Veganmofo: I spy... Chickpeas!

I've been thinking alot about the simple art of easy eating. Which although they can be the most rewarding meals, they are often the least blogged and least shared.. but why not? They are fantastic and honestly when writting your thesis or facing deadlines they can be a live saver.

Writing them down or holding onto the links help my frazzled brain remember the things you always plan to make that seem too easy to even exist. They've been popping up on all my Mofo feed readers so I'm gonna pass some of them along you to.
Click the photos to jump through to the original blog posts!

Tuxedo Cat's Chickpea Cumber Salad

Why Yes I do Eat Potatoes: Simple Salad
Or their Falafel
 
Cake Makers to the Stars- Kittee's Pudla

Plant Powered -Pumpkin Chickpea Curry

 Joyful Girl: chickpea Avacado sandwich


 Snarky Chickpea- Pot Pie!


Other

Veganmofo: Favourite blog post oldie

Sometimes the simplest of posts are the best. There are so many brilliant vegan food blogs it almost seems like a cop-out to call on the ppk's blog. But heck, it's just so swell.

Obviously Isa has all kinds of amazing recipes, tempting photos and glorious colour close up shots of said food.

But one of the posts I love refering people to, especially students, is the big old pot of bean post!

So simple, but sometimes contextualizing a plan for say.. what do you really do with that giant pot of beans you just cooked? hits it home.

PPK Blog What to do with a big pot of beans.

Meal planning is something I'm a bit obsessed with and it makes a lot of sense yet somehow I never seem to be able to stick with even my looses planning attempts and these kind of voyeuristic posts really help me get a feel for planning.

Plus beans are the go-to food for cheap living, so there is a bonus

Black Beans:
Day 1 ? Black Bean Burgers
Day 2 ? Chili
Day 3 ? Sauteed with Greens
Day 4 ? Tamale Pie
Day 5 ? Black Bean and Quinoa Salad
Chickpeas
Day 1 ? Dill Hummus Sammiches
Day 2 ? Moroccan Chickpea Stew
Day 3 ? Falafel
Day 4 ? Chickpea Samosas
Day 5 ? Chickpea Hijiki Salad Sammiches
White Beans
Day 1 ? Pasta Fagioli
Day 2 ? White Bean Quinoa Croquettes
Day 3 ? Roasted Garlic and White Bean Soup
Day 4 ? White Bean and Tempeh Sausage Patties
Day 5 ? Vegetable Soup with White Beans

Chickpea Salad Variant with pickles!

Obvious these are just some guidelines but what are your favorite bean dishes? or beans even?

My Chickpea pot might look more like this

Day 1 Chickpea Cutlets
Day 2 Chana Masala (I use kittee's dal recipe or YRR)
Day 3  Chickpea Salad (which I though I'd blogged about before. Lazy style onion/celery/garlic/chickpea/vegan mayo +acid)
Day 4 Pot pie!
Day 5 Chickpea Noodle Soup Vcon
Day 6 Scrambled Chickpeas!

Day 7 Salad with chickpeas on top (because they are so good! Or Roasted chickpeas)

My black bean list would include tacos, YYR Refried Black Beans, AFR Mango Black Bean Salad, and YRR Black Bean Soup

Veganmofo: Fuck yes pumpkin! Pumpkin Pie Loaf/Muffins

This recipe is a based of Yellow Rose Recipes Aloha Bread and The PPK's Pumpkin Bread and various PPK pies with coconut milk.

I didn't write down the exact ratios so please let me know if you try this! This recipe made a double batch of muffins and fairly large loaf for me.



Pumpkin Pie Loaf or Muffins

Dry

• 2 cups white flour
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  2 tps baking soda
  1 dash of salt
• 2 cups dark brown sugar
  2/3 cup white sugar

Proximately:

• 1 1/2 TBS cinnamon
• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp mace
• 1 tsp cloves
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp all spice (or Chinese five spice if your out like i was)

Wet

• 2 generous cups pureed pumpkin
• 1 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  1/2 can coconut milk
  1/3 cup toasted coconut (Optional any add ins like chocolate chips/nuts would be good too)
• earth balance for greasing

Preheat to 350 degrees and grease muffin or loaf tins with earth balance. If using coconut and it is not pre-toasted spread in single layer on pan and watch closely until colour changes.

