what are your favorite green foods?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
it's so easy to be green, esp. when you're vegan
what are your favorite green foods?
Monday, March 30, 2009
spinach a la rachel
hi everyone! i hope y'all have had a great weekend. it was a tad chilly in southern indiana, but that didn't stop me from cooking. i made spinach a la rachel. i'm sure it probably has a fancier name, but all i know it as "that awesome shit rachel makes."
maybe it's just me, but do any of you out there think chickpeas look like little butts? point in case is the one sitting over yonder on the left hand side of the photo. i think butts are adorable. anyway, here's the unmeasured recipe:
- fresh spinach
- olive oil
- garlic granules
- raisins
- chickpeas
- balsamic vinegar
- sea salt
wash and chop yo spinach. now sautee it in olive oil and sprinkle in the garlic granules, raisins, and chickpeas. don't over cook or you'll end up with mush. sprinkle with sea salt and balsamic to taste.
Friday, March 27, 2009
i'm craving this

pixie pine has an awesome entry on her favorite things and i thought i'd do that but i'm too lazy. do any of you facebook? is that even a verb? feel free to send me a friend request and you'll learn all sorts of heinous stuff about me.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
uuuh, uh-uh me so corny, oooh me so corny!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
better late than never: how i spent world meat-out day at work


Tuesday, March 24, 2009
a nice rawish salsa type thingy
chocolate covered katie is always talking about her chocolate covered song of the day, and i thought of the following song when i think about my beautiful vegan life. it's by the barenaked ladies-(i'm not a huge fan of their work, but the song is awfully cute) and it's from their "snacktime" album:
The houses are built with leafy lettuce.
The light posts are all rubbery asparagus, in Vegetable Town.
The roads are paved with sautéed onions.
Community hall is a hollow pumpkin, in Vegetable Town.
Won't you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Won't you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Where we can ride the zucchini subway,
or watch the carrot planes land on the runway.
In Vegetable Town. In Vegetable Town.
Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
In Vegetable town. In Vegetable Town.
Would you walk with me down to Vegetable Town?
Monday, March 23, 2009
well, butter mah biscuits!
Friday, March 20, 2009
can you see the steam rising?
as usual i don't have a recipe for the pesto because i throw what i think will work in the blender and it comes out awesome every time:
fresh cilantro
1/2 onion
lime juice
cumin
your choice of nut (almonds work best) a handful
nooch
water
ms. dash chipotle blend
sea salt
blend together until smooth. pour on raw dough, top with veggies and bake according to the pizza dough directions.
btw, happy world meat-out day! we had a potluck at work. once again, forgot the camera, but took pictures with my phone. will post those pics later.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
mayo i offer you a cupcake?
for now, the hunt for that perfect mayo cake continues. anyone have one?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
that's how i roll: from the food porn vault
i learned the secret to getting good sushi is (duh) a tight roll. vin mumbled, it's like rolling a big doobie! and i had to chuckle b/c i don't know jack squat about that sport either. when it was my turn i did a good job, but i really had to take my time and focus. i was afraid of messing it up the whole time while rolling it.
here's the finished product. between the four of us, i believe we cleaned the plate. there was another plate left, but we divided that up for lunches the next day.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
best played on random
this is the asparagus quiche with tarragon from veganomicon. i picked it by closing my eyes and flipping to a page. unlike most vegan quiches that use nooch and tofu, this one is made of white beans, asparagus, and walnuts. lemme tell y'all, i was excited about finding another use for asparagus and beans. the flavors were nice and savory, but it wasn't anything i'd shout to the rooftops about. i didn't really pay attention to the prep/cooking time and spent the said hour and 2o minutes preparing this dish. if i made this in the future, i would have made the crust way in advance and prepped my ingredients to save time in the kitchen. yeah, wouldn't it be awesome to have time to do that? my fellow foodie moms-(esp. ones with toddlers) should know what i'm talkin' about.
