Slightly Psychic Paper…

So I hate sweets. With a passion. They make me feel sick.

Normally, I’m a salt girl all the way but lately, I’ve developed a craving for chocolate chip cookies. Gods above, I have no idea why. So since I’ve got this craving I figured I’d look up some recipes for cookies that were easy and chewy in the center and crispy on the outside. I’m a picky cookie eater and they have to be just so or I’ll take a bite of one and put it back on the pile. That being said, most chewy cookie recipes are calling for lots o’ eggs and most of the vegan made recipes just sounded gross to me so I made up my own cookie mix.

Super delicious, takes like 10 minutes to mix up and another 10 to bake and then ta-da smushy cookies.

What You’ll Need

• 3/4 c melted Earth Balance
• 2 c flour (doesn’t matter what kind really)
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract ( if you get imitation try to get the higher quality imitation. It’s still cheaper than the real stuff and doesn’t give you that weird metallic taste)
• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds (this is replacing your eggs here. Some recipes I found called for an egg plus an egg yolk, which I’ll be honest I’m not sure why but I’ll figure that out later and update. I originally used a tbsp and a half of flax with 4 tbsp of water, and found that the cookies were soft and chewy in the beginning but at the end of the day after they’d cooled they were too chewy, so I scaled back the “egg” to just a tbsp)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder ( most recipes call for baking soda, but at the time, I didn’t have any baking soda, so I looked up the difference/exchange between baking soda and powder and most people said that they just tripled the amount of powder to the original soda amount and cut the salt down by about 1/2 tsp)
• 1 C brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• (Now here’s where it gets tricky I suppose. You can add as many chocolate chips as you want, but being a sweets-phobe, I originally only made my recipe with about 1 c of chocolate chips and the last time cut that down to 1/2. I’ve even made a batch with no chocolate chips at all and a touch (1/2 tbsp) of almond extract. Those were my favorite to be honest.) Any how insert quantity of chocolate chips. I used Ghiridelli since they’re vegan.
• 3 tbsp water (for the flax. I almost forgot!)

With these items combined…

Preheat to 325
1. Mix the flour and baking powder together. I used a fork to sift them together since I won’t commit to buying a flour sifter.
2. Mix the butter and sugars together until you’ve got a nice brown goo. Add in the flax seed and water and mix. Now do that with the vanilla (and almond if you’re so inclined).
3. Now pour the brown goo into the flour and mix with a spatula or a fork or whatever. Be gentle, don’t over mix it cause then your cookies are like rocks. Just mix it until everything’s playing nice together. Add in the chips (or don’t).
4. Spray your pan with something oily, grab a tablespoon measuring spoon and scoop out little balls of cookies onto the pan. Give them some space, about a finger’s width between all of them.
5. Bake for 11 minutes. Pull them out and let them cool for a moment since you don’t want to burn yourself on molten chocolate.

Eat them

Scoob and I will post pictures later. I broke his computer during the blizzard and we haven’t fixed it and it seems to be retarding our creative juices. At least on the picture taking front :/

So it’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog. I’m a terrible blogger, but as life would have it, I’ve actually been super busy with getting the house in order, cuddling my boyfriend and working on extremely attention sucking things at work. As a result, nothing for like two months :/ Oh well. I’ve been cooking pretty regularly, though it’s a lot of the same ol’ stuff.

Anyhow, I made this curry stuff the other night, and in my mind, it’s basically a coconut orgasm in your mouth.

Here goes, once again…

What You’ll Need…

• 16 oz can of Coconut milk
• 3 c of veggie broth
• 1/4 c tomato paste ( you could probably use a lot less if you’re using the canned stuff, I just blended some leftover cherry tomatoes that I had, and it came out to about 1/4 c.)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 of an onion, chopped
• 1 yellow squash, chopped
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1/2 green pepper, chopped
• 1/2 red pepper, chopped
• A handful of shredded carrots, or 1 carrot chopped finely
• 1 small Italian eggplant, chopped and cured (eggplant can be super gross and bitter when it’s not cured the right way, so before you start cooking chop your eggplant up into slices and lay it out onto a surface covered in salt and sprinkle salt on top of the slices. Let them sit for about 30 mins or so and then rinse the dark colored liquid that weeps out of them off. They should be good to go now!)
• 2-3 tbsp of chili powder (adjust to your tastes)
• 3 tsp coriander
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cumin
• red pepper flakes
• Extra Firm Tofu ( I just used one package, drained and marinated)
• Lime juice (a splash or so)
• 2 Bay leaves
• Rice
Tofu Marinade
• Lemon juice
• season salt
• pepper
• chili powder

