Fueled by Popcon

A is for Apple B is for Blog

2010-02-17T06:53:00.010-08:00

The first day of Lent and my adventure to eat my way through the alphabet has started strong, but ended weak because I became sick. But I have been holding strong and trying my best to eat my way through the alphabet.

Wednesday is A:

Amaranth and Apples Porage:

1 Apple, chopped

1/2 cup Apple juice

1/4 teaspoon Allspice

Sprinkle of Agar agar (I meant to go for the arrowroot, but this worked)

3/4 cup cooked Amaranth

2 Tablespoons maple syrup (I should have used Agave)

cooked the apple, allspice, and maple syrup in the apple juice for a few minutes. Add the cooked amaranth and sprinkle agar on top, then mix together and let simmer for 5-10 minutes until it reaches a porage consistency.

This has reminded me I am not a fan of amaranth. It's a tiny grain without much substance and too many bites with dirt.

Snacks: Almonds

Dinner: Rice with almond milk and home potatoes (I was sick and the husband was willing to cook!)

Thursday is B:

Breakfast: Smoothie - Blueberries, bananas, and almond milk

Snack: Brazil Nuts

Dinner: B Soup

B Soup:

(vegan) Butter

onions

Butternut squash

Black eyed peas

Barley

Basil and Bay leaf

Broth (veggie)

Saute the onions and bay leaf until caramelized. Deglaze with the broth and add the basil. Add the chopped butternut squash and the remaining broth. Add the cooked barley and black eyed peas.

Simple soup, probably not the best flavor combination, but good. The basil and black eyed peas could have been excluded for a better soup.

Day two of this experiment is interesting and it's allowing me to try new foods, as it was designed to do. And since I have been breaking the rules a bit, I am okay with it because I am still achieving my goal.

Tomorrow is C, for chocolate!

Two weeks ago Jess and I reviewed a bunch of chocolates for our Stumptown Vegans Podcast. I still have a few left over which I will be enjoying tomorrow.

Eating Through the Alphabet

2010-02-14T19:18:00.003-08:00

When I was 8 I started participating in Lent - I vowed to turn off the lights every time I left the room. Each year from then on I gave something up every year to better my life. This was odd since I grew up Protestant in a Mormon community, where I picked up this Catholic tradition of giving up something every Lent, I do not know.

16 years ago I gave up meat and never went back.

11 years ago I went vegan and never went back.

The last two years I went without spending any money, but it didn't stick, just good for 40 days.

Two years before this I gave up sugar, one of my main addictions, but I went back.

This year I will be venturing on a different culinary adventure - I will eat my way through the alphabet, one day at a time during Lent. What does this mean? The first day of Lent I will only eat foods that starts with A, the second day, B, and so on.

While only eating these foods may be impossible I feel I do need to maintain health, sanity, and a bit of wiggle room.

The Rules:

1. Drink all the water I want.

2. Eat rice as needed.

3. Dishes with combined ingredients must include 2/3 ingredients that start with the letter. For example: It is not good enough to eat a dish called, "Pasta." The dish must include at least 2/3 ingredients that start with P, "pasta, peas, peppers, olive oil, and paprika."

4. As a food reviewer for Stumptown Vegans I will allow myself at least one meal a week eating out which breaks this adventure in eating.

This will definitely be a challenge and require planning which will be difficult with my busy schedule.

If you are interested in participating, inviting me over for dinner, or even posting a recipe that meets the requirements.

This study is interesting and we'll see how far I can get into it. A-Z-M. As I reach the end of the alphabet I may need to combine multiple letters as there are few foods which with X, Y, and Z.

Pumpkin Pie Pancakes

2010-01-22T08:36:00.001-08:00

Pumpkin pancakes can often be too sticky and not cook through throughly. These pancakes are thick, but fluffy, and perfect for rainy mornings.

Pumpkin Pancakes:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup graham cracker flour (3 rectangle crackers)2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup soy milk
1 tablespoon oil

Sift the dry ingredients: flour, graham flour, baking powder, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and brown sugar.
Then add the soymilk and pumpkin puree.
Mix well. Add nuts, if desired, and stir well.
Cook over a medium, oiled skillet until the edges are start to dry and bubbles have formed in the middle of the pancake.
Flip and cook about 2-3 minutes or until cooked through. Add oil to the skillet before each pancake.
Serve with your favorite vegan butter and maple syrup.

BattleStar Galactica Pizza

2010-01-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of Battlestar Galactica for awhile. The one element of the show that I always laugh at is the minimization of right angles! Every time I see the books or papers in the show that have corners cut at angles I am thrown out of the show and reminded, "this world is like yours, but different!" Apparently, I am not the only one.

While I was making a pizza-like item the other night (flat bread, pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings) I thought I'd entertain myself and cut off the corners. I burned the first few and my camera lost power for the second set that came out of the oven, but you get the idea.

So Say We All

Orange Julies

2010-01-18T14:23:00.009-08:00

Growing up, my mom use to make homemade Orange Julius drinks for my sister and I. It was simple: orange juice, ice, and powdered soy milk. Or so I remember.

When the husband joked about ordering an Orange Julius at the mall, I boastfully said I could make a better one! He took me up on the offer, doubting you could remake one. Over the last two days I made 4 different versions tweeking them to his liking. So while this is named after my mother, Julie, it's really made to Brian's liking.

This sweet orange drink is great for summer days. We're also going to try it using a protein powder for a meal replacer.

Vegan Orange Julies:

1/4 Cup Orange Juice Concentrate

2 Tablespoons Agave Syrup (don't sub for maple syrup, try simple syrup)

1 Cup Soy/Rice/Almond... Milk

1/4 teaspoon Vanilla

2 Tablespoons Soy Milk Powder

1 Cup Ice

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Serving: 1

Squashy Quinoa

2010-01-03T16:16:00.002-08:00

Naming dishes is hard, so let's just call this Squashy Quinoa. This is a pretty labor intensive dish, but worth it in the end. Save this for a big holiday celebration.

Squashy Quinoa:

1 cup quinoa

2 cups veggie broth

1 onion, chopped

1 turnip, chopped

2-3 carrots, chopped

3 cloves garlic

1/2 tsp. salt

olive oil

3 large delicatta, or other favorite squash

Seeds from 3 delicattas

2 medium apples

1/4 cup pinenuts

olive oil

thyme

Chili powder

Paprika

Maple syrup

1. Peel the squash. Cut off the end and scoop out the seeds and guts. Set the seeds aside in salt water. Cut the squash into 1/4 to 1/2 inch rounds.

2. Place the squash on a baking sheet, single layer. Mist with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and bake covered at 350 F while preparing the quinoa.

3. Saute the onion in olive oil until slightly browned.

4. Peel and chop the carrot and turnip, or other root vegetables while the onion is is cooking.

5. When the onion is browning, throw in the other veggies and1/2 teaspoon thyme. Saute for 3 more minutes.

6. Add 2 cups vegetable broth and salt to the sauting root vegetables and bring to a boil. Add the quinoa and a bit of olive oil. Reduce heat and cook the quinoa and vegetables until just cooked about 20 minutes.

7. Check the baking squash. Remove from the oven when it's become soft.

8. Peel the apples and slice into 1/8 inch pieces. Coat with lemon juice to prevent browning. Set aside.

9. When the quinoa is cooked spread out into a large baking dish, 9x13. Sprinkle with pine nuts. Lay down one layer of squash rounds. Nuzzle the apples into and around the squash, sprinkle with a bit of fresh thyme leaves. Layer the rest of the squash over it. Sprinkle with oil olive, salt, and more fresh thyme.

10. Bake covered for 15 minutes. Bake uncovered until read to serve.

11. Prepare the seeds by draining them from the salt water. Coat with 1/2 teaspoon paprika and 1/4 teaspoon chili powder. Bake on the top shelf of the oven while the dish is cooking until browned, about 5-10 minutes. Watch and stir the seeds as needed.

12. When the seeds are starting to brown and have puffed up, remove from the oven. Place in a hot, heavy bottomed skillet. Sprinkle with salt and olive oil. Saute for 1 minute. Add 3 tablespoons maple syrup. Stir constantly for about 1-2 minutes until the maple syrup is reduced. Place on parchment paper until cooled.

13. Before serving, sprinkle with the caramelized seeds.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Goody Lyon-Bolsh

2009-12-28T20:25:00.006-08:00

This is not food related, but later this week I will share a delicious recipe for squash and quinoa. But first I wanted to share this memory as I am trying to learn the beauty in death.

Goody Lyon was born a small, long haired dachshund and raised in La Quinta, California. He lived the life of luxury, eating whenever he wanted and sleeping all day long. His younger brother, Baily, a blond Wheaton Terrier, took care of Goody by grooming and protecting. Goody was never tethered roamed the whole house at his own pace and even had his own doggie door. Inside or outside - Goody was a free dog, in fact he never wore a collar until he was 13. At the age of 13 his long-term guardian, Bessie Lou Lyon, passed away and he was sent to live with family in Portland, Oregon, while his brother moved to Hood River, Oregon.

His new family, the Bolsh's, opened their hearts and arms to their new family member. The youngest member, and Goody's new sister, Coda, a black Cocker Spaniel, thought otherwise. She had a difficult time adjusting to a new life with a brother, but later came around as she

learned the benefits of a companion to stay home all day with her. Goody also had a difficult

time adjusting to his new life in the city without Bessie-Lou and Baily.

However, he learned to eat and go outside on a set schedule, go for walks on a lease, and meet a plethora of new human friends who would shower him with love as they saw his sweet soul. Goody's biggest accomplishment during his 22 months with the Bolsh's, was the loss of over 20 pounds from his small frame which allowed him to go for walks to the park, climb stairs, jump, and even dance.

On December 24th Goody became paralyzed from

the waist down which quickly degraded into pain. Surrounded by friends and family he was comforted until being provided the gift of ultimate peace early Christmas morning.

Goody brought added love and laughter into the Bolsh's home with his easy-going attitude and new perspective on life. Goody is survived by his adopted parents, Webly and Brian, his adopted sister, Coda. He will be missed, but his cute little face will live on in our memories.

Fried Green Miso Tomatoes

2009-10-31T14:23:00.004-07:00

With my tomatoes not ripening fast enough I've had to pick them hoping they would ripen off the vine, but that didn't happen either so I went with fried green tomatoes.

Fried Green Miso Tomatoes:

4 green tomatoes

1/4 cup miso (red)

Water

1/2 cup flour

2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon paprika

Oil for frying.

Mix the miso with 1/2 cup of water until smooth. Slice the tomatoes and place in the miso. Add more water if needed. Let the tomatoes marinate overnight.

Mix the dry ingredients and coat each tomato slice until fully coated.

Fry on each side until golden brown about 2-3 minutes on each side.

Basic Vegan Sponge Cake

2009-10-26T21:34:00.005-07:00

My sister bought me this wonderful cookbook called, Another Dinner is Possible. I haven't had a chance to make anything from this book until last night. I made the Basic Vegan Sponge Cake. I had a difficult time

Basic Vegan Sponge Cake:

400g self rising flour

200g sugar

200 ml vegetable oil

300 ml soy milk

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp lemon juice

Mix the flour and sugar. Then mix the oil. Separately mix the remaining liquid ingredients.

Bake 180 C for 30 minutes.

The cake was not so much spongy, but more wacky cake in texture. It was good, but I think it would be better in round cake form instead of a loaf style.

Check out the book though because it's great!

Favorite Vegan News Man

2009-10-26T12:46:00.005-07:00

On Friday, my favorite vegan news man, Tim Riley, lost his job on my favorite radio show, The Rick Emerson Show, along with everyone else - Rick Emerson, Sarah X Dylan, and Greg Nibbler. Tim Riley has the voice of a God, or a 50's news announcer. He made anything sound great, even when he messed up, which was often, for comedic effect. The whole show made my day and now I feel there is a big hole where the trio resided on my ipod.

The Rick Emerson Show is no stranger to station changes, layoffs, and cut backs. But what makes The Rick Emerson Show different from other talk shows that go off the air, when they come back, so do the fans. The last time they sent coffee cups to the GM. This got the attention of other radio stations who later picked up the show a year later.

But back to the man, the legend, Tim Riley. He is often referred to as a vegan, but I am not so sure he is. I think he eats eggs since he's a vegetarian who's allergic to milk. Never the less, he's the token vegan on the show. Or, was. Today, he is my Vegan MoFo!

It's a sad week for the radio waves of Portland. I hope Mr. Riley starts podcasting soon, or gets picked up by another radio station along with Sarah and Rick, because without them, there's not much else to look forward on my morning commute.

Isn't that right donkey?

