A Sweet Father's Day

Over the weekend we went to visit my parents and I took my Dad some chocolate chip cookies. I always use the Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe. I usually substitute Ener-G Egg Replacer for the eggs. But I was out so I used flax seed 'eggs' instead. I could tell a slight difference, so I prefer the Ener-G Egg replacer, but they were still delicious.
On Sunday we were back at home and celebrated Father's Day for my husband. I made him a German Chocolate Cake. The recipes were from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The basic Chocolate Cupcake recipe--which I doubled and put into two 9 inch cake pans. I made the Coconut Pecan Fudge Frosting and put it between the layers and on top. I doubled the frosting recipe also, but really didn't need to. I guess I could have iced the whole cake, but I didn't want it to be overly sweet. I have the rest in the freezer waiting to be used.

We also grilled some veggies and tofu and served them over rice. My husband actually did the grilling. I know, making him cook his own Father's Day dinner. But he enjoyed it!

Simple, cheap eats

Here are two recent meals I have made that were cheap and easy to make. First up is Vegan Mom's Scrambled Tofu that Vegan Dad mentioned the other day on his blog. I make tofu scramble pretty often, but I never use a recipe so I just throw in whatever I have--veggies, spices, nutritional yeast. It always turns out just fine, but when I saw Vegan Mom's recipe, I thought it would be refreshing to just make a basic scramble--nothing extra thrown in. And it was really nice! I liked the addition of mustard and because I had some directions to follow I actually cooked the tofu long enough to make it a nice dry consistency. I'm sure the lack of veggies in it also kept the tofu from staying to wet also. I really liked it and I'm sure I'll be making it again. My mom even took a bite and liked it! She is not a tofu fan. I'm working on her! :) hi mom.

Next up is Fideo. I've passed by those little yellow boxes of noodles for many years not quite knowing what to do with them. I discovered this recipe at Vegan Explosion and found it to be pretty good for such a simple and very inexpensive meal. At 33 cents a box you can't go wrong, plus my 3 year old liked it. Vegan Explosion has a lot of great looking recipes that I would like to try. Horchata, flour tortillas, Avocado pie.

Happy Earth Day!

So far I'm having a really nice Earth Day! I took my boys to Whole Foods where they were having some booths and activities out in front of the store. Olen was shy and didn't feel like participating in the activities, but we shopped a little, got some snacks and played on the playground. I hadn't been to Whole Foods in forever--it just isn't on my way anywhere and is too expensive to do my regular grocery shopping at. But it certainly is a nice treat every once in a while.
Some of the treats we got were freeze dried fruits (Just Fruit Salad), Plantain Chips, cranberries (I'm thinking of making some granola bars with these), and dried green beans(which got a yuck from Olen). Also got some hummus and pita chips, smart dogs, and Earth Balance.

Later this afternoon we have plans to go to the farmers market which sounds like a perfect Earth Day activity to me. Can't wait to get some veggies!

Earlier in the week we did some grilling. Seitan Ribz, potatoes and swiss chard. The swiss chard I cooked inside and the potatoes were similar to the Crash Hot Potatoes. I boiled them until fork tender and then cut them into big chunks and put them onto the grill in a grill pan to get crispy. Very nice sides to go with the Ribz which are a favorite around here.

Also baked some tofu the other day. It is a recipe from the Vegetarian Times Vegetarian Entertaining cookbook. The recipe is Tofu Teriyaki Bites. I made these last week to go in a cold Sesame Noodle dish. This week they never even made them onto a plate. I just kept walking by the stovetop where they were sitting on the baking sheet and eating them off. I had specifically made them to pack in my son's lunch because he liked them the week before with the noodles. Of course he didn't eat them this time.

Breakfast for dinner

I love having breakfast for dinner. Last night we had Biscuits and Sausage Gravy with Tofu Scramble.
I got the biscuit recipe from Jewish Vegan and they were the best vegan bicuits I have ever made! Usually mine come out all hard and dense and flat. Not the case with these! Check out her recipe and blog post for pictures. Hers look way better than mine. Her main tip for making them fluffy was folding the dough over before rolling it out. Next time I'll probably roll them out even less and make bigger fluffier biscuits. The sausage gravy I kind of made up. I browned some of the leftover Italian sausage from the Sicilian Bread Pie and added flour and soy milk to make the gravy. For some reason the gravy came out tasting kind of sweet. Not sure if it was the fennel in the sausage or what. I also used whole wheat pastry flour because I had just used up the last of my unbleached white flour in the biscuits. So who knows. It was okay. My Tofu Scramble was just kind of thrown together with some squash and zucchini, nutritional yeast and tumeric. Nothing special. But all together it was breakfast!

Speaking of Breakfast....This month's Vegan Culinary Experience (online magazine) is called What's for Breakfast. I haven't got a chance to check it out yet, but I look forward to looking at all the recipes. Alisa of One Frugal Foodie turned me on to the Vegan Culinary Experience and I thank her for that. I also thank her for the Cinnamon Roll recipe she currently has up on her blog. I have big plans to make these for Easter morning breakfast.

