More Food!

I've been slacking off with blog entries lately, for two good reasons. One was that our friend Dan came to visit for a week.  

And the second is that I'm finally buckling down and writing my novel. I have a MFA in Writing, so it's not like I have an excuse for not doing it ... I'm just a slacker. With that in mind, I'm making myself write a least an hour every day. No breaks, no exceptions.

This means there's less time to cook. We don't want to resort to take-out food, so J has picked up the slack and cooked a few meals this week. Both of them turned out great!

Okay, here's a breakdown of the new dishes we tried:

Enchilada Casserole from 500 Vegan Recipes. This one was nice and spicy, with the faux chorizo and the green salsa I added to the mix.

J made Black Soybean and Kabocha Squash Stew from The Kind Diet. This was delicious!! Even with the substitution of butternut squash for kabocha, it was amazing.
                     

J also made the Veggie Mash-up Casserole from Manifest:Vegan. You can get the recipe here. It's been awhile since we've had mashed potatoes, so the casserole was a nice treat. Love that Daiya!

Baked Goods Galore

Having a guest at our apartment for a week has compelled me to bake. A lot. Which, granted, doesn't make a lot of sense when our kitchen is about 90 degrees these days without the oven turned on. But I wanted to bake some cookies for our friend Dan, and chose the Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies from 500 Vegan Recipes. The recipe clearly mentions that they are not too sweet, but I was still surprised when they turned out less of a cookie and more of a healthful snack (at least, it tastes like one).

Which ain't bad, right? And I have a deep love for oatmeal cookies anyway, so I'll make these again. No doubt about it.

A month or so ago I made a ginger quick bread and really liked how it turned out, so I went back to 500 Vegan Recipes and browsed through their chapter on Sweet and Savory Quick Breads. It's a very comprehensive cookbook! Anyway, I chose to bake a loaf of Lemon Thyme Quick Bread and was so glad that I did! This was amazing!

It was moist, sweet and lemon-y, and the thyme didn't taste obtrusive at all. Everything melded together quite nicely. Wow!! And the best thing about quick breads is that they're so easy to make. Just mix everything together and spoon it into a loaf pan. The only real "work" (if you can call it that) I had to do was zesting the lemon. That's it.

The lemon thyme quick bread went really fast, so I pulled out my recipes and looked for something else to bake. I was aiming for another quick bread, preferably a sweet one, but it turned out that the only thing I had all the ingredients for was the Country Corn Muffins in How it All Vegan.

I guess what makes this 'country' is the addition of corn kernels. Anyway, I have a pretty big bag of cornmeal that I never to seem to find a use for, so this muffin worked nicely. Sweet, but not too sweet. Yes, it would have been great to have with a nice bowl of chili on a cold winter day, but it's a good summer breakfast food too.

More Curry and Orecchiette

I made a couple of new meals this week. I felt we didn't have nearly enough curry in our diets (ha ha!), so I made Creamy Curried Vegetables from How it All Vegan. It's got cauliflowers, peas, and carrots in it, and the creaminess comes from coconut milk. I added a few more tablespoons of curry powder than the recipe called for, and because the curry still tasted pretty mild, added some sriracha to my serving. Very yummy with brown rice.

Tonight we had Orecchiette with Cherry Tomatoes and Kalamata Tapenade, from Vegan with a Vengeance. I love olives, especially kalamata olives, and this recipe does not disappoint. I did use grape tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes, but I don't think it made that much of a difference.

And look at all those red onions! Another great meal.

We're going to have a friend stay with us next week, which of course calls for a lot of cooking. So look forward to a lot of fancy schmancy dishes soon!

Brunch at Zenith

Zenith is a quirky antique store that also doubles as a vegetarian restaurant on the weekends.

Here's a picture of the entrance to the store.

I've been to Zenith for lunch once before, which was great. But it was nothing compared to their Sunday brunch extravaganza.

Ten bucks gets you an entree, tea or coffee, and access to the buffet. I ordered the vegan apple and walnut pancakes for my entree, which was fantastic. It was served with a side of garlic rice, also tasty.

And the buffet! Let's just say, there was an entire table devoted to homemade cakes and pies. I had a small slice of root beer cake with vanilla icing. The cake was moist and the icing sweet but not too sweet.

Other highlights of the buffet incuded noodle salad, grape leaves, green beans, and a pesto potato salad. I didn't even get a chance to try everything, because I had so much to eat.

After that crazy, gut-busting brunch, J and I weren't extremely hungry when dinner rolled around, so I made a pot of Creamy Zucchini and Basil Soup from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen. My friend Nina highly recommended this soup, and I'm so glad I tried it. You should definitely try it too. It tastes like perfect summer goodness. I wish I had a garden full of zucchini, because I'd made a gigantic pot of this soup and eat it for days.

