Salad Staples

Spinach Salad with Salmon, Dried Bing Cherries and Cheddar Cheese

I like my food colorful :)

Salad Staples for the Autumn months:
~Greens (spinach; kale; romaine)
~Reds (beets; dried cherries; dried cranberries)
~Orange (carrots or sweet potatoes, gently roasted for texture)
~Yellows (roasted potatoes; yellow bell pepper)

The first time I made the salad with Romaine, roasted beets and carrots, we put a vegan raspberry vinaigrette on it which was delicious and I said "it needs something yellow." The next time I made it, I put the yellow bell pepper on top. It added this watery, summery freshness that I didn't really want, but everyone else liked it.

For whatever reasons, I really enjoy doing plates half salad and half starchy potatoes; small red potatoes roasted with thyme and rosemary are delicious, and spicy sweet potato fries with tons of crushed red pepper are a good go-to every day--I love sweet potato fries more than life itself.

The salmon was an impulse buy from Whole Foods. I don't ordinarily shop at Whole Foods, but I'd been reading about these Spectrum Fish Oil Tabs that are derived from non-threatened fishies and I wanted some. I get plenty of omega-3s from flax seeds, but I go in and out of phases with flax seeds, so I wanted to check these out. Of course, the ones I wanted were twice the price of all the others, but I had fish on the brain so I figured I'd check out the fillets.

I know that buying Salmon is really bad. I know that buying pretty much any kind of fish is a bad bad idea, and I probably shouldn't have. But I did. It was $10 for two lovely looking fillets (they were on sale, of course) and I took them home and immediately cooked some up for my lunch. It was sinfully delicious, and the kittens loved the skins and bits I tossed them while I was prepping. I froze the rest and snacked on it for the next few days, but I think that was my allotment of fish for the next few months; I have to do my penance for buying it.

Beet & Sweet Potato Hash

This is what we had for dinner the other day. The verdict? DELICIOUS!! I love it because I love root vegetables (beet & sweet potatoes are some of my favourite parts of wintertime fooding), and also because the recipe utilizes the beet greens too, so you can buy a bunch of smallish beets and also use the greens. The second time I made this recipe I only had one large beet without any greens so I sauteed kale instead, and that also came out really good.



First, chop one sweet potato and about two (med sized) beets and roast for about 40 min with olive oil, salt & pepper. (keep them on separate sides of the pan so the potatoes don't get stained.) Cook a cup of quinoa (half a cup of dry quinoa to one cup water) & poach the eggs (one per plate), then thinly slice the beet greens (or whatever greens you're using) and saute in oil with salt & pepper. Chop a leek, add that, and saute until everything's cooked. Then throw in the roasted root veggies and quinoa and stir, then put a serving on each plate (between the two of us, we finish this off every time but it would be easy to do three smaller portions with something else on the side) and top each plate with a poached egg and a sprinkle of pepper.

This was my first time poaching eggs! Since watching the Julie & Julia movie (I wouldn't recommend it; Amy Adams as Julie is insufferable) I've been wanting to eat EVERYTHING with BUTTER, and I was intimidated by the thought of poaching eggs, but it's ridiculously simple. You bring the water to a boil, then add a tablespoon of vinegar and reduce the heat so it's not rolling so much. Then crack each egg in to a teacup or measuring cup, so that you can immerse something in to the water and slide it out slowly, rather than just cracking the egg and dropping it in to hot water. So easy! Cook it in the simmering water for about thee minutes depending on how goopy you want the yolk to be (goopy egg yolks used to gross me out, but if you're eating good eggs they're actually pretty delicious--just sop them up with something). Three minutes gets the white cooked firmly and the yolk still goopy, and cooking it for longer starts to solidify the yolk which I think is gross.

I also did this recipe with a scrambled egg on top of each plate instead, and I liked it slightly more. The scrambled egg is nice and mild and took away from some of the saltiness, but J loves poached eggs, so we've done it both ways. Delicious either way & definitely lacking without. Yum!!

Vegan Chilli

I made this chilli a couple weeks ago from a recipe I found for "Bison Chilli." The recipe called for a pound of ground bison. I know I've been strictly pescatarian for at least the past decade, but is "ground bison" really the kind of thing your average joe has lying around the house? I used a package of tempeh instead, and crumbled it with my hands. No blood, no scary mad-cow microbes, no worries about salmonella or the like, and the chilli was both vegan and delicious.

