Tofu, Fries, Salad

A simple, quick, tasty dinner. I used the italian tofu marinade from Vegan With a Vengeance and Veganomicon. To go with all that lemon juice and white wine and balsamic vinegar I made a simple lemon vinaigrette for the salad greens. And my go-to oven fries with rosemary. Rosemary is so good!

Quinoa Puffs

Here’s a breakfast entry. Rather infamously, I prefer peanut butter toast every day for breakfast, and have done so for about the last twenty years. But every once in awhile I try something different. I got this puffed quinoa from the health food store and it’s pretty good! Tastes a lot like puffed wheat.

Baked Beans and Badly-Lit Strawberry Cobbler

Tonight I made my first meal in a gas oven, and it went well! I am pleased that I own an oven thermometer, though; it certainly came in handy. I made the Cheater Baked Beans from Veganomicon (“cheater” because made with canned beans)–and admittedly baked beans are not incredibly photogenic, but these were tasty, if a little sweet for my taste. I make a lot of things from this cookbook, but I feel like I’ve barely made a dint in the recipes I want to try from it! Then I made the strawberry rose water cobbler with poppy seed lemon crust from the same book. I’ve not made many cobblers: my family was always more of a crisp-making family when it came to fruit desserts. I was kind of expecting a biscuit-like crust, but it called for oil instead of Earth Balance or shortening, jarring me out of my biscuit/pastry-method comfort zone, and ended up needing far more flour than called for. The end result was more of a muffin lattice than a biscuit lattice, but I enjoy lemon poppy seed muffins as much as the next guy…
The natural lighting was gone by now, and I find that my new apartment doesn’t have much in the way of food-appropriate lighting after dark.

International Tapas Sampler

Well, all my cooking plans were foiled this evening: I forgot that my wallet was in my purse and not my backpack. It took an hour to decide what items I wanted, and about eight minutes to put them all back and start shuffling dejectedly home. It’s moments like that a car would come in handy.
So here’s another meal from my trip to Vancouver. Mom and I had a few little portions of leftovers, which we decided to augment with little bits of other pre-prepped things from Whole Foods. It was fun having so many things on one plate! In the center is Chickpea Spinach Curry that I made, from Vegan With a Vengeance. Clockwise from upper left: Kung Pao Tofu, grilled veggies from the barbeque, bean stew my mom made, the next three things are from an Amy’s TV dinner: rice, curried veggies, and dahl, Chile-Basil Tofu, and a Kamut Wild Rice Salad.
And here’s some berries I had in Vancouver:

Liptauer Toast and Pickled Salad

Not until I was plating it up did I realise how themed this dinner was: Eastern European/ Scandinavian all over the place! This was a quick, almost no-cook supper. Liptauer spread from The Uncheese Cookbook on rye toast, steamed kale, and beet cucumber salad with the simple maple mustard dressing from Veganomicon. This was my first crack at the pickled beets I got for my birthday last year from my friend that only eats local. The other night I was at a party talking about pickled beets and sauerkraut with him and a fellow vegan (this is the kind of anecdote my students always poke fun of me for: “that was your party conversation?”). He was so jealous of me that I’d been hanging onto the pickled beets for this long, as he’s all out. I’ve been making plans for them ever since, and they’re delicious!
This felt like a “hearty” “rustic” dinner, but Eastern European and Scandinavian food are always stereotyped that way, so I’ll advisedly keep the quotation marks in order to keep some healthy skepticism in my own judgments…

Shortcut Strawberry Pie

Alright, since it was such a basic meal tonight I’ll do two posts for today, and talk about the strawberry pie I made in Vancouver to round out the spanakopita meal. I took a storebought, pre-made graham cracker crust– I love that these are vegan– and baked it for a couple of minutes and cooled it. I mixed some Tofutti vegan cream cheese with some sugar and vanilla, and spread that in the shell. Then I put some cut-up strawberries on top, melted some strawberry jam in a small saucepan over low heat (a little trick I learned from one of my favourite cookbooks, Farm Journal Complete Pie Cookbook, Doubleday 1965) and used that as a glaze. In the past I’ve made far more involved glazes, crusts, and tofu-cheesecake fillings. I enjoy an involved cooking session, but on a night when I was already wrestling with phyllo pastry, I appreciated the cut corners here, and it turned out to be a very tasty pie.

Beans ‘n’ Greens

I’ve been living out of a suitcase for about a month now… this has meant lots of hummus, cheeseless pizzas and veggie burgers. Don’t get me wrong, I like all these things, but by last night I was in dire need of some dark leafy greens and beans and rice, otherwise known as the Trifecta of Vegan Staffs of Life. It’s not the fanciest vegan showboat food I could make, but on a rainy, dark, fairly chilly day (just look at the lighting), it hit the spot. I braised the beans and kale in some Thai red chile paste and almond milk (an improvised sub for coconut milk that ended up being a bit too watery to make a true red curry) and some tamari. I still haven’t made a true shopping trip for my new apartment, nor have I unpacked my cutting board, so this was a very basic evening. And it marked my first night cooking rice on a gas stove! By the time I made another pot of rice for the leftovers tonight, I had found the knack– every new stove I work with, I have to find my stride with a pot of rice, and then anything is doable.

Spinach Pie and Roasted Potatoes

Well, I’m finally back home and set up to return from my long hiatus from this blog! I’ll start with a meal I made for my family in Vancouver. It’s the spanakopita recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance, a delicious salad my mom made, and potatoes I roasted with a “parmesan” I made from ground almonds, dill, salt, and nutritional yeast. Here’s a blurry shot of the plated version below: