconut oil, to see if that could give me a firmer cheese. And oh my, it definitely worked. It's a bit salty, and very strong, but I really like it, and my mom loves it.

It is very strong, a bit salty, fairly similar to a very fancy, sharp cheese, and since it's so strong, I'd suggest not making any double batches.

Anyway, on to the "Recipe" I hesitate to call it that, because I didn't measure at all, so these are extremely rough estimates. I'll try to measure next time. I tried to have the estimates be a little on the short side, because you can always add more, but you can't take it away.

About 1/2 teaspoon white/mellow miso

About a tablespoon nutritional yeast (Regular will not do! If you must, you can probably use brewer's yeast)

About 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

About 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

A little sprinkle of garlic powder

A tiny, tiny bit of horseradish

About 1 1/2 tablespoons tahini

Melted coconut oil

Mix everything together except the coconut oil, taste it, and adjust to however you like. Then add about three-four times that full amount of melted coconut oil. More for a firmer, milder cheese, less for a softer, stronger cheese (I'd go closer to the four times as much)

Re-adjust seasonings if you need to. If it's not mixing well, add some more tahini. Once it's all mixed and tastes really good, chill it for a while until you can shape it, then shape it however you want. (I made a little wheel, sort of) Then wrap it up in foil or something, and chill for at least an hour until it's firm.

Then get out some cracker, apples, or whatever you like, and enjoy! (Be sure to slice it thin though, it really is very strong!)

I won some cookies!

2010-01-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

I won some Intention Cookies! I've never won a giveaway before, so this is really awesome! Also, these cookies sound absolutely delicious. I will let you know what I think when they arrive. I'm especially excited about the Love, and Well-Being cookies. But they all sound great.

I'll probably do another post later in the day.

Breakfast bagel

2010-01-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

Here's breakfast one day. Much fancier than my breakfasts usually are (I am definitely not a morning person).

It's a lightly toasted bagel, spread with lots of hummus, then with soaked and sliced sun-dried tomatoes, and sliced olives. It was really good, especially while it was still warm. Yum!

Christmas gifts

2010-01-10T14:10:00.000-08:00

Sorry I didn't post this before Christmas, I was going to, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise for everyone I'd be giving them to. And then I would have posted around new years, but my grandpa couldn't make it here on Christmas, so we had a late mini Christmas yesterday, and I didn't want to ruin the surprise for him either. But anyway, I can post about it now!

I made some soaps. You can find big things of soap at crafts stores, and then you just melt it, add fragrance, color, and sometimes add-ins. Like to the lavender soaps I added in some real lavender. Then you mold it, (I use those disposable loaf pans because they're a good size and shape to make good soap slices, and because they're flexible so I can take the soap out easily) let it cool, and then slice it. I made lavender soaps and cucumber-melon.

Then I made some candles, just melt some wax, add a tiny tiny bit of crayon (For color), and fragrance, then put them in whatever mold or container and add a waxed wick.

I made rose, (The pink ones), lemongrass (Th yellow one), pine (The trees), and cucumber melon (The green ones)

And then of course I made some truffles.

I made a bunch of different kinds, and on each kind I drizzled on a different pattern in dark chocolate. For the lemon ones I did a zigzag, for the orange ones I did a spiral, for the coffee ones I did a waffle, and I left the mint ones plain. And then I also had chocolate covered crystalized ginger, and chocolate coconut balls.

I wrapped some of them in the same bags I wrapped the soaps in, and some in cute little boxes with hearts on them. Somehow I didn't get a picture.

I also made some almond bars. So pretty!

And peanut butter fudge! Recipe from a friend.

2 cups peanut butter (Sorry, not natural!)
3/4 cups margarine
2 cups powdered sugar
3 cups (one 14.4 ounce package) graham crackers, crumbled
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Beat 1 1/4 cups peanut butter and all the margarine in a large bowl until creamy. Gradually beat in 1 cup powdered sugar.
With hands or wooden spoon, gradually work in remaining cup of powdered sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Spread mixture into greased pan.

Melt remaining 3/4 cup peanut butter with remaining 1 1/2 cup chocolate. mix, then spread over graham cracker crust. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Not exactly healthy, but tasty!

I also made a whole wheat pancake mix for a few people, which I put in jars with instructions taped to the jar.

I considered also making some sauces, or seasoning mixes, but I was too busy.

I also made some gingerbread, and pumpkin-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies (No walnuts or raisins, but with added chocolate chips) and put them in cute bags with ribbons. Which I apparently didn't take a picture of. Probably because it was really really late.

You guys can come back to this post around Christmas time if you want, otherwise, maybe this will be useful for a birthday gift or something.

Curry stir fry

2010-01-07T02:28:00.000-08:00

I was all out of teriyaki sauce one day, but really wanted some stir fry. This is from December 8th, so I might not remember it all.

The sauce was ginger, garlic, curry paste, curry powder, lemongrass, galangal (Optional), soy sauce, vegetable broth, and flour to thicken it. (And maybe a few other things)

I pan-fried some tofu, and for the veggies, I hadn't gone to the store recently when I made this, so I just used a frozen veggie mix instead of fresh. It was a mix of broccoli, yellow carrots, red bell pepper and green beans. All of that served over some quinoa. It was a bit more work than my usual stir fry, but definitely a lot yummier, despite the veggies being frozen. I will definitely make it again.

I received a Happy 101 Blog Award!

2010-01-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

Kelli at Animal-Friendly Eating nominated me for this award. Thank you! I would nominate you too if you weren't already nominated.

Here are the rules: List 10 things that make you happy. Try to do at least one of them today, and tag 10 bloggers that brighten your day. For those 10 bloggers who get the award, you must link back to my blog.

10 things that make me happy: (In no particular order)

Animals (Cats, dogs, bunnies, rats, etc)
Cooking
Eating
Gardening
Time with friends and family
Parties
Blanket forts
Making crafts
Snow
Learning

Blogs I nominate:

(I will try to list 10 I haven't seen with the award.)

And.... Here's a contest!

Have a great week!

Rice noodle soup

2010-01-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

For a while, I really liked those Simply Asia instant rice noodle soups. Just rice noodles, flavor packet, and dried vegetables. I didn't get them very often though, because they're pretty expensive. But then one day, when I was considering getting some, I realized that it's such a simple thing, I could easily make it myself. So I did, and every time I make it it gets better and better. The flavor has gotten pretty far from the Simply Asia soups, but I think this tastes even better, and is just as quick, but a tiny bit more work.

Frozen vegetables of choice (I use a frozen mix of peas, limas, corn, small pieces of green beans, and tiny carrot bits)

Rice noodles (Rice vermicelli)

Tofu (Optional)

Wakame (Optional

Green onions (Optional, but preferred)

About a tablespoon of white miso

1 cup vegetable broth

Water

Splash of soy sauce

Splash of lemon juice

Seasonings of choice (I generally use garlic powder, lemongrass, ginger, nutritional yeast, and black pepper)

Sesame seeds (Optional, for garnish)

Put whatever amount of noodles, vegetables, and tofu and wakame (If using) you'd like in a pot with enough broth and water for a large bowl. Put it on high, and wait for it to boil.

While you wait, add the miso, soy sauce, lemon juice, and seasonings in your bowl, and mix it all together, and add the green onions. Once the pot boils, add it to your bowl, stir, taste, and adjust if you'd like. Sprinkle with sesame seeds, and enjoy!

I was out of vegetable broth yesterday, so I just used water and extra miso and seasonings, and that worked great too.

(Sporks are the best utensil for this soup, luckily, I have a titanium spork!)

Jasmine

2010-01-02T03:39:00.000-08:00

Hello. I'm sorry I haven't really posted in weeks. I was really busy with Christmas, and then my bunny passed away, and then we had a new years party, so I've been busy. For this post, I'm going to skip out on food, and just post some pictures of my sweet little bunny Jasmine, who passed away recently. I'll post some food and talk about the year in the coming weeks.

(Earlier this month)
Jasmine was a Netherland Dwarf rabbit, and as sweet as can be, I took her everywhere with me, my grandpas house, my friends houses, etc. She was an indoor rabbit, and lived in a cage most of the time, but she played in the living room or snuggled with me almost every day, she loved hopping around in the living room, or my bedroom, or outside, but she was also really social and liked snuggling or playing together.

(Earlier this month)

She liked playing with old CDs, she'd use them like frisbees and throw them around the room, she liked chewing baskets, she liked snuggling, running around, and she even knew a couple tricks. She knew "Come", "Go play" (meaning that she doesn't have to stay on my lap, she can go run around now) and she could stand up on her back legs on command.

(November 2006)
She was really social, and sweet, and really adorable. With a cute little smooshed looking face, and short ears.

(November 2006)

She got along with most people, she got along with dogs, and although I wouldn't let her, she would have been happy snuggling with some cats.

(November 2006)
I won't go into length about the death, I'd like to keep this post mostly about how wonderful she was, not how sad her death was.

(November 2006)

The vet was really nice, and did the best she could, and offered an autopsy free of charge (That we declined) and she even wrote us a really nice card yesterday.

(October 2009)
It's really hard, but I'm glad I got to have her as a friend for five or so years, and that I got to be there at the vet so she knew she was loved when she died. I'll miss her a lot, and I hope she's happy wherever she is.

Another giveaway!

2009-12-19T01:47:00.000-08:00

I really like giveaways. I never win, but they're fun and exciting. And this one sounds really tasty.

So if you're interested, go ahead and read this one

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. And it'll probably be a while more before my next one. I'm just busy with Christmas. I've hardly done any shopping yet...

Raw for the day

2009-12-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

So it seems that I can't be raw for a day as often as I'd like, (Once a week) because I tend to want to make things that have a variety of vegetables, so I can really only be a raw foodist for a day within a week of going to the store, which I don't do every week. So it will be less often than I'd like, but it'll still happen when I can. Maybe I'll do more raw meals to make up for it, rather than whole days.

Anyway! This week, for breakfast I just had a huge pile of sliced strawberries. It was really good.

For lunch I made raw sushi. Filled with carrot, red bell pepper, and green onion. I was a little upset that all of my avocados weren't ripe. But oh well. Cucumber or sprouts would also be tasty in the sushi. I'll tell you about the pate below.

Raw sushi is definitely not as photogenic as regular sushi, but it sure tastes good!

For dinner I made some raw wraps. Filled with nut pate, green onion, basil, carrot, red bell pepper, and tomato. All wrapped up in collard greens. Cucumber, sprouts, and avocado would also be a nice addition.

For the nut pate, and the pate for the "rice" for the sushi, I soaked a cup of cashews, and half a cup of almonds for an hour. Then I put them in the food processor and chopped them up pretty fine. Then I took away about half, and with the remaining half in the food processor, I added lemon juice, basil, tamari, a tiny bit of garlic, water and a little onion, and blended it up. At first I was worried, because it seemed really heavy, and just too fatty for sushi, and I was worried it would go horribly as sushi rice, and was regretting I tried nuts rather than sunflower seeds. Once I actually made the sushi though, it was totally fine. Then with the other half of the blended nuts, I added tamari, basil, bell pepper, and onion. I then added some of that to the "Rice" pate because I needed more of that, and to give it a little more flavor.

The nut pate for the wraps was really, really good. The pate for the sushi was also good, but not especially great. Although using nuts worked, I think next time I'll use sunflower seeds.

I have so many posts to do! I should start posting like crazy. But I'll probably be too busy to, being Christmas time and all.

Product review: Daiya vegan cheese

2009-12-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

The other day I got a half pound bag of shredded Daiya vegan cheese. (The mozzarella kind)

I tried it uncooked, and it was pretty good. Similar to real cheese, but maybe a little tangier? But I've heard a lot about how awesome this cheese melts, so I had to make something with it.

I made quesadillas. One with just cheese so I could properly judge the cheese, and one with onions and kale to see how it went with other things.

Again, it was a little tangier than real cheese, but I still really liked it. It melted really well, and was stringy even, and I think I even fooled my dad for a second into thinking it was real cheese. I liked it on its own, but I think I liked the one with the onion and kale a little better.

Unfortunately, when it got a little cooler it started getting a little rubbery, but it was still good, and re-melted just fine.

Melted and stringy. I had fun pulling off the top of the quesadilla to see the cheese strings.

Then a few days later I tried it on mini pizzas. One plain so I could judge the cheese, and one with sun-dried tomato and onion. They were both great. Pretty much the same conclusion as with the quesadillas. And I left one for later, to see if it would be good as cold pizza. It didn't really, it was a little rubbery, but I microwaved it for a few seconds and it was delicious again.

Cheese strings!

I think I like this better than real cheese, it doesn't taste exactly the same, but it does taste similar, and it tastes GOOD. And it also doesn't taste over-processed and low-quality. (Yes, I'm snobby sometimes)

I still have a little left of my half pound bag after three mini pizzas, and three quesadillas. But I didn't add very much cheese.

Can't wait to try the cheddar! Next time I'll get a bigger bag and freeze some.

Miso soup

2009-12-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

I was planning on doing a post today, but after the last one being so short, I decided to give you two short ones.

I was having lots of miso soup for a while, miso, garlic, ginger, wakame, tofu, green onions, and whatever else I felt I needed to add. Not so much anymore though, I'm all out of miso. And I didn't see any at the store today, but I was in a hurry. Two of the grocery stores I go to don't carry miso, but this third one did, so if they stop carrying it, I'm going to be annoyed.

