Vegan Punks in the Kitchen

Thanksgiving 2010!

2010-11-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

I can't believe Thanksgiving is over. It didn't even feel like Thanksgiving on the day. It just kind of felt like I cooked a lot of food and then it was over and done with. Anyways, I cooked pretty much the same things I do every year, but that's what makes it special, right?

We had:

-Two Tofurkys. One marinated in a bottle of sparkling apple cider, garlic, and fresh poultry herbs and the other was basted in the soy sauce mixture on the box.

-Stuffing

-Canned cranberry sauce

-Mashed sweet potatoes with Ricemellow creme topping

-Green bean casserole

-Mashed potatoes

-Garlic cheddar biscuits

-Poinsettia cocktails

-and store bought rolls

Here's my plate. Yum!

The stuffing was made with an organic bagged mix and I added sauteed carrots, onions, and celery, lots of veggie broth, and then baked it until the top was brown.

The sweet potatoes were baked in a 350 degree oven for a little over an hour, peeled, and mashed with brown sugar, Earth Balance, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Then I transferred them to the oven to warm them up, then topped them with Ricemellow Creme and baked them until the Ricemellow turned brown and bubbly.

For the green bean casserole, I used this recipe and the only thing I changed was adding a package of sliced, sauteed mushrooms. This was the first time trying this recipe and it was really good! The sauce isn't white like traditional green bean casserole, so I got scared, but it tastes amazing.

The mashed potatoes were just potatoes cubed and boiled until fork tender and then mashed with Earth Balance, almond milk, and salt and pepper.

For the garlic cheddar biscuits, I use this recipe and for the herbs I add poultry herbs and garlic powder, and then stir in Diaya cheddar cheese at the end. Then I drop them on to a pan, sprinkle more Daiya cheddar, and bake.

Then for the poinsettia cocktails, I mixed equal parts of pink champagne and cranberry juice. I just turned 21 on the 20th, so I had no idea how to buy champagne, but the pink champagne ended up being yummy and the cocktail turned out great!

Now on to dessert:

Pumpkin Cheesecake and Pecan pie

For some reason the pecan pie fell apart when I tried to cut it into slices. I think I should have baked it longer, but it still tasted really really good!

The pumpkin cheesecake was this recipe. It's the second time I've made it and it was just as delicious as the first time! The only difference is that I used a graham cracker crust instead of chocolate.

For the pecan pie I used this recipe. I've been making it for a while now for Thanksgiving and Christmas and it's really easy and delicious. I would recommend it to anyone.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!

VeganMoFo Day 9: Pomegranates

2010-11-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

I love pomegranate juice. It's a little tart and a little sweet and really good for you. But every time I saw a whole pomegranate at the store, I felt intimidated and didn't know how to cut into it or get the little seeds out. In case someone doesn't know, the only edible part of the pomegranate are the little seeds and the juicy fleshy stuff encasing the seeds called arils. I finally figured out the best way to open up a pomegranate and get the delicious juicy seeds out of it. It seems like a lot of work, and it is, but the seeds are delicious! I'll show you step by step how to get them out.

What you'll need:

A bowl of water that is big enough to hold all of your pomegranate seeds
A sharp knife
A strainer

Step 1:

Cut the top off of the pomegranate about 1-1 1/2 inch down.

Step 2:

When you cut the top off, you'll see little sections with seeds. You want to cut into the pomegranate between each of the sections like the picture shows. Not all the way through, but deep enough so you can pull each section off. Be careful of the juice, it stains!

Step 3:

After you pull a section off, it should look like this. Its easiest to work with one section at a time, so pull one off, and set the rest of it off to the side.

Step 4:

Now you'll want to start pushing all of the seeds out of the white stuff. If the white stuff gets in the bowl, it's fine because it floats and the seeds sink. Try to get all of the white parts off of each seed, only the seed is tasty!

Step 5:

Now you'll have a bowl full of sunken seeds and floating white stuff. You want to get a slotted spoon and scoop off all of the white stuff and then pour the remaining seeds into a strainer in the sink. Make sure all of the white parts are out of your seeds in the strainer.

Step 6:

Now you have these beautiful red beauties! They're all ready to either eat by themselves or combine into any recipe that calls for pomegranate seeds. I like to eat the entire thing, though the seed is a little hard and crunchy. My mom likes to just put the seed in her mouth until the sweet juicy fruit is gone and spit out the seed. Whatever you like!

VeganMoFo Day 8: More Thanksgiving Plans

2010-11-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

I like to plan ahead because if I have to rush to do something, I get really stressed out and feel like I can't enjoy what I'm doing. I love cooking so I definitely want to enjoy it and not have to rush. I decided to share my Thanksgiving plans with you because I don't have much else to talk about and I know I like reading about other people's plans.

Appitizers:

Sweet Dinner Rolls from VegNews' new Holiday Cookbook. This cookbook has some great recipes and it's only $8, so I really recommend it! (These will also be a side)

Holiday Biscuits from VegNews' Holiday Cookbook. I kind of want to make both, but that might be too much bread...

Black olives out of a can. We have always had olives at Thanksgiving, so it just seems natural.

Main Dish:

Tofurky roast marinated in a mixture of one bottle of sparkling apple or pear juice, 2 tbsp olive oil, 4 cloves of garlic, and a bunch of fresh poultry herbs. You marinate it in a baggie in the fridge for two days.

We might have another Tofurky cooked with the box directions too. Depends on our financial situation when we get to that point.

Sides:

Biscuits or rolls from above

Traditional stuffing. For this, we buy organic stuffing mix which is really just bread cubes and seasoning. And then we mix it together with onions, celery, carrots, and broth. Then bake it until it's hot and crispy on top. I've tried doing fancy stuffings and adding things like apples or cranberries, and I really just like traditional.

Garlic mashed potatoes with chives.

Green bean casserole. I usually use this recipe, but I've heard this one is good as well.

Sweet potato pie casserole. I made this last year and it was so good, but Whole Foods just started carrying Dandies, so I might make sweet potato casserole with dandies instead. Not sure yet, again it comes down to financial situations.

I might make macaroni and cheese with Daiya because it's so freakin' good, but we might have too much food already. Maybe I'll save the mac until Christmas.

Desserts:

Pecan pie! I love this recipe so much, it's easy and delicious!

I might try out the Pumpkin Praline Cheesecake from the VegNews Holiday Cookbook, but if not, we'll have either pumpkin pie or pumpkin cheesecake. I still haven't made a good pumpkin pie, anyone have a good recipe? Mine is always either too watery or too chalky.

Drinks:

I'm going to be 21 by Thanksgiving (Yay!) so I want to try out a Poinsettia Cocktail, which is just cranberry juice cocktail and champagne. It sounds yummy. ;)

Hot apple cider

What are your plans??

Vegan MoFo Day 6: Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

2010-11-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

I have seen a lot of vegan people on Twitter lately talking about how they hate Thanksgiving and that they will not be celebrating. While I understand the boycotting of the holiday because of the torture of animals and humans, I will not boycott the holiday because celebrating it for different reasons can end up opening peoples eyes about the real meaning. I say that I am celebrating ThanksLIVING which celebrates veganism, healthy foods, turkeys, and family.

Anyways, on to what this post is about, getting ready for Thanksgiving. In the past I have made the same things each year, which is fine and it all tastes good, but it gets boring to photograph and talk about. So this year I am looking for some new recipes and ideas. I've been looking around and I'll share with you some great sites and recipes that I am considering and that might help you too!

First is the 2009 Thanksgiving post from one of my really good friends, Andrea. She is amazing and always comes up with the best food ideas. Her pictures are gorgeous and her Thanksgiving looks so good!! - Very Vegan Holiday Thanksgiving

Next is the Thanksgiving page from VegWeb. Whenever I need a recipe, I always look to VegWeb because every recipe has reviews and you can almost always find a great recipe from there. - VegWeb Let's Talk Tofurky!

I don't know why, but I never posted my Thanksgiving from last year. I uploaded the pictured to Flickr, but never posted them. But, I think last years Thanksgiving was pretty good. The only thing I didn't like was the potato rolls, if anyone has made them, please tell me how to make them better. They were really heavy and gooey. - My Thanksgiving posts and my '09 Thanksgiving pictures

Vegan Dad always has some awesome recipes on his blog, and these two in particular seem great for Thanksgiving. They're a little different than your normal desserts - Pumpkin custard and Chocolate pumpkin pudding cake

Other than that, one big tip I can give you for Thanksgiving is that if you marinate your Tofurky for two days in sparkling apple cider, garlic, and herbs, it is AMAZING. I make it this way every Thanksgiving and it is so good.

VeganMoFo Day 5: Lasagna

2010-11-05T17:01:00.000-07:00

I've only had lasagna twice since I became vegan over two years ago. I didn't really enjoy vegan lasagna because I didn't like tofu very much and the ricotta I made was mostly tofu. Since Daiya vegan cheese has come out, I really wanted to make a lasagna with it. It's stretchy and gooey, and I thought it would make the perfect lasagna. Well, the other night, I decided to make one. And let me tell you, it was one of the best lasagnas I have ever had. Vegan or non-vegan.

Delicious cheese lasagna

Ingredients:

1 box of no boil lasagna noodles (You can use the boiling kind, but this is easier and tastes better to me)
1 jar of tomato sauce
1 bag of mozzarella Daiya cheese
1 tub of extra firm tofu
2 tbsp non-dairy milk
2 tsp Italian seasoning (more if you want it more season-y)
10 basil leaves, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 c nutritional yeast
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Drain and mash tofu in a large bowl
Add non-dairy milk, seasoning, basil, garlic, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper. Mash well
Cover entire bottom of a deep square dish with tomato sauce
Lay down lasagna noodles to cover whole bottom
Spread a portion of ricotta cheese over layer of noodles
Sprinkle with Daiya cheese and cover that with more tomato sauce
Repeat layers until all of your ricotta mixture is gone and you have enough Daiya left to cover the top
After the last layer, add one more layer of noodles and cover them with sauce, then sprinkle the cheese over the whole top.
Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes
Uncover and bake for another 20-30 minutes until the noodles are soft and cheese is all melted.

I know the directions aren't very technical, but this lasagna is delicious! You can add veggies or faux meat to this as well.

Vegan MoFo Day 3: Cheesecake

2010-11-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

I can never make a good vegan cheesecake. I have seen so many people write about how delicious their vegan cheesecakes were and I thought to myself "Either you like a sweet pie shaped chunk of tofu, or I'm crazy!" Needless to say, every time I made cheesecake, it would just taste like tofu/soy. I never made cheesecake for any non-vegans because I knew they would think it was disgusting and write off all vegan food. I decided to try out a new PUMPKIN cheesecake recipe I modified a bit. I've tried two different pumpkin cheesecake recipes in the past, but I can definitely say that I now see what people are talking about when they rave about their vegan cheesecakes! This one is so creamy and delicious that you can't tell it's vegan at all!!

Pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate cookie crust (I made it for our Halloween party. :))

Pumpkin cheesecake

Ingredients:

1 package firm silken tofu (12.3 oz)
8 oz. nondairy cream cheese (1 tub of Tofutti)
1 c canned pumpkin
1 c granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. flour
1⁄2 tsp. ground ginger
1⁄2 tsp. nutmeg
1 1⁄2 tsp. cinnamon
1⁄8 tsp. salt
1⁄4 tsp. baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Puree all ingredients in blender or food processor and pour the mixture into the prepared crust (A recipe for chocolate cookie crust follows, but you can use just a graham cracker crust if you want.)
Bake cheesecake for 50 minutes.
Cool for about an hour and then cover and place in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours, best overnight.

Chocolate cookie crust

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c chocolate cookie crumbs (I used cat shaped vegan cookies from Trader Joe's, but you can use Joe Joe's, Oreo's, Newman O's, etc. It takes about 20-30 sandwich cookies WITHOUT filling.)
6 tbsp. melted Earth Balance

Directions:

Grind up cookies in food processor to make 1 1/2 c
Melt Earth Balance and combine with crumbs
Press crumbs into pie plate
Bake for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees

VeganMoFo Day 2: Cupcakes!

2010-11-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

Since vegan cupcakes won the hearts of the judges on Cupcake Wars, they have been quite popular. A local coffee shop here in Arizona was actually on Cupcake Wars too, called The Coffee Shop, and they actually won!! Well, recently I was informed that they too are now offering vegan cupcakes! Two people, Jenna and Bobby, have formed a little business called Cruelty Free Cupcakes and they are offering them at The Coffee Shop. I was excited to see the variety in their cupcake menu since all we had around here was Sprinkles cupcakes who offer plain (BUT DELICIOUS!) red velvet cupcakes. The menu includes, but is not limited to:

Red Velvet
Chocolate with Chocolate Buttercream
Chocolate Coconut
German Chocolate
Chocolate Raspberry Truffle
Chocolate Sundae
Mint Chocolate Oreo
Carrot Cake
Vanilla Bean
Pina Colada
Almond Joy
Maple
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip
Strawberry Cheesecake
Raspberry Lemon
Fruit Loop
Toffee Nut

My Grandma was nice enough to pick us up two cupcakes the other day from The Coffee Shop&Cruelty Free Cupcakes. She picked us up Rocky Road and Gingerbread.

Rock Road Cupcake

This is the Rocky Road cupcake. It was a chocolate cupcake with white frosting, almonds, chocolate syrup, and vegan marshmallows. (Dandies, I assume. :P) It was great! The cake is really moist and flavorful, and the frosting was really good. A lot of vegan frostings can just taste like a gob of Earth Balance, but this was really good.

