Blow, Ill Wind, Blow Away

My schedule this term is slightly crazy. I pretty much felt like this all week:

It's really not so bad, but I'm still not used to teaching as much as I have to this term. I'll admit, I'm having a tough time finding a balance between teaching and working on my dissertation. But it's good practice, since I'm signing up to do this full time, you know, for my career. I love my students (mostly) and I love my dissertation (mostly), but I'm ready for reading week. 

But I'm also not ready for reading week, because I have to submit a draft of my dissertation proposal by then, and it's far from done. 

After a full day of teaching, office hours, a staff meeting, more teaching, and planning for class on Friday, I came home and did this:  

That's no cupcake. That's bubble bath waiting to go in the tub. After a long week of writing and teaching the kiddos, it was a perfect way to end the week. Also, bonus, I planned all of next week's classes, so I should be able to have more quality time with Rameau (aka, the star of my dissertation) next week. Here's to a more balanced week.

John and our friend Ian took over the kitchen two nights in a row to make Alton Brown's recipe for Coq au Vin, and they were not disappointed. 

                                        

They paired it with a really buttery, delicious Chardonnay that I hope to find again sometime. 

John has said on occasion that he wants to learn how to cook certain meat dishes, and I've encouraged him to find a meat-eating friend and go to it. Knowing I had to come up with something easy for myself that wouldn't take up a lot of kitchen resources, I made this: 

I call it the Lazy Girl's Pizza for One. It's a pita with melted herbed havarti, sauteed mushrooms, and arugula on top. I got to eat the whole thing while they waited for their coqs (heh) to finish cooking, and they were definitely jealous. Even with coq au vin on the way, melted cheese is still tempting. 

We also made some recipes from Appetite for Reduction.
Living in the age of Twitter means that anyone can randomly get in contact with famous people, or at least bug them more directly on the internet. So I decided to tweet to Isa Chandra that we are using her book. And she replied! Here's the email notification:

**Blush**. You guys, we're friends for life now.

This week we made: 

Red Thai Tofu and Pad Thai Salad.


                                       








Y'all, this salad dressing is delightful. It's mostly ground peanuts, a little soy sauce, water, garlic, cilantro, and sriracha. Super easy, lightly spicy, and it really takes the salad up a notch. The rest of it is simple to throw together: grated carrot, red onion, bean sprouts, and cilantro. She suggests bulking it up with the tofu recipe, which was also very straight forward and probably took 30 minutes, start to finish. Ian and John took a break from the first night of coq au vin work to eat this, and they were pretty impressed. That salad will probably become a staple recipe for us.



Mom's Marinara and Tempeh-Bean Balls

Isa Chandra suggests about 10 different variations on the marinara sauce, which is just a simple tomato sauce. We tried the mushroom version, which adds about a pound of sauteed mushrooms to the sauce, once it's mostly done. John and I also added about 1.5 tbs of balsamic vinegar to the sauce and that gave it an amazing flavor. I'm sort of mixed about the bean balls. On the one hand, they are way easier and faster than homemade seitan. But we left them in the oven to stay warm while the rest of the recipe was coming together, and they dried out slightly. Fortunately, that was easy to fix by smothering them in the sauce. This one will make for good leftovers.

Last but hardly least, I made Oh She Glows, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Larabars. 

If you have a food processor, then the active part of this recipe takes about 10 minutes. Then you freeze the mixture for about 15 minutes, and voila! Larabars. With chocolate in them. Just like the real deal, they have about five ingredients: cashews, dates, chocolate chips, vanilla, and salt. They'll be great little snacks to bring to school. 

And now, I'm off to eat dinner and cheer on the Hoosiers as they play Michigan. Let's go Big Red! 

Grills Gone Wild

Last week I didn't mention that John and I bought a grill from our friend Emilie.

And it. is. awesome.



















We had little charcoal grill, but we haven't used it much. The new-to-us grill is gas, and we've used it almost every day since we got it.

Here are some of the results.
Portobello burgers with grilled sweet potatoes (based on this preparation), asparagus, and zucchini.

