Here's a photo I took with Mr. Riley 4-5 years ago. I wasn't supposed to touch him.

chicago eating

2009-10-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

I made it to Chicago in one piece. thanks for all the eating suggestions. keep them coming.
first place we ate was Handelbar. I ordered the Buffalo Wrap. It had some tastey, spicey setain, letuce, and tomatoes wrapped in a tortilla. A very mild ranch dressing was applied to the whole thing. Unfortunately the flavor was mild but the combination of the thick setain and fresh veggies was nice, but forgetable.
the bbq sandwich was less than forgttable. it was huge. bread the size of your head and soft setain stacked too inches high. it seemed allergy inducing even without a glutten intolerance. the bbq sauce was mild in taste and spice, but pleseant. however, it was too much. some carmelized onions or more tomatoes would have helped.
I do not think we will visit again.

for lunch today we checked out veggie bite. a vegan fast food chain. everything was fried. the beer battered fried and the meatball sub were the two items that stood out among all the food. the chocolate oreo shake was great but just tasted like chocolate sauce. it was too much.
wait until I get back for the photos and proper puncturation.

Chicago Vegan Restaurants

2009-10-07T22:15:00.003-07:00

Tomorrow I hop on a plane to go to Chicago to see The Dead Milkmen at Riot Fest. I don't know what I am more excited about, going to see The Dead Milkmen, a band I have loved since I was a kid, but have never seen; Visiting and experiencing Frank Llyod Wright's early work; and eating at vegan restaurants like The Chicago Diner, Green Zebra, and Handelbar. Let me know if you have a favorite Chicago restaurant and I will do my best to visit.

Okra with Tomatoes

2009-10-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Last summer I cooked a lot with okra. making this okra dish over and over again because it is so simply fantastic!
Thanks Martha. But no thanks for the bacon. I used tofu broiled with Braggs. Yum!

Since I enjoy okra so much I decided to try growing it up here in the Northwest. The okra is a bit tough, but still slimy the way I like it.

Lately I have been a canning fool. Earlier this summer I made strawberry jam. Lately I've made peach jam, peach strawberry jam. Both from fruit I've picked. I've also been canning the back yard tomatoes because we have more than we can eat (even when the dogs get to them!) Yesterday I canned cucumbers and okra with spices. As the days are becoming shorter I do not think my green tomatoes will ripen much more, so I am looking for good green tomato recipes. I am thinking of pickling them or doing the fried green tomatoes thing. Let me know if you have a favorite green tomato dish.

Fakin Fest

2009-10-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was Bacon Fest in Portland. To counter act that a group of vegans assembled in the park for Fakin Fest.

I rolled fake bacon around dates, baked for awhile then dipped in a maple ganache and sprinkled with vanilla salt.

Suprisingly I won Most Creative Dish!

Muffins that Taste Like Doughnuts

2009-10-03T08:49:00.006-07:00

Vegan Vittles was one of the first vegan cookbooks I purchased so I have a fondness for most all the recipes. My poor little book has seen better days, but after being forgotten on the the stove and pages fallen out, it mends together nicely. This is like the recipes - it's a great book to go back to, not just adventures-in-early-veganism.

Muffins that Taste like Doughnuts:

1 Cup flour

2 Tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 Cup soymilk

1/2 Cup apple sauce

1 Tablespoon maple syrup

1 Tablespoon oil

1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

cinnamon sugar

Mix the wet, then the dry, then mix together. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar before baking in muffin tins for 20 minutes. I used my grandmother's muffin top pans.

This recipe is great because they are light and fluffy but low in fat and sugar. This was the first time I added blueberries were good, but I do not know I would add them again. Thank you Joanne Stepaniak for your great vegan recipes.

Vegan Garden

2009-10-02T21:44:00.013-07:00

I love vegetable. I always have. I started my first garden when I was 9. My mom helped me turn an old sand box into a garden. My first harvest wasn't much - a bowl of 1" round potatoes, 1" long carrots, and some tomatoes. But it was mine. I grew it all from seed.

Today my entire yard is my garden, thanks to my mom for teaching me to garden. And,

yesterday I planted carrots and lettuce. Tomorrow I will plant some chard. But that's just for the winter.My garden did not do as well as I had hopped it would this year. It was the first year for my large raised garden beds so the soil is still adjusting. My little puppy took over the green beans. She does not seem to understand the idea of sustainability and decided to lay on the plants as she ate each bean without sharing.

I have planted many food producing plants outside the garden bed, so join me in a tour through my yard - both edible and not.

Figs. The husband bought me two fig plants for our 10 year anniversary this year. just beyond the figs, you can see one of my four blueberry plants. Duke and Berkley plants have been my favorite so far.

Okra is something I grew up eating and I still love it. I tried my hand at growing it this year and it's been okay, a bit too tough with the northwest weather. But still a nice adventure.

The potatoes have taken off this year. All those pretty green plants on the left are my potatoes. I am looking forward to a big potato harvest and possibly a potluck to follow.

This is what I think of when anyone says potato flour. After this stage they develop cute little balls.

Earlier this year I purchased two tea plants. From this one plant I can make a variety of teas by processing the baby leaves differently.

There are many more edibles in my yard but 'll skip to my top favorite non-edibles. The rattlesnake is so cute. I cannot wait for this to grow up and make babies so I can have more little rattlesnake plants.

My snowberry is so beautiful right now as the white berries have come on to last all winter long.

Another plant with berries that last all winter is this purple berry. It seems so out of place to see this purple in nature.

Finally, Mountain Laurel. I harvested these seeds from my gandparents gravesite and grew them from seed. It's a very hard plant to grow from seed because it has a hard coating on the seed, like bluebells. So I had to sand it with an electric sander and soak it in water for a long time. I ruined 16 other seeds until this one started. I will plant it in memory of my Nana and Granddad.

Thanks for touring my garden with me.

Watermelon Cake

2009-10-02T20:50:00.008-07:00

Fruit is one of my favorite things to eat.

As a kid, I remember picking, cleaning, and eating strawberries until I was sick. Every cherry season you'll hear me say, "I would eat cherries forever if I could!" During blueberry season I dream of quiting my job and joining the ranks of the harvester because I love the way the berries fall into your hands with th lightest of touch - and no juice. I could go on.

Watermelon....ah. Watermelon. I remember feeling releived when I first saw the great/terrible

movie Rubin and Ed with the epic line, "My cat can eat

a whooooooooooole watermelon." It put possibility to my ideas that I too could eat an entire waterm

elon - no need to share. No need for one than one cut. Cut it in half and dig in. I have eaten plenty of watermelons in my life in this manner.

This summer, deep in my watermelon meal replacement kicks, I decided I wanted watermelon cake - a raw dessert. Internet searches for watermelon cake bring up im

ages like this cake. Cute, but not what I was looking for. I thought a raw watermelon cake would be obvious - slabs of watermelon stacked with layered fruit in between. But it wasn't.

It was more difficult than I thought it would be to pair the "filling." It needed to have a consistency that would work well with the cellular crunch of the watermelon - a unique crunch that most fruits don't have. Something too creamy or smooth would feel odd - so no peaches, or bananas. Mangos can be difficult to cut so cutting the cake would not turn out pretty and the top layer would probably slide across the room. A citrus would be nice and compliment the flavor, but I needed it to sit for a few hours and oranges would bring too much added juice. I settled for apples because they have a similar crunch, would cut well without adding too much juice, and a tart apple would pair with the sweet watermelon flesh. This is what I came up with:

Watermelon Cake:

1 whole watermelon

1 green apple

Lemon juice

1/2 cup blueberries

Cut 4 inches out of the middle of the watermelon. Select one that is more oblong than sheprical to avoid irrigular layers. Cut off the rind. Then very carefully cut the 4" slab in half. Set aside.

Core the apple slice into 1/8 inch slices. Dip the cut slices into lemon juice or lemon soda to avoid browning. Arrange on top of one of the watermelon slabs so no piece overlaps but with minimal gaps between the apples. This may take cutting some interesting shapes.

Place the second watermelon slab on top with the angles of the rind cuts aligning with the first slab.

Sprinkle with blueberries and garnish with cut apple shapes. Add other fruit as desired. I created a blueberry compote to "frost" mine.

I came across this similar fun watermelon dessert.

I would have loved to have used more than two layers but I used the other portion of the slabs to make this Watermelon Steak. It was an interesting experiment that turned out very poorly. I might try it again next year, but cooking watermelon for 2 hours is a long time to wait to enjoy the beautiful pink fruit.

Vegan MoFo - The People's Sandwich of Portland

2009-10-01T21:33:00.005-07:00

Welcome to my first post for VeganMoFo, and my first post in a long, long time. For the month of October I may or not provide my normal (how can I say normal if it's been so long since updating?) posts with recipes - starting with this post.

As many of you know, I review restaurants for Stumptown Vegans. Most of the time we visit a place at least two times before doing a review. So, there are those few times where we cannot even bring ourself to visit a restaurant for a second visit for a review. Then, there are other times when we cannot wait for the second visit to spread the word. This is one of those times.

The People's Sandwich of Portland is a great little restaurant in Old Town Portland where they handcraft sandwich like the Hammer and Pickle, or the only vegan sandwich - the Peoples' Sandwich with "soylent green." A lightly panfried slab of tofu with hazelnut pesto and wonderfully marinated peppers.

However, this sandwich does not have a people's price tag at $8 a pop - but it's worth it. The flavors tickle all the taste buds in the order they are supposed to - the sweet balsamic vinegar marinated peppers, the salty tofu, and the sweet hazelnuts and basil. Plus there's the side of hand cut potato chips deep fried to crunchy perfection with a light seasoning. I only wish they would give more of these crispy little morsels. I cannot wait to try their curly fries.

Check out this shop by visiting their website page, then heading over to 53 NW 1st Ave.

Dog Treats

2009-01-10T21:59:00.007-08:00

My little doggie, Coda, had 33 teeth removed on Thursday. We think she has 5 left, but she won't show us yet. She's recovering well, so most is good. Coda's aunt gave her many homemade vegan cookies a cook book for Christmas called Emma's K9 Kitchen.With Coda's lack of teeth I've been concerned about how she's going to have treats for all the good things she does! Flipping through Emma's K9 Kitchen I came across No-Bake Peanut Butter Balls, but the recipe wouldn't quite work because of the dried fruit and cereal. I modified the recipe with agar so it would go down a bit easier. So here it is:

Coda's Peanut Butter Agar Treats:
1 cup + 2 Tablespoons water
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 Tablespoons molasses
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 Tablespoon flax
1 Tablespoon agar
Buckwheat flour as needed

Mix 2 tablespoons of water with 1 tablespoon agar and set aside.
Bring water to a boil, add peanut butter, molasses. Whisk until combined. Add nutritional yeast and flax. Then add agar mixture and cook for 5 more minutes.
This recipe may need additional water.
Pour/spread into a parchment paper lined paper. Let cool. Once it's cool, cut into pieces and toss with buckwheat flour to prevent from sticking. Place in an air tight container. I don't know for how long, probably 7 days.

Coda recovery post op:

Coda's Peanut Butter Agar Treats:

Travels and Anniversary

2008-12-20T22:11:00.013-08:00

Mr. Bolsh and I had our 1 year wedding anniversary last July, but due to an unpleasant day before our anniversary we never celebrated. Since we've both been busy with our jobs, and other activities finding a weekend when it was just the two of us has been difficult.
We finally made time to celebrate after my recent trip from Vietnam. I made a very wintery meal for a summer celebration but it was enjoyed.

Golden Chestnut Soup from The Vegan Lunchbox and roasted brussel sprouts:

This chestnut soup was so delicious. Hearty, nutty, and sweet while still being savory. The recipe calls to roast the chestnuts for 20 minutes, but I found this to be too long and dried out, and even exploded a few chestnuts.

Last week I was in Vietnam for work. I had a good chance to try fruit I had never had before. I even got to try the dreaded durian fruit. The fruit that is known to be banned from some countries because the smell is cross between sewage and rotting raspberries. Lucky for me, or unluckily, the fruit was not in season so it was not as ripe/stinky as it normally is. I didn't find it to be too unpleasant. The smell was strong, but it was the texture that bothered me the most. It looked like a steamed rollover dessert. The texture was puply, not juicey, somewhat mealy like a soft apple, but not sweet. I didn't hate it so I would like to try it again when it is ripe.

At the market I did get to pick up some fruit I'd never had. All of it great. The red one is a plum, the red and green one a milk fruit and the one with black spots is Soursop/custard apple.

To share one other thing I really enjoyed from my trip to Siagon, beside the food, was the Reunifaction Palace. This building was so beautiful to eyes. I encourage all others who love great modern architecture to visit the building if they ever have the chance.

