World's Easiest Vegan Cream-Cheezy Veggie Pizza

My mom used to often make the non-vegan version of this pizza for picnics and gatherings when we were little, so it definitely has a nostalgia-value to it. Which is why I was so pleased to realize that it's so easily vegan-izable.

This was the definite crowd-pleaser of the party. It's very rich and filling, so a small slice or two is plenty as a munchie.



INGREDIENTS:

• Two tubes Pillsbury Crescent Rolls


• One 8 oz. tub of vegan cream cheez


• 1/2 c. vegan mayo


• One pack of some sort of ranch/veggie-dip seasoning (I used Veggie Weggie Dip Mix)


• 1/4 c. to 1/2 c. of the following veggies (feel free to add or subtract--musts, in my opinion though, are cauliflower and black olives):
  Black olives, sliced
  Cauliflower, diced small
  Shrooms, sliced
  Broccoli, diced small
  Green peppers, diced or sliced

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375-F.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Unroll your crescent rolls down the pan, trying not to separate at the perforations. Once you've filled the pan length-wise, tear off the extra dough and fill it up width-wise. With two tubes, you should have slightly in excess of a large pan. Once the pan is filled, press down the dough where the perforations are to seal everything together.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes (or until crust is a golden color on both top and bottom). Remove from oven and let cool.

In the meantime, combine your cream cheez, mayo, and seasoning. Whisk together until combined.

Once crust is cool, spread your cream cheez mix across the top of it until it's all used.

Top with your raw veggies.

Slice and serve.

(Makes about 16 or so small--but rich--slices)





PS. CONTEST-WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED THIS WEEK! I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN!!! =)

Creamy Spinach-Artichoke Dip

(Please excuse the horrible pic.)

So yay! I made a really good spinach-artichoke dip for the Oscars on Sunday, and it was super-easy but super-decadent. I was inspired by the Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk recipe but ended up fattening it way the hell up ('cause I'm sorry, but that's the nature of spinach-artichoke dip--it ain't TRULY spinach artichoke dip if you don't feel concerned that it could give you a heart attack).

Anyways, it turned out really fricking well. You would never guess that there's a whole can of beans in there, and they do a nice job of balancing out the cream-cheezy flavor so it's not overpowering.

My brother (who loves spinach-artichoke dip) said, and I quote: "Wow. You wouldn't guess this is vegan. It tastes even better than the TGI Friday's spinach-artichoke dip from the grocery store!" Which I THINK was a compliment.

But yeah: I haven't had spinach-artichoke dip in years and years, and I fricking LOVED it. Thankfully I was pretty full from dinner, otherwise I probably could've easily plowed through half of this.

Oh, and I accidentally baked it at 0-degrees for 20 minutes because my mom's stove is confusing. But you may wanna skip that step. ; )

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 small can Great Northern beans, drained


• 1 T. olive oil


• 1 small onion, diced


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• 4 c. fresh spinach, shredded into small pieces


• 1 14.5-oz can artichoke hearts (quartered or whole is fine), roughly chopped


• 1 tub vegan cream cheez


• 1/4 c. panko bread crumbs


• 1-2 T. nutritional yeast

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400-F.

Heat the olive oil on medium in a pan. Add onion and cook until nearly translucent. Add garlic and cook one minute more. Toss in your spinach and cook until wilted (2-3 minutes). Remove from heat.

Toss your drained beans into a food processor. Blend until smooth.

Empty the tub of vegan cream cheez into a casserole dish. Add blended beans and mix until well-combined.

Add artichoke hearts, spinach-mix, panko, and nooch.

Cover with lid or foil and cook about 20 minutes.

Remove lid/foil and cook for 10 or 15 minutes more, until a little browned and heated through.

Serve with chips or whatever other dippables you like.

Serves 4-ish or so

Three Cheers For Vag-Time!

So finally: the moment you've all surely been waiting for! It's VAGINA-DENTATA-TIME!



As I mentioned last week, I had a little Vagina Dentata party this weekend, and we all watched the movie Teeth.

In honor of the movie's vagina dentata theme, I decided to whip up some vagina/penis-themed munchies.

