Weeknight Meals and wedding food

Baked Ziti- Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

True to the title, very easy to put together, and on the table in about 40 minutes. I used rotini instead. This has smokey TVP which gives it a great flavour.


Sloppy joes- Skinny Bitch in the Kitch
Another easy meal with TVP. On the table in about 30 minutes. I served these on whole wheat Kaiser rolls, with a side of chips and veggies.


A commentor asked for a picture of our wedding cupcakes. I baked about 150 chocolate cupcakes from VCTOTW and a good friend made the buttercream icing. I started baking about a month before the wedding (they freeze beautifully). We then had an icing party a couple of days before the wedding. You can't beat good friends. These were topped with a blue or brown chocolate candy. (Blue and brown were our colours). Our friend also made a vegan cake for us to cut into and serve to the head table. It was chocolate cinnamon with buttercream.



I didn't think to take pictures of the meal, but we went with a buffet and the hotel made lots of great vegan options like a pasta bake, rosemary potatoes, steamed veggies, rolls, salad, etc. So good and I was very pleased with the result.

A good night

My 25th birthday party was last night. Yes, I threw a party for myself :P But really, I do it for an excuse to go all out and cook up a storm for my friends and family! Here we go...

Spinach Dip from 125 Best Vegan Recipes
I make this dip whenever I'm hosting an event, it is a crowd pleaser and never lasts long. As a life long spinach dip lover, you can't even tell it's vegan! Served in a pumpernickel bowl along with sourdough.


Citrus glitters and Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles from VCIYCJ
The citrus glitters are delicious...I used lemon, lime and orange zest. I decided to try the mexican snickerdoodles, since the blogging community seems to really like them. They are spicy! There's a 1/2 tsp of cayenne in the batter. It's an acquired taste. I didn't mind them, but some people didn't like the spice. These would also be good without the pepper. It's weird because they're still really sweet, then you taste the spice, and suddenly you want another bite!

Guacamole from Vegan Brunch

Very nice. Served simply with salsa and tortillas. I left out the raw red onion and cilantro, not a fan.

Ranch Dip with chips-internet recipe

A simple mayo/sour cream dip with garlic powder, onion powder, parsley and pepper. Also a crowd pleaser...no leftovers today :(

Gingerbread cupcakes with lemon buttercream from VCTOTW

I also made the basic chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, which were a hit. As an aside, for our wedding this summer, we opted to serve cupcakes instead of sheetcake. I made all the cupcakes and used VCTOTW's chocolate recipe. People were fighting for seconds!

Billy requested the gingerbread cupcakes. The cupcake itself is not very sweet but the icing makes up for that. They're good but not my favourite flavour.

The rest is in this picture of the food table...

I put numbers on top of the items but it's hard to see:

1- a 6 layer nacho dip from Vegan Comfort Foods: refried beans, sour cream mixed with taco seasoning, guacamole, salsa, lettuce and green onions. This was a favourite too, it did not last long!

2- veggie platter with a vegan store bought white bean dip with grilled red peppers. It was ok, not everyone's favourite so I was quick to point out I didn't make it haha. Also, there were mini pitas served with it.

3- spinach dip, as above, in pumpernickel with bread served on the side

4- fruit platter with chocolate pudding dip

5- at the bottom, tsatziki sauce, made by a friend, apparently from V'con. Very good with pitas and pretzels!

6- guacamole served with salsa and tortilla chips

7- on the cupcake tower, chocolate cupcakes with buttercream. It's a mini cupcake tower so I couldn't load it up, and had to put the cupcakes out in batches

8- gingerbread cupcakes with lemon buttercream and crystallized ginger

9- citrus glitter cookies

NOT PICTURED- mexican chocolate snickerdoodles, the camera cut them off (top tier)

No emphasis was placed on this being good vegan food....it's just good food!!!

And my drink of choice last night, from Vegan Brunch...

Pink grapefruit mimosas

Yum! Grapefruit juice, pink champagne, and agave.

Tonight's dinner is a store bought flatbread with storebough bruschetta, so I will not be cooking today :P

IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH UPLOADING PHOTOS? They all come in at the top and it takes forever to arrange them :(

Heavy on the comfort foods

Lots of food...my batteries were dead for a while so I have some catch up to do.

Cha Cha Chili-Skinny Bitch in the Kitch

I made this before heading out to my parent's camp for Valentine's weekend with the hubby. I was in a bit of a rush, so the beans were a little undercooked, but I simmered them some more once I got to camp. Chili=camp food. This is great with cheddar "cheese" and tortilla chips, or served on a baked potato. I couldn't get a good picture, but we all know what chili looks like. This one has rice, and I also added ground round at Billy's request.

