MoFo 8: Pepita Fettucine with Spinach and Cranberries

It's 11:47 PM now, this is gonna get in late. I was at school before 8 this morning for an exam, then class from 9-5. After that I had to do some work in the simulation lab (we all have our own dummy with a giant mouth we can put plastic teeth in to work on) until 9:30. My boyfriend picked my tired cranky butt up and we just grabbed some Chipotle for dinner. That place has been my savior for a quick, cheap (for the city) satisfying dinner. Now I have a few minutes to relax (which I spent reading blogs) before I study for a bit, then head to bed so I can have another crazy day tomorrow.

The above recipe was made last quarter, back when I still had time to plan out meals, shop, and then make them. This quarter is hitting me hard (it's supposedly the hardest of the 3 years) and our meals (or lack thereof) have seriously suffered. This dish was fantastic and quick to throw together. It's sweet and spicy all at the same time and because it's pasta it's comforting going down. Next time I make this I'd use less dried cranberries than called for because I thought there were just too many, but otherwise it is another fabulous recipe from Vegan Yum Yum.

I think I was just so excited to finally be home, but here's quite the round-up for today:

1) While I'm a big fan of cooking and eating a nice warm meal, sometimes the simplicity and sheer goodness of the flavors present in raw food dishes is unsurpassed. This recipe for cucumber clubs from Raw on $10 a day (or less!) looks so refreshing and satisfying.

2) I'm also a bit under the weather and this roasted garlic, apple, and butternut squash soup from eat well. live well. be well. looks like just the thing to help me feel better! Now if only I could find someone to make it for me...

3) On the more decadent side of things, how about these german pancakes with chestnut mousse and chocolate sauce from vegalicious? Um, yes please! That picture is drool-worthy.

4) Quarrygirl had a write-up of the first vegan beer fest that was held in LA over the weekend. It looks like there was fabulous food and drink and hopefully they'll make it a recurring fest so I can go sometime!

5) Over at the paupered chef there's a fabulous comparison of canned vs cooked from scratch chickpeas along with the ultimate taste-test: homemade hummus. I've never made chickpeas from scratch before...one day.

6) Some more butternut goodness over at vegan.chicks.rock (every time I type that I always want to type "yes they do!", so now I did) with a butternut squash gnocchi with buttery sage sauce. Sounds and looks perfectly autumnal and would make a fantastic Thanksgiving meal.

7) Since no vegan's recipe repertoire can be complete without some sort of legume loaf (nut, lentil, bean), how about this one: lentil and mushroom loaf with savory potato filling from Wing-It Vegan. While it's not the most photogenic of all the foods out there it seems like a great winter meal to come home to as these nights get colder and darker.

8) Sofia, who I've had the lovely pleasure to meet, at carnal vegan has another appetizing soup, chipotle sweet potato bisque, that I'm now dying to make. I won't have the perfect accompaniment of homemade fresh bread bowls, but I can admire from afar.

9) And now, to kill with sugar shock is the amazing looking maple turtle cake over at fragrant vanilla cake. I have no words...

Win: Joni from justthefood is hosting a giveaway for 2 copies of the book she coauthored, 500 Vegan Recipes!

While not from a blog, if you haven't had a chance to read the NY Times article that's circulating, "While Warning About Fat, US Pushes Cheese Sales," you really should. It illustrates not only what's wrong with cheese, but also what's wrong with our nutritional guidelines and food regulations and subsidies in this country.

And with all that, I bid you a very good night!

Italian Rice and Beans and Glazed Green Bean Salad

Here's another Vegan Yum Yum dish, this one had better results than the last. The rice had great flavors with sundried tomatoes, navy beans, pine nuts, and lemon zest. The leftovers were great too.

I found these Chinese long beans at the store, they looked super fun and so I wanted to try them out.
I decided to try this green bean salad (also from VYY) and it was alright, but a bit too sweet for my taste; guess I'll credit the maple syrup for that one. I've tried this version of green bean salad before and preferred it.

Lime Peanut Noodles with Seitan, Kale, and Carrots

Since I'm such a whiz at making seitan now, I wanted to try another new dish featuring it. This is from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook. This was nothing special, but was easy and quick. I think frying up the seitan a bit would have made a great improvement, as was everything was a bit soft and there were no great textural differences. Some sriracha on top was the perfect accompaniment.

Creamy Sweet Potato Bake

This dish is from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook. It definitely had potential, but I screwed it up. I grabbed yams because sweet potatoes were not available at the grocery store and little to my knowledge there are quite a few differences. For one, yams are much drier, and herein lay the problem. The casserole was pasta, spiced cream sauce (hints of nutmeg, yum), kale, and topped with bread crumbs. The yams really sucked to moisture out of everything so they were a bit tough to eat, but it all tasted great. We'll definitely have to give this one another go, using the correct ingredients next time.

Snickerdoodles

I had a mad craving for some snickerdoodles after reading so many posts about all the vegan bake sales that have been going down. I'm not a fan of plain sugar cookies, but put some frosting or some cinnamon-sugar on there and I'll apparently gobble them right up. I used the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum (there is a very similar one in Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar). Because the dough gets refrigerated for an hour after mixing this is a bit of a delayed indulgence, but the wait is definitely worth it--they came out great!