First off, I adapted the bloody finger cookie recipe to make little vaginas and penises.

Now, I must tell you. It is really f-ing hard to make tiny penises and vaginas. Harder (snicker) than one might think. Veganmofo! The problem with it is that as soon as you take a penis or vagina out of context (place it in a situation where it's not attached to the body), it kind of looks confusing and isn't really obvious as a penis or vagina.

And then, to top THAT off, this morning, I suddenly panicked and got paranoid that I put the clits in the wrong place on the vaginas. All them labia and lips and whatnot make things so very confusing when trying to recreate them! But N-A didn't say anything, and he's pretty much a clit connoisseur. Ha ha ha. And no one else at my party said anything either. Then again, they could've just been sitting around thinking to themselves, "The poor poor girl--she doesn't even know where a clit is located."

Well, f- that! I think I got it right.

And if I didn't, well, make your own damn vagina cookies!

Anyways, these are the befores:




These are the afters:




Unfortunately, they sank as they baked, so they didn't look quite as good as the pre-baked versions, but they worked.

I also made some cut-up wieners (get it!), aka. "pigs"-in-a-blanket, served with ketchup (blood--get it!).

This is not the best of pics, and it's a before-pic, but oh well. Basically, I cut vegan hot-dogs into quarters, and then I wrapped them in a piece of Pillsbury Crescent roll dough (also vegan):



And finally... The piece de resistance of the party was the vagina dentata surprise that my friends P (and L) brought over and kept a secret up until the point of unveiling. It was definitely the highlight of the party's munchies.

You can see why:



Ha ha ha.

P used an Isa Chocolate Cake recipe and then decked it out with vegan frostings, fruity chews, and almonds for teeth.

I don't think I've ever seen a cuter vagina dentata. Have you?

Whiskey Peanut Fudge

I don't know whether it's technically against work-policy to be nibbling on these booze-laced goodies, but right now I DON'T CARE!!! <--- That's no doubt the whiskey talking.

Anyways, I whipped these up on the weekend so that I could take them with me to school a) in honor of St. Patty's Day, and b) because we had two sets of serious, hardcore, ass-whooping, last-semester midterms yesterday, and I figured if C (the only other person in both my classes) and I consumed enough of these during our lunch-break, we'd find ourselves going into our second midterm MUCH more optimistically. Unfortunately I left them at home in the morning.

So I instead dragged them out with me to the bar last night to celebrate the fact that I WHOOPED my motherf-ing midterms' ASSES.

98% and 97%, babies! How you like THEM apples?!?!

Anyways, I really dig these. But I must admit: I found myself thinking that they're not exactly the consistency of fudge. At least in my fudge-experience. They're more like crumbly chocolate. Then again, maybe the whiskey fumes made me mess 'em up slightly. It's hard to say.

Regardless: They are still damn tasty. Everyone who chowed down on one yesterday loved them. Especially the fact that they're pretty much BURSTING with booze. And they're SOOOOOO very beyond easy to whip up. Which makes them a perfect party-food.

Anyways, a few recommendations: If you're a lightweight *couLAME-ASSgh*, definitely cut back a tiny bit on the whiskey and maybe sub in some water or something, because these babies are "wobbling down the street with only one shoe on and shouting nonsensical insults at passing cars"-booze-laden. I mean, they've got nearly 1/2 c. of booze in them. And that's quite a bit. All that being said, I like 'em that way. So I wouldn't change a thing.

Other tip: DO chop them nuts up pretty well. The bigger the nuts (teehee) the better the chance your chunk of fudge will crumble around the edges. Because where there's nuts, there's not so much fudge-glue going on. I didn't chop mine up because I was being lazy, and they were rather crumbly. (You can see the pock-marks in the pic. You can also see a random cat-hair which I ever so grouchily noticed only AFTER taking these pics. But did I go back and try to figure out what piece of fudge it was stuck to? Heck no. You eat my food, you risk ingesting a bit o' cat hair, you know what I'm saying?)

