Comfort Food for Cooler Days

Yes, you did read that title correctly. Fall has arrived for us Floridians and we have our second cold front come through the state today. It’s not as cool as it could be, but 60s and 70s are nice compared to 80s (and did you hear that Dallas got snow today). Now if the humidity would just go down. I actually still have to run the AC occasionally to get the humidity out of the apartment. However, this does mean that I can use my oven and so it has been getting ample use this week.



On Monday I made some Gluten-Free Hippie Loaf (from the Happy Herbivore blog). And last night I made the Ginger Roasted Winter Vegetables from VwaV. So they both were for dinner last night. I’ve wanted to make this dish for a while, but have had one problem, the butternut squash. I’m really not able to prep that in my kitchen, but am lucky enough to be able to buy it already cut up for a few weeks each fall in November, so this has been on hold till it came back into the stores. I made this with dark agave, since I didn’t have enough maple syrup and amazingly enough it didn’t get to dark and caramelized wonderfully.



Tonight, I made some Mac Daddy from VCON, using the chickpea variation. However, I did change the recipe just a bit, since I don’t have a pan as big as called for in the recipe. I made it in an 8x8 cake pan and used 1 can of chickpeas with one batch of Cheezy Sauce. It cooked in the oven for 25 minutes and after sitting for 10 minutes it was ready. If you haven’t made this yet and am not sure that you want a really saucy Mac and Cheese, you may want to try it this way. I may have to make a second batch of the Cheezy Sauce for reheating, but that is really not a problem; because I can still control how much sauce goes into the dish. And it should reheat nicely in the toaster oven.

Things I Have been Cooking Lately

Sorry to be away for so long. Due to my tax class, I really did not cook at all the first week of the month. But that is now completed (I passed) and may result in some work starting in January, but I won’t know about that till December. And I have been cooking a lot, since my refrigerator totally ran out of food.



The first thing I made was on November 6, the only day that week with no class. I decided to make the Curried Udon Noodle Stir Fry from VCON, which had been on my list for the past few weeks. It turned out fairly good, but I did make a few errors. The first was making the roux for the gravy; I don’t think I did it correctly. Either that or it is supposed to be much thicker than I realized. The second error was in trying to warm up my precooked udon noodles in a colander under hot tap water, when I should have used a pan with hot water instead. As you can see, they all broke apart. I will just have to try again, because even with all those errors, it was quite good. But a visit to Just Hungry may be in order to learn more about Japanese curries.



The next time I was able to get some cooking done was after the class was over, last Wednesday. I made the Seitan & Polenta with Fresh Greens from Vegan Express again. This time I got the bok choy, but decided to use Vegetation’s variation of seitan sausage. The sausage I used was the Field Roast Italian Sausage. They had been sitting in the freezer just waiting for it to cool down a bit (and it has finally) so that I could make this again. I think that Vegetation may have been onto something, because using sausage just seems to make this recipe better. If you know of someone who thinks that vegan food is bland, feed them this and they will change their minds.

The last three things were part of lunch today, but I made them last week. Just did not get any pictures till today.



First, my lunch today was one of the Black Bean and Potato Patty from 366 Ways to Cook Beans, Rice and Grains; my latest cookbook purchase. It is not a vegan or vegetarian cookbook, but all the recipes are by default vegetarian and most can be veganized quite easily. In this case, I substituted chickpea flour for the eggs and used panko breadcrumbs. Put some salsa on top and these are quite good, they would be good plain as well.

On the side is Cranberry Waldorf Salad. It has all the standard items in a regular Waldorf Salad; apples, celery and walnuts and adds crushed cranberries to the mix as well. If you are still looking for some salads for your Thanksgiving dinner, this would be a good one to think about, since it lets you put cranberries on the table in a way more people may find to their liking.



The last item is my desert for today; the scones from VwaV, done as the chocolate chip variation. I had to use my only and last container of MimicCreme to make them, but it was worth it. They definitely are a different texture when using crème instead of all milk. Unfortunately, since I can no longer get MimicCreme that will mean that I have to make my own with cashews or use the So Delicious Coconut Milk Cremer when making these.

Breakfast for Dinner

Just had another wonderfully cool day in the Tampa Bay area. I am really going to be a bit unhappy when we warm up at the end of the week. I really like not running the air conditioning and running up a near 100 dollar electric bill in our tiny apartment.

