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!

Goodbye dairy, hello vegan world!

Yes, rumors are true.
After many years of contemplating and wishing I had the balls to make the transition of being a vegetarian to being vegan..I'm finally doing it.

I'm not sure what made me finally say it was really time. I mean, I knew that I would eventually one day, but right now is interesting. I suppose a new year, a new diet change? Or maybe it was the recipe book my aunt had given to me for Christmas, Skinny Bitch In The Kitch. After reading the introduction I saw that the two authors were vegan so I knew the recipes in it would be good. Just reading the introduction for the book about their views on meat and dairy, made me see how much I loved these skinny bitches. I was so intrigued by their views and ways of expressing them as well as their recipes, that I thought I should get their first book, just entitled Skinny Bitch. It didn't have recipes, and it wasn't exactly a "diet book", but basically just shared their thoughts and views on the meat industry, consuming dairy, eating unhealthy, buying organic products, etc. Though some may find their writing to be a bit rude with their somewhat vulgar language, I find it to be an entertaining way to hear about what they believe in.



So I took the approach in making my first recipe out of the book. I tried the "East Coast Lasagna." I originally wanted to make the fettucini alfredo, but due to lack of good vegan food variety, I could not(there is no vegan parmesan or vegan creamer to be found in this small town, even in the health food store. ) SO the east coast lasagna it was. I was excited because I made the sauce from scratch and even the ricotta cheese(tofu in a food processor with a few other ingredients to spice it up.) The pasta was whole wheat and I used Morning Star beef crumbles as the "meat" and soy mozzarella cheese in it as well.

So after it taking about 2 hours to make and cook, I was excited to try it myself, let alone let my family have some! It was shared between myself, my mother, my father, and my extremely picky boyfriend who usually denies anything healthy and has all his sandwiches vegetable free. Go figure.
Anyway, aside from the onions in the sauce, my boyfriend actually liked it! I was quite pleased with that. My parents seemed to like it as well, but they were both a bit skeptical at first. There was a lot of leftovers though, so I've been heating up pieces for quick dinners thoughout the past week. Still tastes amazing after being reheated a week later in the microwave! Job well done!

So there you have it. I can be vegan, as well as make a delicious lasagna for even meat eaters to enjoy. I've seen so many good recipes online, you have no idea how excited I am to get in the kitchen and start cooking!