Rice Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Today, I was working from home because we needed to take our kitty to the vet. Nothing major, but she is 20 years old and needs a check up every so often.

I'm almost convinced that this cat is going to live forever.


Taken with my Rolleiflex camera. I just needed to adjust the focus a biiiiit more.

Anyway, so both my husband and I were at home today, he is trying to get over sickness and I was trying to work in a quiet environment. I looked at the clock and realised that we hadn't had lunch yet and it was almost time to go to the vet. I looked through our fridge and decided on rice noodles with peanut sauce. I have been craving Thai food lately and none of the "Thai" restaurants around here are cutting it. While this isn't even remotely authentic, it fulfilled a bit of my noodle craving.

Ingredients
rice noodles
vegetables (I used onion, garlic, carrot, broccoli)

peanut butter
sriracha sauce
hoisin/oyster/black bean/other dark sauce to give a little umami taste
hot water, to blend

Method
Boil enough water to cover the rice noodles. When the water is boiling, add the noodles and cover for 5 - 8 minutes until almost done.

In a wok or frying pan, saute onion and garlic with olive oil until softened. Add carrots and broccoli (and whatever other vegetables you want, unless it is a green - spinach, kale, etc - add that at the very end) and any water to make it not stick to the bottom and to steam the vegetables a bit.

While the vegetables are cooking, make the peanut sauce. I used about 1/4 cup of chunky peanut butter with a few squirts of sriracha and a few drops of oyster sauce, and added enough hot water to make a thin, whiskable sauce.

When the noodles are almost done, add to the pan with the vegetables. Add the peanut sauce and stir until everything is coated. Cook everything together until the noodles and vegetables are the desired tenderness. Add water to prevent too much sticking.


Notes
Both of us thought this was good. I didn't think it was "good" food, but it was exactly what I wanted, so it was great and quick.

Falafel and tzatziki sauce

Wednesday, I got home after my zumba class and I needed to eat. I was trying to decide if I should just heat up a can of soup or go with the original plan of making falafel. I decided that I would be much happier with falafel.

This is based on the recipe from Rabbit Food cookbook, which is a fabulous cookbook.

Ingredients
1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained
1/4 red onion, diced,
3 - 4 garlic, diced (I love a lot of garlic flavour)
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/4 cup flour
lemon juice
cumin
cayenne pepper
black pepper
salt

plain coconut yogurt, this was a tad bit too sweet
1/4 cup diced cucumber
lemon juice

tomato slices
cucumber slices
pickles
lettuce
sriracha sauce

pita bread or tortillas

Method
Using a potato masher or food processor, mash up the chickpeas until there are no whole ones left. Usually I use the food processor, but I didn't want to dirty up the food processor bowl, so I used the potato masher and it works okay. Make sure that all the other ingredients are diced very very small. Add all the other ingredients and mix until evenly distributed. The mixture should be able to stick together when pressed.

Heat up a cast iron skillet over medium heat. You can also deep fry or bake the falafel, but I prefer to shallow fry them in a skillet. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, measure out a 1/4 cup and mash into about a 6 cm diameter patty. Place on the skillet and cook until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Continue making patties until the mixture is gone. I made about 8 patties.

To make the tzatziki sauce, mix together the yogurt, cucumber, and lemon juice. Set aside to let the flavours blend.

To serve, heat the bread or tortillas until warm and pliable. Place 2 patties in the center and add the tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, pickles, sriracha, and tzatziki.

Notes
These were surprising good. The recipe is so simple and came out really well. The patties didn't get hard the way they do when falafel is fried, and even though the fell apart a bit, they were still good. My husband had already had dinner, but he kept stealing bites because he liked it so much. We ate the leftovers for lunch on Thursday and they were still quite tasty.

Homemade Tortillas and tacos

The other day, we had leftover TVP after making vegan nachos with the vegan cheese dip I posted about previously. I decided that tacos would be good, but we didn't have tortillas. I followed a recipe Whole Foods for the Whole Family (which has Bryanna Clark Gordon as a co-editor. I'm sure it was her to help push for the few tofu recipes in there. Over all a fantastic cookbook.)




Ingredients
2 cups white bread flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup water


Method
In a medium bowl, mix the flour and salt together until the salt is evenly distributed. Cut in the shortening until there are little balls of shortening throughout the flour mixture. Mix in just enough water for a slightly sticky dough and knead for a few minutes. Let sit, covered for about 15 minutes.

