First Pesto of the Season

I love me some pesto. Short of avocado--which is the sexiest beast alive when it comes to food--pesto is one of my very favorite foods of all time. Needless to say, I love basil season. And although we're not quite there yet, in excitement and preparation, I decided to try the Appetite for Reduction edamame pesto.

I've fiddled with many different pesto variations over the years. And I love edamame, so I figured it'd be an easy success. And it was. Not only is it much cheaper than most homemade pestos (this required less basil than most, and edamame is cheap as hell if you go to the right place to buy it, especially in comparison to pine nuts which are INSANELY expensive right now or even walnuts) but it also has a lightness and brightness to its flavor that sings of spring and summer and sunshine and gardens. It was really damn good is what I'm saying. So much so that I can't wait to bust it out in the summer knowing that it'll also definitely make my basil stretch further (1 cup of basil yields about the same amount of pesto in this recipe as 3 cups does in most standard pesto recipes). And it's way healthier too, of course.

So yes, for those of you bumping about in Appetite for Reduction cookbook trying to figure out what to cook next: this should definitely be at the top of your list.



INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped


• 1 cup packed basil leaves


• 14 oz package shelled edamame, thawed


• 1/2 cup vegetable broth


• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice


• 1 teaspoon olive oil


• 1 teaspoon salt


• optional: 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

DIRECTIONS

Place garlic and basil in food processor and pulse a few times to get it chopped up. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until relatively smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula to make sure you get everything. Add a little more vegetable broth if it seems too stiff. Set aside until ready to use.

(from Appetite for Reduction, reposted at The PPK)

First Cookout of the Year

First cookout of the year involved:

• Veggie and sausage kabobs


• Strawberry and asparagus salad


• Slightly undercooked grilled corn on the cob



• My damn gas tank running out before we made it through the cooking of the last kabob


• These two lovely ladies:



• Tofutti Drumsticks (holy hell, I didn't even realize they had these!!); and



• The shooting of zombies:

This Just in from El Biblioteca:

And now you will tell me your favoritest favorite Appetite for Reduction recipes and also the ones I shouldn't touch with a 15.5-meter pole.

Annnnnnnnnnd go!

May Your Mouth Writhe with Glorious Tastebud Boners from Checking Out This Food Porn

From Sweet Melissa...



Spinach Salad with busty artichokes, plump sun-dried tomatoes, juicy olives, and sweaty (pine) nuts in a maple vinaigrette that just makes you wanna drizzle it all over your naked body (except for the horrible stickiness factor which is making my mind freak out right now):




Sweet potato fries with a length and girth perfect for inserting into your mouth:





Chocolate peanut butter torte that will ride you until you're exhausted and your heart's all rapid-fire and you think you might lose control of every muscle in your body and wet yourself with joy (it really IS that good):





And last but not least, the ladies that made this food porn possible...

Vegan Flour Tortillas...

Anyone know any brands that are vegan other than "Pinata" (which I've never actually seen anywhere)??

Flayed Mignon of Flabtastic Arm

So I bought this bean curd pack



at Tink Holl (a nearby Asian market) about a month ago with the intent of eventually stir-frying it. Which I did just the other day.

I was excited about using it, because I'd just been talking to my friend, Ms. Tudor Rosy about these delicious bean curd-skin dishes that we'd both had once that were AMAZING, and this bean curd pack sort of actually looked like what they might've used for them. So I was pumped.

And then I opened the pack. And then I realized: the bean curd IN the bean curd pack kind of had the weird gelatinous consistency of the skin on chicken before you cook it. Or the flabby underside of an overweight dude's arm if he didn't get out much in the sun and then some crazed psycho killer tied him to a chair and slowly skinned the flabby underside of his upper arm off in layers:



BLLLLLORF.

Yeah, I just grossed myself out with that image as well.

But it IS kind of what it looked like. And the taste of it before marinating? Well, I can't attest to the taste of flayed flabby underside of an upper arm of course, but it's kind of what I'd IMAGINE it would taste like before you cooked it, which means: creepily gelatinous and utterly flavorless.

Thankfully after I fried it up in some teriyaki with onions, edamame, broccoli, and 'shrooms it tasted slightly better. Like tofu, it's a kind of flavor-shapeshifter, taking on the taste of whatever it happens to be cooked with. However, it DOES kind of retain that creepy gelatinous consistency, which I wasn't incredibly enthused about.

So the long and short of this review? I'd say try it out and see what you think. Just give it a year or so before you do, that way you can forget that I compared it to the flabby underside of someone's upper arm first.

Double blorf.

Dear Tribe Hummus:

You are my favoritest of all hummuses (hummi?), even if you DID get me in trouble with the lady at Nature's Bin who tried to guilt-trip me into buying the shittier hummus because it's local and then glared at me and condemned me with her eyes for still thinking you taste infinitely better.

Surprise Surprise

So surprise surprise, I'm posting a picture of pizza again. Yes, I think I may have a problem.

Mostly though, I just wanted to show off my new thrifted plates as promised.

Super cute, right???




Also: this pizza WAS goddamn good.

Just saying.

Not that I have a problem.

*Tying off my arm and injecting it with pizza*

Assuming I didn't jack this all up...

This blog now has a fan-page on Facebook.

So fan it the shit up.

Help support Mercy for Animals during Vegan/Vegetarian Week, May 23 through the 27!

Click on pic for more info!

In the world of vegan food porn...

I think this would be the carrot cake cum shot.



Yes??