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!