Im a Bad, Bad Girl

Or maybe just a terrible blogger. Christmas is over (happy holidays, everyone) and I haven't even discussed Thanksgiving yet. I suck. I also suck for not getting a shot of my whole Thanksgiving table. Lacking that, I'll open this post with our centerpiece:



That there is the Edible Mayflower (higher res on Flickr).

You may ask yourself "Where is that large automobile?" "Why the crap would anyone make an edible Mayflower?!" I don't have a good answer to that question. But I do have a story.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (i.e. about a year ago, on the Internet), my friend found the Meat Ship (insert rather obvious Gross Out Warning here). I was struck by both its grossness and it's awesomeness (hello there, edible BOAT) and decided I had to make a vegan one. My friends were kind enough to gift me a pirate ship cake pan to aid me in my quest, and the rest is history (or dinner).

Once I decided to make the ship itself from cornbread, I took to the Internet to find out what people enjoyed most with the stuff. After polling the constituents, I ended up with sails made from Veganomicon style sauteed collard greens, Pilgrims made from mini Spicy Pinto Sausages wearing sauteed mushroom hats, sailing the seven seas of Yellow Rose Recipes Better Than Basic Chili. Perhaps not the most traditional of Thanksgiving foods, but damn tasty just the same.

Here's my first plate of the night. Yes, we went classy and ate Thanksgiving dinner on disposable plates. Don't judge me!



Clockwise from that poppy-seed covered ball of awesome, we have:

Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls (Vegan Brunch). Harvest Vegetable Medley (Vegetarian Times). Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans and Raisins (Veganomicon). Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes (Yellow Rose Recipes). Thanksgiving style polenta seitan (Parsnip Parsimony, The I-40 Kitchen). Gravy (my friend Sarah). Grilled Asparagus (Veganomicon).

I had another plate after that with chili, collards, stuffing, cranberry crumble and I don't even know what else. My foodbaby was enormous.

I made the Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times for Thanksgiving dinner, substituting Isa's Spicy Pinto Sausages from the upcoming Vegan Brunch for the store bought ones. Everyone loved it. My mother has some sort of sausage aversion and asked me not to put sausage in the stuffing, so I only put in two and she really liked it. Yet again, vegan food has proven her wrong!

That was my first time eating chestnuts. I don't think I'm a fan. I won't pick them out of anything, but I won't go hunting down chestnut-based recipes either.



I enjoyed the Harvest Vegetable Medley from the same magazine a lot more. Everyone loved it, even my vegetable-phobic grandmother. This was surprising because it's really just plain, old roasted vegetables. Then again, it's not so suprprising because it has almost thirty cloves of garlic in it and who doesn't love metric assloads of garlic? Please note that if you make the recipe as written, you will be able to feed at least a dozen people for two days. I suggest halving it unless you're having a platoon over for dinner and/or really love leftovers.



Thanks to Parsnip Parsimony, I now know about the joy that is polenta seitan. This is not something that would have occurred to me to make, so I'm really glad she thought of it. It's got great bite and I can easily eat a whole batch of it at once if I don't stop myself. Sadly, it's not very photogenic.



Don't let that put you off, though. It's still awesome.

Let the record show I don't like sweet potato. And I don't like tzimmes. I like my vegetables savory, my fruit sweet and never the twains shall meet. My family, however, loves both, so I made them the Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon. Since I made it, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and take a taste and actually liked it. Holy crap. That's the sort of word eating I can get behind. I think the pecans may have been what converted me. I love me some pecans.



The Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes are pretty amazing. How amazing? Amazing enough to get my little brother to eat mushrooms. That's borderline miraculous. These potatoes are stuffed with broccoli and mushrooms and win. Mine don't look so great because they're a bit over baked, but that's how we like them.



Here's a shot of the full pan of Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's upcoming Vegan Brunch. They're good for brunch or any damn time. I obviously thought they'd make good dinner rolls and I was right. However, they are crazy with the poppy seeds. Be prepared to make a mess with these babies.



No SSD family dinner is complete without grilled asparagus. Is that weird?



For dessert, we have leftover birthday cake, my friend Sarah's Tofu Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Not the prettiest desserts ever (I ran out of decorating time), but they more than made up for it in tastiness. Especially the cake. I can't get enough of it and neither can anyone I've ever made it for.





And that's a wrap. Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe. See you back here in 2009.

Menu Planning

It's the time of the season for cooking.

