BANANA MUFFINS! I love them. They are amazing. I have always loved banana bread, and muffins/cupcakes are just amazing because of the "individual size" quality. I made these amazing muffins as a tester recipe for a cookbook by my friend, Tess Challis. You can see some of the recipes from the book here and you can buy the book here. I only tried out a few recipes, but they were all excellent! The book focuses a lot on healthy foods, but doesn't give up taste, which is nice. I am against people trying to make oil-less/butter-less baked goods and sugar-free everything. If you really need to be that healthy just give up those foods, because MAN you can't replace them well with "healthy" alternatives. No, she just focuses more on healthy oils and how to incorporate whole wheat into everyday recipes and makes a lot of soy-free/gluten-free things (especially good for vegans with allergies and intolerances). Anyway, these muffins are definitely "I could live of of you"-quality, with a touch of "I just had a mouthgasm". You can also get an eyegasm from looking at the pictures.. amiright? I really don't know what else to write about these, but I don't want Angela to get bored at work from too little reading material, so I will think of more and be posting soon? Haha, hopefully!

vegan mofo and cookies!

Due to popular *coughemilycough* demand, I am going to start updating this thing again. I have some backlogged pictures I have never talked about and I should get my camera fixed soon for more reasons than just more food porn! So this gives me an excuse.

I am also doing this because I am jealous of everyone participating in Vegan MoFo, otherwise known as Vegan Month of Food, which many bloggers are diving into headfirst and probably going to kill themselves in the process. Maybe not the blogging part of it, but reading everyone elses millions of blog posts would be a big pain! I already waste too much time on the internet to be a regular blog reader.

On with the food! I decided to make a version of vegan samoas (yeah, the girl scout cookies) for fancy purposes, but they looked super coconutty but didn't taste that way, so they turned out tasting exactly like twix! This was also due to making the shortbread to thick (I don't own a rolling pin, gimme a break). I can't say I was disappointed, really. Twix was always a yummy candy bar, as far as candy bars go. I wouldn't super recommend making these to anyone because they are pretty labor intensive. I made the shortbread, then made a sweetened condensed soymilk to put it into the caramel (I think if I made it again I would just sub with full-fat coconut milk, which would also solve the not coconutty enough problem). and toasted the coconut... not to mention dipping and striping the cookies. Pain! If you would like to makes these, I loosely based them on a recipe from vegweb that you'll have to look up for yourself, because the website isn't currently working for me! I would just go to vegweb.com and look up "girl scout cookies", it'll be there.

cinco de mayo means vegan tamales

I used to love tamales, but I have not had them for years (since pregan days). I decided that I need to make them and am so glad that I did. The only part that was "labor intensive" like everyone and their mother says about tamales is the wrapping. Kind of obnoxious, but put on some good music and you're golden for the afternoon. Plus, you get better as you go along.
As far as the specifics go, the filling is made with: onions, shallots, garlic, green onions, one pepper, a bunch of tomatoes, Mexican squash, and pinto beans. As for spices: chili powder, cayenne, lemon pepper (was going to use real pepper and lime, but the quality of my lemon pepper is superior to my pepper), fresh cilantro, crushed red pepper flakes, cumin, and oregano. Yeah, I like spicy stuff. I just chopped everything up (and squished the beans up) and it came out to be an awesome consistency like refried beans but had all this stringy-ness because of the cooked down squash which made it more meaty looking. The dough was a modified version of the recipe on the package of the masa corn flour. I used 2 cups masa, 1 2/3 c vegetable broth, 2/3 c oil, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. It turned out beautifully, considering I just randomly decided to lessen the broth and use oil as the fat (I couldn't find any shortening other than Crisco which has hydrogenated oils in it). My "steamer" is non-existent, so I punched a bunch of holes in the bottom of a pie tin and held that above water in a huge pot with... erm... a bunch of random metal kitchen items. Let's not talk about my odd kitchen habits. I don't know what else to say other than TAMALES ROCK!

It has been way to long since I have posted anything. I give you: delicious soup! This soup was probably one of my favorite soups I have ever eaten. I was planning on making a tester recipe for a new cookbook coming out, but someone had already tested it and it looked like it would take a long time to make it so I skipped out on that soup and used a lot of the same ingredients for a soup that was completely different. Basically, this is a potato leek soup with a base "chicken seasoning" (which was a recipe tester) making kind of a creamy broth. It also contains shallots, green onions, garlic, chickpeas, and spinach. Delicious.

teese?!

