Clearing the Cupboards

With the new year approaching I am quite hooked on the idea of simplifying my life. My kitchen is full of random ingredients that I don't use regularly or bought and never tried. I'm also trying to spend as little money as possible. Using ingredients I already have on hand accomplishes both goals. Hopefully in the coming weeks I will be able to post tasty money saving recipes.

Now, of course, I understand that not everyone has the same random assortment of ingredients to use in their pantry but the following two options are made of rather cost effective ingredients whether you already have them or not. They also have the added bonus of being quite quick when all is said and done. Little prep work and not long cooking times.

After a little Google search through my trusted blogs I came across my first victim, err recipe.

Red Gold Black and Green Chili (adapted from Fat Free Vegan)

1 cup hulled barley, soaked overnight, cooked in 4 cups water and drained, cooking time is reduced by soaking
2 14oz cans canned diced tomatoes, undrained
3 tablespoons water or oil (optional)
3 medium chopped onions
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 heaping teaspoon ground cumin
1 heaping teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon hot sauce (we have an atomic hot sauce so I used only 1 tsp)
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 cups fresh or frozen corn
1 1/2 cups (1 can) cooked black beans, drained
1 1/2 cups (1 can) cooked red kidney beans, drained
salt to taste

Heat a large saucepan adding the 3 tbsp. water or oil if using (I was using a cast iron pot and did not need additional moisture to prevent sticking). Sauté the onions until they are soft; then stir in the garlic, cumin, chili powder, hot sauce, and bell peppers and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes more. Add the tomatoes and beans to the pan and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir in the corn and the drained barley. Cover and simmer for a few minutes for the flavors to meld. Add salt to taste.

This ended up filling my 3 qt pot to the brim and I used all my barley. Pearl barley will work just fine in this recipe but hulled is more nutritious. I have noticed that canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables and canned beans go on sale frequently so it's best to grab them when they are reduced so you always have a quick easy dinner in your kitchen ready to be thrown together. I also pounce on dried beans when they go on sale and then cook and freeze them as needed to have beans ready for use in my freezer. Once they are cooked you only need to run them under hot water for a bit to slightly thaw and separate them. Drain and toss them in the pot.


Tonight's dinner made me feel super clever but I can't be the first person to think of this. I'm not a fan of split pea soup. I am also not a fan of canned soup. Now I like soup in general, just not the split pea variety and not canned. Canned is ok in pinch but there is also too much salt. So how three cans of split pea soup made it into my pantry I have no idea. Well I do have an idea and it wasn't mine but I never turn down free vegan food. I figured we would find a use for it and if not we would donate it to the food shelf. Anyway, while at work today I had the bright idea of adding currying the soup. That might actually make it palatable. Ok but what to do with all that extra salt. Potatoes! Potatoes can suck up a lot of salt flavor so once I got home I set out to make mashed potatoes with

Chick & Split Pea Curried Gravy

1 can split pea soup (ours was Muir Glen Organic)
2-3 cloves garlic or 1/2 tsp garlic powder (start with this and add more to taste)
1 Tb curry powder
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp paprika
1 1/2 cups (or 1 can) cooked chickpeas

Heat sauce pan over medium heat. If you are using fresh garlic then add this to the pan with a splash of water and heat gently for 1-2 minutes. Empty in can of soup. Continue to heat, stiring occationally until simmering. Reduce heat slightly to keep from burning and add spices (including powdered garlic if using). Mix in well then add chickpeas. Let mixture simmer for 5-10 minutes. The timing isn't important but simmering it will allow some of the excess liquid to evaporate off and naturally thicken the mixture and also allows the flavors to blend. Serve over potatoes, rice, veggies, couscous, whatever you can find in your cupboards!
As much as I say I do not like canned soups, they do go on sale frequently and there are so many varieties you can always think of something to add to them to make them a more hearty meal (and to spread out the salt a bit). I didn't measure how much this made. I would guess about 3-4 cups which is easily 4 servings. Since the soup is a fairly blank palate, add whatever your heart desires (and what you have on hand).

