Wednesday, May 16

NACHOS!

Rating: 4.75

We love nachos – a lot. We also love Daiya Havarti with Garlic and Jalapeno. So yeah, it’s obvious. (OK, yes, not in line with the no processed food thing, but I already had it in the fridge…) We like our nachos loaded so Seth made sure that there was a lot of stuff on these: black beans, grilled corn, red bell pepper, green onions and of course, the beloved Daiya. Seth also made some fresh salsa and chopped up a bunch of lettuce and we piled that on top after they came out of the oven. So effing good. That beer in the background is Negra Modello (and yes, we squeezed lime into it). I may or may not have been thinking about these nachos in my evening, pre-dinner yoga class. Om. Nachos. Om.

Tuesday, May 15

Chickpea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce (Veganomincon/PPK) Potatoes (Forks Over Knives) and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Rating: 4.25

We had some chickpea cutlets in the freezer that really wanted to be eaten, so we decided to oblige. I really, really wanted roasted sprouts, even though we normally have asparagus with the cutlets, since the mustard sauce is amazing on asparagus. I cut my sprouts in half and steam them for a bit before roasting, just to speed up the time they need in the oven. I made a fresh batch of mustard sauce (it freezes well, but we were out) and I decided to use an ingredient substitution I had to make on the last batch. Last time, I realized I was out of cooking sherry when I was halfway through making the sauce, but I did have some white wine on hand, so I used that instead. We actually liked it better, so it’s now a permanent modification. Also, instead of the normal garlic roasted potatoes, I decided to go with a recipe I found in the Forks Over Knives book. It’s called “Just Potatoes? Potatoes” and fit nicely with that whole trying to eat more whole foods thing. It’s a really good recipe so if you want fat-free yummy taters, these are a good bet. 

Monday, May 14

Red Beans and Rice (Second Opinion Radio) and Grilled Asparagus

Rating: 4.25

I read the other day on my friend Elisabeth’s blog about how she was getting back to eating healthier, whole foods as opposed to the processed stuff that had slipped into her diet lately. I have really been feeling the same way and endeavored to plan better when I was working on this week’s meals. I really had a hankering for some red beans and rice, which also meant processed vegan sausage. I know, I know, I can make them without it (and I do have a really excellent recipe for just that) but I wanted the sausage. Dammit. Anyway, I allowed us the luxury (Field Roast brand is our favorite) with a promise to myself to do better going forward. I think I have as many red beans & rice recipes as I do cookbooks, so about 80. OK, not that many, but a lot. I ended up using one from the Second Opinion Radio website. Second Opinion Radio is a vegan broadcast here in Atlanta on WRFG (89.3 FM) on Wednesdays at 6:00 pm (you can also listen online) and you should listen or at the very least check out their website. So anyway, I was looking at the recipes they have posted and decided to use the beans & rice recipe I found there. It was really quite simple and used red bell pepper instead of green, which I think I prefer. I haven’t been that crazy about my homemade Cajun seasoning mix lately (maybe it’s just gotten old, but it’s a bit bland) so I broke down and bought some at the store. I used half the amount of sausage the recipe calls for, so at least I cut back on the processed stuff. (Unfortunately, it also means there are still 2 links in my fridge calling to me.) I made a mess of grilled asparagus in the grill pan and we had enough leftovers for a few very hearty lunches for Seth.

Sunday, May 13

40 Clove Chickpeas (Appetite for Reduction) and Salad

Rating: 4

Having recently discovered that I don’t hate chickpeas after all (I used to only consent to eat them when they were smashed into hummus, falafel or cutlets), I decided to try the 40 Clove Chickpea recipe in AFR. It sounded really good – broccoli, tons of garlic, chickpeas. It’s as good as it sounds. I forgot them “smash them up a bit” step, so ours were whole rather than a little bit mashy, but we really enjoyed it. It turns out a bit like deconstructed chickpea you’ve cutlets, if ever made the Veganomicon/PPK recipe for those. The recipe says it serves 4 – I made a half batch and got 2 servings plus a little bit leftover. I used the leftovers in my salad for lunch the next day and it was ridiculously good. And no, it doesn’t actually use 40 cloves of garlic, but it does use a bunch. We’ll definitely make it again. We also had a salad with the Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing from AFR. I decided to try making it in the blender instead of my mini food processor, since it always comes out a bit grainy, no matter how long I process it. It was perfect and not grainy at all. I will always use the blender going forward. 