do any of you get frustrated with getting really rad cookbooks, then another one comes out and you haven't even used the ones you have? i'm kind of on a cookbook ban of sorts for a while until i use the ones i have. then there' s the internet. there are a metric buttload of vegan recipes and others that are dying to be veganized. i get overwhelmed easily.
i'll end this on some random good news: vin bought me a kosher for passover cake mix that is vegan if you don't make it with butter, eggs, and milk. this gets a little tricky b/c soy is prohibited during passover if you follow ashkenazic tradition. i do choose to follow that, so i think i'll use ground flax seeds as my egg and a nice home made-(commercial nut milks have soy in them) nut milk for the milk. i'll sub the butter for canola oil and it should be good.
Monday, March 16, 2009
me want cookie!
so what if cookie monster can't get his grammar right? when you're eating these cookies grammar don't mean nothing. these are the sesame ginger peanut cookies from veganomicon. i was adventurous and just picked recipes at random by opening a page and going, "oh, i'll make that."
if you're like me, you know that if you get a lap dance from a stripper you know that you never ever get rid of the body glitter that gets rubbed on your face. why am i mentioning this? much like a visit to a strip club, these cookies were a chewy crunchy bit of heaven, but i got sesame seeds all over the place. i mean c'mon-- i had a cookie two days ago, brushed my teeth with the fervor of someone with OCD, and still woke up to find one on my tongue and pressed to the side of my cheek. so maybe they should be called erotic dancer cookies.
okay okay, you busted me. i've never been to a strip club, but i've heard stories about the glitter.
Friday, March 13, 2009
eggplant bacon? get outta here!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
from the food porn vault
i keep lots of pics of meals i've eaten, but i don't post them all just in case i don't have anything to blog about. pictured above is a fairly mediocre dinner of grilled tofu over a bed of mai fun noodles and a bag of those "asian style" frozen veggies you get at kroger's. the sauce is the firecracker sauce -(that they use on the firecracker tillapia) from chili's--they had frozen bags of it at my food bank. i called the HQ and asked them for a list of ingredients. accidentally vegan! the sauce was super spicy and like the rug from the big lebowski, tied everything together.
one thing i had to experience a harsh learning lesson in was cooking dishes with rice noodles. this is probably a big "duh" with the rest of you, but until going vegan i never really read directions on packaged food. so every time i made rice noodles, i cooked them and they ended up as a big sticky ball of goo. you're supposed to soak them in cold or warm water for a prescribed amount of time and add them to the dish last. that way they're firm and yummy. no comet of mangled rice noodles and veggies-yay!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
breakfast for dinner
upcoming adventures: i'm making eggplant bacon tomorrow night. got the idea from the ppk forum. we'll see how it goes.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Rockin' the french toast
you know how i said i'm picky about my tofu scramble, and how i only like my own? well, i feel the same way about my french toast. i've tried a couple of recipes and they just don't do it for me. here's my recipe. the key is using bananas. they brown the bread really well, and they add a natural sweetness so you don't have to drown them in maple syrup-(although a little syrup never hurt nobody nohow).
jewbacca's vegan french toast:
you'll need:
really stale bread (a loaf of crusty french works best, but i used old hoagie buns in the pic above)
2-3 super overripe bananas
1 1/4 c. non-dairy milk
1t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1t vanilla
1T flax seeds
cut your loaf of bread in nice diagonal shapes if you feel fancy. otherwise, get your bread together and set aside. if you don't have stale bread handy, you can dry bread out in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes, but check your bread to make sure it is good and tough.
take those wet ingredients and puree the shit outta them in a blender. pour the mixture in a nice wide shallow bowl.
heat a NON STICK skillet. use oil or non-stick spray if you do the low-fat thang. PLEASE use a non-stick skillet or you'll just be pissed and sad. dredge your stale bread in the french toast mixture and cook for a few minutes on each side, flipping it until the sides are nice and toasty brown. for some fun presentation, you can also dip whole pieces of less stale bread in the mixture and put them in well greased muffin tins for french toast cups. this isn't my idea, i just saw that somewhere once. you can also take your stale bread and crumble it up mixing it with the french toast mixture and press it into a shallow casserole dish and cook it at 350 for about 25-30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean, then you have**VOILA**french toast casserole!
now how about that interview? bianca from vegan crunk has this interview thingy going on, and i thought i'd play along. lemme know if you want in the pool, k?
