Mexi Veggies and Quesadillas

Yup, that's right. Yum! This was a quick meal to make and very tasty. I made quick quesadillas with Diaya and corn tortillas. Quinoa for another tasty grain. The main attraction was my mexi mushrooms and corn. Cook some mushroom slices. Add corn bits. Season with mexi seasonings. I don't even remember what I put in there - chili powder, oregano.... other stuff? I like to wing it when I cook so this turned out well!

Tuscan style white bean quesadillas with artichokes and sun dried tomatoes

Long title, tasty dish. I've been reminded by a couple friends that my blog had been un-updated for quite a while....opps! I can't even figure out where to start explaining that one. Disinterest in cooking? Check. Working a lot? Check. Free time taken up with going to the gym? Check.

Regardless, I am going to attempt amends for this. These quesadillas are from Supermarket Vegan, a nice little book full of fast and fresh recipe ideas. The idea for the book is that it uses ingredients found in most grocery stores (score!) and, as a result, tends to have a lot of stuff I have in my house already. These are very tasty with sour creamy sauce (my fav) or pasta sauce (DR's fav). Using beans instead of cheese in quesadillas isn't something I'm new to but it works fantastically. Black beans and sweet potatoes are another winning combo. Yes!

Teriyaki Double Take

Teriyaki double take! I made this sauce from vegweb.com and DR liked it so much I made two dishes with it!

First, teriyaki tofu wrap. Press, slice, marinade. Bake and wrap with some spinach. Second, I used the marinade to soak some homemade seitan (from vcon) before frying it up in a pan. I steamed some broccoli on the side and then tossed them together. Cashew bits completed the dish. Both were quick, easy, and very tasty!

BBQ Tofu with Mac and Kale-Shroom

This was a quick meal put together on the desire from the crew for something "tofu" and "mac'n'cheese"--a pretty standard love affair at my house.

The tofu is simply pressed and baked with bbq sauce from the store. I kicked myself afterwards since Vegan Table has a SIMPLE homemade recipe. Live and learn - at least the bottle will be fun to reuse!

Mac'n'cheese is also Vegan Table. I LOVE this recipe and my crew love the cheese sauce it makes. I like how light it is. It is also runny enough to slop up into the noodles.

Lastly, kale and mushrooms. I roasted the mushrooms in oil and vinegar and added them to the kale, which I like to make in my steamer (so easy!). Splash on a little more vinegar and you're set!

Mustardy Tofu with Quinoa and Kale

Another round of recipe testing. This time, a mustardy dressing that I decided to slather on some tofu. Looks cute, no?

Also tried my hand at the quinoa again, adding a lot more garlic. *drool* Good stuff!

The last bit here is my "go to" kale recipe. DR doesn't like kale but she'll eat it if I make it this way. Steam the kale and then drizzle with a touch each roasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. Toss well and chow down!

Simple Split Pea Soup

I've been neglectful of the blog for quit a while it seems. I don't even know what I've been doing to take up my time but I do know what I wasn't doing -- a lot of interesting cooking! The semester kicked my butt. On the bright side, I got the next dissertation chapter DONE and discovered that teaching 4 classes won't kill me.

So now that it is a break period, what is a little vegan to do? How about cook and eat and test some sweet recipes for my friend's new cookbook that will be coming out soon. I'm not sure if I can introduce you to these recipes yet, but I will tell you about this split pea soup I made. YUM. So simple. As you can see, you see carrots and celery. There are also peas in there. I ate a bowl and went back for another and realized I was stuffed!

Cajun Tofu Wrap

This wrap is too good for words. I'll stop typing now.

Actually, making this for the test kitchen reminded me of how YUMMY tofu is in a wrap. Yummy and easy. My mind was blown.

Fried Veggie Rice

This is called "things to do with leftover rice." Actually, it is simple: you fry it! DR asked me to make her a lunch to pack the other day and I tossed this quick spread together based on a recipe I found on vegweb. I would post the recipe but vegweb is slower than molasses today. Shesh.

Beet and Avocado Salad

This was a very simple salad. We always get a lot of beets in our CSA box and recently we have been liking them more and more. I guess they are growing on us! I steamed the beets and let them cool before slicing them. I also cut up some lettuce and avocado and tossed it with the mustard dressing in VCon. Ground hazelnuts finished it off. Simple and yummy!

Asian-style Seitan and Kale Salad

Since purchasing my steamer, I've been making a TON of kale (if you haven't noticed in the more recent posts). It makes cooking greens sooo easy - wash and insert. Steam. Eat.