But if you have some miso, you should make some miso soup, because it's really easy, warm, delicious, and nutritious.

Just boil some tofu, add in wakame (Seaweed used for soups), turn the heat off, and start dissolving your miso in it, and add your green onions, and whatever else you like. That's it.

Pumpkin-spice hot cocoa

2009-12-09T23:17:00.000-08:00

This is actually from a week or two ago, but I just never posted it for some reason.

It's just some regular hot cocoa, whatever you like, with some pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves stirred in. It was very nice and comforting, and it's always nice to have a little variation if you're having lots of hot cocoa. (Which I am, because it's been below freezing for a few days, I think we broke a cold record today)

How to make vegan truffles

2009-12-06T18:21:00.000-08:00

I am a vegan who loves chocolate. Especially truffles. And not low-quality milk chocolate, but maybe not too dark, either. And I can't really afford the 1-2 dollars a SINGLE vegan truffle generally costs.

So, what to do? Make your own! I do this fairly often, and they're better every time.

And also, a couple weeks ago I stumbled across this. I thought it was a great idea, but much too expensive. So why not make my own advent calendar?! I've already got the chocolate down pretty well.

So I contemplated what I would put the chocolates in so the days would be separate and I could have separate doors, worth different truffles for different days. And I eventually came up with plastic bead boxes! (Something like this. You should be able to find things like that for about five dollars at a craft store) Mine was clear plastic so I painted it with "Glossy red" spray paint on the outside to make it more festive, and so that you wouldn't be able to see inside the box. If you want you can decorate it more by painting on christmas trees, santa, whatever you like. Then measure the size of the separate pockets, and cut 24 pieces of paper to that size. (Preferably green paper!) Then write on one side of the papers a number, one to twenty-four. Set it aside while you make your chocolates!

First, you should probably choose what kinds you want to make. I made almond bars (Turned into almond clumps though... Whoops), peanut bars, peanut butter cups, almond butter cups (Well, I was going to, until I found my almond butter moldy...), coconut balls, chocolate covered candied ginger, orange truffles, lemon truffles, mint truffles, coffee truffles, pumpkin truffles, cinnamon chocolate, and chili chocolate.

I'll start with the truffles, since I was making a dozen different kinds, I didn't make many of each kind.

First you melt some chocolate. I used some high quality semi-sweet chocolate chips, and melted them in the microwave, but if you can remember to stir the chocolate often, you can do it on the stove, which you'll need to do later anyway.

Once you've got some melted, I took about a quarter cup of the melted chocolate for each flavor. For the pumpkin ones I just mixed the chocolate with pureed pumpkin to taste. Then let it cool while you make other flavors. Then for the coffee, make some espresso, and add that to your chocolate to taste. Maybe with a tsp or so of coconut milk. Let that cool. Meanwhile you can make your orange, lemon, and mint ones. Just have three small bowls with about a quarter cup each of melted chocolate, and add a tablespoon each of coconut milk and melted vegetable shortening or margarine. (I used shortening because I can't find unsalted margarine) Coconut oil might work too. To each bowl. Mix it in, then flavor them to taste with lemon extract, peppermint extract, and orange extract. Mix them up and let them cool. By now, or maybe a little before, your pumpkin filling should be not hard, but sort of doughy, and you should be able to roll it into small balls without making a mess, if it's still melty and messy, let it sit longer. Once it's good just roll it into small balls and put it on some wax paper, parchment, or foil. Repeat with all the flavors. Be sure to separate the flavors so you know which is which. I usually just put each flavor into it's own section on the foil, circle the section, and write what flavor it is in marker. Then put them in the fridge for a while, while you can clean up a little, and then start melting some chocolate in a pot on low. Preferably the smallest pot you have, so you can dip them without using a ton of chocolate.

Here are my little balls of filling.

Then I dip the top in the chocolate, grab it with chopsticks (With the dipped end on top) and swirl it around in the chocolate until coated, and put it back on the foil.

There are some. Then when you're done with that, if you want you could melt some dark chocolate and decorate them with swirls, zig-zags, etc.

Refrigerate, and viola!

Now here are the peanut bars. Put some peanuts on some foil, in a single layer, but tightly together. Then thinly drizzle the top with chocolate.

Once it's hardened, should look something like this on the other side! Do the same for the almond bars, or to make almond clumps mix chocolate and almonds together and lay them on some foil and let harden.

Chop then into bite-sized pieces.

Here's how I made peanut butter cups before. Probably a similar concept for almond butter cups, maybe with more powdered sugar or cornstarch.

For the coconut balls, just mix some dried coconut flakes and chocolate, let cool a little, and shape into balls.

For the ginger, just dip some crystalized ginger in some chocolate, and let cool.

For the cinnamon chocolate, mix cinnamon to taste with chocolate, and spread shin on some foil, and score it. Same deal for the chili chocolate, just with cayenne instead of cinnamon.

Here is the finished products. Half of them at least. I didn't get pictures of the rest for some reason. Just the truffles, coconut balls, and chocolate covered candied ginger.

On the back of the paper doors, I wrote certain December events. Birthdays mostly, and also what kind of chocolate treat they got that day. I taped them to each little pocket and filled them with the chocolates.

Here they are in the box! This container only had twenty pockets rather than twenty-four, so two doors were double-doors. and I wasn't able to give it to my friend until the third, so I just skipped those days.

Then I taped the doors closed. Here it is! when you fold down the door to get to the chocolate, the other side of he door tells you what kind it is. (As shown on the first day, with a pumpkin truffle!)

I made two for my friends, and since I only had two boxes, I just have chocolates, rather than an advent calendar. I'm happy, and so are those two friends.

Hope you enjoyed! Now go make some chocolates! And feel free to make whatever chocolate creations you like, not just what I made. Let me know what you come up with! I tried a green tea truffle once, I liked it, no one else seemed to though! But remember, truffles don't always come out perfect, it does take practice, but don't fret, you'll get the hang of it!

Vegan feast

2009-12-01T14:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm finally posting about the vegan feast. The feast is in celebration of my, and two other friend's vegan anniversary. This is our second year.

We had ten people, I think. Four vegans, two pescatarians, three omnivores, and a LOT of food.

And I actually didn't take any pictures there... But, I have a couple pictures from before and after....

I made some roasted veggies, this is them before baking. They're in a nice autumny marinade. It's made of balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, garlic, plenty of sage, thyme, oregano, cinnamon and olive oil. It might make a nice autumny balsamic salad dressing...

The roasting veggies in question are yams, carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, zucchini, onion, and red bell pepper.

I also brought some stuffed acorn squash. (Yes, this is the same photo I used before)

Some mushroom gravy. (Same photo again)

And a pumpkin cheesecake! The whole thing was devoured.

Other foods were mushroom soup, onion bread, chocolate bread, two Tofurkeys, stuffing (Which was actually really good! I usually don't like bread stuffing because it's usually like bread glop, but this wasn't at all gloppy, and really good!), mashed potatoes, homemade zucchini and onion pickles, (Which were good, but were a frightening yellow color. I think they used a bit of turmeric), pumpkin cookies, pecan pie, apple pie, and that is probably it. Oh my goodness there was a lot of food.

Dealing with Thanksgiving leftovers

2009-11-30T17:23:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but I'm still swimming in Thanksgiving leftovers. And after eating the same things for a few meals, I get tired of them. So then I decide to make different things with the leftovers. I usually just make soup, but this year I've got soup, and veggie burgers!

I don't usually have the patience for making pie dough myself, so I occasionally get someone else to do it for me, and then I can also make single-serving pot pies, and freeze them. So if you have the patience to make pie dough, or can convince someone else, there's another idea for you! (That can use up roasted veggies, and gravy)

First, we can start with the burgers. I totally made this up, and they came out pretty darn well!

Makes about a dozen fairly small burgers

1 cup mashed potatoes

2 cups roasted vegetables

1/2-1 whole cup of whole wheat flour

Panko

Tiny bit of oil

Herbs and seasonings of choice

If your mashed potatoes have skins, or large chunks, puree it in a food processor, and put it in a large bowl. Then put your roasted veggies in the food processor, and pulse until mostly pureed, but also with many small chunks. Add it to your bowl, and add the flour, and seasonings of choice. (More on that later)

It should be a nice dough, not very wet, but wetter, than say chocolate chip cookie dough, and it should look something like this:

You might need to add more flour depending on your veggies and mashed potatoes, but you can always play around with the recipe however you like.

Then put the panko in a shallow bowl and shape the dough into burgers and ten coat it in the panko. Then add a tiny little bit of oil in a cast iron pan, and cook them until golden brown. I tried with and without panko, and with panko, I liked it better, and it didn't stick to the pan nearly as much, but if you don't have any, it'll be fine without,

Cook until golden brown. (The far right one does not have panko, the other two do)

Tada!

The recipe is pretty bland without the seasonings, but I left it that way so you can play around with the recipe and have it taste however you like. I did many variations, one with just a bunch of herbs and garlic powder, some with some curry powder, some with some coriander, cumin, garlic powder and cilantro, and my favorite of the bunch, herbs, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and miso. Heck, you might get something tasty by adding gravy and extra flour. Keep in mind that after being cooked, the flavor of the seasoning is more subtle than when you taste the dough.

I put most of them in the freezer, and I bet they'll be great out of the freezer, too!

Let me know what seasonings you try and like!

And here's the soup:

Thanksgiving leftover stoup: (Stew/soup)

3-4 cups vegetable broth

1/2 cup long-grain brown rice or half a cup barley (If you've got some sort of leftover grain dish, you can probably use that, too!)

2-4 cups roasted veggies (Depending on how many veggies you like in your stoups)

Few large leaves of chopped kale

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

Thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Put your broth in a medium pot, along with the rice or barley, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring it down to a simmer, and cook until the rice is tender. Meanwhile, chop your veggies into fairly small pieces. Once tender, add all remaining ingredients. Cook for a couple minutes until everything is warmed. Best served with a good sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

If you've got some leftover Tofurkey or something, you could probably add some chunks of that as well.

I still have no idea how to deal with leftover stuffing. If you've got any ideas, let me know.

I'll probably post about the vegan feast tomorrow. Until then!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and great company and food.

This week is a very busy one, and lots of feasts! I've had two already, and I've got another one tomorrow. On Thanksgiving I went to a friend's house to celebrate there. Then we celebrated at our house with family, and a couple friends, and tomorrow, some of my vegan friends are throwing a vegan thanksgiving/vegan anniversary feast. It's not all vegans though. Omnivores are also invited, as long as they don't bring any non-vegan food, obviously, and no disrespecting the cooks and hosts by adding cheese, butter, et cetera to your food. This is the 2nd annual event, and last year it was great! I can't really remember what we had last year, but I know this year I'll be making a pumpkin cheesecake, oven roasted veggies, and mushroom gravy. The host will be making a Tofurkey or two, cranberry sauce, and I believe a salad, and maybe something else. Another guest will bring stuffing, and a pie. And another guest will bring some kind of dessert. There will probably be even more than that, but who knows.

Anyway! No point in guessing what will happen, when I can find out and write about it tomorrow. Instead I can write about what has already happened, yesterday and the day before.

I suppose I don't have a lot to talk about Thanksgiving day, I was with friends, we had lots of food, not a huge amount of vegan food, but a reasonable amount, and I was still well fed. I had mushroom soup, an attempt at wonton soup, that sort of didn't work and turned into dumpling soup, cashew rice, salad, cornbread muffins, and roasted veggies. There may have been more, but that's all I remember. We all talked, hung out, ate lots of food, etc. It was really fun, and I got to catch up with a couple friends who I don't get to see often.

Then yesterday, our Thanksgiving with my mom, dad, brother, grandma, grandpa, and two friends, we had LOTS of food. We were trying to have a fairly small Thanksgiving feast this year, but really, we should have known that just would not work.

Mom made the turkey, turkey gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and pumpkin bread. (Yes, she goes a little crazy in the kitchen)

My grandma made fruit salad, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow.

I made Oven roasted veggies, stuffed acorn squash, mushroom gravy, and pumpkin cheesecake.

I may have forgotten some, but can you really blame me with ALL of that food?

I did not get many pictures. But they were of very tasty, pretty things.

Everything was vegan but the turkey, (Obviously) turkey gravy, some of the stuffing, pumpkin pie, plain cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow. Still plenty for a feast for the vegan.

Here's my mushroom gravy. It was really, really good. I loved it, the pescatarians loved it, and at least some of the omnivores loved it. The only feedback I heard of it (Which was quite a bit) was love of it.

Just saute some mushrooms, onions, and garlic, I like lots, but some people might not want so much. add as much as you think looks good. Keep in mind it'll cook down though. Once they're nice and cooked, maybe browning a little here, caramelizing there, start seasoning them with a bunch of herbs, I used sage, thyme, oregano, basil, and I think a little rosemary, and pepper. Then add a bunch of water (Or vegetable broth), mix it around, then add some vegetable bouillon to taste, some flour (Start with a little, you can easily add more, but it's more of a hassle to add more water, bouillon, and herbs) Keep in mind that as the gravy cooks, it will thicken more. I like a pretty thin, chunky gravy, but if you like a thick gravy, add more flour, if you like a smooth gravy, you should be able to blend the gravy with a handheld blender until the consistency you like. Serve over biscuits, mashed potatoes, over fake or real turkey (For those omnis reading) or whatever else you like gravy on.