Also: I couldn't for the life of me find dry roasted, unsalted peanuts. All of the dry-roasted peanuts at my grocery store were salted. And all of them had gelatin in 'em. (Yeah, if you didn't already know that, always double-check any coated-nuts you buy, because many of them have gelatin in them.) So I just settled on some regular salted peanuts, and they worked mighty fine. I suspect the dry-roastiness would compliment the whiskey-flavoring, but sometimes you just have to make do.

So happy belated St. Patty's day, boozers. Now toss on those sunglasses, take a couple aspirins, and drag your hungover ass out to the store so you can nurse yourself back to sober a LITTLE less painfully by nibbling on these the rest of the day.

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 T. whiskey


• 1 1/4 c. icing/powdered sugar


• 1 1/4 c. semisweet chocolate chips (melt them and cool them down after measuring the amount)


• 1 c. dry roasted, unsalted peanuts -or- 1 c. salted plain peanuts (chop them after measuring the amount)

DIRECTIONS

prepare an 8×8 baking pan with some parchment paper for minimal cleanup.

whisk your whiskey [ha] together with the sugar. throw in peanuts. add chocolate, stir well.

pour in your prepared baking pan, grab an extra piece of parchment paper and press down with a spatula [or your not-too-warm hands] on top of the extra parchment to level the fudge.

place in fridge for at least a couple of hours.

remove from pan, remove parchment paper and cut your fudge the way it’s never been cut before. the size of the pieces is up to you!

(Original recipe from the very foxy Celine at Have Cake, Will Travel--pleasedonthurtme)

Tofu Wingz

I finally *FINALLY* sat my ass down and made the infamous Hot Wingz de Katie this weekend. I was starting to feel like the unpopular kid at vegan school where all the other popular kids are all peer-pressuring me--"If *YOU* do it, you'll be cool too, just like us," "You won't get addicted from just one bite," "Hot Wingz and blowjobs aren't REAL sex"--and so I caved. What can I say? When it comes to vegan food, I'm not real good at standing up in the face of pressure.



Since there was a huge winter storm a-blustering, I settled on using tofu instead of tempeh, you know, so I wouldn't DIE trying to make it to a store just for a stupid block of tempeh. I pressed the tofu for an hour or two, cut it in half width-wise, and then cut each half into triangles. Once they were cut up, I tossed it in the freezer. The next day, I took it out to thaw, and once it was pretty much unfrozen, I pressed it one more time to get out any excess water. From there, I just treated the tofu like tempeh, breading it down the assembly line.

The end result: delish. The breading is an award-winning combo: the thyme gives it a bit of that ol' school chicken-y type flavor. And the sauce is just delectable. (Next time I may add even MORE hot sauce, because mine was surprisingly unspicy, despite what I had thought was a rather large quantity of hot sauce.) Because I was in a weird pseudo-frying mood (cooking junkier food that normally one would fry but choosing NOT to fry it), I also ate these with a side of homemade vegan hushpuppies (recipe forthcoming). It was nice night of little nibbly-foods, and I found myself craving more wingz as I sat and watched a horror movie later on that evening.

BUT I REFRAINED! I REFRAINED! (And then I just cowed down on them the next day instead.)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 8-oz package of tempeh (or 1 14-oz cube of extra-firm tofu, pressed, cut into triangles, frozen, thawed, and pressed again)


• 1/3 c. rice/soy milk


• 1/3 c. flour


• 1/2 t. salt


• 2 t. thyme


• 1 t. paprika


• fresh ground pepper, to taste


• 1/2 t. garlic powder


• 2/3 c. panko (or just regular breadcrumbs)


Sauce:


• 4 T. margarine, melted


• 2 1/2 T. hot sauce


• 4 T. ketchup


• 2 T. agave nectar

DIRECTIONS

If you are using tempeh, in a small saucepan, boil about three cups of water. Cut the tempeh into four equal blocks, then cut those blocks into triangles, and carefully slice the triangles in half lengthwise. Put the tempeh in the boiling water and cover, for about fifteen mintes or until tempeh is softened. Pour the pan into a colander and rise with cold water. Allow the tempeh to cool enough that you can handle it.