Thanksgiving is upon us and we're doing it at our house this year. And I'm in charge of the cooking. The family is still undecided about whether or not my mother will make some turkey parts for the two people who will actually eat it, but there definitely won't be a whole bird on the table and that counts for something. Also, my whole family goes vegan for the day after Thanksgiving, so I'm cooking for that too. And the day before Thanksgiving is my grandmother's birthday, so I'm also making her cake.

I've decided to post my planned menus for the next few days, in order to keep myself from giving up on anything. And so if I completely destroy any of the recipes, I won't be able to deny it.

Wednesday
Apricot Glazed Almond Cake based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Thanksgiving Dinner
Note: I was told we don't need soup, salad, gravy or rolls, so they're not missing because I'm lazy.
Grilled Asparagus
Harvest Vegetable Medley from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Chestnut Apple Stuffing from last fall's Vegetarian Times
Stuffed Twice Baked Potatoes from Yellow Rose Recipes
Poppyseed Pull-Apart Rolls from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch
Polenta Seitan from a recipe that will hopefully be posted on Parsnip Parsimony soon, with seasoning suggestions from The I-40 Kitchen
Sweet Potato Pear Tzimmes with Pecans & Raisins from Veganomicon
My friend Sarah's gravy
My mother's Cranapple Crumble, which I made into mini pies for last winter's challenge
My friend Sarah's pumpkin pie
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake with Cinnamon Icing based on a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
And something I'm pretty certain I'm going to screw up, so I won't talk about it yet.

Friday Brunch
Pesto Scrambled Tofu with Grape Tomatoes
Paprika Rosemary Potatoes
Raised Waffles with Baked Cinnamon Apples all from Isa's upcoming book, Vegan Brunch

Friday Dinner
Caesar Salad with Roasted Garlic Croutons
Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits both from Veganomicon
Leftovers and fresh fruit for dessert

And if I have nothing else to do, I think I'm going to attempt home made English Muffins on Sunday. One more thing from Isa's amazing book of amazingness (AKA Vegan Brunch).

Happy holidays!

Soup, Moroccan Style

The most recent issue of Vegetarian Times had two awesome things in it:

1. A positive review of Veganomicon.

2. A soup feature.

I love soup. Could probably live on it, given half a chance. Hell, I'd marry it. I made the Moroccan Harira and pretty much fell in love with it. Expect a June wedding.



(unfortunately, all the photos I took of this soup are pretty grody-looking because I couldn't get the noodles in the bowl without them smearing the sides. Whoops!)

The soups in the feature were all from different countries and were supposed to be healthy and somewhat medicinal. VT provided a bit of cultural background for each soup, which was quite interesting. Harira sometimes has a bit of lamb or other meat and egg in it and is usually eaten to break the fast during Ramadan. This particular recipe obviously didn't have any meat or eggs in it, but it did have chick peas, cilantro, green lentils and a cinnamon stick.

This was my first time cooking lentils. I was worried I'd keep them on too long and they'd turn to mush, but they were nice and firm, even in the last portion of the soup. The cinnamon stick gave the soup a nice bite and really complimented the cilantro (which I think is one of my new favorite herbs - the idea that I have favorite (legal) herbs blows my mind. Four months ago, I didn't even know what cilantro was!). I stored the soup in two containers and left the stick in one of them. I ate that one first, then transferred the stick to the other.

With a bit of whole wheat pasta thrown in, this soup totally qualifies as a meal. It's packed with protein and other nutrients and it's low fat. And did I mention it's delicious? The only bad thing about this recipe is that I didn't double it.

Sunday, Soupy Sunday

I can never cook anything in the amount of time it says in a recipe. NEVER. Sometimes it's because I make changes to the recipe that make it take longer. Sometimes it's because I'm just slow and/or distracted. Sometimes it's because the time listed is just flat out wrong. This weekend, I made the Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans from Veganomicon and hit the trifecta of temporal failure (but it was worth it!).



I made changes to the recipe that made it take longer: True. I substituted dried beans and fresh tomatoes for canned. I soaked my beans over night and boiled them for an hour. I roasted the garlic (which was fun, easy and interesting - photos below) while the beans were boiling. That was also when I worked on the tomatoes. I sloppily diced up about ten tomatoes as small as I could, then threw the pieces in the Smart Chopper (I don't have a food processor) to make them kind of soupy like the stuff you get from a can.

I'm just slow and/or distracted: This is true all the time. I chop ridiculously slowly because I'm clumsy and thumbs in the soup mean it's no longer vegan. This is even more true when I have the great idea to start cooking my weekly food at 11 PM Saturday night instead of 10 AM Sunday morning and have already played with my polenta and made more Golden Vegetable Broth (this must be on hand at all times. I added some celery and a zucchini, which was great. The zucchini is a little soft, though. I think I'll put it in closer to the end next time). Being half asleep does not help my accuracy when measuring and cutting, nor does it enhance my ability to move swiftly.

