I flipped the pancakes (I’m getting better!) while she roasted up some potatoes and made a wonderful strawberry sauce from some frozen berries. All in all, this brinner was a success! The potatoes were nice and garlicky, the pancakes were light and fluffy, with a great kick of cinnamon, but the strawberry sauce stole the show. Or, at least it just paired so perfectly with the pancakes…sweet and tart and fruity – it really brightened up the dish. I may have to purchase this cookbook, if all the recipes are this easy and work so well!

I threw caution to the wind and added all 5 tablespoons of the sesame oil called for, in addition to 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon of chunky peanut butter. And these were decadent, but without feeling heavy. The rice noodles are so light, and the steamed broccoli and cauliflower make the dish seem nice and healthy, even though it’s basically just a huge, fried peanut butter sandwich. Elvis would be proud.

(Side note – this is my first food post done from my iPod touch. What do you think?)

done!

But where is the pumpkin, you ask?  It’s in the cheese sauce.  Sneaky, eh?  I never got around to carving my Halloween pumpkin, so we had one lying about.  In to the oven to be roasted it went!  Then, I combined my two favorite cheese sauce recipes and formed one amazing powerhouse of deliciousness.  The semi-vegan boyfriend told me, ‘That’s the best that sauce has ever tasted.’  Indeed, sir!  And it was so easy.  The pumpkin flavor doesn’t dominate the dish, but it does add an earthy, mellow tone to the sauce.  It has never tasted quite so…indulgent.  And really, it’s just a Mexican-izing of this recipe, but my spice combo comes from that recipe in Yellow Rose Recipes for nacho sauce that I’m always praising.

Pumpkin Nacho Sauce

1 cup pumpkin puree (canned, or make your own by roasting a real, live pumpkin)

1 Tbsp vegan butter (like Earth Balance, but I used Blue Bonnet Lite because I was out of EB – p.s. next time I’m going to try to eliminate this extra fat)

1 cup unsweetened and unflavored soymilk (or almond milk)

1 Tbsp cornstarch

1/3 cup nutritional yeast (heaping)

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/8 tsp turmeric

3/4 tsp salt

freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

6 slices of pickled jalapeno

juice of 1/2 a large lime

Ok!  Start on the stovetop by melting your margarine in a medium pan over med-low heat.  While that’s happening, whisk together your soymilk and cornstarch until no lumps remain.  Once the margarine is melted, add the soymilk mixture alone with the nutritional yeast, mustard, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, turmeric, salt, and pepper.  Mix well, and whisk regularly until thickened.  You may need to turn the heat up a bit to get it bubbling, but once it bubbles, it thickens up fast!  Don’t let it get all gummy on the bottom!

Transfer the mixture in the pot to a blender and add the pumpkin puree, jalapenos, and lime juice.  Blend blend blend until it is completely smooth.  Pour back into saucepan and heat gently, stirring often.  Serve over nachos, or as a dip with tortilla chips.

As you can see, I used blue corn chips, black olives, black beans, mushrooms, corn salsa, and some guacamole as my nacho fixings.  And the pumpkin sauce was a really incredible take on the usual nacho sauce.  I know you’ve got at least one pumpkin hanging around from last month.  Roasting it is easy!  And since this recipe only uses a small portion of the puree you’ll get, you can freeze the rest to use in whatever pumpkin recipes you like for the rest of the winter.  Also, feel free to substitute any sort of winter squash.  I find that they all taste about the same.  Oh, and since it’s getting colder, you’ll just love having your oven on for the better part of an hour to heat up your icy cold kitchens (am I the only one?).  There is no losing in this game, people!

liquid pesto yumminess.

Soup is ugly, sometimes.  Anyway, this was fantastic!  Since it gets pureed in the end, it only takes a minute to chop up the cauliflower, and it came together so quickly!  I will say that the added starch (corn or arrowroot?  I don’t remember) was superfluous.  It never actually got ‘thick’, and I kind of didn’t want it to.  You’re blending it all up at the end, why the need for a thickener?  I just don’t get it.  Regardless, the soup was wonderful in its basil-y goodness.  I did not add the toasted pine nuts at the end (because expensive!  and yuck!), and I didn’t really miss them, but next time I might add a few cashews.  I prefer to make my pesto with cashews anyway.  Next time I make this, I’ll prepare a double batch – I needed more leftovers!

Basically, if you love basil, make this soup.  The end.

yep yep yep.

