Breakfast food, comfort food

Pancakes from Vegan with a Vengeance, served Canadian style (or, at least, people tell me it's Canadian style, when you cut up all the pancake before eating it)

And now, just the pancakes

I love breakfast, it is without a doubt my favourite meal. Anyway, yesterday I was all excited to get up early and pick up ingredients to make tempeh bacon (from Vegan with a Vengeance), some sort of potato dish, and roasted vegetables for breakfast. However, this plan kind of fell apart after my alarm failed to go off (or, at least, I don't remember hitting snooze repeatedly) so I didn't have time to go to the grocery store and stuff before work. So I settled with pancakes, using the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. It promised 'straight-up pancakes, just like at the diner at 2am' and that sounded appealing at the time. They were pretty good, better than the classic pancakes recipe from How it all Vegan (previously my standard pancake recipe). They made a slightly smaller amount than the other recipe, which was a good thing because I could whip 'em up in 25 minutes (start to finish) and wasn't too full afterwards (Josh wished there were more, but he likes to stuff himself).

Saturday was a long day for me, and after working and then spending almost 6 hours painting, scrubbing floors and inhaling paint fumes (taking down an exhibition I was part of that did quite a number on the gallery that we had to put back to its initial state) all I wanted was some beer and potatoes. I don't like beer most of the time (actually, the thought of it usually makes me feel sick), but sometimes it has its place, especially blueberry ale. So we picked up some Pumphouse blueberry ale and I made Baked Cajun French Fries from Vegan with a Vengeance and roasted some zucchini and carrots to munch on and drink while settling down to watch an Art 21 DVD (yes, I am a nerd).

Baked Cajun French Fries from Vegan with a Vengeance with roasted veggies (blueberry ale in back)

Sunday morning's breakfast was slightly more nutritious than Saturday's:

Breakfast Veggie Chorizo from Vegan with a Vengeance, Cinnamon Cornmeal Muffin from The Everyday Vegan, steamed broccoli with Mi-So Good Gravy (also from The Everyday Vegan), and iced green tea (although not the best image of it)

For the tea, I just brewed some green tea, refrigerated it, and added a squirt of lemon juice and some agave nectar (I bought agave for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I think it's the only vegan non-sugar sweetener that tastes good with tea - it's very nice). The muffins were alright, but I wasn't too fond of the chorizo. It had a nice, meaty texture (although I don't know what normal chorizo is), but the flavour was just too strong for a side dish on its own. I think it would probably taste better mixed with rice or in a burrito or something. Josh agreed that the flavour was really strong, but it didn't bother him as much.

More of the muffins

More food, more vegetables

Today was, again, insanely hot outside. I had planned on doing schoolwork all day, but my mom asked if I wanted to go to the valley with her (a day trip) so I figured I could just go and do schoolwork in the car (yeah, right). As there's not much choice for vegetarian meals there (not that I know of, anyway) it was important to bring good food. I started off with eating a good macrobiotic breakfast.

Millet Porridge from The Self-Healing Cookbook: millet, turnip and leafy greens (I used swiss chard), seasoned with a bit of gomashio

Then, for a lunch I could take with me, I decided to use the Vegan with a Vengeance Chickpea-Hijiki Salad Sammiches recipe, which became (due to lack of certain ingredients) a chickpea/fava-wakame sandwich.

Chickpea/fava-wakame sandwich on ezekiel bread with balcony garden-grown lettuce

This sandwich is meant to be kind of like a tuna sandwich. I must say, the filling was very convincingly fishy-looking (as in it looked like fish). It didn't taste particularly like tuna, but I don't care, and that could've been because of my substitutions, anyway. It was alright.

My mom pampered me. On the way out of the city I had asked if we could stop in at the Bulk Barn so I could stock up (it's a pain in the ass to take the bus there), and she insisted on paying for everything I got. I bought short-grain brown rice, millet, barley, cornmeal, prunes, walnuts, coconut, bulgar, sunflower seeds, black beans, and I don't remember what else. Large amounts, and the bill was around $20. Very good deal, and apparently students get a 10% discount on Wednesdays (not that today was a Wednesday), which is even better.

Later on we went to a little farm market and got lots of local vegetables (corn, tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, green beans, onions, garlic & turnip) as well as local raspberries and plums. Mmmmm.... Now I don't have any reason to get up early and go to the farmer's market downtown tomorrow morning because I've got everything I need. Which means that I have the morning off. And what do I do when I have the morning off? I make brunch!

More on that later.