Happy Holidays!

Well it's Christmas day at last. After weeks of working the buns off the shopping season has come to a close pretty much. All my plans for Christmas, as usual, went by the wayside. The holidays kicked my tuccas. My family and friends will be receiving their gifts late and I hope they don't mind. Most of my friends understand because I see them often and they know Christmas in retail is insane, especially for those in charge. My family, well that remains to be seen. None of them are here. My husband's family is in Europe and our jobs prohibit us from being with them during the holidays. I'm sure they get that we work a lot. And they must know by now we are crap at organization and timing. As long as everyone knows we think of them often, that's all that matters during this time of year or any time and we do think of them often.

So anyway, on with my Christmas. We've been pretty low key these last few years. Since it's just us and we don't really want for much stuff it's mostly a day of resting, good food, each other's company and A Christmas Story (the only Christmas movie I could seriously watch over and over again each Christmas without getting sick of it and it's the only Christmas movie I own).

For first breakfast we had our usual fruit, a couple bananas and cranberry juice. As I was preparing second breakfast, Lex juiced some oranges on our new kitchen aid juicer attachment and we drank that as preparations continued.

Second breakfast or maybe brunch looked like thisand consisted of Sweet Potato with Cinnamon Drizzle (my drizzle is more of a blob but it was damn good) and Tofu Scram from Get it Ripe and tempeh bacon from VWAV. This was delicious. It's only the 2nd and 3rd recipes I have made from Get it Ripe and both are winners.

One delicious meal is not enough. Not for the first day off I have had in two weeks so on with lunch.

Even though I did not get to prep like I wanted to for all this things came together in time for a late lunch at about 2:30. I was pretty proud of myself.
Dinner is served
We have some teriyaki baked tofu (I used a teriyaki marinade that Lex brought me from the tip top of Vermont), cranberry sauce, Poppy Seed Pull Apart Rolls from the Vegan Brunch testing, the famous green bean casserole, mashed taters with a touch of garlic and loads of chives, on top we have GIR recipe #4- Miso Gravy, and simple mashed rutabaga. This was all awesome and there is plenty of leftovers for later tummy grumblings.

I'm so glad everything turned out so nice. So on to the treats.
There was chocolate of course.
I found the Terra Nostra bars at Healthy Living. We've tried their chocolate before from City Market. They had carried them for a hot minute before they decided not to because they didn't sell fast enough or something. This is what happened with the So Delicious Coconut Yogurt and the Temptation Ice Cream but I'm not bitter (read here, I am bitter but I put up with it because they do still have some good stuff they just irritate me sometimes with their half efforts). The Lindt Dark Santa was a given as it's a delicious chocolate vegan Santa but what made this Santa even more special was my friend Dave adding a filling to this once hollow chocolate figure. Dave makes the most delicious vegan ganache, this one spiked with a little Amaretto. He penetrated Santa's wimpy aluminum foil defences topped it up with insanely good ganache. I mean really, this stuff is easily $3 a truffle good.

For my own homemade goodies I managed to make these ahead of time.

Peanut Brittle

Fudge from Ricki at Diet, Dessert and Dogs. This was rockin' awesome. Lex used some expletives in a good way to describe it's tastiness.

After all this chocolate craziness you'd think I'd be passed out on the floor in a puddle of my own drool but I do have an unusually high chocolate tolerance which I attribute to my mother who was also a chocoholic.

The only present actually open on this Christmas day was a gift from the inlaws. They definitely get that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and wish me to do it in style.
If you can't tell from the worlds worst picture there we have an apron and oven mitts. This apron is much appreciated as it fits better then the BBQ man style one we currently have. Now we have a more his and hers apron set up. I am especially enjoying this apron for it's kind of vintage look even though it's new. Pretty neato.

I've rambled on enough I think for one post. Now that the holidays are over I hope to get more regular posts in. Even if they all aren't as exciting as this one.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Oh and just in case you were wondering how Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is lookin' these days.

