Oh Vegan with a Vengeance, I love you so much.

I’ve only made baked things out of this cookbook so far because I’m a fatty that loves cakes and cookies and scones and muffins.  Okay I used the Tempeh Reuben recipe as a guide.

Anyway, last night I baked up a batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies and I’ve already had about five of them.  They’re pretty super.  I’m bringing them to Ithaca with me today to eat on our journey to New Jersey.  There are lots of car rides ahead of me today.  Chocolate chip cookies make everything better, including cars.  I will someday invent a car that runs on chocolate chip cookies.  Mark my words.

Anyway, I’ve made vegan cookies before and the dough usually looks like any other cookie dough.  But this dough just wasn’t wet and sticky enough.  It was pretty crumbly.  But I rolled the dough into balls instead of just plopping it on the cookie sheet.

I was a little worried when the first batch went in the oven, but five cookies in my tummy later, I’m almost convinced that they came out awesome.

I might need to eat a few more first.

- Ellen

Aw shit yeah. Waffle party.

So I’m trying to terrorize the condiments in my fridge. My housemates and I have stockpiled an amount that is illegal in most countries. I took a whack at the maple syrup with some waffles. Also: vegan.

The Vegan with a Vengeance pancake recipe makes some totally sweet pancakes, and as it turns out it also does double duty as a run of the mill waffle batter. I ate off one batch for a few days. Topped with Earth Balance and bananas. If my stomach were a hot babe, it would totally make out with me.

-Bret

So I think Bret’s been eating food.  But he hasn’t been posting and that makes me sad.  EAT SOMETHING, BRET!

I’ve been eating.  A lot.

I made a really simple curry type dinner the other night, because I like making simple curry type dinners.  This one was tomato based rather than creamy coconut milky based.

I made a lot so I would have leftovers to take for lunch during the week.  I tend to bring smelly foods to work but I’m unapologetic when it comes to curry.

Ingredients

2 tsp. olive oil

1 large onion, halved and sliced

2 tsp. minced garlic

1 Tbsp. curry powder (a heaping tablespoon!)

4 cups fresh cauliflower (about a small head)

1 1/2 lb. red potatoes, cubed

1 cup crushed tomatoes

2 tsp. ginger juice

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped and divided

1 cup frozen peas

Directions

Heat the oil in a big pan, and cook the onions until they’re soft.  Add in the curry powder and garlic and cook that until it smells good.  Add in the cauliflower and potatoes and cook that for about five minutes or so.  You’ll want the potatoes to get a little bit softened.  Once they are, add in the crushed tomatoes, ginger juice, water, and half of the cilantro.  Cover the pan and let it simmer for twenty minutes or so until the vegetables are soft.  Taste it and add in more seasonings if you want.  I added black pepper and cayenne to mine.  Stir in the peas and the rest of the cilantro and cook it until the peas are heated through.

Since there’s quite a bit of potato in this I didn’t figure it  needed any rice or anything to eat it with.  But I do like starch so I grabbed one of my wheat tortillas that I happily found do not have animal bits in them to sop up the sauce.

I’m going to suggest using fresh ginger if you can.  I’ve been not buying fresh ginger because I bought a bottle of ginger juice not too long ago and want to finish that up.  It’s really, really not a good substitute for the real thing.

Other than that, yum!

- Ellen

Best sandwich ever.  I’ve never had a meat reuben.  But I bet they’re nowhere near as awesome as tempeh reubens.

So Bret came to visit over the weekend and I had foods ready and waiting for him when he got here.  And I really wanted reubens and I knew Bret likes them and I figured if he didn’t want reubens then he could just watch me eating them while making loud chomping noises.  But it turns out Bret really likes reubens a bunch so it worked out super well.

I never make them because it seems like a lot of work.  But really it’s not and I’m just lazy. 

You really just need a marinade for the tempeh.  Mine consisted of this:

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup tamari

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp caraway

2 tsp mustard

1 tsp minced garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

(The marinade was borrowed from The Vegan Cooking School archives)

I cut an 8oz. block of tempeh into six pieces and put it in a roasting pan with the marinade and let it sit for a few minutes while I did some other stuff.  I suppose you could let it sit in the marinade for a longer period of time but I don’t really think it’s necessary.  I baked the tempeh at 400F for about 45 minutes.  Pretty much  just until all the marinade is gone from the pan and it smells real good.

While it was cooking I mixed up some thousand island dressing, which was pretty much equal parts nayonaise, ketchup and sweet relish.

So really the only thing left was assembly.  I bought some awesome rye bread that Heidelberg’s makes.  They make bread out of real bread ingredients, without all sorts of weird preservatives and things.  Good stuff.  I heated up some sauerkraut and sliced up an avocado.

