Category Archives: recipe review

More Peas, Thank You’s Tempeh Stroganoff

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I’ve been doing the amazon vine program for several years now, but have kind of been slacking for some time. It’s a program where they give their top reviewers (All of those reviews I wrote about kitchen utensils and cookbooks eventually paid off!) the chance to try products for free, as trade for reviewing them. It’s actually a big part of the reason I went vegan, if you want to know the truth. Some of the first selections I made were Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet and Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (which btw, was so graphic, I couldn’t even finish, and am still haunted by) back when I was thinking about going vegetarian again. I ended up going vegan instead, and staying vegan as a result!

The offerings are usually very book heavy, but I hadn’t seen a cookbook I was interested in for a long time. When I saw a vegetarian book, I got excited and figured I could veganize the recipes easily, and could use a kick in the butt to get cooking again.

Since I left my giant kitchen a year ago, and moved into smaller apartments in Fort Lauderdale and Seattle, my previous zest for cooking had diminished proportionately with my diminished counter space. Sure it’s not as bad as cooking in that tiny studio in Brooklyn, but it’s less than ideal. Unfortunately, that’s just city life, no matter what city you’re in, or at least it is in my price range!

Now onto the book…

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Turns out more peas, thank you is already a vegan cookbook, with no help from me. Sure she does offer the organic, ovo-lacto vegetarian option as well, but they’re written vegan first. I was so excited about my good luck! It also turns out that this book is a sequel to her peas, and thank you volume, and that she writes a blog over at peasandthankyou.com, if you want to check out some of her recipes and writing style.

I started out by reading the entire book back to front (I also read magazines in this fashion) and dog earring all of the things that sounded good, whilst reading out titles to Thomas. Happily, I dog eared most of the book. The recipes sounded good, and were generally not too fussy, which I appreciate these days. I attribute that to her whole mother of two craziness thing that she writes about so often in her intros. I will also say this, I’m so used to anecdotes from the friends that I have that now have kids, that even this was okay. It’s most of the book, but at least it’s usually humorous, and sometimes even a little snarky!

The Tempeh Stroganoff was the first recipe I made, by Thomas’ request…

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I chose to chop the onions in the food processor, because for some reason I really can’t stand chopping onions anymore. I end up burning and crying so much that I have to leave the kitchen and flush my eyes out with water repeatedly. (Though I think these bagged onions I bought from WF twice now are especially bad!) That being said, I chose to pulse the tempeh into crumbles in there as well instead of grating it as called for in the recipe. I highly recommend doing both of these things for convenience & as a time saver. Besides that, I followed the recipe exactly.

Results:

Easy, filling, delicious! I had never had Beef Stroganoff before, so I didn’t have much to compare to, but Thomas said it was pretty similar. I thought it was great, and had the pleasure of eating the leftovers for lunch the next day. The depth of flavor she achieved in this fairly simple meal left me excited and motivated to keep on cooking from her book. Expect to see more reviews of her recipes in the coming days. :)

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Blissful Bites Mac N Kale Salad!

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It’s hard to believe I hadn’t written a review of this salad yet! Months ago I saw Dawn over at Vegan Moxie post a picture of this salad and knew I must try it right away. I bought a kindle copy of Blissful Bites before we moved, but hadn’t really gotten to explore it due to my extreme decrease in cooking at home since then.

This should really be called Pizza Kale salad b/c it’s much more reminiscent of that comfort food, over mac n cheese due to its sun dried tomatoes and nooch.

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Ingredients aren’t too complicated, and the only mixing you do is in the bowl, with your hands. (Easy!) This was the 1st time I used an avocado that wasn’t way overripe, so I even retained some pieces of it this time after massaging everything together!

Sorry, it's a little blurry! I was in a big hurry to eat my delicious salad!

Sorry, it’s a little blurry! I was in a big hurry to eat my delicious salad!

