I Do Eat Sweets

If any of you have taken the time to look through some of my past posts, you would think that I live a fairly virtuous life, as far as food goes. One thing I don’t talk about a lot is sweets. And to tell you the truth, I don’t eat a lot of surgery things. Since I don’t really eat a lot, I try to no fill up on empty calories. However, I do like to have a treat every day and sometimes will make something special for a holiday. Today I want to tell you about two things I had over Labor Day weekend.

The first is this huge brownie I made and put some Coconut Bliss ice cream in between the layers. The recipe for the brownie is a clone of the No Pudge Brownie mix that I found up at Recipezaar and is vegan if you omit the egg whites. The mix even works with the single serving recipe for the No Pudge Brownie. Here I made a quadruple batch (but would have been just fine with a double or triple) and then split the brownie in half and filled it with Coconut Bliss ice cream. And I drizzled some chocolate syrup over it just to add more chocolate (I’m a chocoholic). These brownies are as dense and fudgy as the store bought mix and the ice cream was great as a filling. And just to let you know, my regular daily treat is a single brownie made with coconut milk yogurt, chocolate if I can find it.

The second is an interesting cake I found at Vegweb called a Cinnamon Roll Cake. I made this because I felt like cinnamon rolls, but don’t have the space to make them in my kitchen, so this seemed like an acceptable substitute. On top is a fudgy chocolate icing and some coconut. Just the way I used to enjoy cinnamon rolls as a kid. I altered the recipe a bit and put the cinnamon layer in the middle, since I wasn’t sure how it would work with a regular frosting, instead of a glaze. Also quite good and I really need to make this again. Maybe around Thanksgiving.

So as you can see, I do eat the sweet stuff occasionally. But like all things, I do try to keep it in moderation.

Just a reminder that I am not posting on the weekends and I will see you all back on Monday.

What to do with Leftovers

This is something we all have to deal with as home cooks. Not only leftovers from meals, but for those of us that make our own soy or nut milks, those create their own leftovers as well.

Both lunch and dinner for me were leftovers today. Lunch was a plate of the Bok Choy rice from Vegan Express (with the cashews and oranges added now). For dinner I had more Curried Orzo Salad with Mock BBQ Pork and added some peanuts to the orzo dish, just to round out the meal.

Now that I am going to start making peanut tofu, I have just discovered that I have a new leftover problem, peanut pulp. If I was making regular tofu and had a lot of okara to use I could always do what SusanV suggests at Fat Free Vegan, make cookies. Or I could do what Bryanna Grogan does at Notes From the Vegan Feast Kitchen; make Okara Parmesan or Okara Miso Pate. But I’m not, so what can I do with peanut pulp?

I may do the same thing I did with the cashew pulp I had from recently making a few batches of cashew milk. I used the pulp to make Coconut & Cashew Bread Paste from Recipezaar. But when you have up to 3 cups of peanut pulp a week that may not be enough. I faintly remember reading on other blogs and possibly up at the PPK forums that people have used the pulp for cheese spreads and as binders in other dishes. But I’m not sure how to go about that. So you tell me, what are some of our favorite ways to use up the pulp left from making nut milks? And do you have any good recipes?

Tofu Bacon

Yes, I know that title sounds strange coming from someone who doesn’t eat tofu. However that is what I had with my dinner tonight and also earlier this week. However, it was not made with regular tofu. I made it with a new product from Sunergia Soyfoods called Nufu Tofu or tofu made with peanuts. Unfortunately, I can only get the Herbed Hickory flavor here, so I decided to see how it would work as“bacon”. And I am happy to tell you that peanut tofu works quite well.

This is the plate of my tofu bacon I made on Sunday. The recipe I used is from AllRecipes. It is quite easy to make, but the marinade is more a paste than a liquid. However, it does give the tofu a definite bacon taste.

And what did I first do with the tofu bacon. Why I made TLT’s of course, using a wrap though because I was using grape tomatoes. It was good, but the next time I do this it might be easier to east if tofu bacon was cut up and mixed in with the lettuce and tomatoes.

And this was dinner tonight. I took the last of the tofu bacon and heated it up in the toaster oven. It was then put on top of the Simple Vegetable Orzo (this time seasoned only with olive oil and nooch). On the side is some steamed broccoli topped with vegan parmesan. Reheating the tofu bacon just made it better and it worked quite well with the orzo. This would make a great lunch at work as well. Can you reheat tofu bacon in a microwave?

Asian Inspired Dinner

Tonight’s dinner, if not truly Asian; definitely had all the flavors one would expect in an Asian meal. And that was with me forgetting part of the ingredients for one of the dishes.

The rice dish you see is the Bok Choy, Edamame (Green Beans), Cashew and Orange Rice from Vegan Express by Nava Atlas. This was the highlight of the meal even though I forgot to put in the orange (from a can, since I couldn’t find any Clementines at the store) and the cashews. With the oranges and cashews balancing out the teriyaki sauce and sesame oil, it would have been even better. However, it does have Bok Choy; so at least I got some leafy green vegetables with dinner.

Next to that is Mock BBQ Pork (page down till you see the recipes), which is a recipe for seitan I found over at the Vegetarian Resource Group. This is a bit different way of making gluten, because you start with plain gluten that you flavor after poaching the gluten log. After the marinating the gluten pieces, you then bake them and at that point they are ready to use. Like I said, a bit different. And I would not make these again, unless they were going into a stir fry. That seems to be the best way to eat them.