If you are using the tofu, just make sure you press it, cut it into triangles, and freeze it at least a day prior (I think the longer you freeze it, the more dense and chewy the consistency will be--which is what you're aiming for). Remove it earlier in the day and let it thaw out completely and then press once more.

Make the sauce. In a large pot, combine all of the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Make your assembly line for the wingz. Put your soymilk in the first bowl, your flour and spices in the second, and your panko in the third. At the end of the line, have a greased baking sheet (or a baking sheet lined with parchment paper) waiting.

If you're using tempeh, hopefully by now it's cool enough to handle. Take a triangle of your tempeh or tofu, and dip it in the milk, then coat in flour. Then another quick dip in the milk before thoroughly coating it in the bread crumbs and placing it on the baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the tempeh/tofu.

Spray the tops of the wings with cooking spray, and bake in the oven for ten minutes. Remove, flip over, and bake for ten more.

Just before you take the wings out of the oven, heat the sauce over a medium heat until just warm - there’s no need to boil it, we’re just trying to make sure the sauce isn’t cold.

When you take the wings out, immediately transfer them to the pot and coat in the sauce. Serve immediately.

(Original recipe from Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk)

Oh, My Most Favorite of Holidays: How I Adore Thee

Since I'm sure Halloween celebrations are on the horizon for many of you this weekend, I bring you some Halloween-viewing recommendations and a reminder of my two favorite Halloween recipes (ok, one's not so much a recipe as it is directions on how to make the coolest ice cubes ever, but deal).


RECIPES





Bloody Finger Cookies





Spooky Hand Ice Cubes
(And gentle reminder: If you decide to make
these, make sure you don't accidentally buy those
vinyl gloves that have the powdered insides.)




HORROR MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS


Movies to Chill You to Your Very Core

• The Exorcist


• The Shining


• Texas Chain Saw Massacre


• The Omen (1976)


• Dawn of the Dead (1978)


• Dawn of the Dead (2004)


• The Evil Dead


• Session 9


• Night of the Living Dead

And for the added bonus of being the world's best, most kick-ass feminist horror flick EVER

• Ginger Snaps

And on the gloriously campy horror-flick front (these are good ones to have playing in the background at your party)

• The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra


• The Killer Shrews


• The Screaming Skull


• Bloodlust!


• I Eat Your Skin


• Motel Hell


• Night of the Cobra Woman


• Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama


• They Live


• Zombi Holocaust

Oh, and please, my peeps. Stop back in and post pics of your Halloween costumes next week! Halloween's my favorite holiday, so I'd LOVE to see some of the crazy shit you all come up with. =)

The Infamous Seitan Recipe o' Greatness

Mother of god--when I actually have a rare burst of spare time on a weekend with absolutely nothing I'm obligated to be doing, man, do I cook. (And watch way too many movies--but movies are good, what can I say.) This weekend it was ribz, sweet potato fries, orange chocolate-chip cookies, peanut butter brownies, baked seitan, pizza, and Steph's sockarooni pasta. Utter madness.

Where to start?

Well, I guess I'll head off the week with the Seitan Recipe o' Greatness which has spread through the vegan internet community like chickenpox. Or like leprosy. Or like the blustery snow this weekend over the streets of Cleveland.

I've been itching to try baking this seitan since I first saw it, primarily because it was WAY too easy-sounding to make. I've made the VwaV recipe before, but it requires too much effort for someone as lazy as me. Mixing stuff and throwing it into the oven: that's my cup of tea.

And this recipe is the cutest (if a recipe can actually be cute). 90 minutes after tossing this log o' goodness in the oven, it came out all red and pretty and looking like an animal-friendly Pepperidge Farm salty log o' saltiness. It was so cute that I just wanted to keep squeezing its cheeks and mumbling "Oh isn't the little loggy the cutest EVER! So cute, little loggy loggy. A-boo-boo-boo. Is da loggy cute? Yes it is! Loggy loggy."

And it was tasty to boot. Like I've mentioned before, I'm always skeptical when people act like a recipe is the second coming. But man, this was good stuff. I enjoyed nibbling on it all by itself. And it also tasted delightful tossed on a sammich.

