Catch You On the Flip-Side!

Ladies & Gents:

As of this evening, I will have minimal access to the internet for the next two weeks or so. Which means: chances are I won't be updating here. BUT if I get bored, or eat something that is SO good that I find myself three-hours later, butt-nekkid and slathered in it, with no memory of how I got there, I may perhaps manage a post. So keep your eye out. But chances are, you won't be hearing from me again 'til sometime around New Year's Eve.

Have no fear though! I will be back with plenty of oily feces and recipes for the New Year! So don't give up on my blog: I shall return!

Smooches.

And happy holidays, however you choose to celebrate them!

Chipotle Chili With Sweet Potatoes And Brussel Sprouts

                                       from the ppk


There is something shit-tastic about the brand of crushed tomatoes I've been buying. There HAS to be. 'Cause this is the second chili recipe that I've whipped up that's BOMBED*. And there's NO WAY. There's just no way. I can see one of them sucking because of a random disgusting thick tomatoeyness. But TWO?? For the EXACT SAME REASON?? It's GOT to be the brand of crushed tomatoes. Seriously.

But what a bummer. Because I really liked the flavor of brussel sprouts mingling with sweet taters and tomato. And I really think that this HAS to be a yummy recipe. And yet, BLORF. Brought it for lunch on Monday, heated it up, took a few bites and was like Why God Why?!?! The brussel sprouts were great. The yams (I subbed) were great. I fucked up and bought poblanos instead of chipotles (I had just finished up dicing up THREE huge poblanos and was thinking, My--this is a LOT of peppers, and then, as I was scraping them off the cutting board into the pot my brain was suddenly all NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOthoseare
poblanosnotchipotlesyoudumbmotherfucker but too late), but even THOSE tasted fine. But the tomatoes. Egads. Like a tomatoey version of caulking or something: Thick. Unappetizing. Overwhelming. Just nasty.

I passed some of the chili along to my friend QBL for a second opinion, so we'll see if she never shows up at work today because of Death by Disgusting Chili or something. But man alive. How disappointing. 'Cause I try not to be a food waster, but even the THOUGHT of forcing myself to eat this chili the rest of the week makes me want to weep and never stop. So it's surely going to be a case of Mr. Trashcan meet Ms. Disgusting Chili.

NONETHELESS: I pass along the recipe, because I really DO believe that it's probably a good one. If my tomatoes didn't suck. But that's what I get for being cheap. From now on: The most expensive crushed tomatoes I can find, goddammit!

----------
*The first one, which was this one, I never posted about because it was SO terrible that I was suspicious that something weird was going and didn't want to sound like I was dissing the recipe when I was pretty certain that it wasn't the fault of the recipe itself.



INGREDIENTS:

• 2 T. olive oil


• 1 red onion, diced


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• 1 tablespoon coriander seed, crushed (or I subbed in like 1 t. of coriander powder)


• 2 t. dried oregano


• 3 chipotles, seeded and chopped


• 1 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes (2 average sized), peeled and cut into 3/4 inch pieces


• 12 oz brussels sprouts, quartered lengthwise (about 2 cups)


• 2 t. ground cumin


• 3 t. new mexico chili powder (or other mild chili powder)


• 1 32-oz. can crushed tomatoes


• 1 c. water


• 1 16-oz can pintos, rinsed and drained (about 1 1/2 c.)


• 1 1/2 t. salt


• Fresh lime juice to taste (about one lime was good for me)

DIRECTIONS

In a soup pot over medium heat, saute onion in olive oil for about 7 minutes, until translucent. Add garlic, coriander seeds, and oregano and saute a minute more. Add remaining ingredients (except for lime juice). Mix well. The sweet potatoes and brussel sprout will be peaking out of the tomato sauce, but don't worry, they will cook down.

Cover pot and bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer for about half an hour, stirring often, until sweet potatoes and fork tender but not mushy.

Squeeze in lime juice to taste and adjust any other seasonings. Let sit uncovered for at least 10 minutes before eating.