Then I made a bunch of stuffed acorn squash. I was planning on stuffed pumpkin, but the stores have not had any since Halloween, and since I was in DC at that time, I don't get to enjoy any non pureed pumpkins this year, which I'm a little annoyed about. But I'll get over it. I can at least eat lots of other Winter squash.

There's a picture of the lot of them at the top of the post.

The stuffing is fairly similar to the stuffing in my zucchinis, but slightly different. Mainly wild rice.

This filled four acorn squash with a bit extra, so I think you could do a half batch and probably fill about three.

1/2 cup wild rice

2 cups long-grain brown rice

2 cups vegetable broth

1 bell pepper (I used red. I prefer the taste to most colors, and the color looked really nice)

1/2 a large zucchini

3 small carrots

1 small onion

Drizzle of olive oil

1/2-3/4 cup pasta sauce

Probably about six acorn squash (Unless you want extra stuffing)

Whatever seasonings you have on hand (I used sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, cayenne, nutritional yeast, and cinnamon)

A little panko

Rinse your wild rice a few times in warm water, add it to a medium pot, add your brown rice, vegetable broth, and three cups of water, bring to a boil, then simmer, and let it simmer, stirring occasionally until the water and broth are absorbed, and tender.

While that cooks, you can chop your veggies (bell pepper, zucchini, carrot, onion). Once that's done, drizzle your oil into a pan, heat up to medium-high heat, and then saute your veggies, until almost tender. Meanwhile you can cut your acorn squash in half, and scoop out all the seeds and fibery stuff. Then your veggies and rice should be done about now, add them to a big bowl, add your pasta sauce, seasonings to taste, and mix it all up. Adjust seasonings if you'd like. Oil the inside of your squash slightly. Then scoop your rice mixture into the acorn squash, heaping it a bit, and then sprinkle with panko, and a little nutritional yeast. Put them in a pan (I think a lasagna pan would be best, but any high rimmed pan should do. and add about an inch of water in the pan. Careful not to get it on the inside of the squash, and put it in a 400 degree oven, until the squash is tender, and the panko is slightly browned. If you're stuffing is getting browned faster than your squash is cooking, turn the heat down a little, if your squash is getting tender faster than the stuffing is getting browned, turn the heat up a little.

And a note about the pumpkin cheesecake, with many recipes from that blog, the photos look GORGEOUS, and then I make them, and they're pretty but not as beautiful as in the picture, but this cheesecake really is as pretty and delicious as it looks. I make it for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, basically whenever I'd want to make a cheesecake or a pie. It's really really good.

By the way, I think yesterday was my second year vegan anniversary! I have been a vegan for over two years now! Hooray! That's definitely something to be thankful for.

I'll be posting about the vegan event in a few days! Sorry for the lack of photos, I'll try to make up for it with lots of photos of the event tomorrow.

Raw for the day, week two

2009-11-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to be keeping the tradition of being a raw foodist for one day a week pretty regularly. I skipped last week since I was at my grandpa's house, but I think I can continue fairly regularly. I think I'll generally do it on Tuesdays.

Here's what I had this week!
For breakfast I had some dried blueberries and a clementine. I'm not much of a breakfast person as you've probably noticed.

For lunch I made raw tacos. Filled with walnut taco "meat", marinated veggies, guacamole, and tomato.

For the taco "Meat" grind walnuts until it's in fairly small pieces. The size may vary depending on your personal taste.

Then season it to taste with nama shoyu, cumin, coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, and whatever else you like.

For the marinated veggies, Thinly slice sweet onion, pepper, mushrooms, and zucchini. (I used a good handful of mushrooms, a quarter of a large onion, a red bell pepper, and half a large zucchini, but do whatever ratio you like) Then marinate them in some nama shoyu, minced garlic, cumin, coriander, and cayenne. And marinate for a few hours. I marinated them about three and a half hours, and that was pretty good for me.

They shrunk down considerably after being marinated. The bowl was overflowing a little before marinating, and now they're a but lower. There's some marinade in the bowl that I might use in a sauce or a soup.

Then make some guacamole. If you have a recipe you like, use that. I usually just mash some avocado, add some finely chopped onion, cumin coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, cilantro, and lemon or lime juice. Sometimes I'll add some tomato or salsa.

Then lay out a nice head or two of romaine, that will be your taco shell., the walnut meat, the marinated veggies, guacamole, and chopped tomato.

To make a taco, take a large romaine leaf, and fill it with all the ingredients like you would a taco. Eat up!

Not the nicest picture I've ever taken, but they were delicious!

For dinner I was planning to make Gena's raw peanut noodles. But I really wanted some curry, but obviously that isn't raw. So I thought about just making it, and I could just deal with just being raw 'til dinner. Or I could have curry for dinner, and have a raw dinner the next day, but then I had the idea to just make some raw spaghetti, and make a curry sauce. Which I did, and it was really good! It wasn't totally raw since I used canned coconut milk, which I don't think is raw, but next time I can probably use some soaked cashews.

I made the sauce with coconut milk (Replace with soaked cashews and possibly some water to make it totally raw), curry powder, white miso, garlic powder, lemongrass, a tiny bit of lemon juice, galangal powder, ginger powder, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I just mixed it in a bowl, but a blender would probably work better, and is necessary if using cashews.

Then I spiralized some zucchini, tossed it with red pepper sliced, sliced mushrooms, thinly sliced carrot, and green onions. I think some snow peas would be a nice addition also.

Then I packed some of the leftovers in a container for my dad to bring to work. The sauce in a separate little container so the veggies don't get slimy.

Someone is giving away a copy of Vegan Lunch Box Around The World!

2009-11-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

The giveaway is here.
You just need to follow the blog if you aren't already, Post a comment, post about the giveaway on your blog, and comment on the giveaway with a link to your blog post, and saying if you began following the blog. All in different comments apparently! The winner will be announced on November 30th!

Staying with my grandpa for a few days

2009-11-22T21:02:00.001-08:00

Tuesday to Saturday, I was staying with my grandpa. We played with the dog and the cats, burned a pile, and just spent time with each other, but we also ate lots of delicious food! (More on that later)

Here's my grandpas sweet chocolate lab, Sara.

And one of his two cute cats, Lucky.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good photos of her looking at me. Or any photos of her sister.

Back to the food! For lunches we always had sushi, because, well, we both just really like sushi. We usually had some edamame and gyoza to go with it.

We had quinoa sushi filled with grated carrot, green onions, and avocado.

Since we get up at pretty different times in the morning, we had our breakfasts separately, most of the time, usually leftovers from dinner the night before.

The first dinner was yellow curry with brown rice, which for some reason I didn't photograph. Maybe I forgot. Here's a photo of a different curry!

I think the one we had had potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, and probably some other things I can't remember. It was a tiny bit spicier than I'd like, but I'm a wimp, and maybe that helped me become slightly less of a spice wimp. We can hope.

He had these greens in his fridge which I thought looked really pretty, so I photographed them. Four different kinds of tasty salad greens! Yum!

And here's what I made them into: A nice salad along with onion, carrot, pomegranate, and a homemade herby balsamic vinaigrette.

And with a tasty brown rice jambalaya with pepper, zucchini, and onion.

The next night we had minestrone soup, a nice salad, same thing as the night before but I remembered the avocado this time, and some bread. The minestrone had Carrots, onions, potatoes, zucchini, broccoli, kale, and whole wheat pasta.

Then I decided I'd make some pancakes for him. With warmed maple syrup (The real stuff) and some margarine. The recipe will be at the end of the post.

My grandpa doesn't really seem to like snacks, heck he usually doesn't even eat lunch, unless I'm around, but I do, so I snacked on pomegranate seeds and dried blueberries a lot. They're really a gorgeous fruit.

I also found lots of mushrooms in the yard. I thought about bringing some home to see if I could figure out what kind they are and if I was sure I could eat them, but most of them looked slimy or a bit past their prime.

There were WAY more, but I didn't really want to photo all of the different kinds. There was a ton of them in that spot. And in a few other places too.

Dinner on the last night was stir fry.

Made with snow peas, carrots, red peppers, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. (Not from the yard!) It was nice and colorful. I also added some noodles and sauce after that point, but the photos didn't come out well. Steamy foods are hard to photograph!

I really had a great time. I got to be with my grandpa, Sara, the cats, and my grandpa even made Jasmine (My bunny) a cage so she can come when I come, and not have to be without me while I'm there. She also really likes grandpa, Sara, although she's very nice to Jasmine, Jasmine doesn't like her too much, Sara can get a little too friendly, and start licking Jasmine's face and pushing her over. The cats and Jasmine have not met, since my grandpa lives on a big property with lots of wildlife, and the cats are there to keep the rodents away, so I don't think introducing them to Jasmine would be a good plan.

And as promised, a great recipe for delicious pancakes! Not totally perfected yet, but pretty close! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Whole-wheat pancakes:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Scant 2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Generous sprinkle of cinnamon

1 1/3 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup melted vegan margarine (Half a stick)

Whisk the flour through cinnamon together with a fork until fluffy and there are no clumps. Make a well in the center and set aside.

In a separate bowl, or just a measuring cup, whisk with a fork the soymilk, vanilla, and melted margarine until mixed, and then add to the dry ingredients, and whisk it together until mixed, but don't over mix it or they will not be wonderful pancakes.

Using a measuring cup, pour the batter into a fairly hot oiled pan. If you want to add chocolate chips or fruits, now's the time to do it! Once golden-brown to your liking, flip them over, and do the same on that side. Then serve! I like mine with warmed maple syrup, a little extra margarine, and sometimes some chopped fruit.

Yum!

Homemade peanut butter cups

2009-11-15T19:21:00.000-08:00

I did a double batch of this recipe, and got very many. I did some in mini cupcake liners, but then I switched to some little heart-shaped molds I have, which were much less tedious. It was hard to get the chocolate into all those little ridges.

And I must say, these peanut butter cups are great! Better than Reeses in my opinion, but I can be a bit of a snob.

And it also just occurred to me. Why am I putting up medium sized photos? Why not large? I'll make them large from now on.

Quinoa sushi

2009-11-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

I got the idea from some other blog a while ago, but I can not remember which one to give them credit for the idea. So if you know, let me know.

Same as regular sushi, but you use quinoa instead of rice. I think I actually prefer the taste of the quinoa to white or brown rice in sushi, and with all the nutrients it's got, that's great! It was slightly harder to get to stick than white rice, but I think with a little tweaking I can make it stickier. And it took less work than regular sushi rice.

These rolls are filled with grated carrot, alfalfa sprouts, green onion, and avocado. (Can't have sushi without avocado!)

They were great!

Portobello burger and sweet potato fries

2009-11-15T19:07:00.001-08:00

Well I was going to have a burger... But I forgot to get bread at the store, so I had a breadless burger.

Just my usual sauteed whole portobello with balsamic vinegar thing, topped with tomato, sprouts, and avocado.

On the side are some sweet potato fries. Wash and peel some sweet potatoes, cut them into fries, then drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and maybe some garlic powder or paprika, and bake at 400 degrees until tender and crispy.

I'm really liking my new square blue plates.

Peanut sauce stir fry

2009-11-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

I was planning on making a soup or something for dinner, but my brother really wanted some pad thai, or something similar with peanut sauce, or some sort of stir fry. So I told him I could do that if he made the peanut sauce, which isn't hard to do or anything, you just need to keep an eye on it, and I needed to chop the vegetables. Because if I did them separately, it would have taken an even longer time to make.

You need to make four things separately, so two people would be ideal, one person could do the sauce and the noodles, the other person could do the tofu and veggies. This is pretty messy, and labor intensive, so don't make this unless you have a good amount of time on your hands.

For the tofu:

First I cut some tofu into bite sized pieces, rolled 'em around in some cornstarch, and carefully pan fried them. (Careful or they'll fall apart or the cornstarch crust will fall off)

For the vegetables:

While that cooked I started chopping a ton of veggies. I had some of those precut carrot chip things that I used, some snow peas, zucchini that I cut at a slight angle, broccoli, green onion, red pepper strips, and maybe some other things. I made this on Tuesday, so I don't totally remember everything that was in it. Once the tofu is done, remove it from the pan, then start cooking your vegetables.

For the sauce:

Meanwhile you should have someone making your peanut sauce. You need a bunch of all natural peanut butter, chunky if you want there to be chunks in your sauce. Then add some chili paste, vinegar, lime juice, soy sauce, garlic, and honey/agave,/whatever you use to taste.If you think it needs something else, go right ahead. Mix it all up in a pot on your lowest setting, and stir it often until the peanut butter melts. Once it's melted, turn of the pot, and remove it from the burner. It is done.

For the noodles:

You should also cook up some rice noodles, we used some kind smaller than pad kee mao noodles, but bigger than pad thai noodles. Cook them according to the package directions.

Once your sauce, noodles, tofu, and finally you vegetables are done, add them all to the pan and stir and heat everything up. It's pretty messy and labor intensive, but so delicious!

The photo is really bad, but it was so good!

Here's a photo from Google images that looks way better. This looks closer to what I made then my picture, actually.

Big, chewy, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies

2009-11-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

I used the recipe for chocolate-chocolate chip-walnut cookies in Veganomicon, with a few changes. And they were heavenly. I used whole wheat flour, half brown sugar, half organic sugar, water instead of soymilk, (I was out), and no walnuts. And I made them pretty darn big. They were so delicious, and perfectly done and chewy, and very chocoatey, and big. They were best when they were still warm, and the chocolate was still melted... Mmmmm

The smaller ones in the photo above were a little bigger then my palm, so the bigger ones were pretty big.