Mix all your dry ingredients into a bowl in the order listed (I would advise sifting because I ran into issues with the baking soda clumping). Whisk together until evenly distributed. Add spices and stir again.

If you roasted the pumpkin previously like I did you can skip the preheating (just turn it down to 350 to cool)and go straight to pureeing pumpkin. Make sure to have all your pumpkin pureed in case the mixture is too dry, you don't want the wet baking soda to sit around long.

Add your pumpkin, oil, vanilla and stir to incorporate. Crack open the coconut milk and add roughly 1/2 can until the batter reaches a good consistency. Fold in your toasted coconut or other toppings.

Now divide the batter into greased muffin tins and loaf pans (I did a double muffin tin and large loaf, alternatively you can do more loaf pans or muffins to suit your preference).

Place trays into heated oven, as I had both double muffin tin and large Pyrex loaf pan side by side the muffins took approximately 40 mins and the loaf pan was done in 80 mins.

Set timer for 30 mins to be safe and check on muffins or set timer for 40 mins to check on loafs. You want an knife inserted to come out clean, if not return to oven for 20 min intervals. Remove and place on cooling rack these are super moist and might pull apart while they are still warm (messy but soo good). Allow to cool before storing in fridge with plastic wrap or in container.

 Closer look. Tasty

Enjoy alone or with Earthbalance or jams!

Veganmofo: I've been busy

Feels like I am missing out on most of the magic that is mofo. But I guess the good news is I will have an overwhelming blog roll to check out soon enough right?

Highlight to x-mas vacation maybe, I'm hoping to keep the mofo-magic going by continueing to work on my draft posts and keep cooking and blogging. Because let's face it, I've kinda fallen into a lull.

Sometimes when we all get stressed out or busy it's easy to stop cooking, or eating, grabbing the occasional take out or eating out becomes the band-aid solution or frozen pizzas, and let's face it no one wins there.

It's not sustainable on my budget, or it is but thats a good 100+$ in the long run that could have gone towards student loan. So it's time to pull up the boot straps.

How to get yourself motivated when your so busy? For me it's been grabbing some pumpkins from the market. One or two 2 am cooking marathons brings back the ease, the desire and the motions a bit of prep in the morning here, a stop to the store there, sure it might take a few days but 10 mins a day leads to a home cooked meal somewhere right?

Veganmofo: Fuck yes pumpkin! Thai Pumpkin Soup

So along with spuratic posting comes my theme of spuratic themes for Vegan Mofo. Perhaps my favourite of all the various theme's I've been experimenting with is Fuck yes Pumpkin! which as the name suggests is me making pumpkin shit!

And I will never, ever, ever get tired of it.

Starting off with something simple inspired by the now closed Satisfaction Feast in halifax n.s. canada where they made some wicked soups one of which was a thick, creamy, spicy pumpkin soup called Thai Pumpkin.

Thai Pumpkin Soup

• 1/2 medium pumpkin roasted and pureered [roast for an hour at 400]
•  1 can coconut milk
• 3 tbs red thai curry paste
• 2 tbs corriander
• 3 tbs cumin
• 2 tbs paprika
• 2 tbs yellow curry powder
• 1 inch ginger minced or grated
• 3 large garlic cloves minced or grated
• 2 large onions minced
• 3 tbs olive oil or margerine
• 4 cups homemade vegetable stock
• salt and pepper

To start roast and puree pumpkin (or pull some from the freezer to defrost) and chop the onions. Preheat your oil/margarine in a large dutch oven on medium heat. Once heated add your curry paste and cook for a few minutes. Add spices and cook for 2-3 mins string/scrapping the bottom to get everything toasted and bubbling.

Now add your onions and salt continuing to stir and cook until the onions are translucence (5-8 mins). Things should be smelling pretty good and you can now grate in the ginger and garlic. You want to make sure everything cooks and the flavours develop but nothing burns so adjust heat as needed.

Once things are smelling good, add your pumpkin and stir/cook for 5 mins. You want to make sure the spices/onion are evenly throughout the pumpkin and it is heated through. Slowly pour in your stock until you reach the desired thickness cover and boil for 20-30 mins stirring occasionally. The soup should thicken up a bit and smell awesome. Turn down the heat and add the coconut milk, stir to thicken.

