Candy!

My friend Megan and I went on a candy making adventure. And hamz. But the post here is about candy! We are prepping up for the Egg-less Extravaganza this weekend. It will be fun. Vegan potlucks are always fun.

Anyways, the candies of the day included York-a-like Peppermint Patties, caramels, marshmallows, choco-nut clusters (Veg Times, above), and peanut butter cups (from our brains).

The choco-nut clusters were easy enough. Melt chocolate (here, semisweet). Put in cup. Insert goodies. For some I used a raw nut and fruit mix (almonds, pecans, walnuts, cranberries, etc) and the other I used candied ginger and sesame seeds. Fancy!

The other event of the day was the Peanutbutter Bac'n Candies. Megan made some "truffle style" (rolled in chocolate and then in bac'ns) but my pics of them look like crap. So, instead, I have my PB Bac'n Cup. Yup. The filling is peanutbutter with bac'n bits in it. This is coated in chocolate and topped with more bac'n. What is the world coming to? Needless to say, we made them for our boys.

Herbed Tofu Lasagna with Zucchini

I made this for Easter dinner (see below post re: "Easter"). I asked DR what she wanted and this is what she gave me. The recipe is in the April 2006 VegTimes and I had to make some creative adjustments to deal with the fact that the grocery store I went to was having a bad produce day. I only had two zucchinis, so I added some frozen artichoke hearts. This was a good sub! I also forgot about picking up fresh herbs (well, half forgot: the parsley looked bad and basil was not found). As a result, I used some dried italian herbs in the tofu filling, which was suprisingly easy and tasty. The addition of some toasted pine nuts is what made it a winner. I think.

Turnovers!

For Easter Weekend (not that we celebrate it; DR is more into celebrating bunnies and baskets of candy) I made some mixed berry turnover using the puff pastry that was left over from the loaf I made for Cougi's dinner. My freezer likes to burn things quickly, so this seemed like a great way to get around that issue.

The idea was very easy. Thaw dough. Open up (mine was folded in thirds) and dump berries in the middle. Fold sides over. Bake. Cool. Eat. Yum! I plated them with some soy vanilla icecream and a blueberry sauce I picked up at Trader Joes. It tastes good on everything.

Yukon Gold and Baby Spinach Masala

Again, I'm on a big kick with the newest issue of VegTimes. They have a set of 30 minute recipes based on coconut milk, so when I saw this recipe I decided I would pick up what I needed to make it happen. It's a really easy recipe: potatoes are steamed and then mixed with a spiced coconut milk. Spinach is added and then you eat it. Well, there is also lime juice, cilantro, and lots of garlic and ginger (which was fun to cut up together). I used my awesome slicer to cut up the onions. Not sure why I don't do that more often....

Tom Kha Tofu

I went though a few ideas for dinner tonight before stumbling across this recipe in the March '09 Vegetarian Times. I was on the hunt for a quick and easy noodle stir fry dish and discovered that the one I was thinking about making involved things I didn't have. I'm pretty flexible in subbing out veg and whatnot, but not so great at subbing out key condiments that don't have a viable sub. I ran across this soup and commented that it met the dinner requirement: used the veggies we had and tofu, which DR had started pressing while I was coming home from work. I've always been a bit iffy about coconut milk based soups, but I gave it a whirl. It was good! DR ate two bowls and kept making happy sounds. I better not loose this--I'm sure we'll be making it again. This reminded me of why I like VegTimes - lots of really quick recipes. I should be better about making recipes out of them more often!

Raw Sushi

I found a ton of pictures in my "food to post" folder (lovingly called "food porn" on my desktop) that got pushed to the sides as I worked on other things. So i decided to post them all on different days. To make myself look cool.

This is an experiment in raw sushi. Sprouts, avocado, mango, and carrots rolled into sweet and crunchy little bites. I really started to like avocado and mango together with both my introduction to the Mango Sushi Wrap (from the now missing Beans and Greens) and from a tempeh with avocado/mango salsa recipe from my friend Tess's cookbook. It's a fantastic book and totally worth the green. All I have to say is YUM.

African Beans with Polenta

I can't for the life of me remember where this recipe came from. It was either in a cookbook or on vegweb.com, but I remember having my eye on it for a while before I got to making it. It is an African dish (it kind of annoys me that it is "African" vs. more specific - the whole monoculture thing bothers me since Africa is a VERY diverse place. But again, I don't complain about all the Indian dishes I make. I'll have to think about this some).

The dish was easy to make. Cook down some onions, add coconut milk and spices (mostly turmeric, hence the awesome color). Pressure cook some pinto beans and add to the mess. Cook up some soft polenta. Make balls with polenta and add to bean mix. Done. Now that I think about it, I think this is in Students Go Vegan. The fact checker me would check but the lazy me who is blogging and chatting with a ladyfriend will not. :D

Tofu, Carrots, Cabbage

I went on a big macrobiotic kick over winter vacation (always into something I guess!) and started to play around with macro cooking. I wouldn't say this is a great example of a macro meal, but it is more macro than anything else I normally make. I really like how simple macro meals are - no fuss, easy.

This meal is a scrambled tofu, boiled carrots, and fermented red cabbage (this is the kind of stuff that makes my dreams come true - it melts in your mouth AND is tangy!)