Omlet and Fake Cheese

I enjoy new food products so I pick them up every once and awhile. Lately, those products have been fake cheese. Below is how I've used them.

Baked Omelet:
This is similar to SusanV's recipe, but baked.
I mixed in spinach to the batter. The inside is stuffed with steamed broccoli and Cheesely.
Cheesely seemed to be a cross between Scheese (which is my favorite for taste, though it does smell like V-Dog) in taste and Follow Your Heart in texture.

Pizza:

You can see the two cheeses here: Scheese (orange) and Cheesely white). Cheesely clearly melts better, but that's never been a requirement in my cheese needs. I know vegan cheese will never have that stringy texture of animal cheese and I am okay with that characteristic. If melty cheese is your thing - spray oil, or garlic oil over the cheese, this will help the process.

Recently I tried Teese. Maybe it's the fact that I am spoiled and have all these options and don't crave cheese, but I wasn't super impressed. It seemed similar to Cheesely and Follow Your Heart. I enjoy the flavor, though it was light. Maybe I should have had more than just a bite. Food Fight will have it soon enough.

I love that there are so many products on the market these days. Back when I first went vegan we had one option and didn't have much of a choice to enjoy it or not - it just existed! How times have changed - here I am 10 year later tasting two different type of UK fake cheeses and two American cheeses (and I don't mean flavor here) that some people don't have access to in even a speciality store!

There hasn't been much cooking lately. The doctor insists I stay off my feet so my back can heal but it's been almost 7 months since the accident and I haven't been able to sit still since. Since I love to eat and cook it's been even more difficult! Good thing I've been able to visit more Portland Restaurants to keep Stumptown Vegans going.

Stay tuned for birthday week in the near future. Three birthdays in our household in a one week span! Lots of cake!

Squash Good Bye Winter, Hello Summer

I enjoy my food simple and these two dishes are so simple but do not lack flavor.

Braised Squash with Wilted Spinach:

Pan fry summer squash in olive oil (I enjoyed using my garlic oil here) with an herb of your choosing. I went with tarragon.
With one bag of spinach, toss with a light basil balsamic vinegrette salad dressing. Spead it across a cookie sheet and broil for a few minutes, toss and continue to broil until it's all warmed, but not cooked all the way through.

Pile the spinach on your plate and place the squash over the bed. Sprinkle with salt and better and welcome summer squash back into your life.

Butternut Squash Fries with Vanilla:

I picked up a fun, new salt - vanilla salt! Where to use it? - sweet fries of course!

Here I chopped up butternut squash into fry-like pieces, tossed with olive oil and baked at 400F for awhile. I became impatient and wanted them before they became crispy fries so I took them out, sprinkled them with a wonderful new vanilla finishing salt. This was a perfect way to celebrate the savory of the squash and the sweetness of the sugars within the squash. I love this salt and will find many more uses for it I am sure.

In the oven now - a chocolate version of my glutten-free almond cookies. They smell heavenly!

Cakes

Strawberries. I love them. I saw them at the market last weekend and bought them - but they are such a tease. Early berries are never that great, let alone those sour California berries! I can't wait until Oregon's sweet berry season starts.

With that said, I was inspired by the berries and make this cake:

Vanilla cake with strawberry jam filling and strawberry frosting.
I made the strawberry frosting by mixing strawberry jam and powdered sugar with some earth balance.

I had so much fun decorating this cake I decided to make another, one of my favorite combinations - chocolate and mint!
The filling was simple - cashew cream and chocolate chips. I soaked the cashews over night, blended them with some soy milk, then blended in some melted chocolate chips. So simple and tastey!

This mint chocolate cake is by far the best cake I've made i at least a year. The pudding in the middle really made this cake rich. I can't wait to make this for my birthday.

Mr. Bolsh told me he'd eat this whole cake in a week so I didn't need to take it to work like I did with the strawberry one. Well, wednesday came and he hadn't even eaten half the cake. He complained that living with me is like living in Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory! He lives a tough life, it's true. So I took this cake to work and had rave reviews from my co-workers. I even recieved an email about it,
"Just wanted to share a testimonial of your cake. I have had a headache almost all day it seems, and I swear since I ate you cake, it’s gone. Apparently it’s not only delicious, it has healing properties!

Thanks for sharing it with us!"

Aother co-worker, after hearing of its medicinal properties said I should open shop next to St. Cupcake and start "Revival Cakes!"

Garlic Shells

For Easter I had created a wonderful garlic sauce for some scrambled tofu. We didn't use all the sauce so I got creative. There was no real recipe here but it went something like this.

Garlic Shells with Broccoli:
1 cup soaked cashews
4 cloves garlic sauted in olive oil for 1 minute
Enough soy milk to make it smooth in the blender.

Mix the shells, sauce, and broccoli and eat right away or bake for 15-20 minutes.
We had extra faux sausages left over from the Sunday brunch so I threw those in, just to use them up.

I guess this qualifies for a cassarol - a great way to use up ingredients.

Roasted Eggplant Risoto

It's been awhile since a recipe from me - time to share what I've been working on.
This is a nice, lighter tasting rissoto where the flavors really shine through in a subtle way.