Here you can either eat immediately or if your patient you can let it cook for a bit more to mix up the flavours.

Eat with bread/naan or toppings:

• cajun roasted pumpkin seeds
• coarse sea salt
• earth balance swirled
• crushed chili flakes
• drizzle of siracha or hot sauce
• vegan coconut yogurt swirl

Happy Fall Mofo-ers!

Veganmofo: Canadian Thanks Giving Details post!

I know I promised to write one giving all the savory thanksgiving details so here they are!

DINNER!

I've already gone over the menu and the sheer scope of the undertaking in delisiousness. So I'll just go over a few close ups

 Green Bean Casserole is my unsung hero of the holidays. Warm caserole, rich noochy sauce and crispy onions, brilliant! These photos are all the leftovers I horded back to my place so they suffered some transporting.

 Mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, roasted garlic asparagus, turnip, mom's stuffing.
 Our stuffing recipes has been the one thing Mom always makes.

 Mom's Stuffing
 Homemade brown bread, dried and torn with sliced peppers, garlic, onions, celery and seasoning (paprika, garlic, onion, poultry seasoning, oregano, thyme, Rosemary and pepper) toss and allow to sit for 20 mins, top with EB. Baked in a earth balance coated dutch oven at 350 for 30 mins then ten uncovered.

 More green bean action

 Seriously, tofurky done to perfection and topped with roasted asparagus adds a slight tang to the first layer. So good.

/ end of photos

Veganmofo: Lunches!

Lunch is an often neglected when it comes to the food enthusiest. Dinner is the main show, brunch has it's fans, breafkast can be impressive and lunch is mandatory.

Well I figured it might be neat to have some lunch worth braggin about.

Today's Lunch is brought to you by YRR and the ever fantastic lunch buddy leftovers!

A few years ago I began toying with the idea of Cooking my way through a cookbook, the book I choose was Yellow Rose Recipes by the Lovely Joanna Vaught. After all it was a kick ass book, with good old fashion belly pleasers. As always life got in the way, and a year later I'm still working on it.

 So here is YRR's Delightful Cajun tofu in bento format

This one was pretty simple, wild rice in the rice cooker, produce box veggies in the steamer and leftover YRR Cajun Tofu.

For storage sakes and added flavour, I went with BBQ dipping sauce kicked up with Blair's Hot sauce (review to come). Simple and Tasty

Veganmofo: YRR Mission Continues: Cajun Crusted Tofu

 

 One of those cookbooks you keep coming back to paired with one of those recipes you always wanted to make but somehow never got around to it.

Yellow Rose Recipe's Cajun Crusted Tofu has been tempting me since it's testing days.

So when I defrosted some homemade tofu and thought, what am I gonna do 2 lbs of tofu YRR had the answer.

First came the Cajun spice, which let me tell you is worth the cover price alone. These were cripy, chewing bundles of delight.

Diner was pretty simple, wild rice, steam carrots/broccoli, Garlic braised cabbage, YRR Cajun Tofu and some amazing Mustard Chow from the Market.

Braised cabbage!

Crispy tofu slices

Veganmofo: product review: Zapp's chips

Another gift from Vodoo, these new Orleans Zapp's Potato Chips: Spicy Cajun Crawtators

Kettle chips man, these are what I always expect BBQ chips to be like. Slight zing with a hint of spicy kick.

I don't usually like BBQ because they are rarely what I'm looking for, but Zapp's delivers. Smooth, smokey, spicy, with a bit of zing. Perfection.

The kinda chips that look like sliced potatoes, super coated in flavour and crispiness.

Definitely worth grabbing if you see them near you, plus the bag is super cute.

Veganmofo: Lazy work days

You know whats awesome? Leftover Pizza.

Earlier this week I went over to my Friend Vodoo's place and we made some fucking pizza. It was grand, better still she wrapped some leftovers for me to take home.

Her and Mr. Vodoo went to the states and brought back all kinds of vegan jems, like that creepy lobster we still haven't eaten. And a mother fucking Ham Tube.

So we made Hawaiian Pizza. We also made some kick ass Salsa (another post)

Which ironically all three of us disliked pre-vegan days, but the vegan version was smashing.