Instructions

1. Saute the onions and carrots, just until they start to get tender. Add in the garlic and let them simmer a bit.
2. Add the tomato paste and broth to the mixture and simmer.
3. Now is a good time to toss in the spices, coconut milk and bay leaves. Let this simmer for about 10 mins or so, just so that the spices start to blend together and make it all pretty tasty. Adjust the spicy levels with the red pepper flakes and the chili powder. Remember that the red pepper flakes will intensify after they’ve cooked for a little bit, so add them in slowly and check the level over several intervals.
4. The last thing you want to add to this are your veggies. I like them nice and crispy and the squashes and eggplant can go mushy really quickly when they’re over cooked. Add them in and let them simmer for about 20 mins, or how ever long it takes you to prepare the rice.
5. Fish out the bay leaves before you serve. Serve over hot rice.
by NeedToDestroy | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments | RSS

When I get done coding for a client, I’ll be posting my super easy, super delicious, super Veg FauxLoaf (I feel like meatloaf is misleading, but for titling purposes will suffice).

Posts will include:

Mushaboom Gravy!! So delicious I shuddered in delight! It will reaffirm your life path, as Scoob and I have decided the Mushaboom does.

Anti-Vampire, Cheezy, Garlicky Mashed Potatoes!!! We’ll mash them with forks, much like the pilgrims must have.

Doublemeat FauxLoaf!! It’s like a meat party in your mouth :3

So many recipes just bubbling up from inside… I might just burst.

Today’s my first day of cutting dairy from my diet completely. I keep finding amazing delicious alternatives to my non-vegan food habits, so as I find them, I plan to substitute and cut more and more out. I think that the easiest way to move towards a conscientious vegan life is to ease things in and out. A gentle change to prevent shock.

So a couple of Mondays ago was my first real day of vacation. Since then, I’ve vacationed, visited family, moved and gotten back to work. This is the recipe that I intended to put up during the Christmas week as we prepped for the move and travel. So here it is…

The snowfall allowed me an extra day, though I was working from home. Not having to log-in and check emails and my phone constantly, I really had no idea what to do. After I managed to delete a large portion of my iTunes library (2000+ songs deleted) I decided that I’d just leave that be and work on a web design I’ve been hired to do. Dreamweaver is not in the mood to pen and keeps crashing. It crashes after like 4 restarts and several troubleshooting trials. I give up, resigned that I now have to finally break down and get the Adobe suite. After this little succession of computer woes I decided that a nap was in order. Upon waking up I was completely at a loss as to what I should do afterward. My computer was off limits, which limited me to watching TV, an activity that I take no real pleasure in, playing on the 360 and sleeping again. At some point it dawned on me that I could rummage through the kitchen and cook something.

I settled on making a carrot cake. It was a semi disaster :/ It tastes great, but aesthetically, not so much. Still full of energy I decided that I’d cook lentils for the boys tonight. Not really sure how to cook them, I just kind of threw them in a pot and decided that they’d be chili.

What You’ll Need

• 2 c of washed/sorted lentils (sometimes lentils have little sticks and rocks left over in them, also some of the lentils are all gross and shriveled up so you’ll want to pull thos out as well)
• 32 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 2 16 oz black beans/kidney beans
• 1/2 a diced onion
• 3 cloves diced garlic
• 1/3 c Chili Spice** ( I use the spice mix that my grandmother gave me. We mix it up in bulk and then use it in small bits as we need it. I’ll give the spice mixture first and then go on to the rest of the chili)

Chili Spice Mix

• 3/4 cup chili powder
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons dried minced onion
• 2 tablespoons seasoned salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons dried minced garlic

Instructions

• Saute the garlic and onions until they’re tender.
• Add your spices and let them cook for a few moments.
• Now you’ll boil the lentils. I covered the lentils with water, about an inch or so higher than the lentils. Get the lentils boiling and let them cook for about 20 minutes or so. I let the lentils cook until they’re a bit mushy.
• Mix the beans, tomatoes, onions and spices in to the lentils and let it simmer.
• Salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.

Chili’s super easy to make and super hearty. I love making it and it’s great to take for lunches throughout the week.

So I’m still unpacking and moving boxes like crazy, but I’ve finally slowed down a little. It’s been nice trying out all of my new kitchen gadgets that I got for Christmas in my new, albeit oddly designed, kitchen. Haven’t done a ton of inventive cooking as of late. I’ve been sticking to recipes that I find online for quick meals that are cheap and delicious and a couple of my old staples. Over the break I made some amazing orange “chicken”, cabinet soup, a thai coconut sauce and various other little bits to eat.

