It's a Thanksgiving Tradition!

Just as in past years I've made a Tofurky roast to bring over to Mom and Dads for Thanksgiving dinner.  This year I also tried a new recipe for vegetarian gravy I found online since I couldn't find the vegan gravy mix I've used in the past.

I found the "Vegetarian Gravy" recipe on allrecipes.com.  It had really good reviews and I had all of the ingredients on hand so it was a good fit.

Here are the ingredients all ready to go.  I added chopped mushrooms to the mix because I had them in the fridge.

I ended up needing to add about an extra cup of broth to get the consistency right.  It's really tasty and a little chunky with the veggies, which is how I like it.

Then it was time to get the Tofurky into the oven.  I like to make it with roasted carrots and onions.

 Add the baste and it's ready to get roasted!

This will be a fantastic dinner along with vegan stuffing and horseradish mashed potatoes!  Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Recipe? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Recipe!

So I decided to finally try cooking with seitan (a high-protein wheat meat substitute) and I wonder why I've been avoiding it for so long.  Turns out you don't even need to cook it, it's ready to eat right out of the package.  But considering it looks like dog food right out of the package, it's a good idea to do some doctoring to make it at least look appetizing!

This weekend I purchased some chunk-style seitan while at Mustard Seed.  I thought about finding a recipe, but thought, "Well, how hard could this be?" so I decided to channel my recent meal at Melt Bar and Grilled, and try my hand at making a fancy grilled sandwich.  I also picked up a really nice loaf of country-style bread while shopping and that made a really nice base for the sandwich.

I started by slicing then caramelizing three small onions (from my garden, of course!) in a bit of olive oil.

I then added the sliced seitan into the pan.  The seitan out of the package was in the shape of chunks, which didn't appeal to me, so I simply sliced them in order to appear more like sliced roast beef.  (I said appear...)

For flavor I added a few shakes of soy sauce, some ground pepper, and garlic powder.

Then in another pan I placed slices of the bread, buttered side down, in the pan to brown.  I added a handful of vegan mozzarella cheese (by Daiya, one of my new favorite vegan ingredients) to start to melt on the bread.

Then the seitan layer goes on top of the cheese, which helped to melt it.  Then squish it like a regular grilled cheese to get the layers combined.

Ta-Da!  My no-recipe seitan sammy.

It turned out to be really yummy.  I'm not going to hesitate to use it again it was so easy.  And the sandwich was very satisfying with a Killian's!

Summer Loving...

Now is the time to pull out all of those zucchini and tomato recipes to take advantage of the garden surplus.  Tonight I had two really good recipes.  Yesterday I made Disappearing Zucchini Orzo I blogged about a few years ago (one of Barbara Kingsolver's recipes from her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle).

To go along with the pasta salad I made a recipe I saw in this month's Vegetarian Times. The recipe is for Quick Pesto and Broiled Tomatoes.  The two dishes together make good use of the plentiful ingredients from the garden and taste so good together.






Only a the small tomatoes are from my garden. (The larger ones are from Giant Eagle!)

You can make your own pesto recipe if you want to add cheese and don't happen to have nutritional yeast on hand like I do!

How have I not known about Panko bread crumbs?  Panko is da BOMB!

Hey, it's summer!  Don't turn on your oven... Use your toaster oven!

The toaster oven works just as well and I didn't feel like passing out in the kitchen.

Add some orzo zucchini pasta salad...  It's amazing together.

Tonight's Dinner from the Garden

I love summer.  Look what I found outside when I came home from work:

Now wouldn't that inspire anyone to cook?  So here's what I made for dinner.  First, I made a quick pesto with the basil, some garlic, olive oil, and toasted pine nuts.  (What, doesn't everyone have pine nuts on hands????)

Then I cut the squash into thick strips, around the same size as the penne pasta I was cooking.  Into the pan they went with a little olive oil:

After they cooked for a bit, I tossed in the cherry and grape tomatoes.

I cooked that for a little bit until the skins on the tomatoes started to wrinkle.  Then in went the cooked penne pasta and the pesto:

And voila!  Dinner!

It was really quite good and didn't take long at all.  I love dinner right out of the garden!

Garden Fajitas!

What do you do when you have a bunch of miscellaneous veggies fresh from the garden?  I usually make fajitas!

I had a handful of fingerling potatoes and a few small squash, as well as a really ripe tomato from the farmer's market.  Round it out with an onion, some rice and condiments... and it's dinner!

Here are the sliced potatoes and onions, a little S&P:

Then I stir fried the sliced zucchini and yellow squash with a little Penzey's adobo seasoning.

Assembly time!  There's a layer of rice, the potato / onion mixture, squash, tomato, vegan sour cream and guacamole.

