a brief history of (my) food (intake)

I've been eating good food like crazy! I've been eating it so much I haven't had time to take crappy pictures! Let's see if I can even remember some of it, I should really take notes or something.

Well, for starters I had been thinking of making Julie Hasson's sausages for awhile, and then I read Isa's post about them and that was it. I *had* to make them. I'm a total fangirl for Isa. There, I said it. Some people are fangirls/boys for Star Trek, I'm a fangirl for vegan cookbook authors. If there were a Con (is there!?!!?) for vegan cooks like there are for sci-fi geeks (I mean that in a nice way, I have a tattoo in Elvish, y'all...but that's a whole other story.) I would dress up as a baby bok choy.

...right, so, I made these really great sausages in my food steamer. It's an Oster that I picked up brand new at Goodwill for $10. It's a touch cumbersome, but still my favorite appliance.

sausages in the sauna

I think that I should have steamed them a few minutes longer than the recipe calls for, only because I forgot that my steamer takes a minute or two to get going. However, really this just meant that they took a little longer to really firm up in the fridge, no big deal. I also changed the seasonings a bit, because I searched high and lo at the grocery store and could not find chicken-flavored seasoning. Here's what I used instead:
1 tbsp all-purpose seasoning I made from one of my Sarah Kramer books
1 tbsp onion powder
freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
3 shakes allspice

I'm thinking next time this will be amazing as a sun-dried tomato and fresh basil version, with those beautiful reds and greens, so good! I've been snacking on it with just Dijon mustard.

A few days ago I made sausage and peppers with them. Normally sausage and peppers is just those two things, onion, and garlic. I added a sprig's worth of fresh thyme and mushrooms to mine, then put it all over some lightly fried polenta. Oh how I loooove sausage and peppers! And oh how I loooooooooooved it this way! Mrow.

There was also the Polenta Casserole, as recently discussed. The night before last I made ED&BV's Teryaki Quinoa with a side of steamed broccoli. Veggie-wise this was a turning point as I usually put a pat of margarine on most all my cooked veggies. But it didn't seam like it would go with the quinoa this time, so I left it out, and the broccoli was delicious on it's own. And last night I made spaghetti, which was not fancy as I just added some dried herbs to a box of Trader Joe's Italian Starter Sauce. But it was good enough, I topped that with yet more sausage, which is tasty cold but oh-so-much tastier when fried a little bit, it gets crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside and oh, it's lucky it made it onto the spaghetti plate at all.

Lately work has been not the greatest, I love what I do, but the person I do it for (that sounds more perverted than it is) has been a holy terror lately. It's something I have to wait out, and I have people who are dealing with the same thing which makes it better. I mention this because when I've had a bad day at work, the last thing I want to do is put more effort into *anything*, but I remember that cooking can and should be therapeutic, to help revive the mind and the spirit. Food gets us ready for battles, big and small, inner and outer. So I was all set to make VwaV's Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy, which is rather time-consuming. But then the dishes I needed weren't clean. They are now, but they are drying, and I lost my verve. Tomorrow.

"This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'"

-Henry V

Yeah, that's how I feel about going to work tomorrow.

BUT! I'm super excited for Saturday because I'm having people over to cook for! I love cooking for other people, it's the one thing I mind about living alone. I plan to make the Leek and Bean Casoulet from Vcon. And there must be some collective conscious in the vegan blogosphere because the day after formulating this plan I read two, count 'em two accounts of people making it. It looks delicious. So excited am I.

Now I think I've finally decompressed and worked up and appetite. Time to eat!

Polenta Casserole

Friday night for dins I made ED&BV's Polenta Casserole. It comes together so easily, and grating polenta is oddly...fun? This was also my first experience using faux cheese, as the recipe suggested I used Follow Your Heart's mozzarella and I've got to say, wow! I've had the faux Parmesan on pasta before, but that kind of thing you kind of expect that it won't be melting. I've been wary of the brick cheezes for just this reason, and while this stuff didn't melt as easily as real cheese, I took a little taste before adding it to the grated polenta and it was delicious! For sure something I'll be picking up and playing with again in the near future. The recipe calls for a cup, but I went ahead and used the whole block because Y.U.M. And I didn't even get to how the casserole tastes. Oh, my gawd, it's so good! There's a whole melty cheesiness under the very top, so you get the flavor of the casserole filling and then this creamy tangy thing happening and some crispy bits of polenta on the very top. It's amazing, for serious, it's so good. You should totally buy the book and make it! Yeah! I'm retarded for this casserole. I did take a picture, but it didn't turn out, and then I was too busy eating to take a picture of the food.

Today was also the first day I figured out how to get the broiler to work on my oven. The trick is to get the dial to click once before it clicks to off. I felt like a total genius. 2 years I've been convinced it just didn't work. And now I'm moving.