My hopes for the future: to try out some variations on the cute little loggy log. But until then, I definitely recommend the recipe, as it is a good (and ridiculously easy) one.

Oh yeah, and months after having baked my vegan ribz, thinking that there was a different between vital wheat gluten and vital wheat gluten flour, I finally realized that the two things are THE SAME DAMN THING. Yeah. I'm a dolt sometimes.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1.5 c. vital wheat gluten


• 1/4 c. nutritional yeast


• 1 . salt


• 2 t. paprika


• 1/4 t. cinnamon


• 1/4 t. cumin


• 1-2 t. pepper


• 1/8 t. cayenne pepper


• 1/8 t. allspice (I skipped this)


• 3/4 c. cold water


• 4 T. tomato paste


• 1 T. ketchup


• 2 T. olive oil (I used canola because I was out of olive oil)


• 2 T. vegetarian Worcestershire sauce (or soy sauce--I used soy because I had no Worcestershire)


• 1-3 cloves garlic, crushed well (I just sprinkled in garlic powder to taste)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 325°.

In a large mixing bowl mix dry ingredients. Mix the rest of the ingredients (liquid ingredients) in a smaller mixing bowl. Whisk well until mixed.

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix well, then knead for several minutes.

Form into a log (6-8" long), wrap tightly in foil, twisting ends. Bake for 90 minutes. When done baking, unwrap and leave out to cool all the way. Then wrap it foil or plastic and refrigerate. Slice to use as desired.

[Oh, and belated side-note: For those of you who are vegan or have been privvy to another vegan's gas, you already know that vegans have 100x more filthy disembowelingly nasty farts than the rest of the human race. {{It's the veggies!}} Anyways, this seitan will a) triple the frequency of your gassiness for the day and b) somehow manage to quadruple the raw-egg stench of it to the point that you might actually be able to blind someone with your farts and/or take over the White House with them. I swear, yesterday after eating some of this for lunch, my cats every once in a while would look at me with a "Are you fucking kidding me? Did we do something wrong and you're trying to punish us??" look. So be forewarned.]

Black Punch and Disembodied Hand

My other favoritest item of Campy Horror Movie Night was a punch I made. I rarely drink pop anymore--I gave it up around the time I started eating vegan. But I couldn't pass this one up as it looks creepy and was almost idiotically simple to make.

I modified it from the original recipe some (it originally called for an additional two fricking cups of sugar, but on top of 4 liters of pop, that sounded like it might induce a sugar-coma, so I steared clear), so I'm not gonna try to track the original down again. But if you're gonna make this, you must *DEFINITELY* go with the ice-cube hand as well, because, well, it makes the fricking punch.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 unsweetened packet of grape Koolaid


• 1 unsweetened packet of orange Koolaid


• 2 Liter Pepsi (or Coke)


• 2 Liter ginger ale (I think I used Canada Dry)


• 4 c. cold water


• 1 or 2 vinyl gloves (obviously, the ones that aren't powdered inside)


• 1 bottle of rum

DIRECTIONS
Giving them enough time to freeze (overnight or so), fill up one or two vinyl gloves with water and tie the ends off. Toss in freezer (on a solid and not slatted-surface).

Mix all your ingredients together carefully in a punch-bowl. Remove frozen hand from freezer. Run it carefully under cool water. Cut off the end and slowly and carefully remove the glove from the ice cube. Toss in the bowl. It melts, but not as terribly quickly as the original recipe stated (the fingers go first of course), so you may wanna wait until enough people get to your party to toss it into your bowl, that way it can be appreciated in all its gruesome glory.

Place your bottle of rum on the side, that way people can either drink the punch in its virgin state or lube it up a bit and get plastered.

The best part of it all is that it tastes like Pixie Stix!

Bloody Finger Cookies

THE PREPARATION



THE RESULTS



These have always been my favorite cookies to bake--they are way too much fun to shape and gorify, almost better than pumpkin-carving when it comes to entertaining gruesomeness. And people love them--they are initially grossed out, but then they taste them and can't stop eating them. Despite the grossness of them, they are rich and delicate little almond cookies. And they came out just as lovely-tasting veganized, perhaps even BETTER-tasting than the original recipe (they tasted more luxuriant and crispier to me). They were the definite favorite of Saturday night's party.