Gingerbread Cupcake

This cupcake was delicious and adorable. It was a gingerbread cupcake with white frosting, a little gingerbread man, and edible glitter! I love the glitter added to it since I always see non-vegan cupcakes with the glitter and get sad because I can't have any. Anyways, this cupcake was so delicious too! It was moist, again, and the frosting was just right. The cake was a little spicy and a little sweet, just like gingerbread should be.

Then tonight we went back for more! I guess today was the vegan bakers day off, so there weren't many vegan cupcakes left. So we got the last gingerbread and then a rainbow sherbet! I was excited to try the sherbet one because the frosting is a few different colors swirled together with edible glitter on top!

Gingerbread cupcake (again) and Rainbow Sherbet cupcake

The picture doesn't do the rainbow sherbet cupcake justice, because the frosting is super bright and multi-colored. The picture isn't great because all I had was my cell phone, and I needed to devour the cakes immediately. Anyways, I already talked about the gingerbread, but the rainbow sherbet was really yummy. The cake was (I think) lightly flavored with orange, and the frosting tasted like cherry and another fruit. I don't really know what all the flavors were, but it was perfectly fruity and delicious! And again, the frosting did not taste like vegan butter.

I am so glad I found Cruelty Free Cupcakes and I can't wait to eat more!!

Link to coffee shop: The Coffee Shop AZ

Link to Cruelty Free Cupcakes: CrueltyFreeCake on Twitter

Link to Cupcake Wars: Cupcake Wars on Food Network

First day of Autumn 2010!

2010-09-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, September 23rd, was the official first day of Autumn. Autumn and Winter are my two favorite seasons, so when they approach, I get so excited! I usually cook something for the first day of Autumn each year, and this year was no different. I wanted something with pumpkin, and immidiately thought of sweets. But then as I was browsing around recipes, I found a lot of pumpkin pasta recipes. Yum!! So I decided to make this:

Penne with pumpkin and sage sauce

I found the original recipe on Food Network's website by Rachael Ray, but I veganized/changed it a bit!

Ingredients:

1 pound whole wheat penne pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
4 shallots, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1 15 oz can of pumpkin puree
1/2 c to 1 c of pasta cooking water (you want to get it the consistency of a sauce, so add what you need.)
1/2 c non-dairy cream or milk (I used almond milk)
1 tsp of hot sauce
a pinch of nutmeg
two pinches of cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
8 sage leaves, sliced, plus more for garnish

Directions:

Boil water for pasta, salt, and cook pasta to al dente.
While pasta is boiling, heat your oil over medium heat and add your chopped shallots and garlic.
Cook the shallots and garlic until soft, about 3 minutes.
Add pumpkin, water, and cream or milk and stir to combine. Add more water or cream/milk if the sauce isn't thin enough for your liking.
Stir in hot sauce, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste.
Simmer over medium heat until thickened and well combined.
Stir in sage.
Add pasta to sauce and toss to combine.

This was really delicious and so easy to make! It remnded me of mac 'n cheese a little bit, but with a twist.

Anyways, happy Autumn, and hopefully you'll see more Autumn recipes from me soon!

Beef Stroganoff

2010-08-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

I was craving beef stroganoff like no other. My mom used to make it when I was little and it was one of my favorite meals. I did a little research online of traditional stroganoff recipes and I came up with this!

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp oil
1 medium onion, diced.
1 large container of mushrooms, sliced (You can add as many as you like. I like a lot.)
1 bag of Gardein beef tips or 1 pound of setian cut into chunks
2 cups cream of mushroom soup (Imagine brand is vegan)
1/2 of a container of vegan sour cream (I use Tofutti.)
A couple dashes of vegan Worcestershire sauce
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 pound of any pasta you like (I used whole wheat rotini.)

Directions:
Heat a large pan on medium heat and add oil. When the oil is hot, add your onion and cook until slightly brown. After the onion is brown, add the mushrooms and cook until all the water is gone. Then add the beef tips or seitan and cook until browned. Then add the soup and sour cream and bring to a simmer. Add the Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper and simmer for 20 minutes so all of the flavors can combine. When the sauce is done, you can either mix it all with the pasta, or serve it over the pasta. I mix mine all together.

4th of July BBQ

2010-07-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, Pom Wonderful sent me a sample box of their delicious 100% pomegranate juice to try out in some recipes. It took me a while to get the time to test some recipes out, but what I came up with was totally worth it!!

I decided to try out some recipes to have on 4th of July. What I came up with was smokey pomegranate BBQ sauce and pomegranate limeade cupcakes. Both were amazing with the addition of tart pomegranate juice.

Grilled Gardein chik'n with pomegranate BBQ sauce and homemade pasta salad

Pomegranate BBQ sauce
Ingredients:

1 c Pom 100% pomegranate juice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tbsp ketchup
1-1.5 tbsp molasses
2 tsp of your favorite hot sauce
2 tsp liquid smoke
1 tbsp agave nectar
Salt to taste

Directions:

Combine all of the ingredients together in a sauce pan
Let simmer and thicken about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally
Once thickened, brush on your favorite food and grill!

Next up, we have these:

Pomegranate limeade cupcakes

For the cake
Ingredients:

2 1/8 c unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/8 c sugar
1/2 c oil
3/4 c non-dairy milk (I use almond)
3/4 c limeade
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lime
Juice of 1 lime

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and have about 20 muffin cups ready
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.
In another bowl, combine sugar, oil, non-dairy milk, limeade, vanilla, zest, and juice and mix well.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and make sure everything is mixed really well.
Fill each muffin cup about 1/4 of the way full and bake for 15-20 mins or until brown and a tooth pick comes out clean.
Let cool.

Pomegranate buttercream frosting
Ingredients:

3 3/4 c powdered sugar
1/2 c non-dairy margarine softened (I like Earth Balance soy free)
4 tbsp pomegranate juice
A couple drops of red food coloring (This is optional, but without it, the frosting is kind of brown and not pretty.)

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients together in a large bowl.
Beat on medium speed until it starts becoming fluffy and thick
Add more sugar or juice as needed to achieve a thick fluffy frosting
Frost cupcakes!

These cupcakes are amazing. They were a huge hit with non-vegans and tasted like a little bite of summer!

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and a great summer to come!

We can't say it's cheese!!

2010-04-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

(Sorry I haven't updated in forever, I want to start again!)

Anyways, today I bring you something incredible! We went to Whole Foods Market in Chandler and we hadn't been there in a few months, so there was so much new stuff! We saw Daiya in it's retail package (It's $5.99 for 8 oz is anyone wanted to know, I wanted to know.), we saw the new Gardein Trio meals, which look great, the So Delicious coconut milk in the new quart boxes, Amy's delicious new macaroni and Daiya cheese (SOOOOO good by the way, but over 500 calories. Eek.) and finally we found these:

They are Wayfare Foods "We can't say it's cheese". We saw these, and we were like "WHAT ARE THESE?" There is a Hickory-Smoked Cheddar-Style Spread, Cheddar-Style Spread, Cheddar-Style Dip, and Mexi Cheddar-Style Dip. We decided to try the:

Hickory-smoked spread and the Mexi cheddar dip. We got some organic wheat crackers to try them with. First, we'll start with the Hickory-smoked spread:
This stuff is delicious!! It's a nice firm spread that goes great with crackers. It has a great smokey flavor and a nice sharp cheddar taste. This really reminded me of the smoked cheddar from the booths in the mall at Christmas time that I loved in my omni days. It's seriously good. Soy free, wheat free, and dairy free, and made out of oatmeal! It doesn't have any weird fake cheese taste and I would recommend it to anyone who likes/liked the taste of a smoked cheddar cheese.

Next we tried the mexi style cheddar dip:
This one wasn't AS good because I think I like the texture of the spread better. The dip is thick, but is thinner than the spread obviously. The flavor of this was a little strange, at first I couldn't put my finger on it. But then I thought of it! I don't know if anyone has ever had the frozen meal called "Rockin tacos" but it tastes very similar to the filling of the little taco pockets in that frozen meal. (I used to eat them all the time as an omni...) It's not really spicy at all, but it has a mexican flavor. I prefer the spread, but this is pretty good too.

After trying those two, I really want to try the other two! The next time we go to Whole Foods, I'm definitely getting more.

Teese!

2010-03-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

So, the Chicago Soydairy was doing something awesome a little while ago. They were giving away free Teese to bloggers who would create something unique instead of just pizza or pasta. I decided to go for the challenge and I requested creamy cheddar and nacho Teese. Here is what I made:

Vegan party potatoes

Ingredients (You can double this for a good sized casserole, this recipe fed two adults as a meal):

1 1lb bag of cubed hash browns with peppers and onions (Potatoes o'brian)
1/4 c non-dairy butter
1/2 a medium onion, diced
4 oz non-dairy sour cream
1 package of Teese creamy cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Topping:

1 c cornflakes
1/4 c melted non-dairy butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Melt 1/4 c non-dairy butter in a large pan
Add the hash browns and onion and cook until onions are transparant and potatoes are no longer frozen.
Add the sour cream and Teese and combine everything together.
Transfer the whole mixture to a square baking dish.
Combine cornflakes and the other 1/4 c of melted butter and sprinkle over the top.
Bake for 20-30 minutes or until brown and heated through.

Vegan Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas

Ingredients:

4 large wheat tortillas
1 package of faux chicken cut into cubes. (I used the Trader Joes generic chicken strips, but you can use Morningstar Farms or Gardein.)
1/2 of a medium onion
Half of a container of non-dairy sour cream.
1 package of nacho cheddar Teese
1 small can of green chilies
1 tsp garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small can of green enchilada sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Brown faux chicken in a little bit of oil.
Add the onion and cook until the onion is translucent.
Add the can of green chilies and cook for about 2 minutes.
Add the Teese, Sour cream, garlic powder, and salt and pepper. Heat through.
Cover the bottom of a square baking pan in enchilada sauce and dip the tortillas in the sauce.
Add the filling to the tortillas and roll into enchiladas in the pan.
If there is any extra filling, just pour it over the top, or save it for something else.
Pour the rest of the green enchilada sauce over the top.
Bake for 30-40 mins or until everything is bubbly and brown.

Steaz zero calorie review

2010-01-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

To start with our new diet, I decided we should get some diet soda. Most diet soda is not vegan due to artificial sweeteners being tested on animals. And besides that, everyone knows artificial sweeteners are horrible for you! We don't drink soda that often, maybe one can a day (of NATURAL soda) if that. But then we found the new Steaz zero calorie sparkling green tea! It's sweetened naturally, has no calories, and is certified vegan!!

First off, all of the sodas have a little bit of a diet-y taste. I haven't had diet soda in so long that it's a little bit weird, but not bad. If you're used to diet, then it'll be great for you, because it's a very mild diet taste.

Black Cherry: This one has a really pleasant black cherry flavor. It's not too strong, which is good, and not too sweet. Really good, but not my favorite of the bunch.

Orange: This has a great orange smell, seriously. It's really good. It's really refreshing and citrusy. For a diet orange soda, it's great.

Blueberry pomegranate: This one is my favorite. I love anything pomegranate, and this does not disappoint. It's tart but sweet from the blueberry. It's a great diet flavor because it's so flavorful that you hardly notice it's diet!

Raspberry: This one is really good as well. It's the first one we tried, and at first, I was like... eh this is ok. But then after a few more drinks I loved it! It has a very subtle but sweet raspberry flavor and tastes great. This is another favorite.

Overall-all of the sodas are really good. For a diet, VEGAN, soda, these are really awesome. I would definitely recommend these to anyone. I also highly recommend any other Steaz soda or tea. They are an awesome company with great quality products. Everything I have tried from them is delicious and vegan. So go get some!

Christmas!

2009-12-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have updated, oops, sorry!! I have been kind of busy with my parents moving and stuff. They have a nice kitchen and brand new appliances, so they are being really weird with me cooking in their kitchen. So I haven't been cooking very much... I did cook some for Christmas though.

Sugar cookies with simple powdered sugar icing

I got this recipe from VegWeb. They are the best vegan sugar cookies I have ever tried!! They are buttery and really delish!

For the icing, I just put powdered sugar in a bowl and added enough water to make a thin-ish paste. Then I added food coloring gel.

Next is our Christmas dinner!

We had Tofurky with the basting liquid that's on the box, garlic mashed potatoes with Punk Rock Chickpea gravy from VWAV, garlic biscuits, stuffing, green bean casserole, and mac and cheese.

Everything was so good, but I particularly loved the mac and cheese.

I used a pretty simple recipe for it, and it turned out very yummy!

Macaroni and cheese with Daiya

-1lb elbow pasta (or whatever shape you like. I used wheat)
-1 tbsp Earth Balance
-1 tbsp flour
-2 c rice milk (or whatever milk you like)
-1-2 cups Daiya (I don't know how much I used I just dumped a container in that was about 1/2lb)
-Some extra Daiya cheese to sprinkle on top

1.Cook pasta according to the box directions. You can under cook it just a little if you don't want the noodles too mushy.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Melt the Earth Balance in a medium pan, then add the flour to create a roux. Cook it a little until it's a light brown so the flour taste cooks out.
4. Add in the cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Stir until the cheese is melted and thick.
5. Combine the noodles and cheese sauce and pour into a baking dish.
6. Sprinkle more cheese on top and bake for about 35 minutes or until the top is browned.

I also made pecan pie for Christmas, which was so good, but didn't set right. I don't think I cooked it long enough. So, no pictures.

That's about it for now. We are starting a healthier diet after the 1st, so expect some healthy stuff soon!

Thanksgiving is coming!!

2009-11-13T18:47:00.000-08:00

So, next Thursday, I'm leaving for Disneyland. I'm looking forward to Veggie chili at California Adventure and Veggie Gumbo in Disneyland. I also love their veggie burger for some reason...

Then the Thursday after that is Thanksgiving!! I'm making so much food that I will probably explode. But it's ok.

