Mac`N`Cheese`N`Peas, Birthday dinner and Dessert in one, Tex-Mex Mac`N`Cheese, and Not-Quite-Pad Thai! (2 out of 4 meals are vegan)

Well since I have been so lazy about posting it's about time I get started.  Let's start with the Mac`N`Cheese`N`peas, because its the easiest.  Sorry, non-vegan, but it is vegetarian, and I am only partial vegan (I bet that phrase makes some people cringe), plus there are like a hundred vegan mac n cheese recipes out there.  Mine was just macaroni and cheese out of the box with ALOT of peas thrown in.  It's the first time I've tried it this way and it was so crazy good.  The peas added a sweet mashy complex.

My 25th birthday was November 10th.  A while ago, I promised myself I would try my damndest to go vegan by my birthday.  I couldnt.  I tried, but many would say not hard enough.  At the very least I saw fitting to have a vegan dinner that night.  My boyfriend Chris made it for me.  It's wild rice and and a butternut squash with cinnamon brown sugar apples in the bowl of it.  He said it dinner and dessert in one!

Then this last one, while not vegan, can be easily veganized, but was still ridiculously tasty.  It's just macaroni and cheese from the box, half a packet of taco seasoning from the grocery store, a sprinkle of Lawrys (not neccessary but I did it anyways), a can of corn and some quick soak black beans.  VOILA!  

Now that brings us to tonight, where I tried to make vegan spaghetti make-it-up-at-the-last-second sort of pad thai.  I found some "Hawaiian Style" fried tofu, and I had a mushroom blend of some unknown mushrooms, and some onion.  I sauteed all of that with a healthy dose of ginger, red pepper, jerk seasoning, hot sauce, and a light barely sprinkle of cinnamon.   Then I just tossed it in spaghetti and oil.  Pretty good!!!

Annie Chuns Sushi Wraps

Bless the day I found these sushi wraps in the grocery store.  Among other items like rice and noodle bowls, this brand makes sushi wraps in sprouted brown rice and sticky white rice (I found the brown rice to be pretty darn sticky).

They come with a rice steamer bowl that steams rice in your microwave, 10 Nori wraps (that I cut in half so they were easier to eat, I find most sushi to be too large to even fit in my mouth, plus cutting the Nori wraps in half gave me 20 mini sushis), plus soy sauce.  Unfortunatly, no pickled ginger or wasabi.  Ill have to buy my own next time, oh and you better believe there will be a next time.

I made mine with orange peppers.  I made 4 at first, then went crazy and made all twenty and inhaled them.  The key is to let the warm rice sit on the Nori to soften it a little so its easier to roll.

  

Pasties!!!

Being the good Irish-Catholic family we are, my mum (yes, I'm born and raised in Ohio, and our Irish relatives are like my great-great-grandparents, but I still call my mum "mum" or "mumma" because that's what she called her mum and so on...) makes pasties (not a pastie, the nipple covers, a pasty) a few times a year, usually when it's cold, more specifically right before we go camping in chillier weather, like we are about to next weekend. They freeze beautifully, and are easier to make ahead of time and then cook up at the campsite. If you plan on doing the same, make sure you do cook them ahead of time and dont freeze them uncooked, because when you go to cook them after they've been frozen, apparently the potatoes turn black. I have no idea. I just do what I'm told. Haha.

The pasty is originally Cornish, but Britain and Wales and Ireland and Scotland (we're Scottish, too) all were very similar, culinary wise, and traded recipes often. The ones my mum makes are slightly smaller in girth than the ones in the picture, but yummy nonetheless.
The recipe is simple, but calls for steak or beef cubes. Guess what. I just leave them out and have veggie pasties. They can last a month or so in the freezer (we assume, they're usually eaten fast than that) and were originally meant to be eaten by hand. Great warm veggie pie on a cold day, plus, how many recipes do YOU have that include rutebaga? Now you do!