1) If you could only get your protein from one source, which food would you choose?
i'm a sucker for tempeh. i could easily eat an entire package by myself.
2) How did you choose the name for your blog?
well, it is my observation that most (not all) but most non-vegans view vegans as pains in the ass. granted there are some vegans out there that warrant that label, but i don't really think i'm one of them. conversely so, i think some omnis are a pain the ass. i guess if i think about it even further being a pain-in-the-ass knows no age, gender, sexual identity, faith, political party, or eating habit. i gave the blog the title because i wanted to challenge the omni notion of: why is it "normal" for you to eat the way you do, but annoying to you that i choose to eat the way i do? for the record, i am a live-and-let-omnis-live vegan. i don't fault anyone for eating the way they choose to eat. my partner is an omni and our son is a vegetarian.
3) What's your all-time favorite dessert?
chocolate chip cookies just outta the oven. to cut down on the sweetness, i like to put a scoop of vanilla soy delicious on the top.
4) How long have you been veg? And what sparked the change in you?
i've been on and off the veg wagon for years. i started when i was 15 after reading an article in sassy magazine. i didn't know how to cook then so i ate a lot of pb&j sammiches. in 1999 i went vegan because my girlfriend at the time was vegan. she did all the cooking. so when she left, so did the vegan eats. i mean i tried, but how fun is it to eat nothing but luna bars and soy milk? i bounced back and forth from vegetarian and omnivorism. i guess i just forgot about my connection with food. in june of last year my supervisor brought in a copy of veg news with her to work and i read it cover to cover. i thought to myself, y'know why did you lose your way jen? what can you do to get back on track? i decided that day i'd get back on the bus. i made a 3 week transition from veg. to veganism and haven't looked back since. i did a TON of homework and practiced some vegan cooking. each week i got better and better. now i LOVE to cook for myself and i really don't miss the way i used to eat. i consider making omni food vegan a fun challenge.
5) If you were president, what's the first thing you would do? outlaw fast food restaurants, factory farms, and create a financial incentive for farmers to grow quality organic food for EVERYONE, not just those who can afford it. i'd also create a 'green initiative' that gave tax breaks to any individual, family, or business that utilized green practices: organic farming, recycling, eating a vegetarian or vegan diet.
To play along:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." If a few people want interviews, I will randomly pick 2.
2. I will respond by commenting on your blog with five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Hag Sameach!
now what's "hamantaschen"? it's a triangular shaped cookie filled with a sweet filling (fruit, poppy seeds, nut paste, or chocolate) to represent the hat of Haman, some giant douchebag that tried to extinguish the jews-(throughout history there's always been someone trying to do that!) but failed miserably. so we eat his hat? yeah, it doesn't make sense but neither does the holiday of purim. it's kind of like mardi gras: we dress in wacky costumes, party it up, read the book of esther, and eat these cookies. we don't eat a lot of fatty foods though, that's for chanukkah.
so anyway, back to these cookies! they were very tasty, a nice buttery soft shortbread accompanied by a mixture of almond paste and pears. these would go well with tea. my problem is that i had always relied on the other ladies at synagogue to make hamantaschen and never learned to make it myself. i folded pretty triangles pre-oven, but they became kind of warped in the baking process and looked kind of odd. pictured above are the prettiest ones. i took the ugly ones to a gathering of my omni-goyfriends and they inhaled them so fast the plate stuck to someone's face. cool.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
let them eat cake
Friday, March 6, 2009
you ain't seen nuthin till your down on a muffin


people couldn't believe they were vegan. i don't know what it is about some omnivores that are so amazed that vegan food is tasty. honestly, do they think most of the food we make tastes like dirt? i discussed this with my spouse and he told me that vegan cooking has definitely evolved since the 90's. he had a college friend that made some cookies and brought them to a party he was at and they did in fact, taste like dirt.
