Brussel Sprouts Ruled my Week.

Exhibit A.

Roasted with Lime and Garlic.

Carrying home a locally grown, giant stalk of brussel sprouts from Uncle Paul's produce market last weekend was pretty damn joyous. In retrospect, I wish I had written a DW-style song about it. I had two strangers remark at the big, green stalk leaning on my shoulder on my walk home! They seemed impressed.

For $2.49, I had the centerpiece of my next few meals and a whole lot of roasted brussels in my future. Growing up, my family never ate brussel sprouts. I doubt I really knew what they looked like until I was in college. My family did have an appreciation for a variety of green vegetables, so I assume that my mom had been cursed with over boiled brussels when she was younger and banished them from her life.

My go-to way to cook brussel sprouts is to roast them with freshly squeezed citrus juice. I saw it on a cooking show a few years ago, tried it at home, and the method stuck.

The first way I rolled with my new sprouts was to roast them with lime juice, garlic, coarse sea salt, black pepper and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil.

I subsequently roasted more with lemon juice, crumbled Papa G's savory tofu, more garlic and cremini mushrooms.

Next up is a hodge podge meal that I like to think was more creative than desperate, but it goes both ways. I was obviously going to cook with brussel sprouts, but I wanted to do something different, and didn't have a lot to work with. And I was fiercely craving Pad Thai Kitchen, but wanted to continue on my home cooked meals streak.

Exhibit B.

Pad Thai Woon Sen with Brussel Sprouts and Seitan.

I loosely based the sauce on the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, sliced the brussels, used homemade seitan from The Urban Vegan cookbook and threw some crumbled peanuts on top. I was worried the brussels would overpower the dish's tangy flavor, but they didn't - and it hit the spot.

Go Vegan for the Cookies!

Roasted Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

(half sprinkled with coarse sea salt)

Lots of Try Vegan Week tabling and Vegan Prom ticket selling took place over the weekend. And at every event I was at, I made sure there were free vegan baked goods.

Sharing scrumptious vegan cookies = just the type of vegan I am.

Altogether, I baked three batches of Isa's new chocolate chip cookie variations, two pans of raspberry chocolate chips blondies, oatmeal espresso butterscotch cookies, citrus coconut glitters and raspberry swirl East Coast coffeecake. Many of those are from Terry and Isa's upcoming Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Wink, wink.

I found a little bit of extra time to chop veggies for kabobs and a giant pan of lower fat new farm mac & cheeze for the opening day Vegan BBQ. The turn out was fantastic!

At the Hawthorne Street Fair

My friend Chelsea tabled all day - she's the author of Flavor Vegan and giving a talk on Vegan Baking tonight at Hungry Tiger Too at 8pm I'm planning on checking out. She knows her flours and egg replacers intimately!

I also sold tickets for vegan prom at the 12th and Hawthorne food carts late night outside of Whiffies deep fried pies (including vegan double chocolate, chocolate creme and savory tofu pot pie), and will be doing so THIS Friday night.

That's also the night of the Vegan Pub Crawl starting at Report Lounge on E Burnside and 11th (same location as prom!!) at 9pm. Maeve and I will be breaking off and heading to the carts for 11pm to sell!

Come visit, eat vegan cookies & buy your ticket - it's the following night!

Purposely underbaked by request (whoa-oh)

espresso oatmeal roasted almond chocolate chip

Oh hey, I bought more vegetables this weekend. Hollywood Farmers Market.

Nice to stop by there! Heirloom tomatoes omg omg omg omg.

One more time! Try Vegan Week is now happening! Check out the schedule here.

Yeah, the U CAN'T TOUCH THIS! Vegan Prom is this weekend!

90s style dance off. 90s music. AWESOME prizes.

vegan food. vegan DJs.

90s pop culture icon named specialty drinks (booze and no-booze)!

There's absolutely a drink called The Carlton.

come with a date, come with friends, come solo!

dress up, dress down, dress grunge, dress to dance!

It's been four days!

...and my friend Maeve has yet to take off the tiara that adorned the top of this birthday cake. I brought this cake to a joint birthday celebration for her and her friend Caitlin. Not pictured are the matching earrings that came with the tiara, that I don't think Caitlin has taken off either.

Not surprising, I mean, just look at those jewels.

This was actually the first time I've ever made the NEW VEGAN CLASSIC Raspberry Blackout cake from Vegan with a Vengeance. How odd.

Some thoughts on this, all numbered:

1) I'm a PPK cult member, what's taken me so long?

2) Baking cakes is fun! What's taken me so long?

3) I remember when Isa posted this cake on Livejournal's Vegancooking community years ago, before you could type! Before I could type!? What's taken me so long???