They didn't last too long...

Maple-Balsamic yams

2009-11-14T00:45:00.000-08:00

This is a meal I made shortly after our trip to DC. The only veggies in the house were a yam, and a couple onions.

I made my maple-balsamic sauce for the yam and roasted it halved in the oven until tender.

I also had some caramelized onions, and a pile of quinoa.

Raw foodist for the day

2009-11-11T17:03:00.000-08:00

I'm going out of order with my posts, I have foods from before today that I should post at some point too.

Anyway...

We've recently decided to do meal planning, and I decided most of them, but mom also picked some. Two of mine happened to be raw, raw spaghetti and meatlessballs, and raw sandwiches with raw onion "Bread". I was going to have the sandwiches for lunch on Tuesday, and the spaghetti for dinner today, but we didn't go to the grocery store until Tuesday, rather than Monday, so I didn't have time to dehydrate the "Bread" until that night, so the sandwiches got moved to lunch today, and since I had two raw meals planned in one day, I just decided to try being a raw foodist for one day.

For those of you who do not know what raw foodists are, they are people who do not heat their food over a certain temperature, usually under 115 degreed fahrenheit. The reason they do this is because when foods are cooked, they lose a lot of their nutrients and enzymes. You can read more about it here. Some of the more elaborate raw foods, or raw foods trying to be similar to cooked foods use dehydrators, so that some of the moisture can be taken out without cooking the food. Since I like cooking, and also like more elaborate foods, I usually involve a dehydrator when I make raw food. Although I can make some darn tasty raw wraps without one.

So anyway, for breakfast I made a strawberry smoothie, with a tiny bit of kale, since I can only appreciate a little at this time. I didn't take a picture since it didn't look like anything special.

The night before I made some raw onion "Bread" (Recipe here, all the way at the bottom), an hour before lunch I marinated some sliced mushrooms in a clove of minced garlic, and a little nama shoyu. Then once I got hungry, I piled on the veggies onto my raw bread.

Tomatoes, red bell pepper, onion (Although I think it may have been a little excessive with all the onion in the onion bread) alfalfa sprouts, marinated mushrooms, and avocado. I don't think I dehydrated the bread quite long enough, so it was a little messy, but still delicious! I will be making this again!

After lunch I started forming these raw, vegan meatballs.

Aside from getting the meatballs going, making dinner probably took about ten minutes. I made a sauce out of a big handful of sundried tomatoes, a red bell pepper, olive oil, basil, oregano, thyme, a tiny sprinkle of cayenne (You don't want it spicy, just a little zing), garlic, and half a tomato. I like my sauce really thick and flavorful, so I only use half a tomato and one big handful of sun-dried tomatoes, but if you like a thinner sauce, just add more fresh tomato. And just blended it in a food processor. Then I spiralized some zucchini. Then I put a pile of noodles on the plate, a little grated carrot, some sauce, and a few "Meatballs".

It was great, I always love that sauce, it tastes cooked, and also fresh and delicious. The meatballs were also very good, the texture was pretty similar to meatballs, but definitely not the taste. Which I'm glad. I don't like it when my fake meat recipes taste like meat. I don't want something that tastes like meat, I want something that is tasty, healthy, and goes well with similar things to whatever it is supposedly imitating.

Then I made some fruit and nut bars, they came out pretty good, I made blueberry-almond, and almond-cranberry. I think they'd be really nice with some coconut, but I didn't taste them until they were all done so I didn't decide that until They were already formed, and most of them wrapped. They're still good though. I look forward to doing maybe a coconut-chocolate. Maybe I could call it a cocoa-nut bar. :3 Then maybe a coconut-mango? Strawberry-chocolate, apple-cinnamon, coconut-pineapple, oh man, I'm gonnna make so many different kinds.

Pictured above is the blueberry-almond.

This is the almond-cranberry, please excuse the sponges and bananas in the background, for some reason I cannot crop this photo.

I also snacked on dried blueberries and sunflower seeds throughout the day. Being raw for the day was surprisingly easy, although I do think planning ahead helped a lot. Maybe I'll plan to be raw for a day once a week or something. At the very least once a month.

Balsamic portobello mushroom

2009-11-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

This is a very delicious, meaty dish, that looks very nice, and tastes wonderful. It's very simple and quick.

Wash a portobello mushroom, and take off the stem. Chop the stem, and slice half a small onion. Heat up a pan (Preferably cast iron) with a little olive oil, and add you cap, gill side up, and your sliced onion and stem pieces to the side. Drizzle some olive oil into the cap, and drizzle a little balsamic vinegar into the cap and onto the onions and stem. Stir the onions and stem fairly often, and check the cap occasionally, once the cap is slightly browned on the bottom, flip it over and cook until tender. Once tender place it on a plate gill side up, and top it with the stem and onion, and garnish with basil. Yum!

Oh woah! This is my hundredth post!

DC

2009-11-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't posted for weeks. My 450+ photos were a bit daunting. And then after sorting out all the blurry ones, the photos of the same thing, and the photos of people, I got a little under two hundred. Which was still very daunting. And since I have to upload photos five at a time, and I have to select them all individually, I really didn't want to do that. But eventually, today I just decided to narrow it down a LOT. Until finally I got these 11 photos. I can just tell you about some of the things I did without photos.

This is a photo of the Capitol Building. We took photos from the back, but we did not manage to go inside.

The Capitol Building.

Then we went to the Library of Congress, which was a beautiful building. With art everywhere and tons of symbolism. You need some sort of pass and a reason to go into the actual library, but there's a balcony where you can see it from the top, and we looked at it there. There were no photos allowed there though.

Really beautiful building.

The Lincoln Memorial.

"IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER"

The Washington Monument. It's VERY tall.

WWII Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

WWII Memorial.

We stayed in an adorable little apartment, because it wasn't much more than hotels in DC, and it had a kitchen, so that would save us money on going out for food. It was really cute and cozy.

We also saw the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, a statue of Einstein, the National Zoo, and two concerts. It was a wonderful trip, and I'm very glad we went.

Going on a trip

2009-10-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been posting, I do have things to post, just not enough time to post them. I won't be posting for at least another week. We're going on a trip to Washington DC tomorrow morning, and will be coming back Saturday night. But I'll probably need some time to recover from the trip before I post all of the exciting things that happened there and before the trip.

As I understand it DC seems to be a pretty vegan-friendly place, so we shouldn't have too much trouble getting vegan food. But the place we're staying also has a small kitchen and a Whole Foods near it, so I don't think I'll be starving to death.

It'll be the whole family, my mom, my dad, and my brother. And we'll also be taking a friend of mine, and my brothers.

It should be tons of fun, I'll tell you all about it in about a week.

Raw sushi

2009-10-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

I like eating raw food occasionally. Not only because of the amazing health benefits, and how good you feel after eating it, but because it's just really tasty, and a new way of cooking to explore.

This is the recipe I mostly used: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10667

I actually think it was easier without a bamboo mat. For regular sushi the mat is very useful, but with these, they came out better with my hands.

I didn't have any Bragg's, so I used tamari instead. So it wasn't totally raw.

Here's some photographic instructions past making the pate and cutting your veggies. Sorry about the horrible yellow lighting, it's getting dark early now and without any sunlight the light made it look less appetizing.

Start with your nori (Seaweed) and your cur collard green. (No need for a mat)

Spread on some sunflower puree/pate.

Add your fillings. (I like lots of carrot, cucumber, green onion, and big slices of avocado)

Start rolling.

Roll some more.

And once you get to the end, wet the edges and press.

Repeat with remaining "rice". I got seven rolls out of it.

YUM!

I expected the four of us to be able to eat the 8 rolls, even though it said it made six servings, but we were wrong, these are so delicious, but really filling. I could hardly eat one roll.

Chautauqua photos

2009-10-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

So I just realized I won't be posting many Chautauqua photos, and they're all from the same spot. I thought I'd be able to post way more, but it turns out almost all of the photos were of people, which I will not post without their permission.

So only thirteen photos, out of the 124 photos that I took. All from the same spot. Luckily a very pretty spot on a mountain though.

A little to the left of the last photo. The view is gorgeous on the top of that mountain. No photos of up there though. :/

The city to the left of the mountain.

That's it. Sorry. I'll be sure to get more scenery photos next year.

Lots of food

2009-10-18T23:07:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I procrastinated. I have an excuse though. I was REALLY sick on Friday. Even though I slept plenty, when I got home from my friends house I immediately went to bed and slept for five hours, not because I was particularly tired, but because doing anything but sleeping felt so horrible. And after I got up, at nine PM, I had my first meal of the day (I felt so awful I couldn't eat before.). My mom made me lemon-rice soup. and after five hours of being up, I went back to bed for a regular length sleep.

And then I mostly procrastinated on Saturday, and didn't get around to posting until today because I was making a bunch of food and entertaining guests for my mom's birthday yesterday.

But finally, here's some food:

There's kind of a lack of photos, so I looked through old photos to see if I had anything I was meaning to post but never did. And yes, I did. A snack I made for Chautauqua. Roasted pumpkin seeds.

First, you take a BUNCH of pumpkin seeds, drizzle with oil, stir, season, stir, and bake at 350 degrees. (No need to preheat) Stir it fairly often, it'll cook quick. They're done when most of them are brownish, crispy, and some a bit more round than before.

I season them with whatever I have. Seriously, you can season them with anything. I usually do something like garlic powder, pepper, cumin, coriander, basil, oregano, and nutritional yeast. You want everything to be dry, or it'll go bad and probably not stick. Just let these cool and bag them, and they're a delicious, healthy snack. I think maybe if I mix the seasonings with the oil, and then drizzle that on, the seasonings might stick better. I haven't tried it yet though. You don't need much oil, maybe 1-2 tablespoons for two cups of seeds. If that.

On Wednesday night I made this little snack:

Pan-fried tofu sticks.

I had half a block of tofu I had to use up On Wednesday before we left for a couple days and it would go bad, so I cut it into sticks, mixed pepper and cornstarch in a bowl, and rolled the tofu sticks in it. Then I pan-fried them in a little oil, and served them with teriyaki sauce. You could use just about any sauce you want though, these have a very mild flavor, so really need a sauce, and can work with just about any sauce.

On Thursday, my brother really wanted an ice cream cake for his birthday, and we can't really afford to buy that much vegan ice cream, and didn't have enough time or the ingredients to make our own. So it wasn't vegan. But I'll post the process for those of you who want to make it vegan or aren't vegan.

He used this cake recipe, you could either veganize it, or use a different recipe. He wanted four cakes, so he 1.5 batched the recipe, hoping for four 8" cakes. He only got three, but he filled the pans pretty high.

he cut one cake in half to make two layers out of it. One will be the top, and one will be the middle. Then he cut the centers out of two of the other cakes to make rings.

Here's the whole layer of cake with one of the rings on top.

Then he filled the ring with ice cream. He chose mint chocolate chip.

Then the middle layer.

Then messily frosted with over-thawed ice cream...

Then he froze it, added another ring on top, filled the ring with ice cream, and then put the top on, frosted it, and froze it. No photos of the finished product, sorry.

I would have made cupcakes, but one of my vegan friends was planning on making some chocolate ones with peanut butter filling. So it was all good. They were very tasty.

We got Thai takeout for dinner. Which was delicious. A few things had shrimp in them, but the things that didn't, I made sure didn't have fish sauce. I really like the fried tofu at Thai restaurants, it's always so delicious. I can never make it that good. But I don't really like frying my food anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

Last nights dinner, my mom's birthday dinner, was roasted asparagus, quinoa, and sauteed portobellos, just like the other day. And there were also roasted vegetables. And I surprised her with apple pie too. Not sure how she missed the smell, maybe because of all the tasty smells of other foods cooking.

I bought a crust, because for some reason, I hate making crusts. I peeled and sliced ten granny smith apples. I think a dozen would have been better though. (This is for two pies), I added a little lemon juice to keep them from browning, and then I mixed them with lots of cinnamon, and brown sugar. Lots. Then I put them in the pie crusts, and made a brown sugar top. If you make your own crust, you can weave the top with extra crust. But what my mom and I do is we mix brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little oatmeal up, and then we press it on the top in a fairly thick layer, then we bake it covered in foil for a while, until the apples are almost soft, then we take the foil off and bake until the edges are brown. For some reason my apples produced lots and lots of juice, so I had to drain the juice out of the pie several times so that I wouldn't be boiling the pie. This was probably because I forgot to add margarine, but I'm not sure. It was weird, I got a whole bowl of juice, it tasted a little like apple cider. It was appley, and cinnamony, and sweet. A bit too sweet for drinking, in my opinion though.

Sorry about the lack of photos, I was planning on taking a bunch, because the food was really pretty, but I was expecting one guest and the family, but it turned out that we got three extra people, who showed up before I was done cooking, and started eating everything that was done. Even if I had just taken it out of the oven, or just turned the pan off. They usually come late, and come to the done food that's been sitting out for a while, and can eat immediately, but mom wanted dinner later this time, so they were very hungry and the food was not done.

More later with some Chautauqua photos.

Catering job and new camera!

