Peanuttified Coleslaw

On Sunday, I busted out the recipe for the Nappa Cabbage Salad with Peanut Dressing that I'd been eyeing in the Vegetarian Times--I knew I was gonna have to try it already after having seen it mentioned again on Two Vegan Sisters last week.

When I got to the grocery store, however, I realized I was feeling utterly lazy--so when it came down to the choice of either buying a head of napa cabbage (which the recipe called for) and the already pre-shredded bag o' various types of random cabbage (aka, instant coleslaw shreds), I opted for the latter. When I got home, I realized as well that I only had seasoned rice vinegar (which is SWEETENED rice vinegar), so I ended up making some adjustments to the quantity of brown rice syrup so that it wouldn't end up being overly sweet. I also only had regular sesame oil rather than toasted, regular soy sauce instead of low-sodium, and crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth, so I decided to suck it up and make do. I also realized I only had powdered ginger and didn't feel like running back out to get the fresh stuff.

Needless to say, the recipe ended up a wee bit different than the original, but after all was said and done, I really really liked it nonetheless. Granted, the original recipe could very well be leaps and bounds better than my version. But then again, my version was cheaper and lazier. And ain't nothing better than that.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 T. chunky natural peanut butter


• 3 T. seasoned rice vinegar


• 1 T. soy sauce


• 1 t. brown rice syrup


• 2 t. water


• 1 T. sesame oil


• 1/2 t. powdered ginger


• A few dashes red pepper flakes


• 4 c. shredded cabbage/coleslaw mix (I used from the prepackaged coleslaw bags)


• 1 sm. red pepper, sliced


• 1 handful of slivered carrots (also bought in a bag)


• 3 green onions, sliced

DIRECTIONS

To make Dressing: Whisk together all ingredients in bowl.
To make Salad: Toss all ingredients with dressing in serving bowl.

* * * *
I am still skeptical about it only having 160 or so calories per serving, but if that IS the case, all the more power to them.

{{For some reason writing about this peanutty coleslaw got that old Kriss Kross song "Jump Jump" stuck in my head. I don't even WANNA attempt to figure out why.}}

"Daddy Mac'll make you... JUMP JUMP!
Kriss Kross'll make you... JUMP JUMP!"

(Adapted from The Vegetarian Times)

All That and a Side of Budda-Bang!

I've taken a lot of random food pics over the last few weeks, but they haven't found their way onto this blog, simply because most of them come unaccompanied by recipes--most of them I just smooshed together quickly and shoved down my gullet.

But they look pretty. So I will feature them here anyways, with a delightful, Jacques-Cousteau-esque commentary.


"This here is hummusca, of the phylum sandwicha. Look at its glistening green leaves and moist basil-tomato hummus (from which it derives its name). So very sleek. So very tasty."


"Now this is a rare breed of fry-us stir-ricum. It is an almost fleshy species, speckled with garish spots of green. A salty fellow, no doubt. And a sneaky one."

Oh man, I give up. Thinking up stupid Latin-y sounding names gets old quickly.

The dish above was just a repeat of an earlier Gong Bao "Chicken" dish that I just absolutely love. The Gong Bao fake-chicken is hands down the best thing I've gotten at the Asian Plaza. So good. This time, I tossed it up with just a bit of broccoli, some baby-bellas, and some expired teriyaki sauce (mmmmm, expired teriyaki) and served it over some brown rice.





And finally, I made the (delightful) mistake of reading VegBitch's blog in the middle of the day on Thursday and got an immediate craving for avocado sushi. I ended up scooting out of work early and heading off to the Asian plaza so I could get my hands on some cheap ingredients (I also picked up some stuff to make spring rolls this upcoming weekend as well--woot woot). Went home, prepped the rice (still not so good at that part--every single damn recipe I have at home does not have normal rice/rice-vinegar ratios to go from... drives me batty), and plugged up the sushis with some a) avocado, b) baked tofu (which was weirdly tasty and kind of had a tangy tangy-cheese flavor to it--I later used it on a veggie-burger in place of cheese), and c) baby bellas.

I was a bit disgruntled when I discovered that the wasabi I bought had milk int it (WTF?? Is this common?), but I tried to soothe myself with sweet thoughts of avocado instead. The end result was yum-fricking-tastic, but unfortunately the rice was a bit more moist than it should've been and sogged up the nori. C'est la vie. I downed a whole bunch of it while my cats sniffed away, so regardless of the sogginess, I was a happy camper.

