On the menu tonight: Stuffed Peppers

You know, I don't think I've ever eaten stuffed peppers until tonight. I've had chile relleno, which is similar in regards to being a chili pepper stuffed with something, but I guess that's where the similarity ends. I made them once a long time ago for husbinator, but since I made them with real beef, I did not partake.

Earlier this week, I was looking through my little recipe binder for dinner ideas and came across the printout for the stuffed peppers I had made. Intrigued, I decided to put it on the menu for the week, with veggie beef of course.

I made them tonight, and it wasn't too hard to make. The only annoying part is that they take an hour in the oven, and that doesn't include prep. So while those were roasting away, I thought about a side. We had lettuce that was starting to wilt, so I made a simple salad with red onions, but I wanted more, so I made cheesy (Dayia) garlic bread.

I LOVE garlic bread. Want to know a trashy secret about me? I kind of came up with a shortcut. I am THAT lazy. Get a small glass pyrex bowl or tupperware or whatever. Add a stick of butter or margarine. Microwave on low until softened (I usually do 20 seconds on 30% power for margarine). Add some minced garlic (I usually cop out and buy already chopped or minced garlic from a jar). Mix. Stick it back in the fridge until you want garlic toast. Then the next time you want toast, you just stick some bread in the toaster and spread on your garlicky spread.

ANYWAY. That's basically what I did for cheesy garlic toast. Sandwich bread, garlic spread, and daiya cheese in the oven.

Lo and behold, tonight's dinner:


Looks kind of plain just sitting there like a lump, until you cut into it.




Yummmmmm.

Recipe changes: I mixed diced red pepper in with the beef instead of onion powder, and I omitted the Worcester.

Three new recipes, or three new uses for noodles

A few weeks ago, while still on my "expand my food horizons" kick, I decided that I wanted to try some new recipes for the week. After doing a google search for "vegan menus," I found a great little site called Veg Cooking. It's run by PETA, and while I don't 100% condone everything PETA does, I do like that they are a great resource for vegetarian/vegan information. I browsed their menus and made my shopping list for the week. Anyway, as I think I mentioned before, I do all my grocery shopping on the same day, which requires trips to at least 3 grocery stores. I think it's easier that way, although the food might not be as fresh as it could be. At least I know what I am going to be cooking for the week and I don't have that moment standing in front of my fridge thinking "crap, what should I make..." Anyway, as I was shopping for these new recipes, I was proud of myself for buying stuff I rarely ever cook with, like artichoke hearts, green onion, fresh bell peppers. Yes, this is out of the ordinary for me.

So the first recipe I tried was Creamy Pasta Salad With Artichoke Hearts.

I've never made pasta salad before, but how I known how easy it is, I would have started a lot earlier. Super easy, fresh, lemony. I made it for lunch on a hot summer day so it was perfect. I tried recreating it the following week with some chopped up frozen bell pepper strips instead of the artichoke hearts, but I think the chokes add to the flavor much better.

My second recipe that week was a Hamburger Macaroni Casserole.

Now this recipe I was skeptical about. Tomato soup? French fried onion strips? And what does corn have to do with hamburger? Still, it sounded kind of good. And it WAS. Not just kind of good, it was really good. We did make one addition to the recipe. My sister had some leftover Daiya Cheese, so we sprinkled it on top. Now, the thing with vegan cheese is, one it is hard to find a good brand that really tastes and melts like cheese, and two, it is expensive. Daiya cheese is about $10 a pound, so it's too expensive to make a ton of cheese enchiladas with. It is so creamy and yummy though. (edit: It's November and since this original post, Daiya has become much more affordable and accessible to me! Yay!) If I could only find a good bacon substitute that is fatty and greasy like real bacon, I would be set. But really, I loved the recipe. I'm assuming it's a vegan hamburger helper knockoff. I did use 2 cans of tomato soup instead of one (it looked like it might have turned out dry with just one), and a whole can of corn. Another bonus: it makes a lot, so everyone in the house had leftovers for lunch the next day.

The last recipe of this blog is "Better than Beef" Stroganoff.

Looks kind of gray and bland huh? I will admit, I had high hopes for this recipe, and it wasn't bad, I just don't think I would make it again. It tasted OK, but I think the canned mushrooms mixed with the canned gravy just made everything taste like it came out of a box. Lots of sodium. I was also out of onions, so they didn't make it to the pan. On the bright side, the sauce was creamy and the recipe was super easy.

So those are my three recipe reviews. I would definitely recommend the first 2, even if you use real mayo and beef instead of the vegan stuff, and if you think you can dress up the Stroga-not, let me know how it goes.

Quick project: Quick blog

Oreos + Chocolate chips + double boiler + sprinkles + cupcake liners = this

I love you, mushrooms. Not the drug kind, the food kind.

Ever get tired of cooking the same thing over and over? I do. I'm not an expert chef by any means, so I lack creativity in my weekly menus. And by weekly, I do mean weekly. I usually plan my meals for the week, and buy the ingredients to make them on Saturday or Sunday. It helps us save money grocery shopping. I make the list and I stick to it, that way I'm not grabbing as many impulse "maybe I can make this" types of purchases.

Last week was a big week for me, cooking wise. I wanted to branch out and try to cook new things, add more to the rotation. After looking at a few sites, I decided my new dish attempt would be mushrooms. I usually don't cook with mushrooms, and when I do, it's the plain white button kind. Anyway, I know there's a million ways to make portabella mushrooms, but I wanted something foolproof. Enter my vegan cookbook and their roasted potatoes & carrots with mushrooms. Seemed easy enough.Well at my weekly grocery shopping trip, I picked up some lovely looking portabella mushrooms. Huge suckers. I also picked up an eggplant for the first time ever, but that's a different post. I also grabbed a marinated tri tip for my husband. What a lucky guy. :p I had leftover potatoes anyway, I picked up some carrots and I was good to go.