2009-10-15T00:43:00.000-07:00

My mom has a friend, and my mom has told her about my blog, all of my cooking, et cetera. My mom also mentioned that I had made freezer meals (Pre-made meals that I make so you can just microwave them for a quick, healthy meal) for my grandpa before. My mom's friend was interested, and we worked something out so that I could do the same for her. I made her and her husband 4 meals of my untraditional jambalaya, four meals of lemony quinoa-vegetable soup, four meals of minestrone soup, ten small breakfast burritos, and a dozen peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies. I charge $9 an hour for labor, and whatever the groceries cost me. For all of that the grocery cost was $23.80, the labor cost was $58.30 (If I had made more it would have been more efficient, and therefore be a better deal, but she just wanted to test it out) So the grand total was $82.30. I really like doing this. I get practice, job experience, something great to put on my resume, extra money, and a whole day of cooking. Sometimes more. I also get feedback, so I can perfect my recipes. So if any of you live in Oregon, and would be interested in something like this, let me know, and maybe we can work something out!

She's loved what she's tried so far, is going to recommend it to a friend, and will be doing this again for sure. And maybe some catering other than freezer meals.

Also, you all know my camera broke recently. Well, it's the day before my brother's birthday, and we got a package in the mail, I assumed it was for my brother, but I looked at it, and realized it was for me! So I opened it up, and there was a brand new camera for me from my grandpa! He reads my blog, and so knew my camera was broken, and was nice enough to get one for me. It's really nice, and I've taken a couple photos, and will probably post them in a few days, but it's late, I'm leaving early in the morning, and will be gone until Friday. So nothing for now, just this post.

Roasted vegetables

2009-10-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

My mom and I made this, she chopped the veggies, I made the sauce and baked the veggies.

She cut some carrots in thirds, chopped yams into big chunks, some squash from the garden, which I believe is pattypan into large pieces, and eggplant in large pieces.

I'm really liking the combination of balsamic vinegar and maple syrup. They go really well together. So I made a sauce with balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, plenty of herbs and garlic, and a tiny bit of soy sauce to kind of mellow out the vinegar a little, but not just water down the sauce.

I put all the veggies on a cookie sheet, brushed them with the sauce, and put them in a 400 degree oven. I flipped them a few times while they cooked, and basted them with the extra sauce once, and they were done when they were tender. They were all wonderful, except the eggplant I don't think did too well. I think next time we won't use eggplant, and maybe we'll add some whole mushrooms and some onion chunks. The yams were especially good, I think they went especially well with the sauce.

Balsamic-maple tofu sandiwich

2009-10-14T01:02:00.000-07:00

I marinated some tofu in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, maple syrup (The real stuff), garlic, and a little soy sauce for an hour or so, then panfried it, basting it occasionally, while also sauteing some mushrooms and onions. Once the tofu was cooked and a little browned, and the mushrooms and onions caramelized, I put them on a toasted whole wheat hoagie roll spread with mustard and vegennaise, with slices of garden beefsteak tomato. It was wonderful! The sweetness of the maple syrup really complimented the acidity of the vinegar, and the flavors also went together really well.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Without my camera I don't feel really motivated to post.

Very untraditional jambalaya

2009-10-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Most jambalaya recipes are pretty complicated, and dirty up more pans than I want to wash, so what I was going for today was to make a jambalaya, that only dirtied one pan, was pretty simple, and was made with brown rice. And of course vegan. I'm probably breaking jambalaya laws right now, but I don't really care, because this stuff is delicious.

1/2 a large onion

1 small zucchini

1/2 a red bell pepper

small drizzle of oil

1 1/2 cup long-grain brown rice

about 1 cup pasta sauce

2 1/2 cup water (Or more)

2 cups worth of vegetable bullion (Or replace 2 cups of water with vegetable broth)

Various seasonings, to taste (I used Cajun Blackened Seasoning, paprika, cayenne, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, cumin, dried oregano, and dried basil)

1 roma tomato

2-3 bay leaves

Chop your onion, zucchini, and bell pepper into fairly large chunks, heat up a medium sized pot to medium high heat, and add the small drizzle of oil.

Once the pan is heated, add your chopped veggies, and saute until slightly tender.

Once the veggies are slightly tender, add your brown rice, and mix it up, then add your pasta sauce, stir, and then add your water (Just the 2 1/2 cups) and bullion or vegetable broth.

Add in some seasonings, but don't add to much, because you can always add more, but you can't take it out.

Bring to a boil, and once it's boiling, bring it down to a simmer.

Meanwhile, chop your tomato into large chunks.

Stir the pot occasionally, and let it simmer until most of the water is absorbed. Add you tomatoes, check if it needs more seasoning, and check how tender the rice is, and see if it needs more water. I didn't add enough water to begin with, so I kept adding a little more, so I'm not positive how much I added. Once the seasonings are right, the rice is tender, and the water is absorbed, serve. Some chopped parsley would make a nice garnish. It doesn't taste like traditional jambalaya, but it definitely tasted good. Mmmm. It was good.

Photo from Google Images.

Curry

2009-10-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today I made some curry. I used my purple cauliflower from the Farmer's Market, carrots, green onions (Red onions would probably work better), zucchini, tofu, and basil. (From the Farmer's Market)

The curry was really pretty, with the dark purple from the cauliflower, the white tofu, the bright orange carrots, and the green zucchini and green onions. It made it really pretty, and the broth, or sauce, or whatever you'd like to call the liquid part of the curry was slightly yellow, adding even more color contrast, but it wasn't strong enough to change the colors of the veggies in the curry. The color was really pretty. And of course the curry was delicious over some brown rice.

The purple cauliflower as far as I could tell tasted about the same as regular cauliflower, but was bright purple. I expected it to be one of those things, where raw, it would be a beautiful color, but then you'd cook it, and it would be grayed, and faded, and just look kind of sad. But actually, when I cooked it, it did gray slightly, but it also got darker, and it was still really pretty, even if a slightly different color. So I think, if I'm given the choice, I would choose a purple cauliflower over a white one.

Farmer's Market goodies

2009-09-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

We went to the Farmer's Market today. It was nice. A little cloudy, but all of the bright and colorful vegetables made up for it.

We got some gala apples. They're nice and crisp, sweet, and delicious. And fairly small, so they're easier to eat. I was planning on drying them, but they're just too delicious, I want the whole dozen all to myself. They were in a bag, and when I got the home, and opened the bag, a strong scent of sweet, delicious apples came out. Yum yum yum. They were $4 for the dozen.

A bunch of pears, also for drying, but they're not quite ripe yet, so I'll do that in a couple days. $6 for eighteen.

Some onions with the greens on top. Four or five I think. They look good, but I haven't used them yet. I'm not sure how much they cost, mom told me to buy them as I was paying for some other things.

Some chard, a big bunch for $1.50. They look good.

A bunch of basil I forgot how much they cost. We're planning on making pesto.

A bunch of radishes. I never have radishes, I always think about it, but then decide not to, since I never have them and I'm never quite sure what to do with them. But they were only 65 cents a bunch, and were a beautiful red color, nothing like what I've seen in the stores. When I got home, I just washed one, and ate it, and got a satisfying crunch from it, and a good taste. I'm still not totally sure what to do with the rest, probably just eat them like that, they're good that way. Also, does anyone know if you can/would want to eat the radish greens?

A big pepper, I don't remember the price. Will probably end up on some pizzas tomorrow.

A big head of purple cauliflower. $1.50 per pound I believe? Maybe. I was going to get a pretty small yellow head, but then I realized the last purple cauliflower sitting there. I've always wanted to try some purple cauliflower. I wonder if it tastes any different, or if it's just the color... I'm thinking it'll go in some sort of curry thing tonight... That or we'll have the pesto.

I got all of that for $18.60. Definitely cheaper than the grocery store.

Mom also got some cherry tomatoes, I don't know how much they cost.

I've been snacking on apples, cherry tomatoes, and radishes since I got back. :)

Roasted asparagus, sauteed portobellos with a balsamic sauce, and quinoa

2009-09-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

So last night, pretty late, I decided to roast the asparagus we had in the fridge. So I preheated the oven for 350, cut the tough ends off the asparagus, drizzled them with olive oil, minced garlic, some black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Mixed that around and put them in the oven. Then I decided to do something with our portobellos, but figured with those two, I needed something else to go along with them, so I made some quinoa, preheated a cast iron pan to medium-high, washed three portobello mushrooms, took the stems off, chopped the stems, and the put the whole caps gill-side up on the pan, the stem pieces in there too, I drizzled some balsamic vinegar into the caps and on the stems, along with some olive oil, and put the lid over it. Keep an eye on your asparagus and flip it as needed. And of course remember to stir your quinoa. Check on the portobellos, they should start turning golden-brown on the bottom, and the sides should start getting a little soft. Flip them once they're golden-brown on the bottom, and then they should be done once they're pretty tender and cooked through. The asparagus should be done when they're tender.

I have a half-cup measuring cup, with rounded corners, so I packed that full of quinoa, and flipped the molded quinoa onto three plates. Then one portobello per plate, gill side up, with the stem pieces on top, some caramelized onions on top would also be good. Then several pieces of asparagus on the plates also. It looks really pretty, and tastes fantastic. Too bad my camera is broken. :/ It also took less than an hour, so it doesn't take too long.

The instructions make it sound pretty complicated, but it was actually pretty easy.

Dehydrator

2009-09-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

Here's another late post. It was from a little after Chautauqua.

We've apparently had a dehydrator in our basement for years, and I had no idea. I was wanting a dehydrator, it was going to be on my Christmas list this year, but it turns out we already have one. Only problem is it takes up quite a bit of counter-space, and doesn't have any form of temperature control. Oh well, still works just fine.

My dad taught me how to use it (Basically just put something in, plug it in, and check on it occasionally) and we had a bunch of Asian pears at the time, so dad sliced them pretty thin, and dehydrated them. And they're absolutely delicious, chewy, flavorful, and nice and sweet. And I didn't really have any other fruits, but I made some apple fruit leather. I just put some apple sauce on some plastic wrap and dehydrated it. (Dad told me that you can put plastic wrap in the dehydrator, and it won't melt or anything, no need for the special dehydrator sheets) Wax paper would probably work better though. The apple fruit leather came out pretty well, a little tart since I used unsweetened applesauce though. We also dried our abundance of hot peppers from our garden and our friend, and after they were dried we crushed them up so we would have chili flakes whenever we need them. I can't wait until tomorrow, when we're going to the Farmer's Market, and I'll get lots of fruit to dry.

I've been eating the dried Asian pears like candy. Seriously, I ate like seven dried pears in one day.

After fruits I'm sure I'll be making some raw food.

Chautauqua

2009-09-27T15:42:00.001-07:00

So, I'm posting over a week later than when I said I would.... But, I'm a procrastinator, and that's pretty much my only excuse other than being slightly busy and tired.

So now I'll finally tell you about Chautauqua.

We got there, unloaded our stuff, and waited for everyone else to arrive, when they did, we all loaded up the ferry, and then loaded all the people, and went over the river to the other side, then we loaded all our stuff onto a truck, and started walking to the lodge, we all unpacked the truck, brought our own stuff to our lodges, and came back to the lodge so we could hear all of the rules and sign up for jobs. (Chores) There's all sorts of jobs,. bathroom cleaning, dishes, cooking, kitchen clean up, sweeping, tidying up, mopping, et cetera. I chose cooking, mopping, and dishes. Cooking is definitely the most fun, you make food, talk to people, chop things, hang out with your friends, and get to listen to music, it's tons of fun. But it is the most time-consuming, so you don't want to cook too much because you want time with your friends. But all of the chores are really fun, it's a big place with lots of people, so you always need a bunch of people doing the chores, which makes it more fun since it's more social. (By the way, all of the meals at Chautauqua are vegetarian, always with at least one vegan option)

There's a beautiful beach, and a gorgeous meadow, and hikes and mountain views. I brought my camera and took lots of photos, unfortunately Chautauqua is also very sandy, which got into my camera, and broke it. Now when I turn it on, the screen doesn't work, it makes an angry buzzing noise, doesn't take pictures of course, the lens won't retract, and it won't turn off without pulling out the batteries. My dad completely took it apart and tried to fix it, but it won't work. So I no longer have a working camera, and don't have the photos, and I'm not sure I ever will. Hopefully I'll get a new camera soon... If I ever get the photos on my memory card, I'll be sure to post them.

Anyway, there's tons of cool people there, most of which I only get to see once a year, so it's always nice to see them again. Every family is supposed to have someone in their family put up a workshop, and there's all kinds, most of which are games, like card games, board games, frisbee on the beach, there's sandcastle building, hikes, how to build a fire, and all sorts of things, which are different every year. I didn't plan ahead enough this year, so I didn't do anything, I think I'll teach people how to make vegan sushi next year. Either with brown rice, or quinoa (I got the idea from some other blog I read, I don't remember which one though. It sounds delicious!).

Even if you aren't a very social person, you can always stay in your cabin and be alone, stay on the beach, go on a hike, whatever you like. But I think after a while you would warm up to the people and want to be with them more. If you like people a whole lot, you can pretty much be with people constantly if you want.

For three of the days (Every day other than the first and last day) there's a day-long assassin game. (For those of you who don't know that game, don't worry too much, it's not very important. And if you will be going to Chautauqua, and want to play, the rules will be explained)

On Thursday, there's also a dance, it's mostly just the teenagers, but the first hour or so there's usually a bunch of kids and adults, and then later there are slowly less and less adults and kids, and more teenagers.

And this year, someone's workshop was to have a talent show. There weren't that many people in the talent show this year, but it was still a lot of fun.

