New Kitchen!

After six and a half years in this house we finally broke down and remodeled our kitchen. The old kitchen had a certain funky charm with its huge cast iron sink and painted cabinets but it dated to when our house was built in 1958 so we figured over 50 years was a good life span for a kitchen. The main issues were the lack of a dishwasher and drawers that slid open on friction so we always had sawdust all over our pots and pans below. Plus the sink cabinet was completely rotten underneath from a long-ago water leak. We couldn't afford the higher-end builder we talked to so we went to Lowe's and made it work by getting middle-of-the-road cabinets and counters and doing some of the work ourselves. We gained some cabinet space and a good bit of counter space and are quite happy with the result.

Here's the "before" picture in all its cluttered glory.

We don't quite have a final "after" picture yet because there was a mistake with the countertop order and the sink counter arrived two inches too short. The short counter was installed temporarily but there's a gap between the counter and wall. Hopefully a new counter will come in any day now and the short one will be replaced. Once that's done we can mount a few things on the wall by the sink, and I'm also planning on building a new spice rack since there's not enough room for our old one anymore.

And now that we have a great new kitchen maybe we'll start cooking more in it and get back to posting about food one day soon!

Baked Spring Rolls

OK... this is mainly an excuse to re-hash some old content but for those who have only started reading more recently I did want to bring up this old standby. A couple weeks ago we got the largest head of napa cabbage I've ever seen from our CSA. It was still in the back of our fridge tonight and we really needed to use it so we decided to make spring rolls. There are any number of things with which to fill spring rolls but ours usually have cabbage as the main ingredient. If you have an Asian market near you that's where you'll find spring roll wrappers (as opposed to the more common egg roll wrappers which of course are not vegan). You'll usually find them in the frozen section.

One of our recipes, along with step by step instructions for rolling, is here. Most often we fry our spring rolls in a thin layer of oil in a wide flat skillet. If you want to use less oil though you can bake them like we did tonight and they'll still come out quite good. Just brush a thin layer of canola oil on a sheet pan, place the spring rolls on the pan, then brush the tops liberally with more canola oil. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes, flip them over, then bake for another 15 minutes or until they're a little brown and crispy. And our first spring roll recipe, along with our go-to apricot dipping sauce recipe is here. Enjoy!

Product Review: Cool Cups

Remember Jell-o? If you weren't vegan as a kid you probably ate plenty of it. I can't say I really miss this stuff, what with the artificial flavors and all, but I did jump at the chance to sample Cool Cups recently. In two words: vegan Jell-o. Oh, but so much better! No nasty gelatin for one thing. And no artificial colors or flavors for another. We had great fun snacking on all three flavors (orange, peach mango & black cherry). Our toddler liked them too but they do contain a good bit of sugar so mostly we kept them for ourselves. If there's one drawback it's the packaging. There's only one place I know of around here that will recycle the #5 plastic cups. Hopefully they'll figure out how to package them in something that's more easily recyclable. They're also supposed to be coming out with a powdered mix you can make at home, which will certainly also help reduce the packaging. I wonder if it'll work the same as Jell-o with alcohol. Cool Cups shots anyone?

Calzones with sunflower seed pesto

We were away for a while and we've been neglecting this blog but to get something up, here's basically a copy of something I posted recently over on my mama blog.

Here is my version of a toddler friendly pesto that is made with sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. I am waiting until Jonas is around 18 months to introduce tree nuts so decided to try a variation that he can also enjoy on his pasta. He seems to really like basil. I made a summer tomato salad with a thai basil dressing and he ate it very quickly. I was surprised since the thai basil has a strong flavor. Maybe he will take after his mama and love basil. I am a big basil fan and cannot get enough of it in the summer time. Here is the recipe.

Sunflower seed pesto

3 cups of basil leaves (I used a mix of thai, globe and purple)
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 cup of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Add all of the ingredients except the olive olive oil to a food processor and chop well. Add enough olive oil to form a paste. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I used the pesto to make calzones. Jonas also really liked them a lot. I used a basic pizza dough recipe and also marinara that I made a while back and froze. Here is the recipe.

Sunflower seed pesto calzones

1 cup pesto
1 cup marinara
1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives
2 tablespoons capers
pizza dough

Mix together the pesto, marinara, olives and capers. Divide the dough into several pieces. Roll out each piece, fill and bake them all for 25 minutes at 375 F. Brush the tops with olive oil after they come out of the oven. We also enjoyed them for dinner one night with a nice heirloom tomato salad.

Raw Stuffed Peppers

The last few weeks from our CSA we've been getting these "snack peppers", which are basically cute little bell peppers. At first I wasn't sure what to make of them (or with them) but they're aptly named because they're super sweet and perfect for snacking on. Last weekend we got a whole pound of them and Darlene had the brilliant idea to stuff them with a raw filling. Normally this might be a tasty appetizer but these days if we do anything remotely involved we make a meal out of it. I don't think the presentation and the picture do them justice because they really were fabulous.