It went pretty well. I didn't have little red potatoes, so I used regular peeled russet potatoes. I made it earlier this week with little dutch potatoes and it was equally good both ways I think. I also didn't have rosemary (rosemary is a "fancy spice" so I don't own it yet) but all in all, it was easy and yummy. Wanna see?

With tri tip:


Vegan style:


For dessert, we had some yummy macadamia nut kahlua coconut drinks. I know I mentioned them multiple times on facebook, but I thought you might wanna see how yummy they look.

Blended:


After settling. Pretty :)


Hope I made you hungry!

A tribute to mac and cheese

Oh mac and cheese,
I love you so,
although with ease
you make my belly grow.

My poetry skills are a bit rusty.

One of my lactose intolerance casualties is macaroni and cheese. I love this stuff. It used to be in my regular dinner rotation (which wasn't much a year ago, and still isn't huge now), so having to give it up was a bit of a blow. I mean, I wasn't fancy with it, it was normal kraft shells and cheese, usually mixed with broccoli or some potatoes to make it a bit heartier. It's a total comfort food though, and even better, a cheap one. I mean, sure you can do the whole mac and cheese with real cheese and melted butter and all that and bake it in the oven, but I don't have that much time after work, and sometimes I'd rather have the processed stuff.

Vegan mac and cheese does exist, but it can be kind of hit and miss. I've tried 3 different mac and cheese recipes from 3 different locations and they've all varied.

Mother's Market has a mac and cheese in their food bar. I think their main "cheese replacement" ingredient is almonds and maybe nutritional yeast flakes. For the record, nutritional yeast flakes are pretty common in fancy vegan recipes, especially as a cheese replacer, but I've never tried it. Heard they're a yummy seasoning though. Anyway, not a big fan of this mac and cheese. Not sure why, but the time I had it, I added some bacon salt to make it better. It just wasn't cheesy. Maybe it was because it was reheated. Dunno.

When I went to San Francisco, I hit up a fabulous vegan cafe called Herbivore. My sister recommended it, and I am so glad I went. I had a deeeelicious mac and cheese plate. It was so yummy, look!

Just beautiful. They even did broccoli, like I used to do, except they weren't lazy like me and didn't do Kraft shells and cheese. If you look behind my plate, you will see husband's portobello mushroom sandwich (and his belly) and my root beer. I've become a root beer fan. This picture makes me sad that Herbivore is 6 1/2 hours away by car.

Lastly, we have homemade mac and cheese. I've made it twice at home using this recipe from vegweb. It's pretty easy and makes for some yummy cheddar-y results. If you try this recipe, make sure you follow the sauce directions: heat soymilk first, then add cheese. Last time, I forgot and dumped everything in the saucepan. It was still pretty good, it just changes the texture a bit. I usually add margarine too, because I'm a fatty like that.

You will notice breadcrumbs on my mac and cheese. I had a french baguette that I was saving to make breadcrumbs and I FINALLY did it for this dish. Why you ask? Store bought breadcrumbs are not vegan. Did it taste better with the crumbs? Eh, about the same. Did it make it look all fancylike? Yup. That would also be a fancy salad on my plate, with the red onion and carrots and vegan creamy garlic dressing. What can I say, I'm easily impressed.

Fail

After reading my wife's blog, I decided it was time to share a commiserating story. This is chronicling my disasters in domestication, so get ready for a disaster.

Recently, we were given a bag of peaches. Now I am not a fruit person. I am much more a veggie eater. Asparagus, broccoli, carrots, they are all good. Fruit... eh. I guess. Sure, but not my preference. So what to do with this huge bag of peaches? We were given cobbler as a gift, so I decided to make a peach pie. I've never made a pie, and I was short on time, but my sister REALLY wanted pie that night so, ok, we'll throw one together. I had frozen strawberries, so it was going to be a strawberry peach pie. Sounds great right?

So I hop on to my old standby, allrecipes.com and find tons of recipes for pie crust. The problem? They all need to sit for 30 minutes to an hour. Like I mentioned, I was short on time, it was a work night and I didn't feel like sitting around to wait for flaky crust. So I bypass the flaky crusts and settle on this shortbread pie crust. Actually, the crust was pretty good. I would use it again. For the actual pie, I "use" this recipe for Peach-a-Berry pie. I put "use" in quotations because I just kind of used it as a guideline.

It was going pretty well. Baked the crust, sister peeled and cut up peaches. Here's where it went wrong though. When you see a recipe that says:

Place peaches and berries in a colander for about 15 minutes to drain any excess fluid , then transfer to a large bowl.

DO IT. Do NOT throw them in a colander, wait a minute, then say "oh, nothing is coming out" and throw it in the crust. It needs to drain. Can you guess what the disaster was?

So, I use some remaining pie dough to make a sad looking top crust thing. I was still pretty happy with myself though. First pie. In my neato pyrex pie pan too. I throw it in the oven.

45 minutes later:

I mean, it looks ok. Until you cut into it and realize it is....


Pie soup. Very soggy. There was actually a lot more fruit juice in the pan before I took that pic.

How did it taste? It was pretty good, but I think the sogginess gave us all tummyaches. So this went in the trash.

Fail. Better luck next time I hope.

Cake balls, revisited.

Another birthday at the office, but I made them prettier this time.