This dish was an attempt to making something that the crew I was feeding (DR and LF) would like. I had the seitan left over from lunch meatz adventures. Here, I steamed the kale to soften it before plunging it in cold water to cool it off. After spinning it to remove the water, I was left with a nice base for this salad. I added avocado, seitan, onion, asperigus and carrot. The dressing is seasme oil, soy sauce, rice vinigar, and some seasme seeds. Very quick and very good! Kale and avocado are like a dream together.

Pasta with Chard and Mushrooms

Here is one of my creations using the lunch meat seitan. As I noted in my last post, this stuff is awesome.

The pasta is very basic and easy. Saute an onion in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, add sliced mushrooms and cook until they are soft and ready to rumble. Add chopped seitan.

Meanwhile, boil water and add pasta. During the last 2 minutes or so of cooking, add in washed and chopped chard. Drain and then toss with the onion/mushroom/seitan mixture. Add a little salt and balsamic vinegar and stir to combine. Ta da!

Mushroom Gravy and Kale

It is pretty obvious that DR and I took the KALE CHALLENGE this last week. All that means is that we bought a TON of kale to eat and we will eat it all!

DR really likes mushrooms and she likes gravy, so I made the Awesome Mushroom Gravy from vegweb. She had hers with kale and steamed potato and I made some brown rice to add to my plate. It was a nice, quick dinner and the gravy was mighty tasty! I think gravy gets a bad rap for being fattening or boring, but I've seen so many awesome ways different vegan recipes have used gravy - full of veggies and good things - that I think it is a good part of a balanced vegan diet! It makes me want some tempeh sausage gravy with biscuits. Yum!

Kale and Seitan

I came up with this recipe the other day. I just put it over on vegweb, so that is really exciting! I made the "lunch meat" recipe from vegandad's blog, which is a bean-gluten loaf that is steamed and then baked to a yummy finish. It works really well in this recipe since it absorbed the "juices" well and held its shape.

This recipe is also good if you mash avocado into the cold leftovers, as I found out the next day. Enjoy!

Kale and Seitan

1 huge bunch of kale (about 8-10 cups sliced)
2 c seitan, sliced, cubed or chopped
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp ginger
2 TB canola oil
1 tsp sesame oil
2 TB soy sauce
2 TB rice vinegar

Clean and chop kale. Steam for 5-10 minutes, or until bright green and softer. You could also dunk it in boiling water for a couple of minutes, uncovered, under bright green if you don't have a steamer.

Meanwhile, slice the onion into thin half moons and mince the garlic and ginger. Heat the oils in a large skillet or wok over medium heat and add the onion, ginger, and garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the onions are just translucent. Add sliced seitan (if it is packaged in water, drain it first) and stir to heat though.

Around this time the kale should be done. Take the kale and add it to the skillet/wok and stir to combine. Heat for a couple more minutes or until kale is done to your liking. I tend to like it pretty "crunchy."

Turn off heat. Sprinkle on the soy sauce and rice vinegar and stir to mix everything together. Enjoy! You may want to add the soy sauce and vinegar to taste. I have given approximate measures but I don't measure it.

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.

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.

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!)

Cougi's Special Day

I've been really really bad about updating the blog - it's been like 2 plus months! The semester has been nuts (to say the least). At first, three preps seemed okay but I find that the grading never stops. Oh well, live and learn.

This meal I put together for DR and Cammers to celebrate the one year anniversary of the passing of our beloved Cougi. I wanted to do something "homemade" and wholesome, to keep DR happy. But I didn't want to do anything too normal. So enter: Phillo wrapped bean and nut loaf.

This loaf is from a little "vegetarian" cookbook that I got for a couple bucks at the craft store. If you craft at all, you know what I'm talking about. Most of the recipes are not vegan, but most can be converted easy by swapping out dairy for subs. The best recipe from here to date is this loaf. I first made it a couple years ago for Easter when I hosted "the boys" from the lab at my old apartment (I guess that was over two years ago.... regardless). I made two and one fell on the floor. I stood there in shock and sadness and S picked it up off the floor. I can't remember how it found its way to the trash, but it did becaue it was covered in cat fur.

Along with the loaf, i made some kale, roasted carrots, and mashed potatos and gravy. Yum.

Curried Carrot Soup

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Things have been a bit nuts in the homestead, with the semester coming to an end and the dissertation "coming along" in a real way. I haven't been cooking as much as normal, so posting would be pretty lame and repetitive (ha! boca burgers again! ha! pizza again!). But I did find this jem that I made and apparently didn't report on. It's the curried carrot soup from one of the Kramer books (who knows, I have a couple of them). It was very easy and very good. Coconut milk, carrots, curry powder, some other stuff and love. And it looks good too!