Menu:

Two Tofurkys marinated in sparkling apple cider, garlic, olive oil, and fresh poultry herbs
Cheddar garlic biscuits
Potato rolls
Roasted garlic and chive mashed potatoes
Tofurky giblet gravy
Stuffing
Green bean casserole
Sweet potatoes with two different toppings - Pecans and Ricemellow creme
Organic canned cranberry sauce
Pecan pie
Pumpkin pie

I like leftovers a lot. And... we eat a lot.

What are you having?!

Halloween

2009-11-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

Um, hi. I failed at MoFo. But here, have some Halloween food pictures!!

Pumpkin chocolate chip cake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World with some frosting that I pretty much made up.

For the frosting, I wanted to make buttercream, but I didn;t have a half cup of Earth Balance. So I dumped what earth balance I had in a bowl with Silk creamer, mixed it, then dumped half a container of cream cheeze in and mixed, then added powdered sugar until it looked good. Oh, and some vanilla. The sad thing is, it was like the best frosting I have ever made. Hah.

Ladies fingers and men's toes! These are from Martha Stewart's website. The only thing that isn't vegan is the eggwash and I just didn't brush them with anything. They browned just fine. (These are DELICIOUS by the way. They are like soft pretzels.)

Mini jack-o-lantern pizzas. These have Daiya cheese, faux pepperoni, and black olives.

Peanut butter cups!

2009-10-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

If anyone has been reading my blog since last Halloween, you should remember my really cute pumpkin peanut butter cups! Well, I made them again this year, and they were just as good. I thought I'd do a little tutorial, in case anyone else wants to make them as well. It's pretty easy... but maybe not everyone knows how to make them!

Peanut butter Cups

Ingredients:

1 cup natural creamy peanut butter (My favorite is MaraNatha organic.)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
1/4 tsp salt
12 paper muffin cups or a mold of your choice
Oil for greasing if you're using a mold (I have never used paper muffin cups, so I don't know if you need to oil them or not...)

Ok, let's start with the mold and chocolate chips:

I got my silicon mold from Micheal's last year. It's Wilton brand, and of course this year they have a cuter one. The one this year has different faces for the pumpkins. I also used Trader Joe's chocolate chips because they are cheap, and it looks to me like they're vegan. (if there is something I'm missing, let me know.)

So then we melt all of the chocolate chips in the microwave. I did it for 1min on 50% power, stirred it up, then another minute on 50% power. It melted perfectly:

After you're done melting the chocolate, you need to cover the whole bottom and sides of the mold or paper muffin cup. The easiest way to cover the mold would probably be with a new clean paint brush, but I didn't have one, so I smeared it around with a spoon. It doesn't look that pretty, but it works. Just make sure to get chocolate into every detail.

After that's done, you have to put them in the freezer for like 30mins or until they are hard. When you're waiting for that, you can measure out your peanut butter and mix it with the powdered sugar and salt. It's best to add a little powdered sugar at a time and get it worked in. It might seem like it won't mix, but it will!

Right before you take the chocolate out of the freezer, heat the peanut butter mixture in the microwave. I did it for 30secs and it was thin enough to be able to spoon in the molds. Take the molds out and fill them with the peanut butter, make sure to leave enough room at the top for the rest of the chocolate, though.

I left a little too much room... but it was ok.

After filling them with peanut butter, I would recommend freezing them again until the peanut butter is pretty hard. I didn't, and it was pretty hard to spread the chocolate on top because the peanut butter was too soupy.

When the peanut butter is firm enough, spread the rest of the chocolate on top of the molds, and freeze for about an hour!

Then, when they're done, pop them out, and there you go!!

Pretty easy!

BIG... VEGAN?

2009-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Jacob kept talking about how much he wanted a double veggie burger. I usually don't eat "double" anything, but he seemed to really be craving it. So we went shopping yesterday for the stuff to make a double veggie burger dinner. While we were shopping, I decided we needed to make some vegan thousand island dressing for it, and we needed some cheese, and some lettuce... pretty soon we had:

Two all vegan patties, special Vegan sauce, lettuce, daiya cheese, pickles, onions, all on an organic onion bun!

Hahaa. I hate...THAT fast food restaurant, I really do, but this WAS SO GOOD. I used Gardenburger Flame Grilled burgers and Daiya cheese. I made the Thousand Island by mixing (Reduced fat!) Vegenaise with ketchup and sweet relish.

I'm not kidding when I say this was probably the best veggie burger I have ever had. There is no excuse to buy cruelty filled burgers with this baby around!

Oh... and there are spicy sweet potato fries on the side.

:(

2009-10-21T02:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, I have been really bad about VeganMoFo, but we have been really low on money and we hardly cook. We have just been eating pasta, tofu, and oatmeal. Nothing good to blog about at all. I'll still be posting, but I probably shouldn't have signed up to participate this year. :(

The holiday season is among us!

2009-10-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

I went to Walmart tonight looking for a plain black zip up hoodie (It's harder to find than you would know. I finally found one in the men's department of Target for $10.99! In case you were wondering...) Anyways. Every time I go to Walmart, I look in the dairy department to see if they have SilkNog yet. Jacob yelled at me tonight, saying they weren't going to have it yet. But then! I proved him wrong! They had SilkNog!!!

Well, I just wanted to make this post to let everyone know that I found SilkNog ALREADY at Walmart. It deserved it's own post.

Cell-nique Review

2009-10-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

I was dog sitting this past weekend for some people who are pretty wealthy and live in a beautiful house about 5 minutes from Whole Foods Market. Needless to say, I spent a lot of money and visited WF all three days we were there. We got some delicious store made hummus with tofu in it, Cranberry and stuffing Tofurky slices, and local organic apple cider one night (before we saw Paranormal Activity at 1:15AM... Good movie, by the way.) Then we went on the last day we were there and I saw a green drink I had never seen before called "Cell-nique" There were some pretty appealing flavors and the ingredients were super healthy AND organic.

Look at all of those healthy ingredients!!

I got the Tropical Fruit flavor. Citrus Vanilla sounded good too, but I decided tropical fruit would probably mask the "green flavor" better.

It has the typical green juice color, which is a little scary, but I usually like green juices.

Well, I was wrong. Yes. It's healthy. NO it does NOT taste good. I smelled it first, as I do with everything, and it smelled like tropical fruit and a little bit like grass. But then I tasted it, and it was like grassy, fruity, metal tasting, powdery juice. It was SO chalky. I shook it up like crazy after I tasted it, to try and get the clumps mixed in. It did not work!

I drank the whole thing, because it was healthy, AND it was 4 freaking dollars for the bottle. But the end of it was the worse. It was CHUNKY with grassy tasting stuff.

I don't know if the other flavors are better, and if anyone has tried them, and they are, tell me. But I would much rather just make my own green juice and eat some sprouts rather than drink this.

Meatloaf

2009-10-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

I found some really adorable mini loaf pans at Michael's for $1, so I had to buy some! I have 4 now, all together. I got one with pumpkins on it last year, and then this year- one with squirrels, an orange one and an adorable black one with skulls!

Jacob and I decided it would really great to make mini "meat"loaves in them, so that's what we did!

"Mystery Meatloaf", Mashed BOOtatoes, and Slimy squash!

The bootatoes look kind of dumb because the ketchup eyes and mouth soaked in really fast. But, you get the idea!

The meatloaf recipe I use is amazing. It turns out a little moist, but it tastes really good. I love it!

Vegan Meatloaf

Ingredients:

1/2 cup walnuts
2 Tbsp olive oil
One onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
Two carrots, peeled and grated (Or diced if you like it chunky, which I do.)
Two celery ribs, diced
One cup mushrooms, cleaned and chopped
1 package of silken firm tofu
1 cup dry whole wheat bread crumbs
1 heaping Tbsp flaxseed meal
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp Worcester sauce (If you can find a vegan one, if not, leave it out.)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400º. Grease a loaf pan or 8x8 pan.

Grind walnuts into a coarse meal using whatever you like to use to grind (I use my Magic Bullet!). Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Saute all your veggies in oil until they are soft. Once soft, add to the bowl with walnuts and add your tofu. Squish it all together until it's combined. Then add the bread crumbs, nutritional yeast, and flaxseed meal and combine. Add in the soy sauce and Worcester sauce and mix well. If it seems to dry, you can add more of either sauce or vegetable broth. I add more sauce because I like it pretty salty. Then add your seasonings and make sure everything is well combined.

Press mixture into the pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until cooked through.

When it's pretty brown on top, it should be done! This recipe is very easy, and allows you to really throw in whatever veggies, seasonings, and sauces you want!

I hope you're not sick of Halloween food yet. It has just begun!!

More Pumpkin!!

2009-10-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

I told you I love pumpkin. :) This time, it is pumpkin enchiladas!!

I found this recipe through Andrea, who got it from the wonderful Martha Stewart. I veganized the recipe with tofu instead of chicken and Daiya cheddar instead of regular cheddar.

Spicy Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce

Ingredients:

Serves 4

1lb extra firm tofu, cubed
about 4 medium sized golden roasting potatoes, cubed in the same size as tofu
1-2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp oil
6 scallions, thinly sliced
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 15 oz can pumpkin puree
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 jalapeno, quartered (remove ribs and seeds for less heat, I kept half of the seeds and ribs and it was just the right spice.)
1 teaspoon chili powder
8 corn tortillas (6-inch)
1 1/2 cups grated vegan cheese of your choice (I used Daiya)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine tofu, potatoes, oil, thyme, salt and pepper. Toss to cover potatoes and tofu in oil and seasonings. Lay out flat on baking sheet and bake until potatoes are tender. When tender, take out and combine with scallions.
In a blender, puree pumpkin, garlic, jalapeno, chili powder, 2 1/2 cups water, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper until smooth. Cover the bottom of an 8-inch square baking pan in sauce.
Dip tortilla in sauce, place in dish, and fill with the tofu potato mixture. Roll it up and place it seam side down in baking dish. (I found dipping the corn tortilla in sauce first made it much easier to roll and keep closed.)
Pour remaining sauce on top; sprinkle with cheese. Place dish on a baking sheet; bake until cheese is golden and sauce is bubbling, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

These are delicious!! My VERY non-vegan mom even loved them! This is my first time cooking something savory with pumpkin, and it was a great success. I highly recommend them.

First pumpkin food of October!

2009-10-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

Halloween is one of my favorite Holidays (Christmas and Halloween are pretty tied... oh, and Thanksgiving.) so I love making spooky pumpkin foods all through October.

The movie Trick 'r Treat came out today, which I have been waiting for for nearly 3 years, so I had to make something special to eat while Jacob and I watched it.

Pumpkin Spice Cutout Cookies!

I got the recipe from somewhere online, but I don't remember where. I changed a couple of things from the original recipe:

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup of softened margarine (Make sure it's not TOO soft. I made this mistake and had kind of gooey dough.)

Replacement for one egg

1 tsp vanilla

4 heaping spoonfuls of pumpkin puree

2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

3 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg,vanilla, and pumpkin, mix well.

Mix together dry ingredients and add slowly to butter mixture, making sure it all gets mixed in.

On floured surface roll out to desired thickness, I'd say kinda thin if you want them crispy and thicker if you want them cakey. Cut into shapes and bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.

That's it! They turn out pretty soft and yummy. I prefer them with either frosting or dipping them in milk.

Mac 'n Cheese, Please!

2009-10-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

I have used the same vegan cheese sauce for Mac 'n cheese since I became vegan. It's basically nutritional yeast, flour, water, spices. It's really good and really easy to make. But then I saw the recipe that VegNews had. They said it was the best vegan mac 'n cheese they had ever had. I wanted to try it, but with VegNews recipes, they're pretty hit or miss. I have tried two of their other recipes, one for tortillas and one for spinach dip. The tortillas were dry powdery disks and the spinach dip was bland tofu and spinach blended together. Not good. But I decided, what the heck, and tried this recipe.

One word: AWESOME!!

I sent some with Jacob to work and when he got to eat it, he text me and said "This mac n cheese owns." :D

I of course melted some Italian Daiya on top. Mmm.

Here is the recipe. It's a little time consuming and messy, but totally worth it. It makes a really thick, creamy, cheesy sauce.

I hate to say it, but I think I like it better than my old nutritional yeast stand-by.

Coconut MoFo

2009-10-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

So today, I would like to share a few reviews on So Delicious coconut milk products.

First, we have So Delicious Purely Decadent Coconut Milk Frozen Dessert. The flavor I had was cookie dough:

(Obviously not my picture, I forgot to take pictures of any of the products... Ooops.)

Anyways, this ice cream is amazing. It's creamy, a little coconutty, and the cookie dough is just like I remember it being in dairy ice cream. There are also flakes of chocolate in it which in my opinion, are better than the big hard chunks that were in dairy cookie dough ice cream. My favorite part about this ice cream is that since it's not soy, it doesn't taste like soy! Soy ice cream is good, but has that soy aftertaste that most soy products have. I don't hate the aftertaste, but I'd rather not have it.

Verdict: Awesome ice cream that is a must have!

Next, we have So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk Beverage in Vanilla:

I heard a lot of good things about this non-dairy milk, so I really wanted to try it. But it's pretty expensive. I can get the same size Almond Breeze almond milk for half the price. Well, I found it on sale so i decided to try it. First, I just tried it by itself. Very disappointing. It tastes like watered down canned coconut milk. It's not very sweet, not thick, and not delicious like I was hoping for. I tried it again in cereal and again, did not like it. Still watery and doesn't taste like much.

Verdict: Not worth the money, in my opinion. My boyfriend didn't like it either, so it wasn't just me. :(

Next, So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer in Original:

(Couldn't find a picture, sorry!! But it looks just like the pints of Silk creamer.)