But back to food - Since the Bolsh family date night ended up falling on the first real snow day in Portland, we celebrated by making christmas cookies:

We used my favorite sugar cookie recipe. Then we frosted them using the following recipe:

Hard Cookie Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 - 4 tablespoons of soymilk or water (you'll have to play to get the right consistency)
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract, or your favorite.
Assorted food coloring

1. In a small bowl, stir together sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.
2. Divide into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies, or paint them with a brush.

6" of snow has made for difficult weather to return to after 10 days in 89 degrees in Siagon.

Because of my spuratic posting, this will probably be the last of my year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday Nana

2008-09-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

My Nana would have turned 82 last Saturdau. I was planning to visit her, but she's no longer around to visit.
In celebration of her life I made this cake:

Three layers of chocolate cake, two layers each. Chocolate raspberry filling between each layer. A raspberry buttercream and thick chocolately ganache all over the top. I love how it looks like it's melting.

And this cake:

This was a chocolate, chocolate, chocolate cake.

Fueled by Popcorn: The Zine

2008-08-30T08:17:00.004-07:00

It's now available to two locations!

If you're in Portland you can purchase my zine at Herbivore, or from me directly for $3.
Or, you can purchase it online from Small World Buttons for $3 plus shipping. And from Small World Buttons Etsy Site. (Buy some coffee while you're there. I recommend the half-caf.)

Webly, from the Website Stumptown Vegans, has released her first in a series of cook zines, this one is 22 pages and features popcorn! It is named after her food blog Fueled by Popcorn

Webly tells the story of her favorite snack from how a kernel evolves into a puffed white ball with just the right amount of heat and what to do with it once it gets there! She provides valuable information on the different types of corn, oils, cooking methods, salts, spices how to use them to their fullest, and even how to store popped corn. All this before giving you 15 popcorn recipes!

The recipes range from simple to complex and some include mixing spices to create mouthwatering snacks that are not just for movie watching. Some examples are Webly's favorite, the savory Sundried Tomato or the caramel-corn-like recipes like the irresistible French Toast Popcorn. Pick up her zine today and start snacking!

Fueled By Popcorn - The Zine

2008-08-24T16:20:00.003-07:00

Stay tuned for information about the zine with 15 popcorn recipes.

Grillin'

2008-08-03T18:54:00.012-07:00

I have been grilling up a storm since May. Below are some photographic evidence of my skills, or lack there of.

Cous cous, broccoli, tofu, and garlic:
Tofu and Cauliflower:
Tofu and Greens:

Green Beans and Avocados:

I was inspired by a show on the food channel. They had a bunch of not-ripe-enough avocados and decided to grill them with lemon, olive oil, and garlic. I gave it a try and stuffed them with a carrot, bell pepper salad. It was okay, but not as good as I was expecting. It was a good way to use up unripe avocados.
Tofu and Brocolli:
Onions, Zucchini, eggplant, tofu:
Tofu and Greens:

I have some pineapple, corn, and zucchini waiting to be grilled this week.

Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-07-20T15:42:00.005-07:00

There are so many chocolate chip cookie recipes out there and I've found there are two kinds: dense and not so dense. I think most vegan chocolate chip cookies I came across a dense cookie. I love this kind of cookie, like my chocolate, chocolate cookie recipe that is almost like a brownie. But sometimes I prefer a lighter cookie.

While going through Nana's recipes I came across the, "Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe. There was a newspaper clipping about the history of the cookie at the Toll House Inn on the east coast in the 1930's. The baker was making chocolate cookies and mistakenly used the wrong chocolate which did not melt into the cookie as it should have - it just stayed their in chunks in the vanilla batter - thus one of the most famous cookies was born.

Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies:
2 1/4 Cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup soft butter (margarine)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs (I used powdered Energy egg replacer)
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup nuts (I left these out)

Combine flour, soda, and salt.
Beat butter, both sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the egg substitute and beat once more. Slowly add the flour mixture until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto baking sheets.
Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 9-11 minutes, or until golden brown.

This is a fail-prove recipe.

Peanut Butter Swirls:
Since I cannot follow a recipe to save my life I did alter this recipe beyond veganizing it - I added peanut butter. I spread peanut butter across a piece of parchment paper and put it in the freezer for a few hours until it was hard. I took it out and quickly broken it up into little pieces. Since peanut butter defreezes quickly you need to work quickly to stir the little chunks into the batter before scooping the batter on the cookie sheet.
Cook as normal and enjoy the little bites of peanut butter goodness.

Italian Teese Appetizers

2008-07-13T19:46:00.006-07:00

In looking through Nana's recipes I was inspired this morning and thought of a great use for Teese. For once I found a use for vegan cheese that may be difficult to recreate with real cheese.
Italian Teese Appetizers:
1/2" round of the Teese tube
6-8 basil leaves
1/4 tomato sliced very thinly

Place the Teese round on parchment paper and melt in the microwave, or broiler, until completely melted and it is spread out. Make sure the Teese is spread evenly. Let it rest for 1-2, just enough for the Teese to firm up.
Cut square edges to the sheet of Teese.
Layer thinly slices tomatoes and basil leaves.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper and carefully roll up, and poke with a toothpick about every inch.
Garnish with basil or oregano.
Chill before serving to ensure stability.

Death by Chocolate

2008-07-06T19:46:00.005-07:00

My Nana died this morning, unexpectantly. While I rarely share much of my personal life on this blog, this is important. Some of my first memories of food were when I was with Nana.
Nana loved food and loved to bake. Her love of food was forefront in her warm hugs. She had this soft, cuddly body - when you hugged her it was like hugging a big, pink marshmellow. You just sank into her and knew you were safe in her arms.
One of my first memories with food was with Nana. We use to eat kiwi together. She's bounce me on her knee and we'd talk and eat that funny green fruit with black dots.
She always had perfect bananas. We'd call them, "Nana's Bananas." No banana eaten at her house was ever too green or too brown. They were always perfect.
We'd bake. Cookies. Cakes. Brownies. Pies. Anything sweet. I've always had a sweet tooth and being the great grandmother she was, she'd always encourage it.
Nana would send me articles from her local central Texas newspaper on vegetarinism, or recipes that were vegan, or easily could be. She'd send me recipes for yeast free breads, cook from vegan cook books. She was so excited when she found her mom's "wacky cake" recipe to send to me. I think her's was called, "no egg or milk cake."

She understood my vegetarianism. When I went vegan she sat me down to talk about it. I was afraid it was going to be a scolding, but it wasn't. She said when she was in nursing school she learn how milk isn't that great for the body and how one doesn't really need meat. She didn't understand not eating eggs. I explained how veganism is about animals and equality and she just hugged me and said she was so proud of me for being compassionate.

But the point of this post is about Nana's love for chocolate. I didn't really come to love chocolate until I became vegan. I'd find vegan chocolates for her we could share. This September I was planning on visiting her for her birthday and making some handmade chocolates, but it was too late to even tell her about my plans. I never should have waited to tell her or ask all the questions I still have about her life. It happened without warning.
In my grieving today I decided to make a triple chocolate truffle in honor of my Nana who loved me no matter what and who I loved so dearly. Though she didn't die by chocolate, the name is catchy.

This is for you Nana. I love you and you will be missed.ingredients: cashews, chocolate syrup, maple syrup, chocolate chips, vanilla, a chocolate bar I found in the refrigerator, and probably a few tears.

Burrito Cake!

2008-06-28T13:22:00.014-07:00

Before I tell you about the physical Burrito Cake, let me tell you the full story.

At my birthday party a few months ago my sister saw my Betty Crocker Bake 'N Fill cake pans and decided I would make her a savory cake for her birthday - a burrito cake. Since I have had great success other times using the Bake 'N Fill, but in a sweet way:

Chocolate Bomb:

Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream Cake:

We started scheming the design of the burrito cake. Cornbread, beans, rice, avocado, and tofu sour cream "frosting." The end result was different than we planned, but super tasty!

I scrapped the corn bread bottom and went with a tortilla, salsa, and cheese layered bottom, similar to an enchilada.
Next, the beans and rice. I made a mixture of beans and rice with soyrizo for the outside dome. I added some corn starch to help the form. Then I filled the divit in the middle with refried beans and soy cheese.
I didn't have much luck turning it over! Since it was hot, it separated more than I wanted it to. See the pan in the background?
Nothing a little guacamole won't fix, right? I thought of this as the crumb coat, in normal frosting terms. By this point, it really started to settle and push outward. While I was hoping it wouldn't fall off the counter, two little dogs at my feet were.
Then the tofu sour cream. It's hard to frost something that's so bumpy.
Toppings of fake cheese stars and jalapeños.
The garnish make it complete! We have burrito cake!
Time to cut the cake! Doesn't it look like something from super mario brothers?
Inside:

It really wasn't that pretty, but it sure tasted good. And it was better than my husband's "burrito soup."
If this isn't evidence of my ability to take on cooking challenges I don't know what is!

Chocolate Crackle Cookies

2008-06-28T12:45:00.006-07:00

My good friend Jess gave me a great book for my birthday: Martha Stewart's Cookies. This book is great because it has almost 200 cookie recipes! My favorite thing about this book is the table of contents, instead of listing all the cookies it shows a full color picture of every cookie with the name and page number under the image. This is the perfect way to search for a cookie!

I've had this goal of making one cookie a week, but since we haven't had earth balance in the house and I've been beyond busy, I haven't made much.

I did make these wonderful crackle cookies.
These are basic chocolate cookies, rolled in powered sugar, then baked as normal.
I enjoyed these cookies and I would make them again when I am trying to impress because they are just so pretty. Everyone in the office enjoyed these and I was told to tell anyone who wanted to make these not to wear black while trying to sneak eating these. The powered sugar will leave little specs on your shirt.
I should note that this recipe was not vegan, I veganized it with a powered egg replacer.
*Because I fear Martha Stewart I will not post the recipe. Sorry. Borrow the book from your local library, or just take your favorite chocolate cookie recipe and roll it in powder sugar before baking.

Alaska by Sea

2008-06-16T12:22:00.029-07:00

Two months?! I've disappeared for two months?! Good for me. Work has been intense, then I took a much needed vacation.

I went on my first trip with my family in 12 years. We went on an Alaskan Cruise. We had a wonderful time, the cruise line, Royal Caribbean was not as accommodating as our last trip on Carnival, but there was much more vegetarian food.
You may be thinking that doesn't make sense! Carnival had a menu created for all 7 days - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - all vegan. Royal Caribbean told us they accommodated vegetarians and had Indian vegetarian food on the ship. I sent three emails inquiring and did not hear back. I was unhappy and was expecting the worse. RC's approach was to veganize the vegetarian meals. It was great that there were always two vegetarian meals on the menu every night. The annoying thing was that since they were veganizing them, my diet was left to their idea of veganism. I only got sick once.

With that said, I give you the food they served us:

Chilled Roasted Peach Soup:
It didn't taste roasted. It was more like a smoothie.

Chilled Pear Soup with Cranberries:
The cranberries were too hard to enjoy.Roasted Pepper Hummus:
I like how it looked like a bug.Pasta with marinara:
We had pasta the first night and I really enjoyed the sauce. The last night we had pasta again, but because the noodles were overcooked, I didn't enjoy it as much.
Fried Tofu:
I really wish people who don't know how to cook tofu stop serving it as if they do know how to cook it. It just makes tofu look bad. I am still trying to figure out if this dish was better or worse than the tofu on the last cruise.Eggplant without cheese:
This was one of those dishes I don't think they thought it though. I am sure they dipped the eggplant in egg before breading it. ugh. The balasmic glaze was very nice.
Indonesian Peanut:

Some Indian Dish:
The nice thing about having Indian dinners on the ship is that Indian cooking contains many spices so at least we had some flavor. They told us this dish would be good for us, but really, it had paneer cheese in it. Yuk!

Vegetables:
One awesome thing they did was to bring us a big plate of steamed vegetables every evening. Some evenings when the meal wasn't that great I could just load up on veggies and secretly cover them with the nutritional yeast I brought.

Desserts:
The fresh fruit was always good. So good in fact that many people around us asked for fresh fruit with their meals!

Every dinner we ate in the main dining area. For breakfast and lunch we ate at the buffets. We learned last time and brought some of our own items:
Tofurky slices
fake cheese slices
Toffuti cream cheese
Vegenaise
Nutritional Yeast
soy milk (though they did have some available, you just had to ask)
salad dressing
cookies
Lunch at the buffet - sandwich with fake cheese and meat and toppings from the buffet. Some of the Indian food look suspicious and they didn't know if it was made with ghee, butter or something else.
Breakfast buffet: cereal and bagel with fake cream cheese. Also a big side of fruit.
There was a cafe onboard called the SeaView and they had a great vegetarian sandwich with half an avocado and lots of sprouts.
The only way the sandwich was better was with VegenaiseOverall, they were great to us and we didn't starve. I would just recommend Carnival over Royal Caribbean to assure you're eating vegan food.