A final thought on the subject of food as a healer. I have pink eye, basically the nurse I called at Group Health said I have a cold in my eye and to put cold compresses on it and drink lots of fluids. That's helping a little, but mostly my eye is itchy, swollen, watery, I want to rip it out of my face and stomp on it, it's uncomfortable and looks awful. But while I was working on the casserole, I didn't feel it at all. I didn't notice the itching, I didn't feel the tears running down my face as they've been doing all day (I'm really sorry if your appetite is ruined now). I got it all put together and into the oven and realized I hadn't felt miserable about my eye the entire time. This is one of the many things I love about food, the healing of it is not just in eating, but there's real therapy in the preparation. Grating things, chopping things, stirring, it's all very meditative and can help you focus away from your problems, both physical and spiritual. I have a lot of emotions about food, remind me to elaborate someday on how I believe food is better when you think about love while you make it. :)

blah time food

I have not been inspired in the food department as of late. Perhaps it is because it is the Stressful Time at work (month-end: too much month, not enough end), or perhaps it's horomones or the fact that I am more focused on moving at the end of March (getting rid of stuff, packing stuff, finding stuff, finding a place to live...). Whatever it is, I find things go a lot better when I have a plan for the coming week or so of what I want to eat. I'm not an on-the-fly kind of girl.

So here is a brief idea of what I hope to come up with in the next week of foody yumyums:

*Polenta Casserole from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan

*Stewed Tofu and Potatoes in Miso Gravy from VwaV (which I've made before, but it was so yummy I really want to make again at least once before the weather gets too warm)

*Teryaki Quinoa from ED&BV, which I will probably pair with some nice steamed broccoli. This sounds like a good weeknight meal for sure.

*A stir-fry, of some kind. The pomegrantate stir fry on Get Sconed looks so good! Want! I don't know that I'll make that exact one, but the stir fry craving is present and accounted for.

Note that all of these are dinnery things. For my lunches I generally like to bring veggie sandwiches or just leftovers of whatever I made the previous night(s). Being a single person, I always, always have leftovers when I make a recipe, which is great because it makes lunch easy as long as it can be nuked. Yeah, I'm not anti-microwave.

I did manage to make a couple of yummy things this week. Tuesday I made up some Tamari Roasted Chickpeas from ED&BV which were so good! But I think next time I'll try to achieve a crispiness to them. I don't know, maybe they were supposed to be crispy originally. I've been snacking on them at work and now I crave them in a pita with some tomato and cucumber. Yum! Last night in a fit of "I don't want to make something but I have to make something because I am hungry" I made some Merciful Miso Gravy from La Dolce Vegan!, sauteed some mushrooms in garlic and olive oil, and put it all on top of some lightly fried polenta. It was very comforting, indeed. And I have leftover gravy which is super good on ribbon noodles.

My aim as we get into spring and summer is to make up more recipes on my own. I'm seriously considering taking a cooking class or two, because I can follow recipes just fine, but I'd like to build some skills in the usage of herbs and spices, and perhaps just a more rounded understanding of what I can do with veggies and food in general. PCC offers lots of classes, very few of them vegan (though some have the option to become so, so that's good.) After I get myself situated in a new place, it's definitely something I'll be looking into.

a cookbook review, and a recipe! yay!

Today I received a new cookbook, because I needed one so badly, you know how it is. Yeah. This one is called Please Feed Me: A Punk Vegan Cookbook by Niall McGuirk. It's part cookbook, part memoir of his days running punk venue The Hope Collective in Dublin, Ireland. The recipes aren't indexed and the organization is not by kind of recipe but a chronology of shows put on by Hope, which given the memoir part of the book is the perfect way to put the recipes together. Recipes were submitted by bands and there are all kinds from the complex to the whimsical (bread sandwich, anyone?). It's a great book to flip through and read. The introductions to recipes are longer versions of the introduction at the beginning of the book so might be a bit redundant but no less interesting. If you like the look of any recipe, you'd best mark that page or it might take quite awhile to find it again.

Tonight for dinner, I made something inspired by the Chickpea Pasta recipe in the book. It's pretty simple, but also pretty tasty. Mondays just don't seem like the day for challenges. Especially when I just realized it's Tuesday. That said, I now give you my interpretation of


Chickpea Pasta

1/2 pound pasta (the shell kind are best, like the book says, but I didn't have any)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup frozen peas
1 can garbanzo beans (or 1-1/2 cups soaked and cooked beans)
large pinch dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Boil water and add the pasta. While that's cooking heat the oil over medium heat and cook the garlic until fragrant. Add peas and cook until defrosted and any water has evaporated. Add chickpeas and cook until they're hot. Some of the chickpeas may take on a goldenish color, this is good stuff. Add salt and pepper and thyme. Drain the pasta when it's done, then mix everything together. Add more olive oil if it's too dry. Top with vegan parmesan cheeze. Yum!

chickpea pasta and new cookbook, cuddling

This here is a picture of my breakfast from Sunday, scrambled eggless eggs from How It All Vegan! and tempeh bacon from Vegan w/a Vengeance and toast. So good! So unhealthy but worth it. :)

the week in food...the weak in food?