Ingredients:

• 1 c. vegan margarine (I use the Earth Balance tub that says it's good for baking on it), softened


• 1 c. vegan powdered sugar


• 1.5 t. of Ener G egg replacer mixed with 2 T. warm water (equivalent of one egg)


• 1 t. almond extract


• 1 t. vanilla extract


• 2 2/3 c. flour


• 1 t. baking powder


• 1/2 t. salt


• 3/4 c. whole blanched almonds (or you can blanch them yourself if you can only find ones with skin)


• 1 tube red decorating gel (make sure it's vegan, but i didn't have any problems finding a tube)

Directions:
In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, sugar, EnerG egg replacer/water mix, almond extract and vanilla; beat in the flour, baking powder and salt. Refrigerate covered for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 325F. Take one quarter of dough at a time from the refrigerator. Break off one heaping teaspoonful and roll it into a finger shape. Press an almond firmly into one end for a nail. Squeeze in around the middle of the finger to create a knuckle shape. Using a butter knife, make indents in several places to resemble a finger. Repeat with rest of dough.

Place cookies on a lightly greased baking sheet (or parchment paper) and bake for 25 minutes (or until a golden brown on the bottom). Let cool three minutes. Gently lift up the almond; squeeze red decorating gel onto the nailbed and press the almond back in place, so gel oozes out from underneath. Add in red gel at the stump end of the fingertip if there's a bit of a cave. Remove cookies from baking sheets and let them cool on wire racks.

TIPS:

Make your fingers thin. They plump up and sink down as they bake.

Make a small indentation into the end of the finger where it would've been severed from the hand. You can later squish some red gell in there to make it look like a bloody stump.

Makes about 2-dozen cookies

Cerberus, The Three-Headed Dip

So I'm back in black, babies!

Campy horror movie night was a success and a blast and a gorefest and a laughfest, all rolled into one. And man do I have recipes out the ass. Prepare yourselves.

We ended up laughing our way through two different horror flicks, Bloodlust, which features the dad from The Brady Bunch, and The Killer Shrews which is no doubt one of my all-time favorite campy horror flicks. It features dogs with added fur cloaked over their backs to look like "killer shrews." It features an unbelievable amount of alcohol consumption--my friend Mo pointed out, quite brilliantly, that this would make an awesome horror flick for a drinking game... If you drank one shot or a few gulps of beer every time someone in the movie did, you'd be quite lit very very quickly... please note this suggestion. ; ) And it features some of the funniest (and unintentional) one-liners ever ("I don't believe in asking questions, it's against my principles" and "I'll take a dull, alive woman any day"). Much too much fun.

I decked out my apartment to the brim with Halloween decorations (I love Halloween and I've built up a good collection, but I did venture out to the Halloween store for more over the weekend, including a sweet skeleton-hand punch ladle--woot woot).

I also couldn't resist the fake-blood at the store (especially when I checked the ingredients and realized that--apparently--it was vegan), so I of course had to zombify myself for the evening, grossing people out with the blood smeared all around my mouth and in my hair.

And the goodies were plentiful and enjoyed by everyone. As I mentioned last week, I whipped up everything from various dips to veganized witch's finger cookies (which were a success, folks!) to black punch complete with a frozen ice cube hand, so expect lots of recipe gems this week.

To start us off, I shall share with you the Cerberus of chip-dips I made for the party, from the boring to the sublime.

On the boring end of the range was the spicy peanut dip from The Garden of Vegan. I even added extra peanut-butter to the dip, and it still did nothing for me, which was a bit disappointing. It just tasted potently tofu-ish. And clearly other folks felt the same, seeing as it was relatively untouched at the end of the night. I'd stear clear--I'm sure there are plenty of other good dips in that recipe book to make use of instead.