As for the trip...
We saw Hubbard and Turner Glaciers. Beautiful!
We hiked a lot:
Alaska looks a lot like Oregon.

I did find vegan food in Skagway!:
At the brewry they had a dish called the Tree Hugger. It was grilled veggies with olives on top. We enjoyed it.

I found a veggie dog at a cupcake shop in Skagway! I was so surprised I had to buy it, though I wasn't hungry. I also picked up some interesting items like pickled kelp and spruce tip syrup.

Also, we did good gambling:

Soon I hope to be posting all the food we've grilled on our new grill. Also, some popcorn recipes!

Omlet and Fake Cheese

2008-04-16T13:27:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T20:34:00.007-07:00

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

2008-03-25T21:25:00.005-07:00

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

2008-03-25T19:27:00.005-07:00

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

2008-03-17T20:05:00.006-07:00

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

2008-02-10T19:52:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-05T22:14:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Product Reviews

2008-01-21T19:00:00.000-08:00

I don't normally do product reviews but after I lost all the photos from the past two weeks, why not.

First is Ricera. I was excited about a rice yogurt coming to market but it was clearly lacking - a soy, diary and glutten-free yogurt. Unfortunately, this is not the product to eat. It's thin and tastes like chemicals. I consumed about half of the package before my mouth just refused to swallow. You know that feeling when you need to take a pill and it's in your mouth but you just can't swallow it? It was the same thing - terrible. However, I needed the calories so I tossed the spoon and put my head back to get it into my system without touching my favorite taste buds along the way.

I imagine the process to decide when the product was to go to market was something along the lines of, "well it's 100 times better than our first try!"

One thing I will give this product is that the packing uses as little plastic as possible, with a cardboard wrap to make it more sturdy. But that's no reason to buy it. Stay away!

What you should eat, if you're in Portland, is the peanut sauce from Vege Thai. They have this great sweet and lightly spicey peanut sauce they sell by the bottle, which is good because I can drink this stuff by the bottle!

Here's some rice noodles I cooked up with vegetables and smothered with Vege Thai Peanut Sauce. YUM!

Another great product I've found is a smoked salt I am very happy with. I've been tasting for one that's not too heavy or too light. I found this great one at Williams-Sonoma. It's an Oak-Smoked Sea Salt. The thing that's so different about this one is that the oak is actually from old barrels that once contained Chardonnay, or so they say. I don't care if it's true or not because it's the flavor I've been looking for. It's salty, it's smoky and slightly sweet. I can't wait to make some mashed potatoes and sprinkle this on as a finishing salt.

Mr. Bolsh Cooks Again!

2008-01-16T06:14:00.000-08:00

I updated the Apple Spice Cake recipe to include my working recipe. I think it still needs some work though. I made it again last night and it sank about 1/4 in the middle after the oven. Try it and let me know what you think.

I overheard Mr. Bolsh talking with his grandmother on the phone. She was inquiring why I wasn't washing the dishes and he was. He replied saying that I cook and he does the dishes - if he didn't do the dishes he'd be eating spaghetti every night.

That's right Mr. Bolsh's specialty is spaghetti! Pasta from a bag, sauce from a can and neat-balls from the freezer.

Pressure Soups

2008-01-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

The past few months have no been very good for photos. I just lost all my wonderful Christmas breakfast post, and a few other awesome dinners I've made - but my photo files became corrupt and I've lost a good chunk of my recent photos. It's terrible. So I've dug up some photos from my busy December where I relied heavily on the pressure cooker for good meals.
The photos below are very simple soups.

Potatoes, corn, onions and soy curls:

Black beans, corn, soy curls, onion and spinach:
Black eye peas, yams, tomatoes, onions and probably soy curls:

Apple Spice Cake

2008-01-06T22:07:00.001-08:00

Last month was pretty intense work-wise, that's why I am just now getting around to posting some recipes. Many people at work really helped me push a project to meet my deadline. Since I don't know any other way to say thanks, I made them a cake.

This is my kind of apple spice cake:

I will get around to posting the recipe later but it's pretty basic - white cake with cinnamon and apple juice. Thickened cider filling with cooked cinnamon apples with a simple glaze. I really should have made it three or four layers tall - my co-workers are cooler than a 2 layer cake.

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup soy milk

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (or pumpkin pie spice, or add a dash of clove and nutmeg for extra spice)

1 cup sugar
1 cup sparkling apple cider (Maybe apple juice/cider)
½ cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract (optional)

2 Apples Watered down citrus juice
1 cup apple cider
2-3 Tablespoons cornstarch

- Preheat the oven to 350º.

- Place the apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup and fill the cup with soymilk to equal ½ cup. Stir well and set aside.

- In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. - In another mixing bowl whisk together the soymilk mixture, apple cider, sugar, oil and extracts.

- Peel and cut the apples into quarters. Thinly slice to about 1/8"-1/4" thick. Place in a bowl with enough citrus juice to cover the apples. This is to prevent them from browning. I used orange juice. - Add the wet to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

- At the bottom of your greased 9" cake pan, place a few apples in a cute pattern. Carefully pour the batter over the apples, making sure they don't move too much.

- Bake for 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and place on a wire rack. Let the cake cool completely before handling

- Filling: boil the remaining apples in 1 cup cider for about 5-10 minutes, until they are cooked, but still firm. Lower the heat.

- In a small bowl scoop out about 1/4 cup of the cider and let cool slightly. Add the cornstarch and whisk vigorously until the cornstarch is fully dissolved. Add more liquid if needed.

- Add the cornstarch mixture back to the pot with the apples and cider and stir constantly until the mixture thickens to the consistency of a thick pudding. Remove from heat and let cool until it's touchable, but still spreadable and use as a filling.

- Stack the cakes and drizzle with a powdered sugar and cinnamon glaze.

Sm'love Pie

2008-01-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

This Sm'love pie is awesome. I make it when I'd like to impress non-vegans. This pie was made for a work Holiday Party last month. The awesome thing about my work is there are two other vegans and many vegetarians do I don't need to hide the face that there's tofu in this pie.
This is from Isa an Terry's new cookbook. If you don't already have it, check it.

Sm'love Pie:

Clean Cookies

2008-01-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

November was my team at work's month to clean the office - The Clean Team, if you will. At the end of the month (yes a month ago! I've been busy with work...) we threw a clean party and gave out prizes for cleanest desk, most welcoming, and most inviting.
What other way to make awards than to make cookies?!
These are the cookies I made:

These were great large hand sized cookies, but I cannot yet share the recipe.

Pressure Cooker Cook-off

2007-12-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

Mr. Bolsh wants to eat better food, but he just doesn't have the time to prepare meals so he ends up eating a lot of canned foods. Every once and awhile I teach him a new trick but it takes awhile to stick. For a Christmas present he wanted a pressure cooker so he could easily make his beans and rice. Not being able to turn down any desire Mr. Bolsh has to enhance his cooking skills, I bought him one.
I started off by cooking some lentils because the directions said the beans still needed to be soaked for 4 hours before their time in the pressue cooker.

Pressure Cooker Lentils:
1 cup lentils
2 cups liquid (from the canned tomatoes and water)
1 canned tomatoes
1 onion (diced)
2 cloves garlic
1 cube of bullion

Put everything in the pressure cooker pot, mix and put the lid on.
Cook for 15-20 minutes.

It doesn't look that pretty but it tasted wonderful!

The next experience was Mr. Bolsh's:
Red Bean Medley Over Rice:
1 cup red beans
1 can tomatoes plus juice
2 cups water
1 bullion cube
2 medium potatoes (cubed)
1/2 onion (chopped)
2 large carrots

Throw the ingredients in a pot and cook in the pressure cooker for 20-30 minutes.

The problem with this dish is that not everything cooked at the same time. The beans were undercooked and the carrots melted in your mouth they were so soft. We need to figure out how best to add ingredients while it's cooking because we read you can.

So far we've had some hits and misses, it will just take awhile to understand how best to used it. I've also cooked potatoes make mashed potatoes. It was quick and easy.
Let me know how you like to use your pressure cooker if you have one.

Coconut Rice Pudding

2007-12-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Julie I had a great breakfast pudding a nice dessert by dressing it up a bit.

Dessert Coconut Rice Pudding:
I used her Rice Pudding recipe and subbed coconut milk for the soy milk - it was so great! I used a wonderful brand of vanilla paste that has flecks of vanilla bean it in to make it more beautiful.

Dessert Coconut Rice Pudding:
This one was easily dressed up for dessert when a friend stopped by. I added some chocolate sauce on top. If I had some toasted coconut I would have thrown that on top. Or maybe a strawberry if they were in season.

A Mr. Bolsh Dinner

2007-11-30T19:50:00.000-08:00

Mr. Bolsh made me a special dinner of beans and toast. Okay, maybe it wasn't so special. He meant to add fake hot dogs but we were out. This is Mr. Bolsh's speciality - Amy's canned baked beans with hot dogs.

It tasted like beans and toast...

Mr. Bolsh got an early Christmas present of a pressure cooker, so look for those meals coming up next.

Sugar Cookies

2007-11-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

We had a cookie decorating party!
Mr. Bolsh and I created one of his favorite cookies - sugar cookies.
We started with the cookies, two colors of frosting and a plethora of sprinkles!

Frosting and the blank canvas:
I finally got my new camera and I had so much fun taking photos again, that I couldn't stop! There were also so many sprinkles it was hard to choose just one:

So many shapes and sizes of sprinkles:Emilie sent us these beautiful sparkles of pink and white/clear. I've admired them for so long but hadn't put them to use yet because they seem so special and fancy. I love the way they catch light:

Thanksgiving

2007-11-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Menu: (all dishes named by Mr. Bolsh)
Potato Rolls
Candied Carrots
Mashed Potatoes
Tofurky with Cider Glaze
Gobble Gravy
Super Green Beans

The Potato Rolls came from Veganomicon. They were fantastic, but not much like the potato rolls I grew up with, but more like dinner rolls.

Candied Carrots is a dish both Mr. Bolsh and I grew up with but it seems most people eat this dish with yams or sweet potatoes. Simply over boil some carrots, drain, then add some earth balance and brown sugar. Cook until the sugar is melted.

Mashed Potatoes are Mr. Bolsh's specialty. I did have some input - I had him add some parsley based off Julie's advice.

Gobble Gravy was something I wasn't planning on making, but it turned out wonderful, and I'm not even a gravy fan! I caramelized 1 1/2 onion. It took awhile for it to cook down. I used sparkling cider to deglaze the pan. I then dissolved 1 cube of vegetable broth in 1 cup of thick cashew milk/cream. Once this was all added together I was planning on adding a thickener, but instead I let it cook for about an hour (while the tofurky was cooking) and it boiled down very nicely.

Super Green Beans were about as simple as the carrots. I roasted the green beans with olive oil. When they were done from the oven I added some flax seed, which lightly coated the green beans and gave a nice nutty texture to it.

The Tofurky, both of them, were all cooked by Mr. Bolsh. A few year ago we started using sparkling pear cider to glaze and marinade the fake meat. This year was no different. Mr. Bolsh boiled the cider into a reduction sauce (though I don't think he knew that's what he was doing) and he kept turning the tofurky to coat it. He then baked it like normal.

On to the photos!

The Spread:
Potato Rolls:
Candied Carrots:
Super Green Beans:
My Wonderful Plate of food:
Nap Time!

Faux Indian Food

2007-11-25T09:35:00.001-08:00

I've been craving Indian food lately. It's more the spices and the wonderful smells they bring into the house.

This was a simple meal I made that makes my mouth still water.

Potatoes coated in oil, mustard seed, cumin seed, cardamon seed, pepper, and probably some other spices. I then roasted them for about 30 minutes in the oven.

Pan fried brussel sprouts and onions with similar spices as the potatoes. They didn't taste the same though.

Chickpeas, spinach and a premade tandoori sauce.

Such a simple meal and full of so much flavor!

Pumpkin Waffles

2007-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

This is just a simple praise for Pumpkin Waffles!
These were from Vegan with a Vengeance.
Quick praise to my waffle maker who decided to make waffles that didn't fall apart on me!
YUM!

