Pressed Eggplant and Olive sandwich

I made this recipe again this week.



Changes I made:
- My greens had gone slimy, so I didn't have any spinach to put on the sandwich.
- I added some smoked tofu to help even out the deep flavours of the olives and eggplant.
- I put vegan cream cheese on both sides of the bread.
- I picked up the olives already chopped from the olive bar at the grocery store, and they also had artichokes and roasted garlic so those got added into the sandwich.



I pressed it for about 24 hours in the fridge and the olive oil had seeped into most of the bread. So so great.

Notes
I liked the tofu on the sandwich, it did bring a more neutral flavour to the heaviness of the olives and eggplant. I did NOT like the cream cheese. I'm not sure if it was the brand I used (Daiya, it was soo sweet) or if having it sit for 24 hours allowed it to react with the rest of the ingredients in some weird way? It nearly ruined the sandwich for me. Next time, no cream cheese. The rest of the sandwich was good, but the first time I made the sandwich was much better.

Beer brewing/pumpkin carving party food spread

My husband brews beer. Every few weeks he has his brew buddies over to brew a new batch. He has gotten very technical with all of it and now our basement is filled with two chest freezers with temperature controllers to have the beer brew and condition at the proper temperature as well as a lot of other peripheral brew equipment. The newest piece of equipment saw its debut a few weeks ago. We had a group of people (mostly physicists) over for beer brewing and pumpkin carving. The equipment is a plate chiller and is used to cool the boiling wort to yeast pitching temperature. Unfortunately, we didn't have the proper fittings to hook the hose onto the plate chiller, so they brainstormed and came up with a way to gravity feed the water from our second floor bedroom through the plate chiller to cool the beer. You can see pictures of this adventure at my friend, Robert's, blog. After all the shenanigans, I was glad I made a lot of food!


The entire spread


Dehydrated banana bread, from Practically Raw
It tastes just like banana bread, and only has a few ingrediants. Delicious!


Chocolate kale chips, also from Practically Raw
This is a pretty similar recipe, although I used raw cashews, maple syrup, cocoa powder, and no chia seeds or lemon juice. The massaging of the kale took the longest time. These taste like crispy bits of chocolate. You cannot taste the kale at all. The Practically Raw cookbook has an entire chapter on kale chips and another one on hummus. It is a fantastic book. I need to just buy it, I have been using the library copy for the past few months. The perk of being a graduate student, I get to check out books for as long as I desire.


Hummus, baba ganoush, pineapple, guacamole
All pretty standard recipes.


Homemade pita bread
I used a recipe from Whole Foods for the Whole Family and cooked them on a cast iron griddle in a 400 degree oven. I had the oven heating up to 500 degrees, but the smoke detector went off. Obviously, something was burning off the pan, but 400 degrees worked out fine. I got into quite a rhythm while I was making them. I divided them out into 12 balls. Rolled one ball out into a round with the rolling pin. Put it in the oven. Rolled out the next ball. Turned the first pita over. Put the second one in the oven. Roll out the next ball. Take the first pita out of the oven. Turn the second one over. Put the third one in the oven. I was so happy that these actually puffed up in the oven, it was great and amazing.



Notes
Everyone enjoyed the spread and we only had minimal leftovers. I would say the day was a hit!

The day after the beer brewing/pumpking carving, we were hit with the outskirts of Sandy. School was cancelled for Monday and Tuesday, but there wasn't a lot of damage in the area, thank goodness, and we never lost power. We did, however, see a pack of wild turkeys wander in our backyard during the worst of the wind and rain. They hung out for an hour and then moved onto whereever they were going.

Vegan Eggplant Parmesan

Last week, a friend I work with gave me two beautiful eggplants from her garden and last night I decided to make vegan eggplant Parmesan.

I used the recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Blog. When this recipe was first published in 2006, I made it and it was the first time I had made anything with nutritional yeast. Although, I loved the sauce when I made it then, it has taken me a while (6 years!) to come to really love the "nooch".

Things that I changed about this recipe:
My eggplants were small, so I wish I had more of them and that I had sliced them thicker - I think 1/4 inch was too thin.

I skipped salting the eggplant, and I cooked the rounds in my cast iron skillet instead of in the oven.

I used a store bought jar of marinara sauce instead of making my own.

I didn't have any tofu, so I substituted 1/2 cup of cashews that had soaked in hot water for about 10 minutes. I made sure to blend for a bit longer to make sure the cashews were all broken up. Even so, the cheese sauce was a bit granular.

I skipped the vegan parm or ground almonds.

We had some leftover TVP in the fridge, so we put that on top with the bread crumbs.

Notes
I did not take a picture because it looks like glop. Delicious, yes, but not aesthetically appetizing.

Both my husband and I loved this. And the leftovers I ate tonight for dinner were probably even better. If you have eggplants around, I recommend you making this forthwith. It came together pretty quickly and was super tasty!

Roasted Eggplant Muffuletta Sandwich

This is a recipe from Veganomicon. I have been eyeing it since I got the cookbook and finally made it the other day. I am going to make this many times more.



You can find the recipe in it's entirety here.

I didn't change anything about recipe. It is perfect the way it is. You need to press the sandwich for a few hours prior to the devouring and you should have seen all the physics text books I had stacked on top in my office. It was comical.

Notes
My husband thought this needed a creamy layer, like a mozzarella cheese. Maybe some tofu would suffice? I thought it was great.