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!

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!

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!