4) I'm spoiled with gee-orgeous personalized cakes from Sweetpea nowadays, love it! That's been delaying this.

5) Maeve told me she wanted me to bake this cake, so I did.

I baked, melted the ganache & our friend Jeff frosted.

Is there too much booze in sight for public viewing of this photo? I also brought vodka I'd infused with vanilla beans and local basil (that Maeve grew!) and vodka infused with coffee and more vanilla beans.

We meant to remove the tiara before lighting all 43 candles. Hilarity ensued.

Review and Indian Dinner: WK Pacs

Chola Curry, Peas & Potato Sabji, Coconut Rice

When I crave Indian food, I usually go to a cheap food cart downtown.  I'm talking SW 12th and Yamhill.  There's a lot of murmur recently about the new management of the original India Chaat and the curiously opened Bombay Chaat House next door, which an old owner opened - but I'll save that for another time.

Indian food hasn't made it into my regular cooking repertoire.  I've made curry and samosas at home before but it's a special occasion thing when I do.  When the folks at Waverly Kitchens offered to send me some Indian meal spice packets that promised quick, authentic meals with the addition of a few fresh ingredients, I was intrigued and made two of the three packets they sent on Friday night - the Curry and Sabji you see above.  The coconut rice is based on the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I also received a packet for Pineapple Raita to make with soy yogurt.

TIME TIME TIME

When it comes to dinner time, I don't mind putting in an hour's worth of work into most meals, it helps me relax and focus on my own life after a day at the office, ha!   While I rarely find myself eating packaged dinners other than the few times a year I pick up Trader Joe's craptastic Soy Nuggets, I don't mind the notion of using pre-mixed quality spices in my own cooking, which this basically was.  I buy cajun and chili spices in bulk.  The WK pacs don't contain scary preservatives - what they do have is authentic spices, simple instructions and a shopping list on one side of the packet with the few vegetables you need for dinner for two.  

For example - for the Sabji I needed a bag of frozen peas, two potatoes, lemon juice and cilantro. Yeah, I skipped the cilantro because I'm a hater.  I can handle it very well mingled into salsa and Indian food, but I gleefully left it out here since it just garnishes the dish.  On Friday night I started the coconut rice in my rice cooker, dropped the first set of spices in canola oil for the curry, and within 30 minutes, all three dishes were done. 

There are two sets of spices in the one packet for each meal that I made - the top half has the spices that cook first:

After a couple minutes, you move onto the next step.  Easy.  Add garlic (and onion or onion powder) for the Curry:

White garlic from the farmer's market

A can of chickpeas and spices from the bottom of the the packet-

.....and you've got nothing left to do but simmer.  The Sabji didn't require any sauteing, just two diced, peeled potatoes and frozen peas that I've had in my freezer waiting for a day to shine. The final products were impressively flavorful for meals not only made quickly, but a type of cuisine I enjoy but don't bother to cook at home.  Two thumbs up!  I have to give the packets street cred for not ripping, or at least canvas bag cred, because I carried them around with me for a few days so I wouldn't forget to make them.  

I was curious which type of oil to use and opted for canola, and my only criticism is that I wish I had two paks of the curry, in particular!

They have starter kits available on their website here and they are all vegetarian, and can be made vegan with nondairy substitutions.  Definitely keep an eye out for these, I was really happy with my dinner.  

Anatomy of a Grocery Trip: Fubonn Supermarket & Brooklyn Pad Thai

It's been quite a while!  Somehow I've gone since September without an addition to the 

Get Sconed! Anatomy of a Grocery Trip series.  Blame the economy.  And living close to a New Seasons market.  

Yesterday I had tofu on the brain and took the bus to Fubonn Supermarket, just south of Division on 82nd Ave.

The goods:

I picked up fresh ginger, locally made fried tofu, fresh rice noodles, Mori Nu silken tofu, rice vinegar, agar agar and tamarind concentrate, which I haven't seen at Fubonn before and found on display for $1.69 or so!  I have some vegetables at home, so these were all fun, special purchases.  Once I grabbed the tofu and tamarind, I found myself walking to the fresh noodle section, and Pad Thai fell on the menu for dinner....

Brooklyn Pad Thai with thin rice noodles  

The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance.  This was my first time using tamarind concentrate ever - it's one of those products that I meant to buy and never had - and the taste was so close to Pad Thai Woon Sen at Pad Thai Kitchen!  I added broccoli and green bell pepper, and left out the red onions.  I used Sambal Olek as my chili component and the final product was fantastic.  Not to mention cooked in less than 15 minutes..

Asian. Grilled. Tofu.