Apparently, it’s possible to Mexican-ize almost any vegetable.  We have these new next door neighbors, and they keep giving us vegetables!  Which is pretty awesome.  I’m a planner, though, so when presented with a giant bag of mystery veg, I tend to immediately start racking my brain for options, options, options.  You’d think it would have been easy, when they gave us the giant basket of tomatoes the first day we moved in, but I had to make it difficult.  I still haven’t used up the monstrous bag of jalapenos and banana peppers they gave us two weeks ago.  I keep thinking I’m going to make jalapeno poppers again, but never get around to doing it.  So this time, I wanted to keep it simple.  I love roasted turnips.  Love them!  They’re so tasty!  Sweet, earthy, and a really great alternative to the usual roasted root veggies like potatoes or carrots.  (Next up: carrot nachos?)  Anyway, I wanted to use up some of the plethora of hot peppers in my fridge (plus, roasted jalapenos taste so amazing), so I decided to try to make Mexi-turnips.  About 6 large turnips, 6 jalapenos, 2 red chiles, and a green pepper later (so much chopping!), I had a baking sheet full of potential awesomeness.  I seasoned them with whole cumin seeds, garlic powder (I know, I was sick of chopping by that point, though!), onion powder (I knoooow), smoked paprika, and salt and tossed it all with a tablespoon or so of olive oil.  Then into the oven!  When things started looking roasty and smelling delicioso, out they came, and boy howdy were these turnips spicy.  Whoa.  I like ‘em that way, but if you don’t like spice and you make them at home, adjust the amount of jalapenos to your preferred heat level.

While these were in the oven, I whipped up the rest of the nachos fixings.  Basically I just tossed some kidney beans in a pan with half a packet of generic taco seasoning (again, I know!  But the flavor always reminds me of my dad, who used to make us bean burritos when I was a kid, and this is the same seasoning he used…you can’t fight memories, people.) and made Joanna’s most amazing nacho cheese sauce, about which I have raved over and over.  Want some more raving?  Okey dokey.  It’s easy to make, as in: dump, blend, whisk, done.  It’s delicious.  Omnivores love it.  It’s perfect for nachos.  It’s also perfect for a sandwich spread after being refrigerated (it firms up quite a bit).  I want to drink it.  But seriously.  Unfortunately, Yellow Rose Recipes is out of print (bummer for those of you who don’t own it!).  I’m not into typing up cookbook recipes for you guys, because I feel like it cheats the author out of future sales if their recipes are just all over the internet (not sure how my ethics queue up with an out of print book…), but some other person (maybe they got permission?  I hope so.) posted the recipe for the nacho sauce here, if you’re interested.  Anyway!  Turnip nachos were a success!  I didn’t make guacamole because I was trying to keep them relatively low-fat, but that would be a nice addition.  It totally was not weird eating turnips with nachos, by the way.  They fit in like a cool kid at a new school.

i love my creation.

The best part is that it made enough for me to have leftovers a couple of times, so I got to enjoy them over and over!  Now I feel kind of unstoppable.  What else can I nacho-ize?  Anything….anything!  Mwahahaha.

• I felt like everyone (you and him, and maybe me) deserved a treat – it is Halloween after all.
• Last year (seriously, one year ago) I purchased a mini muffin pan because I thought it looked cute, and had yet to use it.
• The liners I bought (last year) for said pan have jack-o-lanterns on them, thus making them a time sensitive thing.
• I was bored.

So I combed through The Joy of Vegan Baking, saw a recipe for carrot cake (the semi-vegan boyfriend’s almost favorite), and changed it until I liked it.  Normally, I don’t do that, because baking is chemistry and all that crazy science crud, but for whatever reason, this time it really, really worked.

squee!

You guys should have heard me, seriously.  I laughed out loud every single time the buzzer went off and these were ready.  They were just too cute!  So tiny!  So round!  And since I only have one tiny muffin pan that makes 12 teensy muffins at a time, I got to laugh 5 times!

Look at the little jack-o-lanterns!  Halloween!  Since the semi-vegan boyfriend and I both have to work this evening (no candy for our trick or treaters, lame), I figured I’d do something festive.  I guess we did go to a not at all scary (and that’s saying something coming from me, who is the ultimate scaredy cat) haunted house.  And we went to this thing called the pumpkin house last night where these people carve hundreds of pumpkins and have a display set up all over their property, which in years past has been totally amazing…  But I guess in recent years it’s gotten insanely popular, and when we went there were so many people that you couldn’t even really enjoy looking at the pumpkins.  The best part of that journey was coming home to a cup of tea and one of these little guys.