I’ve made this a number of times now due to its addictive nature. Initially, I couldn’t find plain, dry sun dried tomatoes, so I used the ones in olive oil and omitted the extra oil. Now that I found some at Trader Joe’s (our WF doesn’t carry them), I use a tsp. of the leftover [now] tomato infused oil for the recipe. In fact, the last time I made it, I was out of the tomatoes and just used the infused oil, and it was still good. (So much so that I ate the whole giant bowl in one sitting!)

You can find out more about macrobiotic chef Christy Morgan, her book, and her recipes over at her website, TheBlissfulChef.com. I’ll be meeting her for the 1st time/karaokeing with/seeing her in a couple months in Portland for Vida Vegan Con! :)

Oh! And Spring has finally begun over here in Seattle! Here’s what greeted me when I left the parking garage on aptly named Cherry Street today!

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Tomorrow’s going to be 68, and Thomas is actually OFF! I may get to stroll around town in a halter dress instead of a 3/4 length coat! :)

DIY Coconut Oil Vegan Deodorant

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I don’t know if you’ve heard about how to make your own deodorant yet, but if you haven’t, or have been curious about trying it… pay attention!

I first came across the idea when my friend reposted this link on facebook. Then I noticed that Vegancuts.com was selling some for more than I wanted to pay, so started asking around to see if anyone had tried it. My friend Timb said he had been using a similar recipe with his own sage or peppermint oils for about 2 months, and that it was the best deodorant he’d ever used.

Just to give you a background on Timb, he’s a 6’4″ guy who lives in South Florida and drives a car with no A/C, so once he told me this, I knew it was worth giving it a try! Now the recipe he used said you could use cornstarch for the arrowroot from the above recipe, and listed the essential oils as optional.

Since I had a whole bunch of unrefined coconut oil, organic cornstarch and baking powder right in my kitchen cabinets, I decided to give it a go. (That and I had been scraping on the very last bit of my usual men’s antiperspirant, so I figured it was time.)

For my 1st batch I used a 1:1:1 ratio of the above ingredients, using 3.5 tsps of each. I used an empty vitamin D2 bottle as my container not only because I wanted to start with a small batch in case I didn’t like it, but also because I was flying the next day and was aiming to keep it to an airline friendly amount.

This is the recipe from my 2nd batch with just a little more cornstarch and in a larger quantity. Still fit in the vitamin bottle perfectly. Almost filled it… (Updated 4/9/13)

DIY Coconut Oil Vegan Deodorant

7 tsp. (2 tbsp. + 1 tsp.) organic cornstarch (or arrowroot)
6 tsp. (2 tbsp.) baking soda
2 tbsp. unrefined coconut oil

Directions: 

1. Combine dry ingredients. I did this by adding them in, and shaking the sealed bottle.

2. Add liquid coconut oil. If yours isn’t liquid, you’ll need to warm it up so that it’ll mix well. I have a very warm kitchen, so I just left it on the counter for a little while. I poured in the liquid, and shook it up again to combine all the ingredients well.

Results:

What I was left with was a rich cream. It hardened up in my bathroom over night, but it wasn’t a problem. Once I dug in a little with my finger it gave way. You’ll only need about a dime to nickel size amount for each underarm. I love the smell, even without the essential oils! It’s like rubbing macaroons into your axilla. :) It may crumble a little, but mostly it just melts right in. I suggest rubbing it in the direction of hair growth after shaving to help with sensitivity of the skin. I did find it burned briefly a couple of times, but haven’t had the issue anymore, especially with the latest formula. (above)

DOES IT WORK?

YES IT DOES!! I agree with Timb, this is the best deodorant I’ve used. I’ve been using it for nearly a week and I have ZERO complaints. I wore it out singing and dancing, drinking, flying on a plane, sweating in Florida, etc. And even when I was actively sweating, I didn’t smell bad. After the sweating subsided, no odor. It really does the job.

*3/12/13 EDIT: So I do have one complaint! Since this is NOT an anti-persperant like I’m accustomed to, I am a little uncomfortable with the sweating part. I don’t know if adjusting the ratio could improve the wetness issue at all, but I may try that next.

