I'm On a Roll

I cooked again tonight! I know, someone should give me an award. :) Today I tried the Bangkok Street Cart Noodles from the latest issue of VegNews (April 2012). I made some substitutions -- I couldn't find rice noodles at Giant Eagle, and didn't have time to go to an Asian grocery store, so just used some udon noodles in the pantry. I also totally forgot to buy peanuts. 

It was still very good. Next time I'll try it with the rice noodles. You can't see them very well, but there are snap peas and cilantro mixed in with the red bell pepper. 

I think we're having leftovers for the rest of the week. I have to do a crazy midnight shift Friday morning, so I'm not going to be in the mood to cook.


So is anyone else excited about The Hunger Games? I love the books (with some reservation about the third), and can't wait to see the movie in IMAX!

I Finally Cook Something!

So it's something I've featured on this blog before, but that doesn't mean it's not exciting! It's Polish Neighborhood (Cabbage and Potato) Soup from Ripe from Around Here. 

 

With Tofurky beer brats! I love cabbage and potatoes, and the beer brats just tip the scales into soup bliss. 

I also made some stir-fried veggies tonight with the leftover cabbage and some mushrooms, but it wasn't exciting enough to warrant a picture. They tasted good, though.

And now, on to a non-food related topic. Super Best Friends Forever recently premiered on Cartoon Network. I believe this is the first of several shorts involving the adventures of Supergirl, Batgirl, and Wonder Girl. The hope is that if this project does well enough, SBFF will be made into a regular cartoon. I really think it will succeed. The 90-second short is lively and fun, and the superheroines even have diverse body types. Yay for that!

Sorry, Still No Cooking

There was some junk food this week, however. Exhibit A: excellent pizza.

Nothing fancy, just vegan cheese and fake pepperoni from Spak Brothers, the only Pittsburgh pizzeria with a vegan pizza option. They also have vegan hoagies and seitan wings, which I'd like to try.

Exhibit B: A great piece of pecan pie from East End Co-op. Please note that I split this with J!

 Despite the crazy, unhealthy eating going on the past three weeks, I've managed to lose ten pounds. Which is great, but kind of confusing. Maybe it's because I'm sometimes too busy to eat a proper meal. Also, nothing but oatmeal with a spoonful of peanut butter and a teensy amount of agave nectar for breakfasts. Who knows?

But I had a dream last night about cooking, so feel that I will return to the kitchen very soon. Maybe for some late Irish cooking. More on that later.

No Cooking

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been incredibly busy lately, which means I haven't had a lot of time for cooking. I made an uninspired pasta, and J cooked a humongous pot of veggie chili that is going to take forever to eat. Uncharacteristically, I tried to convince him it was a good idea to have take-out every day this past week.

That didn't happen. But we did have a couple of good meals. The first was at Station Street. Well, more accurately, it came from Station Street. J brought a couple of vegan hot dogs home for dinner one night. He's far from a vegan, but it was Friday, so he couldn't eat meat. 

I made a traditional choice with a House Dog, with ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, and the welcome addition of sriracha. This was very good. Next time, however, I'm going to try something else. Maybe the Hawaiian Dog, minus the bacon, of course. 

Next time we'll eat in. I have heard that the decor is very kitschy, and I'm big into kitsch.

We also went to China Palace in Shadyside. We went to this restaurant once before, almost a year ago, and for some reason never made it back. I don't know why. There are a hundred vegetarian options on the menu, so many I was almost overwhelmed. 

We started with the fried sweet yam. This was basically like a vegetable tempura. The batter was not quite as light as I'd like to, but it was still a satisfying appetizer.

  J ordered the Stir-Fried Spinach Lo Mein. 

And I had the Soy Protein with Kung Pao Sauce.

This was amazing! By far the best Kung Pao dish I've had in a long time. We're definitely going back to the China Palace.

I'm sure that there'll be more take-out and restaurant posts in the future. Life is very hectic right now -- I haven't knit a thing in days, or read any comic books. But hey, I still have to eat, right? :) 

Very Random Post

I'm covering all the bases tonight -- vegan food, knitting, and comic books!

It's been unseasonably warm for February, but that hasn't deterred me from making more soup! Last night I made a piping hot Black Bean and Tomato Soup from Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. It was easy enough to pull off on a weeknight, even on a Thursday night when my energy level is usually low. More importantly, it tasted great. I had a cup with a smoked Tofurky sandwich. 

There's a few tomato slices tucked in there, but no lettuce. Our fridge has been freezing all of our lettuce lately, which is an annoying problem I haven't been able to fix yet. 