Such a moist crumb.  So lets talk cake.  Carrot cake – it’s a spice cake with stuff in it, basically.  Normally it calls for raisins and walnuts, but I don’t love either one of those items, so I made mine with currants and almonds.  It’s just sweet enough, for me, and the perfect two-bite sweets fix.  And since they’re wee, I didn’t feel bad eating three of them.  I also tried to make the recipe from JOVB a little healthier, using whole wheat flour and taking out half of the fat and some of the sugar.  They don’t seem to have suffered one iota.  One note – since I thought these were plenty sweet, and I’m lazy (especially after all the carrot grating and almond chopping), so I didn’t ice them.  The semi-vegan boyfriend thinks they would be better with some vegan cream cheese icing.  However, besides the fact of my laziness, we didn’t have any Tofutti on hand, and we’re on a ‘just paid rent’ kind of budget, so no icing for us.  Anyway, with less icing, you get to eat more cakes!

Mini-mini Carrot Cakes, adapted from the carrot cake recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking

3 Tbsp ground flaxseed

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/3 cup canola oil

1 1/2 cups peeled and grated carrots

1 cup chopped almonds

1 cup currants

1 1/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (or the ground kind)

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Add the flaxseed and water to a blender and blend until thick and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add applesauce and canola oil and process until well blended. Combine with carrots, almonds, and currants in a large bowl.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and salt and mix well, until smooth and fine (I used a fork to mix and smooshed out the lumps). Add the dry to wet and mix, using a rubber spatula, until moistened, but don’t overmix.

Line mini muffin tins with paper liners and, using two spoons, fill each tin with the batter, right up to the edge of the paper. These rise, but not a huge amount – filling them to the edge of the paper just gives them an adorable little top. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove and let cool a few minutes until the tops firm up a bit, then transfer to a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes 54 tiny cupcakes! If you wish to make regular-sized cupcakes (spoilsport), you will need to bake them a little longer. Ice them with vegan cream cheese icing if it suits you. They’re sweet enough on their own for me!

With that, Mofo-ers, I bid you adieu.  Until tomorrow, probably.  I’ve rekindled my love for cooking and blogging throughout this past month, and I plan to actually keep up with it from now on.  Enjoy your treats this evening!

A traditional korma will have a long slow cooking. In fact, korma is not one particular dish but rather a method of cooking similar to braising. Because korma is a cooking method there are a wide variety of dishes that could be described as “korma”. Many kormas call for the meat to be marinated in yoghurt and then the meat plus marinade are braised on a very low heat until all the juices condense down into a thick sauce. The restaurant chef has to cook to order so doesn’t have time for long, slow cooking. The korma you find in Indian restaurants usually contains ground almonds, coconut and thick cream. It is often described on restaurant menus as being “very mild” but a good korma should not be bland.  (source)

Huh. Well, I always associated it with a thick and creamy, mild curry sauce, coating loads of tender vegetables and eaten with a heap of perfectly cooked rice (to soak up all the sauce!). And I always kind of figure that the longer you cook any sort of sauce-style Indian food, the better it tastes in the end. However! I actually followed the cooking instructions for the korma in the book, because I didn’t want my veggies to get all yuck and mushy.  Maybe the instructions for a veggie korma are just different than those for a meaty one. 

just like at my local Indian restaurant!

The recipe is for a tempeh and cauliflower curry, but I used roasted tofu instead, for two reasons: the semi-vegan boyfriend does not heart tempeh yet and the fancypants Kroger I like to shop at doesn’t carry tempeh, of all things.  Twelve varieties of frozen fake meat, but no tempeh.  For shame.  Regardless, this was delicious with the tofu, but it would even be fine with no extra protein and just more veggies!  The cauliflower was cooked to perfection right at the time the instructions said it would be, and that creamy, dreamy sauce just smothered everything like a warm, soft blanket.  This sauce is cashew based, and actually gave me the idea for the recipe in my previous post.

Ode to cashews: slightly sweet, with such a smooth texture; you will always be my favorite nut; so versatile, so easily blended; i want to eat you in sauces and also simply roasted; you are worth every penny.

Other vegan kormas I’ve made haven’t been creamy, and really, I can’t handle a non-creamy korma.  The whole point, for me, is that it’s creamy!  If the korma isn’t going to be creamy, I’ll just make some other type of Indian dish.  Anyway, this one was fabulous.  Delicately spiced, yet bursting with flavor, and covered with that velvety-smooth sauce.  I added cilantro as a garnish (rather than mixed in, since someone I know has become a cilantro-hater – oh! how the tables have turned!) and after I shot the photo, I mixed in some sriracha for a bit of a kick.  I know that korma is supposed to be mild, but the sriracha didn’t change the flavor profile, it just turned the volume from 2 to 8.  Which, in my opinion, is never a bad thing.

Man, with all the coconut and cashew based things I’ve made this month, I’m really regretting the fact that I cancelled my gym membership.  Perhaps November will be Awesome. Vegan. Rad.’s month of Appetite for Reduction (again).  Oh, hey, that reminds me (speaking of my cancelled gym membership), any of you with Netflix Instant – what are your favorite workout videos on there?

so creamy.