I think the best part was the potato layer...  And the squash layer...  And the tomato...  It was really yummy!

Pretty Decent Vegan Pizza

I love pizza.  I know Richard *really* loves pizza, but I'm pretty fond of it, too!  I recently discovered that Tofutti makes are good frozen vegan pizza using Daiya cheese, but I can only get it from Mustard Seed, which is a bit far to drive for pizza.

Of course I've made my own pizza using the Pillsbury dough, but I really don't like that "Pillsbury" flavor.  I've avoided making my own dough because I thought it would take a long time.  Then I found this recipe for an instant dough that is pretty good.  It took all of five minutes to make the dough and you don't even have to let it rise.  I made the dough and used Mids pizza sauce and Daiya cheese.  Next time I'll add toppings now that I know that the dough is yummy.  (Most likely zucchini considering how prolific it tends to be in my garden!)

Lighter Sesame Noodles

I tried a new recipe tonight that I found on the Martha Stewart website as part of a compilation of vegetarian recipes, just in time for Lent.

The result was very yummy and it will become part of my regular rotation of go-to meals.  Here's a link to Martha's recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/lighter-sesame-noodles

I chopped all the veggies while the water for the whole wheat spaghetti cooked.  Then once I threw the spaghetti in the boiling water I had time to make the peanut butter sauce.  I love that you toss the veggies in to cook with the pasta water.  I've never cooked this way before and it turned out great.

Since I can't leave a recipe alone, I also stir-fried a block of extra firm tofu and tossed it the peanut butter sauce as the end.  I also used the full teaspoon of red pepper flakes.  Here's the final product:

Even Richard liked it.  It makes a ton, so it's certainly worth the time to make.  This would be a great addition for someone needing a hearty vegetarian dish, especially for a Friday during Lent.

My New Favorite Gadget (and a bonus Hummus Recipe!)

Okay, so Mom pointed out that the last time I posted anything was at Christmas, so I guess two full months of not blogging is just unforgivable.  So, I'm going to share my new favorite kitchen gadget, the Oxo Good Grips Citrus Juicer.

A while back I broke my favorite lemon reamer / press from William Sonoma and wasn't sure I wanted to get the same kind since, obviously, I'm just too strong and don't know my own strength.  So, I went out to Target and bought a couple different kinds, including the Oxo model. 

It has three pieces that fit together and the main reamer part flips between a smaller reamer for lemons and limes and a larger side for oranges.  

I love that I can really get all the juice out of the lemons and the bottom cup has marks to let you know how much juice you have.  The center catches all of the pulp and seeds.

The lid has a notch that lets you pour your juice without getting any seeds in your bowl.

The pieces pop apart and are dishwasher safe.

Makes my hummus sooo easy to make.... (not to mention homemade Skinny Girl Margaritas!)

Here's my new favorite hummus recipe, tweaked a bit from one my Mom gave me a while back.  I still love my "Holy Moly Hummus" recipe for it's depth of flavor, but that one requires a few more ingredients and a couple extra pans, so this one is just quicker and easier.  I throw everything in the food processor and blend.  It's fairly smooth, so it's best for dipping, rather than a sandwich filling. 

Ingredients:

• 2 cans chickpeas (I prefer Bush's chickpeas)
• 1/4 cup reserved liquid from canned chickpeas
• 1/3 cup lemon juice (for me this is usually about 1 and a half lemons)
• 1/4 tahini
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (Mom's recipe calls for 1/8 tsp. but I like the heat)
• Pinch of course salt (Mom's recipe calls for 1 1/4 tsp. but I like less)
• 2 TBS of extra virgin olive oil 

Throw it all in the food processor and blend until you get your desired thickness.  Add more olive oil if you like.  Sprinkle with Paprika. 

Tomatillo Salsa Verde

I'll admit that I've been intimidated by the tomatillos I've been receiving in my Working Gardens CSA share... But no more!

This recipe is so easy and wouldn't you know that I had everything I needed on hand from either my garden (the chili pepper), the farmers market (the onion), my CSA share (tomatillos, garlic, cilantro), or my pantry (everything else).

I used a recipe I found online: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Tomatillo-Salsa-Verde/Detail.aspx
Since I never use a recipe as it is, I of course tweaked it a bit. I didn't have a full pound of tomatillos so I reduced the amount of cooking liquid. I also didn't put the cilantro into the cooking liquid. Instead, I saved it until it went into the food processor so it would keep it's fresh taste. I also added the juice of one lime into the food processor. It turned out really yummy and it was very easy... Intimidated by tomatillos no more!

