stephthevegan

I know veganmofo is over, but...

2009-11-07T18:24:17Z

We had Banana Rabanada today from Vegan Brunch, and it was awesome! Instead of a plain french toast, the bread soaks in a banana custard and, once cooked, is dusted with cocoa powder and cinnamon instead of icing sugar.

Also made a strawberry sauce for it.

Sooooo good.

Ms. Universe

2009-11-01T00:51:22Z

I used to go to this diner near my work that was only open to serve the local steelworkers. It looked it, too. But they had this addictive sandwich I used to always get before I turned vegan. The Miss Universe. It was so junkfoodlicious, with fried egg and mayo and white bread and cheese slices...kind of like a BLT, but with egg instead of bacon. Served with fries...mmmmmmmm.

Today, using the magic of vegan technology, I recreated it. Using Vegenaise, vegan cheese slices, Earth Balance and Isa's marinated tofu from Tofu Benny from Vegan Bruch sliced nice and thin, I got to revel in that sandwich again.

I present to you, the infinitely better (animal-free) Ms. Universe (because whose business is it anyway?):

Other photos

2009-11-01T00:42:42Z

This month, I also made:

Pumpkin Pancakes and Buckwheat Pancakes from Vegan Brunch. I could not for the life of me get those pumpkin ones to cook right - the middle wouldn't cook, it was always gooey. But I doubled the recipe, I may have messed up the measurements. The buckwheat ones, which were excellent, are shown below:

I had Mexican night again and used up random vegetables from the CSA box. Spaghetti Squash Mexicana with Avocado & Fruit Salsa from the Veganomicon, and Chipotle Corn & Black Bean Stew from Vegan with a Vengence. They went well together. The squash recipe was good - it was similar to my standard quick tortilla filling, with squash. I maintain that some vegetables, like zucchini, are "filler" vegetables. Spaghetti squash is, too. The saviour of this recipe was the salsa - it made it sing. The stew I make regularly, it's great. The lime and cilantro added at the end DO make such a difference in the depth of flavour, but it's serviceable if I don't have them around.

The Veg Dinner Club

2009-11-01T00:25:23Z

My first post of the month talked about our Supper Club and the first menu.

The Pine Nut Ravioli and Basil Aioli dish was fantastic! It was from the Millenium Restaurant's The Artful Vegan. I eliminated the Tomato Ragout from the recipe, as some of my guests were not fans of tomato and the test run of the dish proved the ravioli could more than stand on its own. We ate all of it before I could take a picture. I'm lying, I didn't take pictures that night, the ones that follow are when we had the leftovers.

The White Bean-Filled Phyllo Purse over Soft Garlic Polenta with Portbello-Zinfandel Sauce was from the Artful Vegan as well. It was excellent, and a great dinner party dish because the sauce, purse filling, and veg can all be prepped ahead of time. The assembly goes nice and quick, especially if you're familiar with phyllo pastry. A True Vegan Entree. Here's a picture:

The Individual Smlove Pies are a variation of Isa & Terry's recipe from the Veganomicon. The first time I made this recipe, I served it after a five course New Year's Eve meal...and we had already been eating for four hours. I learned my lesson that night about portion sizes, and I thought the individual pies (made in muffin cups) were a nice touch to end the Supper Club meal.

This is where I make up for it all

2009-11-01T00:06:41Z

I finally uploaded my pictures to flickr. This first post will be a bunch of recipes I've mentioned this month, but didn't have pictures for:

Pesto Pizza

Big Pot of Chili

Big Pot of Borscht

Asian-inspired night

2009-10-26T17:07:19Z

Feeling a little under the weather. That usually means one thing - soup. Last night we had Hot and Sour Soup from The Garden of Vegan. It's a family favourite - everyone I've ever made this soup for loved it. It also helped me in my quest to learn to enjoy mushrooms. Every time we get a bag of beautiful shiitake mushrooms in the CSA share my mind turns to that recipe. And it's spicy enough to calm the sniffles. I like adding green onions, sometimes chopped greens, and regular peas when I don't have snow peas.

And in a not-so-coincidental overlap of ingredients, we also had a version of Chef At Home's Asian Salad Wraps. I substituted a 1/4 lb of firm tofu for the meat, and let it marinate in the dressing while I made the soup. I added julienned green onions, too, because I love them. They were delicious! I find when filling rice paper wrappers I need a hearty, tasty filling, otherwise it's too boring - I'd rather have just the salad with the ingredients and save myself the trouble (not the case here). I learned, too, that drying off the wrappers after they've been softened makes all the difference when handling them.

