Arugula & Almond Pesto!

I bought arugula for the first time a few weeks ago while I was in Columbus for the day. All the snobby Food Network stars that I compulsively watch seem to use it more than any other green. Usually when I see that arugula is a key component of a recipe, I simply sub spinach. But, this time, I felt like splurging. To my delight, the health food store I work at recently started carrying organic aurgula for a really good price! Needless to say I've been keeping arugula in the house.

I recently did a semi-raw diet. I say "semi-raw," but what it really was was an unprocessed food diet with a lot of fresh fruit and salads. I mostly subsisted of cooked whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds. I stocked up on tons of almonds and never got around to using them while I was on my diet. I figured the creamy texture of the almond would pair well with the elegant and peppery arugula. (Really, I didn't have any other green or nut in the house.)

I certainly recommend substituting whatever nuts or greens you have on hand in this recipe. And, please spare me the puns.

Arugula & Almond Pesto

3-4 cups arugula

1/2 cup almonds

1 tbs lemon juice

1-2 tbs olive oil

1 clove garlic, smashed

1 tbs nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

Blend, duh.

Tomato Basil Cream Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti with Seitan Sausage

Yes, this meal was a mouthful, in regard to the title and nom factor. I've recently developed this obsession with blending tomatoes and cashews together. I would like to eventually experiment with other nuts, though. Heh, heh, experimental nuts.

My mom sent me home the other day with not only a belly full of BBQ tempeh, roasted potato medley, and green beans, but she sent me home with a load of fresh herbs from her garden. All the basics: chives, thyme, rosemary, sage, cilantro, and basil.

I recently bought the Vegan Yum Yum cook book, and I gotta say, it f*cking rules. There are several recipes that weren't on the site, and as the cover suggests, these are definitely decadent AND very doable recipes. Meaning I want to make sweet, sweet love to her baked macaroni and cheez recipe.

The tomato basil cream recipe sounded delicious and simple for sure, but I wanted to up the ante with some forbidden wheat gluten: Italian-style seitan sausage. I altered the recipe found in La Dolce Vegan and let it simmer in the tomato cashew sauce with some fresh basil.

This was the first time I ever tried spaghetti squash, and holy sh*t. The squash's innards just collapse into this stringy mass of, well, squash noodles. They have a nice crunch that nicely contrasts the typical texture of spaghetti noodles. Also, quite a few less carbs.

Hodge Podge of Sorts

I haven't been posting much lately because a) I haven't had access to the interwebz and b) things have been a touch whirl-windy because Tybrus and I just moved into a new apartment, which would explain my lack of interwebz and the access to it.

Nonetheless, I have been cooking up a storm, despite the fact that the cute, rustic stove in my new apartment has broken heating coil along with a broken hinge so the oven door can't shut which only adds to wildly incorrect temperature gauge. I've been using the side oven to cook in for the time being but I mean, srsly, when I set it to broil it barely reaches 350.

Breakfast classic: beans on toast, topped with cheddar Teese and accompanied by some English breakfast tea.



Give peas a chance! Peas?!?!

So, in my infinite wisdom, I discovered that most split pea soup recipes require a ham hock. Bleh! Ham might be one of the most unethically farmed meat products in the industry and just seems totally unnecessary in an already delicious soup. It ended up thicker than I wanted, but by no fault of the recipe- Ty had gotten an immersion blender for his birthday and I got excited. I went a bit overboard on the blending.


an awful picture of some superb stuffed shells

I stuffed the shells with my tvp mixture and some ricotta. I made up my own tofu ricotta cheese instead of depending on old faithful- Sara Kramer's recipe- and it was great. I used silken and it had a better texture than the crumbly medium tofu. My best shells yet! (I ate about 9 of them in one night!)


Asian noodles with zucchini and tofu

This meal reaffirmed the fact that I FORKING HATE WATER-PACKED TOFU!!!1 It takes forever to prepare, it doesn't hold flavor well at all, and it has an awful texture. I had some tomato carrot flavored noodles that I picked up from the Asian market and wasn't sure how to use them- I didn't know how strong the flavors would be. I figured squash would work well with the flavors. I should've left it at that! But, nooooooo, I gotta go around sticking friggin' soy in everything! Srsly, never again. It wasn't a total loss, though.