Spaghetti Squash

2007-11-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

I've made it public many times that I am not a big fan on pasta. I enjoy pasta about every time out of five times I eat it. There have been times I've wanted pasta but I've gone out of my way to make something pasta like, but not involving pasta. I was in the same mood a couple of days ago so I picked up a squash that use to repulse me - Spaghetti Squash!

Since this is the month of food I thought I should try it again, give it another shot. I had already experimented with brussel sprouts again, why not try another food.
I've heard you can pour spaghetti sauce over it and eat it out of the shell, but that didn't sound good to me, so this is what I did:

Basil Spaghetti Squash:
1 medium spaghetti squash
2 Tablepoons Earth Balance, or other vegetable fat
2-3 teaspoons frozen chopped basil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400F
Cut the squash in half and scoop out guts.
Place face down on a cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes.
Check the squash - the skin part should be a bit squishy to touch. If it's not ready, take out of the oven, turn over, place 1 tablespoon of earth balance in each part and return to the oven for about 10-15 minutes longer.
Take out of the oven and mix up the squash. Spaghetti squash is a stringy squash - that's how it got it's name (I am assuming) so when you start mixing up the squash you'll see that.
Add the herbs and spices to the mixed squash and serve warm.

It's a quick and easy meal. It tastes like healthy spaghetti. Try it again for the second time.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

I have many thoughts on Thanksgiving. I usually share those thoughts with my close friends, but today I will tell you.

I don't care much for Thanksgiving. I love the time off from work, but it's no big deal to me because I cook all the time, from scratch. I get annoyed with all the extra people at the grocery store, hearing people talk about making a pie from scratch, using fresh vegetables...these are common things for me. I live a busy life and I always make time for cooking. (This is where I get in trouble) I see the people who cook real meals three times a year as posers. There I said it. Posers.

I do love that an event makes cooking real food popular and that everyone can enjoy a real meal full of love and healthy ingredients.

Mr. Bolsh loves Thanksgiving. I prefer to fast, but we all do things for our partners to make them happy. The past three years we've spent Thanksgiving in Bend, OR, cooking in a tiny kitchenet, but this year we will have our first Thanksgiving in our first house. I am excited for that. So I've let Mr. Bolsh plan the menu:
2 Tofurkys
Mashed potatoes
Boiled Carrots
Chocolate chip cookies

Yes, two tofurkys, for two people. I'm not the biggest Tofurky fan, but Mr. Bolsh is and he wanted one all to himself.
My favorite thing to do with Tofurky is to either glaze it with sparkling pear cider o marinate it with pear cider. It creates a wonderfully sweet glaze and full flavor. But this year, Mr. Bolsh will not have any of my silly gourmet tactics - back to basic, except for the cookies.
Hopefully a camera will be able to capture the glory of the meal.
As a side note, Mr. Bolsh has expressed interested in participating in one day of VeganMoFo. We'll see if he is really interested in telling you about his cooking skills.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your time with your favorites.

Dill Cauliflower

2007-11-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

I normally consider dill to be a summer spice. Last night I mixed it up to make it into a hearty winer meal with a thick sauce.

Dill Cauliflower:
1 head of cauliflower
flour, soy milk, dill, garlic powder, onion powder and pinch of nutritional yeast

Steam the cauliflower.
Create a roux with flour and soy milk. Add the spices and keep mixing until it's thickened.
Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and sprinkle with dill and salt. Serve warm.

Caramelized Onions, Chestnuts with Roasted Brussel Sprouts

2007-11-20T20:21:00.000-08:00

This dish was made for a friend's pre-thanksgiving feast. You should make this for your feast if you celebrate such things, if not, find another way to enjoy this dish. You might want to half the recipe it's just you.

Brussel Sprouts with caramelized onions and roasted chestnuts:
2 rods of brussel sprouts, de-rodded.
1 large onion
1 pound chestnuts
4 cloves garlic.
Earth Balance
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Simple recipe:
Add roasted chestnuts, garlic and caramelized onions to sliced brussel sprouts and roast as normal.

Cut the onion in half and slice into 1/4"-1/2" slices. Cut into half if you'd like.
Melt 2-3 tablespoons of earth balance in a a frying pan on medium-low heat and add onions. Cover for 5-10 minutes until the onions are sweating. Heat uncovered until they are caramelized. Add 1 tablespoon on brown sugar when they are done and cook for a few more minutes until the sugar is dissolved.
Take the sprouts off the rod, clean, take off damaged leaves and cut in half.
Dice garlic.
Drizzle the sprouts with olive oil and throw in the diced garlic.
Cut an x into each of the chestnuts and roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes at 400F. Husk and cut in half.
Roast the brussel sprouts and garlic at 425F for 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and throw in the caramelized onions and chestnuts.
Return to the oven and roast another 15 minutes.
Serve warm.

The nutty flavor of the roasted sprouts adds beautifully to the sweet chestnut and sweet onions. I am salivating just writing this. I can't wait to take more!

Stuffed Squash

2007-11-17T16:52:00.001-08:00

Good idea, bad idea, great idea. That's how my stuff squash idea worked out this morning.
I bought this beautiful squash at the farmers market. It could have been a sugar pumpkin because of how sweet it was.
My idea was simply to stuff it like I had done a few years ago. But this time I was going to cook the grain inside the squash.

Stuffed Squash:
1 medium squash
1/2 cup quinoa
1 cup vegetable broth
1/4 diced onion
1 diced carrot
garlic, herbs and spices.

Cut a hole in the top of the squash like it's going to be carved for Halloween. Scoop out the guts.
Cut the onion, carrots and other vegetables.
Combine the broth, grain, herbs and spices, and vegetables and mix well. Pour inside the squash - hopefully you had a big enough cavity.
Bake the squash for 30 minutes at 400F. Open oven and move the filling around. At this point it will probably just be warm and you'll be thinking it was a bad idea.
If the outside of the squash is getting too brown, put a piece of tin foil over it.
Bake another 30 minutes, or longer, until the grain absorbs almost all the water.
Take it out of the oven and let it sit about 10-20 minutes.
Cut into wedges and serve.

Out of the oven:
What's inside:
It's quinoa:

If yours turned out like mine, then you will have a nice fluffy quinoa filling with the softest squash ever. The squash was so soft it melted in my mouth.
This particular squash I bought was so sweet it almost didn't go well with the savory qunioa filling. While I was eattng it I had thoughts of going back in time and stuffing it with bits of apple and oatmeal.

Survey Says

2007-11-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
I like the cheap kind. I normally go for rice in cereal and soy in baking. I don't really have a favorite anymore.

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
Brussel sprouts with roasted chestnuts and caramelized onions
Black and White cookies
Muffins - I'll find out what type when I make it to the kitchen.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
melted EB and sun dried tomato powder, and fake parm

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
Trying to make marshmellows a few years ago and I blew my mixer and now it only has one speed, super fast.

5. Favorite pickled item?
Okra!!!!!

6. How do you organize your recipes?
I write them on lose paper while I am making them, crossing things out, adding stuff, then I transfer it to a recipe card.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
We have a garbage disposal, it's just not installed. We need to hire an electrician.
The compost, I talked about that in a previous VeganMoFo.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)?
Potatoes, spinach and mangos. Maybe tomatoes.

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
Tuna melts. I still miss tuna. It's been 13 years and I still think about tuna fish sandwiches on little rolls with a bit of cheese on top and cooked in the toaster oven.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
PB zigzag from soy delicious or the cookie dough.

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
Right now it's the bullet. It's replaced the use of the food processor.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
Garlic.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
Vegan Vittles. It even has a burn on the front cover that just happens to match the metal coils on an electric stove!

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
Strawberry freezer jam!

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
Tofu spinach lasanga.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
I don't know. Seitan I suppose.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
I haven't been eating much lately, but I love to make breakfast. If only Mr. Bolsh would clean up after me.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
cereal boxes too big to go in the pantry, jugs for water.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
Frozen "tropical" fruits, flax seeds, cashews.

20. What's on your grocery list?
apples, pears, greens, squash, cereal, soy milk, chocolate chips.

21. Favorite grocery store?
New Seasons!!!! It's the best store in the world.

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet.
there are many I've tried, but failed - meringue, tuna melt, coconut cream pie.

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa's because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
I just go through my google blog reader from the top down. Right now I am far behind. I do get really excited when I see Emilie made a new post.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
candy - swedish fish and chicosticks. and the truffles from trader joes.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
$5 MimicCream. When I saw what it was made out of I thought I could make it at home, but I wanted to try theirs.

26. Make up your own question to put here (and answer it).
What's your next kitchen project - non food?
After cutting the hole in the cabinet for the dish washer we can't yet afford, and putting up the new shelves for all the bulk items, the next main thing is the counters. I am planning on getting dark gray concrete. I want a bright red under counter mount sink, black/dark gray concrete counters with a little bit of sparkle. To the right of the stove I want a built in hot plate that is a bike chain ring. I want the edges of the slab (the vertical part) to be inset with little pieces of bike chain. to the left of the sink I want a built in drain board. The backsplash will be an aluminium tile and the floor will be a bright red marmolium. Maybe I should change the question, to "tell me about your long term kitchen goals." Then I would mention sanding and restaining the cabinet boxes, refacing the cabinets with a more modern angle. Under cabinet lighting, dishwasher, garbage diposal...I'm a designer - my house will never be done.

Soy Curls

2007-11-12T20:28:00.000-08:00

Julie introduced me to Soy Curls over a year ago and I just got around to purchasing them. I've been using them all over the place and Mr. Bolsh has been a big fan. Too bad his camera hasn't been as appreciative of my food.

This soup contained lots of potatoes, and soy chicken. Very simple but hearty.

Poppyseed Persimmon Pears

2007-11-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

I've been craving the persimmon and pear combination lately. I bought the persimmon, but forgot the pear. Now I just have to sit and stare at old photos and remember better times.

Allergies

2007-11-09T17:28:00.000-08:00

This VeganMoFo is brought to you by the letter A.

A - Allergies

A- Annoying

A- Awful

A - Advantages

I am a vegan with allergies. There are many of us. There are many vegetarians and omnis who say they can't go vegan because of their allergies. I love referring them to gluten free vegan blogs and vegan soy free recipes, because it's possible. There are so many foods out there that being allergic to even 100 common foods, leaves millions of other options available. On top of that, it fosters creative cooking - something I value more than anything in cooking.

As a kid I was often sick. I had what my mom called "Texas Crud" the green and yellow snot collecting in that troth below your nose and above your lip. My chest infections were constant. I received weekly allergy shots and dealt with asthma attacks. We moved to Salt Lake City when I was 8 and a new set of problems came into my life - hives, chest pains, and swollen joints.

I battled these annoyances for years. I was seeing 14 different doctors by the time I was 14 trying to figure out the source of all my pain. One of my mom's hippie friends suggested I do a spit test. Basically, I was to spit into a cottonball and send it to this lady in Denver who was going to tell me what was wrong with me. Sure, why not? It was cheaper than all the other doctors and medicine - only $20.

When that spit test came back she said I was allergic to yeast, brewers yeast, mushrooms, diary, and a few others. Hmm. This was a life change - I had to stop eating those 4 pieces of toast I had for breakfast every morning. I had to stop eating pizza - every teens' favorite food. This was about half my diet! After I cut the yeasts and fungi out of my life my symptoms dropped by 80%.

I had a difficult time cutting out the diary. Since I had cut out drinking glasses of milk long before, that was no problem, but the hidden ingredients were hard to let go of. I ignored the milk allergy, but I still had a few issues.

By the time I was 17 I embraced my feministic and environmental ways and became vegan. My sister taught me how to cook by saying, "combine things that taste good together." That's what I did and what I still try to do.

When I was finishing up collage I had all sorts of stomach pains from my workaholic, architecture student lifestyle. These lasted years and I just thought they were from stress. I had a food blood allergy test done and found I was allergic to many of the same things I was when I was tested younger: yeasts, mushrooms, diary. Added to that list were: avocados, bananas, peas, cranberries, walnuts, kidney beans, turnips, beets, alcohol...

If there was one thing architecture school taught me was that with restraint comes creativity. If you've got a plot of land that's steeply sloping and there's a giant boulder that can't be moved where you wanted the living room to be, what are you going to do? Use that huge boulder as an anchor of the house, figuratively and literally.

My food allergies have led me to create meals I wouldn't normally have.

When I could no longer eat my four pieces of toast a morning I switched to waffles. Tortillas became my typical sandwhich. I've come to eat them in many different ways, mainly folded in quarters but sometimes rolled and sliced. Bananas - there's always other baking binders and foods to grab while you're running out the door.
It took awhile to figure out in the beginning, but here I am now - proving that having food allergies doesn't have to prevent someone from becoming vegan.