The last day everyone completely cleans the lodge and their cabins, pack up the truck, and start heading out. Then after the ferry is unpacked, people start loading their cars, and saying goodbye to eachother, and getting eachothers phone numbers and email addresses, and some people meet up at McMenamins, and then after getting lunch, it's goodbye. Which is always pretty sad.

That's all I have to say for now. If you have the time, you should definitely try to go to Chautauqua next year, it's incredibly fun!

Oregon Chautauqua

2009-09-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

In two days (Monday) I will be going to Chautauqua, it will be from Monday to Friday, so no posts for a while. I'm sure I'll have tons to say by Friday. Well, I'll probably be too exhausted on Friday, so I'll probably post on Saturday.

Chautauqua is really cool, you camp in little cabins, and there's forest and trails, and wild huckleberries, and then there's a big lodge with a professional style kitchen, a huge dining room, a game room, and a huge porch. People spend most of their time at the lodge. And about a minute from the lodge is a beautiful beach, and there are lots of sea creatures on the rocks to look at. And there are also really cool workshops, all kinds.

I'll let you know a lot more in a week! You might get lucky and get a post tomorrow, if I'm not too busy packing and getting ready.

Strawberry parfaits

2009-09-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

I tried to make a coconut cake, which turned out to be a bit of failure since our oven is still broken, so we got the edges of the cake cooked, and the rest pretty raw. So I took off the parts of the cakes that were cooked, and made a bunch of small, messy cakes on a cookie sheet out of the raw parts. The cakes ended up pretty dense. So we decided to make parfaits with that.

First I pureed some strawberries, if your strawberries aren't really ripe you may want to add a little sugar. Set it aside. Then I made a strawberry-yogurt sauce. Mainly with soy yogurt, with a few strawberries, a little sugar, and some thickener, (whatever you have, I used rice flour ) There may have been something else, but I honestly don't remember.

Then I put some strawberry puree in the bottom of several fancy wine glasses, a layer of the yogurt sauce, a bunch of small pieces of cake (Dense cakes work best), some more pureed strawberry, some more yogurt sauce, more cake pieces, some chopped strawberry bits, a slice of strawberry, and a drizzle of the strawberry puree and yogurt sauce.

They were delicious.

I'm probably going to do something similar with blackberries sometime soon.

Pad thai and Summer rolls

2009-09-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

I believe this is from last week, when we had company over.

The pad thai.

The Summer rolls. In the middle is a bowl of made-up curry sauce I made. It complimented the rolls well.

Sauteed mushroom sandwich

2009-09-07T01:08:00.000-07:00

It's got sauteed mushrooms, Vegennaise, mustard, tomato, cucumber, and avocado. It's pretty simple, but still very delicious.

Golden watermelon

2009-09-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

This is from a while ago, but that watermelon that I got from the Farmer's market, when I opened it up, I was shocked, It was yellow on the inside. At first I thought I somehow got a ridiculously unripe one, but when I tasted it, it was perfectly sweet. In fact, it was one of the sweetest, and tastiest watermelons I have had in a long time. It was sweet, flavorful, crisp, juicy, and delicious. It was so good, that I finished 3/4 of it all by myself right then.

I had no idea that there were yellow watermelons.

Brunch

2009-08-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

I usually don't make brunches, but after going to the Farmer's Market, the urge just hit me. The next morning I was going to be going to a friends house, which was great, since I don't like making big fancy meals for just one or two people. I talked to my friends, looked up recipes, et cetera, and figured out the menu. I was making blueberry pancakes, breakfast sausages, mini quiches, and raspberry muffins (from the cookbook "Just Like My Mother Used To Bake", sorry, no sharing.)

I tried to do as much as possible the day before, since I really hate getting up early, so I mixed the dry ingredients for the pancakes to make a pancake mix, and put it in a bag and wrote the wet ingredients I needed to add. Then I made the breakfast sausages, made the quiche batter, and made the muffins.

Then the next morning when I got to their house, I baked the quiches, made the pancake batter, cooked the pancakes, and pan-fried the sausages. Then I made some tea, and we had brunch, it was just four of us, but it was still very tasty.

I made a few changes in the recipes, the original muffin recipe called for blueberries, but my friend and I agreed, that raspberry was better. The sausages were a little soggy on the outside, maybe I just didn't wrap them well enough or something, so that's why I fried them in the pan, that and to heat them up, but it worked out great, even if my sausages were not soggy, I think it gave them a more sausage-like texture. Other than veganizing the pancake recipe, I think I kept it the same, and for the quiches I subbed my maitake mushrooms for the button mushrooms, and added some chard and zucchini.

Everything was amazing, I should make brunches more often. And sorry, no photos.

Farmer's Market

2009-08-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

I always like going to the Wednesday Farmer's Market, but we rarely do, but this week, we did! We got so many tasty things.

Here's what we got: a mini watermelon, some broccoli, beets, basil, green onions, wild maitake mushrooms, peppers (green, orange, and purple!), blueberries, raspberries, and cherry tomatoes. (Yellow, orange, and red)

Here is the maitake mushroom, I've never had it before but they gave me a sample, and it was sooo good. I had to get it even though they were expensive. ($6 for both of the ones in the photo) But I think they're worth it.

Here are the cherry tomatoes, they didn't last long. We were eating them by the handful.

And here's what we did with all that:

We just ate the watermelon and tomatoes as is, the broccoli went in a stir fry, the beets got roasted in the oven, the basil was turned into pesto, green onions went over pasta, maitake mushrooms went into a brunch I made (more about that in another post) The peppers were in stir frys, on pizza, and in the brunch, and the berries also in the brunch.

They were all wonderful.

Bagel sandwich

2009-08-29T23:54:00.001-07:00

Keepin' it simple. Everything bagel, with mustard and Vegannaise, some veggie meat, tomato, and avocado.

Garden goodies

2009-08-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

So, while at the Star Party, my garden decided to produce as much as possible, so I got lots of goodies when I got home. And here they are!

On the right there are four zucchinis, two large, two regular sized. One yellow squash, and in the middle there's some chard, and a single pea pod. On the left there's a bowl of strawberries, under that a few teeny tiny strawberries, and some raspberries. Then two tiny hot peppers, some lettuce, chives, and two green beans. ALL from the garden. They were busy.

Close-up on the strawberry bowl.

The mini strawberries and the raspberries.

Strawberry-peach smoothie

2009-08-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice strawberry-peach smoothie.

And here's an actual recipe!

-2 smallish peaches (Preferably hand-picked)

-2-3 chard leaves (Or more if you'd like!)

-Frozen strawberries

Peel and pit the peaches and put them in the blender, add the chard, and blend until there aren't any big leave pieces left. Then add a bunch of strawberries until you get to the two cup mark, blend it up until no chunks remain, serve and enjoy! Makes 2 cups, (16 oz) serves one.

Fancy meal

2009-08-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

This is actually from a few weeks ago... But whatever, it's still just as post-worthy. I really need to get good at posting things when they happen, rather than weeks afterwards.

Anyway!

Up there at the top is some lemon baked tofu, with a nice lemony sauce. Then there's some quinoa, and some sauteed greens. I believe it's chard and spinach.

I thought it was very pretty. And it looks like a fancy meal. :)

Oregon Star Party

2009-08-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, I went to the Oregon Star Party, which is why I haven't posted in a while. That, and laziness.

What it is, is basically a ton of people come to this place, in the middle of nowhere, in the desert. (Sounds appealing, right?) And then they all camp there, usually in campers, or RVs, or something. The surrounding area is not at all pretty. All there is is dust, rocks, and sad looking sage brush. And then past that is, sort of a forest. Sort of. There was a forest fire several years ago, so it's mostly burned down tree, or at least charred trees, with a couple flowers usually seen as weeds.

Now, why would anyone want to be in the middle of nowhere, in such an ugly place? Well, because they like the stars. A whole lot. There, because there are no city lights, street lights, or anything, and there is also a rule about no lights after dark (unless they're red lights) people have really good night vision, and can see TONS of stars, and the milky way.

Everyone brings their telescopes, and it's very beautiful, even with the naked eye.

During the daytime, there are seminars and activities, which in my opinion, are incredibly boring, but considering the fact that there are usually a bunch of people at them, they must not be boring to everyone.

There are also some things at night, where someone will point out certain stars, constelations and such, and talk about them. Which are nice at first, but then they get a bit dull.

There's a swap meet on Fridays, where people come and sell their stuff, usually telescope equipment. And then there's a shower truck, a coffee stall, and a snack stall, which usually has snowcones, but they didn't bring the snowcone machine this year. Then there are several other little tents and trucks with telescope equipment and the like.

The coffee stall has a couple vegan options, there's the soymilk option for fifty cents extra., and smoothies. However, the smoothies aren't great, it's one of those "Smoothies" where it's just crushed ice and an overly sweet fruit flavored syrup, not to mention the five dollars it costs for a 16 oz, and the$5.50 for the 24 oz. Geeze.

Right, on to the food. I got to be in charge of planning, prepping, shopping, and cooking the food. Which is fine with me, I enjoy planning for some reason. To make cooking in the tiny little kitchen thing easier, I chopped up all of the vegetables for the meals and put them in bags before we left, mixed up all the dry ingredients for the pancakes, and pre-made the breakfast burritos. The first day, before we left, I made the breakfast burritos for everyone. On the car ride, we had snacks. Chips, almonds, fruit, et cetera. After we got there and unpacked we had some yakisoba for dinner. The next morning, we had hash browns, and sauteed vegetables, with sliced avocado and salsa. Then for lunch we had dumplings from the Asian market with soy sauce. For dinner, we had minestrone soup with bread. For breakfast, we had these pancakes. (With soymilk replacing the milk, margarine replacing the butter, and 2 T water+1 T oil+2 tsp baking powder for the egg) I double batched it, and it made just enough for six people. They were REALLY good, they were filling, and somehow dense and fluffy at the same time. I made several different kinds, chocolate chip, strawberry, and blueberry, and all combinations. Some of us had maple syrup with our pancakes, others had crushed pineapple, which was great. That will definitely be the recipe I use from now on. For lunch we had hoagie sandwiches, with mustard, Vegennaise, tomato, avocado, and veggie meat. Mmm. Then for dinner we had lemony quinoa-vegetable soup. For the next breakfast we had breakfast burritos again, ate the last of the peaches, and headed home.

Sorry, no photos. I brought my camera, but my batteries were dead. XP

So if any of you are astronomers, or just really like stars, maybe you'd like to go to the Star Party next year.

Wow, sorry for the huge post.

Garden goodies

2009-08-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

Yum, nice big cucumber, tomato, and lettuce from the garden. I used them all for the raw Mexican dinner in the last post. The lettuce for the salad, the tomato for the pico de galo, and the cucumber for the "chips".

Some other things from the garden, this was a few days after. Three yellow squash, couple handfulls of strawberries, and some tiny red peppers. A friend gave us two pepper plants, this was from one of them. I was so careful about touching the peppers, because when you have really hot peppers, even just holding them will sometimes make your hands burn, and you can't wash it off. But it turned out, she gave us a really spicy pepper plant, and a tiny bell pepper plant. Turned out this one was the bell pepper plant. She said they're good in stir frys, but I just ate them as is since there weren't that many of them..

Raw tacos to live for!

2009-08-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

First, sorry about the lack of posts recently. I'll explain why in a couple posts.

So, the other day my friend sent me a recipe for raw tacos (recipe below), I thought it sounded great. And every Thursday, she and I, and a few of my other friends go to a friend's house. And about half of the time, I make dinner. So my friend and I decided to make some raw Mexican food for dinner this week, so we made raw tacos, a sort of Mexican salad, and some cucumber "chips" (Thick slices of garden cucumber) with homemade salsa.

It was very tasty, the tacos definitely got eaten the most, the salad hardly touched, and only a little of the salsa gone, until the tacos were gone, then most of the salsa got eaten. I really liked the tacos, and will definitely be making them again.

So here's the recipe!

Taco filling, or "meat":

1 1/2 cups raw walnuts

1/2 tsp each cumin and coriander powder (I used a bit more)

Nama shoyu, Bragg's liquid aminos, or other raw soy sauce, to taste

Other fillings:

Leaf of choice, such as lettuce, collards, et cetera

Guacamole

Pico de galo

Whatever else you'd like

Grind walnuts in a food processor until they reach a taco filling consistency.

Combine taco filling ingredients in a bowl and mix well, being careful not to over-salt with too much soy sauce.

Take a leaf of your choice, (I think romaine works well) and use it as your taco shell. Fill it with taco "Meat", and other fillings, and enjoy!

Sorry, no photos, I forgot to bring my camera.

Hot cocoa

2009-08-16T14:44:00.001-07:00

I love hot cocoa. It's so good, especially when you just came inside from frolicking in the rain.

On top I have some Dandies (a brand of vegan marshmallows) The reason they look like whipped cream rather than marshmallows is because when I ordered them I thought "Oh, I won't need an icepack, it'll be fine." I was wrong, and they got pretty melty. But they're still delicious!

Anyway, some other things I sometimes like to do to spice up my hot cocoa is to add a tiny bit of peppermint or orange extract. And of course a sprinkle of cinnamon is always nice.

Oh, and in the Winter when there's soy nog around, I like to fill my mug halfway with soy nog, and the hot cocoa mix, and then fill it up the rest of the way with boiling water. It's so good.

Lemony quinoa-vegetable soup

2009-08-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

I just LOVE quinoa, I'm not sure why I don't have it way more. It's so delicious, and so healthy. It's even a compete protein all on it's own.