One of my co-workers is celebrating a birthday tomorrow, so I made a batch of Chocolate Chip Bars from How it All Vegan. I was a little alarmed by the whole cup of oil called for in this recipe, and I suppose I could have added less oil, but I didn't want to mess things up and have to make another pan. Here's a couple of picture of the bars.

I wanted to try a small piece, but am trying to figure out how much of a pain it will be to transfer everything to another pan. It's probably too much trouble, so I won't get to try one until tomorrow. It looks good though.

Indian Food!

When we used to live in NYC, J and I had a favorite place on Houston Street for Indian food. It was called Punjabi, a little hole-in-the wall that catered mostly to cab drivers. It was dirt cheap and everything served was vegetarian.

Since moving to Pittsburgh, we've gone to quite a few Indian restaurants, some of them good, some of them just okay. But there was nothing that could compare to Punjabi. Until we tried Sree's. This is another little hole in the wall, and like Punjabi, the portions are big and shockingly cheap. It's $6 for the vegetarian/vegan special, which includes rice, four dal or curry dishes, and half a pita bread (also vegan). The portions are enough for both dinner and lunch, at least for me.

Here's a picture. I ate quite a bit before I remembered to snap the shot, so this isn't an accurate indication of how much food they actually give you. There was a chickpea curry, a tomato dal, and a black-eyed pea and spinach dish.

So good! If you're ever in the Pittsburgh area, you must try Sree's. 

Zuccanoes

We had zuccanoes from The New Moosewood Cookbook tonight. Zucchinis stuffed with mushrooms, brown rice, onion, garlic, and minced almonds, and topped with daiya "cheese." It was relatively easy to make, and has a nice retro vibe going on.

I made a side dish of mushrooms, snap peas, and ginger sauteed in Trader Joe's black pepper sauce. I love the stuff! I strongly encourage everyone to go out and get a bottle.

What We Eat on a Typical Weeknight

So, I haven't posted a lot lately because I've been doing quite a few "repeat" meals. When I like a particular entree, I tend to make it pretty frequently. But I did take pictures of what we have to eat on a typical night.

I've been brewing up the Nabeyaki Udon from The Kind Diet every other week or so. It's a great, fast meal, and really healthy as well. Also, this may sound strange, but preparing the udon is a very calming activity for me. There is something peaceful about watching the vegetables simmer in the shiitake mushroom broth. It's an equally peaceful meal to eat -- all subtle, earthy, warming flavors, even with the soy sauce mixed in. The Kind Diet features a lot of macrobiotic dishes, the nabeyaki udon being one, and from what little I've read, macrobiotic food is supposed to make you feel more balanced.

I don't normally take pictures of what we eat with our entrees, which is normally a salad or some kind of vegetable dish side dish. On this particular night, I was feeling the need for some kale. I have a kale chip recipe from the June 2010 issue of Veg News that I make a lot.

I also filled a couple of soy sauce dishes with the great cabbage kimchi I made from Ani's Essential Raw Food Essentials. J told me that this is now his favorite pickle of all time. I love it too. So much that I went out and bought Korean red pepper seasoning (instead of the red pepper flakes used for pizza and pasta) for a more authentic taste the next time I make kimchi.

But that doesn't mean I have to stop making other pickles. There's a great recipe for Radish Umeboshi Pickles in The Kind Diet. I have no great love for radishes, but this pickle is pretty amazing. Here it is, pickling away in the umeboshi vinegar.

And sometimes, we have to have our cake and eat it too. Or in this instance, cupcakes. I haven't had a cupcake since becoming a vegan, which is kind of odd, because I have always been a certifiable cupcake fiend. I borrowed a copy of Isa and Terry's Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World from the library and thought about making a batch, but it never happened. But yesterday, I decided: it was time to have a cupcake. I knew our local Dozen Bake Shop had a different vegan offering every day, so J and I stopped there on the way home. I was so excited to see that the flavor (written on a cute little blackboard) was red velvet! But there was a line drawn it -- they had run out!

J could tell by the look on my face that I was determined to have a cupcake. We drove to a cupcake shop in Shadyside called CoCo's that also sold vegan cupcakes, but it looked like the place had shut down. Instead of driving around to another place that might disappoint me, I dialed 411 and called the Lawrenceville branch of Dozen Bake Shop. They have five locations, because that's how good their pastries are! Anyway, I'd never been to the Lawrenceville store, but knew that it was the most-expanded of the stores, selling sandwiches and even offering brunch on the weekends.

Did they have any vegan cupcakes left? Yes, they did! The guy on the phone actually counted them out for me. They had 14 vegan cupcakes. 14!!! I bought two, one for me and one for J, for driving us around for an hour on a mad vegan cupcake hunt.

Here's the cute bag they were bundled in, featuring Dozen's logo.

And here it is, the prettiest cupcake ever.

Here's a closer view.

It was a great cupcake. I'd had the non-vegan cupcakes from Dozen before, and the vegan red velvet did not disappoint. I could have eaten the frosting alone with a spoon, it was that good.