Pressure Soups

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:

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.

Corn Chowder

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.

Kitchen Gadgets

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.

More Simple Meals

Meals without recipes. That's how I normally cook - just throw stuff together that tastes good on it's own and hope it tastes good together with spices.

Buckwheat Noodle Soup:
With veggie broth base, leeks, onions, garlic, miso, chickpeas, buckwheat noodles and diced tomatoes.
Diced tomatoes are one of my new favorite things to add to soups. Drain the juice from a can and throw it in. I use to put the juice in there before but it always made it too tomato-y so just putting the fruit in there helps the other flavors sand out on their own.


Saturday Market Dinner:
Roasted fiddleheads, steamed asparagus, garden salad with purple cabbage.
Fiddleheads - I knew bringing these home was going to raise some eyebrows. I was cruious as well. They look a little too much like bugs to me. I saw them once on one of my blogs I read, so I picked them up. They are very expensive. One small handful for $1.50. I really wasn't excited about the taste. They weren't bad, what roasted with garlic can be bad?! but they just weren't $1.50/handful good. Interesting look though.



Cheesy Cauliflower and Greens with Almond Pate:
We eat a lot of vegetables, can you tell? Steamed cauliflower with that special cheesy sauce I have been trying to perfect. When I perfect it I'll share the recipe.
Steamed greens with a fun almond pate. I soaked almonds for awhile, added sun dried tomatoes, paprika, chili powder, lemon juice, miso, salt and garlic powder. Mixing this into the greens reminded me of a savory cottage cheese. It was very good.

Cheesy Soup

I went about this soup making a blended potato soup but it ended up tasting like a cheesy tomato soup. SO very delecious!


Cheesy Soup:
6 small red potatoes
1 leek
2 ribs of celery
1 large carrot
4 large cloves of garlic
vegetable broth
salt, pepper
dash of chili powder
1 large tomato

Chop and boil potatoes as normal, about 10-15 minutes.
Saute leek in a soup pot. Dice celery and carrot and saute until tender. 5 min?
Add garlic and saute for 1 min. Add enough potato water or vegetable broth to just barely cover the sauted veggies. Add powdered veggie broth if you potato water.
Peel, de-seed tomato and dice. Set aside.
Let simmer until potatoes are done.
Add potatoes to the veggies and fill with just enough vegetable broth or potato broth to cover.
Place in blender and blend until desired smoothness.
Return to pot, add tomatoes and more liquid as desired.
Let simmer for 5-10 minutes before serving.
Garnish with tomato and if you're feeling extra cheesy add a slice of tofutti chedder cheese. Sprinkle with a dash of chili powder or paprika just before serving.

White Bean Soup with Tomatoes and Basil

This was inspired by a No Fish Go Fish soup I had a few weeks back. Soups are never really measured properly in my kitchen so here's best my shot:

White Bean Soup with Tomatoes and Basil:
1 1/2 cups white beans - roughly smashed with the potato masher
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 1/2 cups soy/rice milk (more for a creamier taste)
3 cloves garlic
1 can diced tomatoes - drained
1 bunch basil
rosemary
taragon

Saute garlic rosemary and taragon in some olive oil in a large soup pot.
Add broth and bring to a boil then add the beans.
Once boiling again add the drained diced tomatoes.
Keep stiring until it reaches your desired texture.
Turn heat to low, throw in the chopped up basil.
Cover for 5 minutes and serve warm with fresh cracked pepper and salt to taste.

Best served with a side of toasted garlic bread.
This was a wonderfully light tasting soup. It was nice to have tomatoes in a soup without tomatoes being the base.
This would have been better with a potato or two to thicken it up.

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 is in the Air!

Every year I look forward to the Apple Tasting at the Portland Nursery. This year I ropped Jess into going with me. It was a wonderful way to kick off fall. Every year I've been it's been held on beautiful, sunny days where the sun is warm and the shade is cold. Unfortuntally, Portland doesn't have many of these type of fall days that I grew up with, but yesterday was one of them.

The follow is how we celebrated.