Today’s posting is for my vodka sauce, which I made on Monday. Super easy to make and is super delicious.

What You’ll Need:

• 1/4 c plain vodka ( the alcohol cooks out and just leaves a distinct flavor. Brand doesn’t really matter, nor does price. I just used up a super cheap left over bottle from my birthday party that’d lost it’s cap)
• 32 oz can of diced tomatoes (or 32oz of tomato sauce, I pureed my tomatoes myself to try and cut down on the sodium found in most canned sauces)
• 3 cloves of diced garlic
• 1/2 an onion, diced
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• Mushrooms, chopped
• Italian spice mix (thyme, basil, rosemary, oregano, marjoram)
• 1/4 c bechemel sauce
• 1/4 c nutritional yeast
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. If you already haven’t, chop/mince your onions and garlic. Toss those into a pan with some oil and let them saute until tender. I used my larger pan with high sides so that I’d be able to make the sauce in fewer pans.
2. Shake in your spices as the onions and garlic are cooking.
3. Puree the tomatoes if you’re not using canned sauce and add those to the pan, letting them come to a boil before turning the heat down to medium-low and covering.
4. Add the zucchinis and vodka in and  let the sauce simmer for about 30 minutes.
5. While the sauce is cooking, we’ll make the bechemel to add in.
   1. 1/4 c Earth balance melted in a pot or bowl.
   2. Mix in two heaping spoonfuls of flour until it’s a paste like texture.
   3. Add in about a 1/4 c of soy milk and stir until the paste is totally dissolved.
   4. Mix in another spoon or two of flour until the sauce is looking thick.
   5. Stir in the nutritional yeast.

Bechemel Sauce

6. Once the bechemel is done, add that in and stir pretty constantly until it’s completely incorporated. Since the bechemel has flour in it it’ll thicken the sauce as well as make tiny tomato sauce dumplings/burned bits if left alone and not stirred on a regular basis while cooking. Remove the sauce from heat and cover.
7. Boil some water and throw in your noodles of choice. We ate this with Farfalle noodles that were super cute and tastey. Once your noodles are boiled and tender, drain, plate and sauce.

That’s all it takes. Normally a vodka sauce calls for Parmesan cheese in the mix but since I’m making this vegan I just added in nutritional yeast to the “cream” portion to give it a cheesy flavor.

I’ll be moving this week and will probably have little to no internet for a the first few days… so bbl ^.^

Well, it managed to snow approximately 2.5 feet here between Friday evening and Saturday evening. It tapered off  around 7 p.m. but by then, the damage was done. Snow everywhere. Holiday party canceled. White elephant exchange limited to the three of us trapped in the house. Despite being cooped up and with no one coming to visit, I was still in the mood for lasagna. Scoob and I had picked up the stuff for it before Sno-mageddon so we were set, we just had to pry ourselves away from horrible SyFy (OMGWTF I HATE THIS NAME CHANGE!!!!!!) movies to feed ourselves.

I found that lasagna is super  time intensive and is not be a meal to be taken lightly. I’d say it took about an hour and a half or so of prep/assembly and then another hour and a half of cooking. The end result of course is delicious, but it’s definitely a huge ordeal. Also, please excuse any retarded typing, as I tore the nail off of my middle finger whilst cleaning up and it hurts like crazy and so I’m typing with a handicap.

So I think my first bit will be listing everything you’ll need for the dish, then we’ll go over the ricotta filling, then the sauce making and finally composition of the whole dish.

What You’ll Need:
Tofu Ricotta Mixture

This first bit is from the Tofu Basil Ricotta recipe found on theppk.com. I followed this recipe for the most part, but when I finished it, I thought that it had a really bland tofu-y flavor and didn’t think it would be all that fitting in my dish, esp since I’m basically hiding the tofu nature from my non-veg anti-tofu diners at times. To give it a more creamy, rich flavor I simply added a bechamel cream sauce to the mixture and that made it pretty much the most delicious thing ever.

Ricotta Tofu bit

• 1 lb. Firm tofu, drained and pressed
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 5-6 basil leaves ( or a couple of shakes of dried basil flakes)
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• salt to taste

Bechamel Bit

• 1/4 c Earth Balance
• 1/4 c plain Silk
• 1/4 c all purpose flour

Pasta Sauce

• 2 32 oz cans of diced tomatoes
• 1/2 an onion, chopped
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 4-5 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 yellow squash, chopped
• 1 small container of mushrooms, washed and chopped
• 2 c frozen broccoli florets
• 4 tbsp Italian seasoning (rosemary, marjoram, thyme, basil, oregano)
• 2 tbsp fresh basil (I love basil heavy sauces, so you could omit this if you wanted)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Misc.

