Vegan Pot Roast

Yeah, I said it - pot roast! This is a dish that I haven't had in, oh say, 10 years... When I saw the recipe in Vegan Diner, I was intrigued. It has dried porcini mushroom powder and Marmite in the seitan mix. Plus, it uses the Crock Pot. My only suggestion would be to saute the onions a little before adding them to the Crock Pot.

All American Dinner

I pre-ordered Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites months before it was released without a clue of what would be in the book. The title grabbed my attention - I have a monster appetite! After marking several recipes to try, I decided to start with the jalapeno hot dogs and baked five-cheese macaroni and cheese. The hot dogs are made from TVP and gluten, then stuffed with Daiya cheese. The five cheese macaroni and cheese has a parmesan cheese-style topping that was another recipe in the book. Very tasty. The book recommends mixing in peas, broccoli, or green beans. I did end up mixing my peas into the macaroni and cheese - nom nom nom. I served this with a side of baked beans since I had some northern beans that were waiting patiently to be used for baked beans. For dessert, I decided to bake some cookies using some items taking up space in my pantry, therefore I ended up with almond butter, oatmeal, and chocolate chip cookies.

Indian Food!

I was flipping through my copy of Indian Vegan Kitchen trying to pick a recipe recently. The book doesn't have photos, which makes it extremely difficult to select a dish. I finally settled on aloo lobhia, a black-eyed pea and potato dish. For the black-eyed peas, I soaked them overnight and cooked them on high for ~6 hours in my little slow cooker. I used a can of diced tomatoes, as well as two potatoes. The recipe calls for one cup of each, but I wanted to make sure this would be enough food for two dinners. Plus, I need to use up some of my canned diced tomatoes; I have quite the surplus due to Publix's buy-one-get-one deals (can't resist those!). I served the dish with pre-made paratha bread that I bought at India Spice a long time ago.

Recreating an Old Favorite

When I was in high school, my mom used to work really late a lot because she'd be on overtime at the hospital. One of my favorite dinners to make when I was home by myself was chicken and dumplings, which was a boxed meal containing two cans of chicken and vegetables in gravy and a bag of biscuit mix to be mixed with water. I loved it and would frequently eat the entire thing by myself. It was not the healthiest choice, I'm sure, but I enjoyed that meal every single time.

When I saw a vegetable and dumplings recipe in Vegan Diner, I was so excited to re-create an old favorite dish. The book suggests adding seitan or soy curls for a heartier dish, but I opted for cubed tofu as the protein source. I absolutely loved this recipe! It was so wonderful to have a wonderful, healthy version of dumplings!

The Weekend

On Friday evening, I went on a catamaran trip with my Network for Women in Science group. The Hakuna Matata (Lion King anyone?!) catamaran left from Riveria Beach area and went around Peanut Island. There were snacks and drinks, but I think we were the best behaved group of passengers that the crew has hosted since it was a work-related function. I didn't get any photos of the boat, but I did snap a few photos of a very unusual flying machine. We saw a dingy boat hooked up to a glider and airboat fan flying through the air. The passengers of this flying machine were rather nice and waved at us as they zipped by a couple times. It reminded me of something my cousin built - a go-cart style frame with an airboat fan and a parachute. We flew it once out in a field back home, flying higher than a radio tower nearby.








After the boat ride, I came home to eat dinner before going to a farewell party for a friend hosted at Duffy's. I wasn't in the mood for their black bean burger with fries, so I decided to make something at home. I made the Moroccan chickpeas with zucchini dish from Appetite for Reduction. It called for canned chickpeas, but I instead opted to buy dried chickpeas. If soaked overnight, they can cook within 3 hours in a slow cooker on high! (That's much faster than most beans!) I had cooked the chickpeas in advance, so they were ready to throw into the recipe when I got home from the boat trip. The chickpeas were much better than canned, because they didn't have a ton of added salt. I served this over quinoa, because I didn't have whole wheat couscous (the suggested grain in the book).





Now, I have to find something to do with the leftover mint...

Darbster - Lake Worth, FL

I went to Darbster *finally* last night. Guess who else was there? Steve-O! Yay! I didn't approach him because I wasn't sure if that would be rude, but it was great to see him. I knew he had gone vegan in 2009, but I didn't realize he had sobered up. He looked so much better than he did on Jackass. He's been clean and sober since 2008, so that's awesome! :)

Anyways, after being star-struck, my friend Sarah and I were seated at an outside table. The whole restaurant is open, but we didn't want to sit under the covered part. I wanted the better lighting for photos.

