This will be a short post for a long time in the kitchen.

Carrot Raisin Muffins (Vegan with a Vengeance): Really good, but I think I want to grate the carrots more finely.

Green Goddess Pizza (also from Vegan with a Vengeance): Also really good, especially the pesto. I think I might make the pizza dough with whole wheat flour next time; it was a big hit. Also, I might go a little lighter on the garden puree as too much tends to taste kinda bland.

There, is that quick and dirty enough for you? No? Well, shit fuck fuck dick weiner cooter damn hell. Now it’s at least dirty enough.

I’ve never had Ethiopian food, let alone make it but that’s just what I did last night.

I made the Ethiopian Seitan and Peppers recipe out of Vegan with a Vengeance. I’ve never actually really had seitan either, nor can I find it in the health food stores around here. The recipe, since it involves dough, intimidated me for a few minutes but it was actually really easy to make. My seitan fell apart just a little bit – next time I’ll knead the dough a little more and keep the broth in the fridge until it’s ready to cook. The rest of the recipe was super easy – slice green peppers and the seitan then make a sauce puree to cover them with and pop it in the oven. If I had realized that it would have been so easy, I might have tried to make the Savory Crepes suggested for the recipe; instead I served it with brown basmati rice and we opened up some wine that I hate. The baked seitan freaked me out a little bit because it looked a bit steak-y but at least it wasn’t so meaty looking when you cut into it.
All in all, it was a success. Go me.

I don’t know what happened to my mozzarella cheese (recipe from The Uncheese Cookbook); it turned out to be more of a spread than a block cheese. I don’t even know if it will be grateable if I freeze it a little. The taste is a little sharp but we have yet to try it on anything.

Last night I made almond Vice Cream; I probably should have blended the mixture for a minute longer in the blender because it’s full of little cashew chunks. Also, I used raw cashews instead of roasted ones but I don’t know if that would make a difference. The taste is good and it’s creamy (around the little cashew chunks) but Jake says that the cashew flavor is really overwhelming. Maybe not using raw cashews would fix this, or maybe soaking the cashews first – I really know nothing about raw cooking. I was tempted to use Disaronno instead of almond flavoring (and I used extract anyway.) Maybe next time.

Thursday was our designated Valentine’s Day, and our usual Night Out ™, but it was just an excuse on my part to trek out to Native Foods. We had the Tempeh Chips (think battered and fried) and shared a BBQ Chicken Pizza and a Gandhi bowl. The Tempeh Chips were excellent, as most fried food tends to be to someone who never eats it. The pizza was pretty good, but we could have done without the TVP “chicken” pieces and the Gandhi bowl, essentially a rice/veggie/tempeh curry bowl was a little bland but made a hearty second dinner for me on Friday night (along with a spare slice of the pizza.) We also went home with cheesecake for both of us; the house variety for Jake and a slice of the raw cherry for me. Jake liked the creamy texture of his but didn’t like the crust very much, and I liked mine because it had a very unique and not overpoweringly sweet taste, but for $8 I won’t be buying more unless it’s a very special occasion (the house cheesecake is half that price.)

The cheddar block (which tasted more like pimento cheese spread) fucking rocks. It’s melty and tasty enough to actually satisfy Jake’s cheese jones, and it goes great on both Morningstar Farms vegan burgers and the black bean patties. How fucking amazing is that? Score one for blender cheese! Up next: mozzarella and maybe provolone.
Also, the chickpea broccoli casserole is strangely addicting even if it doesn’t taste all that interesting. I tend to put a little ketchup (not catsup, goddamn you) on it, but I tend to put ketchup on almost anything comfort foody.

Both dishes are at least half gone now, woot.

What a weekend. It all started on Thursday night, in which we went to Veggie Era again. We didn’t quite stuff ourselves silly this time, but we did get the Potato Curry and the Sweet and Sour Fish (it had a carrot slice for an eye, aww) and brought home two slices of cheesecake for dessert. So what if I feel it’s my duty to try every vegan restaruant’s cheesecake?