• Boil about 2/3 of a box of lasagna noodles. Be careful which noodles you choose, some of the no boil, easy lasagna noodles have both egg and whey in them!
• Shredded Follow Your Heart Mozzarella

Instructions:
Ricotta Mixture

1. Make sure the tofu has been drained and pressed enough to get most of the liquid out or you’ll have soupy ricotta. Break the tofu up into little chunks and pop them into the blender (mushing them up by hand if you don’t have a blender works as well). You want to get the tofu to a reasonably smooth consistancy, not puree, but kind of smooth/chunky like ricotta would look like.
2. Add to this the lemon juice, garlic, nutritional yeast, salt and basil.
3. Mix until it’s all incorporated and set aside.
4. To make the bechamel sauce, melt the butter in a sauce pan on medium heat. I’ve been told to let the butter brown in the pan, but Earth Balance doesn’t seem to want to brown, so just melt it until it’s bubbly and then remove from heat.
5. Alternate adding in your flour and silk a little bit at a time, mixing between each addition. It should reach a pasty consistency.
6. Add the bechamel to the ricotta mix.
7. Depending upon the flavor/texture of your ricotta mixture once you add in the bechamel sauce, you may want to make and add a little more.

That’s all there is to the ricotta mix. You can refrigerate it until you’re ready to use it, that’ll help firm it up a bit.

Pasta Sauce

1. Saute onions and garlic in a pan until soft. (I’ll normally saute my onions etc in the big pot that I’m going to cook everything in anyhow just to cut down on the number of pots that I use and have to wash later.)
2. Add in your spice mixture and stir it around making sure that it gets all over everything.
3. Blend your tomatoes to get them to sauce consistency. If you’d like a chunkier sauce, just do like 1 can blended, 1 can not. Pour tomatoes into the pot with the onions and garlic. Set the heat to medium.
4. Let your sauce come to a boil and then add in your veggies.
5. Simmer sauce for about an hour or so, letting the veggies cook and absorb the flavors. Remember to stir occasionally to make sure nothing burns to the bottom of the pot.
6. Salt and pepper to taste and adjust any spices as you see fit at this point.

Assembly

1. Boil your lasagna noodles until tender. Drain and rinse them so that they’re cool enough to handle.
2. In a greased casserole dish layer sauce, noodle, ricotta, mozzarella. Repeat until full. When layering the noodles, make sure that the edges overlap a little bit.
3. Once everything’s layered up and ready, pop it into the oven for about 90 minutes or so. I was able to watch the abomination “Ice Spiders” on SyFy (>.<) while the lasagna cooked.
4. When the time’s up, pull it out and let it cool for about 20 minutes or so before serving.

And that’s all there is! Looking back it seems simple to recount the steps, but it really did take a serious amount of time, so be prepared if you attempt it. We followed dinner up with Scoob’s delicious spice cake cupcakes and cream cheese frosting. Overall it was a pretty filling dinner and we didn’t mind too horribly that our plans had been horribly wrecked up by the stupid snow storm.

arlier in my blogging, I mentioned making a delicious green bean casserole, which I’ve nicknamed the GBC. Since I made it, I’ve fallen in love with it and will make it to celebrate the opening of an envelope.

Not much happened last night, though I do believe that I spent approximately $12 on canned diced tomatoes at the store last night, since they were buy one get one and since I use tomatoes in 90% of my cooking, I couldn’t resist. We’re also forcasted to get anywhere from 1 to 10 feet of snow according to opinions from the Weather Channel and Facebook, so I was forced to succumb to the “OMG I MIGHT NOT HAVE FOOD” insanity and horde. Let’s just say I got a ton of staples to make many many foods.

At some point in the night, I attempted to make vegan Swiss Fondue. It called for rolled oats, and I thought that I had some. I did not. I substituted flour to thicken it up. It did not turn out so great, but I’ll continue to experiment with it. Overall, it was too lemony.

Here’s the GBC recipe, enjoy!