First tofu experience

2007-11-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

I was 13 when I became vegetarian and didn't change my diet besides cutting out the meat. I stayed away from "vegetarian" items partly because I wasn't a shopper at that point, and partly because I didn't care. My older sister went vegetarian before I did and was at the age where she started experimenting with food beyond boxed mac and cheese.

One day my mom took us to the local "health food store." This was before whole foods became huge or you could buy soy milk at your local store. This health food store was about the size of a convient store and was packed to the brim with all sorts of faux meats. My sister picked up some tofu, because that's what vegetarians eat, right? I don't remember what I bought that first trip but I do remember fruit bars and some jerky. My mom probably found some interesting chip or other product she wanted us to try. (My mom still does this. She'll take us shopping and find some product she thinks is interesting, buy it for us, eat one, then give it back to us.)

Back to the tofu - so my sister bought tofu. When she prepared it at home we all took a pinch of the log. It reminded me of chicken fat. I wasn't interested. I think she crumbled it up and mixed it in this meal she use to make. She'd heat a grain like chickpeas with Italian salad dressing and cheese until warm. Then it was mixed with salad greens and stuffed inside a warm pita. It was so good, but the tofu couldn't be tasted.

So besides the thought of chicken fat, it was a decent first experience. It took me 8 years from then and 2 years of veganism before I bought my tofu to experiment.

Ratatoulie

2007-11-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

I watched Ratatoulie a few weeks ago. I didn't know what it was and decided to replicate a cartoon dish without look at any recipes. This is what I came up with:

I thought it would be thinly sliced squash with the same sized round pasta cooked in a tomato sauce.

Sliced two different kinds of summer squash with dehydrated soy curls. I thought it would look pretty alternating them.
I sprinkled the rows of squash/soy curls with garlic and soy cheese.
I then filled in the gaps between rows with cooked round pasta and smothered it with pasta sauce, more garlic and soy cheese on top. I cooked it for about 20 minutes.
Served with fresh cracked pepper. It didn't look as great as I wanted it to when I put it on my fork, but it tasted great!

One thing I really enjoyed about the movie was this hard, tough as nails, food critic melting at the idea of being served a dish he grew up with. Food is so emotional and it brings up memories of all sorts - something that VeganMoFo is good for. I love the simple flavors of dishes - vegetables and herbs are my usual way to go. This cooked pasta dish was much better than the normal boiled pasta with wet sauce poured over. Baking the dish really helped absorb the flavors.

(One thing I didn't like about the movie was the female chef mentioning that it's hard for females to get ahead in the field unless they are with a male head chef. (I do like they addressed this issue in the movie.) Even with the character mentioning this, she still went ahead and hung herself on the arm of this rising male chef (who couldn't really cook).)

In other news: I've taken photos of waffles, risottos, rice, salads and random other foods which Mr. Bolsh's camera just isn't capable of taking photos of the awesomeness. I don't know if I can wait until the insurance money kicks in to replace my camera. What type of camera should I get? What do you have? What do you wish you had? I loved my Panasonic with the Lumix lens so I am thinking of getting, basically, the same camera.

Pumpkin Pie

2007-11-06T21:46:00.000-08:00

I made pumpkin pie last weekend using a Joy of Cooking recipe and using MimicCream to sub for the condensed milk and it worked! I also added 1 Tablespoon of corn starch because I didn't trust it.
Friends told me it was the best pumpkin pie they'd had, even though they weren't fans before. Without the eggs you can really enjoy the pumpkin.
Too bad the pie was eaten before good photos could be obtained. This will have to do:

Roaster Corn Salad and Veganomicon

2007-11-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

Tonight I made a summer favorite - roasted corn salad with lots and lots of roasted garlic. I am so glad I made enough to take to work tomorrow.Since my copy of Veganomicon came in the mail today I thought I'd share some photos from testing awhile back:

White Bean Ailoi:
Smlove Pie:
Blueberry Brownies:
Buckwheat Noodle Soup:Flourintine:
Tartlets:
Autumn Rolls:
Chickpea Cutlets:Biscotti:
Pound Cake:
Recipes I have also tested but can't seem to find the photos:
Butternut squash and pumpkin seed rice paper rolls
Samosa Stuffed Baked Potatoes
Curried Carrot Dip
White Bean Aioli
Cheatnut Pate
Creamy Kalamata Spread
Diner Home Fries
Tofu Floretine
Caesar Salad
Corn and Edamame-Sesame Salad
Lentil Salad
Maple Mustard Dressing
Sauteed Collards
Sauteed Spinach and Tomatoes
Escarole with Capers and White Beans
Cornmeal-Masala Roasted Brussle Sprouts
Herb Scalloped Potatoes
Chickpea-Quinoa Pilaf
Tomato Couscous with Capers
Broiled Tofu
Chickpea Cutlets
Spinach-Noodle Kugel
Carmelized Onion-Butternut Roast with Chestnuts
BBQ Black-eyed peal collard rolls
Tomato and roasted eggplant stew with chickpeas
Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits
Almond Quinoa Muffins
Chewy Chocolate Raspberry cookies
Terry's favorite almond cookie
Rumnog Pecan cookies
Almond Biscotti
Fudgey Wudgy Blueberry brownies
Berry coconut crisp
Heart shaped Galettes
Jelly Doughnut Cupcakes
Vanilla Pound cake
Coconut Lemon Bunt cake
Smlove pie
Lost coconut custard pie
And maybe a few more.

That should be enough to blow your mind right now. But if you could only cook one thing out of the cookbook. I say go for the brownies - they will change your world. But leave out the dried blueberries - dried fruit and nuts should stay out of brownies in my opinion.

Vegan MOFO and composting

2007-11-04T12:11:00.001-08:00

I am starting late, but from here on out, I will be writing something about food everyday in this blog. Since my camera is working less and less, since my accident, I probably won't be posting many images.

This is about composting.

So maybe composting is not about eating food to you, but it is to me. It's about using all the nutrients within the food items I bought to nourish myself and my garden, thus, later, myself.

I started a new job this past week and I love how eco-aware the people are (though I am sure when the issue of eating animals comes up I will be annoyed.) We have a compost bucket in our kitchen at work and I think it's fantastic. Our office doesn't produce too much waste for compost, but enough tea bags, coffee grinds, banana peels, and apples cores to fill half of a 5 gallon bucket.
It may not be much, but if you think about my medium sized office filling 10 gallons of compostable material each month, 120 gallons a year, that's a good amount, though still small. It makes me feel great knowing that it may be a small step in the large scheme of things, but it's step - like veganism.

How many times have we heard people say that one person not eating meat won't make a difference? How about cutting meat out of one meal a week? Well, what if 10 people did this, 100 people...the little things do add up.

Our office compost bucket has left me to think about my composter dreams - yes I have a dream composter! The last house I lived in had 2 heap compost piles that produced compost slowly but surely. Since we bought our house last spring I've gone without and felt guilty about the apple cores, corn husks and pumpkin guts I throw out. I've been holding out for my dream tumbling composter to appear on craigslist for less than $100. I haven't seen it yet.

It's hard to believe we've owned this house for 6 months. That's 6 months of not composting kitchen scraps. If this was my office, that would be 60 gallons of uncomposted material - and I am sure it's been more than that in my kitchen!
This month, this Vegan Mo Fo, will buy a composter, tumbling or not!

Cherry Oranges

2007-10-26T08:14:00.001-07:00

I got this from Yogurt Land a couple of years ago. It's fun party food. If you're not a delicate person, this might be hard for you. You can freeze a few for a different texture.
People get confused thinking they are orange wedges but upon closed inspection they aren't.

Orange Agar Oranges:
3 Oranges, plus juice
1 1/2 teaspoon agar powder
1/3 sugar
1 extra cup of liquid (try cashew milk for an orange creme sickle, or more orange juice.)

Cut the oranges in half and juice them.
Pull the extra stuff out. This is the hard part. Be gentle with the skins and set aside.
Put the juice in a pot, along with the extra 1 cup of liquid.
Bring the liquid to a boil, along with 1/3 cup suagr and 1 1/2 tsp. agar-agar powder.
Put the hollowed out skin in muffin tins.
Pour the juice into the orange rinds and let cool in the tins to keep them up right.
Once they have firmed up, cut them in half and serve.

Fudge

2007-10-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

I've been told the type of fudge I make isn't really fudge, it's something else. Real fudge is heated to a specific tempture. I'm not very good at candy making, the soft ball and hard ball stages are things I always second guess myself on. So the following semi-recipe is what I use when I want to make something super sugary.

Fudge:
1 bag chocolate chips
1 cup earth balance
4 cups powdered sugar
vanilla or other extracts.

Melt the earth balance and chocolate chips - remove from heat, add the powdered sugar.
If it's too thick add a splash of soy milk or other liquid. If it's too wet, add more powdered sugar.

This is an easy recipe to throw in dried fruits or nuts, which I did for my other batch.
Another great thing to do is to use coconut oil in place of the earth balance and use some coconut flavoring. Then sprinkle with coconut.

The batch shown below is normal fudge, with a bit more vanilla and a separate layer of vanilla with vanilla paste to get the black flecks.
My camera is on the way out so taking photos has been frustrating. Luckily, if there can be when you're a blogger and your camera goes, the damage was done during my bike accident so the insurance will help me with a new one.
Speaking of biking, of lack there of - I am saving money on food by not biking. I don't need to eat as much since I am no longer biking 1o plus miles a day. The down side is that I have to pay for and take the bus along with no longer getting my exercise. My arm better heal quickly. Thanks for all the well wishes!

Soups

2007-10-09T12:21:00.002-07:00

Since my bike accident, I've barely been cooking. I've been able to eat out more. My injuries were worse than I first thought - a sprain and possible hairline fracture in my arm bone - no wonder it hurts all the time! I am so glad that Bone Up now makes a vegan formula, too bad they haven't changed their name.

To comfort myself from the pain, the lack of riding my bike, the pain of paying for the bus and
the recent Portland Fall weather - I've been making soups. Soups are dishes that rarely require recipes. They are usually just lots of ingredients thrown together to make a delicious food I can spoon out of a bowl with one hand.

Black eyed Peas and Greens:
This was nice and smoky soup with the inclusion of liquid smoke. The caramelized onions helped make a great broth along with some blended roasted eggplant. I added a few ripped up pieces of field roast slices. Very filling.

Vegetable Soup:
Lots of zucchini, onions, garlic, carrots, cubes of eggplant and chickpeas.

Hearty Breakfast Mush:
Blended steel cut oats, cream of wheat, cashew milk and flax seed. All topped with a spoonful of peanut butter, brown sugar and dried blueberries.

Fall Cake:
My friend Joe just got back from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and he needs fattening up so I made a cake. One layer is chocolate chai and the other is a vanilla nut spice layer. In between in a sweet cashew fluff layer and topped with two layers of chocolate ganache.

Potato Wedges

2007-09-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

In Oregon they're called JoJos. In the rockies they were called potato wedges. Apparently in grocery store delis they contain chicken fat. I've been craving these thick potato wedges coated with a crusty skin for awhile.

Potato Wedges:
2 potatoes
3/4 cup four
1/4 cup nutritional
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
1 teaspoon your other favorite spice

Preheat oven t0 425 F and cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper
Cut the washed potatoes into 8 long pieces (in half, in half again, and one more time in half.)
Mix the dry ingredients.
If your potatoes are still wet from washing and cutting you can coat your potatoes with the flour mixture right away. If your potatoes are dry, dip them in water (or a combo of water/flax meal) then into the flour mixture.
Place on the covered cookie sheet sheet and bake 15-25 minutes until golden brown and a bit crunchy on the outside.
Sprinkle with salt and serve.

Super Easy Meals

2007-09-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

Coconut Eggplant Curry:
1 eggplant
1/2 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 can coconut milk
curry paste
1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
basil leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion and garlic, add the eggplant, coconut milk and curry paste. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Add basil and cook 3-5 minutes.
Pour over rice and serve.

This was such an easy meal with so much flavor. I can't wait to make it again.

It doesn't get much quicker than this:

Neatball Sandwich:
4 prepackaged frozen meatballs
Pasta sauce
soy parm
Hot dog bun or other bread-like holder, like a tortilla in my case.

Cook the meatballs in the pasta sauce. Once it's cooked through, add to the bun. Sprinkle with soy parm and call it a meal.

Creamy Tomato Pasta

2007-09-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

I've moved onto fall, but I still have some summer produce in my kitchen. This recipe makes a nice sauce as well as having some firm vegetables in it.