Heat up a cast iron griddle pan or skillet over medium heat. You can spread on a bit of oil or other fat, but my pan is virtually non-stick. Divide the dough into 6 - 8 dough balls. Roll out the balls on a lightly floured surface until very thin, 3 - 4 mm thick. Place the tortilla on the pan. Bubbles should begin to form, I usually use a spatula to press down the bubbles and allow the entire tortilla to touch the hot pan surface. It should take about 1 minute on the first side about no more than 20 seconds to cook on the opposite side. Remove from heat and place under a towel to keep warm. Repeat for remaining dough balls.




Notes
We served this with seasoned TVP, guacamole, and habanero hot sauce. Both my husband and I loved the tortillas. I was getting the hang of rolling them out thin enough by the end and it was much easier to roll them up. We are not considering getting a tortilla press, but I should probably see if making tortillas is going to become a regular thing before I purchase more kitchen equipment.

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!

Tofu Scramble

Last Thursday, I woke up early enough to have a leisurely breakfast while my husband was still sleeping. We had some tofu in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I made a tofu scramble. My throat also started hurting that day, so I thought I would try and soothe it with some hot water, lemon, and honey tea.

Ingredients

extra-firm tofu

onions

garlic

spices - chipotle powder, salt, pepper, rosemary

kale

hot sauce

Method

 Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil until browned.  Crumble up the tofu into little bits until it looks like scramble egg.  Stir to mix up the tofu, onion, garlic, olive oil.  Add spices, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, etc - anything you think would taste good on the "eggs".  You can even add black salt at the end.  It gives a sulphur flavour that is reminiscent of eggs.  A few minutes before everything is to your liking, add the chopped kale, pour a tablespoon or so of water in the pan and over with a lid.  Allow the kale to steam for a few minutes until tender.  Mix everything together, taste for seasoning, and serve with a delicious hot sauce.

I picked up this  hot sauce at the grocery store randomly a few months ago and just got around to trying it.  I love it.  It has heat AND it has flavour.

Notes

This was very good. I haven't made a tofu scramble in a while and it was exactly what I wanted. I served it with some Tuscan bread from the new Trader Joe's!


The cat has been a good cuddle buddy while I have been sick the last few days.

Indian Food Fest

Earlier this week, my friend Sonic sent me a text message wanting to hang out. Being in the middle of my semester and completely swamped with classes and research and proposals, oh my! I asked if we could meet for dinner this evening because my husband was having a man date. Everyone needs to eat, right? She came over, drank some home brew, chatted, and ate delicious food. I almost killed our lungs, when I put chilies, spices, and other hot things on the hot cast iron pan. The vapors came up and into coughing fits we went. I opened up the window and and door and put on the fan to try and blow the vapors away. Other than that, a successful dinner!

I was planning on making samosas using phyllo dough as the pastry, but we were getting too hungry to wait for it to bake, so we just ate it as is.



Ingredients
Aloo mattar based the samosa recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance
cumin seeds
mustard seeds
coriander seeds
potato, diced into cubes
onion
carrot
garlic
ginger
peas or edamame
curry powder
turmeric
cayenne pepper


Red lentil dahl
onions
garlic
ginger
hot chilies
red lentils
water or broth
curry powder
turmeric
cumin powder
sriracha


Method
Aloo mattar
Bring the potatoes to boil in a sauce pan. Boil until the potatoes are tender, about 10 or so minutes. Drain and set aside.

Heat a cast iron pan over medium heat and add a bit of olive oil. Add the seeds and stir constantly until they start popping and turning brown. Add the onion, carrot, garlic, and ginger to the pan. Stir to combine. Add any spices to the pan. Turn on a fan, so the vapors don't kill your lungs. Stir to combine. When the potatoes are done, add them to the pan, along with the peas or edamame. Use a potato masher, or the back of a spoon to mash everything together. Add a spash or two of water to help combine everything. Taste and adjust seasonings.


Red lentil dahl
Sauté the onions, garlic, ginger, and chilies in a bit of olive oil over medium heat in a sauce pan until the onions are browned. Add the red lentils and enough water or broth to cover the lentils. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until most of the broth is absorbed by the lentils and it is pretty mushy. Add seasonings and sriracha and adjust to taste.

Serve with rice and fresh fruit.


Notes
This was quite delicious. The dahl was super duper easy to put together. I forgot to start boiling the potatoes before I sautéed the vegetables, so they had to hang out for about 10 minutes until the potatoes finished.