Assembly goes like this: 1 slice bread -> big glop of thousand island -> two pieces of tempeh -> big glop of sauerkraut -> slices of avocado -> another piece of bread.  Cut in half.  Nom nom nom.

I managed to snag a picture of mine before devouring it.

I also made up a bowl of macaroni salad that Bret liked a whole bunch and I liked a whole bunch.  I don’t really remember measurements or anything but it was pasta, nayonaise, apple cider vinegar, salt, sugar, pepper, jalapeno and scallions.  Really simple and so tasty that we ate the rest for breakfast on Sunday.

-Ellen

No, not together.  Separately.  Although I was tempted to throw some kale into my breakfast.  Next time!

On Saturday I had a huge craving for foods that make me feel good.  What I eat affects my entire body, and it probably does for everyone but I don’t think everyone realizes that. 

I made myself scrambled tofu for breakfast, and I’m not including the recipe because I really don’t have one.  I’ll pick whatever vegetables I have around (this time it was zucchini, onion and tomato) and add in spices (turmeric, cumin, paprika, sage…salt, I can’t remember what else) and then crumble in tofu and cook it all up.  Oh and a couple of dashes of hot sauce.

Don’t tell Bret, but I think my scrambled tofu is better than his.  Maybe I’ll make it for him and see what he thinks.

So that was breakfast.  Lunch was pretty uneventful, but I had some ideas for dinner.  My town’s Farmer’s Market started just recently, and I was able to stop there after work on Thursday.  I got really excited and bought a lot.  My prized purchase was a big bunch of kale.  I love kale, and I told the guy I bought it from how much I love kale.  He loves kale too.

I wanted to keep it pretty simple so I chopped it up, getting rid of the stems and parboiled it in salted water for about ten minutes or so.  I drained it once it had softened up a bit and set it aside while I cooked up some onion and garlic.  Then I added the kale to the pan with the onion and garlic, added in some white beans, ginger juice, tamari and some crushed red pepper.  And it was very tasty with some whole wheat couscous.  See!

I definitely have a kale supplier for the summer.  I’ll be making this again!

-Ellen

Okay, so I’m thinking this ended up being a cross between a curry and a daal. It had curry type ingredients but the split lentils made it all creamy like daal.

Either way, it was really good.

So, Bret took me to Wegmans the first time I went out there to visit him. Wegmans was the only fond memory I have from my college time in Geneseo. Well, that’s not true. But it’s a very fond memory and I wish they would spread to the Saratoga area but the Golubs have a tight hold on the area with their crappy Price Choppers. Whatever!

Anyway, while we were there I picked up things that I’ve had a hard time finding around here. One of those things was a big bag of split red lentils. But that bag’s been sitting in my kitchen cupboards ever since I bought it. I’m trying to use things that I have hanging around. So I decided on the lentils. I looked through recipes trying to get ideas and settled on making a curry with the lentils. And an eggplant. So here’s what I did.

Ingredients!

1 large onion, chopped as big or small as you like

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 1/2 cups water or veggie broth

1 cup (about) red lentils

1 eggplant, peeled and diced

2 Tbsp. red curry paste

salt and other things to taste

1/2 cup (about) coconut milk

Directions!

Cook the onion and garlic in a little oil or nonstick cooking spray until it’s soft. This is gonna take a rather large pan to fit everything. Once the onions and garlic are cooked, add the water or broth, lentils, curry paste and eggplant. Bring all of that to a boil, then let it simmer uncovered until the lentils are soft and mushy. Stir it around pretty often to make sure that nothing’s sticking and add more water if you need to. I probably didn’t need to, but I did, and I think that’s why it came out a little more like daal than anything else.

Taste it and add seasonings if you need to. I added some salt, a bit of curry powder, and a couple of shakes of cayenne.

Once the lentils are cooked and everything’s seasoned, add in the coconut milk and let it boil for about five minutes or so to thicken up.

Then eat!

I ate it with a little bit of whole wheat couscous, but I could have eaten it out of a bowl with nothing to accompany it. This makes a bunch, you could totally feed 4 - 6 people no problem.

Bret says he wants to learn how to make better curries and I doubt this helped him any but I think he’s pretty good at it already.

-Ellen

So, Vegan with a Vengeance is my favorite cookbook. I’ve cooked a crapload of recipes out of it and intend to cook a crapload more. I’ve been wanting to cook this recipe for awhile and finally got around to it. Ta-daa!

Yes, that’s marmalade-sized zest. It made it a little chunky, but still plenty good. I gave a bunch away, and ate one last night, one for breakfast, and I plan on eating the last one when I get home from work. Super-yum. I didn’t really know anything at all about scones until I got this cookbook and now they’re one of my favorite things to make for people I like.