This is pretty good. It tastes a lot like the coconut milk beverage, but it's a little thicker and more rich. I tried it by itself and then tried it in some organic coffee. It's not as sweet as I would like, but it would be good for people who just want a hint of coconut and some creamy coffee.

Verdict: Pretty good, but again, not sweet enough for me. It would be good for people who like just plain creamer in their coffee or tea.

Last, I will review So Delicious Coconut Creamer in Hazelnut:

Now this is good!! It's really sweet, nutty, and rich. I tried it alone and it tasted a lot like flavored dairy creamer I used to drink (I think, anyways... Haven't had it in so long!) I had it in my organic chai tea this morning and it made it nice and sweet and a little thick. Jacob had it in his coffee and added a little Stevia, but it was plenty sweet for me.

Verdict: This one is worth the money! It is rick and creamy just like creamer should be. Yum!

That concludes my reviews for today's MoFo. My favorite of all the coconut products I have tried would have to be the ice cream. I hope to try more flavors in the future!

FIRST MOFO!!

2009-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Well, right now it's Midnight in AZ, so here is my first VeganMoFo post!

So the topic today is the AMAZING new vegan cheese called Daiya!

We found it the other day at Whole Foods packaged in small containers that were like $2.00 each. We bought four containers. Two cheddar, and two "Italian" which is basically Mozzarella flavored.

We decided on making a pizza that night with it. We wanted a simple pizza so we could actually taste the cheese and not just toppings. So the pizza was red sauce, fresh spinach, yellow VEGANIC tomatoes, and garlic. Then we used both kinds of cheese. It only took half of each container for both of our pizzas so we still have 1 1/2 containers of both left! Yay!!

So we pulled them out of the oven, and they looked SO awesome. The cheese was oozing, melting, stretching, everything! I couldn't believe my eyes. See for yourself!

So did it taste as good as it looked? Answer: YES!!!

It was kind of creamy, kind of sticky, kind of firm, and a very good flavor! I haven't liked vegan cheeses too much because they all taste like soy. But there is no soy in Daiya, so it tastes really good. Even by itself, it has a salty cheesy flavor.

Bottom line: BUY IT. ASAP. :D

VeganMoFo III! (2009)

2009-09-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

It's that time again!! VeganMoFo time! If you don't know what VeganMoFo is, take a look over here. I will be participating in it again this year. Last year, I wasn't that great at getting a post up every day, but I'm hoping I will this year! I'm really glad it's in October, because pumpkin foods are my favorite, and this will give me an excuse to abuse pumpkin recipes. :D

Let me know if you are doing VeganMoFo too, and I will follow you, or add you to my links if you want... or whatever.

Sorry

2009-09-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting lately.

I just started going back to college for this semester and it's a little overwhelming right now. There is so much to do compared to last semester. Last semester was so easy, but this semester we have more homework, blah blah.

I haven't been cooking many blog worthy things. Just throwing things together that I have already posted numerous times. And I'm trying to lose weight, so I haven't been making any baked stuff or anything, either.

Hopefully closer to October I will be posting more since holidays are my favorite and all my holidays revolve around food. :D

I want fall to come immediately.

2009-08-09T16:56:00.000-07:00

I have been longing for fall lately. Fall items are showing up in stores everywhere and I want crisp cool air!

So I made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

These babies are good! They are like little cake balls, almost! I used a modified version of this recipe. I used applesauce instead of egg replacer and a little less shortening. No big deal. But so delicious!

I don't really have anything else to show. We have been having juice every morning/afternoon and it's so refreshing and energizing! And makes me pee a lot. Haha. We've been having apple, orange, carrot, spinach, ginger. Today we threw in a tomato. Yum!

Mmm cake.

2009-07-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

My mom went to Super Target, and came home with a new Amy's chocolate cake. It's vegan, organic, and frozen.

At first, I thought it wasn't going to be very good, considering sometimes frozen cake is dry. But I was wrong! It was really moist, very chocolatey, and just really good. It was $3.99 and we got 6 slices out of it, so it's pretty worth it.

Then, I decided to try and make the General Tao's Tofu recipe again from VegWeb. Last time I made it, the sauce didn't turn out right. It didn't really taste like... anything. So I made it again, this time taking more time to measure everything and make sure I was doing it right. It came out great! I doubled the sauce because everyone said to that commented on the recipe, and they're right.

On the side is coconut rice. It is essential, in my opinion.

And now, we have grilled food! Veggie dogs were all on sale for 50% off at Whole Foods a couple weeks ago, so we bought two packages of Tofurky dogs. One chipotle and one original. The chipotle ones are so good. A little spicy, and good texture. I like the Tofurky dogs better than Smart dogs or Tofu Pups because they seem kind of rubbery and mushy, but Tofurky is different.

Tofurky dogs with veggie kabobs that Jacob was too impatient to cook all the way.

I'm HOPING to make some pumpkin chooclate chip cookies soon. I'm craving them. Mmm.

4th of July and stuff

2009-07-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

A lot of food stuff has come up lately! I promised Jacob a birthday breakfast and cupcakes.

S'more pancakes. Pancakes with graham crackers in the batter, chocolate chips, ricemellow creme, and another pancake on top. With another dollop of ricemellow, chocolate chips, and graham cracker crumb.

Red velvet cupcakes. Half with buttercream frosting and half with cream cheese icing.

I had one problem with these. I searched for a vegan food coloring and found one, but it was pink. I figured if I added a lot of it that it would turn them red. Well, I had to add the whole bottle of food coloring. It still wasn't red enough and tasted really bitter from the dye. When frosted, you really couldn't tell they were bitter. But still. I wasn't very happy with them. Plus, I wanted to frost them prettier, but Jacob's mom rushed me and I got mad. But I will say one thing: I like Follow your Heart cream cheese MUCH better than Tofutti. It has more.. tang.

And yeah, he had a pirate birthday party for his 20th. :)

Then we had the 4th of July. I wanted something summery and something that wouldn't heat up the house too much.

Chipotle BBQ seitan with onions, peppers, and vegenaise on an onion bun. On the side is potato salad and corn on the cob with roasted garlic butter.

And then, since I had leftover buttercream and chocolate chips, I made MORE cupcakes. But this time I just made 6 so I wouldn't eat too many...

Peanut butter chocolate chip cupcakes with buttercream and chocolate chips on top.

I have eaten WAY too much in the past week. So don't expect too many fancy things in the near future.

French toast

2009-06-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Well, Vegan Brunch has been out for a little while. I don't have the extra money to get it yet, though I am planning on it. So I decided to try one of the recipes posted on ThePPK. Pumpkin French Toast!

I added sugar to the custard because we didn't have any syrup. I didn't want it to be too bland. I thought I would love it since I love french toast and I LOVE all things pumpkin. Well, I wasn't TOO crazy about it. I don't know what it was. The flavor just wasn't too great to me. Maybe it was because I only had half the amount of cinnamon (WHO RUNS OUT OF CINNAMON? Me. :() or because I added nutmeg instead of cloves because I didn't have any. I really don't know. Someone give me faith that this recipe is good enough to try again!

Sweet sweet peanut butter

2009-06-20T15:13:00.001-07:00

I'm really updating to tell you about the most delicious peanut butter in existance. It would be Peanut Butter & Co.'s White Chocolate Wonderful. It is certified vegan and is amazing. I got it at Super Target, so hopefully everyone else can find it around them. Yumyum!!

And since I'm already here, I'll post a new picture.

I have a very summery dinner here:

Chickpea tacos on blue corn taco shells. Inside are chickpeas cooked in the liquid from one can and an organic fish taco seasoning packet. It was vegan, and it was zesty. Then there are tomatoes, onions, pineapple, guacamole, and a little Teese.

Hopefully there will be more to come. I'm planning cupcakes for Jacob's birthday on the 3rd and something yum for the 4th!

Lazy days

2009-05-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

Ah, summer. No school or work, so being lazy takes up my days. I have also been cooking a little bit here and there.

I have actually made a couple things with no recipes! Haha. I usually depend on recipes because I don't feel like I have good enough cooking skills to just cook without recipes. But here are the few things I have cooked without any recipes.

We have a chili lime refried bean burrito with cheese sauce, onions, and red sauce. On the side is chipotle brown rice and avocado slices.

Here is the thing I'm most proud of. Stuffed shells! I made the ricotta filling all by myself and it was better than any I have made from a recipe. Mmm.

A tofu veggie pot pie with a turkey cut out!

Here is the inside. It was carrots, peas, corn, green beans, potatoes, and super firm tofu. Then a chicken-y type gravy.

Homemade pizza is the best. This one had jalapenos (which Jacob and I both took off because they were the spiciest jalapenos I have ever had. I almost cried.), baby spinach, onions, mushrooms, black olives, tomatoes, and a little sprinkle of soy blue cheese. All on whole wheat crust.

Well, there we have it. All my recipe-less food! I'm quite proud. :D

New stuff

2009-04-24T15:20:00.001-07:00

Yay, I'm posting!

We've been pretty broke, again, so I hardly cook anything worth posting. We eat lots of rice, beans, veggie burgers, and salads. Boring!

I made a pretty good dinner for Easter, even though we don't really celebrate it.

Field Roast Celebration roast, garlic mashed red skin potatoes, green beans, roasted veggies and Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from VWaV.

I really regret never making the punk rock chickpea gravy! I always passed it by saying "Oh, I'll just get powdered gravy mix." NEVER AGAIN. It's so much better than that powdered crap. Only thing is, I put too much lemon juice in. It was a tad bit... lemony. But other than that, it was yum.

Oh, and I found the best tofu ever. I have been trying to cook tofu for years, and I have always hated it. It was too mushy, and just bleh. But I have found it. The secret to all of the firm delicious tofu I have had is right here: VACUUM PACKED WILDWOOD SUPER FIRM TOFU.

Why didn't anyone ever tell me that it is the best tofu in the entire world? I was eating it just pan fried with nothing else on it, and I was happy. I usually have to smother my tofu in something before I like it, but I finally found my love.

Now I really LOVE tofu. I crave it. Oh man.

Speaking of the tofu, here are some things I have made with it:

Tofu "chicken" nuggets with roasted sweet potatoes.

These nuggets are so easy! Just cube some tofu, dip them in water, then in some whole wheat bread crumbs seasoned with poultry seasoning, garlic powder, and salt and pepper, then put them in the oven at 350 degrees for 25-30 mins or until they're brown.

And then

Orange tofu with pineapple and peas over brown rice.

One last thing. I WON A PACKAGE OF TEESE.

I was so excited, because for one, I never win anything, and two, I LOVE TEESE.

They had a contest on Twitter. Submit a picture of something you made with Teese. I submitted my Philly Cheezesteak (seen below), and won!

I picked creamy cheddar. Oh man.

OMG CHEEZE.

2009-03-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

So, in case anyone out there lives under a rock, Teese is the new greatest cheeze on the planet.

I just bought the new nacho "sauce" and let me tell you, best thing ever. Melt it in a pan, pour it over just about everything, and inhale. It's a little spicy, but not much. It has the best flavor. I really can't recommend it enough.

Here it is melting in a pan. It even has that orange grease that regular cheese has when it melts.

I made one thing with it so far, and it was amazing.

Philly Cheezesteak made with faux roast beef, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. I topped it with the nacho Teese and had it on roasted garlic bread. On the side are some oven fries with more Teese sauce. Heaven.

I'm making my next meal with it tomorrow night. Mmm.

Also, The Chicago SoyDairy Co. Has some new MARSHMALLOWS. I need them. Right away. So someone please start selling them!!!

Wow

2009-02-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

I am the most horrible blogger around. I wanted to start this blog because I wanted to meet fellow vegans. But I don't get any comments and no one really reads this, so I lost motivation.

But, I'm bored, and here are some pictures of food!

Here are my BEAUTIFUL Valentine's day chocolates from foodfightgrocery.com. They're made by Rose City Chocolatier, which I highly recommend.

Then here are some Asian dumplings inspired by Vegan Dad. They were pretty good, but the dough wasn't great. On the side is brown rice with sauteed mushrooms. And my pretty new chopsticks.

Um, wow. I guess that's it. I blame my lack of pictures on lack of money and free chipotle burritos.

Christmas... is over

2009-01-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

It's so hard to believe that Christmas is over already. This year, it did not seem like Christmas at all. Very very lame.

I had a good one though. Got everything I wanted, including my first laptop. Yay. And a reusable bottle and Brita water filter. Oh and Vegan Cupcakes take over the world!

I made some pretty good food. Have a look:

We had Celebration roast, gravy, organic cranberry jelly, garlic cheddar biscuits, corn bread stuffing, regular herbed stuffing, and garlic mashed potatoes.

We had pumpkin pie too, but I didn't make it myself. I got it out of a box. Hahaha.

Pretty sure I have gained like 10 pounds. Time to cook yummy healthy meals!

Very, very late Thanksgiving.

2008-12-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

I have been so busy lately I really haven't had a chance to post about Thanksgiving. We went to Disneyland the day after Thanksgiving, and then I had Christmas shopping to do, and now I'm watching my 2 month old niece.

Anyways, here was all the food. Yes, it was only for two people...

I made everything I said I would in my last post. My camera died, so I didn't get good pictures of the pumpkin cheesecake. It decided to only be one layer instead of two... Then my mom insisted I use her really old metal pan to cook my stuffing in, and well, the bottom had some weird reaction, and the whole bottom of the stuffing turned greyish black and tasted like chemicals. Ugh. So I plan on making a feast similar to this for Christmas. So that for one, I can have more stuffing, and for two, I love pigging out. :D

Oh, and Disneyland wasn't very hard to be vegan in. I had fruit, vegetarian chili in a delicious bread bowl, vegan gumbo, veggie burrito, Mmm. The Jamba Juice at Downtown Disney also had some new prepackaged sandwiches and salads and two of them said VEGAN on the front! Yay! Oh, and if you ever come across a Flying J rest stop, the chocolate chip cookies they make there are accidentally vegan and SO GOOD. They're really soft and 99 cents each.