And now, a resolution: I will be leaving town to visit my father, step mother, and siblings this coming Monday, and when I return, I plan to do a raw diet. I don't know if I'll necessarily abide by the cooking temperature boundaries or not. If anyone has any cooking tips, recipes, or advice let me know. I imagine it is going to be a tad trying for me being that I eat carbs and gluten like it's going out of style (stuffed shells are a testament to this) but I'd really like to get healthy and maybe drop a few pounds. Wish me luck!

Bow Ties with Broccoli Pesto

Greetings, all! Just thought I'd share a simple and delicious recipe with you that I found in this month's issue of Veg Times. The whole theme of this month's issue was to incorporate more broccoli into your diet. (As if that's a challenge... pfft.) The first thing I thought when I tasted this recipe was, "This is the ideal recipe to trick your kid into eating their broccoli." Though, I gotta tell ya', as a kid I never understood why broccoli was the dreaded vegetable. I tagged this recipe as pretty innovative because I had never thought to make a pesto with anything other than a green leaf of some kind. You obviously can't tell the difference in texture because it's pulverized. Tybrus and I topped it with some shredded Daiya mozarella. NOM. (More to come on our most recent Vegan Essentials purchase!)

Bow Ties with Broccoli Pesto

6 tbs blanched hazelnuts, plus more for garnish (I used walnuts because they're cheap)
2 cups broccoli florets
1 1/2 cups parsley leaves (I used 4 tsp dried parsley)
1/4 plus 2 tbs olive oil
1/2 cup mint leaves
4 tsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp lemon zest (I ommitted)
1 1/2 tsp capers, rinsed and drained, optional
5 large garlic cloves, peeled
12 oz farfalle pasta

Toast hazelnuts in skillet 3-5 minutes. Cool, chop, and set aside. Bring large pot of water to boil and blanch broccoli. Rinse, drain, and cool. Pulse broccol, nuts, parsley, mint, lemon juice, zest, garlic, and oil until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook farfalle according to package directions. Reserve 1/4 cup of cooking water before draining. Mix pasta, pesto, and cooking water. Garnish with nuts/cheese and serve.

"Yeah, that vegan vomit."

Ah, vomitty tomato sauce. No, it doesn't taste a bit like regurgitation, but it certainly would look the same going down as it would coming back up. Lindy Loo even said so in her post. This was a wildly easy recipe. I used cashew butter instead of the raw cashews and cut the amount of water in half. I served my sauce on these really neat spinach spaghetti noodles I found at my local convenient mart. I just described something as neat. I definitely recommend this if you're lazy and feeding a large crowd. Or, if you're just sitting at your apartment, wearing sweat pants and cozy socks, drinking tea, and watching a Charlton Heston movie.

Vegan MoFo Post 4: Hodge Podge

I feel like one big failure this month. It's already the 29th of October and I've only watched 27 horror movies (I will post the final count, I know you're just dying) and only posted 4 Vegan MoFo entries. What can I say? It was a mildly hectic month.



Ah, fall. Finally, it's cold enough outside that I voluntarily seek refuge from the cold in a sweltering kitchen. Generally speaking, I think posting chili recipes is utterly pointless so I'm not gonna! I made this with the essential baking dish of cornbread. Cornbread on crack, that is.



This conrbread recipe was the one found in La Dolce Vegan and I was not very happy with it. While the outer texture was very nice, it was still gooey in the middle and it was a little bland.



All this meal made me crave was some pad thai. Just your standard seitan stir fry served atop some rice noodles. Complete with brocoli, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and makeshift teriyake sauce.



I imagine Isa Chandra Moskowitz had envisioned greater things for her Mac Daddy recipe, but that is all irrelevant now. I present: TVP Helper!