baked goods is a group of foods that can be easily veganized. i know i'm preaching to the choir here, but i'm getting more vegetarians and omnivores reading this blog-(yay!), so i thought i'd let them in on all the alternatives:
eggs: silken tofu (pureed), apple sauce, mushed bananas, ground flaxseeds+water, NRG egg replacer, i've discovered that if you don't have applesauce around you can puree pears or peaches and get the same result. most recently i used some baby food pears my son wouldn't eat in a loaf of miki's pumpkin bread. it turned out great. i would think you could use any kind of baby food fruit as a binder or replacement for oil to make things lower in fat-(if you're into that sort of thing).
butter: canola oil or earth balance does just fine. i've never used olive oil, but i heard that doesn't work so well for baking sweets. anyone ever try this in a pinch? spectrum makes a shortening that is vegan.
milk: with the rise of people realizing that they are lactose intolerant, there are too many milks on the market to count- soy, rice, hemp, and almond are just the tip of the iceberg in the non-dairy milk world. silk brand is the cadillac of soy milks. almond breeze is nice too.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
good evening, clarice
no-no, not about your hygiene practices. he clearly stated he loved this burrito.
hannibal lecter probably wouldn't like this dish because there isn't any human flesh in it. i mean, i could be wrong because his character was an insanely brilliant man and had a always had a hankering for fine cuisine--so who knows maybe he would like this. (((taking bite)))) yeah, he would.
this is the melting pot burrito i made last night. inside is a medley of spinach, corn, black beans, rice, rotell tomatoes with lime, and some great northern beans. it's all been wrapped up in a rice flour burrito shell and topped with tofutti sour cream, salsa verde, salsa, guac, and some of that lovey-dovey cheez sauce from p. 68 in the ultimate uncheez cookbook. to my knowledge, this dish is accidentally gluten free. when i make something a la melting pot, that just means i've purged the pantry and freezer. on a deeper level, when i look at this gem and meditate upon all the colors and textures involved, i think of our awesome country. awesome in an awesome way, of course. not in that blind ultra nationalist way. i guess if i were that type of person i wouldn't necessarily keep a vegan blog, would i? wait, was that a tacky sentiment? oh well, i'm far from perfect.
but that baby sure was tasty. i piled a little too much on top, so some of the flavors of the burrito were masked by the toppings. it took me going vegan to notice my habit of drowning my food in toppings. every now and then that's fine, but i realize i really miss out on a good culinary experience by not tasting the main ingredients.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
from the food porn vault
tonight i'm makin' what i like to call melting pot burritos. that's just code speak for freezer and pantry purge. pics to follow soon.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
leftovertown, population one
fyi: sometimes i don't have time to post a real food porn pic and entry and will often blather on about a product i like. an example of this is the entry about the dark chocolates. this by no means is a directive to any of you readers. i realize all you purdy peeps are grown up and can think for yourselves.
speaking of thinking for yourself, i have to get this out. sometimes i don't always like the campaigns that a certain animal-rights group comes out with to gain new members. point in case: the sexiest vegetarian award. c'mon PETA: vegans come in all shapes and sizes. sure-sure the contestants are all aesthetically pleasing, but in that very commercial sort of way that markets to the male gaze. for an elastic second, i considered sending them a photo of me making a funny face to make a point, but i don't feel like playing ping-pong with their marketing department.
it took me a long time to come to this conclusion (and this will probably shock my spouse to read my typed words) but I AM BEAUTIFUL and SO ARE YOU. we all have the capacity to be sexy or ugly, and to beat a cliche to death it really is all about who you are on the inside. i have no doubt that some of the winners from that contest are great people, but i don't think looks alone provide a solid enough foundation for sex appeal.
Monday, March 2, 2009
when the moon hits the sky like a big pizza pie...
Sunday, March 1, 2009
behold, the s'more muffin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)