Photo courtesy of A Christmas Story House

and from Austin, TX!

I received my care package (swap organized by Lindsay) from Diann full of awesome Texas-ness. Actually I received this on Friday but am only now sitting my butt down to write about it. I just love care package swaps!
I don't know if you can tell from the picture but this box was big. It's a Zappos box, we're talking boot sized. Just opening it up was lovely. Everthing packed so nicely, a note & post card and a lovely scent. I figured I'd have to dig a bit to get to the bottom of the lovely scent.
A wonderful box of Texas goodness:
Agave Nectar
Blueberry Jam
Cranberry Habenero Jam
Soap (this was the aroma)
Corn Tortillas
Salsa
Mexican Oregano
Texas Shaped Corn chips
Whole Foods shopping bag
Laura's Wholesome Junkfood cookies
Yam
Grapefruits

Shortly after opening the box Lex ran off with one of the grapefruits.

I got a kick out of the cornshipsThey really are Texas shaped! Neato!

Mac got something out of the package too. Remember that ribbon tying it all together from the first pic?
Yup, that is the best thing ever!
The cookies are super yummy. Probably a good thing I can't get them around here or I'd be broke buying them all the time. Lex has already started in on the corn tortillas so if I want one I'd better get in there now. The stolen grapefruit was delicious, the other probably won't be around for much longer. Some oregano has found it's way into some tester chili to be posted at a later date. Mac is still loving the ribbon.

It's the T-giving

A couple days late but I still gotta share. This was the most stress free Thanksgiving I can remember that I have cooked for. I now understand the beauty of advance prep.

So here's the line up:
Seitan stuffing roulade, Kittee's totally awesome seitan and a bread/lentil/herb stuffing
Green Bean Casserole with home made fried onions from VeganYumYum
Mashed Potatoes
Cranberry Sauce
Chocolate Pumpkin Pie, from Eat Drink Be Vegan by Dreena Burton

So the night before, after work I made the green bean casserole, made the fried onions, cut up the potatoes (store those in water in the fridge), cranberry sauce, the stuffing, caramelized onions for the seitan and the pumpkin pie. It helped that Lex had to go out for a bit so while he was out I just kept cooking. It worked out well as I had very little to do the next day. So we went to beddy bye at around midnightish which is actually pretty normal for us anyway.

Next morning we had a relaxing coffee and a little fruit. Then a killer tofu scramble (tofu, veggie sausage, tomato, avocado, hells yeah. Oh, and some oven home fries. I've found that I really like making home fries in the oven. Cut up chunks of potato, toss them in just enough oil to coat and bake in oven at 400F for 10-15 minutes until they are golden. You can add any herbs you want to the oil as you toss them. The cook just right and have much less oil then pan fried ones. I do accept that classic homefries are an awesome comfort food, no denying that but with all the calories of the holidays I didn't think I'd miss them here. Cooking them in the oven allows you to multitask better as well.

Case and point, while my breakies was cooking away (it only took 10-15 mins) I whipped up the seitan dough, pressed it out into a rectangle on my Silpat and spread the stuffing mixture on top leaving a little border and rolled it up into a frikin huge roast. I set up my biggest soup pot into a steamer. Wrapped the roast in foil and set it to steaming for about an hour and a half. Then we set to eating breakfast. No pictures of that. Sorry.

Around 2ish we headed to our friend's (Megan & Dave) apartment to complete our killer vegan feast. They were just finishing up so we added our green bean casserole to be heated and the roast to finish cooking in the oven with the casserole to their rosemary batard. On the stove some more magic was happening. Home made pumpkin ravioli, a red wine broccoli rabe saute, the potatoes I had prepped boiling away and a bechamel sauce.

While these bits finished up we noshed some super awesome black bean dip (Megan made that).
That's Lex snagging some more dippage.

So dinner is almost ready. Let's meet Megan & Dave's fur babies before we fill our plates and bellies.