The face of instant-one-pot-meal joy. That's right, I'm putting this stuff in boxes and packets and slappin' this face on it to make a killing. Our slogan: Remember when you were 5 years old at the dinner table denying that mass of macaroni and and mysterious creamy sauce with bits of crumbly brown matter swimming in it that mom would force upon you? We forkin' do!

Vegan MoFo Post 2: A Tale of Two Pastas

Kale and Walnut Pesto

This was the first time I've ever had/prepared/cooked homemade pesto. It certainly won't be the last. Pine nuts are too expensive and generally I only keep dried basil in the kitchen. Here is the product of one cheap vegan.

Kale Walnut Pesto:
1 large bunch of kale
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped rather finely
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (you could use soy Parmesan)
salt and pepper to taste

Note: I wanted my pesto to be greener after adding the nutritional yeast, so I added a couple handfuls of spinach, as well.

Seriously, do I need to give instructions for how to prepare a pesto sauce? Blend, god damn it. Then serve over 2 cups of pastaof your choice. I chose brown rice rotini.

Artichoke Chik'n Penne

This was beautiful. I could probably eat this multiple times a week for the rest of my life and not be bored with it or dwell on the repercussions of my carb consumption. Noms.

Artichoke Chik'n Penne:
2 cups penne pasta
1 8 oz jar artichoke hearts
2-3 cloves garlic
1 package Light Life chik'n strips
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs basil
salt and pepper to taste

Drain the artichoke hearts and saute the garlic in the juice from the jar. when garlic starts to brown add artichokes and lemon juice. Saute for about 5 minutes then add remaining ingredients. Serve over pasta. Add a few dollops of Earth Balance to your pasta so the noodles aren't so dry.

Vegan MoFo is Upon Us!

.. and, I am damn excited. October is the ideal month for me for the following reasons: 1) an entire month dedicated to the delicacy that is vegan fewd nomz, 2) my birfday is this month, and 3) HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEN. This means that I have thirty one days to cram as many horror movies into one month as humanly possible. From 80's horror to 90's, from 70's exploitation to Universal Monsters, from Japanese horror to.. You get the idea. I admit, I've cheated and already gotten a head start on my horror movie intake. What can I say?

I haven't posted a lot of late and not due to lack of cooking. If you haven't noticed it's late September which means I've been back in school for almost a month. And, it's kind of kicking my ass. Also, when I've been cooking, it's been evening time meals where I'm trying to relax. Taking pictures of my food has been the last thing on my mind when a big plate of tastiness is sitting in front of me. Anyway, without further ado, here is what I've been cooking up.
















This was my second illness soup: Asian Mushroom Noodle Soup. It was inspired by a recipe I found in one of my mom's many low-carb cookbooks. One thing I will never submit to is this low-carb craze we find ourselves in. Carbs 'til death! The recipe in the book called for pork, so I subbed seitan. This recipe is really basic and really anyone could make it on the fly. It incorporated cabbage, carrots, button mushrooms, and wheat spaghetti noodles. (Soba noodles would've been MUCH better, though.) This was a really healthy meal and even the sodium content was very mild.















Remember that tempeh stew I made like, a post ago? The left over tempeh was used to make these: Tempeh burritos. I didn't do anything special. I steamed tempeh with some soy sauce and then topped it with some homemade peach mango salsa. Does anything sound more elegant than 'peach mango salsa'? I think not.
















This hearty red lentil pasta sauce is one of my favorites that I've made recently. Next time, though, I'd rather make it with a different pasta, one that holds sauce a bit better. This is a great alternative to those fatty fake meat grounds that you usually throw in your pasta sauce to make spaghetti.















About a year ago, I couldn't stand the taste of tahini. I would avoid making homemade hummus just to avoid it. I found it impossible to cook with and even more impossible to scarf down. Tahini is definitely an acquired taste, but once you do acquire it, you're hooked. Using tahini in sauces and such is all about combining it with the proper amount of water. Tahini has a very potent nutty flavor and needs water to counteract it and tone it down. I love love love this recipe for soba noodles with tahini sauce! This was my first time cooking soba noodles and I couldn't stop snacking on them while I waited for the rest of my meal to finish cooking. Such an awesome flavor. A note: I think next time I make an alfredo sauce I will mix equal parts tahinia and water to the garlic, soy milk, margarine mixture. Tahini with the right amount of water has a bit of a cheesy quality that is absolutely delicious.