Anyway, since I’m trying to domesticate myself (har.), I actually made three recipes this weekend; four if you include the Vegecat cat food, which was a fucking pain in the ass and I’m not so sure that it wasn’t a total wash.

After subjecting myself to the delicious propaganda on The Post Punk Kitchen‘s forums, I made the Curried Mango Tempeh Salad Sammiches (yes, she actually calls them “sammiches”. I’ll kick your ass if you don’t find that to be 3000% awesome.), which were a pretty big hit with us. Jake totally dug the tempeh preperation (tear into bite size pieces, cover with water and a tablespoon of soy sauce or liquid aminos, bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes), as we were both pretty clueless on how to normally prepare tempeh. The few times that we had bought it, it just went into the microwave. Whoops.
Right now I’m resting my feetsies after a double header: a block of Cheddar cheese from The Uncheese Cookbook and the Chickpea Broccoli Casserole from Vegan With A Vengeance (which is the book that the Mango Tempeh recipe is also from.) I know, can you fucking believe that I’m making cheese in my blender and it’s made out of cashews? They both look really good, but I’m waiting for Jake to come home from work to dig in.

In other news, Yogi Tea just came out with a new flavor: Sweet Thai Delight. It’s a Rooibos (red/honeybush) tea with coconut, cinnamon, anise, carob and stevia. Add some vanilla Silk creamer, some agave nectar and pour that fucker over ice and you’ve got the best thing to hit this ridiculously hot (even for Southern California) February evening.

Let’s be honest: I’m a Jamba Juice Junkie.

Before I decided to go completely vegan (I know, there’s no such thing demi-vegan – I was basically a sometimes ovo-vegetarian. I avoided milk like the plague and have never liked eggs, but I wasn’t a label Nazi. Anyway…) I happily ordered anything on the Jamba Juice menu that I wanted and I felt good. I mean, I wasn’t consuming milk but I was okay with yogurt and the occasional sherbert. Then it dawned on me that I’ve pretty much been striving for veganism the whole time I’ve been a vegetarian, it also dawned on me that my beloved smoothie eatery could very easily accomodate vegans (or the lactose intolerant, though I’ve been told that the fermentation in yogurt and cheese tends to make them more digestable for the less sensitive of the intolerant.)

I decided to drop the company a little email off of a form on their website, politely explaining that it would be fantastic if they would offer a few vegan substitues on their menu – mostly soy yogurt and frozen yogurt. I think you could just substitute the sorbet for any of the sherberts and no one would really be any the wiser, and I won’t even honor the lower calorie dairy base with a thought. To be entirely truthful, I didn’t expect a tailor made response – or even a response. However, I did get this form letter back. It looks like to me that their sorting software found the word “vegan” in my letter and spat this response to me. I don’t really mind that part as long as someone gets the message that vegans like their store and would dig it if there were a few more vegan options available:

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Last night, Jake and I made the trek to Upland for some A+ Pan-Asian vegan grub. Come along and watch our stomachs explode.

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I made attempted my first tofu scramble, ala breakfast burritos, today. I think I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I have a feeling that either it needed a) more tofu b) more potatoes c) less spices.

Jake didn’t seem to think that it was so bad, though he did agree that it was a little over spiced.

I was amazed at the texture (yes, creative to-fu *karate chop* still manages to impress me) and the taste of the tofu, while Jake didn’t think that it was better than eggs or anything. I’ve never liked the flavor (or smell, yak) of eggs, so perhaps that’s why I’m so in love with tofu. Jake did say that he’d like to freeze the tofu beforehand to give it more of a chewy texture; I dig the fluffier texture myself.

I can’t wait to get my two Amazon vegan cookbook orders in, then I’ll be driving Jake crazy with delicious (or really bad, I’m a spaz) cooking.