Sunday, February 26, 2012

My Thai Birthday

Another birthday has come and gone...and with it, some delicious food. Before I get to that, here's some other dishes I made in the past two weeks.

Curried Rice Salad- Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook
This book continues to impress me, I haven't come across anything that I didn't love. This dish has a creamy dressing, with raw veggies. Billy liked it too, so double win!


Banana Ice Cream- The Vegan Scoop
This is good with some chocolate chips mixed in.



Black Bean and Tomato Soup- Skinny Bitch UEC
This has plenty of veggies and a bit of kick. It gets a really nice creaminess from blending half the soup.


Vegan Cassoulet- Skinny Bitch UEC
French for casserole, this cassoulet is great comfort food. It has leeks and white beans. It's kind of like a pot pie filling topped with bread crumbs.


Caramelized Pear and Cheese Crostini with Balsamic Reduction- Skinny Bitch UEC
I made these for my birthday party yesterday.....I would buy the cookbook for this recipe alone. It was a perfect combination of chewy crunchy bread, savoury cream cheese and chives, sweet pear and a kick of balsamic zing.


Vegan Donuts!
Billy surprised me with these from a new bakery downtown. They were nice. It tasted like banana bread in donut form :P


We made spring rolls for my birthday dinner. Correction, Billy made them and I helped a little :) I'll be posting the recipe soon.




Pad Thai- 125 Best Vegan Recipes
This is tasty, I love the mix of sweet and sour. Next time I make it, I'll be crisping up the tofu.


Here's our girlies....they get along fantastically :)

Thursday, February 16, 2012

New cookbook motivation...

I don't know why it took so long, but I'm loving this balance I've found between working full time, and cooking dinners in the evening! Now, I just need to throw a more regular cleaning schedule into the mix ;) I'm still in love with my new Skinny Bitch cookbook, so most of the meals here will be from there.

Asian Macaroni and Cheese- Skinny Bitch Ultimate Every Cookbook
So good! There's no vegan cheese in it. It's cauliflower cooked with milk and water, and blended with some asian inspired flavourings. There's also sauteed tofu and cauliflower bits. The only change I made was to sub plain soymilk instead of coconut milk.


Eggless Brown Fried Rice with Garlic Infusion- Skinny Bitch UEC
I knew this was good when I watched Billy scarf it down in about ten bites without stopping. There's no greater satisfaction for this cook than watching my hubby devour something. It came together really quickly too, since you saute the ingredients then add in cooked rice. We had this with a side of teriyaki sauce.


Red Bean and Barley Bowl- Skinny Bitch UEC
I love barley, so I always like trying dishes that feature it and aren't necessarily soup. This is good hot or cold.


I'm back to casual/part-time hours at work, so some mornings I have some extra time to make yummy breakfasts. This morning, I made a fried tofu "egg" breakfast sandwich, using a recipe from Garden of Vegan for the tofu (nutritional yeast, salt and pepper). I like to slice the tofu really thin so it crisps up and I don't get a mouthful of mushy plain tofu in the middle. I served it on an english muffin with a touch of Vegenaise and ketchup.


Corn Chowder- Skinny Bitch UEC
Mmmmmmmm. The mix of almond milk and vegetable broth is perfect...just a touch of creaminess. This if filled with onions, potatoes and corn, and it's so tasty.


Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream- The Vegan Scoop
This flavour is dangerous. A reasonable serving size calorie-wise is quite small, but we measured portions into freezer bags to help with that. Billy wants this flavour as a constant in our freezer....but I think that might be a bad idea ;)


Spaghetti with a White Wine Garlic Sauce- Skinny Bitch UEC
This has mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, and a very satisfying white wine garlic sauce. Makes great leftovers too. It took a bit longer than I'm used to for a pasta dish, since you have to cook the onion garlic mix separately from the wine spinach mix, etc, but well worth it.


Roasted Curried Cauliflower- Skinny Bitch UEC
This is one of the recipes in the book that has a full page picture beside it. I have to say, based on the picture, this wasn't as yummy as I was hoping, but I think next time I'll cook it longer so it's a bit more tender and takes in more of the curry.


Seven Layer Nacho Dip- Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food
In the book its six layers, but I added a melted cheese sauce layer. This was our Superbowl indulgence. It's got guacamole, salsa, lettuce, sour cream mixed with taco seasoning and refried beans.



Happy Cooking!