*3/25/13 EDIT: I’ve just been using a bit extra on each underarm, and have not had the issue anymore. Of course, it’s been pretty cold lately. I’ll be making my second batch soon! I will keep you posted if anything else noteworthy comes up.

*4/9/13 EDIT: Updated the recipe with my more cornstachy formula. Works great!!

I’m so happy because not only am I off of the nasty chemical laden stuff that probably causes cancer, disease and god only knows what else, but it’s easy, cheap and vegan! Your skin is your largest organ, and absorbs everything you put on it, so whenever I can switch to something I wouldn’t feel unsafe eating, I feel a little bit better. Especially as someone working in the Oncology industry. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Quick and Easy Low-Cal Vegan Comfort Food’s Basic Tofu Recipe

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This post is actually from way back in October, and was supposed to be one of my blog posts for Vegan MoFo! Not too surprising, since life has been kind of crazy and chaotic since then with all the traveling and moving we’ve done since.

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This is Quick and Easy Low-Cal Vegan Comfort Food’s yummy basic tofu recipe, only with a package of tempeh thrown it too. I find most cookbooks make enough marinade for two packages of tofu, but in this case, I had only one package, so I made it with tempeh too.

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Result: Turned out to be a GREAT idea! I think the tempeh was even better than the tofu, in fact! These were great eaten on their own, and mixed in to other dishes. Very tasty! I need to cook/review some more of the recipes in this book for you. It’s definitely a keeper.

Blissful Bites’ Un-Tuna Salad over lightly dressed kale

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wpid-IMG_20130211_234250.jpg I had been meaning to try out Blissful Bites‘ UnTuna Salad for quite some time now, and had bought the ingredients last week before I left for a friend’s wedding in Vegas. I chose this light, healthy dinner as the first one back purposefully, making it extra healthy by serving it over a bed of lightly dressed kale. The dressing is just a tahini based something I threw together in the small bowl of my food processor, but I’ll include the approximate recipe below.

For the Blissful Un-Tuna, I made a few adjustments. I went ahead and started by pulsing the chickpeas to a slight mash in the food processor, since it was being used regardless. I then used the fine grater for both the carrots (I used 2) and the celery (I used 1.5 stalks). I subbed dijon for yellow mustard, as I always do (I don’t really care about yellow). Surprisingly, I couldn’t find just plain kelp powder in the downtown Seattle Whole Foods, so I used Bragg’s Kelp seasoning. It came out really delicious! Even without having pure kelp powder it was plenty tuna-ish for me, and besides, we just adore chickpeas, so I knew this would be a win.

Garlic Lemon Tahini Dressing
makes about 1/2 – 2/3 cup

2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 c. tahini
1/3 c. water, plus more to desired consistency
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp. brown rice syrup, or other sweetener to taste, optional
cayenne pepper, optional
Bragg’s kelp seasoning (or salt & pepper), to taste

Directions:

Mince garlic in the small bowl of a food processor. Add all other ingredients and blend until smooth. Taste for seasonings and consistency.

* I only used half of this dressing for one large bunch of kale, hence the lightly dressed!!

image And here is a picture of the kittens being sleepy, just for good measure. Check out the belly on Ganon! (Bottom left.)image

January Raw Kickoff: Day 2 & a Raw Apple Cobbler recipe

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Day 2 started out much like Day 1, with the buckwheat groat porridge, though this time I ran it in the Vitamix until it was warm.

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For lunch I made us some celery soup. You can see most of the ingredients above! It was delicious and the avocado kept us full for a while.

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Dinner came from Matthew Kinney’s Everyday Raw Express. I made the Curried Carrot Slaw, Endive, Pine Nuts, Golden Raisins.