For my second dip, I tried out Courtney's Smoky Chipotle and Black Bean Dip from Fat-free Vegan and it was quite quite good. I consumed way too much of the leftovers while zombied out (no pun intended) in my pjs in front of a movie yesterday in a post-party stupor. I made no variations to the recipe, but it DID end up inspiring me to make my own black bean salsa (whose recipe I'll post in a moment).

Smoky Chipotle and Black Bean Dip

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/3 c. green onion, thinly sliced


• 2 t. garlic, minced


• 2 t. cumin


• 1 - 15 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed


• 1/2 c. water


• 1/4 c. freshly chopped cilantro


• 2 T. lime juice


• 1 T. freshly chopped oregano


• 1 t. chipotle chiles in adobo, pureed


• 1/4 t. salt

DIRECTIONS:

In a small non-stick skillet, sauté the green onions and garlic for 3-4 minutes or until softened. Add the cumin, sauté 3 additional minutes or until fragrant, remove from heat, and set aside. In a food processor or blender, combine the green onion mixture and the remaining ingredients, and puree until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed, you can also add more chipotle puree if you like spicy flavors. Serve with tortilla chips, crackers, or veggies.

* * * * * * * * *
For the final of the three dips (and my favorite), I whipped up a black-bean salsa of sorts. It turned out SO fricking tasty that it even surprised me, and my friend Joe fiendishly consumed most of it during the course of the night and lavished it with compliments, so I suspect I wasn't the only one who thought so.

Black Bean and Corn Salsa

INGREDIENTS:

• One 15 oz. can of black beans, drained


• 1/2 a can of corn


• About 1/2 a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes (or a 15 oz. can would work just as well, obviously)


• 3 cloves garlic, minced


• 1/4 c. chopped cilantro


• Juice of one lime

DIRECTIONS:
Mix all the ingredients together. Let sit for at least an hour so the flavors mingle. Serve.

This final recipe is so fricking simple that you'll be amazed out how good it tastes.

* * * * * * * * *
As for the rest of the week's recipes, I promise to post the finger-cookies recipe sooner rather than later as I suspect some of you may very well be throwing your own Halloween galas this upcoming weekend. So stay-tuned for tomorrow's post.

Orange-Rosemary Olives

Recipe from Fresh and Fast Vegan Pleasures.

I am a bit more worrisome than most about posting recipes from cookbooks on-line (even if I *do* give them credit) because I think it's only right for folks to be able to own the shit they do. But my new recipe-posting theory is this: if it's a simple enough recipe that I can still remember all the ingredients and their quantities a few days after making it and/or I can track down several very similar recipes on-line (case in point: Rosemary Orange Olives at wineskinny.com), then it's fair game for posting. Especially when it's a recipe as simple (though damn good) as this one.

I shall still give credit where credit is due of course, but I shall post them until someone objects--in which case, I shall challenge said objector to a vegan-pudding wrestling match! *Hut hut!*

You can woo mates with these olives, you can raise the dead, and you can curl the toes of those who like when orange and rosemary bed together. They's yummy and sexy. And they're simple to boot. So yay for olives!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1.5-2 c. mixed kalamata and green olives


• 2-4 sprigs fresh rosemary


• 2-4 thick pieces of orange zest


• A handful of fresh parsely, finely cut


• Olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Place all of these together in a container and allow to marinate. I used 3 T. olive oil, but your olives may already have a large amount of oil on them, so the amount you use is up to you. Let sit at least a couple hours, preferably UNrefrigerated (the olives gunk up and absorb all the oil, looking ooey gooey and goopy if you refrigerate them)--if you refrigerate overnight or something, make sure they sit out at least an hour or so before serving. Eat around the rosemary sprigs and orange-bits (the recipe says to remove them before serving, but I think they're too pretty of a garnish to remove).

Sweet-Potato Dip

One of my favorite things that I made for the wine-tasting on Saturday was a variation on the Maple Potato Spread from the PCRM recipe database. I made quite a few variations to the recipe though, so I'ma repost it here...