I made some really yummy soup tonight because I'm sick. I'll have to tell you about it some other time.

More Thanksgiving

2008-11-24T19:51:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is only 3 days away! I'm not sure if I have ever been this excited for Thanksgiving. The reason I am this year, is because I am cooking EVERYTHING. At first, I was like, "This will be a piece of cake!" but now I'm a little nervous about cooking so much food. Here is my menu, anyone have any tips for making it easier on myself?

-Two tofurkys. One marinated in sparkling apple juice, garlic, olive oil, and herbs. The other just basted with the soy sauce mixture on the tofurky box.
-Dumplings that come with tofurky feast.
-Gravy that comes with tofurky feast.
-Extra gravy.
-Garlic mashed potatoes with chives.
-Traditional stuffing.
-Organic cranberry sauce from a can.
-Biscuits made with nutritional yeast and herbs.
-Green bean casserole.
-Mashed sweet potatoes with ricemallow cream on top.
-Double layer pumpkin cheesecake.

I know I'm going to make the cheesecake the night before, but other than that, I don't know. Haha.

All I can say, is that I want all this food NOW.

What are you making?

Mmm, scramble!

2008-11-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

I love tofu scramble. It's so easy, and you can throw in anything you want.

Tofu scramble with onions, mushrooms, green squash, and carrots. On the side are some delicious organic hash browns.

Oh also! Tomorrow is my birthday!!! YAY! I'll be 19.

Thanksliving

2008-11-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

We went to Green last night for dinner, which was awesome, I got a meatball sandwich, Jacob got a Mexicali burger. We shared. OH and Buffalo wings. Mmm. And... I had a smores tsoynami and Jacob has a Black and tan... Anyways. I saw a bunch of posters with amazingly cute turkeys (Does anyone else think turkeys are CUTE? Everyone is telling me I'm crazy and thay they're not very appealing. :( ) And it was for their first ever Thanksliving. The only thing I don't like about it, is that it's actually on Thanksgiving. I would have loved if it was like the weekend before or something. I mean, Thanksgiving is kind of a time to spend with my family, and to cook for myself, so I don't want to go. I WANT to go, but not ON thanksgiving. DAMN YOU. And I don't think we can afford to go, anyways. But still. There's actually a neat event happening HERE, where there is never anything, and I can't go.

On a happier note, I made some english muffin pizzas a while ago. Before Halloween actaully, but never posted them.

On Ezekiel english muffins with FYH Mozz. and Pepperoni.

I LOVE FYH. And that's one thing I don't like about Green now. They use Teese on everything that used to have FYH mozz. I liked FHY so much better. :(

Homemade bread

2008-11-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

I have never made bread in my life, and I'm so sorry that I haven't.

I made this REALLY easy bread that only needs flour, water, oil, salt and yeast. And it was so much better than store bought white bread. Plus, no animal products snuck in under weird names!

We ate it warm with Earth Balance. Best smelling and tasting thing ever.

Oh, and I promised I would show you my Halloween peanut butter cups, so here they are!!

They were HUGE. I could hardly eat the whole thing. But oh so good. Like a Reese's, only better, and more festive!

So, what are you guys making for Thanksgiving? I still need to plan my menu. Mmm. A FEAST!

The end

2008-11-02T19:26:00.000-08:00

I missed the last two days of VeganMoFo! But I didn't have anything to post. :(

These last couple of days, I have just been eating frozen burritos and Amy's dinners.

I made some pumpkin shaped vegan peanut butter cups. but never uploaded the picture. Oops. They were amazingly delicious though.

I just wanted to post to say sorry, and if you have read my blog through VeganMoFo, please comment so that I can add you to my links and we can still read eachothers non mofo posts. :D

VeganMoFo day 29: Pumpkin seeds

2008-10-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate when you look forward to a recipe, and get all excited, just to be disappointed in the end? Well, that's what happened with this recipe.

Pumpkin seed crusted tofu with roasted pumpkin and organic jellied cranberry sauce.

The recipe is from VWAV, and looked amazing. Well, I have never had roasted pumpkin by itself, so I didn't really know how to eat it. That's probably why I wasn't too fond of it. I just put some salt on it and ate it like that. It was OK, but I'd rather have it in a muffin or cookie... Then the tofu was a bit of a disappointment too. It had ok flavor, but it wasn't the best, and felt like too much work just for that. The organic cranberry sauce was good though. But it came from a can and didn't have high fructose corn syrup like the others. so...

So, how do you eat roasted pumpkin? Anything yummy on top? I might give it another chance... someday. Hah.

VeganMoFo day 27: Brunch

2008-10-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't had brunch in a long time. But I decided that it was time to have something yummy and filling in the middle of the day!

Delicious biscuits with Road's End golden gravy and Lightlife sausage.

I know it was really easy to make, but really, it was so good. I haven't has biscuits and gravy since I was just vegetarian, and I haven't had GOOD biscuits and gravy since I was an omni. So this really hit the spot!

Then, last night we did some Halloween-y stuff. Like we listened to Halloween music, carved pumpkins, made spinach dip, and Jacob made mac n' cheeze! This was his first time cooking all by himself as a vegan, and he did wonderfully! I took a picture of it on our cute Halloween plates, but the lighting was so crappy, it just looked like lumpy gray stuff. So just imagine it. It was delicious.

VeganMoFo is almost over. I'm very sad. :(

VeganMoFo day 24: Cookies

2008-10-24T17:55:00.000-07:00

I can't lie, I love cookies. I will stuff almost any kind of cookie in my mouth. Plus, cookies are just so easy to make. You don't have to assemble them, they usually don't need many ingredients, and they're usually cheap.

That's why this year, I plan on making cookie tins for Christmas. Probably just for the people I don't know what to get or don't feel like spending much money on. (haha!) These cookies right here, are definitely going into those tins!!

Sparkled Ginger Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance

These cookies have a nice bite from the ginger, but not too much. Almost like plain sugar cookies with a little spice. I didn't have any coarse sugar, so I just used regular, and it seemed to work out alright. They are deliciously crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. They are just... AMAZING!!

I can't wait to make these and eat them by the Christmas tree with soy nog, while listening to some old fashioned Christmas carols!

So the moral of that story is, MAKE THE DAMN COOKIES NOW. :D!

VeganMoFo day 23: Garlic!

2008-10-23T16:06:00.000-07:00

I like garlic. A lot. So I decided to make the White Bean and Roasted Garlic soup from VWAV. It has two whole heads of roasted garlic along with almost 2 cups of onions. Mmm.

It looks a little disgusting, but it tasted good! It said to blend it in a blender or food processor, but I didn't want to dirty them, so I used an immersion blender for the first time!! I didn't even know we had one until I looked in the back of a cabinet one day. It was successful. It wasn't completely pureed, but that's ok with me.

My only complaint would be that it only made enough for 2 and a half bowls. It said it served 6, but maybe we eat more than the average human. I don't know.

Then, the other night, we roasted acorn squash for the first time! We both agreed that this winter, we need to try more squash. The only squash I have had are pumpkins, green/Italian, and yellow. My dad told me acorn squash is the best, so I picked that one to roast first.

The picture looks pretty lame, but I assure you, it's amazing. All Jacob has at his house are paper plates. His mom is too lazy to do dishes...

Anyways the way I made it was I covered the insides in Earth Balance (of course, after trying to pry the damn thing open...) then I added about a tbsp of brown sugar, then a tsp of cinnamon, then a tbsp of apple cider. I roasted it for about an hour, and it was delicious. Jacob commented saying it tasted like candy.

I will definitely have acorn squash again!

VeganMoFo day 22: Potpie heaven

2008-10-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am in love with potpies. They are the perfect cold weather meal, really. You can throw anything into a pot, cook it a little, and fill delicious pie crust with it. The crust is my favorite part.

So I decided to attempt a potpie recipe all by myself. I didn't follow any recipes! Woo!

There are carrots, peas, potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, white beans, and chickpeas inside. It was more than delicious! And cute, with my little acorn.

I have actually never made pie crust before this, and it wasn't that hard. I used oil instead of shortening because I don't have any shortening and didn't want to use all my Earth Balance.

VeganMoFo day 19: Scramble

2008-10-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

We're pretty much broke again, so I'm not going to be making anything great for the next week. We went shopping at Whole Foods so that I could get the Republic of Tea Hot Apple Cider tea before it sold out. I haven't tried it yet, but I was dreaming of it since last week when I saw it there... Anyways, we stopped at Trader Joes on the way home to see if they had any apple cider that I wanted. They had some, so I got it. We rarely go to TJ, so I took my time looking around. I found the soy chorizo that is only $1.99, and HAD to get it. I also got some tortillas. DINNER!

We had tofu scramble!

Tofu scramble with soy chorizo, potatoes, and onions. All in a tortilla.

I know scrambles never look good photographed, but it was really good, so I had to.

My dad loves real chorizo, so my mom told him to try our scramble. He argued and argued, and finally my mom brought him a small plate of it. After sitting on his desk for about 10 minutes, he finally tried it. After he ate it, he came in the kitchen and said "That was really good. It tastes like regular chorizo." YAY! He actually TRIED tofu for once! Whenever I make vegan baked goods, he is always "scared" to try them, but then eats it all. For telling me how deprived I am of food, he sure does eat a lot of the food I'm deprived of..

I want pumpkin pie. Now. Thanks.

VeganMoFo day 16: Survey

2008-10-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

I haven't cooked anything new yet because all the recipes I had for this week require tofu. I had three packages in the fridge, but they expired and I didn't realize it. So, I'm glad that Jess of Get Sconed made this lovely survey.

1. What was the most recent tea you drank?: Organic "Just for Kids" Nighty Night tea. It wasn't very good. At all. But I bought it because it was on clearance.

2. What vegan forms do you post/lurk on? If so, what is your username? Spill!: Sometimes I'm on the PPK forums as crusty.cupcake. I don't really post anywhere else, besides livejournal, and my username on there is vomitxx

3. You have to have tofu for dinner, and it has be an Italian dish. What comes to mind first?: Lasagna Rollups! Yum.

4. How many vegan blogs do you read on an average day?: I would have to say about 8-10. I have a bunch that I LOVE bookmarked, which I read every day. But the others I read are from the VeganMoFo feed.

5. Besides your own, what is the most recent one you’ve read?: Get sconed!

6. If you could hang out with a vegan blogger that you haven’t met, who would it be, and what would you do?: I'm really shy and I just started blogging not too long ago. So I'm not very close to any bloggers. It would be weird saying I want to hang out with people I don't even talk to!

7. If you had to base your dinners for a week around one of the holy trilogy – tofu, seitan or tempeh, which would it be?: Tofu. You can even make dessert with tofu. So yeah.

8. If you had to use one in a fight, which would it be?: A huge chunk of seitan. It's rubbery so it won't break like tempeh or tofu.

9. Name 3 meals you’d realistically make with that tough protein of choice!: Country fried seitan, Seitan roast, Seitan jambalaya.

10. What’s a recipe in vegan blogland that you’ve been eyeing?: The Pumpkin Spice Sweet Rolls from Vegan Dad. Anything from Vegan Dad looks amazing, but these feature my favorite ingredient: Pumpkin!

11. Do you own any clothing with vegan messages/brands on them?: Yep. I have the Vegan shirt, A Compassion Over Killing logo sweatshirt (They don't sell it anymore, so I can't find a picture.), And the Compassion Over Killing dog shirt.

12. Have you made your pilgrimage to the 'vegan mecca' yet? (Portland, duh): Not yet, but I do plan on it sometime.

13. What age did you first go vegan? Did it stick?: I decided to be vegan when I was 16, but it was on and off. I wouldn't bake or cook with eggs or milk, and wouldn't drink milk straight up, but I would eat cheese and other stuff. I became vegan for good March 10th of this year. I have had small mistakes, like when eating out, but nothing too big.

14. What is the worst vegan meal you’ve had? Who cooked it?: I would have to say these tacos I made a few weeks. I always make tacos with Morningstar Farms chikn strips, taco sauce, beans and onions. Well, Jacob decided it would be a good idea to add this bag of frozen mixed mushrooms to it. It had some WEIRD mushrooms in it that we had never tried. Well, it was fucking disgusting. Everytime I would bite into this one mushroom that looked like a.. ahem.. male part, I would gag. They were really bad.

15. What made you decide to blog?: I got into photographing my food a lot, and would try and make really awesome stuff so I could post the pictures in the communities on Livejournal. After I did that for a while, and read more and more vegan blogs, I decided to make one myself.

16. What are three of your favorite meals to make?: Any kind of homemade soup, tacos with beans and rice and sour supreme, and Mac n' cheese!

17. What dish would you bring to a vegan Thanksgiving-themed potluck?: Probably some kind of dessert. Like Pumpkin cinnamon rolls or Pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes. Or some roasted sweet potatoes, yams, and squash. Yum!

18. Where is your favorite vegan meal at a restaurant? How many times have you ordered it?: Probably the meatball sandwich from Green in Tempe. I have ordered it seriously... like 15 times. It's my favorite.

19. What do you think the best chain to dine as a vegan is?: I would have to say Chipotle. I love their burritos and burrito bols. You can watch them make your food, so you know nothing you're not aware of is going into it. A big scoop of cilantro lime rice, a scoop of black beans, corn salsa, green salsa, hot salsa, mild salsa, any of those can go in, a big scoop of guacamole and lettuce. Oh yum. They're not too expensive either.