Aside: Chef At Home Michael Smith (who all the girls have a foodie crush on - I suppose in that way he's like a Canadian Jamie Oliver) has a new book out (which I'd better see under the Christmas tree...ahem!). It has the meaty dishes, but alongside good veg dishes, including Scrambled Tofu. Well done, Chef Smith, well done. If it's possible, you're integration of veg cuisine into "normal" cuisine makes me <3 you more.

Baby food

2009-10-24T19:08:19Z

Today I'm making baby food. I have a big pile of vegetables and fruits from the organic CSA box, all the right kinds for making baby food - sweet enough for first foods and easy to cook and puree. Why pay for added chemicals and packaging?

Sweet potatos, carrots (a mix of orange, yellow and white), pears, apples, bananas, butternut squash, and pumpkin (why not?).

So easy, and so good to get the little guy started off right. Now, to convince everyone that cow's milk is truly unnecessary...

stephthevegan @ 2009-10-24T14:57:00

2009-10-24T19:02:54Z

Thursday we had a nice Italian meal. Bruschetta, garden salad and Tempeh Caccitore from Vegan Planet.

The bruschetta mix was diced onion and tomato with fresh basil, minced garlic, olive oil and red wine vinegar, piled on ciabatta toasts. Excellent.

The caccitore was not as good as I had hoped. I like my caccitore to be saucier and have a rounder flavour. It tasted like it hadn't simmered long enough. It is definitely a recipe that can be tweaked to suit, though. Saucy is easy to fix - I'm just the right amount myself :)

Food TV-ish dinner

2009-10-22T00:20:19Z

Tonight we had leftover spinach dip with Penne Puttanesca and Creamy Watercress salad.

The Penne was from Vegan Planet, and perfect for using up the half can of crushed tomatoes in the fridge. Puttanesca is always a hit. The first time I heard of it was while watching Restaurant Makeover - Massimo Capra made spaghetti puttanesca. I always watch RM and see if there are vegan/adaptable recipes. Some of the best recipes we've had are my guessimations from the show. Certainly some of the most anticipated.

The salad was from an episode of The Main I saw today (scroll down a bit). It was a creamy, lemony, watercress and apple salad. I had some watercress from the salad mix from the CSA box and some leftover sour cream, so it felt like fate. It was delicious!

One more Food TV comment: they've been playing a lot of shows that have used beets in the last few days. Two Thumbs up.

stephthevegan @ 2009-10-17T16:41:00

2009-10-17T20:57:26Z

Mmmm...soft taco leftovers for dinner...

Tomorrow I'm going to a family potluck and bringing something I'll use any excuse to make: pumpernickle & spinach dip! I love this stuff. It's based on this recipe, but I use Vegenaise instead of tofu. Hollow out a pumpernickle and we're ready to rock and roll.

Incidently, my other secret weapons are Dreena Burton's Bad But Good Bars, and potato salad. These always win over the tentative eaters entering Steph's "crazy vegan land." My potato salad really just uses Vegenaise, but I use dijon mustard, vinegar, s&p, along with steamed potatos, onions, pickles, sometimes capers, & peas. This salad was a big hit at both my sister's rehersal dinner, and my son's baptism. No one was the wiser ;)

Indian Chex Mix? I'm in!

2009-10-17T04:24:04Z

Sometimes I have dirty little cravings for non-vegan junk food. I think it's more the taste-memories than anything, so I'm always excited to try a new vegan snack that could replace those memories. Ones so good they wipe out thoughts of other snacks before them. Kind of like learning new things on the night of an exam that can bump out old things you've already learned because your head is so full. Except in a fun, delicious, non-class-failing way.

So I'm going to have to try this some day soon: Indian Chex Mix.

Nacho night, or, We Like Mexican!

2009-10-16T20:42:25Z

Tonight is a fun Friday night meal: nachos.

I'm pulling some leftover chili from the freezer (actually, this time it's Yves Mexican Ground Round). I add more chili powder, cumin, jalapenos, onions and black beans to the ground round.

I heat up the chili/round, and top with salsa, green onions, Fresh's tofu sour cream, and anything else that's interesting that might be hanging around (olives, more jalapenos, lettuce, tomatos, etc.)