The cornbread recipe went along with it. Combined, the recipe called for a whole zucchini and a cup of frozen corn, then half of each go in the bread and the other halves of each went in the chilli, but the bread also called for eggs, and then I went and melted cheese on top. I had a vegan friend of mine over for dinner and she had her bowl of chilli unadorned.

It's actually good both ways! This evening I wanted chilli again and had a bunch of canned veggies lying around, but no zucchini.

For this recipe, I used:
1 Tbsp Peanut Oil
1 white onion, chopped
1 Tbsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 can diced tomatoes (the kind with green chilli is good, but I couldn't find it for this batch)
1 can white beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 cup vegetable broth
1 tablespoon flour

Super cheap (I got the peanut oil for free from the charity house several months ago--good stuff) and delicious, but next time I'm throwing in a whole green chile and maybe some bell pepper too.

The rest of my evening?

A cuppa loose herbal tea, and some Tim Wise videos.

Vegan Chai Latte Mini-Cupcakes

I made these for the potluck I mentioned at the end of my last post. The amount of batter that would have made 12 or 13 regular sized cupcakes made about 35 teeny ones; just a tablespoon of batter per cup instead of the 1/4 cup for ordinary sized ones. Baking them all was a trial, but the flavour was fantastic! I didn't have enough cardamom so I substituted half of it with garam masala. My Saudi Arabian friend was appalled ("That's for CHICKEN!") but I thought they came out just fine :D



and for size:


I got the little liners at cost plus; what an impulse buy. Since I got tiny cupcake pans, I've been all about the little novelty liners. The cucpakes were a hit at the party and I still had enough leftover to share with friends and save some batter in the freezer for next time I'm having a craving. Which never happens, but I like knowing it's there :)

ETA: The frozen and then baked cupcakes were a disaster! I learned that technique for muffins, but it does NOT apply to cupcakes: they came out weirdly peaked, with a tough outer crust and a mushy inside. Fortunately, they tasted good!

Gluten Overload

I've been cooking a lot lately; making a lot of fun new vegan experiments. I found a can of baking powder in the pantry that had expired in 2006 and thought I'd test it out by making the baking powder biscuits from Vegan with a Vengeance. They came out kind of flat because I tried to make the dough stretch too thin... Always a toss up when you're feeding a dozen. I made the vegan miso gravy to go with them, which I whizzed in the blender for a moment before heading out because it was lumpy and full of texture. Biscuits & gravy came with me to the Trinity House potluck last Thursday, where million people showed up, the biscuits and gravy were a hit, and the rest of the food was plentiful and delicious.*

Since the biscuits had only been an experimental batch, I wanted to try again using fresh baking powder, but I made too many alterations all at once and they came out too dense and doughy on the inside even though they looked overdone on the outside. We had those for dinner on Saturday with the Chickpea gravy (also from Vegan with a Vengeance). It calls for a base of chickpeas, then a bunch of whole wheat flour and a bunch of other things, and it came out more like a kind of tangy soup than gravy. I'd try making it again with less lemon juice, but I'd rather experiment with the miso gravy first; the flavour was more appealing to me, but the recipe was harder to pick out from the rest of the dish. It made a very filling dinner, but with all the wheat flour in both, I was definitely feeling some gluten overload after a little while. All we had to balance it out was some tasty fresh asparagus and a glass of Irish Red Ale from Chama which is definitely my favourite beer of all time so far. We were going to have the last of the black bean soup too, but it turned out to be too much food for the two of us. (When I think of it actually, my all time favourite beer ever would probably be a tie with the red ale and Lips of Faith from New Belgium, but that stuff is so expensive I can only fantasize about it ever anyway so it doesn't really matter.)

This morning I made vegan pancakes with fruit in them. It was my third attempt at this recipe and hands down the best so far. I've finally got the hang of it. I halved the amount of baking powder, used a little bit of extra flour, stopped mixing as soon as the flour was incorporated and found the perfect pan temperature. They were to DIE for. But again, I feel completely overloaded with all the flour and I just want to sit on the couch and groan all day. Springtime means more fresh fruit and vegetables and we're just not there quite yet.

*After the potluck, my little sister M did a presentation on Think Outside the Bomb which was fantastic, but nuclear resistance seems so huge and hopeless that I have a hard time getting pumped to try and make change. I feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all. At the same time, it really seems like they're getting a cohesive organization set up and once all the hard stuff (planning and logistics) is squared away, I'm pretty excited to get involved with the dirty work and help them out. Just point me in the right direction and I'm there!