Creamy Tomato Pasta:
2 tomatoes (one yellow and one red, for color)
1 zucchini
1 Tablespoon Wildwood garlic Aoli
1 Tablespoon fresh chives
1 Tablespoon fresh oregano
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta as normal.
Saute the chopped tomatoes and zucchini in olive oil for about 7 minutes.
Add the aoli and fresh spices and let cook 3-5 minutes or until tender.
Pour over the cooked pasta.

Almond Cookies

2007-09-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

These cookies mark my first atempt at making gluten-free cookies and the result was wonderful!

Almond Cookies:
1 1/4 cup whole almonds
1/2 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons coconut oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 flax eggies
two pinches of cinnamon
1 pinch of salt

Grind the almonds into a meal, but not too much or else you'll make almond butter
Mix the almond grounds, sugar, cinnamon and salt.
Melt the coconut oil, add the flax eggs, and vanilla.
Mix together. Roll into balls, flatten, mark with an almond and bake for 13 minutes at 350F.

Alterations: Add chocolate chips (I did to half these but wasn't sure about the gluten content since I bought it in bulk, so I kept them instead of giving them away as a gift) Add chopped cherries or your favorite fruit.

It was my mother-in-law's birthday a few weeks ago so I made her some chocolate cupcakes. I like the way they came out with such little effort.

Harvest Moon Roast

2007-09-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

I honestly thought life would slow down after we bought the house and after the wedding, but I guess it's not in my nature. I took on four freelance jobs which has been really exciting helping make the world's first Vegan Mini Mall come to life. It's been great working with Food Fight Grocery, Scapegoat Tattoo, Sweetpea Baking Company and Herbivore Clothing and Magazine. When your clients are fun, it makes working fun. Problem with these jobs was that I was also working my full time day job. Note to self - don't take on four freelance jobs at the same time, specially when they all have the same deadline.

When those jobs started wrapping up I ended up getting hit by a car on my bike! Nothing too major, just some major bruising and a few deep cuts. But the limping around kept me out of the kitchen, thus - me not posting.

This is a bit more personal I normally am at this blog because I was tagged by Pauline to do the name meme. It stressed me out. My name is Webly. I could think of words to describe me, but I didn't have all those letters in my name: Driven, Loyal, Trickster, Creative. See, it doesn't spell anything!

Enough with the personal, on to, the Harvest Moon. It's beautiful tonight. I celebrated by making a wonderful fall meal.

Harvest Moon Roast:

1 squash of your choice. I forget which one I used, a dark orange one.
1 medium potato
1 medium fuji apple
1 or 2 ears of corn
3-4 cloves of garlic
1-2 teaspoons rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 F.
Cut the squash in half, scoop out the guts. Peal the squash with a good peeler or a sharp knife. Cut it into 1/2 to 1/4 inch cubes.
Spray a pan with olive oil spray and lay the squash out and place in the oven for about 10 minutes.
Peel and cut the potatoes into a similar size as the squash.
Add the potatoes to the squash, spray with olive oil, and roast for 10 minutes.
Chop the garlic and set side.
Peel and chop the apple into the same size pieces as the squash and potato.
Add the apples to the roasted squash and potatoes. Add half the garlic and the rosemary. Mix and roast for 10 more minutes.
De-cob the corn.
Add the corn and garlic to the roast and cook 10-20 minutes longer - depending on how you like your roast.
Add salt and pepper to taste, toss.

Bundle up, serve on bright colored plates, and eat outside under the Harvest Moon with your favorites.

Cheese and Crackers

2007-09-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

Vegan Vittles was one of my first vegan cookbooks. There are many recipes I love in this cookbook but I tried a new one recently and it was a big hit - Classic White Uncheese.
Unfortunately Joanne Stepaniak does not like her recipes to be spread across the web so I cannot repost the recipe. But I can encourage you to buy the book because there are many great recipes in the book like: Muffins that Taste Like Dounuts, Sticky Buns, Ribs, Black Bean Soup, Uncheeses and more.

I probably had to spread cheese on about 15 crackers to take this picture with just a few. I kept putting them on the plate and they would keep disappearing. Mr. Bolsh would come in and take a few handfuls, like he didn't think I noticed. He called it Fake Cheese Wiz because it kind of tasted like cheese wiz without the gross flavor.

Breading

2007-09-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite breading for anything from tofu to eggplant.

Basic Breading:
1 cup corn flakes
3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon seasoning

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until small crumbs remain.
You can always add other spices depending on what you're cooking. Garlic powder, onion powder, basil, oregano and cumin are always good.

Breaded tofu with a side of roasted corn salad.
The tofu was marinated in a soy sauce and powdered vegetable broth.

Canned wheat chicken with roasted vegetables and rice.
My local Asian grocer has a variety of canned fake meats. I pick them up every once and awhile. This canned setian I breaded and baked before serving with some roasted veggies over rice.

Apple Pie

2007-09-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

This was another test recipe for Julie Hasson's new pie book.
I might have cooked the topping a bit too long, but the almond crumb topping tasted wonderful with the apples.

Simple Meals and Pie

2007-09-03T19:12:00.001-07:00

I got a new tool - a julianner. It makes cutting quicker!

I was a bit too excited to use my new julieanner and didn't think about the whole of my meal because I was too hungry and excited. I started cutting the carrots, but I was already boiling rice noodles and sauteeing garlic. Then went the sun dried tomatoes. It really wasn't a good meal, but it looked good and the salt really helped. This was one of those times when you understand the importance of a flavored salt when it makes a meal.
Skinny Oven Fries:
These tasted much like hash browns. The potatoes were sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt before baking.

Melon Baller!
Another fun kitchen tool, but doing an entire watermelon - it's a lot of work. I always wanted to serve punch out of a watermelon so I balled most the melon. I forgot to take a picture of my watermelon punch bowl though!
I threw in some leechies for color.

Coconut Cream Pie with Lime Sauce:
I am still working on my pie recipe. This recipe is a mixture of this recipe and a vanilla tofu pudding recipe. Unfortunately, the pie didn't set. But it tasted damn good!

New Farm Crackers

2007-09-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

These were great, though I only had a couple fresh out of the oven. I went away for a half hour and came back and they had disappeared! I hear these are LOVED by kids.

New Farm Cookboook's Cheezy Crackers:
1 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
2 Tablespoons oil
2/3 cup soymilk or water

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the oil and milk. Knead into a smooth ball. Preheat oven to 425 F and oil two cookie sheets. Divide dough in half and roll out each layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle top with caraway seeds or sesame seeds, if desired and toll in lightly. Cut into squares. Bake 7 to 10 minutes until golden brown.

Things I learned about these with a tip from Michelle.
When you roll them out, roll very thin, brush with a light oil or melted earth balance, fold the dough over and roll over again lightly. This is create flaky layers like gold fish crackers.
These are fun to cut out with cookie cutters. and have dino crackers!
I used half chickpea flour to mix up the flavor a bit.

Cupcakes

2007-08-30T13:27:00.001-07:00

Nothing new, but I had a fun time making them.

Chai Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:
Chai Cupcakes with Chocolate from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:
Chocolate Mint Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World:These are my absolute favorite!

Raw Dinner

2007-08-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

As much as I love cooking, sometimes I like not cooking just as much.

This salad was inspired by SusanV, who, probably a year ago, posted about eating corn on the cob by rubbing it with lime and sprinkling with salt.

Spicy Corn Salad:
2 ears of corn
1/4 lime, juiced
1 teaspoon fresh dill
1/8 teaspoon (or to taste) chili flakes
Couples of shakes of salt to taste

Cut the kernels off the cob, mix with the spices and serve cold with a side of lime and dill.

I was going with raw lasagna, inspired by Nutshell, but I was missing a few ingredients so this is:

Tomatoes and Garlic Cream:
1 heirloom tomato cut into thirds
3 sprigs oregano
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup soaked cashews
1/4 cup water or oil
Chives to garnish
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix the cream sauce first by pureeing the soaked cashews and 1/2 the clove of garlic, add enough water or olive oil to make it a smooth, creamy consistency.
Make an oregano pesto with the oregano, olive oil, garlic and salt and pepper

Layer: 1/3 tomato, 1/2 of the cream sauce, 1/3 tomato, oregano pesto, 1/3 tomato, remaining cream sauce. Garnish with chives and cracked pepper.

My First Risotto

2007-08-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

I think I've only ever had risotto once (I grew up in a Tex-Mex house give me a break!) I went about making it awhile ago but I bought orzo instead of risotto rice so my cooking was stopped at the grocery store.
Below is my story with risotto.

I started with this recipe. I added rosemary and sun dried tomatoes as a base flavor, then stirred in spinach later.

Started by sauteing some onion. When it was translucent I added some rosemary, chopped sun dried tomatoes and three cloves of chopped garlic.
I added the rice and dry cooked it for three minutes.
Then went the "wine." My wine was mostly water with a splash of apple juice. Next time I will just use more broth.I slowly added more veggie broth, while stirring continuously.When all the both was incorporated I added the spinach.
I added the fresh herbs of oregano and basil and bit more chopped garlic. Also a pat of Earth Balance and covered the rice and let it sit for 5 more minutes.Served with fresh oregano, black salt and some figs on the side because they are just so beautiful.
The risotto was good, but it was a lot of work to sit there and constantly stir it. Next time I will try the lazy approach where you add the water all at once and just let it cook, stirring when I remember.

Summer Time Porch Dinner

2007-08-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Bean and Corn Salad:
Black beans
Corn
Salasa
Salt

Mix together. It doesn't get much easier than that.

BBQ Tempeh and Onions:
Grilled on the panini ad brushes with BBQ sauce.

Fruit Salad with Lime and Salt:
Apples, yellow watermelon and peaches mixed with lime juice and sprinkled with black salt.

The black salt really helped bring out the flavors of the fruit. I love my black sea salt.

This meal was a great outside dinner. I'll have to remind myself of this time of year come January.

Corn Chowder

2007-08-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

I love Corn Chowder and I love to make it for other people. With corn season on the cusp I celebrated.
Here's my recipe .
The only thing I tweaked this time was using coconut oil instead of olive oil. I also ignored the potatoes since we didn't have any. It made it more soup-like without the potatoes.

How It All Vegan Breakfasts

2007-08-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I ended up using two recipes from a cookbook, and from a cookbook I don't use often - How It All Vegan.

I have my own crepe recipe but I decided to branch out and try something new with one of my new toys - a crepe maker!

Strawberries and Cream Crepes:
1 crepe recipe, cooked into crepes
Fill the crepes with cashew cream
Spread with strawberries and sprinkle with powdered sugar

Breakfast Couscous Porridge:
This recipe was simple with a 1:2 ratio of grain to water. Blueberries and pecans were added to the mix. Next time I would make it a 1:4 ratio to make it creamier.
This wasn't as porridgey as I wanted it to be but it was alright.

Simple Meals

2007-08-18T13:11:00.002-07:00

This one wasn't as great as I wanted, but it was good enough to fill me up.
Green Bean Sandwich:
Steamed green beans tossed with a bit of garlic aioli. Placed on bread with a thick slice of tomato.

What to do with a bunch of broken chips?
Baked Tofu:
Tofu crusted with ground tortilla chips, flour and a bit of spices, then baked for 20 minutes.
Served with a side of salad.

Fried tofu and greens

2007-08-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Every time I am in Austin my aunt takes me to NuAge Cafe. Last time I was there, last year, I got a dish called sizzeling setain, or something like that. It was fried pieces of setain with a glazed sauce on top of a big pile of greens. It was so fantastic. Not just the taste, but the combination of healthy and fried food. I decided this was the best was to feel okay about eating fried food - on top of a big pile of greens.

I attempted to make something similar but with BBQ tofu.

BBQ Tofu and Greens:
1 block of firm tofu
1/4 cup corn starch
1 bunch of greens
1/4 bottle BBQ sauce
oil for frying

Drain and press the tofu. Cube and coat with corn starch so it looks like a marshmellow. Fry tofu in oil until it becomes a light yellow color. Place on a drain board to absorb some of the oil
Steam the bunch of greens as normal.
Place the tofu carefully into a bowl and coat with your favorite BBQ sauce. Be careful not to smooth the tofu too much.
Layer a place with greens and top with BBQ tofu.

Enjoy your fried food!

Peach Pie

2007-08-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just to tempt you:
Peach Pie!

I was honored to test for Julie Hasson's upcoming pie book. I hope I can test more.
This pie was quick and easy, even for someone who dislikes making pie crust.
I cut out bats for the weep holes.

The pie held up very nicely, even after being cut. The sugar topping was beautiful and didn't burn like I thought it would.

Dessert Pizza

2007-08-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

We had a pizza party a few night ago and I never thought it was odd for it to be an adult pizza party, but apparently some people think it's odd for adults to throw one. Who cares - it's pizza!