I feel sort of bad posting a recipe for this, since the idea is obviously Isa’s, but it’s a neat variation that I really enjoyed.  And it just felt less…processed without the vegenaise.  Plus, it made a smaller portion, for those of you who are only whipping it up for yourselves.

Ripoff Curried Mango Tempeh Salad

1/2 8 oz block of tempeh (4 oz!)

1 mango, peeled and cut into 1/2-1 inch cubes

1/4 cup cashews (I used roasted, unsalted)

1/4-1/2 cup plain, unsweetened soymilk (or almond milk)

3 tsp curry powder

1-2 tsp garlic chili sauce (or just sriracha if you don’t have the garlic kind)

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, minced

juice from 1 small lime

salt to taste

So first up, get your tempeh steaming while you prep your other ingredients.  Cut the tempeh into a bunch of small cubes (doesn’t have to be perfect, we’re gonna mush ‘em later) and put them into a steamer apparatus of your choice and let them go for 12 minutes, then drain.  Meanwhile, put your cashews in the blender with the smallest amount of soymilk first.  If you need more soymilk to make it all whirl around together, add it.  Blend these together for at least 5 minutes, so that your cashews aren’t grainy.  You’re looking for an end result that’s like heavy cream, or full-fat coconut milk – thick and smooth and creamy, but pourable.  When that’s done, add all of the ingredients to the bowl (I didn’t bother to let my tempeh cool, and it didn’t hurt anything) and stir with a fork, mushing the tempeh into crumbles as you go.  Taste for salt and spice.  It’s best left refrigerated for a few hours to let the flavors meld, but you do what you want.

One thing – I have noticed that this salad separates a little after being refrigerated, like it looks like there’s water at the bottom of the dish.  Just stir it all up again and don’t worry about it.

restaurant style, sort of.

I’ve been eating this open-faced on a really nice and thick slice of bread because I don’t have any pitas this time around.  It goes great with a Caesar-style salad!  I made my own croutons using the same bread (it’s just sandwich bread…I was going to use nice brown bread, but it turned into a science experiment when I wasn’t looking) by cutting up 3 slices into cubes and then tossing with a teensy amount of olive oil, salt and pepper, then baked them at 300F for 15 minutes.  It’s been so long since I had a crouton!  I had forgotten how awesome they are.  Anyway, I made the Caesar dressing from Appetite for Reduction, which I love (but some jerk at work told me tasted ‘like bile’ [seriously, how rude can you get?]) and have just been salad-ing it up with romaine, halved grape tomatoes, and the croutons.  Yum!

What is your favorite lunch combination?

“Liebster” is German and means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’ but it can also mean ‘favorite’. The idea behind this award is to bring attention to bloggers who have less than 200 followers and show your support during Vegan Mofo!

The rules of winning this award are as follows:
1. Show your thanks to those who gave you the award by linking back to them.

2. Reveal 5 of your top picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Post the award on your blog.

4. Enjoy the love and support of some wonderful people on the big wide web!

So, without further ado, here are my choices, in alphabetical order:

1. Coldandsleepy Cooks  This delightfully funny and vegan mom is blogging her way through the alphabet this VeganMofo!  I’ve really enjoyed her posts, and I always adore the description of how her sweet little boy reacts to the food she makes!

2. Gumboots & Cats & Vegan Snacks  Down to earth and delicious recipes by a lovely vegan lady, with lots of yummy looking photos!

3. Miso for Breakfast   This blogger is Mofoing by doing tons of giveaways, one of which I won!  Besides that, I really love the descriptions of trips to various stores in Portland, OR that she takes and the reviews of various cookbooks that she’s giving away.

4. My Zoetrope  I’ve been a fan Michelle since I first started blogging.  She has tons of fabulous illustrations to compliment her many photos of delicious food.  I want one (ok more than one) of her prints so badly!

5. The I-40 Kitchen  I’m a sucker for anyone who veganizes old favorites, and this is exactly what this blog is full of!  Old southern recipes, mostly family ones, made vegan for the rest of us!

I love so many other blogs, but those are the ones I could find that actually have counts of how many followers (that were also under 200) on their pages.  Keep on keepin’ on, guys.  I love reading what you write and drooling over your photos and recipes!

And so as not to leave you hanging, readers, I shall leave you with some delicious eye candy.

even better this time!

I’ve blogged about the Polenta Rancheros from Vegan Brunch before and how much I loved it.  So I made it again, because honestly, it’s really easy and so so so delicious.  And!  This time around, the semi-vegan boyfriend loved it too!  Last time he wasn’t crazy about it and was sure that this time I’d done something different.  ’No’, I told him, ‘only you and your mindset have changed!’  Have faith, people, even the most staunch bean haters can be turned around if you’re persistent.