20. My kitchen needs a……… Steamer basket. Jacob has one, but I don't.

21. This vegetable is not allowed in my kitchen…..!: The only vegetable I REALLY don't like are peas. I like sugar snap peas sometimes, but plain peas, ew.

22. What's for dinner tonight?: Honestly, I have no idea. I'm thinking some roasted sweet potatoes and yams and the cookie dough soy ice cream in the freezer!

23. My added question- What's your favorite main course for Thanksgiving?: Tofurky, of course! I love me some tofurky. Especially with the basting liquid recipe on the box, and some roasted veggies. Oh man. Yes. I also like Field roast sometimes. That's delicious as well.

VeganMoFo day 15: Stew!

2008-10-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy it's fall. I really feel like skipping fall all together and going straight into winter. I love winter. More than any other season. Mostly because I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mom has always been a huge Christmas lady, which is probably why I like it so much too. I swear, our house turns into Santa's workshop at Christmastime.

But anyways, I have only wanted wintery soups and casseroles. It was freezing last weekend, but now it's 90 again. Please make up your mind weather. But I don't care! I want winter food!

Which is why I made a delicious stew with biscuit topping!

I got the basic recipe from Vegan Dad, but modified it a little bit.

I didn't have the frozen mixed vegetables that it called for, so I just added some carrots. I figured it would have enough veggies, and it did. It was wonderfully delicious.

I also didn't have any shortening, so I used a recipe from VegWeb. The only difference was that I didn't measure the Earth Balance. I just scooped it in until it looked right to me. And I used 1 tsp of Italian seasoning and 1 tsp of Poultry seasoning.

It was seriously one of the best dinners I have had in a LONG time. The biscuits were perfect, the stew was amazing. You have to try this. If not now, sometime in winter. SO GOOD.

I really need to post some of my own recipes. All I ever cook is other people's stuff. I need some motivation.

VeganMoFo day 14: Try new things

2008-10-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

I hardly ever try new things, because I'm afraid of them. But I decided that I need to. So, when we went grocery shopping, I looked for recipes that had things in them that I had never tried, or had never sounded "normal" to me.

The first recipe I wrote the ingredients down for was the Ginger Roasted Winter Vegetables from Vegan with a Vengeance. I have only tried to roast vegetables twice. The first time was last Thanksgiving when I made a tofurky with some carrots, potatoes, and onions. The vegetables didn't cook at all. So I tried again on Jacob's birthday. Tofurky again, but this time I made more of the basting liquid and poured it over the veggies. Most of them turned out really good, others burnt or didn't cook at all. So I wanted to try again.

Plus, I had never had butternut squash or parsnips before.

Well, here they are with a side of spinach and mushroom risotto (from a box. Shh.) There are pasrnips, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, and ginger.

First of all, it said to roast for 25 minutes, then flip them and roast for 20 more. Well I did that, and all the veggies were still hard as rocks. So I waited 20 more minutes. Nope. So, we went to the store for the risotto while it cooked, and spent more time than we expected at the store. So about 30 minutes later, the veggies were finally done! We ended up eating at midnight. But whatever.

Second of all, I'm pretty sure I don't like parsnips. They taste like flowery spicy carrots. I don't know what it is about them, but maybe they would be better in something else. I don't know.

I loved the butternut squash and everything else, so it was a success.

Jacob didn't like the parsnips either. Darn.

VeganMoFo day 11: Ooops.

2008-10-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

So, I decided to make some chocolate chip pumpkin bread. I got this little loaf pan from Michael's for a dollar, so I wanted to make a small loaf in it and a regular loaf in a regular sized one.

Well, I made a little mistake. I filled the little one a tad bit too much. And this happened...

Whoops.

Besides that, the bread came out amazing!

Well, I had to rush this entry a little bit, because I am watching three dogs at someones house, and I need to go back there soon. That's why I haven't updated. But I'll be back Monday!

VeganMoFo day 8: Junk food

2008-10-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

There are some people who think all vegans have to be healthy. And then there are other people who think vegans who eat junk food are satan. Well, I like to live by a little of both. While I love vegan junk food, I also LOVE eating fresh produce all day.

Well, save your produce for another day, because this MoFo is about junk food!

Last night for dinner, you want to know what we had? Tempeh Wingz and french fries! The fries were just crappy frozen ones, but the wingz. Oh man.

I know you're supposed to toss the wingz with sauce, but I'm a wimp and just like it spooned over the top, not soaked.

This is one of the best junk food recipes I have tried yet. But hey, at least they're not fried!!

I forgot my agave nectar at my house, and we made these at Jacob's, so I just left it out. I used Frank's red hot, and added more than it calls for, because Jacob likes them hot. I also added garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a little chipotle tobasco sauce. YUM!

My second favorite "junk" food would have to be Tings. They're not really junk, since they're just cornmeal with nooch and salt, but they are packaged in a bag and addicting like junk, so we'll just call it junk.

They just opened this new store RIGHT down the street called Marketside, and apparently, it's owned by Walmart, and is designed for just quick trips. Well, they sell TINGS THERE! The closest place that sold tings before, was Whole Foods Market, which is about 20-30 minutes away. Well, now I can get them anytime! And they're only like $2.50. Marketside also sells a lot of awesome stuff I wouldn't expect it to. Lots of vegan stuff and lots of organic.

Well, that's all I can think of before Jacob gets here from work, so it'll have to do.

What are YOUR favorite vegan junk food items?

VeganMoFo day 7: Random crap & Cookbooks.

2008-10-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

I must say that updating every day with something new has already become a challenge! I wanted to be able to update with delicious food that I have been making, but that became a problem when we starting going broke a lot faster. Jacob got paid on Thursday, it's Tuesday, and we have $15! So, we have been eating whatever we can find.

We had the leftover vegetable soup for two more days, and yesterday for lunch, we went to Chipotle. (Oh how I love that place.) Then for lunch today, we had Yves smoked chicken sandwiches with vegenaise and brown mustard. We do plan on making something really awesome tonight though. I won't tell, because it will spoil my entry for tomorrow. But it's amazing.

So for today's entry, I decided to write about cookbooks.

I don't have that many vegan cookbooks, but I have a couple. And I will review them, or something like that, now.

1. Vegan With a Vengeance: I can safely say that this is my absolute favorite cookbook. My copy is beaten up pretty badly, and Isa has a chunk of her face missing because some of the paper peeled off... But that doesn't matter! I go back to this cookbook over and over. It has my favorite pancakes, my favorite tofu ricotta, my favorite tofu scramble, and my favorite chocolate chip cookies. Ah. I just love it. There are some recipes I haven't tried yet, but I plan on doing that. Sometime. If you only want one vegan cookbook, I would buy this one.

2. Veganomicon: Jacob surprised me with this for Christmas. I didn't think he would get it for me, since it was $30, but he did! I was really excited. It's a good cookbook, but it seems a little... too gourmet for me. A lot of the recipes have ingredients that are kind of expensive, or are just a little too gourmet for my taste. I still love plenty of recipes out of it, though. I just wish I had more money so I could try more. It has some amazing nooch cheese sauce that I make all the time, and a really good cornmeal crusted tofu sandwich with chipotle mayo and coleslaw (sorry, I can't remember any names because the book is at Jacob's house!) I can't remember anything else that I made out of it right now. Overall, I like the cookbook, but like I said, I need more money to try the recipes!

3. The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook: This has to be a classic. One of my internet friends sent it to me as a surprise, and I really like it. I haven't tried many recipes out of it, because frankly, I'm a little scared of them (Soybean tacos... I don't know about that.) But their macaroni and cheese is a must have! Best vegan mac n' cheese yet, in my opinion. I actually don't think I have even made anything else out of that cookbook. Any recommendations?

4. Vegan Express: My mom ordered me this as a surprise, which was really nice of her. Sadly, I don't really like this cookbook that much. Some of the recipes look good, but they just seem kind of... common sense? A lot of the recipes call for faux meat and already made products. There are recipes for quesadillas, which is fine, but that just seems like something that shouldn't be in a cookbook, but maybe a food blog or something. I really appreciate the concept, recipes for people in a hurry, and maybe if I was in a hurry and had kids and a job, I would like it more. But all I have is time! So hour recipes don't bother me much.

Those are all the cookbooks I have. Only 4, I thought there were more.. The one book I don't have that I really need to get before I explode, is Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I don't think I can live another month without it. Really.

VeganMoFo day 5: Autumn

2008-10-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

Since it's been 80 degrees here in Arizona, I have had the urge to make yummy warm food! I know 80 doesn't seem that cool, but compared to 120, it really is. We have been sleeping with the windows open, and we didn't have to turn the air on until 4:00PM! It's supposed to warm up again, but shhh, don't spoil my fun.

In honor of the cool weather, I cooked my first fall/Autumn/winter meal: Vegetable soup.

I'm sure you all know the basic recipe for soup, so I won't type up a recipe, but it contained a tablespoon of olive oil, 6 cloves of garlic, 1 big onion, 4 organic carrots, 7 organic stalks of celery, 2 organic leeks, 2 potatoes, 1 green squash, 1 yellow squash, a container of vegetable broth, and 2 cups of water.

Man, we had a lot left over, and it was so damn good! We ate it in the kitchen with the sliding glass door open, screen door closed, being cold from the breeze! It really felt like an Autumn night for once.

Then we went to Bookman's and got an $8.00 Ouija board... But that's another story.

I was still feeling in the fall spirit this morning, so I made this:

Two crumpets: one with pecan pumpkin butter, and one with Earth Balance. And I made some organic spiced apple cider. I boiled half of the bottle of apple juice with a cinnamon stick, some powdered cinnamon, some ginger, and a dash of pumpkin pie spice.

I could not, for the life of me, find any organic apple cider! How hard is it? I went to Whole Foods Market, and they said it's too early for cider. I went to Sprouts and they only had ONE KIND of regular cider. And then I went to AJ's and they didn't have any at all. Ugh. If you have organic apple cider where you live, please send me some. Haha.

And I could never find any pumpkin butter that didn't have honey in it. Someone told me to go to Trader Joe's and get theirs, because it was vegan, so Jacob drove me all the way there. We get there, read the ingredients, HONEY. Damn you vegan person who doesn't read labels. But, we found some yesterday! It's from Williams-Sonoma. Pecan pumpkin butter. I mean, yeah, it's 10 dollars, but it's worth it! It's really good. And I would pay $10 for anything with pumpkin. Because we are in love.

The only thing I don't like about fall/Autumn, is that there are things like apple cider doughnuts and pumpkin pie ice cream at the store tempting me. I know I can make these things at home just as good, but it's something about just buying it at the store that makes it special. But I think I'll survive.

PS: I got Silk Nog at Walmart the other day. Be jealous!

VeganMoFo day 4: Cheeses

2008-10-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

Guys, I'm sorry. i told myself I would update EVERY day for VeganMoFo, but I have an excuse! I'm a beta tester for a new MMO [Massive Multiplayer Online] game. So yes, being a nerdy gamer is my excuse for neglecting vegan food...

Anyways, I'm going to write about cheeze today. That's the first thing any new vegan thinks about. (Well, it sure is the first thing Jacob and I thought about!) "How the fuck am I going to replace my beloved CHEESE?!"

Well, what I found out after whining about it for a while, is that cheese replacements don't really taste like cheese. What you have to think going into it is that they are there to be something melty and good on stuff, but won't actually taste exactly like cheese.

A lot of new vegans I have encountered get really angry about cheese substitutes. They say they're too soy tasting, or don't melt good enough. Well, I have learned to just think of them as not even cheese, but as a creamy/melty substance that works well with once cheesy dishes. After I told myself that, I started loving almost every cheese substitute, because it was a new flavor, not cheese.

My first experience with vegan cheese was with Follow Your Heart, Vegan Gourmet Monterey Jack. I was expecting it to just taste like cheese and that would be it. Well, I sliced it thick and put it on a cold sandwich with some Yves deli slices. Boy... was I wrong. It tasted, well, like shit. Hahaha. I didn't understand, after that day, why anyone would want to be vegan if they couldn't have good cheese!

Well, eventually, I learned that vegan cheese isn't very good cold straight out of the package...

So I tried again with Vegan Gourmet mozzarella this time. I was at my sister's house, and she was vegan as well. (She isn't anymore because she said that if she was vegan she wouldn't have a healthy baby. So she eats meat and dairy and FAST FOOD every day. Real healthy...) We decided to make pizzas. We made them with all kinda of veggies and FYH mozzarella. She has a neat counter top pizza oven, so we cooked them in that. I was AMAZED. The cheese was SO freakin' good! I never doubted my trusty FYH mozzarella again.

So I always make pizzas with FYH mozzarella, and they always turn out amazing. I learned a trick, from flickr, to make the cheese melt even better. Right before the pizza is done, take it out of the oven, spritz the top with water from a spray bottle, and broil. I don't know why, but it makes the cheese melt so much better. As seen in the picture below:

Please ignore the burnt lumps. They're sun dried tomatoes...

The next cheese we tried that we really liked, were Tofutti slices. We really like them, even cold, on sandwiches. My favorite way to use them is to use the Mozzarella flavor in quesadillas. The cheese doesn't melt really, but it gets soft and tastes really good. I find the Mozzarella kind to taste like those processed Swiss cheese slices that I used to love. The cheddar flavor is really good on top of Egg McMuffins (See picture in last post) broiled in the oven. It gets soft and could almost pass as real cheddar!

We used to only use Galaxy Nutritional Foods: Rice Vegan cheese on sandwiches. It's really good as well, but I think I just prefer Tofutti over it.