Aside: I really like the Fresh cookbooks. They are written like they are for the restaurant in the layout - each recipe calls for two or three other basic sauces or marinated items that are found elsewhere in the cookbook. At first, this was frustrating, because a seemingly simple recipe actually had many steps and many ingredients. But a hidden benefit is that the portions are really large and the sauces can be frozen and used for several recipes. So one night of effort could make a week of easy meals. I spread the week out by freezing leftovers, because, as good as the Thai Noodles are, I can't eat them every day. Almost. But not quite.

Vegan Planet

2009-10-15T22:35:11Z

Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet has been hitting the spot the last few nights.

Tonight we had:
Indonesian-inspired Tempeh Stew with brown rice and a salad. The stew was tempeh and sweet potatoes with a tomato/coconut milk/chili/ginger/garlic sauce. It was delectable. The salad was equally excellent: baby spinach with green onions, walnuts and ground cherries with Kraft's Classic Herb dressing. The ground cherries came in the csa box, and I couldn't figure out what to do with them until I thought "I'll taste them and then decide." A ground-breaking approach, to be sure :)

Last night we had:
Orange-Roasted Beets and Shallots with Orange Gremolata, Brandy-Glazed Winter Squash with Apple-Pecan Topping, a salad, and the PC Fake Chicken with BBQ sauce. The salad was baby spinach, shallots and pecans, with the same dressing as above (it's my new favourite easy bottle dressing). The beets were good (I have to sometimes force myself to eat them), though every time a recipe says the skins will slip right off, it never happens. It's hard to peel things when they're hot, so I'ma just going to peel them cold from now on. The squash was also very good.

Before that:
Tempeh Goulash, which was very good. Hungarian-style, it threw the native Polish around here for a loop. It was creamy, tomato-y and a bit spicy. I served it with rice noodles. I would add peppers next time, because that's what my background remembers in goulash. I would also serve it with some side vegetables, because it would have been nice to break up the meal.

stephthevegan @ 2009-10-09T22:15:00

2009-10-10T02:20:18Z

I finally bought a giant stock pot. It's awesome. And I've stocked the freezer with borscht, chili and vegetable stew. All slightly undercooked so I can put them in the crock pot on wintery days when I don't want to cook.

The borscht is the Garden Vegetable Borscht from How It All Vegan, the chili is my own recipe, grown from one I saw on Martha Stewart years ago, and the stew was based on Robin Robertson's Autumn Veg Stew from Vegan Planet.

And now, off to the cottage, where I am making pumpkin pie (standard recipe, subbing in soy milk/egg replacer - EnerG really is better!), Mighty Miso Gravy sans miso (How It All Vegan), and Unprocessed Cheese Sauce from The UnCheese Cookbook. I was going to make Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh from Veganomicon, but it turns out Tofurkey was purchased for me already. Boo. Oh woe is me, living in a world that doesn't truly understand vegan cuisine, a world that thinks the nearest analog available is the proper substitute for a "real" meal. :P

Come eat at my house, we'll show you how it's done...excusing, of course, my last post...

Fajitas

2009-10-09T01:11:45Z

Those PC unChicken Breasts are lethal, in the best of ways. I used them in fajitas last night with the peppers and onions from the CSA. I made tofu sour cream using Fresh's recipe, which I've found to be reliable and a good approximation. Both these "cheats" are acceptable to my omni husband, which makes dinner that much easier on a quick weeknight.

What harvests together goes together

2009-10-08T00:21:59Z

Last night we had a meal straight out of the CSA box. Roasted balsamic beets, acorn squash and chickpea patties with apple sauce.

I'd been thinking all day about what to put with the beets and patties leftover from early Thanksgiving. Then I saw the squash there and the giant pile of apples I'd been ignoring. Since the oven was hot, chop and scoop - in went the squash. I pulled out my Better Homes and Gardens that I keep for all the basics (and to feed the omni husband) and it turns out apple sauce is the Easiest and Fastest thing ever! I didn't even have to peel the apples! And it was done in a half hour, perfect timing for the rest of the meal.

Delicious!

And today's CSA box was even better, so this week is looking good.

Today I tried the snickedoodles from Vegan Yumyum's new cookbook, and while not how I remember these cookies, they were much better.

Light Coffee Vegan-styles

2009-10-07T00:42:23Z

I joined up to blog in the VeganMofo, and I've managed one entry. So here's a quick entry to assuage my guilt:

How to whiten coffee vegan-styles? I have some serious problems here. Regular soy milk always curdles in my coffee at home. I know Starbucks used to use Silk in their lattes and those turned out OK. Second Cup's coffees somehow taste way worse than Starbucks. They have that nasty soy aftertaste. Which I why I hate the soy creamers. They don't curdle, but they taste gross to me.