-Bret

Ellen came to visit me over the weekend and I knew if I didn’t have food waiting for her she would punch me in the mouth. I wandered around the internets for awhile looking at recipes for inspiration and feeling out my own hungries for ideas, and decided that I wanted something that involved beans and barbecue sauce. Apparently in this country they call that “baked beans.” Oh and putting pineapple in there seemed like a good idea too, so I did that.

Ingredients!

2 cans of pinto beans

1 medium sized onion

1 8 oz. can of crushed pineapple

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1/3 cup barbecue sauce

Directions!

Directions? Oh! Just dump all that stuff into a kettle and cook it for a long while or put it in a pan and bake it for awhile or put it in a crock pot and let it cook for a good long time. That was easy! So, since that’s so simple you can make something else. Buy some cornbread mix and make cornbread muffins. Fold in one jalapeno and make it a little spicy. Yum!

Now Ellen won’t punch you in the face when she gets here!

-Bret

So I have nothing to blame my lack of posts on but complete laziness.  I’ve been cooking and eating, but not posting.  So it’s time to catch up.

Last week I was feeling like I should cook with things in my cabinets that I don’t touch as often as I should.  I settled on the almost full bag of quinoa that I had sitting around.  I really like quinoa.  But I hardly ever find myself in the mood to cook with it, or hardly ever find recipes that use it.  But I think I’m going to use it more often, because it is a great source of protein and fiber.

I based my recipe on a Weight Watcher’s recipe.  Before anyone stops reading, I’ve cooked Weight Watchers food for people before with no complaints.  I mean, diet-ish food doesn’t have to be chicken marinated in fat free salad dressing or whatever silly things people eat.

So I didn’t have everything I needed to make the recipe as it was written, and it was a warm dish and I wanted something cool, so I messed around with it a little bit and did this:

Ingredients!

2 cups water

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup quinoa, rinsed a whole bunch in a fine mesh sieve

1 Tbsp. olive oil

about 3 carrots, shredded

1/2 cup scallions, sliced

2 tsp. fresh ginger, chopped

1/2 cup pineapple juice

1/3 cup cilantro, chopped

Directions!

Bring the water and salt to a boil and add the quinoa.  Lower the heat and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes or so.  Drain off any leftover water if there is any.

While the quinoa’s cooking, heat the olive oil in a pan and add the carrots, ginger and scallions.  Cook them for a minute or so, just to soften up the carrots a bit.  Add in the quinoa and mix it all up.  Add in the pineapple juice and the cilantro and transfer to a bowl.   Eat it right then and there or let it sit in the fridge to get cold!

I got four good sized servings out of it.  And I added more than 1/3 cup of cilantro I think, I didn’t really measure.  So add less if you’re one of those weirdos that doesn’t like cilantro that much.

The original recipe called for orange juice, but I didn’t have oranges and had leftover pineapple juice from drinks that I had made.  So, use whatever juice you want!

- Ellen

Remember how I said I had money now and I was going to start cooking nice things and not just living on Big Lots’ jars of pickles and whatever I’ve had in the cupboard for the last year collecting dust? Okay, that didn’t really happen. I’m in a money squeeze, who knows when I’ll get out, and I haven’t been doing the best job of assembling real meals for myself. Lunch was shredded wheat and milk. Breakfast was shredded wheat and milk. Hmm.

But I have this bag of lentils, and Jeff won’t mind if I steal one of his onions, and oh I have some brown rice too. Holy crap! I can make mujadarrah! I discovered this recipe a long time back when I was in a similar low-budget situation with some random ingredients hanging around. Now, I don’t know if the way I make it resembles at all the authentic proper way of making it, but it tastes awesome.

I’m not going to give you a proper recipe because I was just winging it and there’s only a few ingredients but here’s what I did. I cooked a cup of brown rice and boiled a cup of lentils. In another pan I used some olive oil to fry up a whole sliced onion. Now, if I had it to do over again I’d use two. I cooked them until they were good and brown and some of the onions were even burnt a little. Then  I took the rice and the lentils, put it in the skillet with the onions, and mixed it all up while still frying it on medium heat. I added a little more oil at the end, stirred it, and then seasoned it with salt and pepper to taste. Whoops! I forgot the garlic. I added in a couple cloves of minced garlic at the end here and fried it for another minute to let that cook a little bit, but I probably should have added it towards the beginning after the onions were translucent.

Hey! That was easy! And it was really tasty too. Some recipes add in spices at the end like cumin. I thought about it and thought it tasted just great without.

-Bret