The last brand I'm going to talk about is the ever so popular, Chicago Soydairy's Teese. I didn't really want to fork out the money to get it sent here with cold packs and stuff, so I waited and bought a log at Green. I was SO excited to get to try it, so that night, we made mini bagel pizzas. Well, the bagels were too mini to REALLY taste the cheese, but I thought it was pretty good. I tried it by itself, and it has a weird texture and flavor. It's almost buttery and... slimy? I don't know, but next, we made normal sized pizzas with it. This was the real test. Well, it LOOKED really good:

So we dug in. Well, I can say that I like Follow Your Heart better! I feel like I'm the only one saying this, but really, I don't like Teese very much. It melted good, but when it cooled down, it went back to the same texture as before it was melted. Firm and slimy. Maybe I just suck at cooking it. I don't know. But I wouldn't pay the 8 bucks again.

I tried it again on a grilled "bologna" and cheese. And this time, it didn't melt. I had the heat low so it would melt, but the bread got really dark, and no melting. Hmph.

Yes, that's fried "bologna" on the side. Don't judge me!

So in conclusion, like all vegan things, you have to experiment and find out which brand works the best for you. Just please don't expect them to taste just like cheese! Or you will be disappointed. I warned you.

(Tomorrow, I will have actual cooked food! I'm making something delicious for dinner. Nothing special, but I'm making it in honor of our "cold" weather this weekend! Yes, 80 is cold in Arizona.)

VeganMoFo day 2: TOFU?!

2008-10-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

So, I'm back. Many many things have happened over the last... forever. But right now I'm posting because of VeganMoFo!! If you don't know what that is, check it out right here. I'm a day late, but who cares, right?!

For my first VeganMoFo, I decided I would share my horrible experiences with tofu.

When I first became vegetarian, I was terrified of tofu. But I would always read all those talented blogs of talented vegans who made mouth watering tofu dishes. So I thought "Why can't I make those dishes? Tofu must be good if so many people eat it!" And there started my journey.

The first thing I ever made with tofu was tofu scramble. I went out and bought turmeric and various things to put in it. I think I even added some soyrizo, since I was afraid just tofu would be gross. I had no idea what I was doing, so I actually asked someone in a forum how to make tofu scramble!! I used a recipe! Now, I just throw random things in and don't think twice. But anyways, I think I put some onions and mushrooms and maybe some tomatoes. Well, I followed all the directions this guy gave me to make it, and jacob and I ate it in tortillas. We both liked it, but we though "regular eggs" were better. Now I couldn't dream of eating "regular eggs" instead of tofu scramble. Mmmm.

So since the scramble was a semi success, we decided to make eggless salad! I mushed up tofu with pickles, mustard and vegenaise. I think I added salt and pepper too. Well. It was mushy and flavorless. We hated it, and decided we probably would never try tofu again, since we didn't like this and didn't like the scramble much either.

Then a few months down the road, I saw an orange tofu recipe. Orange chicken used to be my favorite thing to get at Asian restaurants, so I begged Jacob to try tofu one more time. He agreed. Well. We cooked the tofu on too high of a temp. and it got black on the outside and raw on the inside. At the time, we didn't know the temp. was too high. So we sat down to eat it, took a bite, and spit it out. It was burnt and crispy and cold and mushy. That was it, we thought. NO MORE TOFU!!!

The last time I decided to try it was at an Asian restaurant. I thought I would give it one more shot. Well, they cooked it perfectly, and it was DELICIOUS. I brought home leftovers and Jacob just did not believe that tofu was actually good. So he tried it, and SUCCESS! I got him to gobble down a bowl of tofu.

Now we ocassionally cook our own tofu for Eggless McMuffins and such and it's amazing. I love tofu! I could eat it all day long.

So, if you see that you don't like something the first time, just keep trying it until you do! Haha.

No, but tofu isn't as scary as it seems. It really just takes trial and error.

Holy shit, I'm back!

2008-07-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't written here in forever, but I have valid reason! First, the bracket and chain that was connected to my impacted canine fell off. I had to be put to sleep and be put through a lot of pain for that stupid motherfucker, and then it just falls off. Needless to say, I was pissed. So the oral surgeon agreed to put it back on for free WITHOUT me being put to sleep. Well, as I was waiting for my surgery date, something happened with Jacob's kidneys, and we spent 6 hours in the ER, for them to tell us it was "probably a kidney stone." They didn't do any blood work or anything. So then he went to the doctor the Monday after, and they ordered a bunch of tests to find out what was wrong, and ordered him to be out of work for over TWO WEEKS. So, during the period of time, we just spent a lot of time together and screwed around, so I was hardly online. Then that Thursday, I had my surgery. The fucking novacane hurt so bad I cried and was shaking. I was gripping the chair so hard, my hand was bleeding. Haha. So, after that I was in a lot of pain again, so I didn't feel like cooking or eating. So no updates. THEN this past Monday, the FUCKING CHAIN AND BRACKET FELL OFF AGAIN. I am so done with this shit. I'd rather have my teeth messed up than be in all this pain.

But anyways, I'm back! And here is something I just made. Vegan Dad's wonderfully delicious tempeh burgers! They are really easy to make, and taste delicious. Instead of fennel (I don't like fennel.) I added cumin for a spicy smoky flavor. YUM! We grilled them after pan frying, and they turned out wonderful. We had them on an Ezekiel bun with organic greens, vegenaise, pickles, jalapeño mustard and organic ketchup.

We also had a salad of mixed organic greens, organic tomato, and organic goddess dressing. It's the most simple salad, but it tastes so good, and I eat it almost every day!

I will leave you with one last comment. So Delicious yogurt is AMAZING. I LOVE IT. I could eat it every single day. No soy taste AT ALL.

Sorry!

2008-06-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. Jacob was off for an entire week because we were supposed to go to a cabin with his parents. His brother had to get his appendix taken out the day we were supposed to go, so we didn't end up going. So he had a week off with nothing to do. So I have hardly been online. We cooked, but nothing real special. I made a three bean pasta salad, chickpea salad, tofurky on Ezekiel bread, and a salad to take up to the cabin. But they weren't very special. Very tasty, but not photogenic.

Here is some stuff we made a while ago. I don't even remember when, but it's the pictures that count!

Here is a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich on an ezekiel bun with vegenaise, ketchup, mustard and organic onion. We had it with an organic baked potato and pickles on the side. The mushroom turned out amazing. We grilled it on a charcoal grill with olive oil, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and a little chili powder.

We made the chocolate chip cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance, and let me tell you, they were PERFECT. I wanted to eat every single one in one night. The dough was really weird though. I followed the recipe just as it was written, and the dough... was not dough. It was more like sand. So I added some soymilk until it came together. But then it was awesome. They were soft and chewy. AHH MAKE THEM NOW.

Now I'm going to show you some vegan ranch dressing we bought. Excuse Jacob in the background please.

Ok, I was very excited to find this at Fry's of all places, but it was kind of disappointing. It didn't taste very ranchy. It was creamy like ranch, but not tangy or anything like real ranch dressing. It was alright for the money, but I'd really just rather make my own with vegenaise. :(

Then the other day we went to Whole foods Market, and they had the new So Delicious ice cream flavors! The only ones I remember right now are Snickerdoodle and Blueberry cheesecake. They also had the new coconut milk flavors. But I got the Blueberry cheesecake, and it was SO GOOD! It's half blueberry ice cream with blueberries and half cheesecake flavored. And it has chunks of graham cracker crust in it. I ate almost the whole thing on the way home from Whole Foods... Hahaha. I highly recommend the new flavors! Even if I can't find them on the website...

I have also been thinking about marriage and I really want to get married in the next 2-3 years. I know that's kind of soon, but I think I'm ready. The only problem is trying to find somewhere to get a vegan cake and vegan food for the wedding around here. But I haven't looked, so who knows.

Love ya guys!

Chickpea Cutlets :(

2008-06-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

I made the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon. Ok, so, everyone was making a big deal about how great these are. So I wanted to try them really bad and got really excited. So I put all my hard work into making them and frying them in a pan. And they looked really good. And smelled really good. So we sat down to eat them with some brown gravy, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. THEY WERE NOT VERY GOOD! :( It made me very disappointed. I'm not sure if it was my fault, or if we just didn't like them as much as everyone else. They were too lemony and were... gritty. It actually was kind of powdery. I don't really know how to explain it, but it wasn't very good, in our opinions. Can someone recommend anything to make them better? We thought of either actually breading them and frying them, like a country fried steak, or maybe they are better baked.

On the bright side, this was my first time roasted a whole head of garlic, and it was amazing! We added it to some mashed potatoes with earth balance, soy milk, salt and pepper, and it was really good.

And before you go "EWW! HAIR IN THE PICTURE!" It was a stray strand of silk from the corn, NOT hair! :)

Let's see... We have been grilling stuff a lot. Like vegetables, Tofurky beer brats, tofu, and Boca burgers. Last night, we used my parents charcoal grill. Charcoal is a little better than gas, I guess, but I don't really know anything about grilling. I just know it tastes good!

Anyways, we marinated little cubes of tofu in a mixture of organic ginger tamari, liquid smoke, grated garlic, and grated ginger. I left it in as long as I could, about 2 hours, and it still didn't soak up enough marinade. The outside tasted good, but the inside of the tofu just tasted plain. I was very disappointed, because I was looking forward to the grilled tofu all day. We grilled it on metal skewers with mushrooms, organic grape tomatoes, organic onions, and organic potatoes. The veggies were great grilled.

And then when all the veggies were done, we grilled ourselves each one Tofurky beer brat. I love those brats. I feel bad eating processed, fake, meaty crap, but they're so good! I'm going to try and make my own brats from this recipe. But while I procrastinate, Tofurky beer brats are amazing. Oh, and we grilled potato halves, too. They were like grilled baked potatoes. Yum.

Before cooking dinner, we got ourselves pretty hungry screwing around in our new pool! It's just one of those $100.00 pools from Target that you blow up. And it's only about three feet deep, but it's way better than sitting in 110 degree weather with nothing to cool you off! It's 12 feet wide though, so it's big enough to at least move around. Here is Jacob trying to pose in the pool. Those swim trunks are from Walmart by the way. Hahaha. We needed to get him some really cheap ones one night when we were going swimming at someone's house, so he got the most redneck ones we could find. CORONA!

Tonight, Jacob worked from 3:15 to 10:00, so I had dinner with my mom and dad. My mom brought me home a yummy veggie wrap from Jason's Deli. It was Vegan, besides the Asiago cheese than she asked them to leave out. It had organic spinach, mushrooms, sprouts, guacamole, and pico. It was slightly warmed and came with fresh fruit. It was delicious for $5.99.

As my parting note, I have to say that I have sadly gotten tired of tofu... We eat tofu scramble like every single weekend, have tofu egg McMuffins, grilled tofu, fried tofu, AHH! I don't know why, but we have both started to get really tired of that tofu taste. I know it's really good for you to eat and all, but I'm so tired of tofu! Anyone have any suggestions to tofu recipes that don't have the tofu/soy taste?

School's finally out!!

2008-05-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Jacob graduated on Thursday. It was nice, but then again made me extremely depressed. I should be graduating too, but I threw two years of my life away, and am now getting my GED. I think it's a better choice, because otherwise, I would be in high school for another two years. Logically, it's a better idea, but in my heart, I know I'm making a mistake. It just sucked since everyone was graduating that I used to go to school with, except me. Plus, he got a lot of money!

Anyways, it was a good night. I made Jacob his cake. He wanted a carrot cake, so I searched online for a recipe, and found this one. It was definitely a GREAT recipe. I panicked half way through though, because as I was combining the wet and dry, it turned into a really stiff dough, like cookie dough. And I was like, OMG! But then, when we added the pineapple, it moistened it up A LOT. But it was seriously the best carrot cake I have EVER had.

This is the cake his mom bought. It's not anywhere near vegan, which is why we didn't eat it, but she refused to make the whole family eat a vegan cake...

His mom also made us some vegan spinach dip, and oh my god, I have never eaten so much dip in my life. It was SO FUCKING GOOD. Like, I can't express how good it was. I haven't had spinach dip in so long, but this was amazing. I didn't take any pictures, because there were weird old people who were related to Jacob everywhere, but trust me, it was amazing. This is the recipe she used. She used fresh spinach, which I have never done, we always used frozen. But it still came out great. We used all kinda of veggies to scoop it up, and it was delicious.

Then Friday night, we decided to make the jambalaya from Vcon that has the beans and seitan in it. I couldn't find white kidney beans, since I neglected to read that they are also called cannellini beans. So we used two cans of regular kidney beans. It still turned out extremely good. It made so much, that we had to refrigerate AND freeze some. It makes a HUGE pot. So, it was really worth the time it took to make.

That's about it for now. :D

Well, fuck.

2008-05-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

Last night my computer decided to stop working. So we had to dump everything and reinstall everything. So all my pictures and songs and EVERYTHING were gone. So I don't have any new food to share, since the pictures got dumped. But Jacob is graduating on Thursday, so after that, I will be cooking a lot more. Plus I am making him a graduation cake. It's going to be pretty sweet.

So, I'm sorry my new blog has been so boring, I promise, it will get better.

Lazy

2008-05-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was pretty lazy, so I didn't really cook anything. I planned to, but it just never happened.

Last night I did make spaghetti and beanballs from VCon, but the bean balls didn't turn out very good and just mushed when I put the sauce in. So I didn't bother taking a picture. They tasted really good, but the texture was off a little. Oh well, I'll try again.

Friday night, we went to Green! Yay! It was really good, as always. We had chili cheese fries to start with, then I got a sweet and sour chicken bowl, and Jacob got drunken mushroom chicken. Then we ended it with a cup of vanilla soft serve with chocolate syrup.