Tofu. Marinade. Cast Iron Grill Pan. 

Side of Hoisin'd Veggies. Long grain brown rice.  

Lunch.

Lunch, lunch, lunch.

The Asian Marinade recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance and Veganomican can be found here.

I don't really feel the need to talk much on this post, I've left the message to the grill lines and fu.

ho

Best Wishes to all during the end of December 2008!  I don't really celebrate anything myself, besides time off from work and the possibility of snow - and Portland had a White Christmas!!

According to the National Weather Service Forecast Office, this was an event - the probability of it happening was less than 0.08%.  End of the world, thanks!  It's now turned to rain and in the 40s again, but I was happy for real, inches of snow while it lasted and extra time away from work.  I really don't hate my job, I just prefer not being there.  Shocker.

Bittersweet chocolate and peanut butter tofu mousse

Food wise, I've been soaking beans, eating Thai, baking cookies and playing with my

new Vita-Mix.  Recently I learned that I could turn my homemade Roasted Garlic and Red Wine Marinara into tomato sauce silk.  I also took 3/4 of a block of silken tofu and blended it with chunks of bittersweet chocolate, almond milk, peanut butter, vanilla and a little bit of sugar to see if it would mousse it up, and it absolutely did.  No need to melt the chocolate beforehand! I let it set in the fridge for a couple hours and then enjoyed this vegan classic.

Chili sin Carne ala Mole - from Vegan with a Vengeance

Using soaked small red beans and black beans, I made this recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance.  I used the last of my locally made Cast Iron Seitan sample and added carrots and yellow bell pepper.  I've never had seitan in chili before and call me a fan.  

This was my Christmas eve dinner above - with a Full Sail Limited Edition Lager Recipe #1 and side of gluten free cornbread.  The only gluten free part of the meal was based on the Veganomicon recipe, using Bob's Red Mill gluten free baking mix for the flour.

Vegan Lunch Special Soup from Pad Thai Kitchen

On Christmas Eve, I ended up meeting a few friends for lunch at Pad Thai Kitchen on SE Belmont.  It's proven to be a reliably vegan friendly Thai restaurant.  

Vegan Pad Thai lunch special, with tofu and vegetables

Citrus Glitters 

From the Isa and Terry Vegan Cookie Book test kitchen - 

here's a slide show of what I've made so far.

Almond Soy Latte from Tiny's in SE Portland.

Snow Serpent from another time...

Another reason to love/hate Portland, OR....

I don't mean to jump the gun, but in a week or so, Portlanders will be able to buy containers of freshly simmered, locally made seitan at Food Fight!  It's called Cast Iron Seitan and the makers are Homeskillet LLC - who just happen to be Isa Chandra Moskowtiz and her awesome husband Justin, who's really doing all the work.  

I was happy to be given a sample and used half of it for yesterday's lunch.

Peanut Noodle Bowl

To keep things appropriately charming and tasty, I decided to grill the seitan over peanut noodles ala Vegan with a Vengeance for yesterdays's pleasantly made-at-home lunch on a leave-early-from-work snow day (and then it stopped snowing, holla).  

Naturally I changed the recipe a bit - I grilled the seitan and red bell pepper instead of sauteeing, omitted the onions, added raw julienned carrot with the cucumber and as for the sauce, I used locally made Thai and True yellow curry paste and a squeeze of fresh lime in place of dried coriander (ew).

I have never gotten my seitan as perfectly textured via simmering, and this stuff is darn wholesome and convenient, and made with something resembling love.

Huxley's a fan.

Maeve from Strawberryrock stopped by and had herself a bowl and a couple cookies.  I rarely cook meals for others these days so there was a little bit of casual excitement.

Mocha Mamas.  

Another test recipe for Terry and Isa's Upcoming Vegan Cookie Book.  

It took me two years to make these damn bars.

Apparently there was some 'Make it to 20 Posts!' MoFo goal that I recently picked up on. Fortunately, I'm on track.

Here's my #20!

Apple Peanut Butter Caramel Bars

I remember seeing the recipe (scroll down) for these Apple Peanut Butter Caramel Bars pop up on the Post Punk Kitchen forums and meaning to make them.  I didn't see how this recipe could be available and I would not jump on a reason to make it!  The thread is from September 2006 and I didn't find myself making them until this past weekend for a party.  To be fair, I was gleely swallowed up in Veganomican recipe testing at the time.

For the crust, I used a double recipe of the Date Nut Diamonds base from Vegan with a Vengeance, also a recipe I've never made.   I thought I had read about it being used instead of graham crackers, which I didn't have.  It seemed a bit thick, but I can't really complain or approve because I didn't get to try one!  I'll just have to make them again.

