Vacation Food

Well I just got back from my trip to Ottawa and Montreal, and I definitely spent all the money I saved in the weeks before the trip on food. But it was good food, so it was ok. I'm not one to take photographs of restaurant food, but I will try to describe the highlights:

Montreal

The Spirit Lounge - this was an experience that I will remember for a while. It was a small restaurant and different objects and materials covered the entire surface of the walls, ceiling, and floor. Our booth seats had a faux-snake skin cover, there was a rug on the ceiling, playing cards were glued to the wall as well as tinsel, there was writing on a mirror which was also on the wall...and those were just what was in my immediate vicinity that I remember. It was a very colorful place. The music was good as well and went from Carol King to reggae to tango to Hindi music. The owner, who was also (as far as I could tell) the waiter and cook, told us that only one meal was served each day (all-vegan), that we could have a regular or reduced portion (both for the same price) and that he didn't want to see a drop of food uneaten. I've read that in the past he used to charge $2 for not finishing your food and now he just gets angry if you don't. I guess it probably makes sense, especially because Montreal doesn't have composting. Anyway, we were first given a curried coconut milk-cauliflower soup, then a curried crepe thing that (I think) had sweet potato, regular potato, turnip, cilantro, and peach (yes, peach), among other things, then a slice of chocolate banana pineapple cake, and to finish, red bush tea with indian spices. We got the reduced portion (which was still very substantial) and every morsel of food got eaten. The soup was amazing, the crepe was good but a bit weird (too much unnecessary fruit), the cake was really good and the tea was amazing. I was shocked that some extra spices could make a tea taste so good! I will have to try it myself. very interesting place.

Aux Vivres - we went here for Saturday brunch. I was very excited to have brunch at a vegan restaurant, and it was very good. I was disappointed that there weren't any pancakes, though. Pancakes are a brunch essential, or at least french toast. Anyway, I got the 'le brunch complet' (I think that was the name), which consisted of scrambled tofu, tempeh bacon, cornbread, roasted veggies, and a bit of fruit. I'd never had tempeh bacon before, and it was awesome! That is another thing I'll have to try to make myself. Everything was pretty good.

Ottawa

Irene's - this was a little bar/pub that had vegan food. It's find of funny, the night Josh and I got in to Ottawa, we decided to go here because it was fairly late and I thought other places might be closed. We didn't have a map at the time, so it took a while to walk to Bank street, and then we realized that Bank street was quite long, but we didn't realize exactly how long it was... By the time we got there the kitchen had long shut down and all that was left was chips. So then we went back (on bicycles) the next night and I got a yummy veggie burger. I was just impressed that Irene's had a variety of vegan as well as non-vegan food - I don't know of any bar in Halifax that has a good selection of vegan food, although I don't go out much so I wouldn't know. They had soups, sandwiches, hummus & tabouli, and other vegan things. It was nice.

Caribbean Flavours - this was the first time I'd had Caribbean food. We ordered the jerk tofu roti platter, and it was the spiciest thing I've ever eaten in my entire life. Spicy curried tofu wrapped in flatbread with spicy carrots, green beans, plantains and sweet potato on the side. I drank about three glasses of water during the meal, my nose was running, my eyes were watering. It was insane. And it was the kind of spice that lingers for a while. The food was good, but next time I will never order 'jerk' anything again, or at least not soon. I'll stick with the regular tofu roti for a while, then maybe try to work my way up to the jerk tofu in a few years. This restaurant had home-brewed ginger beer, which I really enjoyed. It was sweeter than the stuff I can buy here, but it was tasty. Interesting place.

The Wild Oat - this was a health-food bakery/cafe. It wasn't strictly vegan, but it had several options. Busy place with a nice atmosphere. The first time we went, I got an 'east meets west' sandwich, which had grilled tofu and vegetables with a cilantro-something sauce. Delicious. The next day we went back for breakfast and I got, I don't remember the name very well, but something like ______ creme. I wish I could remember. Anyway, it consisted of buckwheat groats blended with flaxmeal, orange juice and banana (I think), then topped with fruit salad. I'd never heard of anything like it before, so I was intrigued. It was good - the blended part tasted almost bitter, but the fruit salad balanced it out. Interesting, very interesting.

That's it for now, but expect new recipes and pretty pictures soon!

Cheap Food, 1 Week Left

School ended last week (for the summer) and I've been celebrating by spending lots of time in the kitchen. I guess I'll start with the most recent things:

This morning I made Scones from Vegan with a Vengeance (surprise, surprise). They were quite tasty.

Last night my friend Jeanna came over for supper and I decided to make Ethiopian food from the Cooking with Kittee website.

