Pasta Fagioli

Pasta Fagioli: olive oil, celery, carrot, onions, garlic, vegetable broth, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, kale, navy beans, macaroni, oregano, red chile flakes, pepper.

Served with homemade whole wheat flax bread and roasted cauliflower.

Vegan Gyros

Homemade sesame-semolina flatbread with pan fried homemade seitan seasoned with pepper, oregano, cumin and tamari, tomatoes, baby spinach and cucumbers and topped with vegan yogurt sauce: plain vegan yogurt, lemon juice, minced garlic, dill, salt, pepper. A side of potatoes, onions and green bell peppers, roasted in a mustard-white wine sauce with paprika.

Gado-Gado

Here is the gado-gado recipe from Vegan Express from Nava Atlas. It's an Indonesian salad with baked tofu, steamed and raw veggies, rice and peanut red curry sauce. Really easy and really satisfying.

Cocoa V

My friend Sandy gave me these great chocolates from Cocoa V months ago when I left my job for grad school. The lollipop has a kitty face because we like our kitties! The chocolate was preposterously good. Support vegan chocolatiers by buying your favorite vegan fancy chocolates.

Also, I miss work friends!

So, what did tofu do to you exactly?

Some people think vegans live on salad and tofu. This is not true. I live on kettle corn, whole wheat toast and juices and Tomas eats a diet of 100% vegan sausages in ketchup.

Sometimes, when we feel bad about this, we eat a salad and call it even.

Tofu was marinated in white wine, garlic, tamari and pepper and pan fried with olive oil. Salad includes baby spinach, carrots, red onion and cucumber and is topped with agave-mustard dressing.

Voting Yes on Proposition "Raw Cake"

Like an outdated lolcat meme, I was skeptical, yet curious. Ultimately, I found this Ani Phyo recipe to be a success!










It's really fast: you blend dates, walnuts, and cocoa to form the cakes, layer them with fresh berries and a frosting made with cocoa, dates, agave and avocado. It works! Of course it does, it's sweet and full of yummy healthy fats! Especially with coconut vegan ice cream.

Fancy Butternut Flatbread

Recipe from Chef Chloe. I used my own semolina-flax pizza dough recipe (will post once I perfect it-- semolina is magic!) and topped with Chloe's recommendations: butternut squash, apples, spinach, garlic-white bean puree and caramelized onions. This is a great recipe, and you should go make it now if you like things that taste good and are healthy and awesome.

Blueberry-chocolate cake, sweet potato bread

Hi everybody. Grad school is kicking my butt, but I still do eat food, so here are some pics:



Blueberry-chocolate cake, recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog. I used a chocolate-hazelnut spread my friend brought me back from Paris to adhere the fruit to the cake in lieu of agave. This was delicious, quick and looks pretty fancy to boot. I used these farmers market blueberries that made you say; "oh yeah, that's what these things are supposed to taste like!"





Braided sweet potato yeast bread loaf, recipe from IVU (International Vegetarian Union). Delicious, but somewhat dense. The recipe doesn't instruct you to warm liquid ingredients to room temperature, and I only thought of that halfway through the process, but it still rose quite a bit, so I think next time using warm soymilk and yams it will be even better. I made two spreads for this, both based off of Bryanna Clark-Grogan's vegan "boursin" recipe. One was made with cranberries, walnuts and orange zest and the other had dill, garlic and scallions. Both were delicious (google that recipe, I make it all the time!) but neither were super photogenic unfortunately.

Recipe-less stuffed mushroom plate

Baby bella mushrooms stuffed with more mushrooms, vegan sausage, panko bread crumbs, red peppers, onions, garlic, olive oil, red chile flakes, oregano, pepper and salt. Sprinkled with paprika. Cooked at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Mashed potatoes with Earth Balance, salt, pepper and soymilk.

Baby spinach sauteed with olive oil and garlic very very briefly.

Viva Vegan!

Tres leches cake with coconut and fresh fruit. The cake is soaked in a boozy, milky spice mixture and finished off with a coconut custard type topping. I've never had the "real" thing but this is delicious cake. Tomas says it tastes pretty accurate. This is funny because I think I reduced the liquid too much at first and then just winged it making more soaking liquid and had no idea if it what work. It did! Fair warning: time intensive recipe. Will impress (and quiet) your (drunken) friends!



Potato seitan tacos (use the skewers recipe, but not the skewers is all), refried black beans and jalepeno-lime rice. The tacos, like a few recipes in this book could stand to have to oil content reduced a bit, but were thoroughly delicious all the same. You'd think as a vegan you'd be pretty jaded about rice and beans; "I've tried it all" you say in a raspy voice to the young and naive veg-inclined. But NO, you discover you haven't tried them all. These particular dishes came out so light and so delicately flavored (almost *fluffy* I could say) all descriptors not usually used on rice and bean dishes or about a lot of Latin food in general.