Dessert Pizza:
Pizza dough (below)
Cashew Sauce (below)
1-2 apples
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon coconut oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon clove
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Slice the apples, thin, about 1/4" and toss with lemon juice and melted coconut oil. Set aside.
Mix the sugar and spices and sprinkle over the apples, mix.
Spread cashew sauce on pizza and arrange apples as desired.
Bake at 500F until nicely browned on top.

Pizza Dough:
3/4 cup warm water (105°F to 115°F)
1 envelope active dry yeast

2 cups (or more) flour
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

Pour 3/4 cup warm water into small bowl; stir in yeast. Let stand until yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes.

Mix 2 cups flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor. Add yeast mixture and 3 tablespoons oil; process until dough forms a sticky ball.
Transfer to lightly floured surface. Knead dough until smooth, adding more flour by tablespoonfuls if the dough is sticky.
In a large bowl drop about 1 Tablespoon olive oil in the bottom and use the dough ball to to spread the olive oil around the bowl and the dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Punch down dough. Store in airtight container in refrigerator until use.
Roll out dough to your liking or flatten a ball of dough and start at center of dough, working outward toward edges until you have the desired shape. Pinch the edges to form a crust.

Cashew Sauce:
1 cup raw, soaked cashews
3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
3-4 Tablespoons soy milk (or as needed to make the sauce creamy)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a blender or food processor blend the soft cashews and 3 Tablespoons soy milk until smooth. Add the sugar and extract and more soy milk if needed to make it creamy. It should be the consistency of hummus.
Feel free to add more sugar or spice as desired.

Pesto Based Pizza in the background with Follow Your Heart cheese and Dessert Pizza in the foreground:

Cut pieces of pizza:

Low-fat Potato Dinner

2007-08-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

This dish is very filling and is pretty low in calories and fat but high in flavor.

Baked Potato with Salsa:
1/2 cup corn
2/3 cup black beans
1/2 cup chopped spinach
1 Tablespoon Wildwood Aioli or a vegan mayo
Salsa to taste

Mix the ingredients and serve over a warm baked with a side of salsa.

This dish was served with a side of yellow watermelon sprinkled with lime juice.

Carnival Cruise and Vegan Food

2007-08-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

After our wedding and ceremony, Mr. Bolsh and I dashed through the sparklers to our pedi-cab where we were taken through the city in a bike powered cab. We arrived at our hotel room very late, took a three hour nap before catching our 6am flight to Houston, Texas. Luckily, our baker, Sweetpea Bakery, supplied us with breakfast treats. We then took an hour and half bus ride to Galveston, Texas where we waited in line for over 2 hours before entering our beautiful balcony room to start our 7 day Caribbean cruise on Carnival's Conquest.

This is what our cabin looked like:
The View:

Of course, this is about food and not our trip. We had a great time on every island we visited. Now onto the food.

I had contacted Carnival prior to our departure to make sure we had vegan food. They tried to assure me there would be vegan food for us and that we should just speak with our wait-staff when we got on board. I wasn't very happy with that solution and was preparing to eat pasta with condiments and lots of fruit.

We packed an entire suitcase of junk food. Mr. Bolsh and I have sweet tooths so most of our food was cookies and candy. We must have been the only people who brought food on a cruise!

The first night of food was a salad and a baked potato. The hostist introduced herself and asked about our needs and showed us a prepared vegan menu. We approved our breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next day, all of which had more hope for the boring salad and dry baked potato of the evening.

Breakfast was boring oatmeal and fruit, but it was good enough. Later it was blueberry pancakes once they found out that's one of my favorite breakfasts.
Lunch was grilled onion and peppers on a hot dog bun.

Food photos in no particular order:

"Burrito" with a side of Salsa and Guacamole:
Simple, but good.
Tomato Soup:
Salad with Italian Dressing:
Pasta with peas and plain tofu:
We thought this soft, plain tofu was microwaved. They only served us tofu one other time, covered in BBQ sauce. It was no better.
Black Bean Burger:
Coconut Rice Pudding with Berries:
This won my favorite dessert award
Breakfast was often Blueberry pancakes and fruit:
Vegetable Soup:
Black Bean Soup:
Fruit Struddle:
Soggy and not my favorite.
Pasta:
Dinner Salad:
Herbed Polenta:
This dish could have been terrible, but it was fantastic and served with a side of sauted mushrooms and another of spinach.
Dinner Salad:
I must say that some of the saddest salads I've ever had have been on this cruise.
Corn Chowder:
I forgot what this was called but it seemed like left over veggies rolled in tortillas, deep fried, cut into pieces. Then, served with a side of pureed peas:
Creamy Pasta:The Chef and Webly:
I don't think he really wanted his photo taken with me, or anyone else.
Non Main Dining Room Food:

We checked out the sushi bar:
We found the coffee shop with soy milk:
Buffet:

Left over polenta with herbs, glass noodles and vegetables, and watermelon:
Drinks:
What do you call an alcohol-free, dairy-free drink? I don't know but it seems like the begining of a joke.We found the 24 hour Pizzaria!
The food was hit and miss. Most of it was good, if not great. I give them a lot of credit for trying. I would encourage other vegans to travel Carnival without fear. There's no need for an entire suitcase full of junk food, but it sure was nice to have some vegan baked goods! We're headed up to Alaska next year for a family cruise. We will be taking more Sweetpea cookies for sure and those little cartons of soy milk came in great for quick breakfasts with their boxed cereal.

Love,
Mr. and Mrs. Bolsh

(Tulum, Mexico; 125 F)

Tofu Scramble

2007-08-06T21:33:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I attended the Post Punk Kitchen Vegan: The Gathering and cooked a large amount of tofu scramble Sunday morning. People were really happy with the dish and hearing Julie tell me it was "the best tofu scramble" she'd ever had, was a compliment to many any heart smile.

Sun dried tomato Tofu scramble with Basil

I don't really have a recipe but it usually goes like this:
Saute onions, add garlic, mix. Add tofu, a bit of soy sauce and any dried spices and cook until the tofu starts to brown.
Add veggies related to their firmness (carrots, to green beans, spinach and tomatoes) and add fresh spices last.

Miso Popcorn

2007-08-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I would have a smart idea again like the pesto fries and come up with a new popcorn flavor, but my idea flopped.

Miso Popcorn Flavoring:
1 Tablespoon red miso paste
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon Vegenaise

Mix it all together and quickly mix with the popped corn. Top with Nori spice.

The reason I wasn't happy with it is because I don't like wet popcorn. I don't like melted butter on my popcorn. Maybe if I was able to dry out the miso and make it into a powder, it might be better.

Fall Back Popcorn:
Popcorn popped in Earth Balance and topped with a bit of salt.

On a popcorn note - I found a popcorn machine at Pirates Tavern and asked if I could use it. I was like a kid in a candy shop - so much fun!

Tofu Apple Quesadilla

2007-07-30T13:25:00.001-07:00

I've been enjoying the panini grill to the extreme.

Tofu Apple Quesadilla:
Marinaded and grilled tofu
Sliced Fuji Apples
Follow Your Heart cheese

Place it all together and grill.
I was trying to figure out a dipping sauce for this. I kept munching on it thinking and by the time I thought of using a Balsamic Vinaigrette, I was finished.

Tofu Marinade:
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tsp. all purpose seasoning salt
1 tsp. thyme
water - enough to cover the sliced tofu.

I usually just keep a block of tofu marinading in the fridge with this mixture.

It's a very plain, and white meal. Spinach would look better in here.

Christmas in July

2007-07-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Shelley throws the best parties, so much so that she throws two Christmas parties a year. I wanted to come up with a a new way to enjoy something common. With that in mind I came up with a dessert dip - cheese and crackers.

Cheesecake Dip with Ginger Snap Cookies:
1 8 oz. container Tofutti Cream Cheese
1 12 oz. container vacuum packed firm tofu
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons corn starch
2 Tablespoons soy milk
2 Tablespoons raspberry jelly.

Blend cream cheese, tofu, lemon juice, corn starch and soy milk in a food processor until smooth.
Place in square baking pan and bake at 375F for 25 minutes.
Let cool completely.
In a glass dish spread sides with a bit of raspberry jelly. Layer cooled cheesecake dip with some raspberry jelly in a decorative fashion.
Put in the fridge for 2 hours before serving with ginger snap cookies.

The dip was a hit!

Potatoes with Carrot Tarragon Sauce

2007-07-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Potatoes with Carrot Tarragon Sauce:
2 large potatoes
olive oil
1/2 sweet onion
1 large handful baby carrots
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 Tablespoons Mirin
3 cloves garlic
2 sprigs tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste

Slice the potatoes in round and boil until soft, but not falling apart.
When the potatoes are done, spray cookie sheet with olive oil and place boiled potatoes on sheet and bake about 10-20 minutes at 425 F until lightly browned on both sides.
Saute the onion until caramelized. Deglaze with Mirin.
Add carrots and water and boil until the carrots are very soft. Add garlic last three minutes of cooking.
Blend the carrots, onion, left over water in the pot and 1 sprig of tarragon until pureed.
Spread across a plate and place boiled and baked potatoes on top. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and tarragon.
Serve warm.
This sauce is fun to trick people because they will think it's a cheesy sauce. Really, it's a hearty, lightly sweet and warm carrot sauce.
The sauce would make a great soup with more liquid. This sauce had Mr. Bolsh licking his plate!

Kitchen Gadgets

2007-07-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

The following meals feature dishes made from new kitchen gadgets.

First the Panini Grill:
I love grill lines on my food. I can't wait until the day we have a backyard grill to include the smoky flavor. The Panini grill is great because it's larger than a George Foreman Grill and the lines are closer together.
I wanted a quick meal so I threw on a cut of cabbage, onion and some quickly miso-marinaded tofu. I sprayed the cabbage with soy sauce and sprayed the onion with olive oil before sprinkling on some kelp powder before grilling. I walked away and when I came back there was hot, grilled food waiting for me. I stacked them on top of each other and called it a meal.

Rocket Blender or "The Magic Bullet":
The Magic Bullet is a tool I've heard people rave about for a long time and I ignored it because I have my dear food processor to fulfill all my desires for chopping, blending, shedding. The Bullet seemed like the Vita Mix people who are just loyal.
When I broke our blender I went out and bought a Rocker Blender, just to try it. I had no idea the world I was about to step into!

Peaches and Cream:
Smoothies have been a great way to fill me up while not having much time for a full home cooked meal.
1/2-1 cup raw cashews soaked in water for an hour or more (I have these soaking in the fridge these days)
1- 1 1/2 cup soy/rice milk
1- 1 1/2 cup frozen peaches or strawberries

Blend the cashews with a bit of soy milk.

You might need more soy milk or other liquid, so just blend until it's thick and creamy.

Add the frozen fruit and maybe more liquid. Blend until the consistency you desire.

Take off the blender attachment and add the drinking cap.

We've really enjoyed this kitchen gadget because it's quick and easy both in clean up and use.
The pros, beyond the clean up and user-friendly style, are how well it blends ice and how you don't have to push down or stir the items -you can just lift it up and shake! When it's ready to serve you just throw on a little drinking cap to cover up the threaded edge and drink away.
The cons to this toy is the annoyance of screwing and unscrewing the blender attachment. Blenders are great because you can continue to add items while blending, something you can't do here.

Creamy Potato Soup:
I've been pretty stuck on the cashew cream lately. I used it in a potato soup to make it creamier and a bit thicker. It was a hit.
Cashews, veggie broth, carrots, onion, potatoes, and basil.

Pesto Shells:
Here I was trying out the Bullet again while making pesto.
basil, olive oil, veggie broth (to cut the oil down), garlic, cashews, sun dried tomatoes.

The problem with using the Rocket here was that to dice the garlic small enough the pesto became soup-like it was so smooth. I prefer various sized basil pieces in my pesto over a pesto-soup. It still got the job done but I will be sticking to my food processor for pesto.

Little Pies

2007-07-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Jess and I prepared for her 4th of July party together. I enjoy cooking with Jess because we work similar to each other in the kitchen - cooking, cleaning, tasting, adding, experimenting.
You can see more of what she made over here.

Raspberry Coconut Pie:
This was based off my coconut pie recipe. Jess wanted them pink, so we added the juice of some raspberries but it turned lavender. They still tasted great!

Yogurt Fruit Pie:
Luckily, Jess made the crust for all of these because I really dislike making pie crusts.
These were filled with apricot yogurt, various thickeners and sweeteners before throwing in some fresh fruit.

07.07.07

2007-07-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

Time to tie the knot at 7:07pm.
Look forward to our culinary experiences cruises the oceans in a couple of weeks.
Bye!