Here are all my ingredients all ready to go:

Bringing the ingredients to a boil:

The finished salsa:

I plan to use the salsa as a regular salsa and also as a topping for enchiladas later this week. Yum!

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

This weekend I was surprised to see how many vegan cookbooks have popped up in the bookstore and was excited to see a couple new ones by a couple of my favorite cookbook authors. I decided to get vegan cupcake cookbook by the authors of my favorite cookbook, Veganomicon.

It's a tiny cookbook, but it's chock full of cupcake recipes and most of them use ingredients most well-stocked pantries will have on hand.

I decided to start out on the easy side and made the "Golden Vanilla Cupcake" recipe. They turned out really nice and I can see this would be a good base for lots of variations.

For the frosting I made the "Chocolate Buttercream Frosting" which took a little more effort to prepare. Lots of mixing with the hand mixer and more than a little bit of frosting ended up around the kitchen. I'll probably try a different frosting next time since this uses a lot of cocoa and is very sweet. I'm also going to need a bit more practice with my mechanical pastry bag... I'm not very confident and I think it shows!

When mom gives your free asparagus...

Make a stir-fry!

I have a new favorite sauce recipe that I'm using all the time. It all started with this recipe I tried from Vegetarian Times: Stir-Fried Shiitake Mushrooms with Tofu and Bok Choy.

I really liked the bok choy, but I like to make a stir-fry with whatever I have on hand. I've been changing it up, trying different mushrooms and different veggies, and tonight I decided I wanted to use the bunch of asparagus Mom gave me as part of a Buehler's BOGO.

I started with the tofu and added half an onion, then stir-fried shiitake and baby portabella mushrooms, then tossed in the asparagus. Last I added a variation of the sauce from the original bok choy recipe.

My sauce variation:

• Stir 1 tsp of cornstarch into a couple tablespoons of water. Add the following:
• 3 Tbs light soy sauce
• 2 tsp Thai sriracha chili sauce
• 1 Tbs fresh grated ginger (I've also substituted Penzey's granulated ginger when I didn't have fresh)
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

I first purchased Huy Fong sriracha chili sauce for this recipe and have been using in anything that needs a little heat. It's my new favorite condiment, so I was so excited to see this post on the Bitten Word championing the virtues of Huy Fong chili sauce. I can't wait to try their brussels sprouts recipe. I haven't been able to find the chili garlic sauce they use in this recipe, but when I do, watch out! If any of my bloggy friends out there see it, please let me know!

Two super-easy vegan recipes

Mom cut out a recipe from a magazine and passed it along to me since she knew Richard loves pumpkin soup. Even better, the recipe is from Edensoy, so it is also vegan. The recipe for Quick Curried Pumpkin Soup is available at the Eden website.

I would hold off garnishing with the spicy pumpkin seeds until you're spooning into your mouth, otherwise they get soft and chewy. The Eden pumpkin seeds are really tasty... love them! Next time I make this I'm going to add a tablespoon of garam masala because, well, I love garam masala. (I pretty much put it in everything...)

I also wanted to do something with cauliflower and didn't want to steam it since my big pot was in use with the soup. So, a couple minutes with Google and I came across a roasted cauliflower recipe on the Simply Recipes site.

Instead of Parmesan cheese is use Galaxy's Parmesan Vegan topping. I love the lemon flavor in this recipe. This was a big hit with Richard as well.

Aside from being vegan, the best thing about these recipes is that they were so easy and the pumpkin soup was very fast.

It's funny... I have a huge collection of cookbooks but I'm finding that some of my favorite recipes are off of the Internet or clipped from a magazine. Someone needs to remind me the next time I'm in Border's that I don't need to buy any more cookbooks!

What's a girl to do with all of this zucchini?

Make zucchini bread, of course!

But even better, make chocolate zucchini bread, and even better yet (so I can actually eat it) make it vegan chocolate zucchini bread!

I found this recipe online and it turned out really yummy!

Adapted from: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=24203.0

Vegan Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
Egg replacer for 3 eggs
2/3 cup soymilk
2 cups shredded Zucchini
1 cup vegan semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray 2-9x5" loaf pans with non-stick spray.

Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl & mix well. Add vegetable oil & using a fork, stir. It will be dry but stir as well as possible. Then add the flax eggs. Continue to mix. Add soy milk & Vanilla & stir until well blended. Add Zucchini, Chocolate Chips & Walnuts & blend them in. The mixture should be nice & smooth, moist looking.

Spoon into loaf pans. Bake 55-60 minutes. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then remove & cool completely. Serves: 2 loaves

By request: Hummus Recipe

A couple folks have asked for my hummus recipe. Here's the recipe that I use, with my adjustments in italics:

“Holy Moly Hummus”
Derived from: Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer’s How It All Vegan, c1999.