Pasty Crust
3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk (I haven't ever made them with soy or almond or hemp milk, but I imagine it'd work)
1 cup shortening

Filling
1 rutebaga, chopped into smallish squares
1 medium onion, ditto
3-4 medium potatoes, ditto
3-4 carrots, ditto

Blend flour, salt and baking powder. Add milk to flour mixture. Add shortening, mix to texture of pie crust. Roll out the dough and use an upside down cereal bowl to make uniform circles. Don't roll the crust out too thin. Put in your filling, fold in half, and flute the edges with a fork to seal, like you would a regular pie crust. My mumma says she can get about ten pasties out of that much dough.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 min - hour, or until crust is golden and crispy and flaky.

The pasty has an interesting history. Does everyone else love food history as much as I do??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_pasty

BBQ Mushroom Slider

I posted this a few posts ago, but I made them again tonight with a few variances, so Im not going to bother putting a pic up. First, instead of using a overly-hoison combination, I just used BBQ sauce to cook a square cut of portabello mushroom in, that would be placed on a mini-burger bun. I remembered that I had some leftover acorn squash chunks and a mix of chopped portabello and chopped button mushrooms. I just MagicBulleted them and made a puree with a splash of soy and hot sauce dashed in (or could I be so bold as to call it a tampanade?) and spread that on the bun. I then had a sliced pearl onion and a slice of roma tomato to go on top of my burger. Not bad!! Could have used more hot sauce for my taste, and was very messy to eat like the last one I posted. I also had a basic salad with extra cracked black pepper (leftover unserved-salad I brought home from my students who dont like salad.)

My favorite accidently vegan salad topper? Bacos. Don't tell anyone, but when I'm craving fat, I just eat a handful of Bacos. HA!

Spaghetti Night!!!

I hadn't had roasted vegetables and spaghetti in a while, and Chris was very nice to me yesterday when I was having a rough day at work, and he likes spaghetti and meatballs, so I did it up!

I didn't exactly have a variety of roasting veggies on hand (today is Farmers Market day, and the dinner was last night.  Ill be going shopping today), so I just had to deal with boiled squash and sauteed chopped portabello mushrooms.  Not bad, not fantastic either.  Could have used a better variety.  Chris made some great oven toast from the last of that from-the-freezer-bread that I made.  Here's a secret to making freezer bread.  Don't let it rise all the way.  The bread will be thicker and chewier like fancy bread, and WAY easier to cut.  My mom lets her rise until the last possible moment, thinking bigger bread is better bread. Nay, I say.  Just makes it thinner and hole-ier (not like the Vatican, like swiss cheese), and extremely hard to cut because the whole loaf squishes down when you start to cut it.

Again, I had another Woodchuck with dinner, because damnit, it's October and you should be drinking two things, Oktoberfest beers or hard ciders.

Here's Chris and his damn meatballs.

Then late last night we went to go see Quarantine.  HOLY GOD THAT MOVIE IS MESSSSSSED UP.  I really like a good scary movie that is so intense you end up hiding behind your hands half the time.  The one thing that really bothered me is that at one point there was a rat chasing after this guy, and they showed him stepping on it and crushing it and... yeah... I almost threw up.   Sometimes I dont like to feel like a righteous soapbox standing animal loving vegetarian (and sometimes I do), but at times like these, I like to make it clear that even when I was a meat-eater, that whole rat-smashing thing would have been equally as gross.

And also, a crazy zombie dog with rabies gets shot and lets out a little yelp, but being a dog owner, even though it was a zombie rabies dog, that little dog yelp made me go "OH!" in the theater and Chris giggled at me, then I giggled at myself.  He had to remind me A. It's just a movie, and B. IT WAS A ZOMBIE DOG WITH RABIES BITING PEOPLE....hahaha

Chinese StirFry, Glazed carrots, Savory Toast

Chris and I have been so on-the-go and lazy about meals lately that we've just been making it up. Tonight I wanted a sit-down-set-the-table-have-a-drink-with-dinner full on meal.
So Chris had a stuffed chicken cordon bleu from the freezer.
I had quickie stir-fry, with not as many vegetables as I would have liked. Broccoli, Squash, Mushrooms, Peas, and my beloved Wheat Germ. Cooked with StirFry sauce which is basically garlic and ginger, soy sauce, and a tablespoon of orange honey glaze. Then I put a pile of it on a tortilla. Ive been crazing soft warm mini-tortillas. Theyre so convenient.