I mentioned my fear of bugs, especially in my produce, in my Broccoli post a couple weeks ago.

How FUCKING HAPPY I was to find this friend in the basil I had bought the weekend earlier and forgot about.  LIVING IN IT.

AHHHH.  I felt the evil coming from his basil scented antenna.  I carried him and the basil to the dumpster and then locked my door and took a long shower.

Peach Cobbler & Purely Decadent Coconut Ice Cream

To my delight, I was contacted by Purely Decadent recently for the sole purpose of eating coconut ice cream and dishing about it here.  

Not being entirely selfish, I decided to invite several PPKers over after a lunch meet up and share the decadence.  

To start, the package of their coconut ice creams was fed-exed with dry ice to my office:

Cookie Dough, Chocolate, Coconut, Vanilla Bean and Mint Chocolate Chip

Note to the world - do not touch dry ice!

I set up the ice cream station with dark chocolate sprinkles, organic chocolate syrup, water and a fresh Peach Cobbler.

Now, I am already a fan(atic) of the light and creamy Sharon's Coconut Sorbet sold at Trader Joe's, and do enjoy a few bites of Coffee Coconut Bliss until it gets a bit rich for my taste.

Overall, I enjoyed how these weren't as heavy as Coconut Bliss, for better or worse (aka eating half a pint for dinner).   The Vanilla Bean was my personal favorite, and even the Mint Chocolate Chip escaped being victim to too much coconut.

The winner of the day seemed to be the Cookie Dough and Chocolate.

The Vanilla Bean ontop of a small piece of warm chocolate cake or brownie would probably blow my mind.  

As for the cobbler, I made it with local peaches I picked on my birthday weekend.  It is the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, and somehow I'd never made it before.

Jeff takes the taste test very seriously.

The Veganshizzle enjoying her dish:

I am back from Seattle and had fantastic time.  I'll try to post about it before leaving for Monterey Bay, CA for work this weekend - let me know if you have any tips for there or San Jose - and don't forgot about VeganMoFo starting October 1st!

shroomin

Last night I made a REAL meal in my kitchen that was totally not processed, totally awesome and totally trippy. It's been a while. I missed my kitchen.

Sauteed cremini mushrooms with local fava beans, olive oil, sherry, garlic, frsehly ground black pepper and tamari.


The dinner plate - with steamed kale, millet polenta with pesto and kale (VWAV variation - I wanted to use millet but wasn't a huge fan of this variation) and a few of my first local cherry and grape tomaters. And by my, I mean from the farmer's market. Can you make out the glass in the backround? Classy, yup. Plenty of leftovers for fake omelet stuffin...

I'm off....

Low and behold - my camera is working! again! I spent 3 days assuming it was gone, fiddling with it, and then last night, although the menu is being funky, I decided to attempt using it to capture Thomas' birthday cake - and success!
This camera has really held up through the past few years, with all the dropping I've done to it, the portland mist, etc. - so while I'm absolutely wanting to replace it, I do have soft spot for it, for sure.

From last weekend - Toasted salt and pepper pecans (another one inspired by Julie! who made these a while ago at a potluck - they stuck in my mind!).

I didn't have her recipe, just the idea - so I toasted the nuts in a pan, added a lil bit of olive oil, some coarse sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of organic sugar.



Oh, and that cake that I just had a teeny little sliver of?
Mocha Buttercream Layer Cake.



At the birthday boy's request.
FYI, It says 'T-rock'. Not that anyone calls him that. I underestimated how much frosting I had left to pipe, and was simply going for T, and then kept going...

He requested the cake I made for our anniversary a couple years ago, with the layers from the Candle Cafe cookbook (recipe here), but since I was out of maple syrup, I made the chocolate cupcake batter from VCTOTW and added coffee extract to the batter.
The buttercream is based on the fluffy white one from the same book - with coffee liquor as the liquid, and coffee extract and cocoa powder added. I myself would call is heavenly! or something.





And dinner before cake - baked tofu (tamari, sesame chili oil, agave, rice vinegar, garlic), sesame green beans (VWAV - asparagus recipe) and short grain brown rice.



Thomas and our friend Jeff split what I was originally making for dinner for the birthday guy - half a soy chicken baked in sweet and sour sauce - and then dove into the vegan baked ziti that that he asked I make while I was away as well. I wanted some of the tofu to myself, above, so I only used half a recipe of VWAV's tofu basil ricotta - plus chopped roasted red pepper.



Wish me and my camera good luck - red eye flight tonight! If you were me, where would *you* go, and dine, in Boston and NYC? And well, South Shore Long Island if you're familar..