Tofu Spinach Alfredo

This was thrown together in a bit of a hurry. I used my go- to alfredo recipe that I modified a bit for this recipe and Brianna Clark Grogan's Breast of Tofu recipe that can be found on Everyday Dish. I would've preferred to have used penne, but being that I'm a broke college student, I had to use what was on hand.

Alfredo Sauce
1 cup soy milk
3 tsp chickpea flour
2 tsp all purpose flour
1 tbs nutritional yeast
2 tbs Earth Balance
dash of cayenne
salt and pepper to taste

Bring soy milk to a boil and flour to a boil while whisking constantly. Lower heat and add remainder of ingredients. Continue to whisk until desired consistency achieved. Could this be any easier?

Baked Mac 'n Cheez

Super Ultra Comfort Fewd Nomz achieved! This took less than 45 minutes to prepare and cook and was so wonderful. It was even enjoyed by a cheese-addicted friend of mine. Win. I used my Supa Simple Mac Sauce and two cups of macaroni. For the topping I sprinkled a handful of Panko breadcrumbs and about a teaspoon of both paprika and pepper. Also, if you have taste buds are even remotely similar to moi, you'll throw in an onion. Just for good measure.

Mac 'n Cheese recipe: new & improved

I think this is my official go-to recipe for vegan mac 'n cheese. I combined two recipes from La Dolce Vegan! (Notice how my bowl mac is sitting on the cook book.) I've had my share of problems with mac 'n cheese recipes: either the cheese recipe didn't make enough so it was dry, the sauce was too bland, or what have you. This made the perfect amount for two servings and was just cheesy enough without being overpowering. This is my first recipe I've ever posted on my blog, and it's simply my adaptation of someone else's recipe. I'm lame.

Supa Simple Mac Sauce:
3 tbsp Earth Balance
3 tbsp all purpose flour
salt 'n peppa, to taste
1 1/2 cups non dairy milk (preferably soy)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/4 cup soy cheese, optional

Melt EB. Leave on burner but remove melted EB from heat. Whisk salt, pepper and flour. Place back on burner and add soy milk. Allow to boil. Add nutritional yeast, mustard, and soy cheese if using, and whisk. Remove from heat immediately. Continue whisking until well incorporated. Serve over macaroni or other pasta of choice. Commence with noms.

Can you tell I've ordered from Vegan Essentials?

I would like to begin by pronouncing my utter disdain for UPS. I loathe UPS. I received my order almost a week late because my UPS delivery guy refused to notice the countless failed delivery slips that I had signed the back of. I'm steadfast in my belief that he wants to see me cry.

On with the noms. Oh. My. Word. I experienced nerdy euphoria while I sat around, eating my weight in this and dominating Peggle. Baked spaghetti with molten mozzarella Teese. Certainly not healthy.
















Next up, what to do with some homemade sammie bread, cheddar Teese, and your last tomato? Oh, I think we know.
















Grilled Teese Sammich. I've completely eliminated the word "sandwich" from my vocabulary.
My bread recipe was Kramer's Sassy Sandwich Bread. It didn't rise as much as I would've liked, but it's still pretty awesome and dense.

Brooklyn Pad Thai

I used the recipe from VWAV. Nom Nom Nom. I deviated from the recipe a whole lot, mainly because I didn't have a lot of the ingredients it called for. I didn't add lime juice, added sesame seeds, no red onions, etc. Again, nom nom nom. I was only cooking for two so I had to cut everything in half. In doing so, I eliminated about a 1/2 tbs. of the sugar. Still retardedly sweet. Place a bowl of this in my hands, set me up with a creeptastic 80's horror movie movie starring Joe Spinell, and I'm set!