Carrot Soup and Feijoada, oh my!

So. The Farmer's Market yesterday morning was kind of a bust. It was rainy, gray and cold, and there were much fewer vendors than I expected. I did snag a pound of portobello mushrooms from the local Mushroom Guy, but that was about it. Oh well. We'll try the Farmer's Market on the South Side next week. That's one perk about living in Pittsburgh -- there are several every week in different locations.

In the afternoon, J participated in a poetry reading at the library. He is one of the contributors in Natural Language, which is a collection of work from featured readers of the Sunday Poetry Reading Series. I took one far away and pretty awful picture of him reading. He did a great job!

Dinner Saturday night was entirely from my newest vegan cookbook, Viva Vegan!!

This is the newest offering from Terry Hope Romero, one of the authors of Veganomicon, and all of the recipes are for Latin food. J and I are big fans of Mexican cuisine, and after flipping through the cookbook at Barnes and Noble and drooling over all the beautiful photographs,  we both agreed that it was the one purchase we had to make! Choosing a dinner menu was difficult, because every recipe sounds wonderful, but I finally decided on portobello feijoada, Brazilian-style savory orange rice, and homemade corn tortillas! That's right, I made homemade corn tortillas. I feel so proud of myself! And they were amazingly easy to whip up.

I'm lucky to have access to a great Mexican grocery store, one which not only has delicious homemade salsas, guacamole, and tortillas, but useful items like tortilla presses. It isn't necessary to have a press to make corn tortillas, but Terry writes that it's much easier with one. As I forsee many years of homemade corn tortillas ahead of me, and it was reasonably priced (a big plus), I am now a proud owner of a tortilla press.

The Mexican grocery store also has the flour necessary for making tortillas.

All you do is mix the flour with water and salt, as per the instructions on the back of the package. You then divide the dough into the number of tortillas you want, put the ball of dough between wax paper or plastic wrap, and use the tortilla press to smush it into a pleasing tortilla shape. Just heat it on a hot frying pan for less than a minute, and you're done!

And can I just say that fresh corn tortillas are really one of the best things in the world? They are. Believe me. I could eat them all day long.

Here is a picture of the tortillas and the orange white rice I made. I would have never thought of cooking rice with orange juice and orange zest, but it is a great combination. It tasted wonderful even though it burned a little on the bottom of the pan.

The portobello feijoada took approximately three hours to make, not including the eight hours of soaking time the dried black beans required. It wasn't that labor-intensive, though, as most of the cooking time was for simmering the beans. And it was well worth it. I'm really frustrated because I can't make the camera take a good picture of this dish! It isn't that colorful looking, but it has a taste that is both intense and pleasing. I will definitely make this again.

The feijoada was also my first chance to cook with TVP, or textured vegetable protein. When rehydrated, TVP has the texture very similar to chunks of stew meat, and absorbs the taste of the liquids and spices it is cooked in.

My verdict? Viva Vegan is a winner. I look forward to more delicious Latin food, paired, of course, with homemade tortillas!

Today I made the Garden Carrot Soup with Fresh Ginger from The Garden of Vegan. Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally!), one of J's favorite kind of soups is carrot ginger. This was really easy to whip up, especially with the help of the food processor. I strayed a bit from the recipe, adding a few cloves of garlic and curry powder to taste. Here is the end result:

I love the taste of carrots in soup, especially paired with fresh ginger and yam. Yummy! I only had a few spoonfuls tonight (because I was busy eating leftover feijoada!), but am anticipating a great carrot-gingery lunch at work tomorrow.

Today I also made a batch of pear muffins. I found this recipe on the internet somewhere, unfortunately I don't remember where. I think it was related to diabetic-related eating? Anyway, I veganized it and have already made it four or five times.

Veganizing muffin recipes is actually really simple. The secret is this:

EnerG egg replacer takes the place of eggs in baked good recipes. I've also heard of people using flaxseeds to replace eggs, but I'm not sure if that works for muffins or not. I also replace the milk called for in this recipe with rice milk, and that's it. Easy, right?

Well, normally it's easy. I had to make two batches of muffins today because I forgot to add sugar to the first batch! There's not a great deal of sugar in this recipe, but it turns out that it's a pretty crucial ingredient. The muffins turned out to be really interesting pear-biscuit creations. Interesting in a way I don't care for at all, but J claims he really likes them.

Batch number two turned out the way they should be: fruity, gingery, cinnamony goodness. I always eat one or two and then freeze the rest for the next couple of weeks. Freezing the muffins is an effective way to prevent overeating!

A close-up picture! Look at the chunks o pear!

Tamarind

Last night we tried an Indian restaurant we'd never been to before, Tamarind. We both really like Indian food and were happy with our dining experience. Tamarind has two restaurants in the greater Pittsburgh area. The one we went to located in an old house -- you can see the picture from their website. It was a pretty space, although there were crumbs on the table and a ripped cover from a composition book wedged under the table's legs. We had two waiters -- the first was a bit intense, so I was relieved when the second waiter turned out to be low-key and attentive.