This weekend, I didn't do much cooking at all, as I had Part II of my "The Art of Being Awesomer at Being Cool" seminar. But I *DO* have one recipe to share, so hold onto your horses/hats/golf-balls/ukeleles and I'll post it as soon as I can.

Rerun

This weekend I made one of my favorite go-to recipes yet again: my friend Kristen's super-easy salsa chili. It seriously is one of my favorite easy-peasy recipes because it's beyond simple and because you can craft a completely different-tasting dish out of it each time with just a few very simple changes.

Basically, the main ingredients of the recipe that make it thrive are the three types of beans you pick out and the salsa. What's so delightful about it (and what I like to do each time I make it) is switch up the beans and salsa I use to get a completely different experience.

This time when I made it, I used kidney beans, black beans, and pigeon-peas (which I've never had before, and which ROCK). For the salsa, I used Arriba's Mexican Red Salsa which, as a stand-alone salsa I would NEVER EVER eat having tried it now, since it tastes more like a spicy spaghetti sauce to me than it does a tasty salsa--but it works well with the chili. It has a certain sweet zinginess to it that I found appealing.

It makes a buttload, so it'll make for a good number of lunches or dinners for the week.

And holy mother of god, if you top it with half of a diced up avocado like I did on Tuesday, you will just wanna explode all over the place. Good stuff.

Buttery Kidney Bean and Avocado Salad

As any of you who've been reading this blog for more than five minutes knows, I've had a long-standing and torrid (and sexy, and kinda sweaty) love affair with the avocado. Quite frankly, if I had a harem list of foods like I do my harem-list of famous-people (see My Personal Harem list in the sidebar here for more), the avocado would be my Julian Casablancas, my #1 go-to food. It is sexy and it sets my insides all a-flutter. It is, dare I say it, the perfect food.

So although this is not any real complicated recipe, is not even really a "recipe" per se, I felt the need to share it with you today. Because over the past week, my love of avocado has been reaffirmed (I've been lucking out with perfectly ripe avocado after perfectly ripe avocado from the market for the past couple weeks), and I recently realized that, if I were into threesomes, it'd most certainly be the kidney bean that I'd invite to join me and Avocado.

Seriously. Kidney beans and avocado? Surprisingly damn good. I think it's because as beans go, kidney beans are one of the more buttery ones in consistency, just like an avocado. And they are rich-tasting and velvety in consistency, JUST LIKE THE AVOCADO! And they're damn sexy!!!! JUST LIKE THE AVOCADO!!!!! I mean, seriously, how could you NOT let them go at it with each other knowing all that?

So yes. Though this seems almost not even worthy of its own recipe, given the simplicity of it, I figure it's worth noting if for no other reason than to get you out there and dabbling with an avocado-kidney bean threesome. (And yes, it's healthy, it's super-easy, and it's MAGICAL to eat. MAGICAL!)

INGREDIENTS:

I've included guess-timated proportions for the anal-retentive of you, but truly, it all comes down to portioning it out the way that makes you most tingly in your nether-regions.

• Shredded/chopped lettuce (About 1 cup)


• Kidney beans (About 1/2 to 3/4 cup)


• 1/2 of an avocado, diced


• One plum tomato, diced


• Salsa (1/2 to 3/4 cup)

DIRECTIONS

Toss lettuce in a bowl. Heat up the kidney beans in a microwave until hot. Toss the kidney beans, avocado, and plum tomato on top of the lettuce. Top off with salsa (not pictured here, otherwise it'd make a really boring picture).

Creamy Roasted Chipotle Soup

I eat soup ALL the fricking time for lunch, mostly just because it's really quick to whip up a batch on the weekend, and typically soup recipes make an assload so it typically lasts me through the week.

At some point, I think I'll grow sick of eating them for lunch though (especially since I favor tomato-based soups, and there's only so many you can make before you start feeling like you're gonna blorf up acidic tomatoes all over your desk), but for now, I'm digging on them, partially because of the ease-factor and partially because it's been helping me eat healthier during the week and be more aware of my portion sizes, which I've been trying to do (because I can easily polish off half a large pizza with no problem, just as an example--and it's been making my insides feel gooey and bojiggly and coagulated as of late). So soup to the rescue.