Roasted Eggplant Risoto:
1/4 cup maragrin
1/2 onion, diced
3/4 teaspoon rosemary
2 cups risoto rice
7 cups vegetable broth
1 eggplant, roasted
1/2 bulb of garlic, roasted
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 450. Cut the eggplant in half, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. If you have garlic oil, all the better. Do the same with the garlic. Roast in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until tender.
Saute the onion and rosemary with the margarin. Once the onion starts to brown add the rice and stir until coated.
Add 1/2 cup of broth at a time stirring until absorbed.
Remove the eggplant from the oven and scrape out the smooshy eggplant and squeeze out the garlic. Add the eggplant and garlic with the 6th cup of broth. Continue adding broth as normal until complete.
Once complete sprinkle with chopped basil and a finishing salt, a smoked salt would be best.


Garlic Oil:
Olive Oil
Garlic, smashed

Smash the garlic and place in olive oi.
I am really looking forward infusing more oils and using them for popcorn. Now I just need some more bottles for storing these oils!

Podcasts and Dogs

I can't believe it's been so long!
Since my last post, a lot has happened.

We adopted another pup, my grandmother-in-law's long haired weinner dog, Goody:

The black haired dog is Coda, my heart and soul, and Goody is on the left. Goody is very much a special needs dog with his health issues and we are giving him as much love as possible to make his transition easy after having lost his last person and bother-dog. Coda is adjusting alright, though she prefers to be the only child.

For Lent I gave up sugar. It hasn't been as hard as it has been in the past, but testing cooking for upcoming cook books has been hard:
Terry's Lime Shortbread Cookies
Giving up sugar has been difficult because I've been trying to make popcorn that tastes like french toast or cinnamon toast. Creating a recipe without tasting it is no fun!

Other things going on in my life include recording podcasts for the new portion of Jess and my other website, Stumptown Vegans.

Head over here and listen to our first two podcasts!

Stuffed Squash

This was my 9 year vegan anniversary meal and so much more delicious than I was expecting.

Stuffed Delicata:
1 delicata squash, cut in length and cleaned
1 yellow onion, diced small
1 carrot, diced small
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon Mirin
1/2 tart apple, diced
1 large chard leaf, chopped
1 cup rice, cooked
Spices like thyme, salt, pepper...
1/2 cup shredded cheese

Bake the squash until it's done, usually it's about as long as it tastes to do the rest.
Saute the onion until it's caramelized. Add the diced carrots and cook until tender. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with a splash of mirin. Add the rice, and thyme, or other favorite spices. Keep cooking until the rice is cooked through.
When it's complete add the cheese and mix. Fill the holes of the squash and cook for another 10 minutes. Serve warm.


Part of what makes this dish take so great is the small size of all the ingedients. It packs in the filling in the squash, which add extra flavor with the sweet onions, tart apples, and sweet squash. The cheese isn't necessary but it adds to the texture.

Soups

How many soup posts can be made? Apparently thousands during the winter months.
A couple of weeks ago I started by making soups of every color, red, orange, yellow and green. I lost the majority of the photos and wasn't able to complete my project of going after purple, brown, and blue. Without completing my project, I show you two soups.

Green Kale Soup:
This soup used boiled chard and steamed broccoli, pureed it all with lots of spices and my green soup was done, and damn tasty.

Corn Chowder:
When I created this soup I had already created my yellow corn soup, so I went for a twist to my corn chowder. Caramelized onions, carrots, corn, tarragon and potatoes in a creamy soy and vegetable broth.
It was nice to have a stew-like meal with creamy potatoes.

Crepe Cake

Today is my 9 year vegan anniversary! So today I post a cake! However, I will not be eating cake today. I am once again trying to go without processed sugars for about a month and a half.

This cake was inspired by a photo/recipe in Martha Stewart a few years ago for a chocolate crepe cake.
I just my regular crepe recipe with a bit of cocoa added. I used a cashew cream between layers until I ran out so I used a blueberry filling.

Simple Breakfast Crepes:
1 3/4 Cups Flour
1 1/4 Cups Liquid (apple juice, water, soy milk...)
4 Tablespoons Maple Syrup
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1 1/2 Cups Soy(/Rice/Oat/Nut) Milk
4 Tablespoons Oil
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
Pinch of Salt

Mix all together until the bumps and lumps are gone.
Ladle a small amount into a warm frying pan, or use an electric crepe maker. Pick up the pan and rotate until the batter doesn't spread anymore and let cook on one side until the other side is done.

To make the cake, keep layering crepe with the filling of your choice until it's as tall as you want, or you run out of crepes.


This was a very intensive process! And unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my cashew cream thick/strong enough to support so many crepes. None of that matters when you taste it though - it was great, but something I'd rather have someone else make for me.

Lemon Garlic Brussle Sprouts

Normally I eat my brussle sprouts roasted with a bit of garlic, today I was looking for a different flavor and decided on lemon and garlic.

I started with a roux - soy milk, flour, earth balance and a bit of lemon juice. I added the garlic and stirred until it thickened. I poured over my broiled brussles and served with rice.

This was a simple meal that added much more flavor than normal, though I added a bit too much lemon. The sauce was a nice touch with the nutty tasting broiled vegetable.