So, I've taken to heating up Silk and using more of it, and voila! No curdling. I think it's a temperature shock thing. So by adding warm soy milk, and more of it, it eliminates the effect.

Now I can buy crappier coffee again, because I need good coffee if I'm not lightening it up. :P

Veg Supper Club

2009-10-01T21:15:51Z

Inspired by the latest Veg News article on Supper Clubs, we decided to start our own out in suburbia. A girl's gotta have some good gourmet once in a while, even if she's gotta cook it herself. And it's so much nicer cooking for a crowd!

Here's the menu, which I'll go over in detail in the next few posts. We also had wine to match each course - it worked out really well.

Vegetarian Supper Club

September 26, 2009

Menu

Salad

Roasted Golden Beet Salad

with

Cashew Cheese

Pasta

Lemon-Pine Nut Ravioli

with

Basil Aioli

Main

White Bean-Filled Phyllo Purse

over

Soft Garlic Polenta

with

Portbello-Zinfandel Sauce

Dessert

Individual Smlove Pie

We had these wines:
Aperatif: Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2007 (used in the Main sauce)
Salad: Santa Rita Sauv Blanc 2008 (recommended by Food & Drink mag, where I got the salad recipe)
Pasta: Wild Ass Riesling 2007
Main: Baron Phillippe de Rothschild Cabernet Sauv 2007
Dessert: Muskoka Roastery Maple coffee with Drambuie

The world is crazy...

2009-01-16T15:15:46Z

Dad wants to ban The Handmaid's Tale because it is sexist and intolerant.

SOME one has no sense of irony. A frightening day, to be sure. The comments from Star reader tell it like it is, make sure read some of those to restore your faith in today's society.

stephthevegan @ 2008-12-19T12:02:00

2008-12-19T17:03:06Z

I am boycotting all radio because I am SICK of cell phone commercials.

Random Notes

2008-07-16T02:26:49Z

So when a few tomatoes are contaminated with E. Coli. every fricken restaurant, including Subway, eliminates them from the menu. When beef causes massive sickeness from E. Coli...nothing happens. Jeepers, do yourself a favour, just stop eating it.

Also, the Burlington Jazz and Blues Festival is going veg this year! They are even having a veg food drive. Since Burlington is showing itself to be...progressive...I just make the trek downtown to check it out.

Also, the local store that sells matt & nat is having a sidewalk sale Friday...looks like that's not the night for studying.

stephthevegan @ 2008-05-28T22:48:00

2008-05-29T02:49:25Z

The bike lane is not for old people's scooters. That's just dangerous.

stephthevegan @ 2008-05-25T18:02:00

2008-05-25T22:03:26Z

Anyone want back issues of Food & Drink, Chatelaine or Women's Health?

I'll be donating them if not.

Vegan Fast Food

2008-04-30T22:18:41Z

Spending the weekend in Montreal is a fun thing for a vegan.

We ate at O Noir, which is totally in the dark. They were super and had no problem making a vegan dish for me. I had pasta and peppers, and sorbet with pineapple chunks. None of which I can show you, obviously.

Since I cannot eat low fat muffins at Tim Hortons everyday, and because I had an empty, hung-over stomach, I went to the Mediterranean restaurant next door and had this:

I love Montreal falafel!

I had Indian at a mall for "lunch" and vietnamese veggies and tofu on noodles for dinner.

Last night we had a little ChemEng dinner. I had the veggie futo maki:

It came with miso soup, edamame, some boy chok with chili sauce, and dessert. Best $7 sushi ever!

stephthevegan @ 2008-04-22T22:40:00

2008-04-23T02:47:04Z

Finally having some time to breathe is nice. Just in time for school to start again next Monday! Yay.

We had my inlaws for dinner on Sunday. I made the "vegan Keg meal" with Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, Mushroom Gravy, Chickpea Noodle Soup, and Smlove Pie. Everything capitalized is from the V'con, and I've posted it before. Here's a picture of the X8 marinade I did for all the tempeh (schwing!):

This week, I'm tryin' new-to-me recipes. Below are Mole Skillet Pie with Greens and Spicy Tempeh with Broccoli Rabe, from the Veganomicon.

And, in other vegan-y news, I picked up Vegan Deli by Jo Stepaniak. Looks like a winner for picnics, Easter Baskets, etc. Go Jo!