As evidence that we did eat the deliciousness, I present: Sonic!


Nom nom nom

Freezer Meals: Bubble up pizza bites

My husband and I spent an afternoon making a bunch of meals for the month this past weekend. We have started to eat on our freezer food and man it is good and easy to have things that are ready to eat.




Ingredients
pizza dough - we used a pre made one that is for a 12 inch pizza
pizza sauce
any toppings you desire - we used onions, black olives, and daiya pepperjack cheese

Method
Grease a 12 muffin muffin tray. Divide the pizza dough into 12 even balls and place one in each of the muffin cups. Push the topping down into the dough. Really get in down in there. Top with a teaspoon of the pizza sauce and any vegan cheese.

Bake for about 15 - 18 minutes at 350F, until the dough is browned.

To freeze: place the muffin tray in the freezer and allow the bites to partially freeze - about 15 or so minutes. Take out of the tray and put into a gallon sized freezer bag. To reheat, place the frozen bite in a toaster oven and cook at 350 for about 10 minutes until heated through. You can also, heat up in the microwave for a minute or two. You can also put these frozen in your lunch box and by lunch time they are thawed. Heat up in the microwave for about 30 seconds until warmed through.


Notes
I have a confession: I am not a daiya cheeze fan. I think it smells like stinky feet and tastes rubbery. I decided to give it a try, but I am now going to be giving away the rest of my bag to friend. I'm glad that I didn't cover all the bites with the cheeze. Other than that, these are really good! I didn't shove the topping down far enough to the dough, so they came out on top instead of "bubbled up" around it. My husband also enjoyed these, although, he said it took him about 15 minutes for them to cook in the toaster oven for him. Super easy and delicious!

Geez, we don't just eat pizza around here.

Freezer Meals: Pesto, potato, mushroom pizza

It will take one more day to finish of making all the rest of the freezer meals. I think we have three more to do. I'll post a picture of the inside of our freezer when it is done. We aren't making allll our meals for the freezer, just about half of them. Although, we did have a friend over tonight and ate both of the pizzas we had frozen, so we aren't going to make it quite all the way to the end of the month with our recipes.

For those that are lost, my husband and I are trying to cook a good majority of our meals in advance and then freeze them. We are using recipes from Once a Month Mom. All the recipes we have tried so far, have been fantastic.



Tonight, we decided to break out the frozen pizza. From frozen, it cooked in a preheated 350F oven for about 10 - 15 minutes. Before we froze the pizza, we had parcooked the crust for about 8 minutes before adding the toppings and freezing.

Ingredients
Kale Pesto
1/2 bunch kale
1/2 cup slivered almonds
a couple of garlic cloves
salt
black pepper
olive oil

Mushroom bits
12 oz mushrooms sliced
2 T olive oil
2 T maple syrup
1 T soy sauce
1/2 t liquid smoke

pre made pizza dough - just the usual dough for about 12 inch pizza
Any other toppings you desire - we added garlic, potato, and onion


Method
Kale Pesto
Process the kale, almonds, and garlic in a food processor until chopped up. Add seasonings. With the processor processing slowly drizzle in the olive oil until it is the desire consistency. Adjust for any seasonings.

Mushroom bits
In a bowl, mix the mushrooms with the liquid ingredients. Allow to soak while the oven is heating up to 400F. Spread on a cookie sheet lined with foil (for easy clean up). Cook in oven, stirring occasionally, until crispy. I didn't really get these to a crispy stage, just cooked well. Set aside to cool.

Pizza
Roll out the dough to desired size. We divided the dough into two pieces and rolled them into their own pizzas. We needed to make the dough fit inside of a gallon size freezer bag. Also, a pizza made from all the dough is usually too much for one meal for two people.

Place the dough in a preheated 400F oven for about 8 minutes until the dough is mostly cooked through. Spread the pesto on and top with any topping you desire. At this point, you can wrap in plastic wrap and put in a freezer bag and freeze until needed, or you can put it back in the oven and cook until the toppings are heated through the bottom of the pizza is brown.


Notes
I was a little bit wary of the pesto, when I tried it after processing it, we both thought it tasted like the way fresh cut grass smelled. The flavor mellowed out on the pizza and worked really well with the kind of sweet mushroom topping. The pizza over all was delicious. It was really fun to come home and have a frozen pizza that didn't have a bunch of weird ingredients in it. Both my husband and the friend we had over, loved the pizza.