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Only minus the endive, because it is too expensive, with regular raisins, and with ALMONDS instead of cashews for the sauce because Thomas is allergic to cashews. (I do this all the time now as a straight substitute and have had no problems. I’m going to try to make some artisan almond cheese one of these days based off of a cashew recipe.) I served it on romaine leaves as incredibly fresh and tasty burritos. The pine nuts gave this the necessary filling ingredient. The sauce on this combined with the mint was just so flavorful.

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For dessert, I made this apple cobbler, very similarly to the way I made the pear blackberry one the day previously.

Raw Apple Cobbler

2-3 apples, cut into bite-sized pieces
drizzle of raw agave
sprinkle of cinnamon
pinch of ground ginger

1/2 c. almonds
1/2 c. raisins
pinch of salt

1. Place apples in a 2-3 quart dish. Drizzle with lightly with agave and toss with spices until lightly coated.

2. For the topping, add almonds, raisins, and salt to the small bowl of a food processor and pulse until crumbly. Sprinkle on top of fruit.

January’s Raw Kickoff: Day 1 & Raw Pear Blackberry Cobbler recipe

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Just like last year, I decided a great way to kick off the new year would be with a few days of raw food. It’s day 2 and I’m feeling great. It’s not a permanent lifestyle choice for me, but a great place to go back to whenever I need it. The holidays usually leave me feeling a little gunky, so I decided to do full raw for 3 days. I mostly used my Raw Food: A handy guide for every meal of the day book as a guide for the recipes for day one. (Except dessert, see below.) The nice thing about making meals like this is, it’s extremely easy to improvise and adapt the recipes. I have other raw books now, but this was the 1st one I ever purchased. It may come off as simplistic for some, but the servings are generous, and the recipes, though not extremely abundant, are easy and taste good.

Though I love eating this way, and there are certainly times when we eat high raw for month periods at a time, produce is expensive. That said, we’ll be going back to eating lots of cheap protein like grains, beans, and legumes after this. :) Speaking of finances, mine should be improving fairly soon though. I start my orientation for work in a week and a half on Monday, January 14th! Which is great because I really want to buy my ticket for this year’s VidaVeganCon in Portland before they sell out! Just look at the amazing list of speakers!!

Okay, okay, now onto the food…

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I bought enough buckwheat groats to last us for about 4 breakfasts. These are cheap enough out of the bulk bins. I soak the amount we need overnight (or in this case for a few days, rinsing daily) and then combine it with apples, cinnamon, dates and a little water.

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For lunch we had this delicious spiced carrot soup. A fairly modified version of Raw Food’s Holiday Season Carrot Soup. Orange juice, carrots, grind of sea salt, dates, figs, cloves, cinnamon, ginger and almonds.  Even though I’m kind of over anything tasting too “holiday” right now, it was tasty. I ran it in the Vitamix until it was warm-hot.

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For dinner, I added some baby kale to this carrot salad, which I had made before and loved. It also had broccoli, tomato, apple, sun-dried tomatoes, raisins, carrots, sunflower seeds, olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper.

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We ate so much of this, and we even had a little leftover. (Which became my awesome lunch today!)

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I made this Pear Blackberry Cobbler, based off of some of Ani Phyo’s ideas in her raw dessert book. Her formula seems to be about 2-3 fruits like peaches, pears, nectarines, apples with a little agave and maybe a spice and a crumble consisting of equal parts nuts/dried fruit with a bit of salt. I prefer the fruit cut smaller instead of sliced, and thought the salt was a little too much, so I cut it back for the cobbler I made tonight, but I’ll give you the recipe below with the adjustments I made!

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It was just delicious. We ate all of it!

Pear Blackberry Cobbler

3 pears, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 small container of blackberries
drizzle of raw agave

1/2 c. pecans (you can use 1/3 c. I just happened to have 1/2 c., so I figured, why not?)
1/3 c. dates
pinch of salt

1. Combine pears and blackberries in a 2-3 quart dish. Drizzle with lightly with agave and toss until mixed.

2. For the topping, add pecans, dates and salt to the small bowl of a food processor and pulse until crumbly. Sprinkle on top of fruit.

