Yay friday.

So this week went by super fast..which is pretty good. Only five weeks left of the semester! How crazy is that..and then half of my college career is over. oh no.

Anywayy, today the roomies & i all had off work, which was nice. So for the afternoon after classes we went to Ardmore to do some shopping. We had lunch at this Farmer's Market which was so cute! Everything they had looked so delicious, although the majority of it wasn't vegan. boo. I ended up getting this spicy eggplant basil tofu from the chinese food section. It was really delicious!
After the farmer's market we headed to trader joes and picked up a few things. I got some tempeh, smart dogs, veggies, and a couple other random things. From whole foods I got the tofutti cuti mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches. I'm really looking forward to trying them, i've heard gooood things about them! And my roomie got cookie dough ice cream from Temptation which I've also heard awesome things about. :)

I forgot to post a picture of another thing I made while I was home! My mother and I made these delicious vegan peanut butter cups.


The only problem with them was the chocolate was much more solid than the peanut butter filling so it would kind of smush out a little bit..oh well, they were still delicious! And really easy to make.
Microwave 1 1/2 cups of vegan chocolate chips (we used ghardelli semi-sweet) for about 2 minutes until stirred creamy. Spread chocolate into cupcake papers for bottom layer so you fill the crevices as well. Put into freezer so the chocolate hardens. In a bowl, mix 1 cup peanut butter and 1/4 tsp of salt and fold in 1/2 cup of sugar. When chocolate has hardened, put peanut butter mix in microwave for 1 minute, let it cool a bit and then put as second layer over the chocolate. Microwave another cup of chocolate chips and use as top layer over the peanut butter. Place in freezer and eat when they've hardened!
We took them out of the freezer and put them in the fridge after,, which made the peanut butter not as hard. Anyway you eat them though, they're still delicious..i mean it's chocolate and peanut butter, whats not to like?

So I had a can of white kidney beans in the closet for a while because I had intentions of putting them in a soup I made a while ago, but never did. Soo I saw in my Skinny Bitch recipe book a recipe for white bean dip. And I made it..quite delicious!


I did however add a bit of hot sauce to mine, due to my love of spicy-ness and hot sauce. I ate it with pretzels but I can see myself eating it with tortilla chips as well.
I mixed 1 15 oz can of cannellini beans, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/8 teaspoon of pepper and 1 tablespoon of basil and 1 tablespoon of parsley in a food processor. Then afterwards I added about 1 tablespoon or so of hot sauce. Delish!

Well hopefully i'll come up with a good recipe to make with the tempeh I bought earlier..until then. off to enjoy my weekend! :)

The weekend home in review

So I decided to make a dessert and I stumbled upon a recipe for vegan samoas. The recipe called for brown rice syrup, which I was unable to get at any store in salisbury..so i substituted half maple syrup and some sugar and well..i'm not sure if that's why they didnt taste like samoas or not, i doubt it. they weren't bad though, quite tasty actually! just not samoas haha.



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix 1 1/2 cups rolled oats, 1 3/4 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1 cup shredded coconut, 1/2 cup chopped pecans, 1/2 cup chocolate chips, 1 cup brown rice syrup(i used about 1/2 cup of maple syrup and 1/4 cup sugar), and 1/2 cup of oil in bowl. Put on lightly oiled baking sheet and bake for 14 minutes. (mine took about 11-12 minutes)


For dinner that evening I wanted to make something that my parents would like. I loved cooking with tempeh so I went through store after store in salisbury and finally found some in Giant Food. Things are so hard to find in salisbury, it's ridiculous! Even the health food store said they used to have it..but stopped since they didn't sell enough. Oh well. Anyway, I originally had the intention of making a recipe that I found on vegweb.com called "Spicy Peanut Butter Tempeh" It had some pretty good reviews and I love peanut butter so I figured how bad could it be.
Well the recipe called for coconut milk, and I'm not sure why mine tasted so off..maybe I just don't enjoy coconut milk, but it wasn't very good. Luckily my mother helped me out and we made a different sauce for it that was quite tasty. Saved the tempeh!


All I did really was dice up and fry a package of tempeh with broccoli, onions, and peppers in a bit of olive oil. As for the new sauce that I used instead of the recipe on vegweb.. it was just 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup peanut butter and 1/4 cup soy sauce all mixed over a burner. Probably one of my favorite sauces..and it tasted absolutely fabulous over tempeh and rice. This was quite a filling meal too!


For some reason I had a huge urge to make banana bread as I was home too. Not sure why, but bananas are just so delicious and I was just really craving it. I already had a banana bread recipe saved on my computer, and it called for a lot of ingredients including egg replacers, soy milk, a bit of vinegar, and a bunch of other ingredients. So I searched more for a quicker and easier version. The version I found was for banana nut bread, but I don't particularly enjoy nuts in mine so I ditched them. Anyway, this was so simple and came out so moist and delicious!




Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a loaf pan. Mix 3 mashed bananas and 2 tablespoons of oil in a large bowl. Stir in 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 cup applesauce. I also added just a bit of cinnamon which also gave it a nice taste. Put mixture into loaf pan and bake for an hour.

This is such an easy and versatile recipe that I feel like anyway you wanted to add things would be quite easy to do. The applesauce wasn't in the original recipe, but I found that it made it more moist and didn't hurt it at all. Too bad I forgot to take some back to philly with me!

Take me back to the warm weather!

So spring break has come and gone and I'm back in cold dreary philadelphia.
Well hopefully it will get warmer soon!

Daytona Beach was beautiful..low 80's with lots of breeze so it never got too hot. wonderful!



doesn't that just scream a postcard picture saying "greetings from daytona" haha.

anyway..i got back to maryland on wednesday and i did lots of cooking! I'll post pictures and what I made and such tomorrow..I have a lot of unpacking and homework to do tonight..
night!

So i like to run away and not post for a while..excuse me.

So I realize I have not posted a blog since I've been back in philly..
but not because i haven't been making delicious vegan food..
because i most certainly have. :)

Let's see..since i've been back..
well emily brought back a huge box of duncan hines brownie mix, which happen to be vegan before you add the eggs.. so using a flaxseed egg replacer,we made a batch of em for a sorority pot luck. They turned out really tasty, yet really oily and hard to even pick up. Soo we made another batch about a week later just for us and we used less oil and they turned out fabulous. :)

Last weekend I made a chicken salad for me to munch on throughout the week..i used 3 grain tempeh (which i absolutely loved cooking with/eating!) veganaise, celery, some spices and viola! it was quite delicious, and i loved it in these whole wheat pitas that we had picked up.

What elsee? Oh yes! We had a cookie-swap for the sorority 2 weeks ago as well. Unfortunately, I couldn't eat anyone else's cookies, but I made a vegan black and white cookie for everyone.. wish i took a picture, because they looked and tasted fabulous! Emily made a vegan cookie too so I would have two cookies to eat. :p she made an oatmeal cherry chocolate-chip cookie...also quite lovely! So between those two, I wasn't even tempted with those other animal-cruelty cookies! haha.

Tonight I was thinking of something to make using the rest of the celery I had from my chicken salad..and decided I would make a soup!

Nothing better than soup. :) I used a vegetable bouillon cube that i picked up from whole foods, the rest of the celery,carrots, green pepper, onion, diced tomatoes, green beans.. bassssically almost any veggie you can think of. haha :) its delicious and i made a ton though, so hopefully it'll last me through the week!
I go home next weekend though so maybe I can find some good vegan stuff to bring back with me when i'm there. :)

Dinner and dessert?

So after being bored and not having much to do during the day yesterday, I decided to make something scrumptious.
I first made these chocolate chocolate chip cookies..which turned out like such




I was excited to find out that the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips were vegan! They're so delicious and they made the cookies just perfect. Everyone enjoyed them..my boyfriend told me I have to make them for when he comes to visit! :)

As for the recipe:
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grind 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of flax seeds in a blender until it becomes a powder. Add 1/2 cup of soy milk and mix for another 30 seconds. In a large bowl, sift together 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup of cocoa, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. In another large bowl, cream together 3/4 cup canola oil and 2 cups of sugar. Then add in the soymilk/flax mixture and mix. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Fold in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in batches. When it gets too tough to stir with a spatula, use your hands to make a doughy texture. Add the chocolate chips. Then place on 1 inch balls on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Viola!

That brings us to the other boredom dish I made..A chipolte taco salad..


I was a little skeptical of the dressing ingredients, but it turned out pretty good. A bit spicy though, I might use a little less of something next time I make it.
The dressing was 1/3 cup chopped cilantro, 2/3 cup soy sour cream, 1 tablespoon minced chipolte in adobo sauce, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon chili powder, 4 teaspoons fresh lime juice, 1/4 teaspoon salt.
And in the salad i just put 4 cups of romaine lettuce, I grilled up some of my chkn slices (i used morningstar), 1 cup of halved cherry tomatoes, a diced up avocado, 1 can of black beans, 1 can of corn (both rinsed & drained)

The salad itself was delicious ( I'm a huge fan of salad with lots of stuff in them!) But perhaps less spice in the dressing. You be the judge.

I go back to my apartment for school the day after tomorrow, so I probably won't cook up any more concoctions until I'm back there. It's hard to cook there though because I'm always either working for dinner time or something else comes up. Hopefully i'll find more time to cook this semester though. I'm excited!