Aspen puppy (she loves having his picture taken. She loves love really).
Chloe cat
Poppy cat (Poppy is actually Mac's brother)
Tiger kitty

Ok, enough! Let's eat. Just look at this spread!

And my crazy full plate!
After such a feast we were all pretty much zombies. Then crammed in some pie.

Sugar Sugar

This month's challenge is Shuna Fish Lydon’s recipe for Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting hosted by Dolores of Culinary Curiosity, Alex of Blondie and Brownie, and Jenny of Foray into Food. I managed a good result the first try which is great because these days I'm not finding myself with a lot of time (read here retail and holiday season) but I can't let that keep me from a potentially delicious Daring Bakers Challenge. Well I say potentially delicious but I have yet to experience a not delicious challenge so it's pretty much a sure thing at this point.
I followed the recipe pretty closely. First, I halved the recipe just to save the calories during this season of excess. My modifications to vegandom were:
-Earth Balance for the butter in both the cake and frosting
-1 Tb flax meal and 3-4 Tb water for the egg (remember I halved this recipe so you may want to double this for the original recipe which calls for 2 eggs)
-vanilla soy milk for the milk and I also omitted the vanilla since the soy milk already had this
-doubled the baking powder
-a little Mimic Cream in the frosting instead of the heavy cream

So as you can see the substitutions were fairly straight forward. I made mini cupcakes because I haven't made them in ages and they are super cute. To get into the holiday spirit I used gingerbread print ones. Aren't they adorable. I had to eat them right up. The cake came out very nice actually. Quite light in density as well as flavor. The frosting piled on the sugar but that's to be expected from frosting. I give this cake two frosting covered thumbs up.

Happy baking everyone!

This isn't what it looks like. Ok, it is.

So I kinda remember saying during Mofo that I was going to eat a little more healthy this month. That's kinda happened. But then there's this
That may or may not be a plate of fried green tomatoes, mashed taters and jalapeno poppers. In my defense I had green tomatoes to use up as well as a surplus of jalapenos that were just begging for popperdom.

Also, when I said I would be caught up with mofo posts in a week. Well, as you can probably guess by my absence over the last few weeks I am still not caught up. Work is burying me in loads of work in preparation for the holidays. I'm hoping to plow through it and just have normal days at work again soon but we'll see.

Happy Birthday to Me

It was my birthday on Friday. I did a little work but over all it was a pretty nice day. It's kinda still going as I just received another gift of yummy chocolate peanut butter bars from one of my work team mates. They are super yum.
I received my present early from Lex. A couple weeks ago he brought home this beauty.
and out of the box.
Actually the rack that it's on is a bit of a present too as I couldn't really keep it on the counter. It's too tall so I can't open the cupboards.

My friend Megan gave me the grooviest My Little Pony card. Do I have to tell you that I loved My Little Pony when I was a kid? I didn't think so. Along with was a rainbow wood spoon. It's so pretty. And a gift card to a local kitchen store Kiss The Cook.
Lex and I met up at New Ethic for lunch. We split a Sweet Chili Burger and Chicken Ranch. So really, you all need to make a trip to Burlington and hit up New Ethic. They are groovy peoples and make some delicious foods.

Back home I had to make some cookies and put that new mixer to use. I also started munching the delicious Pfefferminz bar I received from Amey at Vegan Eats & Treats. Holy hell this is a tasty chocolate bar.
Then, Lex and I went to dinner at Single Pebble. Buddha Beef. Salt and Pepper Tofu. Dry Fried Green Beans. Aw yeah. No pics, sorry. Too busy stuffing my face.

We got out in time for a showing of Quantum of Solace. I think Daniel Craig is the bestest Bond ever.

End of VeganMoFo 2008

As VeganMoFo '08 comes to a close I wanted to make a quick post thanking everyone for their fantastic stories, insightful product reviews, drool worthy food porn and delicious recipes. I have hundreds of posts still to read. I managed to keep up for about the first week or so but then things just careened out of control but I will keep reading and now that most people will slow down on the blogging I should catch up in another week. The recipes will probably take a year to catch up on but no matter. I love collecting recipes, tried and to be tried.