Dinner was breakfast, for me today. I figured with the cool weather and lack of humidity, it would be a perfect day to make the Sweet Potato Hash from VwaV. The only thing I hate about this dish is cutting up the sweet potatoes, other than that I could easily make this weekly. Tonight it is paired with some more of the Puttanesca scramble made with Bryanna Grogan’s Chickpea Chilla. And since I cannot find any watercress around here, I use frozen spinach. I do lose some nutrition in squeezing out the thawed spinach, but that can’t be helped. A very nice little dinner.

Memorial Day Weekend

Hope you all are having a happy Memorial Day weekend. The rain, for a little while, has finally ended in the Tampa area. No need for us to think about building arks, just yet, anyway. However, I really should not complain since we really do need the rain. The drought has caused very draconian watering policies to be enacted, and they are not going away any time soon. However, hurricane season starts in one week and if we can get some tropical storms through that are rain events, that would help.

I didn’t do a lot of cooking this week, due to still recovering and also starting back at work. This was dinner on Monday. I had gotten some quinoa pasta as an experiment, due to a suspicion that the TeddyBear has some gluten intolerance issues. He didn’t like it, but I thought it wasn’t that bad. Here I am having it with some kale and diced tomatoes that I made over the weekend. I was just looking for something quick and easy to make that would also be nutritious. It was a nice filling dinner after a long day at work.

The Fronch Toast was my breakfast on Saturday. The topping is a Cinnamon Spiked Blueberry Sauce (along with some maple syrup) that I found over at FoodTV from Robin Miller. She uses it on frozen yogurt, but I like it on the Fronch Toast (VwaV) and it would be good on pancakes or waffles as well. An easy way to eat some fruit at your breakfast or brunch, and if you don’t like blueberries then the cinnamon is a nice touch.

Amaranth Potato Patties and Sweet Potato Hash

Dinner tonight again hits a round food, in this case Amaranth Potatoes Patties. For those of you not familiar with it, amaranth is an ancient grain; as is quinoa. However, amaranth is from central Mexico and associated mostly with the Aztecs. It was part of the yearly tribute that would have to be paid to the king and priests, along with corn. The Conquistadors banned it after the Spanish conquest, due to its association with Aztec festivals. It has recently made a comeback due to its high protein value, especially lysine. And some people see it as a crop of the future for developing countries, since it will grow under a multitude of conditions. Personally I prefer amaranth to quinoa, since I can’t get past the sprouted look of quinoa.

Unfortunately, the Amaranth Potatoes Patties were somewhat disappointing. They stick to the pan (and a nonstick pan at that) like you would not believe. On the second one I followed the advice from the recipe and coated it in chickpea flour (but any flour would work also) and it went slightly better. At least it would come out of the pan and had a nice crust on it. They taste rather bland even with all the nutritional yeast and the ½ tsp of onion powder and garlic powder I used in place of the other seasonings. Of course a bland side dish is not a bad thing when you have something that is high in flavor. Before these are made again, I think some flour needs to be added to the potato mixture to make it less sticky and more dough like.

The Sweet Potatoes Hash with Five Spice and Watercress (Vw/aV ) was much better. However, if you don’t like Asian flavors, this is not the dish for you. Five Spice powder is a mixture of different spices that when put together are the basic Asian flavors in a nutshell. The basic flavors are sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. It goes great with the sweet potatoes and also the spinach (since I couldn’t find any watercress). The chick-fu was a nice addition, since it toned down the spice just a bit so that I didn’t find it overwhelming. The leftovers are going to make for some great breakfasts.

That is all for today. Tomorrow is a big experiment, so if dinner tomorrow doesn’t have something round in it, you will know it crashed and burned.

Thai Curry – Redux

Tonight was the return of the Thai Curry from earlier this week. This time I did it with the chick-fu that was coated in almond flour and then fried. The good news is that after the chick-fu was crispy it didn’t dissolve while sitting in the hot curry. That is good to know, because it shows that the chick-fu is sturdier than we thought it my be. After all the do make a curry with it in Burma and I think they do it with the fried fritters. So this must need a hard skin on it to stay together in a liquid. I just wish we could find a recipe for how they do their curry with this. From what I read it sounds interesting. But back to this dish. Another good thing is that the taste and the texture of the chick-fu do seem to blend with the curry. Which is good, because if they clashed, then this would not have been so good.