I'm officially sick of roasted soups though, I will tell you that. This will probably be the last one I make for a long while. And be forewarned--this is a spicy bugger of a soup. So have some tissues handy.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 t. oil (I used canola)


• 1/2 large onion, diced


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• 1 large can crushed tomatoes


• 1 small can diced tomatoes


• 1 T. diced jalapenos


• 1 chipotle in adobe, diced up small


• 2 small cans of corn, blackened (spread on a baking sheet and toss in your broiler for a while)


• 3 c. veggie broth


• 1 small can black beans


• 1/3 c. vegan sour cream

DIRECTIONS
In a large pot, cook the onion and garlic in the oil until translucent. Add all other ingredients minus the sour cream. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 20 minutes or so. Swirl in the sour cream. Let cook for 5-10 minutes more. Chow down.

You Will Eat Your Veggies, and You Will Like Them!

Along with the peanut butter stuffed peppers and the peanut butter-chocolate cheesecake this past weekend, I was tempted to pimp out my asparagus by adapting the peanut-buttery green-bean recipe from the April 2007 VegNews as well, but then I had a moment of clarity and thought to myself, Seriously, Lindy Loo, there *IS* such a thing as overkill. (Plus, I didn't wanna be held responsible for blocking my fella's arteries.) So instead I whipped these up.

As always, I'll take broiled asparagus over steamed ANY day. And this weekend was no different. Except this time I decided to toss in a few added flavorings to the mix.

End result: intriguing. The soy sauce and sesame flavoring worked well with the asparagus. Perhaps not the best side for a meal filled with peanut butter. But then really, what is? Other than a giant peanut? Mmmmm. Giant peanuts. ARGHLGHLGHLGHL.

SIMPLE SESAME ASPARAGUS

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 T. sesame oil


• 1 T. soy sauce


• 1/2 to 1 T. sesame seeds


• 1 bunch of asparagus

DIRECTIONS
Prep your asparagus by rinsing and snapping off the bottoms. Place them in a large bowl and drizzle the sesame oil and soy sauce on top. Let marinate for about 30 minutes at least, stirring it around every once in a while. Turn on your broiler. Spread the asparagus across a baking sheet. Place in the broiler until it's starting to darken and it's almost cooked all the way through (about 5 minutes or so). Remove and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top. Return to the broiler for just a minute or two (keep your eye on it because the sesame seeds will darken and burn very quickly). Remove and chow down.

Peanut Butter Strikes Back

Also in the April issue of VegNews was a really simple but delish recipe for a peanut-butter chocolate vegan cheesecake. Totally worth whipping up.

The only comments I really have about it are a) I used a 9-inch pan instead of an 8-inch. I hate that all pans aren't either one or the other, because IT'S A FRICKING INCH, FOLKS, AND I HAVE NO DESIRE TO GO OUT AND BUY ANOTHER PAN THAT WON'T FIT IN MY MINISCULE AMOUNT OF CABINET SPACE, JUST FOR ONE INCH. Needless to say, the cheesecake was flatter than it normally would be. Still really damn good though.

The other "interesting" thing about the recipe was that b) the picture that came along with it in VegNews was one that could not POSSIBLY have been made using the same recipe. The actual recipe has two layers of cheesecake (chocolate and pb) that you "swirl" together (though "mush" together would be a better word for it, seeing as the quantities on both are the same, so there's little "swirling" going on and mostly just "pouring on top of"). As you can see from my pic, it's kinda layered looking, brownish and light brownish. The picture itself is of a stark white cheesecake with what looks to be chocolate chips sprinkled throughout it. It would be HUMANLY IMPOSSIBLE to craft that picture from said recipe. So I laughed a bit when I saw it. Cracked out crazy VegNewsers!

Check it out though--mmmm mmmm.

(p. 60, April 2007 issue of VegNews)

Muffins Gone Wild

We interrupt this peanut butterly-scheduled program to bring you a delightful recipe for mocha chip muffins, straight from the PPK. I figured you could use a break from all the talk of peanut butter recipes these past few weeks (mostly I'm just covering my back so that you don't end up suing me when you suddenly become 100 lbs. fatter, way more greasy, and start smelling faintly of peanuts).

I whipped up these very non-peanut-buttery muffins when I got home last night, and they were delightfully simple to make. I have yet to actually try one of them, so they *COULD* very well taste like dog food. But I plan to for breakfast. And I can say that the batter was fantastique, and the little nibblins of broken muffins were tasty as well. So I suppose that bodes well for the recipe.