The last few days it's been a little chilly, and there has been some light rain. I really love Fall and Winter, so this is great for me. I've been pretending it's Winter lately. I've been making hot cocoa, soups, snuggling up in blankets, frolicking in the rain, and so much more.

Right, anyway, back to the soup. I don't cook quinoa much, and wasn't sure how long it would take to cook, so I cooked it separately. But if you are very familiar with it's cooking time, you can cook it in the soup itself.

So anyway, I started the quinoa cooking in a pot. (1 1/2 cups raw)

And started the vegetable broth boiling (4 cups I think?) I started chopping some veggies. Carrots, squash, onions, and chard. Once the broth was boiling, I added the veggies and some herbs and bay leaves. After a while the quinoa was done, and the veggies were almost tender. I added some lemon juice (I think it was one lemon, but it may have only been half) and some frozen peas and stirred. Once the veggies were tender, I added the quinoa, stirred, and served.

It was delicious.

Veggie-tofu wrap

2009-08-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a yummy wrap I made. I sauteed some tofu pieces in a balsamic-soy sauce I made up. Then I put it on a whole wheat tortilla with some clover sprouts, tomato, cucumber, avocado, and some of that nut pate. On the side are some of the extra tofu pieces.

Yum!

Green smoothies

2009-08-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

So, I follow a lot of food blogs, most of them are vegan, but at the very least, they're healthy. And I've noticed lately, that a lot of people have started drinking "Green smoothies" every morning. Where it's basically a smoothie, but they also include vegetables, and usually greens. Whenever I see a photo or a recipe of one, they always sound so good. But I've tried making them, and really, when I drink it I'm kind of thinking "This could really use a LOT more fruit. Some sugar would help too." But I'd still like to like them. They sound good, they look good (most of the time), and they're usually very healthy. So I figured I could start trying for it, but just take baby steps. So when I feel like having a smoothie, or in the morning when I'm kind of hungry, but don't really want something big, I'll have my all strawberry smoothie, but add a few leaves from my chard plant into it. So far I can only really handle about 2-3 smallish or smallish-medium leaves. But even baby steps are good. :)

I think the strawberries are a good idea, they keep the color about the same, the taste about the same, and they're nice and sweet, to keep the bitter chard from making my smoothie bitter.

I've had a few of these, I'm enjoying them.

Garden artichokes, pasta, and veggies with a "butter" sauce

2009-08-16T14:00:00.000-07:00

Garden artichokes, pasta, and veggies with a "butter" sauce.

I got a bunch of artichokes from the garden today, so I cut the big ones in quarters, the medium ones in half, and left the small one whole. I started cooking them in a pan. Simmering with some water, vegetable broth, herbs, nutritional yeast, garlic and margarine.

Once they were getting close to done (artichokes take a while) I started cooking the pasta. once the pasta was almost done, and the artichokes only needed about another minute, I added to the pan some yellow squash (from the garden) and some sliced onion. I also added some lemon juice. Once everything was done, I put an artichoke piece on the plate, added some pasta, and spooned some of the sauce over the pasta. (the sauce that the artichokes cooked in) I only needed a little, since I made a very flavorful sauce.

It was REALLY good. I highly suggest it.

Snack crackers

2009-08-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice little snack, I made them on Ritz, but homemade crackers would be much healthier, and yummier.

First I took a cracker, and spread on some of this nut pate. (I recommend making a half-batch, it makes a lot) Then I put on a few clover sprouts, then a cucumber slice, and little slices of cherry tomatoes from the garden. They were very nice.

Minestrone soup

2009-08-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here some minestrone soup I made a few days ago. Very tasty.

It has pasta, kidney beans, stewed tomatoes, carrots, collards, onions, green beans, basil, mushrooms, yellow squash, potatoes, and bay leaves. Maybe a few other things.

It was quite tasty.

Garden photos

2009-08-11T12:51:00.000-07:00

Here's some photos from the garden.

Sunflowers, doing very well.

More sunflowers.

And some more.

There's some of the chard, I've got many more plants like this. :)

Some cherry tomatoes. We've got a couple cherry ones, no large ones yet. They're getting there though!

Raspberries! We got practically none last year, I'm glad they're doing better this year.

Mmm.

Those were all the ripe ones that day. Plenty more unripe ones on the plant.

Muffins

2009-08-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

Mom asked me to make her some muffins. She gave me a recipe for blueberry-almond muffins. they sounded great. However my mom really dislikes blueberries and asked me to use cranberries instead. I was really set on the blueberries. That just sounded great. So I split up the batter, put some dried cranberries in part of it, and since we didn't have any fresh blueberries I used a frozen berry mix, which turned out to pretty much just be blueberries anyway. I made the muffins, and they both came out great. But I preffered the blueberry ones.

Here they are. The cranberry ones in front, the blueberry ones in the middle, and some mini blueberry ones in the back. We ate some, and brought the rest to a friend's house. The mini blueberry ones got eaten very quickly. Then the big blueberry ones, then the cranberry ones. they were all great. I'd share the recipe, but it's from a cookbook. I think it was called "Just Like My Mother Used To Bake", but I don't remember. That cookbook however is definitely not vegan. But if you're good at substituting you should be fine.

Dumplings and soup

2009-08-08T14:03:00.001-07:00

I really love soup, and the brief chilly weather that's been happening really made me want to make some. This soup is kind of a misoy Asian kind of soup. There were rice noodles, and mushrooms in a miso broth with sesame seeds. More for comfort and flavor than to fill me up. Then there were some dumplings from the Asian market with some soy sauce for dipping.

Curry

2009-08-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

I made some curry. This photo is much more flattering. It was very good, and great with the brown rice.

I think there were some carrots, potatoes, onions, broccoli, squash, cauliflower, and maybe some other vegetables.

100% Strawberry smoothie

2009-08-08T13:54:00.001-07:00

I had a bunch of frozen strawberries from when I went picking them, so I decided to make a smoothie. I defrosted a cup to 1 1/2 cup of the strawberries, once they were fully defrosted I put them in the blender, added almost twice as many frozen ones, and blended.

It was so thick, it was wonderful. Almost more like a sorbet than a smoothie. I had to eat it with a spoon, the straw didn't work.

It tasted great and so strawberry-y. Yum.

I purposefully made more than I could drink so I could make some of it into popsicles. They are also very tasty.

Mini pizzas

2009-08-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

I bought some cute mini pizza crusts, and so I decided to make myself a little pizza, and make another for my dad for his lunch at work.

Here is my dad's pizza. I believe it had some sauce, fresh basil from the garden, mushrooms, onions, squash from the garden, peppers, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds. Most people wouldn't think to put seeds on pizza, but I personally really like it.

Here's mine. Pretty similar. Sauce, the basil, mushrooms, onions, the squash, peppers, olives, sunflower and sesame seeds, cream "Cheese" and some nutritional yeast sprinkled on top. The cream cheese was wonderful. It had the texture of real cheese on pizzas (little burnt spots and all!) and the nutritional yeast and the original flavors made a pretty similar taste to mozzarella too. It was great.

I was still hungry after the first one, so I made another one for myself. Same ingredients (other than the olives, we ran out) and I put the cream cheese on the top so it got more brown spots. Very tasty.

Garden goodies.

2009-08-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Here's some more goodies from the garden. Pretty much the same as last time. Some chard, (used in some yakisoba) some green beans, some basil (used in the yakisoba), a yellow squash (also in that yakisoba), and a single soy bean pod.

They were very tasty. I wish the camera could fully capture the beautiful color of the stems of the chard. Oh well.

Berry smoothie

2009-08-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some smoothies I made. It's a mix of frozen berries (I think strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries) and some fruit juice (Cranberry-pomegranate). Very tasty. I don't think it needed any sweetener, but other people might. I like my smoothies very thick, so I added as little juice to the blender as was possible to get it to blend.

Delicious.

Mmm...

2009-08-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

Vegan sushi is perhaps even tastier the next day.

Try to cut your sushi rolls as needed. If you have leftover sushi, you want it to still be a whole roll. Sushi with raw fish should not be kept for more than a day, vegan sushi, is perhaps even tastier the next day. It should last about four days. I like to dip mine in the leftover tofu marinade, along with some wasabi and pickled ginger.

Sushi: It's not all about raw fish!

2009-08-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

This post is going to multi-task. It will show you how to make sushi (for the most part anyway) it will tell you that sushi isn't just about raw fish, and give you some ideas of what else to put in it, and it will also tell you about my recent sushi making party!

Lets start off with telling you that sushi is not all about raw fish, and give you some other filling ideas.

Many people think that sushi means raw fish, and that if no fish is involved, it is not sushi. This is not the case. The word sushi actually describes the vinegared rice that goes into making sushi. Raw fish however, is one of the most common ingredients to be a part of sushi.

So what should you put in your sushi if you're not adding in any fish? Simple. Vegetables. Sometimes some tofu or tempeh as well.

Here are some of the more common vegan fillings for your sushi:

Carrots

Cucumber

Avocado

Green onions

Tofu (baked, pan fried, deep fried, whatever you like)

Tempeh (I've never done it myself, but others have, and I think it sounds tasty.)

Sprouts (Alfalfa, clover, etc)

Sauteed mushrooms (Shitake is most common, but I like portobellos!)

Bell peppers

Broccoli (not very good in sushi rolls, but I like them in hand rolls)

Cooked yams

And probably some others that i haven't heard of, or am forgetting.

Really, you can put whatever you like in your sushi, it's up to you.

Now, on to my sushi making party!

So, I decided that I should have a sushi making party. Unfortunately, I decided this the night before I was planning on having it, so I didn't expect many people to show up. Two people came, but I know at least two other people who would have liked to come, so maybe I'll do it again sometime soonish.

But anyway, I set up the table with cutting boards and sushi mats, the rice, the fillings, and little sauce bowls, wasabi, pickled ginger, and low-sodium soy sauce.

Those are the fillings. There's broccoli, carrots, red peppers, avocado, sauteed and sliced portobello, green onions, cucumber, and tofu.

I was going to just buy this tofu, so I wouldn't have to heat up the house by cooking my own tofu, but it turned out that that tiny little thing costs more than a whole block of organic tofu. So I figured I'd make it myself. And I'm glad I did.

I cut my block of tofu into three thick slices, placed them on a towel, and pressed some of the water out. Then I coated them in cornstarch, and pan fried them until lightly golden (I did this to give it that nice outside skin you get from frying, without frying it) Then I marinated it in a mixture of this Teriyaki sauce, some low-sodium soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and I think maybe something else. I can't remember though. A few hours later (let it sit as long as you can though) I sliced it with a sharp knife, and i got something fairly similar to Pete's tofu.

Now let's learn how to make some sushi!

Take a bamboo mat, and wrap it completely in plastic wrap. Then place your seaweed (shiny side down) on your mat.

Thinly spread your rice on the seaweed. As thin as possible without having big gaps.

Then lay on your fillings. I think this one has green onions, carrots, cucumber and tofu.

Start to roll it over, just a little, then press it down with both hands.

pull the mat off, and roll a little more, and lightly press it.

Repeat until it's all rolled up. Try to roll it tight.

Tada! Cut it with a sharp knife. You may need it to be slightly wet.

Here's our sushi plate. We made a lot more, but most of it was eaten. Some of the sushi doesn't have seaweed, because one of the friends there doesn't like it. It's much harder to make without seaweed, so don't do that until you've got the hang of it.

There's also some hand rolls, and some inari.

Pad Thai

2009-08-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

I made some Pad Thai today.

I've had some problems with making a good pad thai sauce without the fish sauce, so I used this one from the store. (No fish sauce!) They say you only need two sauce packets for a pound of the noodles, but I think you really need three.

In this pad thai is some onion, carrot, zucchini, and broccoli. And of course some rice noodles (1 pound), and the sauce. The veggies wouldn't really mix with the noodles, they liked to hide under them, so you can't really see them in the photo.

then I garnished with some basil from the garden, some lime wedges, and some chopped peanuts. Very tasty!

Frappe/frappuccino

2009-07-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a recipe for a frappuccino, or frappe. Something like that. I think my ice cube tray has bigger ice cubes than most, so you may have to add more.

Make some coffee. Strong coffee. Then put it in an ice cube tray and freeze it. Once it's frozen, start making your frappe. Put this all in a blender and blend until smooth. Make's one smallish glass, about 1 1/2 cup. About 1 1/2 tablespoon Nesqick (Yes it's vegan. But always double-check!), about eight coffee ice cubes, and about half a cup of soymilk. Or other nondairy milk. Taste it and adjust it however you like. Tada!

Please excuse the the chair and other things in the background.

Salad thing

2009-07-27T21:17:00.001-07:00

I'm not really sure what to call this, so if you have ideas, let me know.

It's just some chopped tomato, cucumber, and avocado, with a tablespoon or two of red wine vinegar. I think balsamic might be even better, but we didn't have any. Poppy seeds are also nice.

It's great for these hot days when you don't want to cook anything, or even eat warm food.

Friend's birthday party

2009-07-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

So my friend had a birthday party. It was a lot of fun. She said I should bring my own food because there probably wouldn't be any vegan food. Which didn't bother me. I like cooking, and as the vegan it's my responsibility. It was a sleep-over, so I brought three meals. Plus I brought her some cupcakes.

I thought I might get jealous of other people's food, so I figured I'd trump them. So I made some sushi for my lunch.

I used up all of the seaweed, so there were a few with the soypapers. This time I sliced one of the papers, and used the strips to gently tie the handrolls closed. That worked okay. You have to be very gentle though.