Double Chocolate Stout Cupcakes for Spring

So, the first day of spring was Saturday. There seems to be a little bit of disagreement about this on my facebook page; some people were saying "Happy first day of spring!" on Saturday and some people said it yesterday, and a few are still insisting "Happy first day of spring!" Toady. At any rate, I think transitions are appropriate on the 20th & 21sts of months, so I'm going to say it was Saturday.

When we got up on Saturday the ground was covered in snow. Wtf, New Mexico. Not just the first day of spring, but also NEW MEXICO. It was probably the most snow we got all winter, and it's in MARCH. I don't doubt it will be snowing again on my birthday.
Here is a picture that I finally took around eleven after a lot of it had melted. (Also: I need to get on picasa.)

Anyway, since there was snow out, I HAD to bake something (obvs). After munch deliberation and noisy lamentation about items we're fresh out of (coconut milk, cornmeal, and soy yogurt), I decided to make beer cupcakes. Double chocolate stout cupcakes, as a matter of fact. And I took photos the whole time, so brace thineself, dear readers, for a photo montage of beer cupcakery.

*

Here is a glorious picture of the finished cupcakes, with the can of beer I included. The little box on the cutting board is a picture of the book I found the recipe in; a book I swear by: Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I altered the recipe slightly as I often do, but I don't have the patience to copy it all down anyway, so I'm not going to worry about any copyright infringement and just post some pictures.

Being new to blogger I have no idea what the html is for posting under a cut (or a "jump" or a "read more" link or whatever it's called today), and being impatient I have no intention of further scouring google for tips on how to do this, so for today I'm letting it all hang out. Perhaps when I find the patience or figure it out I'll come back and edit the post so the pictures are hidden, but for now you'll just have to deal. They're all pretty small anyway, and that was an accident since I'm also new to Picasa as of this afternoon, so everybody ultimately wins. Yey!



This is the vision that inspired me to take pictures of the process. All the ingredients went in to the measuring cup in the opposite order: almond milk & ACV first, then beer & molasses, then sugar last. The sugar is herbally processed evaporated cane juice I found at the Community Food Store in Colorado-- a brilliant find. It's completely vegan and exceptionally delicious; it adds extra depth to anything chocolatey I mix it in to. They call it "heavenly sugar," for obvious reasons.

So, we whisk all that together, and add it to the dry ingredients pictured here:



and you whisk that:



then you get your crumb topping:



and you put it all together for baking:


These are some fabulous silicone baking cups my sister gifted me, since I like to make cupcakes. I like things that are reusable, and cupcake liners are a thing I used to run out of a lot, so I think I'm getting her money's worth out of them. I also have the benefit of usually sharing my cupcakes in person so I can collect all my baking cups and take them home, which I realize not everyone does-- some of the more generous among us like to give them away to passersby and use disposable paper liners for practical reasons, but I don't usually hang out on the streets with cupcakes, so I like these liners.

So, we put the cupcakes in the oven and set the timer for just less than the suggested baking time, since I'm still getting used to the electric oven, then I mix up the leftover ingredients:


...and eat that with a spoon. Which I didn't take pictures of because it was messy, folks... messy and delicious.

Then I wash up:

...still in my jammies, yes... don't judge...

...and 20 minutes later:

*sounds of angels singing*

They were delicious. I shared them with my partner, since I got to hoard the kitchen that whole time, and I brought some to my friend who got hit by a car a couple weeks ago and is still hobbling around with a cane and several broken bones, poor thing. I also offered some to our friend who had a birthday, but she was recovering from the tequila all day Sunday I think, and I never heard back from her. There are four left right now, and I'm saving the last two for my little sis M and her twin brother I'll be meeting tomorrow, but letting those last two cupcakes sit there will definitely a struggle.

Anyway, this was a fantastic recipe that I'd definitely do again. If anyone wants it, I would be glad to transcribe, but I altered it a lot for this batch, adding cinnamon here and almond extract there and making adjustments for high altitude, so I can't guarantee they'll be quite this photogenic. (I might have to go eat another right now...)

*I'm still learning how to work with the gimp and I haven't figured out how to stretch a selection like the cleverly inserted picture of the cookbook I used. It's purpose in the picture was to give credit where credit is due, to the amazing Isa Chandra Moscowitz and the equally amazing Terry Hope Romero who wrote the cookbook, but I know it's too small to see. Sorry. That's what the link is really for. Just bear with me here.