Back to the food

It's been three long weeks of cooking, so prepare yourselves for a lengthly-ish post.
First up, is the Portobello Mushroom Tofu Quiche from ExtraVeganZa. I didn't have any portobellos, so I subbed porcini mushrooms, which, the dear Food Network chefs have taught me, are really just baby portobellos. The quiche was super yummy, but a little labor-intensive, since it involved a few steps, as well as making a crust. I'm sure I'll make it again though.
I was supposed to use red pepper strips, which would've been prettier, but I had yellow on hand, so there you go.

My sisters turned 20 last week (they are twins... hence the sharing of the birthday....), and we had a small family dinner for them at my dad's house. My stepmom, who, like most of the amazing people in my life, always makes an effort to veganize food for us, made a vegan version of one of my sisters' favorite foods: Jamaican patties. Mmmm. I haven't had these in years....like, maybe 7 or 8 years. Wow. They were awesome.
While we're talking about awesome people, I'd like to give a shout out to everyone else who has been sweet to us in the past few weeks: thanks to my friends Audrey, for the pizza and the soup, Nicolette for the sushi, Trina for the rad bean-cookies, and to my family, who are always super supportive, and always have chocolate soymilk around for Quinn. :)

Next up is two ED&BV recipes put together: Living Caesar Salad and Blackened Tofu. It was super-yummy, but I totally effed up the tofu and burned the crap out of it somehow. I know the idea was to blacken it, but not to burn it to a total crisp. Whatever. I scraped the badly burned parts off and dug in. My husband loves all things burny (despite the carcinogens), so he kept his intact and loved it.

At the farmers' market on Saturday, I picked up, among other things, a huge savoy cabbage. I've never seen a savoy cabbage before, but they are really ginormous. My husband was reluctant to get it, since I rarely cook with cabbage, but it's the dead of winter, and the market has some pretty slim pickens. I knew I had a recipe that called for savoy cabbage in my ReBar cookbook, so I went ahead and bought it. As it turned out, ReBar had two vegan recipes using my new giant cabbage. I made the BigBarn Bowties. It was described as "humble and earthy" (just like me!!! haha), and it did not disappoint. Topped with nutritional yeast, it was a lovely winter meal.

Shockingly, I haven't done too much baking lately. I certainly should be, with the ridiculously low temperatures here. Last week, aside from a batch of ExtraVeganZa's Carob Mint Oatmeal cookies (or something to that effect), Quinn and I made a batch of ED&BV's Oatmeal Raisin cookies (inspired by VeggieGirl), with the addition of some carob chips. Quinn always likes to have a job when we bake (when we make muffins, it's his job to line the tray with muffin liners), so I gave him the oh-so important job of smushing the cookies down a bit before they went into the oven.
The cookies were super yummy, and baking with the boys (Teague is usually in a baby carrier of some kind) is the best way to spend a morning.

Speaking of the boys, we have a lot to catch up on with Baby Teague's dining experiences.
First, blueberries! He loved 'em, no surprise there.
Next, butternut squash, which also went over very well.

Also on the menu, without pictures, are broccoli, blackberries, bananas, and peas. He doesn't dig broccoli on it's own, but doesn't mind it mixed with other veggies. Oddly enough, he really doesn't like blackberries either. Huh. Maybe the seeds?

And lastly, that sneaky guy tried to rebel against our vegan values and eat a cow! We caught you Teague!
"Crap! I've been outed!"

Stiil here...

Hey friends! I'm still here... still cooking. I have much to post about, but have been too busy/ lazy to upload pictures onto my computer.

There's mega snow here....temperatures tomorrow will be -30 C for the high. Wow.

And, since I don't have enough on my plate, I'm working on opening an etsy shop. Details on that to come... right now I'm thinking that it will be mostly baby/ toddler clothing made from recycled thrift shop clothes. Maybe children's backpacks, cloth diapers, pouch slings, and mei tai baby carriers. We'll see. (Yeah, that's not vegan-food related, but it's one of the reasons I've been absent. So.)

Anyways, I hope to have a post up in the next couple days. From the looks of the forecast, it looks like I won't really be leaving the house too much in the coming week.

I hope you are all a lot warmer than us!

Recent stuff

Not too much going on around here. Things have slowed down mega since the holidays, which is lovely.
Here are a few recent goings-on from our kitchen.
My most favorite grocery store/ restaurant closed last month, which breaks my heart. (And makes me hate giant chain grocery stores, but that's beside the point....) I used to get this really awesome tofu tahini rice bowl there, and I tried to recreate it, with a little help and inspiration from the rice bowl recipes from the Fresh at Home cookbook. Brown rice, marinated tofu, diced tomatoes, avocado, spinach, sunflower seeds, and tahini sauce. Yummers.
And after Michelle's hardy recommendation, I decided to make V'con's Leek and Bean Cassoulet. I've been wanting to try this recipe since she first posted about it, but it always looked so complicated, especially since I always wait until the last minute to make dinner. In reality though, it was super straight forward, and no trouble at all. Oh, and did I mention that it was totally delicious?
And my fancy-pants dinner: roasted portobellos, tomato couscous (both from V'con), roasted cauliflower, and steamed chard. It would've been fancier if I would have put it in a little cup, so it would've been all molded, and, well, fancy. But that was an afterthought. So. This is as fancy* as it gets.
I also made another one of the expensive vegan cheesecakes last weekend, and Quinn helped me clean up. :)
(Note the adorable sock monkey pants that Grandma made Quinn for xmas!)
And now for the feeding pictures! Two new foods for baby Teague. Spinach:
and swiss chard:
Both went over well, now I need to get back to my steamer and food processor, and decide what to make next!
Have a great week everyone!
*I refer to this meal as fancy, because couscous and roasted portobellos seem very restaurant-y to me. :)