The mushroom burgers were marinated in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and garlic. We topped them with goat cheese and lettuce. Amazing!




Next up: Asian-style Grilled Tofu with an enormous salad.

















We grilled these cuts of tofu on foil so that they didn't stick to the grill and then go up in flames. They stuck a little bit when the marinade caramelized (it was made of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and lime juice), but they came up ok. The marinade was delicious, if a little higher in sodium than I prefer. I had one of the leftover slices on a hamburger bun for lunch the next day. They're pretty tasty.
















By the end of the week we were ready for something non-grilled, so we made pizza with sauce I read about on Dave and Carla's food blog.

















This recipe makes a ton of sauce, so we've made several versions of the same pizza over the past few days: zucchini, red peppers, mushrooms, and goat cheese with some fresh herbs. It might be my new favorite combination of toppings. Apparently the sauce is a copy cat from a pizza place called Palermo's (I'm guessing that's the right place, but if it's not, let me know!). It's a sweet, flavorful sauce, and I'm glad we have so much of it. We even froze some to use again, probably next month during our comps.

And finally, totally unrelated to grilling and pizza, I saw a blog post this week (similar to this one) about torching some bananas with sugar on them as an oatmeal topping that mimics creme brulee. Since John and I have a torch, I felt like I had to try it.








It doesn't involve the grill, but it does require a flame.









They were a little too sweet for my taste, but, what can I say? I can't resist the chance to light my breakfast on fire.



In other news, the weather felt a lot more like spring this week. The purple wildflowers are coming up in our neighbors' yard.





You can see downtown just behind those trees.










Compare with this somewhat similar angle.






Things really have improved.











Though it snowed like crazy for a couple hours today, it didn't stick. Maybe that's how we can tell it's really spring?

Vegan Brunch Highlights

Unrelated: I am now allergic to both kiwi and pineapple. Found out the hard way, but I didn't get hurt.


















You may have heard, Breakfast for Dinner is almost my favorite meal. It's a close second to brunch. I love me some brunch. Since John and I cook a lot of vegan food, I've been fairly intrigued by this book - Vegan Brunch, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Lots of people I know - omnivores and vegans alike - rave about this book, and I've thought about buying it. But Lord knows we have a ton of cookbooks. I've learned it's good to try before I buy. Luckily, the London Public Library (should definitely be on my list of awesome things about London!) had it. So last Sunday, John and I had a vegan brunch for dinner.


First, a tour of the plate!





Delicious.













Clockwise, starting with the brown stuff at 1 o'clock:
You've gotch'er faux chorizo sausages, made with vital wheat gluten, yer roasted potatoes with curry powder and cumin, yer avocado for topping, and yer tofu scramble with mushrooms.

Let me elaborate.
















First, the sausages.
These are made from a small amount (1/2 cup or so) of mashed beans (I used black), a bunch of spices, a tbs olive oil, and 1.25 cups of vital wheat gluten, which is like an extremely gluten-ee flour. It made a sort of dough that I divided into 4 segments and approximately rolled into little sausage-like shapes. If you do this longer and thinner, it'll be more like a breakfast sausage link. Mine were more like the shape of Jimmy Dean's, but it would work either way. You roll them in the foil like little candies, and then steam them for 40 minutes. They magically cohere into this sausage shape and you can either slice them and fry the slices (that's what we did - delicious!) or grill them whole and then slice them, etc. We made the chorizo version, but their book includes two others, and I really want to try the Italian one.
We don't have Morning Star Breakfast Sausage here (as far as I can tell) and these are 200% better than the crappy soy breakfast sausages that I found at our grocery store. We had the leftovers the next night with dinner and then along side another scramble later in the week. They keep fairly well and are easier to slice after some time in the fridge. So a little time consuming, but so worth it.

Next, the potatoes.
These were your basic potatoes, and there wasn't anything particularly vegan about them. They're delicious on the side.


And, a scramble.

