This, is TEESE. Teese is a new vegan cheese by Chicago Soy Dairy (Made by and for vegans!). Me and a friend ordered some off the internets because we are cool like that and made pizza of course, but then I had leftovers and I put it to the test in the toaster oven quite a few times. The picture is of a "Tuna melt" I made with chickpea salad (my favorite!) and teese. Chickpea salad is a very occasional dish for me because veganaise is out of this world expensive, but I made a discovery: the low fat TJ's mayo is accidentally vegan. Go buy some!

Anyway, to properly enjoy chickpea salad one must mash chickpeas, mayo, mustard, relish, and celery/celery seed. What a delight!

The promised popcorn. This is really good, actually. Pop popcorn and put on soy sauce and some kind of sea vegetable. Yum! Also, soy sauce and nooch. Also, nooch plain. Also, chocolate.

Good 'ol popcorn! So versatile and cheap. Also, a really good something to snack on when you feel like going through the motions of eating (no wonder it's so popular for the theaters).

vegan loaves!

This is my first experience with a "loaf" of any kind. For some reason I just wanted to try one out and I was not disappointed at all. I used the "magic loaf generator" thing-y at Vegan Lunch Box and had fun with it. I actually put in ingredients I didn't have and had to sub stuff anyway. I also put I would use vegetable juice as a liquid and didn't feel like making vegetable juice so I just left it out and it was still really... well, not moist but definitely not completely dense or anything. Anyway, I ate it with sauteed kale and toasted pine nuts and red quinoa. It made a good meal for a few days!

stir fry goodies

These are actually from before I got new veggies from the organic farm and I was using them up. I basically throw any veggies in a frying pan with a bit of olive oil, cook it and call it a stir fry. What can you do?

This stir fry was basically an entire bunch of kale, some cabbage, green onions, and garlic with some tamari, and pepper. Basically the easiest, cheapest thing I could possibly make. With the lentils it was quite enjoyable and made for a super hearty meal. Also, I got in a lot of veggies, which isn't my normal "broke" doing.

This second one was probably one of my favorite stir- fries I have ever made. I think it might have just been one of the few delicious, substantial meals that I had, though, so maybe I'm wrong about that. Anyway, in it there is turnips, green onions, zucchini, cabbage, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic and I think that's it (but the veggies are besides the point, you can make it with anything). The delicious part of this stir fry was the sauce I used. I combined in a small bowl a bit of water, soy sauce, cornstarch, cayenne, chili powder, sugar, and lemon. YUM. There is something about spicy+soy sauce that is so good together. Plus, I added in the sugar and lemon for good measure.

The tale of two lasagnas

So I broke down and went to the store twice. I spent $7 one time and $10 the next. Oh well, I got two excellent meals out of it.

One: Traditional lasagna
This was the meal I spent $7 on. It would have been more, but I got the pine nuts from work. Anyway, What I did was made the "savoury filling" with tofu (1/2 pakg), portabella mushrooms (2), and a baked potato (that was also from work). I sauteed all of that with olive oil and Italian seasonings. For the "cheese" I made a pine nut ricotta. For this I used a bunch of pine nuts, tofu, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and salt. It turned out really well!
Anyway, the picture sucks, but it was really good!

Two: Mexican lasagna.
I don't really have a picture that does this stuff justice, either, but WOW. I think this was the best Mexican food I have ever made (ok, I guess it depends of whether I am in a burrito mood, but this was outrageously good). What I did with this was made a filling with tomatoes, red onion, peppers, garlic, and fresh parsley. I added chili powder, cayenne, oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper in the way of seasonings. It basically looks like salsa and you cook it forever and let the flavours meld together. In order to make this a "lasagna" I layered corn tortillas, refried beans, my filling, and soy cheese (could easily omit, but I had a craving for the salty grossness that it embodies). The avocados I just put on the side (but they definitely added to the dish if eaten in the same bite!).
The Mexican lasagna was the winner!

Broke but still eating some tasties.

I'm broke. Broke and not going shopping. If anyone has any ideas of how I could make money, leave me a comment. I am looking for stupid crap things like helping people move and babysitting. I'm also trying to find someone to share my room for a month and a half then take over my lease for two months. Oh, and I was looking at free stuff on craigslist to see if I could sell any of it. Ha. So the point of this is to say, I am eating stuff like this. Lentils, turnip, and avocado. The lentils because I have them around (Well, I just cooked the last of them today) the turnip is now about 3 weeks old (still tastes ok, though) from the organic farm (We start packing again next Monday. Yay, food!), and the avocado was taken from work. So that is why this was such a cheap meal. But despite me having no money, this is actually something I really enjoy. The lentils are cooked and seasoned with simply salt, pepper, garlic, and cumin. My personal favorite thing to eat them on is cucumber (then w/ avocado on top), but I settled for turnip. Tomorrow I wil show you the many ways you can enjoy popcorn for diner. Get ready for amazing!