All recipes from Viva Vegan by Terry Hope Romero. Aka my new favorite cookbook. To be fair, Tomas has been the one cooking the most from it, but I have really enjoyed *eating* everything, so I am still an expert and stuff. We also have made the yucca with Cuban garlic-lime mojo sauce, the Brazilian braised kale, annatto oil, arroz con leche(rice pudding), peanut sauce, steamed red seitan and steamed white seitan and the dough recipe for baked empanadas. Honestly, all the recipes so far are incredible and the only modification I would suggest is possible decreasing the amount of oil in some of the recipes which really is a matter of personal taste anyway. It was just surprising to me because I do have a personal taste for a goodly fat content. Anyway, the seasonings are dead-on and the methodology is user-friendly.

Muchas gracias Terry!

BBQ Tempeh Rice Bowl

I can't really give you much info on the cooking methods or ingredients, because Tomas made it, but I can tell you it was delicious. Brown rice topped with kale braised with chili and garlic, BBQ tempeh chunks, carmelized onions, sliced avocado with sesame seeds.

PB Crispy Rice Treats

I melted peanut butter, Earth Balance, and Dandies Vegan Marshmallows and then added some crisp brown rice cereal to coat and set the mixture in a pan to set. Once the treats firmed up I sliced them up and gave each one a little dip in a semi-sweet ganache bath (chocolate chips, soy milk) and topped them with a few roasted salted peanuts.

Dandies, (the candies with the happy bow-tied marshmallow on the bag) are great for this kind of dessert or any other classic puffy sugar application-- you know, your s'mores, your hot cocoas, etc etc. I like the Sweet & Sara marshmallows too (They come in fancy flavors! And I can see their factory out the subway windows on my commute! Their logo is a bunny!) but I think they are better appreciated on their own, maybe served with some fancy chocolate and fruits.

Rockie Road Cookies

These are from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. They have roasted almonds, chocolate chips and vegan white chocolate chips, which can be tricky to find (I usually order them online). They were a fun change from regular chocolate chip cookies and well received by the other vegans in my office. (There are 3 besides me now!)

Peanut Butter Waffles

Peanut butter waffles with sliced bananas and maple syrup. Recipe from Vegan Brunch, which has to be my favorite vegan cookbook at this point.

I got a waffle maker (a $20 one from Target) because of this cookbook's many waffle recipes. All of the ones we've tried have been great. I used to be a bit intimidated by homemade waffle-craft, but that seems silly now. Making waffles is less time-consuming and more dummy-proof that pancakes and they re-heat better too. If you make one batch of waffles over the weekend, you can just pop the leftovers in your toaster during the rest of the week. These peanut butter waffles are easy to make using 1/2 whole wheat flour and go great with some applesauce and cinnamon if you want a healthier breakfast.

Mango Seitan

Mango Seitan: Fry seitan chunks dusted in cornstarch. Drain and set aside. Stir fry red onions, green bell peppers and fresh mango chunks until veggies are softened. Add minced garlic and ginger and let cook for a minute longer. Add seitan pieces back to your wok and toss. Stir in a slurry of orange juice, lime juice, tamari, agave, sriracha, black pepper and cornstarch. Cook and toss until sauce thickened. Serve over rice and top with chopped roasted cashews, sliced scallions and fresh cilantro.

Getting serious about Vegan Pizza

Pizza made on a pizza stone (new!) with tomato sauce, roasted eggplant, garlic, spinach and fresh basil. Topped with Daiya Italian Blend vegan cheese. Daiya is melt-y, cheese-y and soy-free if you care about being free of soy. I don't but I think it's cool that they made "cheese" out of cassava.

We can't find anywhere to buy Daiya in in NYC, so I order it from VeganEssentials.com when we want some, but if anyone knows where to get this locally, let me know in the comments! The cheddar flavor is also excellent is quesadillas.

Also, Fleischmann's brand yeast makes a special pizza yeast. I didn't think it would make a difference but it does. Makes the crust chewier and more toothsome. Recommended.

Bienvenidos a Queens!

It's been a while since I posted and lots has happened in food- and non-food related news. I'm starting grad school in August, cut my hair off, and started baking bread every week. Also, Tomas, Simone and I moved to Sunnyside, Queens and I've been eating well the whole way.

Queens has fewer exclusively vegetarian and vegan restaurants than Brooklyn does but there is lots of good eating for vegans and overall everything here is considerably more affordable. In our neighborhood we have a Mexican restaurant with a special vegan seitan burrito on the menu (and they deliver!) as well as some very friendly Thai spots whose staffs have all been very accommodating to our "no egg, no fish sauce, extra tofu!" requests. We live above a 24-hour grocery store with a seemingly special room for kimchi and fresh noodles and there are several specialty Middle-eastern markets within a 3 block radius so many varieties of halvah and spiced teas are readily available. We also enjoy an abundance of Irish bars with very affordable happy hour specials for those rare occasions when food isn't really necessary...

Some recent homemade dinners made by Tomas, who is happy to be back to his home borough (where his New York-ese accent fits in better):



Here are the Courico Tacos with Grilled Pineapple Salsa from Vegan Brunch. God I love this book. And tacos. I love tacos. Seriously, the spicy soy filling is a great contrast to the salsa: sweet pineapple chunks, cilantro, red onion. I would eat these for any meal.









Yellow rice with peppers, cilantro and pinto beans, garlicy kale and sweet fried plantains (platanos maduro).