At least once a week (but usually twice), I stop at the deli for dinner on the way home instead of making my own food. This isn't good for my health, my wallet, or my attempts at learning to cook, tasty as the Tofu in Spicy Sunrice Sauce may be. Even when I'm planning to make something at home, I will sometimes stop at the PCC deli and buy a "back-up" meal, and if someone told me they did that I would think they were ridiculous. So I set out this week to make my own dinner all five days and eat it, even if I didn't like it. I did have to stop at the store for a couple of things near the end of the week, but the ultimate goal was to not have anything that would be ready in only 2 minutes in the microwave. There were hits, there were misses, but that's just the story of my life.

Monday:
For dinner on Monday I made up some chiocciole pasta and tossed it with sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil, artichoke hearts (from frozen simmered in some water), and a bit of dried basil, salt, and black pepper. It came out looking really pretty and tasting really bland, which was disappointing to say the least. The artichokes had almost no flavor, and it only got better by eating around the artichoke hearts and adding a lot of salt and vegan parm.

But I don't think it's a total wash, there are areas where I think this dish could be improved. I mean look at it! It looks appetizing, and as they say we eat with our eyes, I just need to tweak it so that my mouth will want to eat too. Next time I make this, I'll use water packed artichoke hearts, or at least do some seasoning on the frozen ones to boost their flavor independently of the whole dish. I think fresh basil would be amazing, and as I write this I'm thinking maybe the sun-dried tomatoes whizzed up with basil and a little olive oil and tossed around would be really good. It can be made good! I know it can! I'm not giving up just yet.


Tuesday:
After Monday I just wanted something simple, something that would be a sure thing. So I marinated some tofu that I had pressed for almost an hour in a concoction I made up* and keep in the fridge and re-use over and over (one of the many nice things about not working with meat). After marinating I fried the tofu in a little bit of olive oil until it was crispy and paired with brown rice with a little bit of soy sauce and peas. It was delicious! The tofu was nice and chewy, and I felt nice and full like you only can after a good yummy meal. And for lunch the next day, I put more rice and peas and cut up the other piece of tofu I had made into cubes and put soy sauce all over the whole thing. The meat-eaters at my office commented on how good my lunch smelled.

*My Marinade is a loose combination of ginger tamari (you can use ginger and tamari if you can't find ginger tamari), soy sauce, a couple of smashed-up cloves of garlic, some sesame oil, and some water to carry it. Nothing fancy but oh-so yummy on *everything*.


Wednesday:
By the time Wednesday rolled around I realized that my craving for simple, comforty food was in my horomones, if you know what I mean, and since I still had a little chiocciole left I decided mac and cheeze sauce was the way to go. Instead of going back to the cheezy sauce from V-con I decided to see if any of the other cheezy sauces from my cookbooks would be any good. I decided to make the Wolfie's Nutritional Yeast "Cheese" Sauce from La Dolce Vegan! It only has 7 ingredients and took maybe 10 minutes. It was just the recipe I was looking for. It came out tangy and cheesy and creamy and so many other good things. I'd like to try the other recipes I have, but this is looking like a front-runner for my go-to cheeze sauce recipe. I tossed the pasta with the sauce and a little black pepper and some salt and at it just like that. It was as comforty as comfort food gets. It wasn't anything fancy but it hit the spot.

Thursday:
Thursday this week was also known as Valentine's day. Since I am in a committed relationship with myself I wanted to do something a little special for myself. After reading Lindyloo's post about V-con's chickpea cutlest I decided it was finally time to try them out, what better time to give myself a little food love? Ho. Ly. Crap! They're so good! Crispy and packed with flavor that left me craving them even after I was completely stuffed (2 is really the maximum anyone should have, seriously.) I'm not sure if I made them as flat as intended, but I also don't really care because they were so delicious and that's what matters. I went with the suggestion Lindyloo posted to just dip them in a little bit of agave nectar and it was wonderful, savory and sweet together and letting the cutlet remain the star. I hope she goes through with her plan to make the cutlets into little dippable nuggets because I plan to copy her. I paired them with a bowl of corn and for dessert I indulged in a pint of Purely Decadent Turtle Trails vegan ice cream. I totally loved myself up right, food-wise with this meal.


Friday:
Friday I didn't have a lot of time before I went bowling with the local vegan group, so I decided to toast some bread and make a sandwich with a leftover cutlet and some grapeseed vegenaise, lettuce and tomato. Oh, but you know what? It would have been phenomenal with the addition of some fake bacon. Oh! I must do that! Yum! I'm on a woefully beginner level but I'm going to declare this week a total success food-wise and I'm motivated to keep it going. I can't wait to see what I come up with next week. I definitely see more chickpea cutlets on the menu.