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.

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

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!

So, I’ve started to schedule my weekly meals so that I have some semblance of structure during the week and can shop during the weekends with a pretty good idea of what I’ll need for everything during the week. Since Samu and I love tacos and Mexican food in general, I’ve made an effort to establish Tuesdays as “Taco Tuesday” with lots of taco makins and various other Mexican-esque foods.

Sadly, last night Samu was working late, so it was just Freedom, Scoob and me with the taco festivities. Normally I’ll Julliene some potatoes, fry them up and have a potato faux meat mixture stuffed inside of a shell or tortilla but I’d been dying to try a Chiles Rellanos recipe ever since I had a veggie one stuffed with Mexican mashed potatoes at Viva in Richmond. Since the mushed potato filling was a little mushy and less than super flavorful, I decided that I’d tweak the general recipe to just include some of my favorite Mexi-Veg food/filling.

I looked up a few recipes online for Chiles Rellanos, which is a pretty common Mexican dish. It normally involves cheese and ground meat stuffed into a skinned chili covered in cheese and tamatillo salsa, so I would just be subbing the meat and cheese portions.

According to the internet, the key to the dish food is blistering your chilies correctly, so that the skin comes off easily but the chilies don’t burn. Blistering chilies kind of sucks if you’re like me and almost guaranteed to touch the side of the outrageously hot baking dish that you’ve put your chilies in. Other than that, not really a difficult dish to make. I’ll break it down in ordered steps so that you don’t have to watch two bits of the recipe at once and risk burning something or someone.

What you’ll need for blistering:

• Baking dish (casserole dish/cookie sheet/anything to put the chilies on close to the broiler)
• TIN FOIL!!!!!!!!! (If you don’t cover whatever you’re blistering the chilies on/in with the foil then you’ll end up with this black/brown liquid from the chilies exploding from the heat that is neigh impossible to get off of your cookware. Took Scoob and me aprox 10 mins scrubbing with a steel wool pad to get most of it off.)
• Pablano chilies (or any other type of big green chili pepper you’d like)

1. Move your oven’s wire rack pretty close to the top broiler. Make sure that there’s enough space to get the chili vessel in and out of the oven without you having to risk your hands, as it will be scorchingly hot.
2. Grease your tin foil once it’s in place on your cookware and arrange your chilies on the foil. Nothing special about the arrangement.
3. Set your oven to broil and let that preheat for a few moments. Once preheated, stick your peppers in on the rack close to the top.
4. Keep an eye out on your peppers to make sure that they’re not on fire. When you can see or hear the skins cracking and popping and they’ve got charred spots on the skins pull them out of the oven and flip them over with either tongs or some kind of kitchenware that’s not your hands, as the peppers will melt your fingers off at this point.

*I was told online to flip the peppers and let them blister on both sides, but mine were pretty blistery on both sides, so you may not need as long on the other side. I’d say that the blistering process took about 20 mins total, but every oven is different.

5. Once the peppers are good and blistery, wrap them in a moist paper towel or cloth and let them sit for a few moments. You could also stick them in a plastic baggy to let them steam themselves a little bit.
6. When the skins seem to come off pretty easily, pull them out of the bags and start peeling. (The skins get a little sticky and the peppers will probably still be hot and possibly still full of liquid, so be careful.) The peppers might start splitting on their own, which is fine, I just made a little pepper sandwich for the ones that had split into two parts.
7. Once you’ve skinned the peppers, slice them open lengthwise and cut the top bit with the seeds off. Clean out all of the seeds and ribs inside and set your peppers aside.

What You’ll Need for Pepper Stuffing

• 1-1 1/2 cups of rice
• 1/2 16 oz can of black beans
• 1 16 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1/2 onion
• 3-4 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 2 tbsp (to taste) Goya Adobo seasoning
• 2 bay leaves

1. Prepare the rice. Normally you’d do 2 cups of water to every cup of rice, boil, use.
2. Chop and saute the onion with the garlic in a medium sized pot.
3. When the onion and garlic are tender add in the tomatoes and beans. No need to drain the tomatoes.
4. Add the bay leaves and spices, stir and bring to a boil. Should be slightly soupy, if not, add a little water to allow the ingredients to simmer and exchange flavors.
5. Let this boil for a few moments before removing from heat and adding in the rice. Mix the two together.

At this point you’re pretty much done with the recipe components. For the topping I chose (vegan) Follow Your Heart Monteray Jack Cheese and shredded about half of a block and a green tamatillo salsa that I found at the local international grocery.

Assembly:

1. Grease a cooking dish and preheat your oven to 350.
2. Fill your peppers with the rice mixture and lay them in the dish, trying to close the edges of the peppers to make them into little pockets.
3. Cover with shredded cheese and a little bit of the salsa and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or so.

*I had some trouble getting the cheese to melt as regular cheese would, but that’s common with the vegan cheese options. From here I’d plate and serve them. They were a great addition to tacos and nachos. They reheat pretty well for work lunches as well.

