Tofu, roasted veggies, mashed potatoes and cheesy sauce!!

Vegan MoFo Post #3!!

I was having a group of mostly omnivorous boys over for dinner, and wasn't really sure what to make, so decided to go with comfort food. It turned out to be a good decision!

I marinated some chunks of tofu in equal parts white wine vinegar and tamari, flavoured with a huge bunch of chopped up basil. I set the tofu aside to soak up flavour while the rest of dinner was prepared.

Next, I boiled some potatoes in preparation for mashing, and put some water on in which to blanch some swiss chard. The chard was blanched for three minutes and set aside until the potatoes were fully cooked.
Mashed potatoes are a great vessel for other things... beans, greens, tomato paste, mashed up squash... if you are cooking for someone who is a fussy eater and you want to sneak more veggies into their diet... seriously... mashed potatoes... it's the way to go.
To these potatoes, I added:
-Earth Balance
-unsweetened almond milk (I don't measure these first two ingredients; instead, I add them a bit at a time until the potatoes have reached the consistency that I desire.)
-lots of garlic
-1 tablespoon of miso paste
-an entire bunch of blached swiss chard
-salt and pepper

Meanwhile, I tossed some mushrooms (lightly coated in olive oil) in the oven at 375 F to start roasting, followed by some zucchini about ten minutes later. These were left in the oven together for an additional ten minutes.

Cheesy sauce was made according to the recipe from the Veganomicon, to which I added a few tablespoons of tomato paste, and half a can of coconut milk (plus roughly one extra tablespoon of flour to compensate for the additional liquid.)

The tofu chunks were then grilled.

All of this was garnished with pea shoots and served with some lovely flat bread that I picked up at the store.

PHOTOS!!





The most satisfying part was that even the boy who had never eaten tofu before totally loved it. SUCCESS!

Soba noodles with arugula, zucchini and pea shoots.

Post number 2 for Vegan MoFo!!



This was a very quick and simple dinner that was super tasty, and full of greens.

I took an entire bunch of arugula and wilted it in a pan with a little bit of Earth Balance. I chopped up some zucchini, and tossed it into the pan when the arugula was almost done.

Meanwhile, I cooked some soba noodles.

Once the noodles and veggies were done, I tossed them in a bowl together, and topped them off with some fresh pea shoots. Everything was sprinkled with a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Easiest dinner ever!

(one more photo.)

Peanut noodle salad, mushrooms, fingerling potatoes and white bean dip.

Ok, so it turns out that SO FAR, I have been a total Vegan MoFo slacker! Not in so far as cooking, but in so far as posting. (I had a calculus midterm this week, give me a break.)
Seven posts to follow, from the past week.



OM NOM NOM!
This was a simple dinner, of the variety that I usually seem to end up making.
I love, love, love peanut sauce, and really liked this salad the last time that I made it, so decided to whip it up again.



Peanut noodle salad:
-Peanut Sauce (as I stated in an earlier post, you can find recipes for this stuff anywhere, you basically just have to fiddle with the proportions of the ingredients until you find one that suits you.)
-Noodles (again, depends on what you are going for. I like soba noodles a lot.)
-Veggies! These can be whatever you want, but it works best if they are fresh, and if you chop them up into fairly small pieces.
I have never been a huge fan of cucumber... but OMG, I bought one from the local farmers' market, and it was the best thing EV-AR! So sweet and flavourful. It was shocking. It was kind of expensive compared to what I am used to, but well worth it.

The rest of dinner!!



I tossed some fingerling potatoes, and cremini mushrooms in olive oil, and roasted them in the oven. YUM!

Then covered the potatoes in a huge glob of white bean dip (recipe taken from "Eat, Drink and Be Vegan".)
I've been extra into bean dips lately... they go on anything, and you can basically put anything in them, depending on what you are feeling like that day.
As long as you have the key ingredients:
-beans.
-tahini
-olive oil
-garlic
-lemon juice
Everything else can be adjusted. Try different types of beans, and different herbs and spices to suit your mood. I will elaborate on this in a future post.