An update on the rice-fu. I may have jumped the gun on how well it set up. After taking it out of the loaf pan today, I noticed that it had set up all the way to the bottom at the same hardness. So maybe it just wasn’t set up yet when I used it on Tuesday. I am going to try make “fish” sticks with it this weekend from a recipe I found over at PPK from LadyVoxx, she did it with tofu and I am going to see how it works with the rice-fu. If it goes good, the rice-fu will get a bit gelatinous and resemble fish a bit, if not it will fall apart in the pan or in the marinade. Don’t worry, I have a back-up plan for dinner if this crashes and burns, which I still fear it will.

And not to trump anything, but this blog has now been around for two weeks. Now the trick is can I make it two months. Still have lots of things to try and there are lots of recipes to de-tofu. Speaking of the de-tofuing, I am going to take a big chance next week with the chick-fu. Hopefully it will work, because that then would allow us to do a lot of what people do with the regular tofu. The big chance is marinating it cold and then baking it in the oven. I am even thinking about BBQing it at some point. Just to test the boundaries of what it can do. Just think we might even be able to make sandwiches out of it when cold. I have some other things I want to try also, but those are for the future.

That is all for this week. If the “fish” is a success there might be a post this weekend, if not then the post mortem will be on Monday. Have a good weekend.

Thai Curry-My Way

The semi appetizing picture you see at the top is what I had for dinner tonight. I made the Green Thai Curry from VwaV tonight and, with some modifications. First I didn’t make the green curry paste from the book, since I can’t find lemon grass easily. I know in Florida and can’t easily find lemon grass. I would have to go to an Asian grocery store and just don’t have any near me. So I used some red curry paste from the refrigerator. I used 3 tsp and it didn’t blow my head off. Must have been the coconut milk. Then I cheated on the red bell pepper and onion and used a half a bag of the pepper stir fry mix. Just easier to deal with and something I use a lot. The last change was using the rice version of the Burmese Tofu I made today. More on that later.

Let me just say that I am now officially hooked on Thai curries. I cannot believe how good they are. Now this recipe is as close as I have ever come to having one and I can’t wait to have it again. What I couldn’t believe is that it didn’t blow my head off, considering how much curry paste was used, it should have. It must have been the coconut milk (said that already didn’t I).

Unfortunately, the Burmese Tofu made with rice flour was a disappointment. It did seem to work alright as it got solid and seemed to set up fairly hard. However, it gets soft and sticky when it is heated. I will put a tutorial later about how to make it (complete with pictures), but I do not think it is versatile as the chickpea version. I am going to try and make fish from it, but am not sure it will work. Hopefully it will absorb a marinade and not fall apart when fried. But that will be next week.

All for now. See you later. Cinnamon Spice Roasted Vegetables tomorrow.

Some more housekeeping. I have been playing with the blog elements and have started to add the list of blogs I follow. It is not yet complete, but will be over the next few days.

Now on to the food. I guess the first thing one realizes when you go vegan is that tofu is a common egg replacer. You will see it in both the savory and the sweet. Until recently I thought all that was something I would have to just miss, that is until I happened across this page from the Vegan Society of England. It lists egg replacers and apparently one is just 1 Tbsp of chickpea flour and 1 Tbsp of water and mixed till combined.

If you own VwaV, I am sure you have seen the Fresh Corn Fritters on page 74. I tried this last week using the chickpea egg replacer for the tofu, which my Teddybear and I figured was equivalent to 3 eggs. Just make the recipe as per instruction and use 3 Tbsp of chickpea flour and 3 Tbsp of water in place of the tofu.

As you can see, the batter looks like batter

This is my test fritter in the pan. Now I will tell you that it is way to big. Isa says to use a tablespoon and I read that to be a serving spoon, not the spoon used to stir your coffee. So if you are making these, use the spoon that would be next to your plate, not the one that would be in the mashed potatoes.

This is the fritter after flipping it over. It could have cooked just a bit longer, but turned out just fine.

And this is what I ended up having for dinner. Three of the very large fritters with some leftover Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts from here. I used some Asian Sweet Chili Sauce to add some flavor. They came out great. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The next night the batter was finished up and eaten with some Mustard Sauce from page 94 of VCON, along with some steamed green beans and seitan, made the right size this time. The batter does seem to keep for a few days, so you don’t have to make them all at once. Now I just need to have them at breakfast with some vegan sausage, biscuits and maple syrup.

So you see there are some ways around the tofu problem. In my next post I will tell you about something some of us at PPK have been experimenting with, Burmese Tofu. Which is soy free, just so you know.