New Recipes for this MoFo

With only a 3 days left to MoFo, I’m trying to be on my game. What’s a blogging game? Posting daily? Sure. This post focuses on 3 new things I’ve made in the past few days. Two of the dishes are actual dinners made from actual recipes, and one is something simple I put together with my fresh pumpkin – the pumpkin smoothie from Monday evening.

I’ve made light milkshake and pumpkin ‘millk’ variations of this. This one has some Soy Delicious Vanilla, French vanilla flavoring, maple syrup, cinnamon, pumpkin puree and light vanilla soymilk. I'm calling it light because there's much, much more light soymilk than soy cream.

Pumpkin Shake


Pumpkin Seed Crusted Tofu and Spicy Baked Yam Fries

Next up is a dish that I’d eyed in Vegan with a Vengeance but never got around to making, which was silly because it featured two things that I enjoy – ‘crusted’ pumpkin seed goodness and tofu. I assume I was simply intimidated by the recipe and then forgot about it. Whatever the case, I made it on Sunday night with half of my newly scooped seeds, and took the extra step of marinating the tofu in a mixture of tamari, tomato paste, garlic and maple syrup. Not that I don’t trust Isa, but I remember wishing I had strongly marinated my roasted almond-and-herb crusted tofu way back when. I was really happy with how this came out. I wanted to work with what I had around, so I subbed some seasoning salt and random dried herbs for the fresh oregano. If anything, I had to remind myself that no, the pumpkin seed bits were not hurting my teeth. These thinly crusted tofus and the Nomicon cranberry sauce = kickass. And, after the 1-2-3 bowls breading process was completed, all I did was pan fry and bam, done. I contemplated baking, but worried the breading might not hold as well.

Fueled by Popcorn’s Baked Cauliflower Marinara

Before roasting the last of my purple cauliflower that dreams are made of last night, I used some of it in this cauliflower marinara. I was sitting around, wondering what I wanted to make with cauliflower, a pot of marinara sauce and chickpeas…and then I remembered how I never got to try this dish that Webly blogged about. I subbed Bryanna Clark Grogan’s pizza cheesy sauce for the vegan mozzarella, added some chickpeas and olives, and separated it into florets instead of one large head. I cooked mine longer than instructed, since I wanted the cheesy sauce to firm. I used the Roasted Garlic simple marinara from Veganomicon, and anything covered in that makes a fine dinner.

I’d definitely make this again. It was bold, easy, and on top of that, the colors ruled.

Pumpkin Seed Crusted tofu dinner

Maple carrots and green beans - from Pumpkin Seed tofu night.

The full spread on Pumpkin Seed tofu night - on a new table, finally. it's time for some kickass placemats..