I think food tastes are so relative. A year and a half ago, I probably would have thought a tofu scramble sounded unappetizing. Here's the thing: it isn't eggs. And that's fine! As I was making it I thought to myself, "Will I like this? Yeah! I like tofu that's been pan-fried." And that's really all it is. Basically you break apart the tofu pieces and fry them with garlic. Then you add some spices (thyme, cumin, turmeric) with water and a 1/4 cup nutritional yeast and fry a little bit more. Just like scrambled eggs, there are a lot of variations on this. We made it first with mushrooms, then later in the week with spinach, green onions, and cilantro. All of those versions tasted great. I think nutritional yeast is one of those mysteriously delicious toppings for things. I don't really need to understand it, but it tastes wonderful and cheezy. The avocado on top was a great addition as well.

Since we tried these recipes I've already ordered the book on the interwebs; I want to be able to write in it. The next recipe I plan on trying is the one for classic pancakes, since I've been inexplicably craving them. So far, 3 for 3!

Update: the straight up pancakes in this book are fantastic, especially with chocolate chips. A+.

American Thanksgiving, 2010

Naturally, John and I don't get a day off for American Thanksgiving. Since I'm doing an independent study this semester, I can feel like I have a "day off" any time I want, except that then I would feel really guilty and behind my imaginary deadline. This year, we marked the American version of Thanksgiving by staying at home to work on papers and cook fairly normal, American Thanksgiving fare.

Since John and I don't really buy meat in Canada (because of the expense), we went with a meatless Thanksgiving and ended up using a few different vegan recipes from this website, which I love. The author over there had a couple different tofu preparations that looked delicious, and I ended up choosing the one I did because it involved making gravy, that was too goo to pass up.

So here are the things I made, some of which were for that day in particular, and some for other occasions.

Pumpkin Chocolate Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World.





Delicious.












Those were meant to be dessert after the holiday meal, and I think I'm the only one who had any room left to eat them. Also, they're great heated up in the microwave the next day.


Molasses Spice Cookies, from America's Test Kitchen Family Cook Book.



















Don't believe the recipe when it says this makes 2 dozen cookies - it made more than 2 and a half, and they weren't small, neither. I gave half of it to a local holiday bake sale and brought the other half for my students on Black Friday. One of my colleagues said these are better than the same cookie at Starbucks. Ahem.

Then we set the table and our friend Gwen came over for dinner.

















With just three people to feed, I tried not to let the menu planning get out of control (as I'm wont to do). We had three dishes, gravy, and the cupcakes. It was kind of perfect because I stuffed my face (especially with potatoes) but I didn't eat my weight in three kinds of potatoes.




















Here's what we served:

• Steamed green beans, with margarine, sea salt and pepper
• Crash Hot Potatoes (I could eat these every. day.)
• Pan-Fried Tofu with Mushroom Gravy, from fatfreevegan.com.
  

It was sort of hard to explain the tofu recipe to John until I made an analogy to chicken-fried steak. Then he was on board. This was a delicious recipe, and it reheats in the oven well. The breading is delicate, since it's just flour and some herbs. Our guest (who told me in advance that she would try anything once) said if I hadn't told her ahead of time, she would have thought it was chicken. The chicken seasoning is a pretty crucial ingredient for making it so good. I seriously couldn't wait to have this again the next night.

As for the gravy, our guest also told us that mushrooms are the one food she absolutely abhors, so we left them out of the gravy. Still, it was delicious and came together easily. I think if you added some finely chopped and sauteed celery, and maybe some bread cubes, it would taste just like regular stuffing. The mushrooms would make it even better and I hope we try that again. John and I were putting the gravy on everything on the plate by the end of the meal. I was concerned that it all might taste overly like soy, but it didn't at all.

I have no illusions that what we ate was "healthy" just because it was vegan. Fried and breaded tofu may not have have as much fat as similarly prepared beef, but it's still high in fat. I just figured it was a cheaper (and just slightly healthier) thing to eat in place of making a turkey or buying a cut of meat. This meal was a good example of how vegan cooking can still be somewhat indulgent and super flavorful when you want to splurge on the calories a little. We won't make it again right away, since you know, it's fatty and for a special occasion, but we will definitely make this tofu again.

I know I'm late, but I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, whenever you might have celebrated it!