• Pizza Dough Recipe: HIAV by Sara Kramer made in the kitchen aid
• Can of pizza sauce
• 2 Fucking bags of moza Daiya
• 1 Fucking Ham Tube
• 1/2 Pineapple, diced
• Fresh Basil/Thyme from the window sill
• Bonus pizza topping: Sliced Shitake Mushrooms, Red Peppers and maybe some onions

Basically we sliced the veggies, cubed the pineapple and ham while the dough rose. Vodoo placed the dough on the pizza pans pricked it with a fork the layered on the sauce and herb. Tossed one pizza with as much pineapple and ham tube as we physically could, then emptied a bag on Daiya on top.

HAMMM TUUBBBEEE!!

Mr. Vodoo topped the second pizza with sauce, herb, leftover ham tube, pineapple, the peppers, onions and mushroom followed by yet another bag of Daiya.

Pizza's were baked at 400 for 30ish mins and delicious.

Three days later I ate my leftovers at work on an awesome skull plate.

Veganmofo: Staples 3! Spiced Peanuts

Another shared recipe from friends of the family, this one has earned a place in the time honoured Zodiac Cook Book my mother's had longer than I've been alive.

Remember those talent friends? Well there are actually two sets of them, each with their own talents and trade secrets. One of which I'm about to share.

Carol's Spiced Peanuts

Insert Nuts Joke Here

These tasty little numbers are busted out every craps game or social gathering. Think of them like a tastier version of bar nuts. The kind of thing you can always expect to walk away with a jar of whenever you visit.

They make great snacks, to pick you up when you are helping someone move and they make adorable house warming presents.

Late night snacks or any other occasion.

Roast up a batch and pour them into an empty glass jar they'll be ready to go anywhere you go. I'm not sure exactly how long they keep, sealed I've had them for a few weeks but they don't usually last past that before my roommate eats them all. I like to up the salt, but honestly they don't need it.

So simple, you'll wonder why you never made them before.

Veganmofo: Staples: Zuchini pickles

We're back with another Vegan Mofo Staples edition.

This one comes from a family friend who is always pickling, canning and generally whipping up a home cooked storm. These are those friends who always seem to put you to shame, the ones who whip out homemade dips and crackers for every card game and always seem to eat waffles for breakfast.

Yup, they're those kinda friends. But recently some of their good cheer has rubbed off and they gifted my mother (who in turn bestowed upon me) this simply brilliant insight.

Pickled Zuchini.

These are no Ordinary Pickles.

You know those plants that just keep growing and no matter what you do there is always more zucchini then any one person could ever hope to consume. Well their garden overflowed as usual, so they took those suckers and pickled them like cucumbers, the result is a slightly softer yet still crisp pickle. Pretty smart no?

These particular pickles were a cross over between bread and butter with a kick of dill. We served them with thanksgiving dinner, but they'd be good all over.

Veganmofo: Thaksgiving post

As promised, here is the complete unhealthy vegan thanksgiving spread. There will be a follow up leftover's post which will provide some more details and recipes on the dishes.

Here we go!

Thanksgiving Tofurkey Platter:

Featuring roasted garden onions, garlic bulbs, celery and carrots. Basting mixture of soy sauce and OJ with poultry seasoning, fresh pepper and a bit of sugar.

Next up Butternut Squash pre-baking:

Squash was cut with fresh garlic, brown sugar, crushed rosemary, pepper, sea salt, ginger and sage.

Roasted at 400 for over an hour

Yellow Rose Recipes Sweet Potatoes, Candied with ginger

 Final Platter with tofurkeys, roasted veggies and the squash medallions

 Double Tofurkey roasting in the oven, 2 hours

 Green Bean casserole, man this stuff is good. Simple roux, nooch and vegetable broth sauce. Seasoning with garlic, onion, and oregano poured over beans baked for 30 mins then topped with fried onions.

 Gratuitous plate shot, sorry about the flash it was dark by the time we ate. Left to right: YRR sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, tofurkey slices, mom's bread stuffing, and roasted squash. Not featured second plate: Roasted garlic asparagus, steamed garden carrots, steam snap peas, apple crisps and more.

Family bonus picture, my mother peeling potatoes on her back deck. Happy Mofo everyone!