Then Saturday night, we went out to eat with my parents to Sweet Tomatoes which is basically a really healthy buffet. There are tons and tons of salad options. They even had jicama, which really surprised me. They also have pickles, peas, corn, chickpeas, kidney beans, red peppers, yellow peppers, and so much more! They also have some prepared salads like one with strawberries. And the best thing is, everything is marked vegan that is! Well, in the restaurant, it's just labeled vegetarian, but on the site, it tells you which things are vegan too. I made the mistake of not looking on the menu before we went, and ate some soup that isn't marked vegan on the menu online. I feel really bad now. But there was no reason it shouldn't have been vegan. It was just a bunch of vegetables and beans and broth! No noodles or anything. They probably put fucking parm cheese in it or something. Ugh. But other than that, it's a really good place!

Saturday, we also got bikes! Really really cheap ones, but still. They were only 55 dollars each. But to start with, that's really all we need. I rode every night since then, and I'm so sore. I am way too out of shape. But hopefully this will help.

Now, so this isn't too boring, here are some pictures of two recent vegan related purchases.

I just got this shirt in the mail today. It shipped out Friday and got her today, which is awesome. The company is great, and the shirt is really awesome. I got it from veganshirt.com. It's not a bad price at all for a good quality shirt. ;D

Then I got this pair of sandals from Dillard's. They were 75% off, then an additional 30% off of that. They came out to be $10.00. They are made by Simple Shoes, and are REALLY comfy. The bottom of them is made out of car tires. And they are vegan. Yay.

I also got this pair for the same price, made by the same company. Both pairs were men's. But oh well, I liked them.

My dad got a pair like this for like $30.00, when they are originally $90.00. He says they're really comfortable and loves them. So I recommend Simple Shoes to anyone. They seem like a great company.

Well, that's it. Sorry there's no food. I've been really lazy and just cooking boring things that no one cares about.

The only reason I like summer: Delicious produce!

2008-04-28T23:51:00.000-07:00

Right before I started typing this, I ate half of a small watermelon. It was so ripe and juicy. Watermelon is one of the only reasons I like summer! Haha. I decided to capture the beautiful melon on camera before I gobbled it all up...

Ok, anyways. My mouth is feeling a little bit better, so I have been trying to eat actual food! We went to Green on Saturday with one of Jacob's non-vegan friends [He loved it by the way, and says he really wants to be vegetarian or vegan.] and I got a grain burger. They got buffalo wings, which killed me, because I love them. But I couldn't eat anything spicy because it would burn my mouth. Hmph.

Then last night, I decided to try and make something we would both enjoy and wouldn't be too hard or spicy or whatever. I used the Mac n' cheese recipe from Get Sconed. I don't think I ever do it right, because when it says to make a roux, it just turns into dry lumpy flour. What the F? Regardless of the lumps, it still turns out tasting really good! I didn't add soy sauce because Jacob poured the last HALF of the fucking bottle on his rice the other night. But I did add some mustard. It really turned out to be a disaster because:
-First the lumps wouldn't break up.
-Then we didn't have any more soy sauce.
-THEN my mom didn't have a pan that I could cook it in. So I ended up using a loaf pan.
-Halfway through, my parents came home and I questioned my mom about ANOTHER guitar my dad bought. [Half the time we don't have money for food, but he thinks he can go out and buy as many guitars as he wants. I think he has like...7 now. I don't know.] And my dad started yelling at me, telling me I was a brat and couldn't tell him what to spend his money on. And it just turned into a huge fight.
Finally, we all stopped fighting, the cheese sauce tasted fine, and I got all the mac n' cheese into a pan and into the oven. It was really good.

There it is with roasted garlic bread.

Last, but not least, Jacob works at Fry's, which is Kroger for anyone with a Kroger near by. And they ALWAYS have manager specials on organic stuff and vegan stuff. So we buy a bunch. Like a few weeks ago, they had organic blue sky soda for $0.99 a six pack, when the normal price is $5.00, organic hot sauce and soy sauce for $0.49, Ener-G egg replacer for $0.99, and Organic vegan bread crumbs for $0.99. Needless to say, it was all an amazing deal. Then the other day we got organic peanut butter filled pretzels and Larabars. Yesterday, we went in, and a bunch of Bear Naked granola was on sale for $1.99. It's usually around 6 bucks. So I bought a bag. The other flavors had honey, so I stuck to apple cinnamon.

Yum!

Surgery

2008-04-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had oral surgery. I have an impacted canine. Meaning that when I was little, I never lost my canine tooth, so the baby one is still there, and the adult one is stuck in the top of my mouth. Well, yesterday I had the baby one removed, and a bracket and chain attached to the one in the top of my mouth, then connected to the wire on my braces. I have three stitches in the front of my gums, and the top of my mouth is really swollen. I love food, so I have been trying to force myself to eat normal meals, and it has made me suffer. It makes my mouth hurt and crap. So I think I'm going to stop trying and face the facts that I have to live on soft things for a little bit.

Jacob did buy me the following items though:

I love the vanilla, but haven't had the strawberry yet. Rice Dream is better than soy ice cream. It has a sweeter flavor.

ZenSoy chocolate/vanilla pudding. This is the first time I have had this, and it's really good!

So I figured those will help me along. I might make spaghetti and bean balls later tonight and try to eat it. But I don't know yet.

Wish me luck!

Holy shit. WAY TOO SPICY!

2008-04-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight I decided to make the Chile cornmeal-crusted tofu poboy from Veganomicon. It sounded extremely delicious and I was excited to try it. I cooked everything and tasted it all by itself. The coleslaw was great, tofu was crispy, chipotle mayo was nice and smoky. So why wouldn't it be good? I slathered the mayo on both pieces of bread, put two pieces of tofu, a pile of coleslaw and three pickle chips on top. I photographed it, then I bit in. It was delicious! But then it hit me. An extreme spice I can't even explain. Half way through the sandwich, tears were pouring from my eyes and I couldn't feel my tongue. Now, I am not that sensitive to spicy food at all. I eat chipotle things all the time. But this was so fucking spicy that I couldn't even eat the whole thing. The rest of the sandwich was super good. But the mayo was far too spicy. So if you don't like a shit load of hotness, use only half a can of chipotle peppers. We're going to have them again tomorrow for lunch with regular vegenaise. Not chipotle.

Anyways, here are two pictures I took before lighting my mouth on fire. They aren't great quality because I had to use Jacob's camera phone. I forgot my camera at home.

Moving on.

Can anyone recommend a way for me to get some Teese without paying 20 dollars? I calculated it on one site and it would be 20 dollars with shipping and cold packs. I don't think I can justify spending 20 dollars on vegan cheese. But I REALLY want some! Help me!

Mmm. Tzatziki!

2008-04-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished a fresh mango, so I am ready to blog!

This past Friday, I decided to make Falafel waffle pitas. I got the idea from Bigmouth Strikes Again who got it from Don't Lose Your Lunch. It's a fucking great idea because I hate frying things. It takes too long, & I always screw it up. So I decided to try it. I used Fantastic World Foods falafel mix, but I made my own Tzatziki sauce. I got the sauce recipe from Vegan Dad, but I used one more clove of garlic, blended up my cucumbers [Jacob doesn't like chunks of cucumber in his sauce.], and no parsley. It came out tasting just like I remember real Tzatziki tasting. The falafel on the other hand, basically failed. I used my Hello Kitty waffle maker, because I thought it would be cute to have Hello Kitty heads in my pita [Is that vegan?!] but they turned out looking like... big lumps of nothing. The imprints didn't really imprint. Hah. And they all turned out either really wet inside still, or extremely hard on the outside and fine on the inside. Damn you, Hello Kitty. They still tasted alright thought. And made for a pretty nice picture:

My falafel with my crabs in the background!

Jacob's falafel.

It took more work than it was worth, probably. But whatever.

Then on Saturday, we were supposed to go to Green, but my mom took us to an outdoor mall for tea from Tea Infusion which is amazing. It's a tea bar that has like a million flavors of tea. I originally ordered Pink Pomegranate green tea, but the lady accidentally messed it up and made some really fruity one. I took it because I don't see the sense in wasting perfectly good tea. It was still delicious. Jacob got some tea with like mango & papaya in it. With boba. So we didn't have time to go to Green that night.

Sunday, I was supposed to make a sandwich for us from Veganomicon, but we ended up ordering cheeseless pizza from Papa Johns. Tomorrow I'm going to make the sammy though. So be prepared!

Then tonight, we went out for my sister's birthday, which was not a great experience. We went to Z'Tejas which is kind of expensive and not very good. But whatever. I emailed them last week about vegan options and they said, a quesadilla with no cheese, some rice stir fry with no cheese, or guacamole & chips. I was just going to get guac so I was sure it didn't have animal products in it, but my family got all pissed at me and said I needed to eat a normal meal. They got all mean about veganism and started like attacking me. My sister used to be vegan and wouldn't even sit by people who ate meat, but now she eats meat and makes fun of me just as much as them. But I said "This is my decision, this is what I believe in, I don't push things on you, so let me do as I please." They shut up after that.

Oh, I almost forgot. We went dumpster diving Friday night, but found nothing. We went Saturday night and found a bunch of bags of organic salad, tomatoes, and peppers. It was all behind Trader Joes, which is a good place to go dumpster diving. We're still pretty new to dumpster diving, so if anyone has any tips on what is good to eat still out of the dumpster, what I shouldn't eat after expiration date, anything of that kind, just let me know! We plan on going to Einstein bagels next weekend.

Breakfast for dinner is always good!

2008-04-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Since Friday night, I was planning on making Jacob and I a great brunch. We were going to have it Saturday, but if we eat too much during the day, we're not hungry to eat at the restaurant we go to every Saturday night, Green. And I would never want to miss that. So I decided we would have it Sunday for brunch.

We went grocery shopping Saturday and got everything we needed for meals for the next couple weeks and for our brunch. Tofu, Gimme lean sausage, organic pure maple syrup, etc. It came to Sunday, and we didn't wake up until 12:30 in the afternoon. Haha. So we decided we would just have breakfast for dinner. That's always good, right?

So we had tofu scramble:

I used a bunch of left over veggies we had laying around. There was onions, yellow bell pepper, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and some garlic. We added turmeric and some mexican seasoning. Then threw in some browned Gimme lean sausage. At the end, I shredded the leftover Vegan Gourmet Mozzarella we had from pizza on top & melted it. Tofu scramble never looks very good in pictures. But yumyum!

We also had silver dollar pancakes:

I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance but didn't add any cinnamon and used vanilla soy milk. The pancakes are topped with Earth Balance & pure maple syrup. To die for!

I have never bought pure maple syrup before because I always thought it was too expensive. I had it once when I lived in Indiana and visited a maple farm, and I loved it. They had maple syrup and those delicious maple leaf sugar candies. ANYWAYS. I have been trying to eat a lot more healthy, and cut out high fructose corn syrup, things I can't pronounce, soda, artificial sweeteners, and the like. So I decided we would buy some pure maple syrup. We got Whole foods market brand for $5.99 and I do NOT regret it. You don't need nearly as much on the pancakes as you would need artificial syrup, because it tastes so much different and better. Mmm...

In the background of the picture above, you can see some sweet Wizard organic hot sauce that we got for $0.49. More about that in the next post!

Pizza night

2008-04-15T00:47:00.001-07:00

Every Friday, we usually make pizza. We make two individual ones because Jacob doesn't like half of the veggies I do. We used to get pre-made dough from Fresh & Easy, until I realized there was honey in it. Lame. Now I make my own, which is better anyways. I usually just use the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance because it's pretty easy & has good directions.

This past Friday was no exception. We made two pizzas:

This one is mine

It was tomato sauce, yellow peppers, black olives, spinach, fresh garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms. It was a little soggy, but I don't mind. Vegan gourmet cheese is on top. And the crust is spread with a garlic earth balance sauce.

This one is Jacob's

It was tomato sauce, spinach, onions, green olives, fresh garlic, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes. The sun dried tomatoes burnt, which they always do. But his crust was more burnt than we would have liked. That is the result of screwing around in the kitchen far too much to notice the pizza was broiling for longer than it should have. Oops..

The cheese in this picture looks amazing. Too bad the sun dried tomatoes look like burnt pieces of crap.

I've found to melt Vegan gourmet the best, this is what you have to do:
1. Freeze the whole block.
2. Thaw the block out until it's almost thawed completely, but still a little frozen.
3. Shred on to pizza.
4. Bake pizza at 450 degrees.
5. 3-5 minutes before pizza is done, take it out and spritz the whole top with water from a cheap spray bottle.
6. Broil the pizza until the cheese is extremely melty & brown.

This method hasn't failed me yet. And each time we make our pizzas, the cheese turns out better than the last.

First post

2008-04-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

Alright, so thanks for stopping by, anyone reading this. I just created this blog because I have gotten more and more into cooking and taking pictures of my food. I don't cook fancy things by any means, but it's always really tasty.

I'll start this post out by introducing myself. My name is Megan and I am a vegan girl from Mesa, Arizona. I'm 18 years old and I still live with my parents. I have a boyfriend of three years [Jacob], and we mostly cook at his house since his parents are more lenient about messes. [and boy do we make a lot of messes..] He's 18 going on 19. Our parents hate the fact that we're vegan and hassle us all the time, so we're basically just trying to get through this hard time together, and meet some new vegan friends through this blog. :D

The reason my blog is titled "Vegan Punks in the Kitchen" is because my boyfriend and I are into the punk scene. And, well, we'll be in the kitchen for most of these posts. Sorry the layout isn't really fancy or anything, I have forgotten most of the HTML I used to know, and I really don't have much time to worry about the layout, just the content of the posts. I think it's pretty anyways. Haha.

Well, I guess that's about it. Look foreword to sweet recipes, awesome pictures, and some cursing from time to time. :)