Glazed Carrots are easy and comforting in cold weather. Baby carrots in a pot with a little water (very little), and good pat of margarine, brown sugar, sprinkle of nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger and cook until the carrots are slightly soft. Done.


Chris likes`em!


Awww, ain't he handsome.

I made made some freezer bread the other day, just the kind you buy in the freezer section and set out to thaw and rise and pop in the oven, and sliced it semi-thick and brushed it with butter spray (not real butter) and seasoned it with Savory seasoning (thyme, rosemary, sage and such), and stuck it under the broiler. It was a great meal.

I really should have taken a picture of the whole table. It was a lovely set up. I also had a Woodchuck Draft Cider (on of my many favorite cider beers I like to drink in Fall. I'll have a fall drink post eventually).

Then Chris made me dessert.
His name is Sir Strawbapple Esquire III

Making it up as I go....

As a Pre-K teacher, I am fortunate enough (fortunately for me, unfortunately for my kids) to have a group of kids that love their veggies, but dont do salads. They think its weird haha. So I take the un-served portions home and use it all week!




This week Ive been making quickie lunches with just a small pile of this mixed veggie salad (theres actually very little lettuce to it this time, its more veggies than anything) on a mini-tortilla. Very simple, and Ive been experimenting with different add-ons.
Here it is just plain salad:


I poured a little vinaigrette dressing and soy sauce on it. Pretty good! A 2-second lunch!
Here's one of my more favorite add-on experiments:


It has sesame seeds and walnuts on it. It added a great texture and taste. Here it is folded up:



For lunch today, I was really in the mood for a portabello burger, since I had just bought some for that purpose exactly. I almost didnt make it because we only had mini slider buns, but then I thought DUH, just cut the mushroom into a square!
I cooked it in a BBQ, soy, hoison sauce mix (which was stupid because hoison already is BBQ and soy sauce mixed, so it was like doubly hoison-y and a little too much), added lettuce and BAM!




It got a little messy at the end there...hahahah


SO, VEGAN UPDATE. I was two days in, going strong, when I went out to dinner with my friend and her little girl, and the kid tricked me into a bite of her ice cream. BLAST! -sigh- Then today I went out to eat with my boyfriend, Chris, and ate vegetarian, but not vegan......Daaaaamn you cheeeeeese. Granite City Brewery didn't leave me with alot of choices. Super fantastic Oktoberfest beer though. And possibly a little too heavy of a beer on an empty tummy....I was halfway in the bag by the time the food got there...hahahah

Back to vegan tomorrow...here's hopin`!


Addendum: I keep meaning to mention this, but I found a FANTASTIC alternative to turkey for those who don't want to feel left out at Thanksgiving. I myself have always been a "sides" girl myself, meaning even when I ate meat, I always just had a little turkey and 72 helpings of side dishes. I've found LightLife's Smart Stuffers!!! The Turk`y with Cranberry Stuffing was incredible. It tasted SO real. I can't wait to try it at Thanksgiving. They also have a cordon blue type stuffer and a Broccoli and Cheese stuffer. I wonder if the chicken ones are as good as my Turk`y one was. LightLife is so far my favorite brand of faux meats. I've already mentioned my affinity for their fake breakfast sausage, and I also prefer their ground meat to other brands such as MorningStar, whose, to me, has a very mushroomy texture, which is fine, but if I wanted mushrooms, I would have bought mushrooms. Dang Im mean about my fake meats. Haha.