Serves 6 to 8

(Recipe from the ppk)

Upside-Down Shepherd's Pie

                                       from My Veggie Kitchen


**WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY-SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING TO BRING YOU THE FOLLOWING LATE-BREAKING NEWS**:

My boyfriend likes to put Bac-Os on everything.
And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING.

I waggled my wtf-eyeball at him when he kept tossing them on some of the pasta dishes I'd made.

But then the one time, he shook them all over my fettucine alfreda, and I was like, Dude, not EVERYTHING needs Bac-Os. Until he convinced me to try it. And I realized that it actually DID taste good with Bac-Os. So I thought, Perhaps he's right after all.

Until this weekend.

This weekend, I made us this upside-down shepherd's pie. And seriously: It was the bomb. It's super-fricking easy, but it's totally yumtastic belly-warming winter food. He took a couple bites, and his eyes lit up. "Holy shit. This is like the best thing ever," he blurted between bites. Then 10 seconds later: the dude is totally shaking Bac-Os all over it.

Now, pasta: I can see. But shepherd's pie? That I tossed a bit of sage into to give it a kind of chicken-pot-pie flavor? AND BAC-OS?!?! I'm sorry, dude: no. That's just gross.

But I think perhaps he's becoming a bad influence. Because the day before, I totally had a hankering for Bac-Os, and I whipped up a quick pasta dish that ended up being delish (some margarine, Bac-Os, flour, veggie broth, nooch, and garlic powder, which tasted strikingly similar to a previous pasta carbonara recipe I've made before and love, but with only half the cooking time):



So: Damn the boy. And damn Bac-Os. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

But whatever you do, don't damn this shepherd's pie recipe, 'cause it's damn motherf-ing good. No lie. And I don't even like tater tots.

**WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY-SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING**




INGREDIENTS:

• 6 c. mashed potatoes


• 1 lb tater tots (half a bag)


• 3 T. Earth Balance Margarine


• 1 small onion, chopped


• 2 cloves garlic, minced


• 2 c. broccoli florets


• 1/4 lb mushrooms, sliced


• 1/4 c. flour


• 1/2 c. frozen peas


• 1/2 c. frozen corn


• 1 can chickpeas, drained


• 2 c. vegetable broth


• 1/2 c. soy milk


• 2 T. nutritional yeast


• 1/2 t. salt


• 1/4 t. pepper


• A shake or two of sage powder (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Melt margarine in a sauce pan. Add onion and mushrooms and saute until soft. Stir in garlic and broccoli and cook until the garlic is aromatic. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly for a couple minutes longer. Add the remaining filling ingredients. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently and remove from heat and set aside. The sauce should have thickened a bit.

Spread mashed potatoes in a 9 x 13 casserole, spreading some of the potatoes up the sides. Pour in the gravy and veggies. Spread tater tots over the top. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 45-60 minutes, until the tater tots are browned and the gravy is bubbly.

COOK'S TIPS:

This can be made with any combination of veggies that you want and can be as simple as mixing a bag of frozen veggies with gravy and adding a can of beans or seitan strips. Just make sure you have five or six cups of filling. Also, I kept the nutritional yeast to a minimum at my kids' request. I ended up sprinkling some extra over the top for myself. You may just want to add some more.

(Recipe from My Veggie Kitchen)

Vegan Ice Cream Cake Bar!

So my plan for my sister's b-day (which fell on T-day this year) was to make individual little ice cream cakes for everyone. I used the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World chocolate cupcake recipe and doubled it to make two cakes. I then cut out individual little circle-cakes with a glass (the two cakes yielded about 7 of them). My plan was then to coat each cake with a mixture of caramel and oreo cookies and then use one of my martini glasses to shape the ice cream into a cone-shape on each cake. I then planned on drizzling fudge over each of them and serving them with soy whipped cream.

But, as with most well-intentioned plans, things went awry: The caramel sauce was thin and drizzly instead of thicker as I'd assumed from the recipe which said the sauce was "thick but pourable at room temperature." It was not. However, I *did* use cornstarch instead of arrowroot. So that could've been the problem, although they SHOULD be relatively interchangeable (3:2 ratio of cornstarch to arrowroot). Nonetheless: I was forced to change plans and instead decided to reverse things up and make an oreo-fudge layer for the cake-tops and use the caramel to drizzle all over everything. Fine and good. But then I tried to shape the ice cream and realized that there was NO way in hell THAT was gonna work.