Dazee's Misr Allecha (gingery red lentils) and Yetakelt W'et (spicy vegetable stew), served with quinoa

It was delicious. I would have preferred injera (Ethiopian flat bread stuff), but Halifax only has one Ethiopian restaurant (there used to be two but they were across the street from each other and one of them had to win out), let alone an Ethiopian grocery that sells injera (if there is and I've somehow missed it, let me know!). So quinoa sufficed alright. These two recipes seemed to use up all the things I was worried would go bad if I didn't use them soon - leftover tomato paste, vegetable stock, frozen vegetables...it was great! All of the ingredients were things I had already, and even if I didn't, none of them are expensive (although I did substitute dried cayenne for the jalapenos). The Niter Kibbeh (spiced oil) and Berbere (roasted spice mix) take extra time to make, but once you make them they last for quite a while, and I made mine a couple of months ago. I think that next time I want to save money I should just make lots of Ethiopian food. Yum.

I have no photo documentation of this, but last week I tried to make my own soy milk. Tried. It was quite a disappointment. I used the recipe from How it all Vegan, and whether it was my fault or the recipe's, I don't know. I won't go into too much detail, but making soy milk takes hours. First you soak the beans, then you blend them in batches with boiling water, then you pot it in a pot and boil it, then you let it cool, then you strain it out (the pulp is called okara and can be used in other recipes - I've saved mine with the intention of making a curry with it later this week, we'll, see how that goes), then you put it in a double-boiler and cook for half an hour. The fact that it took a whole evening to make made it all the more disappointing that the soy milk didn't turn out. It was watery and beany-tasting. I'm forcing myself to use it up by mixing it half-and-half with store-bought soy milk. Maybe I didn't blend it long enough, or maybe I got the proportions wrong. Last time I made soymilk (I've only tried once before) I used the same recipe and also screwed up, but it was because I tried to make it coconut-soy milk by adding coconut to the soybean puree and adding coconut extract later. It was a failure in that the coconut flavour was way too overpowering, but it was nice and thick and the coconut must have masked the beaniness. I read somewhere after that peeling the skins off the soybeans after soaking them gets rid of the beany flavour, maybe next time I'll try that and use more soybeans than the recipe calls for, if I get the guts to try this again.

Now for a food tangent: I went to Montreal for the first time three years ago, and I remember going to a vegan restaurant called Aux Vivres for lunch and coffee. I've been back there since then and it was in a bigger, different space that felt totally different and not as charming as the first time I was there. Anyway, The atmosphere, the music, the brass railings and the plants by the big front window stuck in my head for a long time (in fact, they're there right now). And I was given coconut-soy milk for my coffee. I know it was just in coffee, but the coconut-soymilk was delicious. I asked the waitress where it came from and she said it was home-made. So I've been dreaming about it ever since. I wonder if they just mixed soymilk with coconut milk, or if they added coconut extract to soymilk, or if they made soymilk and added the coconut at some point in the process. I guess I'll never know.

Now, back to food I've been making and not dreaming about. Well, I made a tasty curry. And I know I took a picture, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Oh well. It was based on the Coconut Curried Tofu with Green Jasmine Rice recipe from http://www.randomgirl.com/, but it was a cheapo version. I can't remember all the changes I made, but I used shallots instead of green onion, I used a regular tomato instead of baby tomatoes, I used dried cilantro instead of fresh, and I ommited the shredded coconut. Oh and I also didn't bother with fancy rice and just served it on plain brown rice. And I added a bunch of green beans and eyeballed most of the ingredients. I don't know if I made enough changes to warrant calling it my own recipe adaptation, so I won't post exactly what I did. But it was so tasty that Josh ate all the leftovers before there were any. Ha. But I've tried this recipe following the directions & ingredients exactly, and it's really really good, so if you can afford to go out and buy all the ingredients, you should really make it. It will not dissapoint. And adding a few green beans won't hurt it, either.

Rice Bowls and Meteor-Watching + a smoothie

I'm amazed at how much extra money I spend (waste) on food. I haven't been going crazy or anything with not spending money on food, but I've been able to cut back quite a bit. Basically I've been trying to use as much stuff in my cupboards and freezer as I can. More grains and beans. I've been packing all my lunches and coffee to take to work and school instead of buying them. I'm not going to cut vegetables and fruit out of my diet, though, so I have been going to the grocery store for some small things, but I won't buy anything expensive. Last week I ate mashed potatoes with the punk rock chickpea gravy and vegetables and miso soup a lot. Later this week I'm probably going to make Ethiopian food. So I've still been cooking a lot, but I won't choose a recipe that I need to buy half or more of the ingredients for and then make it - I'm only making things I have most of the ingredients for already. It's not too bad.