Saturday, May 12

Mac & Cheese, A Giant Mushroom, Kale Chips and Whole Foods Deli

Rating: 4.25

Seth went to visit his mom in Tennessee, so we were on our own for dinner. I love mushrooms and Seth hates them, so it’s rare that I have them at dinnertime. I figured this was a good time to get a great, giant Portobello and roast it to perfection. So I did. I really didn’t use a recipe for it, I just drizzled it with a tiny bit of olive oil & white wine and sprinkled seasonings like thyme, rosemary & marjoram on it. Oh, and garlic – lots of garlic. I pressed a few cloves and spread them out on it and roasted it for about 20 minutes or so. Juicy, yummy mushroom goodness. I also wanted some mac & cheese so I made some of that as well. I usually use a mix of Daiya cheddar & pepperjack, but I was out of cheddar – I wish I’d gotten some when I was shopping. It came out good, just not as good as it is with both cheeses. There was kale that really needed to be used up, so I made some kale chips. I sprayed the kale with some olive oil and sprinkled garlic salt and nooch on them. They were good, but I managed to burn a good many of them. I ate them anyway. 

On his way out of town, Seth stopped in at Whole Foods to grab dinner for he and his mom. He wanted to just bring something quick and easy that they would both enjoy. I have to say how thankful we are that his mom is open to vegan meals, even though she is an omni – it makes things so much easier and enjoyable. Anyway, he got a variety of things for them to have – quinoa salad, curried tofu salad, chickpea salad, black beans & corn and collards. He also made a side salad and garlic bread for them. They both really enjoyed it and he even left the leftovers for her. 

Friday, March 11

Pasta Primavera (Vegan Table) with Salad and Garlic Bread

Rating: 4.75

It had been a little bit since we’d had a pasta dinner, and I was really craving a plate full of veggies. I based this on the Prima Vera recipe in Vegan Table, but with a few changes, based on what I had on hand. We ended up using carrots, zucchini, asparagus, bell pepper, broccoli, red onion, kalamata olives, capers and tomatoes. I omitted the fresh basil since I was out and added fresh oregano since I had some of that. You can probably tell by the rating that we really liked it. I used penne pasta since I that was what was in the pantry. I made too much because I was aiming to have more veggies than pasta, but ended up with more pasta than veggies. I was worried that the saucy mixture meant to coat the pasta wouldn’t be enough, so I added a bit of pesto we had in the freezer and that solved it. Seth made yet another amazing tag team of garlic bread that should be illegal and salad. 

Thursday, March 10

Calzones 

Rating: 4

We made calzones for the first time a few weeks ago. We ended up with four and they were pretty big. Naturally, we froze the extra pair for later use. Still feeling a bit lazy after camping, I decided this was the perfect time to thaw out those little beauties and use them up. We’d filled them with tofu ricotta, a bit of Daiya mozzarella, broccoli, spinach, Field Roast sausage, and of course, lots and lots of garlic. They reheated really well, along with the extra homemade sauce we had left and made a fast, easy, no mess dinner.