Cookie bars!
I have a serious addiction to chocolate chip cookies and the last couple of times that I have made them I have made them into bars in order to make it easier on myself. I don't actually use a recipe, but I am pretty sure my cookies are loosely based off of VwaV's chocolate chip cookies. To make the bars the amount of dough is good for a small jelly roll pan and you just have to cook it a little longer. It is also pretty much essential that they cool before eating, so if you like warm cookies right out of the oven (not me, I like my cookies sufficiently chilled), you probably wouldn't like bars. Unless, that is, you over cook them and eat them all at once.

I also recently made tofu scramble. Tofu scramble is definitely one of my favorite (savory, at least) ways to eat tofu. It is also one of the few (heavy on) tofu dishes you can serve to professed tofu-haters that is appreciated. I don't know what it is about you, little tofu scramble, but you rock! If you are new to the whole tofu scramble thing, don't hold back, make one! I was very hesitant when I first heard of it because 1.) I didn't like tofu that much, 2.) I had hated scrambled eggs before going vegan, and 3.) I am not sure if there is a three, but three seems like a good number of reasons to have.
Anyway, I always use extra firm non-silken tofu and squeeze out as much of the water as I can (I could press, but I'm lazy). Generally, this results in me squishing the tofu too much, so it's a good thing I am just going to crush it all up anyway. I generally use a very little bit of oil. VERY little bit. Every time I make one I think I am going to try no oil the next time but I never do, I am pretty sure you could use no oil, though. Other than the crushed up tofu, my key ingredients are: tomato, avocado, nutritional yeast, and turmeric. Other than those, you can put in any kind of veggies and spices you desire. I like to use asparagus, onions and mushrooms (the one on the picture only has asparagus and onions) for veggies and garlic, salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika and oregano for spices. I just like to load in tons of stuff, really. That is the beauty of tofu scrambles, you can't really go wrong. You just keep scrambling until everything looks and tastes yummy.

peanut butter molasses ice cream

I haven't been making food since I just got back from a small bike tour, but I took a picture of this invention earlier and feel like I need a new post! I was yearning for ice cream but had no chocolate (which is always my first ice cream choice) so I decided to make a peanut butter molasses ice cream. It rocked! My only complaint was that it was VERY rich, and while that generally doesn't deter me from eating a ton, with this it did (in retrospect, maybe that shouldn't be a complaint!). To make it, I mixed peanut butter and water making a thick peanut milk, basically. To that, I added molasses, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla. I think that if you wanted it to be a little less rich you could just omit the molasses and put in plain vegan sugar (which I probably would have done had I currently had any normal sugar). In this case I would probably supplement the THICK peanut milk with some soy milk or other nut milk and omit the ginger and cinnamon. Either way, it's a great recipe to play around with.

I have been making a quick, faithful recipe a lot lately: vegan mac and cheese. Every time I come home late and am really hungry I go for it because it doesn't take much prep and I can get sufficient calories to calm my famished stomach.
I play around with the recipe a lot, but I generally use something like:

• 1 part raw pine nuts: 2 parts nutritional yeast
• cayenne
• onion powder
• salt
• pepper
• garlic powder
• (whatever other spices you want)
• water or soymilk

...I blend all of those ingredients in my magic bullet and pour them into a roux (I generally like earth balance and flour, but olive oil or canola oil works), heat until it's my desires consistency, toss the pasta into it, pour that all in a pan (possibly topping with bread crumbs) and bake at 400 until you are too starving to leave it in any longer. YUM! My picture is not the most delicious looking things because, if you know nutritional yeast, you will know that not all nooch is created equal. My current batch just so happens to be of the less than "bright yellow" variety.

Organization of SPICES!

I must be a complete nerd, but I spent the day fooling around with the spinning spice rack I have had for a couple of years because there was stuff on it I was never using (seasoning salt, poultry seasoning, steak seasoning, sesame seeds [no, i don't NOT use sesame seeds, i just need more than one little spice thing of them], and maybe some various others that I have already blocked from my memory) so I am finally trying to get good about having a stocked pantry. I have realized lately that I am very bad about having stuff just hanging around, which is why I never have the ingredients to make stuff when I want it.

This blog is an attempt to get me to explore more recipes and build up that cupboard. Today, most notably, I got dry soymilk mix. This is pretty ideal for people like me who aren't prone to using soymilk often enough to warrant getting a full thing of it. I often just make my own nut milks... but sometimes I am too lazy. In addition, this will be a good way to make it as thick or thin as I want (creamy for ice cream! thin for uhhh... other stuff).