The last item I had for dinner is some broccoli. I had been planning on doing the Spicy Sesame Broccoli, also from Vegan Express, but I don’t have any more containers for the refrigerator. Since I need to use these up, I just decided to put some broccoli in the oven, to heat up with the Mock BBQ Pork and then topped them with some Gomasio, from the refrigerator. For those of you not familiar with Gomasio, it is a condiment from Japan usually used on rice in bento boxes and is salt covered sesame seeds. I used it to add some extra flavor and nutrition to the broccoli.

So that was dinner. One hit, one miss and on filler. All in all not bad

Menu for Week of October 4

As promised on Friday, here is what I plan on cooking for the week. Some of it is from the past week, that I have yet to finish; but mostly it is new dishes. I had hoped that I could just import this from OneNote and then paste it up on the blog, but Blogger doesn’t work that way; apparently. So I am going to have to type it in below.

Before I give you my weekly menu, however, I want to tell you how it comes about. Usually on Wednesday I start to search through both my paper cookbooks, ebook cookbooks and my electronic Living Cookbook for recipes to make for the next week. I am basically looking for recipes that will work well together and will last well throughout the week. Some weeks I also look for specific ingredients, such as eggplant or kale. I try to get a good mix of vegetables over the course of a month. If anything, my diet is deficit in green leafy vegetables, and I haven’t quite found the way to remedy that situation, since I don’t eat a lot of salads. I guess I need to find more recipes that use them as a component.

Rotelle with Mixed Summer Vegetable Sauce TMV pg. 119 (however, I forgot to get the pasta at the store, so will have to use some orzo I cooked up this past week, may not make till weekend, have no more containers for the refrigerator)

Get Your Groove on Veggie Burgers (in the freezer, from Vegweb.com)

Mock BBQ Pork (from vrg.org)

Bok Choy, Edamame, Cashew and Orange Rice Vegan Express (using green beans in place of the edamame)

Spicy Sesame Broccoli Vegan Express (not making this week, have no more containers for the refrigerator)

Simple Vegetable Orzo (leftover)

Curried Orzo Salad (leftover, from PDQ Vegetarian)

I also have a few other things that will round out what I eat for the week, such as walnuts, brownies, fruit, rice and some sauces.

Simple Vegetable Orzo

Simple Vegetable Orzo is something I made up this week to use a as side dish. Between the vegetables and orzo, I get to kill two notional birds with one dish, servings of veggies and carbs. And since I eat things multiple times in one week, tonight is the second night I had this. The recipe leaves the seasonings up to you; so I used olive oil, Mrs. Dash Italian Medley blend and a generous sprinkling of nooch (nutritional yeast).

Along with the orzo I had some Burmese Tofu, done in the smaller and quicker way that Vegetation came up with on her blog. Its round, because the best dish I had to mold this was a small ramekin. The chick-fu was just sliced and then baked in the toaster oven. Didn’t need to do anything fancy to it. I’m really just using here for my protein for dinner.


Earlier this week I had it as the side dish for my all time favorite veggie burger (at least for the moment). Here it is on the side (with the same seasonings as above) of a Get Your Groove on Veggie Burger. I like it because it is lentil based, and as I am anemic, I need all the lentils I can get. I also like that you can add whatever veggies you like to it, so I use this as an opportunity to put some more mushrooms in my diet. Mushrooms are not one of my favorite things, but I do realize that they are a needed vegetable that I had to figure out how to eat. Since they are also in the orzo, I get a nice serving of them here.

Thus ends the first two days of VegaMofo. I will only be blogging on weekdays, so no posts this weekend. Hopefully, that will allow you all to catch up on the huge public RSS listing of participating blogs. I don’t know about you, but I am a bit overwhelmed. Correct that, extremely overwhelmed. All those blogs are turning my mind to mush. But I have also found some that I may continue to follow after this is over. Look for next week’s menu on Monday.

Vegan Mofo Day 1

It’s that time of year again. Time for a month of showing how great and varied vegan food can be.

Last year I just missed this and only read the blogs. This year, will be my first to participate and I am looking forward to showing people that great vegan food doesn’t have to have tofu or tempeh in it. Since I am soy intolerant most of what you see will be either seitan based or bean/lentil based. But that doesn’t mean that I am greatly limited. Sure there are some things I really can’t do, like “vegan fish”, but there are other dishes I can make. I even managed to find a cookbook lately that only had grain and bean recipes in it. Some of those will appear this month and in the future here.

I also plan to do some experiments with my new great find, peanut tofu. I know, doesn’t sound quite right. However, there is a commercial version and I would really like to make it at home, since it would give me a lot more options in dishes. I am buying my first batch of raw peanuts tomorrow and will have a tofu kit in the next week. Hopefully I can make it work.
There will be some things with the Burmese Tofu as well. It is such a simple dish and great for a quick dinner, so I don’t want to forget about it either.

I want to warn you that I eat a lot of leftovers, since I more or less cook for myself. Over the years I have figured out how to re package them, so I hopefully won’t bore you too much with them.

On Mondays I am hoping that I can show you the food plan for the week. The way I do it is in OneNote. I look at what is left over from the week before and also what is in the freezer. From there I look through all my recipes and figure out what to eat for the next week.
The last week of this will probably be devoted to quick and easy dinners; since that is the week I start an income tax preparation course. The class starts at 6, which means I have to eat a bit earlier than normal. And if I have picked up a short contract assignment by then, it will mean a real quick dinner on the fly. However, the class is very near a Chipotles, so I might just go there one night for dinner; especially if I am working.

So hope you enjoy what you see. If you have not been here before feel free to look around. I have some tutorials on Burmese Tofu and a list of soy protein free products that are vegan (to bad it isn’t longer). If you know of any product I may have missed, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

All for now. See you tomorrow.