Note from Maureen: This recipe serves an army (or one vegan who likes her snacks). You may want to cut the recipe in half.

Ingredients:
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic (more if you dare), minced
• Splash of olive oil
• 2 ½ cups cooked chickpeas (I use 2 cans of chickpeas, rinsed)
• ¾ cup tahini
• 1 ½ tbsp soy sauce (I use low sodium)
• ½ cup lemon juice (I usually get enough with two juicy lemons)
• ¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped (I use cilantro if it’s available, but some strange people don’t like cilantro)
• ¼ cup jalapeno pepper, chopped (optional) (I don’t added the jalapeno, but sometimes will add red pepper flakes if I’m just making it for myself)
• 1 tsp cumin (I use a heaping teaspoon)
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp salt (I use slightly less than a teaspoon, just seems like so much!)
• I also add at the end a generous sprinkling of paprika on the finished hummus. I use Penzey’s “Hungarian Half-Sharp Paprika” which also adds heat.

Instructions:
• In a small saucepan, sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat until onions are translucent. (Make sure you don’t burn your garlic… Yuk!)
• In a blender or food processor, blend the sautéed onion mixture with the remaining ingredients until you reach the desired consistency. (I use one of those stick / immersion hand-blenders instead of a food processor. I like my hummus chunky and this allows me to selectively blend the chickpeas and control the consistency.)
• Sprinkle with paprika.
• I serve with veggies, pita chips, or bagel chips.

Snow day kitchen experiment

Since I had an unexpected day off, I thought I would try a recipe I've been wanting to make out of my Veganomicon cookbook. (Moskowitz, Isa Chandra. Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook. c2007)

Last week I made a Macaroni and Cheese with Cauliflower recipe out of my Real Simple magazine for Richard. So today I made a vegan mac and cheese recipe, "Mac Daddy" from my new cookbook.

It's a two-part recipe. The first step is to make the "cheese" sauce which is a broth-based sauce with nutritional yeast. I've just started using recipes with nutritional yeast now that I know that they sell it at Raisin Rack in the vitamin area. Last week I made a vegan lasagna from Vegetarian Times, which used the yeast. It was really good, but too rich for my taste. (And kindof a lot of work!) I didn't take a picture of the dish when I made it, so here's a pic from my magazine. Believe it or not, mine looked just as good!

The "cheesy" sauce is really not that cheesy, it's more like a butter sauce or thick savory gravy. It looks a little cheesy, though, so it gets points for that! It tastes really good, but I don't think I would substitute the sauce in recipes like nachos, like recommended in the cookbook.

Here's a picture of the "cheesy" sauce:

Then I crumble tofu into a casserole dish with some olive oil, lemon juice, and salt, then combined the macaroni (I substituted rotini since I used up my macaroni last week on the real stuff!), and the cheesy sauce. Here's how it looked before it baked:

Then it bakes for 30 minutes, and sits for 20 more minutes. It gets nice and bubbly. I'm thinking I should put some breadcrumbs on the top since that might make it look a little prettier.
Mmmm...Comfort food on a snowy day!

Even more SQUASH!!!!

So yesterday I had another armload of squash. Considering I had just finished making a new zucchini recipe, that bunch made its way into work to be shared....

Here's the recipe I made yesterday morning, adapted from one of the recipes found in Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (Out of a chapter aptly named "Zucchini Larcency"!)

Even more seasonal recipes are available on the book's website at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Recipes.html.

DISAPPEARING ZUCCHINI ORZO
¾ lb pkg orzo pasta (multicolored is fun)
Bring 6 cups water or chicken stock to a boil and add pasta. Cook 8 to 12 minutes
1 chopped onion, garlic to taste
3 large zucchini
olive oil for sauté
Use a cheese grater or mandoline to shred zucchini, sauté briefly with chopped onion and garlic until lightly golden.
thyme
oregano
¼ cup grated parmesan or any hard yellow cheese
Add spices to zucchini mixture, stir thoroughly, and then remove mixture from heat.
Combine with cheese and cooked orzo, salt to taste, serve cool or at room temperature.

I used a couple zucchini and one yellow squash... It was really quite pretty all grated in the bowl:


I, of course, left off the cheese. Instead of using fresh herbs, I used Penzey's Italian herb seasonings. Here's the final product:


I'm thinking my recipe turned out a little dull, so next time I might switch things up a little by adding either some black beans or tofu... Also, I ended up draining the liquid that formed when cooking the zucchini. It gave off quite a bit of liquid and started getting soupy. But give it a try and see what you think!

I couldn't find tri-color orzo, which would certainly make this a very pretty salad.