Soba Noodles and Kale Chips

J was all for grilling a couple of veggie burgers for dinner tonight and calling it a day, but I had a crazy craving for noodles. But not starchy Italian noodles. Soba noodles! I found this recipe from The Ordinary Vegetarian. Look at all the soba goodness!

It was absolutely delicious. I urge everyone to try this. If you triple the recipe, like I did, you'll have plenty left over for lunch.

I bought another bunch of kale from the Farmer's Market the other day. Luckily I have the latest issue of Veg News, complete with a recipe for kale chips. I'd never had kale chips before. They were really good, and quite addictive, like chips of all kinds. Crispy and salty, yum.

Being a vegan is amazing. I'd never even had kale before a few weeks ago. Here is a list of some other things I'd either never liked or never tried before going veg:

1) Beans (kidney, cannelinni)

2) Grapefruit

3) Tempeh and seitan

4) Oatmeal (I am now an official oatmeal addict)

5) Agave nectar

6) Nutritional yeast

7) Brown rice (love it!!! Just the short grain, though. I don't care for the long grain version)

8) Leeks

9) Kabocha squash

10) Bulgur, millet, and quinoa

In short, the stuff we're cooking now is so much more exciting than the hamburger and mushroom-soup based food I used to make. I actually look forward to brown-bagging lunch to work. And I feel so revitalized. My skin is clearer, my body feels lighter, and I have so much more energy. It's amazing, how much power food has. I used to think food was just something to shovel in my mouth, without benefit or consequence. I don't think that anymore.

Chili

Pre-vegan days, we would make chili almost every week. Now that we have so many great new vegan recipes to choose from, it's been a long time since that last pot of chili. But chili is good comfort food, and I missed it. Of course, I never want to eat chili with hamburger again. Our chili has mushrooms, onions, peppers (both hot and sweet), corn chickpeas, kidney beans, and heirloom tomato in it. I also made some brown rice in the rice cooker. One word: yum.

Memorial Day

Here's what a vegan eats on Memorial Day:

Veggie hot dog with sauerkraut and jalapenoes, a lentil dal patty from Whole Foods (with chopped hot pepper on the top), and watermelon! I had to work today, but fortunately was able to leave a little early. J put the patties and hot dogs on the grill pan (we don't have a real grill, much less the outdoor space to grill in), and we had a great and relatively painless dinner.

My grandfather always went to the cemetery on Memorial Day to visit his parents' graves. Unfortunately, I'm not in Honolulu, where both sets of grandparents and my father are buried, but I like to spend some quiet time on Memorial Day in remembrance of them.

Have a good one, everyone.

No Rest for the Wicked

Today was really hot in Pittsburgh, almost too hot for cooking. I didn't let that stop me, although I might be experimenting with raw foods in August, if the temperatures get much higher. Anyone out there have any favorite raw food dishes? I'm partial to cooked food, but admit I'm curious about the raw food movement. 

 

Anyway, this morning I woke up late and immediately went to the kitchen. I can't let my sleeping in interfere with our tradition of a semi-lavish Sunday morning breakfast. There's something really soothing about sitting down to a plate of warm goodies and watching public television with the husband!

I had an extra container of firm tofu in the refrigerator, so decided to make a nice tofu scramble.. I always follow the recipe in Vegan Brunch pretty closely, because I think the spice combination is perfection. Today I added a cup of sliced white mushrooms, a handful of kalamata olives, and half a diced onion. I also toasted a few pieces of rye bread.

I had every intention of making the Pumpkin Spinach Ravioli from 500 Vegan Recipes, but couldn't find any pumpkin puree. Silly me for wanting pumpkin in the summertime! I decided to improvise with a spinach, mushroom, and butternut squash mixture.

Working with semolina flour was pretty challenging. I'd never made any pasta from scratch before, and had the hardest time with the sticky quality of the semolina flour. It kept sticking to the rolling pin, and I ended up adding a crapload of additional flour just to be able to roll it out into a semi-circle. I also think I need more practice with rolling dough out, because I couldn't get it anywhere near as thin as it should be. I've since found these instructions, which I will follow the next time I make homemade ravioli. I also found this recipe, which calls for a mixture of either wheat flour or white flour, and chickpea flour. I'm guessing this might make the dough less sticky. Oh, and this recipe, for heart-shaped ravioli. Super cute.

So my ravioli was a little thicker than they should have been (okay, a lot thicker), which meant there was less room for the filling, but I thought they had a lot of promise. J thought so too.

Here's a pic of the ravioli, nekkid.

And here they are, mixed up with some of the extra filling and a few spoonfuls of extra marinara sauce we had lying around (Nana's Heirloom Roasted Red Pepper). By the way, I think the tomato sauce from Veganomicon's Pasta E Fagioli would be awesome on ravioli. Next time.

J is a pasta purist, so ate his with a drizzle of olive oil and Italian seasoning.

I was exhausted after the semolina challenge, so didn't do my normal manic cooking-for-the-week routine. I did make a pot of vegetable stock, but that's it.

Falling Water, Ohiopyle and Basil Eggplant

Today we took a road trip to see Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural wonder. It was a beautiful day for travelling, and Falling Water, which was originally built as a summer home for the Kaufmanns, was amazing. There were a few strict rules in the visitor's guide about not posting pictures of Falling Water on websites without permission, so sadly I can't share any of the great pictures we took.

 For lunch, we stopped in Ohiopyle to eat at the Firefly Grill. I'd like to say that we just happened to stumble upon this great little place, but I found the menu on the website. When you're a vegan, you have to do a bit of planning beforehand. The Firefly Grill has so many vegetarian/easily veganized choices, it was almost overwhelming. But it's the season to start grilling hamburgers and hot dogs, so I ordered a veggie burger with french fries.