Of course, we topped our pizza with a drizzle of sriracha.

If the freezer meals continue to be awesome, we are doing this next month and every month after that. It's like eating frozen meals from the grocery store, but they don't have a bunch of things in there that you don't want and it took three days to put all the food together! We are loving it.

We might have a problem....

My husband and I like Sriracha. A lot. Recently, the grocery store we go to most often, has stopped carrying the brand we love. We decided it was time to purchase in bulk and off to Amazon we went. Two days later (thank you Amazon Prime for students), a large box appeared on our door step.





Unfortunately, one of the 12 bottles had opened up and emptied its contents all over the box and other bottles. Fortunately, it was only one and it was easy to clean off the other bottles.





We are now in possession of 11 big bottles of Sriracha and my goodness, I could not be happier about it. We quickly replaced the empty bottle in our pantry, and two went up to school to sit at our desks. You never know when your lunch is going to need the Sriracha kick, right?





We estimated that we go through about a bottle of Sriracha a month. Now we have a year long supply! I don't think this is unreasonable, yes?

Once a Month Cooking: Prep/Cook Day 1

Today, my husband and I attempted to prepare about half our meals for the month. We bought the food this morning, took about two hours to cut up all the vegetables, and then began cooking. About 1.5 hours into the cooking, we burned out and decided to begin a new tomorrow. We are about half through making all the meals. If the meals turn out and taste great after being in the freezer for a few weeks, this is going to become a regular occurrence at our house. I roughly used the menu plan at Onceamonthmom. There were several recipes for the October menu that we were not down with - the stuffed squashes and a tofurky sandwich - not for us. So I supplemented recipes from the September and August menus.


Most of what is going to get turned into our meals for the month


We don't have a lot of counter space, so we made use of the stairs to hold the prepped vegetables

The recipes that we made/going to make are:

x Pumpkin Muffins (I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance)
x Roasted Sweet Potato, pomegranate seeds, almonds as a salad topping
Lentil-Mushroom Sliders mini-burgers (My husband refuses to call them sliders)
Nut Loaf in Pastry
x Pomegranate Chili Tofu
Gnocchi in pumpkin sauce
Curried Lentils and Sweet Potatoes
Curry Tofu Scramble
x Baked Empanadas
x Bubble up pizza bites
x Kale Pesto, basil, mushroom pizza
Spicy Seitan Flautas

All the recipes can be found at the Once a month mom website.

Goodness, it is making me tired thinking about all the ones we still have to cook. I have placed an x next to the ones we have completed. 6 more recipes to get through and then hopefully it will make cooking over the course of this month, so much easier. Things are starting to get crazy with school - homeworks, tests, research, etc - so having good food to come home to will be great.

After we lost steam to cook more, we discovered that we didn't really have anything planned for dinner. It was decided that the Pomegranate Chili Tofu I was preparing was going to go in our bellies instead of the freezer bag.



Pomegranate Chili Tofu


Notes
If all our meals are as good as the tofu, then we will be in for a good food month. We couldn't find any pomegranate molasses, so we picked up some pomegranate juice and added it to blackstrap molasses. The dish was a good level of spicy and sweet. The breading for the tofu was a little strange, but I just decided to add whatever spices I wanted and called it good because we didn't have the Thai 7 spice blend called for. I would say this recipe is a success.

I really really hope that the freezer meals work out for us, it would simplify our cooking schedule so much. I'll be reporting back on all meals as month goes on!

Happy day 1 of Veganmofo 2011!

Vegan MoFo Themez

Vegan MoFo is almost upon us again. I wanted to have a couple of themes to blog about to keep myself motivated for the entire month. I decided that I am going to try to not eat out at all during the month (Taco Tuesday being an exclusion to this rule). I have also decided to try once a month cooking. You cook a bunch of meals at the beginning of the month and freeze them in individual portions to use through out the month. It is fortuitous that the beginning of the month starts on a Saturday in October. My husband and I are going to spend ours cooking up a storm. Once a Month Mom is a website devoted to putting together meal plans for people cooking once a month. They have several different categories including Vegetarian! A lot of the recipes are easily veganizable. The meal plan makes about 6 - 10 breakfasts, 8 lunches, and 14 dinners. I am looking forward to using it as a good back up to the other meals that we are making. My husband is super sensitive to anything musty, so as we get to the end of the month, some of the meals might not be up to his standards, but I hope with enough freezer bags, everything will last just fine!