Then: KABBLAM! Ephiphany! Ice cream cake bar!!!!



I knew my sister would love it, so when it came time for dessert, I brought out one of the boring little plain individual cakes with some candles in it. Disappointing surely. But after she blew out the candles, I announced that--taddah!--there was an ice cream cake bar. Woot woot! Cafeteria style, I laid out oreo-fudge, caramel sauce, oreos, vanilla and chocolate ice cream, and soy whip, and everyone lined up and made their own ice cream cakes.

It rocked.

This is my sister thinking to herself: Boy does this ice cream cake bar rock! And also, Boy do I hate you and your motherf-ing camera.



Had I thought of this plan initially, I probably would've just made the chocolate cupcake recipe AS chocolate cupcakes instead of cake and served THOSE for the ice cream cake bar instead, because as it was, I have a contained of misshapen cake-fragments left over from cutting out mini-cake circles. But hey: you live and learn, you know?

So although there isn't a specific recipe for the cake in its entirety, I am posting the two sauce recipes, since they were both really delish. The caramel sauce is thin and drizzly and uber-sweet. The fudge is thick and dense, a little bit difficult to work with and thin out (perhaps a bit more soy milk would've helped) but seriously fricking fantastic.

Enjoy!



CARAMEL SAUCE

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 c. Earth Balance or other vegan margarine


• 2 c. brown sugar


• 3/4 c. soy creamer or soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)


• 2 T. arrowroot (or 3 T. cornstarch)

DIRECTIONS

Combine 1/4 cup soy creamer with the arrowroot. Set aside.

Melt the Earth Balance in a saucepan. Stir in brown sugar. Add remaining 1/2 cup soy creamer. Bring liquid to a boil and boil for 4 minutes, stirring frequently.

Take the pan off the heat and immediately add arrowroot slurry. The liquid should thicken quickly.

Pour over ice cream! Or store in fridge for up to one week.

(Recipe from the ppk)




OREO FUDGE SAUCE

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 c. cocoa or carob powder


• 2 T. cornstarch


• 1 1/4 c. soy milk, rice milk, or other non-dairy milk of choice


• 1/2 c. maple syrup


• 1 t. vanilla


• 12 to 15 oreo cookies, ground

DIRECTIONS

In a small bowl, sift together the cocoa and cornstarch.

Transfer the cocoa mixture to a small saucepan and whisk 1/2 cups soy milk into the cocoa mixture. Add the remaining soy milk and maple syrup to saucepan and whisk well to combine.

Cook the mixture over medium heat, while whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes or until it forms a thick sauce. (It will happen all the sudden--like BLAM! Suddenly thick!)

Remove the saucepan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla. Stir in the oreo cookie crumbles.

Serve warm as a topping for cakes, desserts, non-dairy ice cream or sorbet, or as a dipping sauce for fruit. Store in an airtight container, in the refrigerator, and reheat as needed.

(Recipe adapted from The Vegan Chef)

Sweet n' Salty Stuffing

Entirely random unsegue into a stuffing recipe: I have strange food-habits, which I've no doubt mentioned before. But this morning, while grabbing a utensil to take with me for lunch, I realized the following one takes the cake when it comes to irrationality...

I have this one fork in my collection of forks that I hate. As in, when I pull it out of the fork drawer, I get angry. And I usually try to avoid using it, unless absolutely nothing else is clean. Why? Because it has a wide base and short tines. Which for some reason fills me with intense hatred.

And now: the stuffing I raved about incessantly yesterday:

                                       from bakingsheet

I'm a big proponent of the salty-sweet combination in a dish. There's just something incredibly delicious about the way the two contrast on the tastebuds.

Case in point: For a long time, my mom used to make fun of me because when we'd hit up a movie and grab a late-night snack somewhere after, my order would usually consist of toast and ice cream. Or toast and pie. Or toast and cake. Get me? Salty-sweet: love it.