I always feel kind of weird about taking pictures of my food in restaurants. I know I have to get over this! So, no picture of the veggie burger, but it was thick and substantial (very hamburger-ish) and delicious. The fries were great too. J had a grilled cheese sandwich, which he said was also very good.

An extra bonus was the restaurant is next-door neighbor to the Methodist Church, so I got to look at the pretty stained glass windows while eating my lunch.

Ohiopyle looked like a great little town. There was rafting and bicycling activities going on everywhere, and little cafes and hippie-ish stands. We stopped in at a store that sold local food stuffs, mostly condiments. Luckily there were samples. I tried a little of these and just had to buy them. The ingredients for the apple butter was especially impressive: cider, apples, and spices. That's it! Amazing. And I can't wait to use the habanero pepper mustard on pretty much everything.

Tonight I made the Basil Eggplant from The Vegan Table. I improvised a bit by adding asparagus and broccoli florets, and then doubling the sauce ingredients to make up for the extra vegetables. This is what happens when you buy too much produce and don't feel like cooking a bunch of side dishes. I also decided not to seed the red chili peppers, because I like my food really spicy.

Also, sorry for the blurry picture. I took twenty of them, and this was the most focused of the bunch. My camera doesn't like to work at night!

This was great! Next time I'll follow the recipe so I can try it with just eggplant, and double everything to make sure there are lots of leftovers.

A Hodgepodge of Food

I've been heating things up in the kitchen ... again!

First, a picture of what I ate for lunch the other day. Just a salad with green leaf lettuce, half a tomato, olives, beets, wasabi peas, and spicy tortilla won ton strips, but isn't it pretty? I thought it was.

Last night was another Viva Vegan! extravaganza. Every once in a while I'm nice and let J choose what we'll have to eat. Here's what he decided on.

Arroz con seitan ...

And tomatillo salsa with freshly made corn tortillas and storebought tortilla chips (we like Frontera's blue corn version).

The tomatillo salsa was absolutely the best salsa I've ever had. I wanted to eat it with a spoon. And it made a great amount too, which means at least a few more days of chip and salsa. :) The arroz con seitan was also wonderful and flavorful. The long grain white rice, seitan, carrots, green peppers and green olives make a tasty combination. There is a recipe (actually, two recipes) in Viva Vegan! to make your own homemade seitan, but as this was my first venture with seitan in the kitchen, I decided to play it safe and bought a packet of it from Whole Foods. I did use my homemade veggie broth, however!

I'm really impressed with Viva Vegan! I've been eyeing the recipe for black bean pupusas, so maybe you'll see a photo of it soon!

Tonight we stopped at the Farmer's Market on the way home from work. There were so many lovely vendors, with a great assortment of baked goods, fruits and veggies, flowers and plants. I wanted to buy pretty much everything, but settled on this:

Strawberries, kale, and pear jam (but not the black pepper grinder that somehow snuck its way into this picture).  

No way was I going to let the kale languish in the fridge. I made a side dish of Ginger Sesame Greens from Clean Food, served with Mushroom Bulgur Pilaf from Quick-Fix Vegetarian.

 

It was a nice, simple meal. We aren't used to Tuesday nights without Lost, so soothed ourselves with an episode from Season One.

There was an abundance of beautiful-looking rhubarb at the Farmer's Market. I think Clean Food has a recipe for a strawberry rhubarb crumble ... hmm. Yum ... I've never cooked with rhubarb before, but each week brings new culinary adventures (seitan and bulgur, for example). Why not rhubarb?  

Saying Goodbye to Lost

I apologize for not posting in quite some time. This past week has been very busy and stressful. J was in the hospital for a couple of days, and then we went to upstate New York to visit his mother for the weekend. I was too stressed out to cook while J was sick, subsisting on the hospital salad bar and leftovers. But once Friday night rolled around, I was cooking like a maniac.

J, his mother, and I are all big fans of Lost. Last night was the big series finale, so I threw a Lost party on Saturday night for the three of us. Of course, a party ain't a party without dessert.

This is the peanut butter blondie from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. I think I may have to buy a copy of this cookbook someday, despite it being full of wicked temptations (ha ha!). The blondies were AMAZING. My mother-in-law loved them too.

The rest of our dinner had an Italian vibe going on. I made the pasta e fagioli from Veganomicon. This was quite easy to throw together, and I loved the tomato-based sauce. Tomatoes smell so wonderful when they're simmering down to a sauce. I'd never had pasta e fagioli before, but apparently other people make the dish with peas instead of tomatoes. Next time I think I'll throw in a cup of peas, but I won't forgo the tomatoes.

I also made a batch of Rustic Olive Rolls from Students Go Vegan. I made these rolls once before, and then realized that my baking powder had expired, umm, approximately a year ago. Amazing what a difference fresh baking powder makes. Here's a picture of a roll, with the heel of a store-brought loaf of French bread.

They're actually more scone-like than roll-like, which is completely alright with me. I love the kalamata olives and onions, and the fact that you just mix up the ingredients and then bake. No waiting for any yeast to rise.

Here are a few pictures of our festive table.

I also made us iron-on transfer shirts with the Dharma Initiative logo on them.

The Lost series finale was amazing. I cried for an hour afterwards, not only because the television show ended (I've decided that it's my favorite series of all time, tied with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It definitely had a much better ending than Buffy), but because the series finale was profoundly sad and beautiful.