To start, we ordered a couple microbrew rootbeers and appetizers. I had fried hearts of palm with a remoulade sauce, which the waitress said was similar to crab cakes. I've never had a crab cake so I had to try it. It was so tasty! Sarah ordered an avocado-based gazpacho, which had an unusual taste to it. Perhaps from the mushrooms? She didn't finish it.









For our entrees, I ordered the quinoa and root loaf with a porcini gravy, mashed Yukon gold potatoes, and asparagus, whereas Sarah ordered the tomato flax sandwich from the raw menu. You can't see the dehydrated flax-onion bread for the sandwich, but it is there.







For dessert, we split a piece of peanut butter cheesecake. We asked for Disaronno cheesecake, but we're certain we received a peanut butter cheesecake. There was no hint of almond, but instead a hint of peanut butter taste. This cheesecake is tofu-based, which made it much tastier than just using a ton of soy cream cheese.





I have to admit that I ordered a side of mac and cheese, which happened to be gluten-free. I've never tried gluten-free pasta, probably for the best since the texture was gross. I was expecting a nutritional yeast sauce, but this was just covered in Daiya. Not worth the couple bucks, but I have to try vegan mac and cheese at every place I go that offers it.





Overall, Darbster was great and I'd like to return to try more dishes! :)

Dinner in 30

I had little motivation to cook a big meal tonight, so I kept it simple with seitan and broccoli over rice. The seitan and broccoli recipe is from 30 Minute Vegan's Taste of the East. I used my go-to Asian-y seitan recipe from FatFreeVegan. I cooked the rice in my rice cooker, the seitan in the oven, and started the veggies on the stovetop. When the seitan was ready, I pulled it off the oven, cut it in strips, and tossed it into the skillet with the veggies. Everything was ready in a little over 30 minutes. :)

Twist on Falafel

I love falafel, so I had to try this twist on falafel - chipotle kidney bean falafel with black olive hummus and garlic basil pita breads. I used active dry yeast, not instant yeast, so my bread rose really slowly. It wasn't doubled in size when I finally caved in and started baking it. The reason this makes a difference is that active dry yeast need to be "proofed" before use - this means the yeast should be placed in warm water (temp less than 110F though!) with a pinch of sugar to be activated before mixing with the remaining ingredients. This ensures the yeast are ready to get to work when you add them to the dough mixture. Since I didn't do that, my yeast were slow to activate and my dough didn't rise enough. This means it was much denser than it was intended to be. Oh well, still tasty, just not a real pita. I wish I had started the dough before going to work yesterday, so it would have been doubled in size by my late dinnertime.

Christopher's Kitchen... Again :)

I was at work last night, dreading working late with radioactive materials, when I received a text from my friend Sarah. She wanted to grab dinner at Christopher's Kitchen. I was thankful for the excuse to leave work and met her at the restaurant. We split an order of chips and guacamole for an appetizer, but I forgot to snap a picture of it. We all know what dehydrated seed crackers and guacamole look like anyways. I ordered the ginger lemonade and the cacao chili tacos for my entree and Sarah ordered the chipotle bbq flatbread. Both dishes were surprisingly filling. The tacos use walnuts for the meat, plus they serve you three of them! The coleslaw was better than I expected, given that I used to hate coleslaw as an omnivore. For dessert to go, I grabbed a tahini almond butter ball and a mint cookie, whereas Sarah selected the mint heart and caramel bar (both things I've already tried).










We went to see a movie after dinner. I'm planning to do a big post of reviews of all the movies I've seen this summer, but there's one more movie I'd like to watch before writing that post. :)

Mystery Ingredient

The last time I went to the Asian market, I saw a bag of "vegan big meat slices" - a soy/wheat concoction that I felt compelled to buy. I don't know why, but whenever I see the word vegan prominently displayed on a random food item, I feel like I have to buy it to try it out. So I ended up with this:





I had no idea what I would make with these, but I figured it should be something saucy to give the slices some flavor. I decided to make Pad Thai from Buddha's Table. The book doesn't have photos, but this dish is shown on the cover. The recipe originally calls for fried tofu, but I used the faux meat instead. I wish I had used tofu. The faux meat was still really bland and the chewy texture didn't impress me. I'm going to pick the pieces out when I eat the leftovers. The recipe also called for preserved turnips, but I had no idea where to even buy something like that so I left it out. Overall, the sauce was pretty good. I used tamarind paste (another Asian market find) in the sauce.