I finished the cardigan! Here is a picture of it blocking. I tried to enlist J in taking a picture of me wearing the cardigan, but no luck so far. Maybe tomorrow, when the sun is out. 

Overall I'm pleased. I did spaz out when I was making the raglan decreases (I was paying attention to Captain America on the blu-ray when I should have been looking at my knitting!), so the neckline turned out to be off-the-shoulders instead of a traditional scoop-neck. I added a black button in an asymmetrical position to make it look intentional  (not shown in the picture).

Here are the details:

Pattern: Vinelle by Voolenvine (you can download it from Ravelry)

Needle size: 8

Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted (in Eucalyptus) 

My newest project is a shawl in striping colors. The pattern is Athena, by Kate Ray. I love stripes, but I hate weaving in all the loose ends. Sigh.

And finally ... I didn't get to my local comic book store this week. I think Animal Man came out this week, so I have to go there soon to get my copy. But in the meantime, I've been reading Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise. I'm on the fourth volume of the pocket book edition.

My introduction to Terry Moore's work has been unusual. I read the first few issues of Rachel Rising first, then the first trade volume of Echo, and then finally picked up the first volume of Strangers in Paradise. SIP is like an addictive soap opera in comic book form. Katchoo and Francine are best friends who may also be in love with each other ... except there is everything standing in their way, from a sweet boy named David to gangsters, plane crashes, and pregnancies. SIP is over-the-top, bittersweet, addictive fun. 

Fat Tuesday

Why do they call it Fat Tuesday? I guess it's because you're supposed to gorge yourself before the long stretch of meaty deprivation. As I don't eat meat, I had to indulge in a different (yet still extravagant!) way. 

So here's what I ate today:

I made another steel-cut oatmeal in my slow cooker last night: Slow Cooker White Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie Oatmeal, from healthyslowcooking.com. The recipe is here. And yes, that is graham cracker crust sprinkled over the oatmeal! I added an extra half a cup of coconut milk this time, and cooked it on low for only six hours to prevent burning/sticking. 

For lunch, the aforementioned jambalaya. J actually cooked this one while I was at spinning class last night. I left out the Red Jambalaya recipe from 500 Vegan Recipes for him, but he improvised, adding extra vegetable broth, Tofurkey kielbasa, and a lot of Old Bay and cayenne pepper. It was almost too spicy for him to eat, but perfect for me!

For dinner, a meal with no vegetables in sight! Grilled cheese sandwiches (with Daiya), french fries, and Tempeh's Smoky Maple Tempeh Bacon. After snapping the picture, I stuck the bacon in the sandwich. The Daiya shreds didn't exactly melt, but it was still a really good dinner. Oh, and I used Trader Joe's low calorie wheat bread to minimize the guilt factor.

For dessert, half a piece of the best chocolate cake in the world, from the East End Co-op. 

In other news, I'm 98% done with the cardigan I've been knitting for three weeks. I have to sew the armholes and loose ends, and then acquire some suitably pretty buttons from either the LYS or Etsy. I'll post pictures as soon as I'm done.

Good Belly 12-Day Challenge, Day One

Today J and I went to see a matinee performance of The Gammage Project today, a harrowing docudrama based on the true events of October 12, 1995, when a black man was stopped by police due to a traffic violation, and ended up dead. It was a great performance, but we needed cheering up when it was over. So we went to Whole Foods, where I got another container of Brad's Raw Leafy Kale. I also picked up a quart of GoodBelly Probiotic juice in cranberry watermelon. 

I'll admit, I didn't read the back label until I got home. I'm not that big of a juice drinker, mostly because of the added calories and sugar, and the serving of this has 100 calories and 24 grams of sugar. I'll drink the juice, of course, but next time I think I'll pick up the Goodbelly Straightshot (no added sugar, and just 30 calories). 

I love the cranberry watermelon flavor. It has a slight yogurt-ish taste to it, but of course it's vegan, so there's no dairy involved.

I also purchased the ingredients to make Cheesy Kale Chips, recipe courtesy of Pride & Vejudice. My food processor went kaput when I was making the cashew/nutritional yeast spread, so I didn't get a very smooth consistency. A few of the chips didn't get that crispy, due to excessive glops of cheesy sauce. I cooked the kale at 200 degrees for 50 minutes; maybe I should have kept in the oven longer. But it didn't matter, because these taste so freaking good! 

J and I ate half a batch. The other half I put away in sandwich baggies to eat tomorrow. Oh, and tomorrow, one day ahead of Fat Tuesday (cause I can never cook elaborate dishes on workdays), I'll be making jumbalaya!