Get this though... I'm taking perfectly harmless pictures of my muffins last night, when, Holy Mary Magdalene, out of the complete blue, this muffin comes running in front of the camera and whips off her top! I'm like, WTF! Apparently she thinks we're working for Muffins Gone Wild or something, and I try to explain to her that those kinds of trashy programs FILM girls topless (not take photographs of them). But she won't take no for an answer, and she's just standing around with no top on, freaking out all of my camera-people, so I ended up taking a few pictures just to appease her.

I've of course blocked out the dirty parts because, well, this ain't no p0rn0 site, folks. But you can still see her in all her glory.

Her mother should be ashamed.



MOCHA CHIP MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour


• 3/4 c. sugar


• 1/4 c. baking cocoa


• 2 t. instant coffee


• 2 1/2 t. baking powder


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1 c. soy milk


• 1/2 c. canola oil


• 2 T. soy yogurt


• 1 t. vanilla extract


• 1/2 c. chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl, sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt).

In a seperate bowl, wisk together wet ingredients (soy milk through yogurt) until emulsified.

Pour wet into dry and combine until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in chocolate chips. Fill muffin tins almost to the top. Bake 18 - 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

(recipe from the PPK)

Sweet and Spicy Stuffed Peppers

Hurray! Finally time to cook this weekend! *Jumping in the air and clicking heels together*

Since I actually had more than five minutes to cook, I decided to go all out this weekend and cook my ass off. (Not literally though, because I don't think that would technically be "vegan.") Anyways, inspired by the peanut-butter conversations I've been having in the comments section of this blog, I decided to try out a couple of recipes from the Passion for Peanut Butter article in the most recent issue of VegNews. Mostly I was just excited to try out these stuffed peppers, as I found myself thinking "Peanut butter? In stuffed peppers?!?" And when I mentioned to my sister that I was making this recipe, her response was the same as well. But I can assure you, the inclusion of peanut butter in this recipe was interesting and delightful.

Though I won't be posting the recipe here (I have no smoldering anger against VegNews like I do the Vegetarian Times that would compel me to defy copyright laws and post their recipes here--so I recommend getting the newest issue as it's got some damn good recipes in it), I will at least give you an idea of what these stuffed peppers consisted of. Basically, they are red peppers (though I used a couple of green as well) stuffed with brown rice, red peppers, kidney beans, peanut butter, parsley, jalapenos, and salsa. F-ed up, no?

Unfortunately, since I was having some sort of Three Stooges space-cadet kind of weekend, I somehow managed to leave out the kidney beans. Thankfully, the stuffed peppers were still really damn good. I also forgot to cover them like the recipe states--perhaps this would've made them more moist, but truth be told, I like my pepper-stuffings a bit more crunchy and crisp.

All in all, this was a really interesting and tasty stuffed pepper recipe (and the nice thing about it is that you can easily tweak it or experiment with it each time you make it, just by using different salsas)--it's got a nice kick to it from the jalapenos and salsa, and yet it's also kind of rich as well, from the peanut butter.

Despite the fact that I left out the kidney beans, I did remix some in with my leftovers last night, and they did add a bit more oomph to the recipe. For those of you who aren't big fans of beans, you can definitely do without. But if you like-a da beans, definitely include them in, as they add a bit more texturally and flavor-wise.

Good stuff.

(p. 60, April 2007 issue of VegNews)

I Suck

Yes, I know. It's true. I suck and haven't posted a damn thing all week.

Mea culpa.

What can I say? It was a long weekend. I spent all of it at a seminar. I was busy learning "The Art of Being Awesomer at Being Cool" (because I already am cool, of course, but I figured I could definitely be way awesomer at it if I just worked a bit harder), so I didn't have any time at all to do anything even resembling cooking.

I did stare at a Mustard Seed eggplant-falafel pita-wrap really really hard at lunch on Sunday, if you can count that as cooking.

Oh, and I also ate a hummus-tomato conglomeration yesterday that I accidentally broke a glass right next to, so each time I took a bite, I could swear I tasted glass in it.

Mmmmmm. Glassy tomato-basil hummus. ARGHLGHLGHLHGLHGLGHL.

Anyways, next week: I promise to have a recipe or two to share with you. Especially since I have a perfectly good and perfectly new set of silicon bakeware that my brother got me for my b-day, and it'd be a real goddamn shame if I don't get around to using it already. (*Fingers crossed*)