Congratulations to everyone who acheived MoFoEnlightenment (20 or more posts) during the month. I think we did a fantastic job wreaking havoc on the net for the month. With our excessive posts you can be sure there will be many more hits for vegan related searches. The most awesome thing being that some of these hits will teach nonvegans how unscary we are. Notice I didn't say "unweird" because I myself am all kinds of weird. Even if you didn't make loads of posts, mofo probably got you thinking a little bit more about cooking, about being vegan, about other vegans, about introducing people to veganism, about something! Hopefully everyone will continue with awesome blogginess because I hope to carry on following the journey.

I enjoyed mofo although I am a little glad it's over for now. I work in retail and we are about to begin the crazy season. Although with the economy, it may not be as crazy as hoped. If mofo had been in November there is a distinct possiblility I would not have made it.

Thanks again for an awesome mofo everyone!

Hugs!

Happy Halloween!

It is time again for the little ones (and the not so little ones) to go door to door demanding tooth rotting goodies. They will fill their sacks then go home, or to a friends home, where they will dump out aforementioned tooth rotting goodies onto a surface. Probably their bed if they are home or maybe their floor. Secure in their room where they can stay on their guard and watch all angles of approach for any candy snatchers. They will sort out the good candy from the gross and then attempt to trade the "gross" candy with friends like depreciated currency. Do you remember this? If you are really lucky 10 packets of candy corn might buy you a fun size snickers from your friend's "keep" pile but usually those items are not for sale. You can only purchase from what your friend has deemed "gross" or at least less then good. Often your get rid of pile and theirs has many matching items but if your lucky your buddy actually doesn't like chocolate in which case you have struck gold. This is what parents should be advising their kids on. How to pick trick or treating buddies. Pick someone who doesn't like what you like (like chocolate) so that you can buy all that stuff they don't like with stuff you don't like. You're doing them a favor after all and helping their candy economy.

Ok enough with the trick or treating. I, for the first time ever, made Halloween goodies. Or a Halloween goody. Spiderweb cuppers. I used the vanilla cuppies recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (a crazy awesome book that you should run out and buy right now if you don't have it yet, how could you not have it yet anyway, get a friend to buy it for you if you can't, truly, get the book, bake more cupcakes!). I frosted them with the basic chocolate ganache recipe and helped Mrs Spider build her web with a quickie royal icing.
After webbing we enjoyed a quick fried rice dinner and for desert enjoyed one of these delicious looking treats only to find Mrs Spider had already caught some suculent flies.
Well the next time someone asks you where you get protein you can tell them you pick flies out of spider webs. Ok I'm just being silly. They are just currants but they are almost grossly the size of flies.

You may make a squash lover out of me yet.

I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong. I need to rethink squash. I've eaten it of course. I don't hate it I just don't love it. I'm talking the hard winter squashes, not summer squash and zucchini. I have always eaten some kind of squash with Thanksgiving meal and usually Christmas. More tradition then craving. I am changing my tune now though. Over mofo with all these amazing looking recipes featuring soooo many squishes, I mean squashes. So I decided to try one. It's actually not from a mofoer but some mofos have tried it and verified it's deliciousness so I trusted and went for it.

With one carnival squash at hand I made Vegan Yum Yum's Squash Bisque. Yes I was using a different squash than was called for. Yes I had to scale down the recipe because I only had about 1 lb of squash. Luckily the recipe is all embracing, or very forgiving. It can be both can't it?
See how beautiful it is. So coming from a not-quite-a squash lover, try this soup.

So you need dessert too don't you? Lex though I was making too many chocolate desserts. I that even possible? Well just to satisfy him I threw together some non chocolate cookies tonight. The oatmeal raisin cookies from Eat Drink Be Vegan.
This woman knows cookies! I like that most of the recipes (as in, the ones I've made so far) make one sheet of cookies. They are truly quick recipes.