Wednesday, March 9

Beans and Veggies and Rice in a Bowl

Rating: 4.25

We came back from camping with some veggies leftover that really needed to be used. It was sort of an odd mix – a small head of broccoli, an orange bell pepper and two ears of corn. Oh, and some Vidalia onion bits. So. Um. Yeah. My first idea was the obvious stir-fry, but that would leave out the corn. So then I thought of making some kind of bowl dinner. I thought of using tofu, but then I remembered the corn and decided some kind of vaguely latin/southwestern thing would work with that mix of ingredients. We buy beans and whatnot in bulk, so there are always at least 7 different kinds on hand. I went with a mix of pinto and black beans. I’m glad I did. I really liked the combination – probably about 1 ½ can’s worth of beans total. I made another batch of yellow rice with garlic from Viva Vegan, because really, it’s not possible to have enough of that. It also gave me the idea to sauté the veggies in annatto-infused oil for some extra umph. I cooked the corn in the grill pan because we truly love it that way – the caramelized pieces are so good. Now, I knew all this stuff mixed together was going to be good, but also likely to be a bit bland and I would need some kind of sauce or dressing to perk it up. I went with the Citrus-herb Dressing (alson in Viva Vegan) and it was, dare I say, perfect. The tangy, flavorful burst in combination with the broccoli, corn, pepper, onion and the 50 or so cloves of garlic I added (ok, like 4) was delicious. I’m not one of those cooks who can dream up amazing gourmet meals out of my little head, but every now & then I can mix up enough stuff with a trusted recipe or two and come up with something yum. We served this concoction in big bowls with cilantro sprinkled on it and a lime wedge. Sort of a deconstructed burrito. Yummers. (and a great way to use up odds & ends)

Tuesday, March 8

Latin Baked Tofu & Yellow Rice with Garlic (Viva Vegan) and Salad

Rating: 4

I had planned to make this on Monday after we got back, but there was just no way I was cooking – we were just too tired. Even though we had a latin-ish dinner on Monday, we just moved this to Tuesday. I’ve made this tofu recipe several times before and love it. This time we just had it on it’s own with a side of rice and a salad. Normally, I use it in tacos, and while it’s good on it’s own, I think we both like it better in tacos. My favorite rice recipe right now is the yellow rice with garlic. It’s yummy and garlicky and really easy to make. I keep the annatto-infused oil needed for the recipe on hand in the pantry, which makes it that much easier. I like mine really garlic heavy, so I use extra, but it’s really a matter of taste. Seth made an awesome salad, since that’s the only kind he knows how to make, and we topped it with ranch dressing from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch (since we still had some leftover from the weekend). The leftover tofu is really good in salads, so that’s lunch for me for the week. 

Monday, May 7

El Myr

Rating: 4.25

Back in the ATL, with a living room full of camping gear and wet stuff (it rained Sunday night –typical) we were both exhausted and having no part of cooking. So we headed out to El Myr in Little 5 Points for some tacos, burritos and a side of punk rock. A little explanation for non-Atlanta readers – L5P is a bohemian neighborhood filled with cool bars, restaurants, stores and tattoo shops. El Myr is one of these great little places to eat. The music is loud, the beer is cold, the margaritas are strong and the food is always good. The menu is Tex-Mex and very vegan friendly. I normally get the Hazedilla, named after a vegan graffiti artist named Hazeus (vegan quesadilla with too much yummy stuff in it to list) and Seth normally gets a burrito. I’ve had a burrito there before and my only complaint is that they’re just too big for me. They’re huge – like football sized. OK, maybe not quite that big, but pretty effing big. What’s great about that though, is the fact that it’s a ton of food for a little bit of dinero and will keep you full for a really long time. So – bonus. Seth did get a burrito and it was stuffed full of beans, rice, broccoli, spinach, guacamole and salsa with a side of hot tomatillo sauce. I broke with tradition and ordered tofu tacos (the Hazedilla is enormous too and I knew I couldn’t eat that much). These are really pretty basic, but so crazy good. You get two flour tortillas filled with seasoned tofu, lettuce & tomato and your choice of red or green salsa on the side. I also got a side of rice. I love these tacos. I think they’re my new regular meal here. Both the tacos and burritos come with cheese, so just tell them you want ‘em vegan and they’ll hook you up. (Small side note – there is no non-smoking section so if smoke bothers you, get yours to-go.)

Sunday, May 6

Gardein Beefless Burgers and A Mess of Fried Stuff

Rating: 4.5

Sunday night, still camping. At this point, most of the ice in the coolers is typically gone, so I try to plan a meal that can be largely made of stuff that requires little to no cooler space. Yes, the burgers had thawed by now but were still totally fine. We’d never tried to cook them on the grill, but as there were two of us and four of them, we figured if they were a total fail, we could just toss the other two in a pan on the camp stove. 