What you’ll need:
Casserole Filling

• 4 16 oz cans of french style green beans, drained
• 2 c Tofutti Sour Cream (the mildly expensive part here. I made due with about a cup and a fourth, so it’s really not that big of a deal if you wanna wing it and only use one container.)
• 1/4 c Earth Balance, melted/softened
• 2 c Swiss Cheez mixture* (recipe to follow below)
• 1/4 c flour
• 1 big can of fried onions

Swiss Cheez

This recipe comes from the “Uncheese Cookbook” with some slight modifications.

• 1/2 c water
• 1/8 c lemon juice (I recommend using less and just adding to taste!)
• 1/8 c tahini (sesame paste)
• 1/4 tsp mustard powder
• 2 tbsp onion (powder or finely chopped fresh)
• 1/4 c nutritional yeast (add more or less to your tastes)
• 2 tbsp arrowroot powder
• salt to taste
• splash of dry cooking sherry
• dash of garlic powder

Make the Cheez first to keep the workflow going better.

1. Mix everything up in a blender/processor/magic bullet.
2. Pour the mixture into a sauce pan and let it simmer for a few moments.
3. Salt to taste. You could also adjust the amount of nutritional yeast as well.

Casserole Instructions

1. Mix all of your ingredients together in a big bowl, making sure that the flour doesn’t get lumpy and is well distributed.
2. Add in the Swiss Cheez and mix again.
3. Grease a casserole dish and preheat the oven to 350.
4. Pour the bowl contents into the casserole dish and sprinkle the fried onions on top.
5. Bake for about 30 minutes or until it’s nice and bubbly. Try not to burn the onions on top or they’ll taste horrible.
6. Let sit for a few moments to lose it’s molten lava properties and then serve.

And that’s it! Super simple and pretty easy to make! I love this version better than my non-vegan one since my cheez mixture coats more thoroughly.

So in an attempt to help out our friend with Celiacs disease, Scoob and I have been brainstorming veg recipes that he can eat, in an effort to show him that his condition doesn’t require him to eat just meat. With an added allergy/intolerance to grains, it became quite the challenge.

The easiest thing that I could think of that’s veg and reminiscent of meaty dishes was a shepherd’s pie. It’s one of Samu’s favorite dishes and he will order it wherever it’s available. Everyone was pretty excited over the prospect of the pie.

An added treat, Scoob decided to film me cooking.

What you’ll need:

• 5 lbs potatoes, peeled and chopped (it sounds like a lot but you’ll chop a few up for the stew and then mash the rest)
• 3 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 4 cups of veggie broth
• 1 tbsp of Thyme
• 2 tbsp of Rosemary
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 1/4 cup of Earth Balance butter
• Salt and Pepper to taste

The Stew

1. Start off by cooking the onions and garlic until they’re soft.
2. Add in the herbs
3. Pour the veggie broth in and bring it to a boil.
4. Add the carrots and about 2 cups of chopped potatoes. Let them cook for 15 minutes or until the carrots are softer.
5. mix up a cornstarch and cold water slurry to thicken the soup while it’s cooking. I used about 3 tbsp of cornstarch to about 1/2 tbsp of cold water. It should be thick and goopy.
6. Add the mixture at the end of cooking. Once the cornstarch is added, bring the soup back to a simmer for a few moments to allow the cornstarch to take effect. If the soup isn’t thickening to where you think it should be (I definitely underthickend my stew. In the future, I may use a roux to thicken the stew next time.)

The Potatoes

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil.
2. Toss the rest of the chopped potatoes into the boiling water.
3. Let the potatoes boil for about 15-20 minutes or until they’re soft and easily squished with a fork.
4. Once the potatoes are done, drain them and put them back into the pot.
5. Start mushing the potatoes with a large fork to get them smooth.
6. Add in salt and pepper to taste.
7. Add in the cup of plain soy milk and keep mixing. Mashed potatoes are pretty simple, so you’ll know what level of chunkiness you’ll want to have with your topping, but do keep in mind that it is a topping to the stew.

With your potatoes made and your stew made, it’s time to put the two together and bake them.

1. Grease the casserole dish so that things don’t stick. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Pour in the soup into the casserole.
3. Add the potatoes to the top of the soup in little blobs, trying to smooth them out as you go. (my potatoes sank in as I added them, but it didn’t really bother me too much, just showed that the soup needed to be thicker).
4. Once the stew is covered in potatoes, toss a sprinkle of nutritional yeast on top of the potatoes and pop it into the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the top of the potatoes has begun to brown.

I learned a little bit about Shepherd’s pie while making this, mostly about the thickness of the stew in comparison to the density of the potatoes. Definitely will make the soup with a roux next time to make it thick and gravy-like.

With that said, here’s our video!