Salad and Dinosaurs

This is another salad from the Millennium Cookbook. This time I made the Ruby Grapefruit, Avocado, and Pickled Red Onions with Baby Spinach and Grapefruit Mojo Dressing. Whooo, that is a long title. It had a lot of components. I made the oil-free version of the Dressing. It was tangy, sweet, spicy and minty all in one. The Pickled Red Onions were marinated in lime juice and zest. Also on there were Chile-Lime Toasted Almonds which added a nice spicy crunch. All together it made a really pretty and delicious salad.

There are a lot of great recipes in this cookbook. Most of them have a lot of components, but so far everything I've made has been well worth it. Here is what I've tried and recommend:
Marinated Seitan Medallions
Brownies
Millennium Tofu Spread
Fat-free Mashed Potatoes
Millennium Pizza Dough

Wow, that is not very many. There are so many more recipes to try. My husband suggested throwing out all our other cookbooks.

I got some dinosaur pancake molds at a garage sale the other day. 3 dinosaurs for $1.25! A great deal. Here they are in action.

With some leftover silken tofu I had, I decided to make Chocolate Covered Vegan's easy tofu pudding. I melted some chocolate chips and peanut butter together in a bowl in the microwave. I added the tofu and some agave nectar. Then I used my immersion blender to blend it. Not the best idea. It was a full bowl and it kept splattering everywhere. Ate it all up, no picture. It's pudding, so I'm sure you can imagine it.

Grilling out

It was a beautiful day to grill outside on Friday. I had some left over lentils and rice from Thursday's Vegan Swiss Steak, so I used them to make Lentil Confetti Salad. This is a cold salad from The Vegetarian No-Cholesterol Barbecue Cookbook.

This is a great cookbook for veggie burger recipes, salads and basic grilling tips.I also used the rest of the red, yellow and green bell peppers and grilled them with some tofu. I didn't use much in the way of spices on these. In fact, none at all on the veggies. So it probably could have used some, but sometimes it is nice to just taste the veggies. So not much to say about this meal, except that it was a nice summery meal on a beautiful 'is it spring yet?' day.Check out those grill lines!

Whatever we have dinner

Today was grocery shopping day, so last night I had to rummage around in my fridge, freezer and pantry to come up with dinner. And it turned out great!
I found a block of firm tofu that I had forgotten about in my fridge. The expiration date on it said March 1st. So I knew I had to use the tofu in whatever I was making. I also had pasta. So I went to Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen (Bryanna Clark Grogan's blog) and searched tofu and pasta. One of the recipes that came up was Bryanna's Quick Creamy Sauce for Pasta. It actually called for Silken tofu, but the firm I had worked just fine. I made the sauce and boiled the pasta. Then looked around for veggies. I cut the extra 1/2 block of tofu into small cubes and sauteed it with some carrot, diced up small and some frozen corn and frozen pearl onions that I had thawed. It came together quickly and was very tasty. Actually, I found out I'm not a fan of pearl onions. I ate around them. I'm sure I'll be making this sauce again though.
As I mentioned last week on W.I.P. Wednesday, I have been working on a bracelet idea. Here are the results of my first and second attempts. The first attempt, I really like the pattern, but the closure was a big button that I didn't like (not shown). The second attempt I used pearl snaps for closure. I like this better, but the striping pattern I did made it look like a sweat band. Not what I'm going for. I'm also experimenting with widths and as you can see from this picture I need to figure out a more finished look for the backs.
Work In Progress for sure!

This and That

I haven't been cooking much this weekend. At least nothing too memorable. I did get a valentine package in the mail from my mother-in-law. Besides all the goodies for the grand kids, it had some fun baking stuff for me. She is the best at getting me all that fun baking stuff that I would never buy for myself.
Here is what I got:

A baking pan to make car shaped cakes--my 3 year old is going to love this. A fun monkey spatula. And a family baking kit that includes a little rolling pin, cookie cutters and cookie mix.

I made a tofu scramble the other day. It had broccoli, peas, fingerling potatoes and tofu--Bryanna's Breast of Tofu to be exact. I love making this tofu. It is an easy marinade to mix up and then you can keep the tofu in the fridge to be used for all kinds of things. I usually pan fry the tofu slices and make sandwiches or put it on a salad. For some reason this time when I made it the tofu slices did not stay together. I either sliced them too thin or the tofu I bought was softer then what I usually get. So I figured it would be best to just make it into a scramble.

I stuffed the tofu scramble into some potato rolls. It was a fun idea and nice and portable, but I have to say I really prefer it with toast. Something about the soft tofu with the crunchy bread is so good.

I'll try to get to cooking this week.

Tofu nuggets

Here is a quick and delicious recipe for you:

Tofu Nuggets

1 package firm tofu
1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.
Combine flour, nut. yeast, salt and garlic powder. Drain the tofu and pat dry. Cut the tofu into 1/2 inch cubes.
Coat the tofu in the mixture. The best way to do this is to put the tofu and mixture into a paper bag and shake. Place the coated cubes onto the baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, flipping them once half-way through the cooking time to brown all sides.

The great thing is, while you have the oven on at that temperature, 20 minutes is just the right amount of time to roast most veggies. Last week I cubed up a butternut squash and tossed it with olive oil, salt and pepper and added it to the baking sheet alongside the tofu nuggets.

This recipe is also kid approved. OEM loves dipping his in ketchup. I like dipping them in barbeque sauce.

Stay tuned: I'm working on a recipe for Vegan Almond Joys.