What do I mean? Well a bowl is any combination of grain + protein + veggie, usually including a sauce. Such an excellent concept. I made a bowl with baked tofu (favorite food ever), brown rice, and sesame-seed-studded broccoli:

I made a quinoa-zucchini-white bean bowl with the Romesco sauce from the cookbook.

That’s the night I ate an entire zucchini.

With the leftover quinoa and rice, I made a stuffed pepper! First I sauteed some onion plus spices – I think paprika, white pepper, maybe fennel seeds? Then I mixed the onion and leftover grains with some French lentils I cooked up. Then I baked it in an oven! And ate it with salad.

Not a bowl (more of a plate) or from an oven, but I also roasted some beets and potatoes and ate them with the sauteed beet greens plus Swiss chard and chick peas. I put tomato sauce on the chick peas because it sounded delicious, and everything else was red. Guess they wanted to play too.

These are Kahlua balls.

VEGAN Kahlua balls, no less. They are as delicious as they sound. Kahlua + chocolate rolled in sugar basically.

Then my dad made this delicious thing while I was in Ohio for winter break. Behold:

Kale (sauteed in olive oil no doubt), a cauliflower steak, and Romesco sauce, topped with an olive and pumpkin seed garnish. That Romesco sauce is so rich and flavorful, I think I ate some spoonfuls of it. You would have, too.

Lately I have been very into salads. Lettuce, you know?

Get out of there, cat! What has been dramatically improving these heaps of greens is not only the toppings (broccoli, alfalfa sprouts, chick peas, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds here) but the dressings. Lately I can’t get enough of Annie’s Goddess Dressing and Brianna’s Poppy Seed. Back when I ate dairy, ranch dressing was my jam, and these restore creaminess to my salads.

You know what I love? Baked tofu. I also love potatoes and sweet potatoes. I may love potatoes most of all.

That deliciousness was created in my oven! That tofu was super marinated, too. I actually pressed a block of tofu for once in my life. I was going to bake that on Sunday so I started marinating on Saturday. Then life happened and I didn’t bake it until Monday, meaning that it had been soaking up deliciousness for a solid 48 hours. I don’t really follow a recipe for that, per se, just mix together garlic, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and tomato paste. If something else looks like it would fit in there and is accessible, I may throw it in. And I certainly don’t measure anymore. So amateurish.

I made this delicious quinoa salad with edamame and shredded cabbage and cilantro but the picture is icky. Then I made a portabella steak with some gluten-free tricolor pasta mixed with chick peas, all covered in the basil-cilantro pesto from Veganomicon.

That pesto is super opaque. Just an observation.

This weekend I made another vegan lasagna. I ate it with another salad, while grading, listening to Adele, and drinking white wine.

That picture is a frighteningly all-encompassing view of my life right now. Well … have a good week everyone!

I topped it with Soy Whip (way better than rice whip). Verdict? It was delicious, but too sweet. The recipe calls for a cup of maple syrup, which is a lot of sweetness. Next time I’ll tone it down.

I also made cranberry sauce. Cranberries, orange juice, sugar, heat. DONE.

I didn’t really make much other food, which is one of the other reasons why Thanksgiving is excellent. I made the cornbread from the back of the Eden Soy container, and my dad turned it into dressing, complete with vegan sausage! SO GOOD.

That was delicious. I’m still dreaming of it. Oranges and fennel and caramelized onions and pecans and dried cranberries… mmmm.

My dad always makes me this thing called Tuscan Carrboro Bean Salad. You can see it in the corner of that picture in the orange bowl. It’s white beans, pasta, red onions, parsley, olive oil, and lemon juice. Probably other mysterious things I can only hope to someday understand.

I have lots of that leftover. LUNCH! 

Have a good week, everyone.

First, I made Pumpkin Baked Ziti from Veganomicon. What an excellent idea! And it came out really well, too.

I used tofu ricotta instead of cashew ricotta like I was told to, because I don’t have a food processor, and I wanted to know I was eating protein. I was only vaguely aware of that aspect of this baked ziti [actually penne], however, because I was distracted by the a) caramelized onions! b) bread crumb topping! c) delicious mix of spices!. I will be making this again. Actually, Emily and I have a list of all the pumpkin things we will be making over thanksgiving. Which is in 10 days, by the way.

Then I took a break from Veganomicon and made a recipe that was just from life, not a book. I roasted some green beans:

Delicious as usual. Then I marinated some tofu and baked it with potatoes, red pepper, and onions, the way lots of people do chicken or whatnot. The picture that I have of it is blurry. I just wanted to eat it; it was delicious.

This morning I did not want to eat oatmeal again, as SHOCKING as it may be to hear. Instead, I made biscuits and sausage patties, both from Vegan with a Vengeance. The biscuits were super small — I think I made 7 when I should have made 6 because I was getting confused reading both recipes at once. They were super good though.

The sausage patties were super good, too. I tried to just go to Harris Teeter and buy some vegan sausage links, but it turns out that neither Boca or Morningstar’s normal veggie sausage links are vegan. From the summer I THOUGHT I remembered one was vegan and one wasn’t. Guess not.

I ate this with lemon yogurt, and blueberry jam on the biscuits. I don’t have a picture because it got kind of messy. By messy I mean there were fake sausages IN my yogurt. Not photogenic.

Tonight for dinner I returned to Veganomicon and made Pasta e Fagioli, and ate it with a salad.