I made this yesterday. It was originally supposed to be a knock-off of the rice bowl at the Wooden Monkey, but it's been a few weeks since I went there and I can't afford to go back for a while, so I don't really care if it tastes exactly the same, it's more 'inspired' by the version at the Wooden Monkey.

Rice Bowl

Rice Bowl

1/2 lb firm tofu, cut in 1/2-inch cubes

2 tsp. sesame oil

1/4 cup braggs

1/8 cup rice vinegar

1 1/2 cups uncooked short-grain brown rice

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup chinese cabbage, sliced thinly

1/2 cup almonds, toasted and chopped*

Start cooking the rice. Put the tofu in a shallow dish and add 1 tsp. sesame oil, the braggs and rice vinegar. Mix gently and allow to marinate. Prep the vegetables. Heat the rest (1 tsp) of the sesame oil in a skillet on medium heat. Add the onions and cook until almost translucent, about 2 minutes. Drain the tofu (reserving the marinade), and add it to the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another 2 minutes. Remove from heat. When the rice is almost done, add the chinese cabbage, the stuff in the skillet, and the almonds. Pour the tofu marinade and mix together. Cook about 3 minutes, then remove from heat. Serves approx. 4

*to toast the almonds, just cook them whole in a small skillet at medium-high heat for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, until they brown a little bit. WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK. Chop afterwards.

Last night was the biggest meteor shower of the year. In Halifax, at least. A group of my friends decided to get together to watch. It was really interesting. A lot of time was spent staring at the sky, waiting, then of course when people started to get distracted because nothing was happening, someone would say "I see one!" and then everyone else would look up. Those sneaky meteors are too fast, though, so they'd miss it. Anyway, I decided to bring an appropriate treat to munch on while meteor-watching: rebel rocks from Cooking with Kittee. That website is amesome, I used to have an unhealthy obsession with it. Every recipe I've tried from it is delicious. This one was no exception.

Rebel Rocks from Cooking with Kittee website

Yesterday was really hot out, so (while stocking up on fruit and veggies) Josh decided to get a watermelon. Then he went home and made an amazing smoothie. It was seriously the most refreshing smoothie I've ever tasted. I will include the recipe, but let it be known that Josh made it, and not me. OK? OK. Oh and the recipe is extremely simple, but I say simple is often better, especially when it comes to smoothies.

Josh's Watermelon-Banana Smoothie

Josh's Watermelon-Banana Smoothie

2 frozen bananas, roughly chopped
1 cup of soymilk
2 cups of watermelon, roughly chopped
2 ice cubes

Throw it all in a blender or food processor, and blend for a minute or two. That's it, but it is sooooo good!
serves 2-4

Natal Day Brunch + Miso Soup + Poor for Three Weeks

So I'm going on a little trip in three weeks (to Ottawa and Montreal) and have decided that I really need to save money, so I'm going to try to spend as little money on groceries as possible until then. So my meals will probably get increasingly more boring. We'll see, anyway.

I made this yesterday using mostly local & balcony-garden-grown veggies. I thought it was pretty successful.


Simple Summer Miso Soup

6-8 cups water (depends how you like your soup, I like mine hearty)
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1/2 cup green beans, stemmed and cut in inch-long pieces
1 3-inch piece wakame
2 tbsp dulse
3 tbsp nori (not the flat sushi type - if this isn't available, just add more wakame or dulse)
1/2 cup chinese cabbage, sliced thinly
1/2 block tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/3 cup chives, chopped
approx. 1/4 cup miso, to taste (I use rice miso)*

Bring the water to a boil. Add carrots, green beans and seaweed, then simmer 15 minutes. Add the tofu and chinese cabbage and simmer 5 minutes more. Add chives, turn off heat, and add miso, making sure it dissolves properly.

*I don't usually eat all the soup at once, and since heating miso kills valuable nutrients, I leave the miso out until I have my soup heated and in a bowl, and then I dissolve it in approx. 1 tsp per bowl.

On Natal day (Halifax's birthday), I decided to make a nice, satisfying brunch for Josh and I.

(Sorry about the bad photo): Herb-Roasted Potatoes from Vegan with a Vengeance, Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy (from the same book) over Kitty's Drop Biscuits, and some steamed broccoli. Yummy.

We ate it on the balcony, and it was a beautiful day. A very nice meal. Next time I make the potatoes I think I'll half the amount of salt, but other than that, the meal was great.

From last week: Fauxstess Cupcakes from Vegan with a Vengeance. I love that book! These were fun to make and very tasty, but I ate too much! My problem (one of them) is that I like to bake (I find it really relaxing) but then I get stuck with all this unhealthy food. I wish I loved sauteing, roasting, and other cooking methods as much as I love baking. I wish I came home after a really busy day and thought to myself, "Hmm, I think I'll make up a batch of dolmas tonight."

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!