No new recipes but lots of food

Well, I've been cooking a lot lately, but since I've got two new cookbooks in my hands right now, I've been more interested in trying out new recipes than creating my own. I had said that I would post some more strawberry recipes, but I've had enough of the junk for a while. Last weekend I got the urge for sweets (which happens WAY too often) and decided to make this blueberry oatmeal breakfast cake from vegweb, subbing the blueberries with strawberries. It wasn't bad, but I ate too much and decided to take a break from sweets for a few days. Here's something healthier I did with the strawberries:

Strawberry-apricot oatmeal, cooked in half-soymilk/half-water for added creaminess...mmmmmm...

I've just discovered the greatness of baked tofu. I don't know why I took so long to try it, but it's awesome! So easy - just marinate the tofu in something tasty and then bake it in the marinade for 30 minutes, turning half-way through. One version I tried (although I forgot to take pictures) was the lemon-herb tofu from Dreena Burton's (author of the Everyday Vegan) cooking blog, and the other was the baked tofu from the ppk website.

Baked tofu over whole-wheat spaghetti with olive oil and garlic as part of my lunch on Monday

Then my friend Jeanna lent me The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner. It's wonderful! The author advocates a macrobiotic diet, but she is very positive and encouraging. Rather than restricting lots of foods, she emphasizes whole grains, beans, certain vegetables, seeds and seaweeds. She suggests minimizing things like sugar, fats, tropical fruits and flour, but doesn't say you must cut them out forever to be healthy. There are a lot of nice, wholesome meals in the book, some of which I've tried but forgotten to photograph. I've been inspired to try to reduce my intake of sugars and tropical fruits and eat more whole grains, beans and vegetables. I'm not much interested in using the cooking methods in macrobiotics or cutting out eggplant, tomatoes and peppers, but there are a few things I would do well to eat more of.

Breakfast of brown rice with cinnamon, raisins and toasted sunflower seeds, from The Self-Healing Cookbook. The sunflower seeds were a really nice addition - I should use toasted seeds more often.

So this macrobiotic-ish thing lasted until today and then temporarily stopped for two reasons:
1) it was insanely hot weather and I couldn't imagine eating anything besides a smoothie, and it went downhill from there. That's ok though.

My boyfriend, Josh, made up a pasta salad (pretty tasty) which we ate accompanied by some steamed swiss chard, on the balcony. Nice hot-weather dinner. And yes, I'm aware of how many chips are in my bowls. They're well-loved.

The 2nd reason why I decided to break the macrobiotic-ish diet is because I bought Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I've seen this book mentioned many times on the internet but it's fairly hard to find here, so I had to special-order it, and it just came in. Yay! I had another craving for sweets (although I've been fairly good with that all week) so I made this:

Glazed Orange Scones from Vegan with a Vengeance

I tried to make them a bit healthier by substituting half of the white flour with spelt (I slightly increased the baking powder), using applesauce in place of the oil, and reducing the sugar. They still turned out pretty good, although I don't really want to know how much better they might've been if I'd followed the recipe exactly. I was happy with them.

Anyway, it's getting late now and I'm very tired, but I shall post again very soon!

Fruit Salad + More Strawberries!

Well, my mom just dropped off some more strawberries, so expect another strawberry recipe soon (although I hear it's the last week of the season and I only get strawberries when they're local, so after this week, that'll be it for the strawberry recipes).

A couple of weeks ago I had an over-abundance of fruit and decided to make a fruit salad. Me making fruit salad is rare because I love fruit so much that usually I'll just eat it as is instead of bothering to make anything out of it, but when there's too much, I have to get creative. I was pretty happy with my fruit salad - it was light, had a nice combination of textures and the right amount of tang. Here is the recipe:

Fruit Salad with Walnuts and Mint

3 kiwis, peeled and chopped
1 banana, sliced
1 1/2 cups of strawberries, hulled and chopped
1 pear, cored and chopped
1 apple, cored and chopped
1/3 cup orange juice
3 tbsp walnuts, chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped

Prepare the fruit and combine in a large bowl. Pour the orange juice over the fruit, then sprinkle on the walnuts and mint. Toss to combine, and voila! Makes 4-5 servings

*I think this recipe would work also with different combinations of fruit. I'm not sure about cantaloupe or honeydew or grapefruit, but probably oranges, grapes or other berries. Differing amounts of the fruit listed would probably also be fine. But I think the walnuts and mint are a must.

Sorry I don't have a photo of this recipe, maybe I will sometime in the future.

Strawberry Cream Cheeze Pie (vegan)

Okay, it tastes way way better than it looks - I'm not the greatest at cutting pies to make them look pretty...

