One year anniversary

Can you believe it? We started this blog last year in February. I am not sure if anyone even reads this blog, but I know that I get ideas from what Em writes and it inspires me to think of food to eat.
Thanks Em!!

On a week night this week, I used three different recipes to make a dinner! It was a great tasting dinner!


First, I modified this recipe to make a boullion. I was not able to find fennel or leeks in our grocery store for the past two weeks, so I used scallions instead. Also, no parsley, only cilantrol. I pureed carrots, celery, scallions, cilantro and salt over the weekend and froze it. Based on Heidi's recipe, I heated one cup of water with 1 T of this boullion to make stock!


I modified this pasta recipe into a vegan recipe. No butter, olive oil instead. No pancetta, morning star grillers. No chicken stock, home-made stock using the boullion I made instead :), no cheese, period. No parsley.

I had some collard greens left over from the black bean and collard greens soup and saw this recipe earlier. I also saw a similar one on a Vegetarian times magazine. I roasted the collard greens without the sesame seeds.

It was a great dinner :) Here's to one year of blogging and eating Vegan food and looking forward to more :)

Crockpot Quinoa Red Lentil Soup; Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows

I just discovered a new website this weekend called Savvy Vegetarian while searching for vegan crockpot recipes. There were so many interesting recipes. They even sell downloadable recipe books. I decided on Crockpot Quinoa Red Lentil Soup since I am trying to incorporate more quinoa into my diet. This soup used practically every spice I had on the shelf! Sadly, I did not have fennel seed which may have impacted the flavor a bit. It needed a little salt infusion in my opinion so I added a TB of veggie bouillon. The flavor was better the second day I am discovering. The recipe did not indicate when to add the veggies so I just threw everything into the crockpot and it worked just fine. I used my favorite butternut squash, of course!

I got "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar" for my husband for the holidays and had to try these Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows. They look a lot more difficult than they were. They are delicious. Sort of wishing I had not made them since I am still home with the baby and seriously lack self-control around cookies.

Good Night!

Golden Sesame-esque Tofu and Squash, Chickpea and Lentil Stew

I also finally made the Squash, Chickpea and Red Lentil Stew that I had mentioned previously. Looks like Anu beat me to it. Obviously yours looks a whole lot better which I will attribute to your far superior photography skills and prettier stoneware! They don't even look like the same recipe. I did use butternut squash since I cannot get enough of it!!! I also used brown lentils since I was out of red. Mine turned out more soup-like than stew-like but the flavors were good. I added the lime and some peanut butter after but I actually seemed to preferred it without these additions. It was a little heavy on the beans and light on the veggies. I am still searching for the perfect butternut squash recipe!!!!!!


We also took a trip to Wholefoods for some of the Tofutti products that we cannot seem to find any where else. While there, I saw the Golden Sesame Tofu in the Salad Bar area and remembered that I used to have the recipe for this delicious tofu. Sadly, I was unable to find it but I came across this version online on Diana Cooks. I did not have any mirin and so I used rice wine vinegar instead which may have altered the flavor and texture quite a bit. I liked it but it was definitely different than the Wholefoods version. If anyone has this recipe please share!!!!

Black Bean and Collard Green Soup with Sweet Potato Fries

I spend a LOT of time looking through recipes and food blogs - can you tell? I found this recipe for Ribollita. It looked SO good and our next grocery list had Kale on it. But when I went to the store, we only found collard greens. So, we bought them. I thought I would try the Ribollita with Collard Greens. And then, I came across the recipe for Black Bean and Collard Green Soup. It's almost like it was written by the blogger after she looked at my pantry and fridge :)
So, I made it!!



The verdict - I should have cut the collard greens even smaller. I am not a huge fan of the collard greens in the soup, but it's a good healthy soup (and it's frozen for later in the week).

I also made quick sweet potato fries - I have difficult time using Butternut squash because it's so hard to cut!! The fries were easy to make - cut up sweet potatoes with a spray of olive oil and drizzled with salt and pepper. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. It was a wonderful treat - a slight sweet from the sweet potatoes with salt and spice, with a crunchy texture. Yum!

Enjoy!!

Squash, Chickpea and Red Lentil Stew

Em posted a new recipe to try. I happened to have most of the ingredients in the house and was looking for a stew/soup recipe to make for someone I know who is bedridden and is looking for some food help. So I tried the Squash, Chickpea and Lentil Stew .
The only changes I made was to use sweet potatoes/yams instead of squash. This gave the stew a little sweet taste along with the spice. I also used a little Paprika in addition to the black pepper.
We really enjoyed the stew. And we were able to save this for dinner on another night too in keeping with my plans to try to eat home more during the week.

I hope that people are continuing to keep the people of Haiti in their thoughts and are giving whatever they can to help the people there.

Apple Cake/Crisp/Crumble - esque dish

Before I write about the recipe, I want to say that the death and devastation in Haiti makes all my troubles seem unimportant. Puts everything in perspective. If you read this and have not done this yet, please consider donating to the International Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders or Clinton Bush Haiti Fund or any other charity. If you are planning a party, set out a jar to collect some coins/money and send it to an agency. Do your little thing.

Back to the luxury of writing about food - in attempting to eat healthy food, I have been trying to not eat too many desserts (don't remind me about the ice cream on Saturday and the snacks at a party yesterday). So I decided to bake a dessert (It is logical - I bake healthier food than I buy and I know what I am eating!). There is a reason that I should not make up any baking recipes. The 'apple cake' that I made is not really much of a cake. It could have been because I used a wider pan. A friend made this really wonderful pan for us for Christmas - she is a potter. And I wanted to bake in it. So, the cake was a very thin layer. But, I really liked the taste. V has been eating it with ice cream (not-so-vegan) for the past two days.

V got a new 50mm camera lens last week (a birthday present that came late). So, he used that to take multiple photos. I had to upload all of them - the first is an homage to the pan - just the pan. Susan, we love the pan and love you all! The second is the 'cake' before baking and the third is the 'after' picture. Recipe follows.

























Apple Cake -Esque Dish

Ingredients

2 C Apples, Chopped
1/3 C Applesauce
1/2 C Brown Sugar
1/4 C Oil
1 C Whole Wheat Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1/3 - 1/2 C chopped Nuts (I used Walnuts)
1/3 - 1/2 C Raisins/pineapple chunks
1/2 tsp Nutmeg/Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8x8 pan
Mix applesauce, oil, sugar and vanilla essence. Separately, mix whole wheat flour, baking powder, nutmeg/cinnamon and salt.
Add the two and add chopped apples, nuts and raisins.
Mix till well coated.
Pour into the pan and bake for about 45 minutes.

Enjoy.

New Year's Black-Eyes Peas

Happy New Year - a tad late :) I'm so glad to see that Em blogged a little last week. Yay Em!! Welcome back.
I made this Black-Eyed Peas dish for New Year's day. And based on the plan, I even froze half of the dish and we ate it for dinner during the week last week. It was yummy.


No greens. But to complete the Southern meal, I made grits to eat with the Creole Black Eyed peas. I followed the recipe almost completely. I did not add any liquid smoke and added carrots to the mix.

I also made some home-made ravioli and was going to blog about it, but realized that the wonton wrappers I bought had egg in them. If any one knows of vegan wonton wrappers, I would love to hear about them. I am very excited about options of things to make with wonton wrappers, if I can get vegan ones.

Here's to yummy, healthy foods this year...