The time listed is just flat out wrong: One of my many peeves is when cookbooks list the time required to make a dish, then contradict themselves within the recipe. I recently came across a recipe like this in Vegetarian Times, and the Tomato-Rice Soup with Roasted Garlic and Navy Beans represents for Veganomicon. The recipe is classified as 45 minutes or less, but you need to let the soup simmer for 45 minutes. That's on top of the chopping, sauteeing, etc.

That said, the soup is still extremely easy and pretty damn fast to make. Just not 45 minutes. However, this does NOT make me love Veganomicon any less. It's still my ichiban numbah won! cookbook.

The soup is also very tasty. Because I used fresh tomatoes, it's not as smooth as it would normally be and almost feels like rice and beans with a ridiculous amount of tomato sauce on it. I happen to like rice and beans and tomato sauce, so it still wins.

Garlic:



Topless (scandalous!):



Looks like one was almost about to sprout:



After being drizzled with olive oil, wrapped in foil and left in the oven for a while:



After that, popping the slippery cloves out of the skin was fun. Mashing it was less so. A tip: mash your cloves against the side of the bowl, not the bottom. If you mash against the bottom, you'll be chasing them around your bowl for ages.

Welcome to Winter

It's frickin' cold outside!

It's officially scarf and gloves season. At times like these, half of me wants to move to California and half is just glad I knit. The other half is excited about winter vegetables, so it's no surprise that this weekend was all about the squash, i.e. Vegetarian Times' Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast.



I doubled the recipe, and as you can see, it made a hell of a lot of winter vegetables! That's absolutely thrilling because it tastes amazing. It was really difficult for me to pack it away in containers instead of my belly (I ended up eating some, of course) and I've spent all day today looking forward to having it for dinner (I had the last of the Byzantine Vegetable Stew for lunch. Yummy even three weeks old!)

This is another amazingly easy dish to make. Cutting up all the squash is the most time-consuming part, since you can just throw your herbs in the blender and hit the Chop button (or a food processor, or whatever). The recipe is very clear on the size of the pieces that should be cut, but I think I'll go smaller than instructed next time. I'd much rather have bite-sized pieces than need to cut up slices the diameter of the actual squash while eating. The roast probably took closer to an hour and a half to cook than 45 minutes, but that makes sense since there was twice as much food cooking.

When I was done cooking all the squash, I roasted the seeds. I don't know what kind of seeds would be done in 3-5 minutes; mine took close to an hour to be dry and golden-brown.

I've been rethinking a bit of how I do this blog. The Internet is very fluid. What's here today may be gone tomorrow, so going forward, I will not only link to recipes but include them in my posts as well. The only recipes I won't include are ones I get from current, easy to find cookbooks, since I'd rather not steal the authors' thunder. Pictures will follow recipes.

Herbed Winter Vegetable Roast
Serves 6 - Vegan

Thin-skinned delicata and butternut squash can be roasted without peeling. Serve this satisfying vegetable roast with brown rice, steamed bulgur, or polenta. Sprinkle leftovers with grated cheese, and broil until bubbly for a delicious next-day dinner.

2 Tbs. olive oil, plus more for greasing pan
1 Tbs. chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbs. chopped fresh basil
1 Tbs. chopped fresh thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced (2 tsp.)
2 delicata or 1 large butternut squash, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds (2 1/2 lb.)
1 acorn squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (1 lb.)
2 medium carrots, cut on the diagonal into 1/2-inch thick slices (1 cup)
2 medium parsnips, cut on the diagonal into 1/2-inch thick slices (1 cup)
1 medium onion, cut into 1-inch-thick wedges

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly oil rimmed baking sheet or roasting pan.
2. Whisk together olive oil, rosemary, basil, thyme, and garlic in large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add delicata or butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots, parsnips, and onion; toss to coat. Spread in single layer on prepared baking sheet. Roast 45 minutes, or until vegetables are tender and beginning to brown, stirring every 15 minutes.

Per Serving: 190 Calories; 4g protein; 6g total fat (1g saturated fat); 34g carbohydrates; 0mg cholesterol; 408mg sodium; 7g fiber; 10g sugars



Butternut squash with guts:



Butternut squash cleaned out:



Acorn squash. How floral:



Butternut squash seed:



Acorn squash seed. Can you tell the difference?