Success Is Sweet

I had my annual committee meeting today and it went surprisingly well. I have the toughest committee of the biology students in my program, because everyone on my committee works directly in my field or in a very similar field. Most students don't have that because there are so few faculty members. They were dissecting my data like crazy today. But they let me out in a little over an hour, which is shocking since my exams were 2.5 hours long. They did offer a couple good suggestions though, so hopefully I get results from the more technically demanding experiments that I've been struggling with recently. They were satisfied overall with my progress over the last six months and think that I'm generally on track for graduation next year. Woohoo! They even told my boss that they were impressed with my professional development over the last year. Thank you, Leslie from Live Love Leslie, for all of the amazing coaching. If you ever want a career (or life) coach, I would highly recommend the investment in Leslie's services. It is worth every cent!

Since it's a Tuesday, I can't really throw a party to celebrate, so I decided to make an amazing dinner that is more time consuming than my normal dinners. I selected Isa's lentil meatballs with a cheesy marinara over whole wheat spaghetti and ooey gooey brownies from Vegan Diner topped with Tofutti vanilla almond bark ice cream. (I promise I will eventually make a real meal from this book, instead of just making desserts!)

Soup & Sandwiches

With my committee meeting on Tuesday, I wanted a very simple meal to make tonight that would provide leftovers for tomorrow. I decided to defrost the lentils that I made recently and throw them in a soup. Luckily, Appetite for Reduction has a lentil soup recipe. I used more spinach, tomato sauce, and lentils than the recipe called for. I also used regular ol' lentils instead of the lentils du Puy listed. Those lentils are available in the bulk section of Whole Foods, but I already had the defrosted lentils. I thought grilled cheese would be perfect to serve with soup, so I used Earth Balance and Rice Vegan slices. I bought the cheese slices at Valerie's Market, since I never see them anywhere else in town. For dessert, I enjoyed oatmeal raisin cookies from Vegan Diner that I baked this afternoon.

Jackfruit & Other Asian Adventures

I had no idea what jackfruit was until about a year ago when I saw it on the internet. Here is the Jackfruit Wikipedia. It comes in cans either in brine or syrup. I found some at the local Asian market, Saigon Oriental Food Market, recently. I immediately knew I wanted to make a pulled pork-style sandwich, which is the way I've seen jackfruit used online. I found this recipe and went to town, doubling the recipe to use up the two cans of jackfruit I purchased. I don't know if I made a math mistake but they were quite hot from the cayenne. I love hot and spicy foods, but these sandwiches had me stopping for bites of Wildwood soy yogurt periodically. (I got the yogurt on sale for 77 cents each, instead of the usual $1.07, at Whole Foods last week!! Score!!) Since jackfruit doesn't have any protein, I served it with baked beans and yogurt for some protein, as well as with sweet potato fries for carbs.





Continuing with the Asian ingredients, I made two dishes from Vegan Fire & Spice. The first dish was hot and spicy Thai tofu. It has fried tofu, carrots, broccoli, onion, and dried chiles. The second dish, which I served as a side to the tofu, was buckwheat noodles with jade vegetables. It has soba noodles, baby bok choy, zucchini, and green bell pepper. I served this warm, instead of serving it cold like the recipe suggested. The sauce was delicious, because it has orange zest in it! The tofu would be great with any kind of noodle and the noodle dish would be great with cubed tofu or seitan to make a complete dinner (protein, carb, vegetables). The author of this cookbook, Robin Robertson, runs a blog called Vegan Planet and she has several other vegan cookbooks. These were both great recipes and I prepared both simultaneously within an hour. :)

Stay-cation

While most people are traveling this time of year, I'm on a stay-cation. Because I have my committee meeting in two weeks, I agreed to watch my boss' dogs at his house while he is on vacation. It's like staying at a resort, because the house has better cable than my house and a pool, plus I can eat anything I want. I've been enjoying using the VitaMix for making smoothies to use up the fresh bananas off their tree and I found a few pieces of vegan junk food in the pantry (dark chocolate, Skittles fun packs, and Oreos).

I've been cooking dinner at my house though, so I can spend some time with my kitties. Tonight, I made Vietnamese tempeh with rice noodles from Vegan Fire & Spice. I had whole grain rice noodles from the Asian grocery store that I wanted to use, so I found this recipe in my cookbook. I also bought vegan fish sauce that I thought I could use in this recipe, but once I taste-tested that stuff I threw it away!! It was terrible, so I just used soy sauce. I didn't want to try to make the fish sauce from the recipe in the book after being disgusted by the store-bought stuff. [Edit: The fish sauce recipe in the book tastes fine, not rancid and disgusting like the storebought one.]