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!

Cleveland Eats and Cornbread

J and I, plus one adventurous pup, went to Cleveland this weekend. We were only there overnight, just long enough to go to the kitschy and wonderful Christmas Story house/museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Museum. I knew we'd have the opportunity to try out at least one Cleveland vegan/vegetarian restaurant, so I consulted VegGuide.org and found out all about Flaming Ice Cube, a cute little vegan restaurant located in downtown Cleveland. 

J and I were both famished when we got to the Flaming Ice Cube, and briefly considered getting everything! Instead we restrained ourselves and ordered two entrees and an appetizer to share. Our choice of appetizer was the summer rolls, which came with a fantastic peanut dipping sauce. We ate the summer rolls before I even thought about taking pictures! 

I remembered the camera for our entrees, however. J ordered the Mediterranean Hummus Wrap, which came with a side order of couscous. I didn't try the wrap, but J assured me it was delicious. I did steal a spoonful of couscous, which was savory goodness. 

Look at that wrap! It is actually half a wrap, which is crazy.

I was tempted by the flatbread pizzas featuring Daiya (yay Daiya!) or the vast selection of veggie burgers. In the end, I chose the Mmmushroom Burger with a side order of pesto pasta.

This was the best veggie burger I have ever had. Seriously. And the pesto salad was pretty great too.

We were too stuffed to order one of the amazing desserts, but I couldn't go completely without. So we got some chocolate chip cookies to go. I waited until we got back to Pittsburgh before I had mine. There is apparently nothing that Flaming Ice Cube doesn't do fantastically well, and the cookies were no exception. Yum!

After such a wonderful lunch on Saturday, I decided to make a veganlicious spread for Sunday dinner. I made the Hawaiian Chickpea Teriyaki and a pan of Cornbread, both from Happy Herbivore. I also sauteed some kale with garlic and olive oil. 

All in all, this was an excellent food weekend. :)

Slow Cooker Oatmeal

Today is one of the very few days of the year where I have to work a different, later shift. I don't look forward to these days, so last night I decided to make a slow cooker oatmeal for a treat in the morning. Carrot Cardamom Oatmeal, to be precise! I've never made oatmeal in my crock pot before, but I loved the idea of an Indian-inspired breakfast.

And believe me, this was so simple to make. I threw all the ingredients in the slow cooker at 10:00, and this morning at 7:30 there was delicious oatmeal! I didn't have pistachios to sprinkle over the top, so I subbed a few tablespoons of crushed roasted almonds. 

Look at the end result!

Oh, I also wanted to give another shout-out to Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. Last night I made the Roasted Curried Cauliflower. Now, I don't really care for cauliflower, and neither does J. We buy a head of cauliflower maybe twice a year. But I was making my weekly quota of chana masala, and thought roasted cauliflower with Indian spices might be a nice side dish. 

Can you tell there is a theme to what I've been cooking lately? Yup, lots and lots of Indian and Indian-inspired dishes. 

Anyway, I roasted the cauliflower using all the ingredients except for the fresh parsley -- I only had dried. This was a very easy side dish to make, and we loved it! J and I ate almost the whole thing. We ate it so quickly, in fact, that I didn't have time to snap a picture.

So another big recommendation for Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook!

Hello Again

I'm back! I know it's been a very long time since I blogged here last. Fortunately, I have lots of great new discoveries to share today. 

I borrowed a great cookbook from the library this afternoon, Kim Barnouin's Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. I loved Barnouin and Freedman's cheeky first book, Skinny Bitch, but found their Skinny Bitch in the Kitch kind of disappointing. Okay, I admit it -- I didn't give it a chance because there were zero pictures of any of the food. Zilch. I hate cookbooks without pictures!!

Anyway, after flipping through Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook, I was transfixed. Everything sounds so wonderful, and one of every three recipes come with an accompanying picture. Yay! I had a package of pre-cut butternut squash cubes from Trader Joes in the fridge, so it was only logical for me to whip up a pot of Butternut Squash Soup with Poppy Seeds. 

Poppy seeds were the only ingredient I did not have, but I'm not a big fan of them anyway, so assumed I wouldn't miss them. The soup was delicious. 

Next week I'm going to make either the Asian Macaroni and Cheese or the Spicy Vegetable Curry (with okra!!!!) I am so buying this cookbook!

J was jonesing for poblano peppers, so he stuffed two with portabello mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic and thyme and then roasted it for twenty five minutes. Yum! Next time we're thinking about adding some daiya or a nice creamy sauce. 

Last weekend J and I went apple-picking with friends, and after making a nice batch of applesauce, I still found myself with yet more apples. So I decided to make these:

Okay, so they're not the prettiest muffins in the world, but they sure were tasty. These are the Apple Crisp Muffins from The Happy Herbivore. They're sweet without being cloying, hearty (thanks to the oats) and best of all, only 124 calories per muffin. I will definitely make more of these in the near future.

Tofu Mania

What's better than tofu? Tofu Marsala, of course. Served with a generous portion of Sesame Garlic Wilted Kale. Both recipes come from good ole 500 Vegan Recipes, of which, after more than a year of vegan cooking, I have still barely scraped the surface.

On the junk food front, I've picked up a few goodies over the past couple of  months, including a carton of Amande almond milk yogurt. Well, I guess you could argue that yogurt isn't junk food. Anyway, I tried the cherry flavor, which was delicious. It tastes nothing like traditional milk-based yogurt, which suits me fine, as I never really liked actual yogurt anyway. J had a bite and thought it was more of a dessert than a breakfast-type food, and I have to agree.

Oh, and I made this:

My mother brought me her old bread maker. This loaf is just a non-fussy white bread, but I hope to branch out soon!