Easy and so very delicious! Stay tuned for day 2 and another raw recipe. :)

Winter Holiday Wrap-up: Holiday Feasting & A kitten!

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Thanksgiving Dinner 2012

Thanksgiving Dinner 2012

My holiday cooking this year was a little atypical. Being that we spent Thanksgiving Day driving through Texas, eating seitan sandwiches from Austin’s Counter Culture (delicious!) in a gas station parking lot (above!), I went ahead and made us a nice spread a random day in December.

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Starting in the top left you’ll see my Maple Glazed Brussel Sprouts w/Apples & Onions, and some store bought cranberry sauce. Bottom row is my Perfect Pumpkin Pie, a tasty casserole from the Veganomicon, Carmelized Onion and Butternut Squash Roast with Chestnuts, and my perfected Cornbread recipe.

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Hello, gorgeous. You can see all the wonderful casserole here up front. Butternut squash, white beans, and chestnuts combine with caramelized onions and breadcrumbs and sage to give you that taste of stuffing, with a bunch of extra goodness thrown in.

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I’ve always read that it’s better to grind your own flax seed, but I felt just fine about buying it pre-ground and keeping it in the fridge in a glass jar. However, Thomas could only find the whole seed at Trader Joe’s.

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No matter, I scooped out the amount I needed and put it in the vita-mix for a few seconds. Worked like a charm.

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I was ecstatic about this cornbread using my new, super secret (not really) ingredient. And I updated my previous recipe accordingly. Just the perfect combination of salty and sweet, with a nice texture and no added oil.

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Christmas Eve wasn’t all that far away from my impromptu meal, so some of these items were repurposed, including the cranberry sauce, and the very little that was left of the casserole and brussel sprouts.

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But I also made some sweet potato mash and baked up a field roast celebration loaf with some onions and green beans. The field roast was incredible, and we enjoyed eating the leftover slices cold, right out of the fridge.

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For the mash, I simply baked the potatoes during the prep and baking of my other dishes. (1.25 hours) Once cooked through I mashed them with a bit of butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, salt & pepper.

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I hope you all had a safe and happy winter holiday season! It was a bit sad to be away from everyone we love this year, so I’m actually pretty glad it’s all over. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to travel home for one of the holidays. The bright side was between Christmas and the New Year, we added another member to our family.

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This is Midna, our 16 week old sphynx kitten! She’s the sweetest little baby, and she is slowly but surely starting to put up with Ganon. He came on a little strong on day one, so she’s been hissing and growling at him a whole lot over the last week, but I was super excited last night when they managed to share a blanket together in peace. Today they were running all over the house playing.

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Ganon’s only 2 months older, but he’s about 3 times the size of Midna right now, but she’s proven that she can hold her own! She is one of the sweetest kittens I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing mommy to.

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Cream Corn Chowder & Jalapeño Parsley Pesto – Matthew Kenney’s Everyday Raw Express

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Week 1: High Raw mini-theme continues in VeganMofo post #4 with a delicious and filling raw soup and fresh pesto from Matthew Kenney’s Everyday Raw Express, but first…

I’m going to start off by saying sorry for the picture of the finished soup with the big shadow [of me] across the bottom. I tried to clean it up in Photoshop, and it made the soup unnaturally lemon yellow. I do hold an Art degree, but it was strictly in studio arts. No technology.  So I’m going to just go with the fact that I am after all the “camera phone vegan” and hope I’m off the hook until they start making better camera phones!

Since I’m off on a tangent right now anyway, I’ll tell you something else that has nothing to do with this soup, and everything to do with vegan blogging and technology. I realized today that I WILL be in Seattle for the Vegan Vida Con Tech seminar! It’s a pretty steep $150 for a 1 day “on the technical aspects of serious Internet veganism: blogging and social media”, but I think it’d be really beneficial. Two of my soon to be neighbor tweeps, Helen of Vegtastic, and Dawn of Vegan Moxie, are going to be doing presentations. In fact, they both also just gave away free tickets to the seminar, but unluckily, I didn’t realize that I’d be in Seattle for it until today. (Feeling generous? You can donate to my cause here! hah!)