There was a lot of veg choices on the menu, but J and I both had dosas. I have no pictures of the food because I was afraid the first server wouldn't like it! -- but to give you a frame of reference, a dosa is a crisp savory pancake normally served with a chutney. And when I say pancake, I don't mean the sort that you would find in a diner. One dosa is more than enough for one person; our dosas literally did not fit our dinner plates! Anyway, J's was spread with spinach chutney, and mine with peanut chutney. They were both really good, but I preferred the spinach dosa! J offered to switch with me, but I decided to be stoic and eat what I ordered.

Then I took his picture, with stern orders to "smile this time!"

Here is an accompanying photo of me:

Anyway, we will definitely go back to Tamarind. I'd like to try more of the dosas, as they had a dozen or so different options. And the entrees sounded great too, like a cauliflower and potato masala dish. Also, the special they are running on Sundays for a buy one, get one half off entree makes for a good incentive. :)

After dinner, we did some of our grocery shopping, which can be labor-intensive, as it normally involves four different stores. At Whole Foods, I was seduced by the vegan bakery options ... and was convinced by J. to buy an oatmeal chocolate-chunk cookie. It was masterful looking to say the least. Here it  is posed with the Kitten bargain book I got at Borders. Because, yup, sometimes I feel the need to buy things with cute kittens on them.

Also, I love when products are clearly labelled as VEGAN. Sometimes I feel like I have to carry around How It All Vegan (which is my go-to source for all the sneaky ingredients that sound innocuous but actually contain animal by-products) all the time. In this case, Whole Foods took the guesswork out of it for me. Thanks!

Also, the cookie was scrumptious. I made a very solemn promise with myself to only eat these on very special occasions, because I liked it so much.

More things to look forward tomorrow, including the opening of the Farmer's Market!!!!!!

Some Random Pictures

It's still early, and I've only just had breakfast (TJ flax seed oatmeal with a little sugar-free syrup!), so no photos of food. Yet. But I just took a really cute picture of one of our kitties.

We both like it a lot when I have a comp day and can stay at home! Not that I won't be busy. My apartment is a disaster zone. We haven't cleaned since my family visited, which was two weeks ago. I hate cleaning, ugh, but it has to be done. Also, I haven't exercised in TWO days!!!! This means only one thing: at least an hour of exercising today.

Now, can't post a picture of one of the babies and not the rest!

And one of the husband! J got his hair cut a few days ago. It is very short, and I still need time to get used to it, but he likes it a lot. He doesn't like to smile for pictures, though!

And here's one of me, being my normal weird-o self.

I guess I don't really like smiling for pictures either. Not that you can see my mouth!

Nabeyaki Udon

Another yummy offering from The Kind Diet! I am on a quest to try all the recipes from this cookbook. I've never cooked with udon noodles before (crazy, I know), but on a whim purchased a package of them at my local Asian grocery store a few weeks ago. So of course I had to find the perfect recipe for them.

This is a water-based soup flavored with the soaking water from dried shitakes. The recipe calls for maitake mushrooms too, but I didn't have any. There were three components to this dish that I was supposed to keep separate from one another but ... well, you'll see how that ended up. The udon noodles, a vegetable broth (bok choy, broccoli, carrots, napa cabbage leaves, and a leek. I omitted the bean sprouts because ugh, can't stand them) with tofu cubes thrown in, and a sauce composed of shoyu, ginger juice, and rice vinegar.

So here it is, properly separated. No picture of the sauce because it couldn't fit into the picture!

We crowded the table with all the various bowls. Four bowls per person, because I roasted a few yams as well. And it was very pretty, but quite ridiculous. Also, the idea was to dip the noodles and veggies into the sauce, which would have made for some messy eating.

So we did this:

Admittedly, not as pretty. But so much easier to chow down! I really loved the flavor of the shitake mushrooms and the ginger juice in this dish. I did add some sea salt and a few glogs of tamari to liven things up a little. Delicious! As my brother pointed out, I say that about just about everything I cook. But it's true!

Snobby Joes!

I'm lucky to have two friends who are vegan and patiently answered all the questions I had before starting my own vegan adventure. Like, what do vegans eat?? They gave me lots of great info about websites I should look at and books I should read.

Kathy then sent me a treasure trove of vegan books: Obligate Carnivore, The World Peace Diet, No More Bull, and Veganomicon! Thanks again, Kathy! All the books are wonderful (I'm reading The World Peace Diet now), but Veganomicon is like The Joy of Cooking for vegans. It has a massive amount of great-sounding recipes. I want to try all of them eventually, but I decided to make the snobby joes first.

Doesn't everyone have childhood nostalgia about those Manwich sloppy joes? I know I do. Snobby joes substitute lentils for the ground beef, which is perfect because I'm a big lentil fan.

It takes longer to make this than the Manwich version, of course, but it was well worth it. It is so much more delicious than sloppy joe-in-a-can! Also, as my husband pointed out, it is still really sloppy! I served the snobby joes with the requisite salads and scoops of brown rice (sriracha on mine!).