You may be thinking that this is a lot for one person, but I figured I'd share a few with other people.

But it turned out that her parents were nice enough to have vegan options for lunch. But I mostly ate the sushi, since I really like sushi.

Then for dinner, I brought two black bean and Spanish rice burritoes, with some salsa, tomatoes, and avocado. But again, they were really nice, and got some vegan hotdogs as well as regular ones.

For breakfast, I brought some strawberry soy yogurt and an Oddwala bar. But again, they made vegan waffles. It was extremely nice of them. I ate the waffles, and ate the yogurt and bar as snacks later.

A week or so before the party, I handed the birthday girl Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, and had her pick two kinds of cupcakes for me to make her. She chose the "Sexy low-fat vanilla cupcakes with berries" and the green tea cupcakes. I asked her how many she wanted, and she said only a dozen each. I didn't think that would be enough, since with my friends, if I put two dozen cupcakes on a table, they would be gone within half an hour. Yet somehow. Even though the recipes said they would make two dozen, they only made 19. And still, somehow I had four left. It was really weird. Here are the cupcakes.

Both kinds. Sorry, the strawberry ones didn't have the strawberries on them yet. I wanted to put them on pretty much last minute so they wouldn't be gross.

The green tea.

Vanilla. Yum.

Anyway, the party was a ton of fun, even though it was ridiculously hot. We spent a lot of time in the unheated hottub, with the hose in it to make it even cooler.

And since it was a party, there was soda, and chips and stuff, and other things I usually would not eat, that are not very healthy. By the time I was in the car going home, I just wanted to eat some kale and quinoa. Unfortunately, food was already made, and did not include either of those foods. But it was still good, and I ate handfulls of arugula and lettuce.

Then we went and swam in a river, lots of fun, especially in the heat.

Oh and the last post was the fiftieth post! Woo!

Sushi Hand Rolls Again

2009-07-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

I was going to make some more handrolls, but I was almost out of seaweed, so I went to the store, and they were out of seaweed too. But right next to where the seaweed usually is, there were some "Sushi Party Soy Wrappers" (Here's their site) They're very pretty, so I was excited to try them out.

And I must say, I'm a little disappointed. They are very pretty, but that's the only thing about them that is better than nori.

Here's a photo:

First off, they're very small, about the size of half a sheet of nori, so I cut those in half to make two tiny squares, and did it that way. So they're very small, as you can see. The fork is there for comparison in size.

Also, they don't hold together, as you can see. Even if you wet the edges, they won't stick to eachother, so they fall apart.

Then they don't have the nice taste of seaweed, instead they have a sort of unpleasing sweet taste that I don't think really works with the sushi.

The one redeeming quality is that they're pretty, they came in white, yellow, orange, green, and white with sesame seeds.

I don't think that makes up for it though. I'll just stick with seaweed. They aren't horrible, but seaweed is much better.

So after eating those ones, I was still hungry, so with the leftover veggies (Cucumber, avocado, and grated carrot) I made a cucumber salad thing. Just chopped up the veggies, then added some seasoned rice vinegar, lemon juice, and sesame seeds.

Sorry for the rant.

Garden goodies

2009-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some goodies I got from the garden today.

There's some chard, green beans, lettuce, soybeans, and cucumber.

I put the chard in some yakisoba today, we still have the lettuce, and part of the cucumber is in the handrolls in the next post.

I was just going to eat the beans raw, but I've heard things about raw beans being poisonous, so I did some research, soybeans were said to be toxic raw from many sources, and green beans were said to be toxic by about half of the sources that came up, and half said it was fine. So I figured I'd cook them just to be sure. I boiled the beans, and just ate them like that. Very tasty.

From the looks of it, I think I'll be getting some more, lettuce, tomatoes, and squash from the garden, maybe a few other things. I've got one yellow squash getting big, I could pick it now, but I'm letting it grow big so I can stuff it.

Stuffed Zucchini

2009-07-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

So here are some squashes from my garden. See that really big zucchini? (It's actually bigger than it looks) I'm going to stuff it! Full of brown rice, veggies and other tasty things.

First you cut it in half lengthwise. (After washing it of course) Then you take out all of the seedy parts, but don't throw it away. Put the zucchini on a foiled baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Here we have some sliced mushrooms, chopped carrots, the core of the zucchini, chopped red bell pepper, diced onion, and minced garlic.

Here are the seasonings, sauces and condiments. Nutritional yeast, pasta sauce, marsala cooking wine, cayenne, Italian seasoning (there were also some fresh herbs) vegetable broth, margarine, and garlic.

Start cooking some brown rice. About 1 cup raw, maybe 1 1/4 cup raw. I purposefully made extra, so I'm not sure. Also replace about 1/2 cup of the water with vegetable broth.

Then saute the veggies in a little margarine until tender. Add a splash of marsala, until it evaporates. Then add your seasonings. (Italian seasoning, fresh herbs, cayenne, and nutritional yeast) Let it cool.

Your rice should be done now. Put it in a bowl, add some pasta sauce. (maybe about half a cup?) It should taste tomatoey and yummy. Then add the veggies to the bowl, and mix it up. If you think it needs more seasonings, go ahead.

Here's the bowl of stuffing.

Stuff the zucchinis, and if you have some, sprinkle on some bread crumbs. It gives it a nice crusty top. Then put it in the oven. I'd give you an estimated time on how long, but my oven is a little broken. It's got two rods that heat up the oven, one on top, and one on bottom. The bottom one no longer works. So it wouldn't be accurate for most ovens.

Here are the done zucchinis. You can tell when they're done when there are a couple burnt bits, golden breadcrumbs, and the zucchini is tender.

Serve and enjoy!

Sushi Hand Rolls

2009-07-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

So, I wanted some sushi, but I was really hungry, so I didn't want to bother with making rice, letting it cool, and then making sushi rolls, so I decided on hand rolls. I looked for a recipe, but with very little luck, most of the recipes had nothing to do with sushi.

So I just made it up. I'm probably doing it horribly wrong, but whatever. It tastes good.

I think they're very pretty.

First, I made some tofu. I just put some pieces of tofu in a pan with some low-sodium teriyaki sauce and some ginger and garlic. I sauteed them until they got firm and the sauce was mostly absorbed. Baked tofu would also work.

Here's the setup. I cut some sushi nori (seaweed) in half diagonally to make two triangles.

Then I've got a bag of grated carrot, (julienne works too) The tofu, some chives (Green onions should work too) Some sliced avocado, some cucumber sticks, some red pepper strips, and some small florets of broccoli.

Almost any veggies should work though. Get creative! Maybe some sprouts?

Start with the nori. Have one corner facing up. Place the nori so that the nori is wider than tall.

Place a piece of tofu on it, then two broccoli florets, and a couple chives. As above.

Then put on some red pepper strips, and some cucumber. As above. Pay attention to the angle, it needs to be tilted outwards a little to make the cone work.

Then add some avocado, and some carrots. Julienne carrots also work.

Time to get rolling. Take one edge of the nori and pull it over the veggies.

Fold the excess back over.

Take the other side and fold it over. Slightly wet the edge with water.

Then tuck the edge under. One made, however many more to go.

Your first batch might look something like this.

Then maybe like this.

And then hopefully like this!

Enjoy!

Selling baked goods

2009-07-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

So I wanted some money, so I decided that I would bake a TON of cookies, cupcakes, and chocolates. And then I would go sell them to neighbors, door-to-door.

Here are the snickerdoodles. The recipe is here. (I substituted the butter with vegetable shortening, and the eggs with 2 tablespoons water+1 tablespoon oil+2 teaspoons baking powder per egg)

Here are the chocolate-chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, without the walnuts.

Although these look like oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, they're actually oatmeal-raisin. Also from Veganomicon.

All of the cookies were put in cute little boxes, all in mixes of thirteen.

Here's a box for the cupcakes, the brown ones are chocolate, and the pink ones are vanilla (both from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World") this is the only box I had left, the rest of the cupcakes had to deal with paper plates and plastic wrap... There's two extra snickerdoodles in there as well.

Here are the truffles. They came in assorted flavors, also in cute little boxes. I think there was strawberry, raspberry, coffee, orange, peanut butter, mint, almond, and coconut chocolates.

I used this recipe, sort of. Be sure not to use the chocolate they call for, it isn't vegan. Instead I used their semi-sweet chocolate chips, and some unsweetened baking squares. And then for the butter I used shortening, and for the cream, light coconut milk. And instead of liqueurs, I used extracts mostly. I guess I hardly used that recipe. It was more like a basic idea.

Here are the plates of chocolates.

And I also had some individual chocolates. I used some green and red clear plastic wrapping "paper" and some ribbons.

So to make this, it took over an entire day. Then the next day I went door-to-door selling them. I was out for two hours doing this. With hardly any luck. I only sold to four people. Although two of them tipped, which was nice. Then the next day I tried again, I only did it for half an hour though, since it went so bad the day before. With no luck for that day. So after over an entire day of cooking, and two and a half hours of trying to sell them, I only got $16. At least I have a bunch of sweets I can eat?

Well, actually, a friend of mine took a large basket full of sweets and took them to his work where he put it on a table with prices on them, so that if people would like, they can buy some. Hopefully that will work out much better than door-to-door did... I'll tell you how that goes.

I don't think I'll be doing this again.

But I have another idea, slightly similar, instead of door-to-door, I'm thinking a lemonade stand sort of thing, maybe with a few cookies, and then I'd have my blender out there, so I could make smoothies and frappes. And probably some lemonade too. Sounds good to me.

Yakisoba

2009-07-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

Yakisoba again. These are the ingredients I usually use.

The veggies. Starting from top left, going clock-wise: Onions, mushrooms, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, and tofu. Then on the side there's some garlic and ginger.

Pan-fry the tofu until lightly golden.

Add the veggies, and keep cooking.

Once the veggies are done, add the cooked noodles and sauce.

Serve and enjoy! Sprinkle with sesame seeds for garnish.

I was going to post a photo of some curry I made. But it was appallingly unphotogenic.

Sandwiches

2009-07-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

So, I was just going to post a photo of a grilled veggie sandwich I made with the leftover grilled veggies, but then I decided that I should post more. About how vegan sandwiches can be more than just PB&Js, and fake meats.

Sure, if you like them you can still have PB&Js, and fake meat sandwiches, but I feel like if you have sandwiches often, there should be more variety. So here are some ideas:

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Some varieties are with bananas, with agave, with almond butter, and probably a couple others.

Fake meat sandwich, fake meat, homemade or store-bought, with some condiments and veggies of your choice. You should be able to figure that one out.

Veggie sandwich. If there are enough veggies in your sandwich, who needs the fake meat? I like tomatoes, sprouts, cucumber, avocado, hummus, grated carrot, et cetera.

Grilled or sauteed veggie sandwich. Grill or saute some veggies, such as zucchini, peppers, mushrooms, and onions. I like that with some sprouts, tomato, and onion, maybe some mustard.

Veggie burger. This could be counted as the "fake meat sandwich", but I just wanted to remind you of veggie burgers. I like homemade black bean burgers, personally.

Marinated tofu sandwich. Sometimes I like to marinate a big slice of tofu, for at least an hour, in whatever sauce I feel like at the moment, then you cook it in a pan in a little oil until it's firmer and lightly browned on the edges. Then put that on your sandwich with some condiments and veggies. I also like this idea along with some grilled or sauteed veggies in there too.

Got any other ideas? Comment them, and I'll add them. :)

I'll probably do a post similar to this some other time with sushi, tacos/burritos, pizza, and whatever else I come up with.

Here's a nice photo of a grilled veggie sandwich. It's got grilled mushrooms, onions, peppers and zucchini, with some tomato, sprouts, cucumber, and mustard. Along with some mini watermelon slices.

Sunday barbecue

2009-07-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

Hooray! I planned a party/barbecue, invited a bunch of friends, made a bunch of food, my this is sounding great. OH WAIT only one person showed up. Great.

Oh well, we still got to have very nice food and a fun time.

It was a barbecue, we had the black bean burgers from Veganomicon, grilled veggies, (zucchini, peppers, onions, mushrooms, and believe it or not, yams) grilled corn, and kebabs. (veggie and tofu, and unfortunately, some shrimp and veggie, I was unhappy about that part) Then there was a salad, some coleslaw, some fruit, and some other stuff.

I didn't get many pictures because I was busy barbecuing everything, but I got two, if that counts for something.

Here are the sandwich fixin's.

Cucumber, tomato, clover sprouts, and onions. Then there was some homemade ketchup, Vegannaise, pickles and mustard.

Here are the veggies before they were grilled, sorry I couldn't get any of the beautiful grilled veggies, I was too busy to take pictures.

I also made a sauce for the veggies, I mixed up some pomegranate mango chipotle sauce with some red wine vinegar, some marsala, and a TON of herb and seasonings. I think there was some basil, oregano, dill, thyme, pepper, nutritional yeast, cumin, garlic powder, fresh garlic, and probably some more.

Sorry I do posts in batches, hope it doesn't bother anyone.

4th of July cupcakes

2009-07-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't do much for the fourth this year, I made some cupcakes, and went to a friends house to blow stuff up. It was still fun though. All of these cupcakes got devoured.

I used the "Sexy low-fat vanilla cupcake" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. On top is some homemade strawberry jam, (made with the strawberries I picked a while ago) and some raspberries from a friends garden. They were delicious!

A little blurry, but oh so tasty.