In addition to that, while we’re on the topic of Vegan Vida Con, I realized last night that I had said if we made it out to Seattle this year, then I’d definitely go to Vegan Vida Con in Portland, Spring 2013. And well, now that it IS happening, I’ll be needing to buy a conference ticket soon too! Pretty exciting! It’s going to be held over Memorial day weekend.

And now on to the soup!

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Jalapeño pesto consisted of parsley, pine nuts, lime juice, agave, jalapeño, nooch, olive oil, salt & pepper. It was unbelievably delicious, and made plenty!

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More than enough for two recipes of the soup!

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Soup was made from corn, pine nuts, almond milk, miso, olive oil, lemon juice, agave, salt & pepper.

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I ran it on high in the Vitamix until it was steaming and warm-hot.

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Results:

Wow! Except for the soup being a bit too sweet with the full amount of agave called for in the recipe, this was absolutely incredible!  I did cut back the olive oil just slightly on the first go, as well as added some Braggs to counteract some of the sweetness. The pesto gave this a spectacular contrast, visually, as well as in taste and texture. The pesto seemed to keep really well, because I made another batch of the soup [with less agave] a week later, and I swirled plenty of it in, with no problems! It’s like drinking amazing, spicy cornbread! Like most raw food, it made for a surprisingly filling meal with robust flavor.

I really like this book. The recipes are quick, simple, and flavorful, and best of all, don’t require a dehydrator to deliver professional tasting results. More recipe reviews to come from it! Yum!!

Oh, and before I forget, here’s a picture of our kitten Ganon, doing one of his most favorite activities of all. He’s 15 weeks and extremely exhausted from a long day of sleeping! Gotta throw in a kitten picture here and there for good measure! ;)

AFR Tamarind BBQ, Roasted Brussel Sprouts and our move to SEATTLE!

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This is something I made months ago! I’ve been ridiculously behind on blog posts, but I think it really all worked out, because October is VEGANMOFO – Vegan Month of Food, and I have plenty to blog about! October is always the darling of this household’s calendar because of things like pumpkin beers and pie, and of course, Halloween, but this year it’s going to be an extra bit hectic because we will also be preparing for our MOVE TO SEATTLE! I’m flying out to Seattle on October 30th with Ganon (our kitty) and as much clothing as possible, and then coming back in 2 weeks to do the drive with Thomas. We’re very excited, and that extra long road trip will be packed with vegan goodness as we travel from south Florida to New Orleans, Austin, San Diego, LA, San Francisco, and finally Seattle. We’ll even get to spend Thanksgiving in Santa Monica/ LA, which will be VERY cool! :)

This is definitely one of my favorite dishes from Appetite for Reduction. I served it over some brown rice, and tossed in some roasted brussel sprouts for an awesome, easy meal that all cooks at the same time! The rice cooks while the other two bake up together. I just swapped their positions halfway to ensure even baking.

The full recipe for the sprouts is in my recipe tab at the top of the page, but I’ll post the simple version here for you too. This lovely, warm, comforting meal was just SO good!

Simple Oven Roasted Brussel sprouts

small to medium brussel sprouts
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt & fresh ground pepper to taste, I used smoked pepper

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven according to directions for AFR dish, and prepare a cookie sheet.

2. Wash sprouts and trim off the brown ends. Remove any yellow or unappealing looking leaves, and cut in half if medium to large in size. Little ones are fine left whole.

2. Place sprouts in a bowl and spray or drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss with hands to coat.

3. Bake right along with tempeh. Don’t forget to switch the positions of the trays halfway! They should be nicely browned and just starting to blacken on top; this is the where the toasty sweet flavor comes from, but keep an eye on them so they don’t burn up!

 

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