Roasted Red Pepper and Asparagus Pasta Salad

I start my new job tomorrow, so I am making food to bring to eat all week. And it's spring. So I'm making pasta salad. I posted a pasta salad/bbq vegetables recipe awhile ago, and this is similar to that, but with less ingredients, and faster.

First, roast some red peppers.

This was initially intimidating to me and I was all like "omg, how do you do this, it must be so hard. i must google this and read 20 different websites to make sure i'm doing it right". you actually just put peppers under the broiler til the skins are black. It's about as difficult as making toast (if you are a toasterless hobo such as myself). So yea. First, do that to one pepper. After you broil them, put them in a freezer bag til they cool (the bag lets the flavors ruminate) for like 20 minutes.

The skins should peel off easily at this point. If they don't, whatever, skins are full of fiber and good for your bowel movements.

Here are the ingredients:
-bunch of asparagus, the skinnier the better
-half a sweet onion, sliced
-pasta
-1 roasted red pepper
-4 oz (1/2 a package) of tempeh
-olive oil
-salt
-pepper
-garlic or garlic powder
-crush red pepper (optional)
-the juice of a lime
-balsamic vinegar
-dried or fresh basil to taste

Sautee the onion in olive oil until translucent. Dump it into a bowl. Add some more oil, and sautee the asparagus until tender, with salt and pepper, dump into the bowl. Cut up the tempeh, add some more oil, crushed red pepper (optional) and some salt, sautee the tempeh until browned (i like all the burned crap that is on the pan at this point to give the tempeh a little extra flavor, but if that grosses you out, wash it off in between). Dump that in the bowl too. While you are doing this, you should've been boiling some pasta. I don't know how much because I like my vegetable to pasta ratio to be mostly vegetables, while some prefer mostly pasta. Once the pasta is done, drain it well and let it cool. mix everything together, add balsamic vinegar, a splash of oil, probably some more salt. Fresh basil is really good (home depot has the plants for like $1.99 and my mom has been out of town for 2 weeks and i managed not to murder her plant, so they are easy to take care of). Refrigerate until cool, taste it once more before you serve it and add more oil/vineger/salt/whatever before serving. I find the tempeh really sucks up a lot of moisture.

Best Vegan Food in Detroit, according to me

So, I'm originally from Metro Detroit, but haven't lived here in about 7 years. Been having a hard time adjusting to the lack of vegan options/difficulty eating out, so I have rarely strayed from my comfort zone (hot bar at Whole Foods).

1. Blue Nile (9 mile near Livernois): All-you-can-eat Ethiopian (with a veg option)... it's pretty spendy, but nice.

2. Tokyo Sushi (2 locations that i know of: Squirrel and Walton in Rochester, and next to Noir Leather in downtown Royal Oak). I always get an order of "air conditioner rolls" (asparagus, cucumber, avocado), an inari pocket, and miso. To me, best sushi in town.

3. Mind, Body, Spirit (on Main St in downtown Rochester)... I haven't been here yet, and it's had mixed reviews. Restaurant.com has one of those cheap coupon things, I bought one, but haven't gotten around to going yet.

4. Inn Season Cafe: (4th street, just east of Main Street)... it's good, sorta spendy and always obnoxiously busy. I don't go there a lot, but it's a nice place. Everything is vegetarian, and pretty much everything can be made vegan.

5. Chipotle and Qdoba: i love burritos and hav yet to find a delicious non-chain with vegan options. I guess there is one in Ann Arbor/Ypsi, but I haven't been out there yet.

6. Palm Palace (everywhere, I go to the one on Squirrel and University).... these places have popped up in all the vacant La Shish buildings after they shadily shut down all overnight... nowhere near as tasty as the $16 million dollars of tax evasion that probably funded terrorism, but still delicious because Middle Eastern food is the most delicious. Nothing will ever be as delicious as La Shish.

7. AJ's Music Cafe (on 9 mile in downtown Ferndale)... coffeeshop that has a lot of vegan options. The vegan philly cheesesteak sounds and looks disgusting, but is actually tasty. The mexican tofu wrap thing was meh, but the dudes there are always super nice.

8. Zoup (I go to the one in Somerset mall): finding vegan mall food is so difficult, but Zoup is really delicious. Soup is actually my favorite food. The pea soup is AWESOME. The sourdough bread is vegan (I checked). They mark things as vegetarian or dairy free, but not vegan, but have a binder of all the ingredients behind the counter and are really nice about it.

ok. that's all i feel like writing. I am still in search of a brunch place.

Banana Rum Cake

My friend Jolinda, who I met in West Sumatra, writes for vegetarian.about.com. She made this recipe for vegan banana cake which I modified and am posting here.



-2 cups flour
-1.5 t. baking soda
-0.5 t. salt
-0.25 cup oil
-0.25 c. soy/almond/hemp/whatever milk
-3-4 bananas (very ripe)
-1 cup sugar
-1.5 T. rum extract
-1/2 t. cinnamon
-1/2 t. ginger powder

preheat oven to 350. combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Mix together suger and oil, add milk, mash in banana, the extract, and the flavorings (i used a potato masher, then a egg beater thing with the hand crank... no clue what that's called... fast stirring with a spoon and a strong bicep muscle or an electric hand mixer will work). Bake for like 45 min (til a toothpick comes out clean).

You can ice it, or just serve it with vanilla ice cream. i don't really like icing, so... you can google how to make plain icing if you don't know how, but i'd just serve it with ice cream if i were you.

I tried to estimate calorie content, because my parents are on a diet, and i think the entire cake has about 2500 calories, so don't eat the entire cake if you are on a diet. It looks like it'll make 12 slices so that comes out to about 210 calories per slice (but i didn't put it in a bomb calorimeter or anything, just googled "number of calories in 2 cups of white flour", etc).