I’m happy to report that the Gardein burgers held up just fine on a grill and since we only cook over charcoal, they got a yummy smoky flavor, too. The one caveat is that they’re not as juicy as when cooked in a pan, but oh well. We topped them with lettuce, tomato, onion & vegan mayo on Ezekiel sprouted sesame buns. Super yum. In addition to rarely getting to grill, one other rarely done activity is deep-frying. For one thing, it makes a tremendous mess and for another, well, it’s obviously not terribly healthy. 

I was all for French fries and beer-batter onion rings. Seth also wanted some other veggies so we had a ton of food. The onion rings and fries were easy – we dipped circles of Vidalia in the batter and Seth sliced & seasoned a potato. The other veggies we battered and fried were broccoli and, oddly, bell pepper. The broccoli I had full confidence in. The pepper not so much. Happily, they were both delicious. The batter didn’t adhere to the pepper as well as it did the broccoli and onion, but enough of it did and the result was really quite tasty. Now, we were both adamant that you can’t have a pile of unhealthy fries stuff without something gooey to dip it in, so I made a batch of ranch dressing (Skinny Bitch in the Kitch) and we happily dipped the yummies and raised our beers to our full fat, deep fried, really bad for us dinner. Cheers.

Saturday, May 5

Grilled Italian Marinated Tofu (Veganomicon) with Grilled Peppers, Onions and Corn

Rating: 5

Before I delve into the dinner, I also want to mention that we have a thing about blueberry pancakes when we camp. Our favorite recipe for pancakes is from the first Happy Herbivore book and is crazy easy to make in the woods. I just mix the dry ingredients into a plastic container with a lid and pack it with the dry food. When it’s pancake making time, I mix in the wet ingredients and voila! Pankcakes! For lunch we made tempeh BLT’s if you’re interested. Anyway, on to dinner. We were camping at a festival-type event and on Saturday night there’s a potluck dinner. So – here’s the mission: create a vegan meal, in the woods, that omnis will eat. Thankfully, this is a group that’s open to meatless meals and tofu isn’t some big, scary white brick to them. 

We love the Italian marinade in Veganomicon and use it on tofu, seitan and veggies alike. So, since I have a tofu press that I love, I take it camping and press tofu in the woods, which is awesome. I pressed two bricks of tofu in the morning, cubed it and put the cubes in the marinade (which I made on Thursday) and dropped the container back in the cooler to sit. Late afternoon arrived and we shucked a bunch of corn and cut up the onions and peppers. We skewered the tofu first and then put the onions and peppers in the marinade. (The only thing I think I’ll do differently going forward is to add the olive oil to the marinade right before I add the tofu – it tends to congeal a bit sitting in the cooler for two days.) Now, since this was for a potluck and the grills are small, we had to find a way to keep it all warm while we cooked in batches. 

A couple of years ago, we decided to get an inexpensive chafing dish. OK, it’s really just the metal frame that has space for the little containers of sterno. The aluminum pans don’t really survive the trip all that well, so we just toss them in the recycling bin when we get home. So we get a flow going with corn first since it takes so long, then do peppers, onions and tofu. As food comes off the grill it goes in chafing dish and I cover it with foil to keep it warm and discourage the insects (we are camping after all). It disappeared pretty much as soon as we added it to the serving table. My favorite moment was when a little girl in line saw the dish and said “Oooh! I love tofu!” Success.

Friday, May 4

Grilled Peruvian Seitan & Potato Skewers (Viva Vegan) and Asparagus

Rating: 4.5

Camping dinner #1. Ok so, when we go camping, it’s really more like we move most of our kitchen and living room into the woods for a few days – which is why it takes us so long to get organized for it. I made seitan earlier in the week and made the marinade on Thursday night. See? This is how you can eat fancy pants vegan meals while camping. While the seitan marinated, I boiled the potatoes on our camping stove and Seth got the charcoal going. We live in an apartment building with nowhere to grill, so we take advantage of being outdoors and use it as much as possible. I had intended to grill some corn to have as a side dish, but there was so much food once we had everything prepped, we decided not to (we also had a bit of asparagus). We threaded some bell pepper and Vidalia onions onto the skewers as well as the sietan and potatoes. Seth cooked it all to perfection on the grill and we had very happy tummies.