Today I made strawberry cream cheeze pie, based on my mom's recipe. It was a really sunny day and I went swimming with some friends, and then we came home and ate some pie. Yum. My mom is a genius when it comes to making pies. Apple, blueberry, rhubarb, strawberry-rhubarb, strawberry cream cheese....and best of all, her crust recipe has always been vegan and it's really easy! Here is her white pie crust recipe, followed by a whole-wheat adaptation by myself:


Mom's Cold-Water Pie Crust

1 cup + 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup oil (scant)
2 tbsp cold water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the oil and water. Mix well, then roll out or press onto a pie plate as with any other pie crust recipe. makes 1 crust


Angela's Whole Wheat Pie Crust

2/3 cup white flour
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 tbsp cold water

Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the oil and water. Mix well, then roll out or press onto a pie plate as with any other pie crust recipe. makes 1 crust


And now for the purpose of making the pie crust: Strawberry Cream Cheeze Pie!


Strawberry Cream Cheeze Pie

Filling:
1 pkg. (8 oz) tofutti plain cream cheeze
4 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp soymilk

Strawberry Glaze:
3 cups of strawberries, washed and hulled
1/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup water

1 pie crust recipe (above)

Bake the pie crust in the oven at 350 degrees until slightly golden, about 15-20 minutes. Let cool. Meanwhile, blend the filling ingredients together and then spread over the cooled pie crust. Place about 20 strawberries on the cream cheeze layer with the tips pointing up, and set aside. For the glaze, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large saucepan. Add the water and stir. Add the rest of the strawberries and cook at medium-low heat, stirring and mashing the berries as they cook (I use a potato masher). Bring to a slow boil, stirring constantly, and boil for about 3 minutes, until it starts to thicken. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Pour over the whole berries & cream cheeze layer (be careful not to let it overflow!). Then chill for at least 1 hour (preferably overnight). Makes 1 pie

Strawberries on the cream cheeze layer

All finished!

And now the strawberries are all gone: (

More Vegan Recipes Coming Soon...

In case I forget, here are some recipes I hope to be posting (along with photos) in the near future:

-strawberry cream cheeze pie (veganized version of my mom's recipe)
-strawberry almond cake
-coconut french toast
-almond creme brulee
-vegan cream puffs (I first made non-vegan ones when I was 11)
-Wooden Monkey copycat rice bowl
-adzuki bean stir-fry

Expect another strawberry recipe later this week, I still have 1 pint of strawberries left to use up...

First Post: a Fancy Vegan Sunday Brunch

A couple of friends came over for brunch today. Since it's strawberry season and my mom just gave me 4 pints of strawberries, I wanted to use them in the brunch and decided to make coconut french toast with strawberry sauce, accompanied by some scrambled tofu. Yum!


Unforunately it didn't occur to me to take pictures (this blogging thing is new to me) until people started getting seconds, so the pictures aren't as pretty as they could be. Oh well. The french toast was topped with the strawberry sauce (made from strawberries blended with some maple syrup), sliced strawberries, and toasted shredded coconut. So tasty. I made the coconut french toast by modifying a regular french toast recipe I already had, but I wasn't completely happy with it. I will try to make it better, and when I do, I shall post the recipe (along with some better pictures).

The scrambled tofu recipe, however, is my own creation. I have made it many times and can post with confidence. Here it is:


Angela's Scrambled Tofu with Mushrooms and Spinach

1 block (approx 16 oz.) firm or extra-firm tofu
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup of mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp* red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp* turmeric
1/2 tsp* paprika
2 tsp* cumin
1/2 tsp* curry powder (optional)
1/2 tsp salt, or 1 tbsp braggs
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 to 1 cup of baby spinach or chopped spinach
salt & pepper, to taste

*I usually don't use measurements, so these are just approximations - add a bit less than these amounts at first, maybe, and then judge by looking/tasting and adjusting accordingly

In a frying pan on medium heat, saute the onions in the olive oil for about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and mushrooms, cooking until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms soft (about 4 minutes). Crumble the tofu (for the best texture, I squeeze it through my fist) and add it to the pan, followed by the spices, salt and tomato. Stir. Turn up the heat and cook until most of the liquid is gone, stirring occasionally. Add the spinach and cook for a couple of minutes, then season with salt and pepper, and eat - but let it cool down a bit first!
Serves 4


I went to the (fairly) new Asian grocery near my apartment last week and was very excited to discover that they sell tofu by the bucket for $2.30! Before that, I was biking 40 minutes every couple of weeks to this other Asian grocery to get buckets of tofu because it was the only place I knew of that sold them. Yay buckets of tofu at the Asian grocery! They are so cheap and fresh and good (not organic, but I can't usually afford that). I read about them in the tofu section of the Cooking by Kittee website (awesome website!). Anyway, the point of this rant is that I used this tofu to make the scrambled tofu today.