Mac and cheeze, collard greens and oven fried spicy chicken-Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

I had a southern themed meal last week. The oven fried spicy seitan chicken was way too dry, but the coating is still good. The collard greens were rubbery, which could be my fault. The real star of this meal was the mac and cheese. I admit, I had high expectations for mac and cheese out of a whole cookbook dedicated to comfort foods, so when I flipped to the recipe and saw that it did not use soymilk or cheese substitutes, but nuts, I was a little skeptical. But, wow, it's delicious. Billy ate all my leftovers...and if Billy likes it, it's good! I didn't get a picture, but the recipe is on the cover of the book. This recipe is worth buying the book to have it!

http://www.vegcomfortfood.com/

Spinach Cheeze tofu scramble and breakfast biscuits- Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

For breakfast this morning, I had easy breakfast biscuits and the spinach cheeze scramble. The biscuits are great, and once again, Billy is eating all of them. The tofu scramble has tons of flavour, and has nooch added in at the end of cooking, which gives it a good texture.

Tuno casserole, green salad and 1000 island dressing- Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

This tuno casserole was missing something. BUT, I will say that I was forced to use kelp flakes instead of dulse flakes, and its almost a sin to give a negative recipe review if you didn't follow the directions perfectly, so I'll have to give it another try. It has pasta, a white cheese sauce, peas, and chickpeas. I refried it today with a touch of ketchup (don't ask me why, I'm not usually a fan of it except with fries) and more salt and pepper, and it was much better. For a side...green salad with 1000 island dressing. The dressing is amazing!! I cannot keep this one in the fridge or I'll be in trouble!

Pear crisp for two- Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food

And lastly the pear crisp for two. Simple and very good! I like that it's baked in two small ramekins for individual servings. It made it easy to omit pecans in Billy's but top mine with a few.

Yay for slowcookers!

Here is the wait-for-you stew from Vegan Comfort Food. It's made in the slow cooker, convenient! It's very basic: carrots, potatoes, celery, seitan, "beef" broth and some seasonings....but it's so good! True comfort food. I ruined the picture by putting crackers in, but it had a bit more broth than usual for a stew. I love recipes that use seitan where you just have to mix up the seitan and plop it in to cook with the rest of the ingredients. Mmmmmmm....

I bought a new belgian waffle maker with my PC points yesterday...I was tired of seeing yummy recipes that I couldn't make. Plus I'm getting Vegan Brunch soon, so I need to be ready!

To test it out, I made the banana walnut waffles from Veganomicon. These are good enough to eat on their own but I'm a maple freak! Although, you don't need as much as usual due to the sweetness of the bananas. Great way to use up ripe bananas too! I froze the leftovers for a quick breakfast during the work week.

Also, I remade the fettucine alfredo from Comfort Food, with regular unsweetened soy milk....so good!

I've got chik'n seitan simmering right now. Dinner is oven fried chicken, mac and cheese and collards.

Comfort Foods

We've been on a bit of a banana bread kick lately...I try to make different kinds of baked goods with bananas, but Billy still always asks for banana bread. And why not, it's one of the greatest foods of all time! I like to change up which recipe I use for variation though. This time, I used the recipe from How It All Vegan. This loaf is so moist and sweet, and the chocolate chips don't hurt either! It has dates in it, which really give a soft texture.

From my new cookbook, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (I know, I know, everyone else already has it :P), I made the carrot raisin spice cookies. Keeping Billy in mind, I left out the walnuts and coconut (picky!), and they still turned out wonderfully. These are delicious, with a great chewy and soft texture. The lemon glaze drizzled on top adds some extra pizzazz.

Omelettes were made for Sunday mornings. I made the spinach omelette from Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food...and it was very comforting! My first omelette didn't come out too nicely but it still tasted good! These were a little oily, but only because I eyeballed the oil for frying...next time I will reduce it. I still love the tofu omelette from Garden of Vegan, but this one has more of an eggy texture. Yum!

Also from Comfort Food, I made the wait-for-you slowcooker stew. That's for lunch today so I'll post it later!

New Cookbooks!

As much as I love my latest apartment, I have to say, it's really not the ideal lighting for food photography :(. Nevertheless, I won't let that keep me from blogging...I'm on a roll!

To keep my motivation for cooking up, I bought two new vegan cookbooks....every vegan's favourite thing in the world! Well, at least mine. I bought Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar...which I didn't even know existed until I saw it in the store...out of the loop or what?!?

Anyways, the recipes in Comfort Food sound delicious so I was eager to try them right away! For dinner yesterday, I made the alfredo sauce ( the book has two recipes for it) with linguine and the french onion soup. The creamer I used for the sauce was sweet which I didn't know, so the sauce was a bit off. Still ate it though, so it must be really good with non-sweetened creamer, or even soy milk. This was supposed to be topped with steamed broccoli, but I forgot to add that to my grocery list.

The french onion soup was more complicated than other recipes I've tried. That being said, it wasn't hard by any means, but required more cooking time and had more ingredients for the broth. This soup has caramelized onions, worcestershire sauce, red wine, vegetable stock, and thyme. And it's delicious! The extra time is worth it to get such a rich tasting broth. This soup is topped with a slice of toasted French baguette and mozzarella. Mmmmmmmmm....and Billy doesn't like onions, so I got it all to myself!

This morning, I made the Egg MacGuffins. The little egg patties are so cute! And they're very simple to make. My breakfast sandwich was on a whole wheat english muffin with the egg, tofutti cheese, and a slice of fake lunch meat, since sausage patties cannot be found around here anymore. I added a bit of vegenaise to give it some zip. These are great, and will become a part of my morning!

Also, here are the banana date scones from Veganomicon that I made...

Wanna see my weiner?

My husband and I got a puppy just before Christmas. A miniature dachshund (weiner dog) named Dill (as in the pickle). She is rambunctious and beautiful...and lots of work!

Billy and I made the hearty bean soup from 125 Best Vegan Recipes before the weekend. I brought some with me to camp, and it was the perfect meal after snowmobiling! Black beans, navy beans, celery, carrots, tomatoes...mmmm. Not the best picture, my new apartment just doensn't get the same great lighting for food pictures like my old place.

Today, I made the peas and basil risotto from Vegan Italiano, as well as the Tuscan beans and tomatoes. The risotto is so creamy! I love the fresh basil in it. The beans are also very good. The book tends to use can sizes that aren't available here, like 15 oz cans of beans or tomatoes, so I decided to up the amount of beans and tomatoes, but didn't bother to up the quantity of garlic and sage, so these could be more flavourful.

I also made the banana date scones from Veganomicon today but did not have time to take a picture, so I will try to post it later. I will say that they are very healthful, and a good breakfast bread. No refined sugar, just dates and brown rice syrup.

Squash and Soup

Well, that makes two posts this year! Yesterday, I made Spaghetti Squash Mexicana with Tropical Avocado Salsa Fresca, from Veganomicon. Billy likes this one, minus the salsa! The squash was still crunchy, which I don't know is normal, but it's pretty good. I like the occasional bite of fresh pineapple too!

Today, since I'm feeling a little under the weather, Billy made the delicious "chicken" and rice soup for the soul, from La Dolce Vegan. This is our go to soup, and I've blogged about it before. So easy to make! It only takes about 20 minutes, and then you have a delicious and nutritious soup to eat.

Oops...where did the time go?

Wow...over a year since I posted. Let's go!

I haven't been good at taking pictures, so I only have a picture of this lemon coconut bundt cake from Veganomicon. It is so tasty! I brought it to my French class tonight, and everyone loved it. Coconut milk, shredded coconut, lemon juice and lemon zest all in one, what a great combination!

Plus it gives me a reason to use my bundt pan which I received as a wedding gift...

Some of the cake stuck to the pan, so I had to do some patch work!

I have been cooking with a few girlfriends on Sunday nights. This week we made the potato kale soup from V'con....comfort food at its best! We also made vegan caprese salad, stuffed zucchini, and chocolate zucchini cake.

I promise to try and be a better blogger!

Everyday food and an anniversary

Where to start? Chronological order, I guess.

Last Sunday, Billy was supposed to have friends over to watch the football games. So I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies (Vive le Vegan) and chocolate raspberry cookies (Veganomicon), two tried-and-true recipes. And Billy even whipped up a vegan ranch dip for his chips, which is really good. But of course, the guys never showed (hungover) so we were stuck with all this food. I didn't have any cookies but I know they're delicious.


Then, to use up some white wine sitting in my fridge, I made peaches with spiced white wine, from Vegan Italiano. The wine is simmered with sugar and cinnamon sticks and then tossed with fresh peach slices. I don't drink or like wine...but this dessert isn't too bad, since the peaches are good, and the cinnamon sugar syrup helps out a bit too ;)

For lunches, I prepared easy Mexican wraps from the Candle Cafe cookbook. Quinoa and black beans are wrapped up in a tortilla with citrus-cilantro-marinated grilled tofu and a tomato-avocado pasta. These are very filling, and a nice change from regular sandwiches.


And lastly, yesterday Billy and I celebrated our anniversary and decided to have a romantic dinner at home with some of our favourite foods. So the appetizer was bruschetta on a whole wheat baguette (not pictured) and dinner was La Dolce Vegan's amazing mac n' cheese recipe, with a twist. Billy stirred in about a tablespoon of cajun seasoning. SPICY! I don't care what anyone says, mac and cheese by candlelight is just as romantic as any other recipe :) The picture I have is of the leftovers so it doesn't show how deliciously creamy this recipe really is!