There was no exact proportion in the book for the amount of cinnamon or sugar to roll on the outsides, so I just sprinkled a little of both on a plate, mixed it up and went with that. Also, when I went to smush them from ball form to cookie form with a fork a lot of the edges broke and those four in the pic above were the best-looking. That was a little disappointing, but obviously doesn't matter once you get them in your mouth. These didn't seem to stay fresh very long, after a couple days they were quite crispy. We just chowed down on them and finished them up (poor us), but it's definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

Note: I believe Lauren has a recipe for these on her blog, but the site is not working today so I can't post it.

Sweet and Sour Tofu with Asparagus and Carrots

Knowing I had some asparagus on hand to be used up I gave my boyfriend the option of pasta or some sort of stir fry. We tossed around ideas for how to do the stir fry and eventually ended up with this. I used the tofu and sweet and sour sauce recipe from Vegan Yum Yum (I pressed the tofu in the TofuXpress because of the lackluster results when I tried this last: here). In lieu of broccoli I cut and steamed the asparagus and then tossed shredded carrots in as well. We served it all on a bed of quinoa. This was fabulous! I really liked the sweet of the carrots with the sauce and also that they were still crunchy. We ate every last bite.

Broccoli Red Lentil Dal

I used the leftover broccoli from the broccoli and mushroom bake to whip up this bad boy, also from Vegan Yum Yum. This was pure deliciousness in a bowl. So good! I even thought it was spicy enough, which is rare for me; so if you don't like spice you'll want to tone down the chili flakes.

The Indian spices within the dal went so well with the broccoli bits and the bit of soymilk added for creaminess. I added about 1/3 of the suggested soymilk because I ran out, but I liked it that way. We just ate this with some toast, but it would be fabulous with any other Indian dish or some rice. If you have this book, make this!

Marmalade Tofu with Kale and Lemon Pearl Couscous

I knew I wanted to make this recipe the first time I saw it reading through Vegan Yum Yum. It looks and sounds so good. Plus, I love me some kale. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly enough, I had never had kale before going vegan (or chard, collard greens, mustard greens...I love that my world got opened up to all these wonderful greens!).

This made a very good dinner, and pretty quick to put together too. I thought the tofu was a bit too sweet, but my boyfriend thought it was great (it was his favorite part; mine was the kale). I left the kale with a bit of crunch to it to have the contrast between the soft tofu and Israeli couscous. Luckily this recipe is also on the Veganyumyum blog, so you can find it there and try it for yourself. I'll probably make this again, but next time I'll use a little less marmalade and a little more I don't know yet (soy sauce? chili sauce?).

Broccoli Mushroom Bake

When a cold knocks you down and out of the kitchen it's best to start back up nice and easy. So, for dinner tonight I went with a casserole. This one from Vegan Yum Yum, served quite nicely. It's a mix of broccoli, cremini mushrooms, orzo, onion, and a nutritional yeast based sauce. It's coated with some breadcrumbs and baked. It was good, nothing amazing, but good. I especially liked that the entire stalk of broccoli was used, not just the florets. I only recently found out that the whole stalk is edible. All those years of wasted broccoli stalks...better late than never I suppose.

This didn't take too much time to put together. Also, while it's baking there's time to do the dishes!

Chickpea and Artichoke Heart Salad

This was my second time making this salad from Vegan Yum Yum, and it's definitely a keeper. It fulfilled a craving that I didn't even know I had. I now make sure I always have a can of artichoke hearts around so that I can make this if the mood strikes. It's made up of stir-fried garbanzos and artichoke hearts with some ground toasted almonds mixed in. The oil from cooking the beans and hearts serves to keep it moist, then some lemon juice and salt is added. It tastes so good and can easily be a meal all in itself!

Spicy Tomato Chickpea Soup and Biscuits

This delightful, very filling, soup is from Vegan Yum Yum. It had a nice spicy, almost curry-like, flavor from the chickpeas and spices that were simmered and then blended together. It was perfect for this chilly, overcast day. Browning the chickpeas also imparted a nutty flavor that was very nice.


We also made some biscuits to go with the soup. These were a variation on the fancy biscuits from How it all Vegan; I left out the green onion and dill and used thyme, basil, and rosemary instead--turned out great.

Almond Broccoli Sweet and Sour Tofu

This recipe from Vegan Yum Yum caused me a bit of grief. I guess I'll start by saying it tasted great and the sauce had the fabulous gooey consistency of Chinese take-out, so that was good. However, I had a lot of problems with the tofu. It requires tossing the cut pieces in Ener-G egg replacer and water, and then cornstarch to give a nice coating before frying them. While I did this I became well on my way to making a nice tofu paste. I'm guessing I didn't press my tofu enough and there was still too much moisture to make this work correctly. Next time I will definitely make more of an effort (this little kitchen gadget looks fabulous for this purpose, btw--it will be on my Christmas list). I also placed the tofu in a bowl and attempted to coat it by stirring; this was not a good plan. I should have gone the shake-in-a-bag (or tupper) route, I think this would have worked much better. Then, since my coating wasn't very uniform, and in many parts non-existent, the tofu didn't fry up very well and I had a big mess in my wok.

I'm hoping that my tofu problems can be remedied with the above ideas, because this was really good (even with my fried "tofu paste"). The almonds mixed in with the broccoli, tofu and sweet and sour sauce was perfect. I served this over brown rice.