The only issue here is mine was a little bitey (like my cat), which was entirely user error. I didn’t have any white wine, and I hate vegetable broth, so I used red wine. Obviously this was a poor choice. This pasta is nowhere near as exciting as the other pastas I’ve made from this section of the cookbook, the pumpkin baked ziti, spinach linguine with cilantro-basil pesto (from last week), and the spicy tempeh with broccoli rabe. That last one is a complete fixture in my life. There is even a picture of it on my facebook with some inside jokes on the comments. So that’s serious.

I have to finish planning for tomorrow. My students are being aggravating, so next week is silence appreciation week. Nobody is moving, or speaking unless I call on them. Go into my brain and come back out and tell me it’s not the only possible thing I can do at this point. I hope you enjoy your silence appreciation week, because I am really looking forward to it.

I declared two weeks ago “Veganomicon week” because I wanted to make several delicious things out of Veganomicon. But then this week I just kept going! There seems to be no end to the deliciousness of that cookbook.

I made chocolate-chocolate chip walnut cookies:

Vegan chocolate things are the best. I ate so many of those.

I also made the tempeh shepherdess pie that I made with my housemates last year when we did an Irish-themed meal near St. Patrick’s Day:

It’s funny how I used to hate peas, and tempeh actually, but now they are an even better part of this than mashed potatoes, which I have always been all about. The mashed potatoes were incredible as always, but the tempeh part is what makes this.

Then I made spaghetti and beanballs. Oh man were those delicious. My only mistake was accidentally buying a kind of spicy marinara sauce from Target. I will totally make this again.

What up, Stanley.

Then the following week I made 2 more Veganomicon things. I made barbecue black-eyed pea collard rolls with MORE mashed potatoes.

Instead of actually making barbecue sauce, I just purchased some. I hope that’s ok. These were great, but slightly annoying to eat because collards are slightly stringy. Also, when I was buying them at Harris Teeter, the woman working there was like “what do you know about collard greens? You’re too young!” But then I somehow convinced her it was legit by saying “I like vegetables…”

I have to write lesson plans now. Tomorrow I’m giving a test in 2/3 of my classes. I hope they do well because we’ve been practicing and reviewing for what feels like a super long time, in Algebra II at least. I’m making an effort to cook things (rather than eat Chipotle multiple times per week, not that there’s anything wrong with that) so I’ll try to also make an effort to blog about it.

I made delicious enchiladas last week. These were sweet potato black bean enchiladas, inspired by the Vegan Planet recipe.

I put some tomato paste in the filling to keep it all together. Look what my mom found … it’s TOMATO paste, in a tube, like TOOTHPASTE. Whoever came up with this is a crazy genious.

And on the subject of things involving a) red sauce b) being baked in an oven c) typically cheese + layered carbs, I made lasagna this week!

Doesn’t that look like a legit lasagna? This time, rather than put in black beans and sweet potatoes, in place of cheese I put in a recipe of tofu ricotta from Vegan with a Vengeance / Veganomicon. This stuff is great.

I also made some pancakes! I had been eating oatmeal and oatmeal alone for breakfast lately, because let’s face it, it is the perfect breakfast. They came out looking fairly ugly this time, but tasting delicious.

These are blueberry walnut pancakes. I want to eat more of them like now, and take better pictures of them to truly do them justice. I can’t really do much of anything now, though, because Stanley (the kitten) is sitting right on my stomach, and it’s too cute for me to move.

Last night I made a quinoa salad similar to some of the other things I’ve blogged about. Semi-relatedly, one time I made a quinoa salad with a tahini dressing, and I can NOT find tahini in the Harris-Teeter by my house.

Then I made this Asian pasta salad. I made something kind of like it at the end of first session, but this is my version, for me and me alone.

It has:
Whole-wheat pasta
Sesame seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Red cabbage
Snow peas
Peanuts
Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Lemon juice

I’m not going to act like I’m writing a recipe. Just … mix them together.

I also made the cauliflower-tempeh stuff I make sometimes.

I usually put cashews in there, but I did not have any. Man, I missed those cashews.

Then, I moved to Charlotte. I got a job teaching Algebra II and Geometry at a magnet school here. It is a really great job, but it doesn’t leave me much time to blog, or cook or eat for that matter.

But here I am!

That’s my cabinet. I’m trying to get away from putting food in disorganized, structurally questionable plastic bags and more into putting it in bins, but that does take up more money and more space.

I still have my coffee maker! And my mom gave me that little kitchen timer that looks like a chicken. I think I might use that at school sometime if I need to time a quiz or an activity. In this particular picture I’m making scrambled tofu.

I’ve made scrambled tofu like 10000 times. This time I made it pretty chunky, with big pieces of onion and zucchini.

In other news, I just brought a kitten home from camp. I’m trying to keep him away from my food right now because he has mites, fleas, conjunctivitis, and an upper respiratory tract infection, but he doesn’t have any parasites, so we’ll see!

I made a slightly less delicious salsa out of tomatoes and cilantro and onion. We also made a salad. Excitingly and atypically, we were able to put things (avocados and grapefruits) in it! And I put the dressing (orange vinaigrette from Vegan Planet) right on there!

Not in conjunction with this meal, I made homemade graham crackers for super gourmet s’mores.

I’ll post tomorrow about today.

This is Jessie’s birthday cake! I used the fluffy white cake recipe from Joy the Baker that I’ve used before. It looks super delicious. Then in between the layers I used a delicious blueberry syrup concoction I have put on pancakes and oatmeal before.

Then I made some sesame noodles.

The recipe I used this time called for sugar, which I included. I’m not sure why, though, because I have never put sugar in them before, and that was all that I could taste in the end, just because I knew. However, they were super delicious anyway.

It’s Adult Weekend now, so I have lots of current really delicious things to blog about, later.