Dinners and Desserts

Things have been cranking up in the Veggie Obsessed kitchen lately. It started with some cream of potato soup, veganized from an old family recipe ...

Next was the Spicy Veggie Curry from, you guessed it, Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cooking. I love this cookbook so much, and unfortunately had to return my copy to the library this afternoon. Luckily I happen to know that I'll be getting a copy for Christmas! Anyway, the curry was amazing, filled with okra, eggplant, zucchini and mushrooms.  I served it with some white rice. 

I also dusted my crockpot off and made Slow Cooker Pumpkin Chick'n Chowder from the Fatfree Vegan Recipes website. The recipe is here.

Lazy Saturday Dinner and Extravagant Sunday Brunch

I'm still sick. Sad but true. This meant I skipped my spin class on Saturday morning and went to the Monroeville Mall instead to buy a few sweaters. I don't get out to the Mall very often, so I forgot how tiring that can be! So by the time dinner rolled around on Saturday night, I didn't feel like cooking much of anything.

Here's what I slapped together:

A simple salad with a green salsa/Nacho Mom's ultimate vegan queso dressing. After almost six months of pining for a bottle of Nacho Mom's queso sauce and not being able to find it in three states, I finally caved in and bought a jar online at Pangea. I'm so glad I did! Pre-vegan, I used to be obsessed with the Tostitos brand of queso. Nacho Mom's vegan queso tastes even better and is only 10 calories per serving. 

 Here's a picture of the Vegan Mom's vegan queso, along with another vegan queso I purchased for test-tasting purposes, Food for Lovers vegan queso. Oh, and you can also see the soy curls I also got in my order in the left-hand corner. Not sure what I'll make with these yet.

What goes well with a salad? A deli-meat style sandwich, of course. I took my first foray into vegan deli "meat"  with Tofurky peppered slices. I added a tomato and a little bit of Vegenaise and whole grain dijon mustard. Alright, the sandwich looks a bit plain, but it was amazing. I can't wait to eat this again.

I made up for my culinary laziness this morning with a no-holds barred brunch. I almost always include a tofu scramble (using the recipe from Vegan Brunch), this time with asparagus instead of my usual mushrooms. I also made a batch of Biscuits and Creamy Sage Gravy from Vegan Diner.

Everything turned out great. The biscuits didn't rise as much as I wanted them to, but that's my fault, not the recipe's -- apparently I need to get some new baking powder. They were still exceptionally flaky. The sage gravy was wonderful as well. I love brunch! 

Alma Pan-Latin Kitchen

So I've been sick with the flu for about a week now, way too sick to cook much of anything. Luckily J took over and made a few dishes so we didn't have to survive on veggie burgers and salad all week. Today I had more energy than I've had in a while, so we decided to go, with a friend, to Alma Pan-Latin Kitchen for dinner.

I really appreciated the menu, as all the vegan items were carefully denoted with a 'V' and printed in a different colored font. Great for the lazy vegan -- which admittedly, I sometimes am. Anyway, there were a number of wonderful dishes to choose from. After much discussion, J and I decided to split the Yuca frita con salsitas de Alma for an appetizer. Yuca fries! Sorry, no picture, but they were pleasingly crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and came with two semi-spicy sauces. I thought they were better than potato french fries.

Our omnivore friend ordered the empanadas, which were adorably petite and looked scrumptious, but unfortunately filled with cheese. Sigh. So I didn't get to taste an empanada, but was assured that they were quite good.

J was feeling a vegan vibe tonight, so we both ordered the same entree: Arepa de vegetales con platanos maduros. 

Look at all the gorgeous food! Roasted asparagus, beets, and sugared fried plaintain smothered the arepa. Everything tasted so vivid and fresh. 

We were very impressed with Alma Pan-Latin Kitchen. I hope to go back soon, to try one of the other vegan entrees!