June 12, 2012
Today I made a miso noodle soup and pickled daikon and carrot salad, along with my usual kale and sweet potatoes.
The soup had red miso, water, a little veggie stock, wakame, shiitake mushrooms, tofu, edamame, shirataki noodles, soy sauce, crushed red peppers, green onions, toasted & black sesame seeds, and radishes, plus a little Sriracha. Not bad!
June 11, 2012
BBQ tofu today! Only one photo because I wasn’t really feeling it today. I didn’t really want to cook, and I wasn’t all that impressed with what I ended up with, although that barbecue sauce never seems to fail.
I tried a different dry rub, made with smoked salt, smoked paprika, mustard powder, and onion & garlic powders. It was REALLY good. The smoked paprika is turning out to be a really good ingredient to have around. I threw some in the sauce too, because why not?
I tried making sweet potato chips without oil today, because I’m trying to cook more healthfully and it really bums me out how many calories a little bit of oil can add to a meal. Whoops, should have gone ahead and used it anyway, they weren’t very good. The more you know.
Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood about cooking tomorrow. I have some brussels sprouts that are sitting around looking delicious and needing to be used.
Edit: here is the post with ingredients for the sauce, although there are no measurements. Basically you bring all the ingredients to a boil together and then simmer it for a long time. The tofu was covered in my dry rub and then baked, then cooked in the sauce in my wok. Pretty tasty!
June 7, 2012
Open face chickpea salad sandwich (based on this recipe but with less Vegenaise, more celery, and some smoked Spanish paprika), red quinoa, sweet potato chips, and steamed kale.
The chickpea salad tastes a LOT like tuna salad, only better. I wasn’t expecting it so it was a nice surprise.
June 5, 2012
This is what happens when I want a “healthy meal.” Sesame portobello steak, stir “fried” (no oil) shirataki noodles, sweet potatoes, and steamed kale.
The portobello caps were roasted at 375° in Organicville sesame teriyaki sauce (my favorite, gluten free and made with agave), Bragg’s, and rice vinegar.
I cooked the noodles with tamari, rice vinegar, mirin, and five spice. I usually get the tofu shirataki noodles, but they were out so my boyfriend got the regular non-tofu kind. They are a slightly weirder consistency than the others, but they pick up flavor really well.
I used a little sunflower oil with the sweet potatoes, but that’s it! I’m getting a lot better at not relying on it. I will never stop loving sunflower oil, though.
June 4, 2012
Seitan roulade with oyster and porcini mushrooms and tempeh, sweet potatoes, black quinoa, and kale, with mushroom gravy.
The seitan did not go entirely according to plan (next time I will definitely get some string and tie it closed), but everything tasted good. It was made from vital wheat gluten flour and veggie stock and marinated in soy sauce, and the filling was the mushrooms and tempeh with yellow onion and spices.
The gravy was awesome. Mushroom stock (from reconstituting my dried porcini mushrooms), veggie stock, nutritional yeast, whole wheat flour, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder.
Anyway, I’ll try this again with a few lessons learned. Hopefully it’ll be more successful next time.
May 31, 2012
Mango miso tofu steak with mango & avocado, Israeli couscous with garlic, pine nuts, olives, and Turkish apricots, steamed kale, roasted asparagus with smoked salt.
The tofu was marinated in (& basted with) a mix of veggie broth, red miso, mango vinegar, and pink Hawaiian salt, and baked at 350°. I made this up as I went along and it turned out pretty tasty.
The couscous was toasted in olive oil for a bit and then cooked. It’s so tasty, even though I could have done a better job seasoning it. I also probably won’t use pine nuts in it again. Meh.
My newest ingredients here are the smoked salt, which is amazing, and the mango vinegar, which is mind blowing. That’s a picture of it at the bottom. I’m kind of addicted to interesting and expensive ingredients. Help!
May 29, 2012
Vegan crunchwrap supreme! Ricky really wanted a crunchwrap, so I made him one. Also, by the way, these tasted EXACTLY how we remember them. I also made “cheesy” fiesta potatoes in keeping with the Taco Bell theme.
If you read this blog regularly, you know this is NOT my typical style of cooking, but I’ll admit these were pretty awesome.
Here’s what you need:
- Giant flour tortillas
- tostada shells
- vegan “ground beef” style taco filling
- vegan sour cream
- vegan nacho cheese (which I made using flour, almond milk, nutritional yeast, salt, garlic and onion powder, paprika, cumin, shredded Follow Your Heart cheddar, and some Daiya cheddar (because FYH didn’t work as well as I had remembered).
- diced tomatoes
- shredded lettuce
Here’s how you layer it in the tortilla: taco filling, nacho cheese, tostada, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream. Then fold it up and toss it face down onto a VERY hot skillet. The longer it’s on there, the less crunchy the tostada shell will be. Flip it and do the other side for a minute too.
Too bad Taco Bell doesn’t serve kale as a side. Then theirs might be almost as good as mine.
May 27, 2012
Forgot to post my dinner from last night. I felt like something light and didn’t feel like cooking really, so this was a super easy way to go.
This is lemon garlic orzo by Flour City pasta, with baby spinach and grape tomatoes, tossed in olive oil and lemon juice, with pink salt and pepper. Not much else to say besides that, but it was pretty good. Their pasta is pretty much all amazing.