Sunday Brunch

I like to make a nice Sunday morning brunch. For a while I was doing tofu scrambles, but today decided to try something new from Vegan Brunch. Curried cauliflower fritatta.

No eggs in this fritatta, of course. Instead crumbled tofu stands in as the binding agent. There's also cauliflower, carrots, garlic, soy sauce, lemon juice, cumin and curry powder, and nutritional yeast. Isa very specifically advises that you chop the cauliflower into tiny pieces, which I thought I did, but apparently they weren't small enough. My fritatta came out looking great, but fell apart as soon as I tried to cut it into pieces.

Here it is just out of the oven.

And here it is, inverted onto a plate. I think it would have been easier to just scoop it out of the pie pan.

Despite being more of a curry cauliflower mash-up than a fritatta, it still tasted good. I added sriracha to mine, of course. :)

In the spirit of adventure, I also made tempeh bacon. This recipe was from You Won't Believe It's Vegan! It was ... umm, good, but did not taste like bacon. Mine didn't crisp up either, despite cutting it into very thin slices. To be absolutely truthful, I don't think I'll make this one again.

This was also my first attempt at cooking with tempeh, and some bites of the "bacon" had a slightly bitter taste. I read somewhere that steaming tempeh first gets rid of the bitterness, so I'll try that the next time I use tempeh in a recipe.

Leftover dumplings and dumpling sauce for dinner, with sauteed zucchini, snap peas, ginger, mushrooms and a poblano pepper.

I was a little cranky today, because I wanted to jog around the track in the park(exercise's so much more fun when you don't have to rely on fitness DVDs), but it rained pretty much constantly. So no jogging.

Oh well. At least I had lots of good food and my best friend (my husband!) to spend the day with.

Dim Sum

I took a bunch pictures of the food we ate on Saturday, and then the internet refused to work! So that's why I'm posting them today.

I fasted through Friday night to Saturday morning for my latest blood test. As I mentioned before, I hate blood tests and needles, so the prospect of going to have labwork done while on an empty stomach never makes for a great morning. And then -- the lab technician could not draw the blood from me! I have tiny veins, and this has happened to me before. Apparently, they didn't have any of the butterflies necessary to draw my blood. So I have to go back next week or the week after that. Yuck.

So to make myself feel better, my husband and I went to the Hot Metal Diner, which is a bit of a motorcycle-riding-gathering place, because there are always a ton of Harley Davidsons parked outside. But it's also got a nice family-friendly vibe to it, and the food is always good. This was my first time there as a vegan. Diners can be a little hard for vegans, but I asked a few questions and ordered from the offering of sides. I got a gigantic bowl of oatmeal (they make their oatmeal with water, not milk, yay!) and dry toast with orange marmalade. It may not sound like the most exciting breakfast in the world, but it was good, and just what my hungry, anxious self needed.

Lunch was at the East End Co-op, the local Pittsburgh Co-op. I love, love, love the Co-op. Not only do they have a vegetarian cafe/hot bar with a good number of vegan options, but they also have products like Frontier Bac'Uns Vegetarian Bits.

I forsee tofu-based "egg salad" sandwiches in the future!

The Co-op also has a wonderful variety of prepared meals, including my new favorite weekend lunch: peanut butter tempeh wraps. A creamy peanut butter sauce, tempeh, spinach and carrots in a chipotle tortilla wrap. You really can't go wrong with that.

And then baked goods! There is an entire rack of homemade baked goods, many of them labelled Vegan! Every time we go to the Co-op, I mention to my husband that I want to try one someday. Yesterday he turned and said to me, "Why not try one today?"

I don't really need any more encouragement than that. I had to decide between pumpkin bread, peanut butter cookies, and gingerbread bread, but finally chose the banana bread. I served it to myself on my monkey plate for dessert-- I thought it made sense!

It was nutty and moist, all the things you want in a good banana bread.

Dinner was inspired by the April 2010 issue of Vegetarian Times' section about dim sum. The basic premise is: dumplings are really difficult and time-consuming to make, and there are already a lot of great prepared varieties out there, so why bother? Instead, make a few homemade sauces and side dishes, and perhaps a dessert or two.

I decided on sauce: ginger-scallion. Like a lot of recipes I find in The Vegetarian Times, it needed tweaking to fit a vegan's diet, but this wasn't very hard. The recipe called for honey, but I substituted brown rice syrup instead. The other ingredients were scallions, fresh ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame seeds. Here is a picture of the sauce, served in individual ramekins, with a picture of the salads we also ate:

Instead of making a second sauce, I was lazy and bought this:

Trader Joe's sweet chili sauce. What would I do without a Trader Joe's in my life?

And finally, a picture of the dumplings, not homemade, but still lovely just the same.

It was all great! The scallion-ginger sauce was amazing, and quite easy to whip up. And the sweet chili sauce was a nice complement in flavors.