Here's what we did; the filling is adapted from the Garden Pate in Ani's Raw Food Kitchen.

1 lb. small bell peppers, halved and seeded
1 c. raw cashews
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
3 carrots
2 stalks celery
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1/2 c. raisins

Cover the cashews with water in a small bowl and soak for several hours. Coarsely chop the garlic, carrots and celery and add these to a food processor with everything else except the peppers. Buzz in the food processor until everything is finely copped then spoon into the pepper halves and serve. Simple!

Fresh Salsa

I'm sure many of you out there have made fresh salsa. This is for those who haven't. It's tomato season, what are you waiting for? I often don't use a specific recipe but just keep it simple. This time I diced a nice yellow heirloom tomato from our CSA, along with a little bit of red bell pepper. A minced jalapeño went into the mix too. If I would've had an onion, a small minced slice of that would go in there too. Then I added about 1/4 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a drizzle of sunflower oil and a splash of cider vinegar. Then I mixed everything together and opened a big bag of chips...

Summer Veggies

It has occurred to me that I've been neglecting this poor blog but I guess that's what happens when you have a 15-month old. Our meals these days often consist of a quick pasta, or sometimes just something frozen. This particular meal isn't necessarily something to write home about (and maybe not something to write a blog post about) but it's all I've got at the moment. Actually it was very tasty. And a good way to use a bunch of fresh veggies from our CSA. We got corn and fresh lima beans together and I thought of succotash again, but then at the last minute I decided to cook the limas with squash instead of corn. Either way they're much better than frozen lima beans. I also used up a bell pepper by slicing it and frying it with tempeh slices. At the end I poured on a mixture of soy sauce, maple syrup, ketchup and a dash of liquid smoke. Probably better to marinate the tempeh first but this was the quick method and it turned out good. Finally, we had a simple tomato salad on the side, which is something we've been having a lot of these days and never tire of. Simple is best here - chopped tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, a dash of red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Black Bean Baked Pasta

Here's a recipe I've been meaning to post for a different sort of baked pasta. I came up with this one night while pondering how to use up some yellow squash from our CSA. I ended up using too many bread crumbs for the topping but I think I've rectified that in the recipe below.

1 lb. pasta
1 Tbs. canola oil
1 medium onion, diced
3/4 lb. yellow squash, cut into large dice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
3/4 tsp. dried oregano
2 c. cooked black beans (or 1 can)
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
salt & pepper to taste

For the topping:
3 Tbs. Earth Balance, melted
1 1/2 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. nutritional yeast
2 tsp. chili powder

Cook pasta according to package directions in plenty of boiling water. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet. Add onion and cook for a couple minutes then add squash and cook until squash is just getting a little tender. Add garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt & pepper and cook for another minute. Add black beans, tomatoes and tomato paste and mix until well combined. Combine all this with the pasta in a large bowl. Pour into a lightly oiled 9" x 13" baking dish. Combine all the topping ingredients in a small bowl and spread on top of the pasta. Bake at 375° for about 30 minutes until the topping is getting brown.

Product Review: Bountiful Vegan cookies

I admit it. I'm a total cookie fiend. So when the folks at Bountiful Vegan asked if we'd like to sample their vegan cookies I jumped at the chance. They come in four flavors (or themes as you'll see if you follow the link). No sooner had they come in the mail than we were scarfing down the Well-Being cookie, which is Coconut Pineapple flavor. It was quite big enough to share as were all the others. I didn't get a strong coconut flavor from this one but still it was delicious. I really enjoyed the flavor combination in this one and in the Chocolate Chip-Orange and Lemon Snickerdoodle. And who doesn't like Chocolate-Chocolate Chip? The Chocolate Chip-Orange in particular has inspired me to throw in some orange zest or orange oil the next time I make chocolate chip cookies. What an amazing flavor profile! All of these cookies were a little more crumbly than I generally like my cookies but I think that mainly means they're not loaded down with fat, and anyway the flavors more than make up for that fact.

Tempeh & Seitan with Onions & Peppers

Back in my college (and pre-vegan) days I'd often cook a simple meal of sausage with onions and peppers. We got a nice bell pepper from our CSA this past weekend and still had some sweet onions from last weekend. Plus we had some locally made tempeh and a little seitan left over from the previous night so that got me thinking about something similar last night. This is sort of a general idea rather than a recipe but here's what I did:

Cook bell pepper strips in a cast iron skillet in plenty of olive oil for a few minutes, then add sliced onions and some coarse sea salt. Next add chopped seitan and tempeh, then cover, reduce heat and cook for several minutes. Add paprika and fresh ground pepper and continue cooking and stirring occasionally until everything is getting a bit brown. Finally, add a tablespoon or so of soy sauce and a bit of liquid smoke and give it a quick stir. We had ours with mashed potatoes and it was scrumptious.