May 25, 2012
Chipotle black bean tofu scramble, homemade corn tortillas, cumin & paprika sweet potatoes, steamed kale. You can tell it’s good when your face sweats and your nose runs while you eat. SPICY.
The scramble had half a yellow onion, a clove of garlic, a block of tofu, nutritional yeast, chipotle peppers, the leftovers of my pupusa filling from yesterday, Field Roast Mexican Chipotle sausage, grape tomatoes, paprika, cumin, turmeric, and salt. And then adobo and green onions on top.
The tortillas are just masa harina and water.
So spicy. So good.
May 24, 2012
Tonight I made black bean pupusas and chipotle sweet potato soup! This meal was ridiculously good. Pupusas are a little time consuming, but not difficult, and they’re pretty fun to make. For those unfamiliar, they are basically stuffed corn tortillas.
I had never made them before, so I used this recipe. If you try that recipe, ADD SALT. I added it in the dough and the filling, and I’m really glad I did. Without it they would have been way too bland. I also put Daiya inside some of them.
The soup I made was based off this, but I used maple syrup instead of honey. There are no amounts on that recipe, but I used one biggish sweet potato, one avocado, two cloves of garlic, three or four chipotle peppers, and the rest I just eyeballed.
Try these recipes. They are delicious.
May 22, 2012
Seared tofu a l’orange with roasted broccolini, plus spinach salad with lemon-garlic whole wheat couscous and sauteed mushrooms and red onions!
The sauce did not work out well, so I don’t have a recipe to recommend. It was supposed to take about 45 minutes to reduce, but at the rate it was going it would have taken hours, so I had to make do with a thinnish but tasty sauce.
Searing tofu is fun. A tiny bit of oil in a really hot pan + tofu slice + a few minutes = seared goodness. I marinated it first in some Bragg’s, veggie broth, liquid smoke, orange juice, and maple syrup. Sounds weird, actually good.
Anyway, I want to try this again, because it definitely had potential.
May 21, 2012
I’m back from San Francisco and I made some polenta! Creamy polenta, to be specific, with sauteed kale, mushrooms (portabella and oyster), and red onions. Plus some roasted carrots and asparagus, and frisee.
Polenta is so easy and tasty. I used a cup of cornmeal, two cups of unsweetened coconut milk (the kind you drink, although the canned kind would make it a lot more rich), a cup and a half of water, a few pinches of salt, and some ground pepper. Bring all these things to a boil while stirring with a fork, and then put the burner on low and let it simmer and thicken (stir it sometimes). This didn’t take long at all for me, and I had other things cooking, so I turned the burner off and then when I was ready for it, I added a little more coconut milk and heated it up again. I stirred in a bit of Earth Balance at the end.
For the rest, I sautéed some red onions in sunflower oil and red wine vinegar. Once they were pretty floppy, I added my sliced mushrooms and a little more oil, and let those get tender. Then I added the kale and some minced garlic, then some vegetable broth and a little more red wine vinegar and rosemary and salt, and let it cook for a bit. It could not have been more tasty.
By the way, my trip to SF was amazing, and is pretty well documented here (lots of vegan eating). I haven’t quite finished posting about the trip yet but I will soon. Farewell!
May 10, 2012
Okay, well, I’m not gone yet, so here’s another meal. Baby portobellos marinated in Balsamic and stuffed with my homemade cashew cheese (and then baked) & microgreens, with fried sweet potato wedges (fried in my wok in sunflower oil, tossed in apple cider vinegar with pink sea salt), steamed kale, and spinach salad with sautéed garlic, pine nuts, and truffle couscous.
Tomorrow we’re probably just having Field Roast hot dogs again, so this is seriously probably the last photo until I’m back from SF. But once again, I’ll be back, and hopefully inspired from all the fancy vegan eating we’ll be doing.
May 9, 2012
Dinner! Sesame tofu (with homemade sesame sauce, peppers, celery and edamame), roasted portobello, stir fried shirataki noodles, steamed kale, spring rolls (with sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, baby spinach, and radishes).
The sesame sauce was awesome. I used a little less than a cup of brown sugar (I know, gross), a half cup of water, a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce, a little more than that of white vinegar, minced garlic, about a tablespoon and a half of sesame oil, and some sriracha and crushed red peppers. Once that was boiling, I added a slurry of 1/4 cup cornstarch to 1/2 cup water, and then simmered the sauce for a while. So yummy.
So next week myself and my man-pal are headed to San Francisco! Which means I am not going to be cooking. I may post stuff about my trip on my Denver Vegan tumblr, but since this is strictly a homemade food blog, it’s unlikely there will be anything to post. Never fear, don’t unfollow me, I will be back with lots of ideas!
May 8, 2012
I got a little overexcited about my cashew cheese (I mean, it’s REALLY good) and forgot to post my slightly-less-exciting meal from tonight.
We finally got up to the big Whole Foods this past weekend and got some Field Roast franks, and boy, I was not at all prepared for how good they were. We ate them with semi-caramelized red onions, mustard, and dill relish, plus steamed red kale, baby spinach, and salt and vinegar sweet potato chips (apple cider vinegar and pink Hawaiian salt).
So it’s not as homemade as most of the meals I like to post, but Field Roast deserves some recognition for making something so incredibly tasty.