Thursday, May 3

Soul Vegetarian Take Out

Rating: 4.25

Today was pack the van and do the pre-cooking for a few meals day, so it was also a take out day. Soul Veg is right up the street, so we grabbed some burgers from there. If you’re not familiar with Soul Vegetarian, it’s a vegan soul food restaurant chain. I think the menus vary from one restaurant to another, even in the same city (we have two of them in Atlanta, and there’s more information on them here). The one closest to us has amazing mac & cheese and comfort foods like country fried steak, BBQ tofu and pepper steak. The food is pretty heavy and we had a lot of work to do, so we just got burgers this time. Super yummy, super easy. 

Wednesday, May 2

Cheater Pad Thai (Happy Herbivore) and Spring Rolls

Rating: 4.5

Still in need of quick and easy meals to prepare to go camping, I reached for one of our favorite recipes. I made a quick Asian marinade in the morning before work and plopped the tofu in it so sit for the day. (I used half of the block of tofu for Tuesday night’s dinner, so I didn’t even need to press it.) I baked the tofu while I chopped up some fresh veggies. I double the amount of sauce since we do like a lot of vegetables in the Pad Thai. This time we used orange bell pepper, broccoli, green onion, garlic and shallots. I meant to add some carrot as well, but somehow left it out. The spring rolls (Lin Lin brand frozen – I get them at Whole Foods) slowed down the total time it took me to make dinner, as I sort of forgot about them and needed to hold everything else for a few minutes – the Pad Thai comes together that fast. Then it was off to the grocery to get all the stuff we needed for vegan yumminess in the woods.

Tuesday, May 1

Basic Baked Tofu (Appetite for Reduction) with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy (Happy Herbivore) and Spinach

Rating: 4

OK, so I may have mentioned that we’re in prep mode for camping. I needed a quick and easy dinner so we could keep up with the inventory and packing of camping gear. And I wanted tofu. I really, really wanted tofu. I make the Basic baked Tofu from AFR all the time and use it in salads (it’s perfect) and decided since it’s so quick, easy & tasty that I’d go with that recipe. I made the marinade last night & let it sit all night & all day. I’ve never made it for Seth and served it on it’s own so I wasn’t sure how he’d like it. He first tried it without any gravy and when I got an “MMM. That’s really good” I was so relieved. Sometimes, what I think is awesome, he thinks is icky – like mushrooms and eggplant. (And vice versa like okra & collards.) I suggested he try it with a little gravy too (since the book suggests that & I’ve never tried it as the tofu normally is hanging out in a salad roughly the size of my head. (I like BIG salads for lunch.) The gravy I made is the brown gravy recipe in The Happy Herbivore Cookbook. It’s our go to, hands down favorite, I could eat it off a spoon gravy (and may or may not have done just that occasionally). It’s simple, fast and holy yum delicious. I brought some at Christmas to my parents to put on my potatoes & my mom (omni, but also owns the HH book) tasted it and asked if I’d bought enough to share. Yes, she wanted it instead of the “other” gravy on the table. It’s that good. The mashed potatoes I pretty just eyeballed in the pot. I dumped in a little unsweetened almond milk, some Earth Balance & salt. (Yes, I know the orangutans and the palm oil – I’m working on it. In fact, I just found a homemade vegan butter recipe here and plan to try it very, very soon. I’ll let you know how it goes.) Spinach is spinach and gets sautéed in a pan with salt & pepper, sometimes I like a splash of lemon juice in it to brighten it up a bit, but tonight I skipped it. Anyway, the meal was start to finish about 30 minutes. Pretty much just the amount of time it took for the tofu and potatoes to cook.