Pumpkin Pie
1 box of silken tofu
3/4 cup sugar
1 can pumpkin
1 tsp. vanilla
pumpkin pie spices to taste

Blend in blender until smooth. Pour into premade crust and bake for about 1 hour at 400F.


Simple Maple Salad
Salad greens and other veggies of choice (I used shredded carrots, thiny sliced onions, lettuces)
1/2 pear chopped
1 Tbl. maple syrup
1 Tbl. balsamc vinegar
pepper

Mix and serve.
Toasted nuts and other fruits are also a nice touch to this dressing.


Roasted Veggies
Any random veggies you need to get rid of. Looks like I used potatoes, leeks, onions, carrots, winter squash. All mixed with olive oil, garlic and some rosemary.
The special touch to this simple dish was adding roasted kale on top. I just baked 4 leaves until crispy. Once the veggies were done I sprinkled the dry leaves on top. It added a nice depth to this dish and put some leafy greens into a roasted dish.



Apple Strudel
Totally inspired by the apple tasting.
Many sheets of phylo.
2-4 apples
powdered sugar
olive oil.

Lay a couple of phylo sheets down, spraying olive oil between each sheet. Layer on sliced apples, sprinkle with powdered sugar. Repeat a few times. Fold/roll phylo once the apples are done to make a latice across the top.
Bake about 20-30 min at 350F.
Once out of the oven coat in vanilla frosting.

A simple dessert that only looks fancy.


Lentil Soup
I wanted a brothy soup and found a quick way to use up those left over roasted veggies.

Boil left over roasted veggies for 30-60 minutes.
Strain veggies and add 1/2 to 1 cup of lentils, depending on how much liquid you added to your veggies.
Add salt and pepper to taste. let look until the lentils are tender.
Garnish with shredded carrots and chopped chives.


I've updated the cupcakes I've worked on. Check out this post for new pictures.

Chick Chicken Soup

Is it clear yet what my favorite bean is?
This wasn't a good summer soup, more of a hearty winter soup, but very tastey.


2 Cups Veggie broth
1 Cup chickpeas
4 Cloves garlic
1 cup chopped Wheat Meat
1 Head broccoli
2 Tbl. nut. yeast
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic with some olive oil, when clear add veggie broth and cooked chickpeas and wheat meat and bring to a boil.
Add nutritional yeast, mustard powder and other spices.
Cook on high for another 10 minutes. The soup should start to thicken.
Add chopped broccoli and serve when broccoli is bring green in color.

Corn Chowder

Corn chowder
This is easily one of my favorite recipes. I look forward to corn season each year so I can make this. It seems more complicated than it is, but this recipe is much better with the homemade broth.

4 ears of corn
2 potatoes
4 cups water
1/2 - 1 large onion
1-2 cloves garlic
1 can light coconut milk
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
teaspoon

1. Broth: Fill pot with 4 cups water. Remove skins from onions, potatoes, and garlic, put in water. Cut the kernals off the cob (like this) and place the cobs in the pot (like this). Boil until mixture is about 2 cups. (This takes about as much time as it does to prepare everything else and clean up a bit.)

2. Chop onion into bits, saute until clear and a bit browned. Set aside.

3. Chop potatoes into bite sized pieces while onion is sauting (like this). Set aside with corn and chopped garlic.

4. Strain broth. Return clean broth back to pot, add 16 oz. light coconut milk or soy milk.

5. Add sauted onions, chopped potatoes, corn, garlic, 1/2 tsp. pepper, salt/braggs, and some fresh or dry tarrgon.

6. When potatoes are almost done, turn heat down and let cool 5 min before serving.

7. Remove about 1/2 of the soup and blend unil smooth. Return to pot and mis together.

8. Pour into bowls, adding a few taraggon leaves. Dust with salt, pepper.

9. Serve.

Alterations:
Soy milk can be used for those who are sensitive to the taste of coconut or want a low fat version.
Blue potatoes makes a wonderful fun color of soup and helps brighten up this light colored soup.
Other veggies can also be added, but I prefer to highlight the simple and sweet taste of the corn.