(Makes about 2 cups)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and quartered


• 1 small onion, sliced


• 1 tablespoon tahini


• 1 T+ vegan brown sugar


• 2 dried figs, finely chopped (the recipe calls for 3, so you may wanna use this instead, I just accidentally got the wrong amount)


• Soy milk

DIRECTIONS:
Steam sweet potato until soft. Toss the onion into a pot and caramelize it (cook it in a bit of oil until it's soft and starting to brown, toss in about 1 t. of vegan sugar and mix around, continue to cook until it is a rich caramel color and then remove from heat). Place all your ingredients into a blender and blend until mixture is thick and smooth. Very gradually add soy milk until the thickness is to your liking. The amount of brown sugar you use may vary as well--more if you want it sweet sweet and less if the sweet potato's doing all the work for ya. Let cool before serving (tastes best after having sat in the fridge overnight and eaten cold). Serve with original (non-honey-ed) Nabisco graham crackers.

Speedy Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Cornmeal Chips

Yesterday, inspired by the Shiny Happy Hummus recipe over at Fat-Free Vegan and struck by the notion of an oil-free hummus (which pleased me since I like my hummus thick and chunky anyways) and upon receiving an email recipe from my friend D for a Turbo Hummus that also sounded quite good, I decided to try whipping up something of my own (with some homemade cornmeal chips to dip).

This is the fastest recipe I've made in a while. It was so fast I almost wet myself. But I didn't. But then I almost did again when I got giddy at the fact that I got it all done in the amount of time it took for my laundry to swish its way through the wash-cycle. But then I didn't. And then I stopped for a moment and thought perhaps all the near-accidents might be a result of a bladder-infection and not just excitement and that perhaps I should go see my doctor. But then I didn't. Instead I just went and used the potty.

SPEEDY ROASTED RED-PEPPER HUMMUS INGREDIENTS

1 small can (10.5 oz or so) of chickpeas (drained, liquid reserved)
1 small roasted red pepper
3 cloves of roasted garlic
1 t. natural peanut butter
Dried basil
Cayenne pepper
Salt
Pepper

Place chickpeas and garlic into a food processor. Pulse until it's a bit too dry and trying to escape the blades. Toss in your peanut butter and gradually add half of your reserved chickpea liquid. Continue to pulse until creamy. Add Dried basil, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper to taste. Slice up your red pepper and add about half to the mix. Pulse until it's blended well enough (but with a few tiny chunks still floating around). Add to taste (I only added about 1/2 the red pepper. Voila. Oil-free hummus.

While my cats wrestled inside my heater-box, I whipped up the cornmeal chips...

Cornmeal Chips Recipe: HERE (by the way, this recipe only yields about 20 of these chips, despite alleging it makes 30)

Apparently this was an aphasia-recipe for me, because I kept f-ing everything up: I grabbed the wrong measuring cup when adding the cornmeal into the water and had to wing it (after trying to quickly do mathematical conversions and figure out how much more needed to be added if the recipe called for 2/3 cup and I had accidentally added 1/2 and if Sue was on a train coming from Phillie that left at 5 pm and Roger was headed from Brooklyn on a train that left at 2pm what time they would meet up and how much cornmeal would they tell me to put in the goddamn rest of the recipe--and then giving up and remembering that I no like math). Then I somehow decided the recipe called for the oven temperature to be at 350 rather than 375 and couldn't quite figure out why they were taking so goddamn long to bake. I only realized this retrospectively.

Anyways, all in all, making everything in both of these recipes took me about 40 minutes. And I think I even managed to do the dishes before the timer went off for my laundry. So this is a nice, simple recipe if you wanna whip up something last minute for visitors, say. The chips did not come out as chiply as I had hoped, but I think this was probably because of my oven-temperature aphasia--they still taste pretty good but some are a bit moist and chewy in the middle. But hey, they're homemade. And the hummus is nice and roasted red peppery and doesn't give you that greasy-slick feeling that oily hummuses do. I still think it needs something more to give it a bit more oomph, but we'll see how it is at lunch today and whether the flavors have mingled and danced and screwed into one big copulative pleasure-overload of flavorfulness last night. Will keep you posted...

UPDATE: Chips have gotten chewy overnight. They are incredibly flavorful, but they have the chewy consistency of jerky. Meh!

VERDICT: Hummus--B, Chips--B