And that's what I dug so much about this dish: It's got the saltiness going on from all things vegetabley and bouillony, but the apples and cranberries counter it with a delightful and delicate sweetness. AND, not only does this stuffing represent when it comes to the sweet/salty combo, it also does so with the soft/crunchy. Smushy gushy bread and soft veggies blessed with an occasional crunch from the pecans. How stuffing is meant to be.

I doubled this recipe, but I'm just reposting the original. It doubles easily. I just baked it in a 9x13 glass baking dish (or something along that line of measurements), and I think I added on maybe 10 or 15 minutes to the baking time, but only because I added a little too much broth.

Anyways, there were only six of us, and even with double the quantity, there were very little leftovers. And it was the dish most raved about at T-day. So hopefully that's enough stuffing-flattery to get you try this recipe out.

(Ps. Allularpunk: If you try it, lemme know what you think!)

INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 c. onion, diced


• 1/2 c. celery, diced


• 1/2 c. apple, peeled and diced


• 2 t. dried or 3 T. minced fresh parsley


• 1/2 t. dried sage


• 1/4 t. salt


• pinch cayenne pepper


• 4 c. bread cubes (white or whole grain)


• 1/2 c. dried cranberries


• 1/4 c. chopped pecans


• 10-12 T. strong vegetable broth* (up to 3/4 cup)

*Use strong veggie broth for the best flavor. (I used double the amount of bouillon that you'd usually use for 3/4 c. water. Also, as bakingsheet mentions, you can add a tbsp of soy sauce to boost the flavor if yours isn't particularly flavorful.

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350F and lightly grease a 1.5-quart baking dish.

In a small frying pan, sautee the onion, celery and apple until tender with the parsley, sage, salt, cayenne (or regular pepper, if you prefer). This should take about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, combine the bread cubes with onion mixture, cranberries, pecans, vegetable broth, adding slightly more if the bread is very absorbant (some need more liquids), and mix well. Taste one of the cubes and, if necessary, add additional salt or pepper.

Pour into prepared casserole dish and cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 20 minutes, until top is crisp and golden.

Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

(from bakingsheet)

Tofurkey Day!

(from Someecards)

So Thanksgiving! How dare I take so long to post about such a bountiful day of food! Laziness, my friends. On account of all the tryptophan! (Which, my bitches, is found in things other than turkey, so don't you EVEN get all up in my grill about that!)

So yes: Thursday was a fun Tofurkey day, but a brief one--a veritable wham bam thank you ma'am-type Thanksgiving, mostly because one of my sibs was home from Chicago and had to be at the bus station by 5 to get back. So we had T-day at my house, since my house is the closest to the bus station and afforded us the most amount of time to stupor it up after eating. It was also my one sister's birthday, so we kind of jammed food and gifts up into a brief four hours or so. Nonetheless, it was a wonderful day, and I must say, most certainly the BEST Thanksgiving meal we've had over the past five or so years. (And all vegan to boot!)



However, because I'm evil (but a NICE kind of evil), I'm only bringing you a menu today. MWAHAHAHAHA!

OUR EATS:

• Two Tofurkeys--mom





• Tempeh sausage (from VwaV) with biscuits (from Vegan Dad) & gravy (from The Vegan Family Favorites)--me



• MacGyver Mac n' Cheez--me





• Apple-cranberry stuffing--me





• Sweet potatoes with cranberries and pecans--my mom





• My mom's green bean casserole--mom





• Ice cream cake bar for my sister's birthday--me



• Beer--and lots of it

It was really a fantastic feast, the highlights being the stuffing (which was beyond fantastic--recipe this week) and my mom's always amazing green bean casserole.

The only disappointment was actually the tempeh sausage from VwaV. I made a double-batch and really regretted having done so since barely anyone ate any. It was much too potent, and (maybe it's just me but) I'm not a huge fan of biting into large bits of fennel seed. And with something like 2+ Tablespoons of it for just one batch, that's a lot of fennel. The only thing that really made it worthwhile is my mom peering skeptically at the tempeh sausage not once but two or three times and asking, "So what is this again?? Tabouleh??"

Stay tuned this week for an astonishingly tasty stuffing recipe and more info on that ice cream cake bar which--trust me--you'll want to hear all about.