That’s really it. It seems like a lot of work but it didn’t seem like it to me. The most intensive part was the chili blistering. We had lots of delicious Mexi-Veg food and played Trivial Pursuit and Animal Crossing for the rest of the night. Overall, pretty delicious and satisfying night.

So the GBC #2 turned out kinda meh. I didn’t make this one vegan, due to time, cooking and cost restraints. Whipped it up in the morning and cooked it. Turns out Swiss cheese, the real kind, doesn’t melt for crap and didn’t really blend very well to add to the flavor of the casserole. Turns out the fondue mixture Swiss Cheez that I made earlier in the week blended much better and gave it so much more flavor. Yet another mark in the, “OMG turns out my vegan food tastes amazing” column.

Scoob and I went Black Friday shopping today and pretty much wore ourselves completely out. Throughout the day we attempted to eat and stay fueled since we’d had about 4 hours of sleep total. Our bagels after many hours of shopping only served to tide us over for a few hours. We stopped by the awesomely delicious Sticky Fingers bakery in Colonial Heights, DC and had sweets and “Tuna” melts.

Once home, we had Christmas trees to assemble and shopping days to recover from. I caught the wild hearty soup hare and finally showered and pulled myself out my funk. De-funking required the making of this soup. Pretty simple with super accessible ingredients and maximum rumbly belly pleasing.

So here’s my “Everything in my cabinet” soup.

Cabinet Soup

Ingredients:
1 small onion chopped roughly
olive oil
4 cups of vegetable broth
1 cup of water
1 16 oz. can of kidney beans, drained
1 16 oz. can of black beans, drained
1 32 oz. can of diced tomatoes
2 cups of frozen mixed veggies
3 peeled and chopped carrots
1 cup uncooked barley
couple of shakes of Italian spice mix (thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, marjoram, garlic)
2-3 Bay leaves
sea salt to taste
pepper to taste

Saute the onions in the olive oil. Once the onions are tender shake in your spices and add your broth. I used the Knoff’s bouillon cubes, so I added 4 cups of water and let that boil before I added my cubes.

Add in bay leaves and all the canned veggies and barley. Bring everything to a boil and cover the pot. Let everything simmer for about 15 minutes or so before adding in the frozen veggies. Cover the pot again and let everything cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Soup should be done by this point, just salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot. Enjoy :3

Shy

My new goal for the next few months will be to yet again work on keeping a blog afloat. Not sure what I’m gonna put here yet. Probably more ramblings etc. We’ll see…

So far on today’s commentary:

I’ve battered John’s TV
listened to old chinese people yell upstairs
listened to John’s grumpy noises as his alarms went off and he slept through them.
Attempting green bean casserole #2. In my new found ability to cook and figure out recipes that don’t taste like ass, I’ve been mostly successful, so I plan on moving forward yet again.

So far I’ve mastered:
vegan cookies, vegan pumpkin bread, vegan mac’n'cheese, made-up spinach and artichoke alfredo (also vegan), vegetarian tacos, vegetarian polish sausages and peppers, spaghetti, veggie cuban sandwiches, vegan stuffed shells and tons others and now the green bean casserole.

Tuesday’s GBC attempt was pretty interesting. I made this one vegan as well so that my roommate Scoob could help me taste test it. Started out with having to make a Swiss Cheez to add into the casserole. I found a recipe online from the Uncheese Cookbook and used that as my cheesy filler. I had to edit the recipe a bit, but it wasn’t bad at all, wasn’t swiss cheese exactly, but pretty damn close and pretty damn delicious. I’m finding that I can properly use cooking sherry nowadays and so my food’s not tasting like an old lady’s sitting room smells.

Once we had cheez in hand the rest of the recipe was pretty simple and straightforward. All I had to do was mix and bake. Originally the recipe was a non-vegan creation that sounded pretty good, so I just had to substitute the sour cream for Tofutti Sour Cream, the Swiss cheese for Swiss Cheez and 1/4 a cup of Earth Balance rather than straight up butter. After I mixed everything and stuck it in, Scoob and I sat back with a documentary for about 30 mins until the casserole was done.

Turned out great! So great in fact that I took some to work for lunch on Weds and ate it as soon as I got to my desk >.<

Today's endeavor will be non-vegan since it's hard to find the Tofutti sour cream outside of a Whole Foods and I didn't have the cooking space or equipment to make the Cheez at my Samurai's place. So his family will just have to deal with the normal flavors and higher fat content. I'm sure they'll be quite let down >.>

Anyhow, I think I might start posting some of my successful recipes with photos… really depends I suppose. I’ll have to figure out how to make hoverbox work with word press since I dearly love that website feature, but I might just settle for normal pictures.

Today is mah birfday.

Pirates tomorrow and Saturday.

Friends comin in from everywhere. Costumes and awesomeness.

Haunt starts this weekend, but I’ll be there next Friday. I’m excited^.^