Dessert, requested by Billy, was carrot cake. So I tried a new recipe from Skinny Bitch in the Kitch for carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. This is originally supposed to be a two layer cake, but that comes out to about 800 calories per 1/12th of the cake....and that does not make a Skinny Bitch. So I made just one layer and half the icing recipe. This cake is fantabulous! It is so moist that it is fragile, and it could stand alone without any frosting. In fact, I found the icing to be a little too thick/sweet, and would prefer a lite glaze instead. But we both wolfed our pieces down with glee.

Another post, look at me go!

I have lots of meals planned but first I have to finish off my leftovers. So far since my last post, I've been eating up the tempeh pie slowly.

I also adapted a recipe from Cooking for the Rushed, and made a "beef" enchilada casserole, which is basically like a "mexican" lasagna. I'm very pleased with the results. It's a cheesy beef mix with salsa and onion, layered in lasagna noodles and topped with more soy cheese. It is comfort food at it's best. I top it with a little more salsa and some Tofutti Sour Cream. Now these are leftovers I don't mind!


From Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, I made a breakfast sandwich. This consists of fried tofu, soy bacon, soy cheese (optional), tomato slices and some seasoning. It is delicious and very filling. It kept me satisfied right until lunch time. I served it with a side of the yummiest organic strawberries I've ever tasted.

More to come!

Veganomicon Feast

I went on a cooking/baking spree one day to use up the groceries I had bought, before they went bad. It resulted in two entrees and two baked goods from Veganomicon.

First, pasta della california. It's linguine with a white wine garlic sauce, arugula, broccoli and avocado. The avocado is pretty good, since it's just added in at the end, although warming up leftovers is bit harder, since I don't feel like eating hot avocado. It's a good plate though, with just enough saltiness and spicyness.

Then I made the tempeh shepherdess pie. I had two packages of tempeh in the freezer, and this was a great way to use it up. The tempeh is simmered with a tamari mixture, then cooked with spices, peas and corn, and cremini mushrooms. Then you make a gravy sauce right in the whole mix! Top it with mashed potatoes and bake, and voila, you have dinner. I didn't have any soymilk left, so my potatoes are probably a little less creamy than desired, but it still tastes great. A very homey, comforting meal.


Then, to use up the pumpkin puree I had leftover from making a pie, I made pumpkin-cranberry scones. These are wonderfully spiced and not too sweet, but not bland either! It was my first time using fresh cranberries, and they provide a nice, tangy bite every once in a while. They're topped off with pumpkin seeds.


Also, I made chocolate hazelnut biscotti. There are so yummy. I love almond extract in chocolate things. I wish I had some soymilk around so I could dunk these in tea. I brought them, along with the scones, to work for everyone to try, and the biscotti was more popular, although I prefer the scones. Not to brag, but my baked goods are somewhat treasured at work now :) Once everyone hears I brought something in, it's a race to see who will get some. And no one cares that it's vegan.


Happy Halloween!

Catch Up

I could go on about how long I've been gone, but I won't bother. There's been little time/little motivation for me to be in the kitchen often, which is so not like me. But I'm starting to get back to business. To the food!

This is Mac Daddy from Veganomicon. It's a nutritional yeast cheesy sauce, mixed with macaroni and firm tofu and baked. It's pretty good for a nutritional yeast sauce, although I must admit I'm a "fake cheese" mac and cheese girl now. I plan on mixing the leftovers with some steamed broccoli.

Next, maple and brown sugar pinwheels, also from Veganomicon. I didn't have enough brown sugar, so I subbed the rest with regular sugar and molasses. These turned out very nicely. I didn't make the orange icing to go along with it. They're pretty sweet on their own, and as they bake the sugar coats one side with yummy goodness. They're like cinnamon rolls, but no cinnamon. The underused cardamom is used instead, along with allspice.

I couldn't get Thanksgiving off from work, and all of my family left town, so Billy and I had a small dinner at home together. I made a simple, but good, "meat and cheese" lasagna, and pumpkin pie. The pie recipe was from Sinfully Vegan. I believe I undercooked the crust, as it was a bit chewy on the bottom. I wasn't a huge fan of the filling. I know pumpkin pie isn't meant to be supersweet, but this one just wasn't sweet enough for me.

In the summer, I ordered marshmallows (which led to severe finger burns at a bonfire) and ricemellow creme, which led to some yummy homemade treats, such as:
Last minute smore with graham crackers, melted chocolate and ricemellow creme;

and rice krispie squares! These were pretty soft, but very yummy. I think I got the recipe from a youtube video for vegan rice krispies.


I've got plans for more food this week....if I get over this cold and feel like cooking.