Simple Meals and Pie

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!

Common Dinner Salad

Simple salad but oh so good!


Butter leaf lettuce, spinach, shredded carrots, basil, tomatoes, red onions and cubed moz. Scheese with balsamic vinegar dressing.

I am a big fan of the salad spinner. The lettuce we had was about 2 weeks old and wilting. I just chopped it up and put it in the salad spinner with cold water and within 10 minutes it came back to life and was crunchy. You could do this with any bowl, but what makes the salad spinner so great is that it gets out all that extra water in the leaf folds.

Poached Pears with Persimmon Poppy Seed Sauce

Oh man. These are so great! This recipe was created for the Vegan_Cookoff's Sauce Challenge.

Persimmon Poppy Seed Sauce:
1 Persimmon - skinned and mashed
1/2 tsp. poppyseeds
1/4-1/3 Cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar

Toast the poppy seeds in a dry skillet for 2-3 minutes on medium heat. Make sure they don't burn.
Add sugar and stir, then the remaining ingredients.
Simmer for a few minutes until the sauce becomes an even consistency.

Spoon 2 tablespoons of sauce over each pear before baking.
Bake the pears as normal.
Spoon two more tablespoons of sauce over pears after removing from the oven and before serving.

Taste:
The light sweetness of both the pear and persimmon blends perfectly! Neither over powers the other, but the poppy seed brings this wonderful almond flavor to the simple sauce. Perfect!

Normal Dinners

Like most bloggers I take photos of most the food I eat, even if it's not that interesting or have real recipes. It's always interesting to see what others are eating so here you go.

Chickpea soup with spinach and noodles with a side of dill carrots.
I've been working on my carrots. My partner misses these mushy carrots his grandmother use to make. So I've been trying to over cook my carrots to a mushy perfection and coat them with a pinch of brown sugar, dill and earth balance.

Vegan Chicken Sticks with agave-mustard dip and garlic greens.
While at Food Fight I felt like I needed to support their new freezer so I picked up these weird fake chicken legs. They are on little sticks which are actually sugar cane sticks - It's interesting. The dip was

Fall Desserts

Chocolate Pumpkin Pie:
Pumpkins grew out of my compost this year and this was my first sacrificed pumpkin for pie. However, it wasn't a sugar/baking pumpkin. It looked like one - but didn't taste like it so I just added a bunch of chocolate.


Chocolate Pumpkin Pie:
- One baked pumpkin
- 1 container silken tofu, firm
- 1 1/4 Cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp. pumpkin spices
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder

Blend everything in a blender. Pour into premade pie crust and bake for about 30 min. at 350F.


Harvest Balls:

These were from the Vegan Lunchbox cook book.
You can check Jennifer's website for the recipe - or go get her book because it's awesome.

Just a note about these. They were a bit too sweet for me. Next time I will cut the sugar down from 1 cup to 3/4 or 1/2 cup so I can taste the popcorn a bit more. Also I used currents instead of cranberries.