Grillin'

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.

Stuffed Squash

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

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

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


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

Pressure Cooker Cook-off

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.

Caramelized Onions, Chestnuts with Roasted Brussel Sprouts

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!

Soups

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.

Summer Time Porch Dinner

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.

Lunch Swap

My friend had a birthday party last Sunday with an interesting theme - a lunch swap. Half the people made lunch for two and the others just showed up. All the lunches were wrapped and placed on the table. When eating time came those who didn't come with lunch drew numbers. The first person got to pick a lunch, unwrap it and wait. The second person could steal the first person's unwrapped lunch or pick a wrapped lunch on the table and unwrap it. It goes on until everyone has picked a lunch. The chef of the lunches are then exposed and you have a little picnic with them.


The inspiration for my lunch came from my awesome, new dinosaur cookie cutters. I made Flax crackers from How it All Vegan, and a black bean "tar pit" dip. I didn't know how to continue making a meal with a dinosaur theme, so it stopped there.

The Flax crackers from How it All Vegan were great. I added some crushed, sliced almonds, and extra spices and they are great. I often skipped over this cookbook when I learned to cook, but it does have some good recipes in it. These will be made again with various spices.
For an appetizer I also included garlic stuff green olives and large capers.

Next dish was a simple potato salad. Apparently mustard and relish is not common to some peoples' experience in potato salad. Potatoes, vegenaise, mustard, chopped onions, fresh dill, fresh tarragon, vinegar, celery, salt and a tad of relish.

Tofurky Kielbasas satueed with onions and zucchini and put on skewers for easy eating. These were really easy and went over well because they can look impressive.

Fruit put on skewers. Another simple way to make fruit more fun and easy to transport by placing it in a pink glass.

Last was dessert, of course. Chocolate pear cookies with a strawberry filling.


The party was really fun but it took a lot more energy to make a full lunch/dinner for someone than making one dish I'd normally make for a potluck party. I later found out that others didn't put as much energy into their lunches.
The history from this idea came from a 50's dating and fund raising idea. Women would make lunches, men would then place auctions on the lunches. When they won the auction, they would then have lunch with the woman who made it. Very cute.