Food! I love it!

VEGAN MOFO!

Apparently, next month is the Vegan Month of Food. The idea is for food bloggers to try to post something every weekday. EXCITING! MOTIVATION! Participants are going to be put into the PPK RSS feed, so that is pretty rad.

Bring it on, October!

Also, just for fun, here is a picture of my friend Shmoo's cat, Isabelle.



She is such a beautiful little princess!!

Ok, bye.

more potatoes, tofu, roasted veggies, heirloom tomatoes!

I picked up these beauties at the farmers' market this weekend...



I decided that they would have enough flavour to hold their own in a very basic sauce, and I was right! They were so very lovely.

I used about the amount of tomatoes that you see in the photo above, or maybe a handful more.

I cleaned the tomatoes and cut them in half, heated some olive oil and garlic in a pan, and then tossed the tomatoes in.

I simmered them until they were a bit liquid-y, added 1 teaspoon of sugar (they were pretty tart), and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I then continued to let them simmer on low heat until they reached a more sauce-like consistency.

SO SIMPLE!



The rest of dinner was composed of some roasted mushrooms and zucchini; some leftover "burger" mix (see earlier post), simply pan fried instead of floured into burger form; and some stips of marinated tofu.



Roasting veggies!
Mushrooms were cleaned and rubbed with olive oil before tossing them into the oven preheated to 350F. They stayed in there for about 10 minutes before I added the oiled zucchini chunks to the mix (it takes less time to cook). They probably stayed in for another ten minutes. I don't usually time roasted vegetables, but rather test them periodically to see what's what.

The tofu was the "Marinated Asian Tofu" from the Veganomicon.

The whole thing was sprinkled with fresh cilantro.

All-in-all, pretty delicious dinner.

Curried tofu stuffed peppers; potato, pumpkin and black bean "burgers"; greens.

The other day i made a lot of potatoes... a lot! I had a huge pot full of boiled yellow potatoes, so I decided to mash them up with some other delicious things that I had kicking around the kitchen.

"Burgers"



- Large saucepan half full of potatoes. (ok, so that's a pretty ghetto description, but i don't really know how to quantify the potatoes)
- Half a can of pumpkin puree (make sure that it is NOT pumpkin pie mix!)
- One bunch of chard, chopped and blanched for three minutes.
- One can of black beans, rinsed.
- LOTS of garlic.
- Several tablespoons of olive oil.
- Salt and pepper.

This delicious mess was formed into patties, and then patted with flour. They were then fried in a hot pan with a bit of oil for about 3-5 minutes on either side.

I also sprinkled them with some Sheese, "cheddar style" fake cheese.

Stuffed Peppers
The peppers were stuffed with a crumbled curried tofu, and some really lovely green tomatoes that I picked up at the farmers' market. The peppers were rubbed with a bit of olive oil, before being stuffed, and tossed in the oven at 350F for roughly 12 minutes.



Tofu, roughly:
- 1 package of extra firm tofu, crumbled.
- 2 teaspoons of peanut oil (but any oil will do, really)
- 1/4 teaspoon each of cardamom and ground ginger.
- 1 teaspoon of curry powder.
- 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds.
- several splashes of tamari.
- 1/2 teaspoon of chilli paste.
- garlic!!

The greens were just a mix of random things picked up from the farmers' market, and were tossed in lemon juice and flax oil.

nori strips and hummus.

Ok, so this is one of my less fancy photos of food, but making a post without a photo seems silly.
I am not normally one for food with a lot of packaging, but a friend recently introduced me to these little snack packs of seasoned nori, and they are the greatest!
This weekend, I ate them like crazy. I also had made a bunch of hummus, so I ate them together, and it was even better. Woot!



Since nori is a sea vegetable, it's packed with all sorts of vitamins and minerals, as well as omega-3s (and 6s, but 3s can be harder to get).

My hummous isn't incredibly special, and recipes are abundant enough on the internets, so I won't bother posting one here. To your standard hummus mix, I added a HUGE bunch of basil, and probably about twice as much garlic as your average bear.