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).

pizza pockets

Trader Joe's-heavy recipe for pizza pocket/calzone:

-a thing of Trader Joe's pizza dough
-a half of a piece of the Trader Joe's "spicy chorizo" (or any pepperoni/italian sausage inspired meat alternative)
-pizza/spaghetti/marinara sauce of choice (1/3-1/2 jar)
-half an onion, chopped
-1/2 c. chopped peppers (i used the rainbow frozen assortment)
-1/2 c. chopped mushrooms
-3/4 c. frozen chopped spinach
-any other ingredients you like on a pizza (pineapple! black olives, whatEVER!)
-one clove chopped garlic
-tsp of olive oil
-oregano/basil/salt to taste

preheat oven to 400 degrees. in a skillet sautee onions and garlic in olive oil. add vegetables. chop up chorizo (peeling it first, which is nasty). warm everything up, mix in the pizza sauce. warm all that up. divide the pizza dough into 4 pieces, and stretch them out the best you can (flour will help here). scoop the filling into the dough and pinch them shut like a little pocket. place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes until brown. even my picky non-vegan dad liked this! you won't even miss the cheese!

Olive Hummus

a cooking dialogue with a sort of musician, and that dude who occasionally sings the star spangled banner at the demolition derbys at KilKare Speedway in Xenia, Ohio, the man/myth/legend Jason Anderson on how to make olive hummus:

(jason)
well
boil some garbanzo beans, genius
then mush 'em up and add tahini
toss in some sea salt
squeeze a goddamned lemon
teaspoon in olive oil

and then, here's the kicker kate, ADD OLIVES.

(me)
mashed?
how many?
what color?

(jason)
whatever you want dude
BE FREE
WING IT

Scallion Pancakes

I made these in Indonesia, among other things, because vegan food was limited, as were the ingredients I could recognize at the grocery store. After 6 weeks I was pretty tired of Gado Gado. While I was taking a taxi to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for this, I found 1,050,000 rupiah ($110) that I got to keep because no one claimed it after I reported it to the cab company...

The recipe is from apartmenttherapy.com

Ingredients:
-white flour
-hot water
-chopped green onions
-salt
-oil

Mix flour and water in a 5:2 ratio to make a basic dough. 2.5 cups flour/1 cup water is good for about 3-4 people as an appetizer. Hot water (like close to boiling, or even boiling) will facilitate chewier pancakes. roll dough into a ball and coat in some oil. Cover with a damp towel, and allow dough to rest for about 30 minutes. Then, roll the doughball out flat and sprinkle it with green onions and salt. I haven't gotten the green onion amount down to science yet, but use an amount based on how much you like green onions.

Roll the pancake sprinkled with onions up like a snake. This way, the onions are on the inside, which makes frying them up easier/the onions don't fall out or get burned. Cut the snake into 6-8 pieces (if you used 2.5 c flour). Cut them into smaller pieces if you only have a small fry pan, larger if you have a larger one. Heat up a skillet and put some olive oil in it, and roll out the small pieces until they are about 1/3 inch thick (like pita bread thickness). Fry on both sides for about 2 minutes, until brown.

Serve with a dipping sauce. I use soy sauce with lime juice, fresh grated ginger, rice vinegar, and a bit of water just because it was what I had around, but really any "asian themed" dipping sauce would be delicious. Or, honestly, hummus (since I put that on everything).

I've relocated back home to Detroit and I'm unemployed and bored out of my mind, so I'll likely start posting more on here. Unless I get a job. If you need a women's health nurse practitioner in Detroit, call me.


I can has onion pancake...

Stew

Haven't tried this yet, but I'm posting it to remind myself to try it. Looks delicious.

fat free vegan's winter stew

Holy Crap I Just Made The Most Delicious Sandwich Ever

So I don't usually post my "clean out the fridge night" made up stuff because a) it's usually difficult to recreate and, b) they usually take a billion ingredients, but this one was SO GOOD, I wanted to share. I think most people have this stuff lying around... half used packages of tempeh and ground meat, half used onions, cans of breadcrumbs, etc, etc but if you don't... don't bother with this recipe. If you do, enjoy. I've broken it into several parts, so I apologize that the ingredients list is scattered. All I bought for this was the baguette, the mushrooms, and the eggplant.

Meatball/Eggplant Marinara Sandwich
-baguette
-fresh spinach (or whatever lettuce-like thing you have)
-breaded eggplant (see below)
-sauce/protein slop (see below)

Step one, breaded eggplant:

-one eggplant
-plain almond milk (or soy/hemp/whatever)
-bread crumbs
-basil
-oregano
-pepper
-oil

Preheat the oven to 350. Slice the eggplant as thin as you can, and then dunk it in the milk. Season the breadcrumbs with the seasonings, and using small portions at a time, coat each eggplant slice in the breadcrumbs. The bread crumbs won't stick once the plate gets wet, which is why i advise doing the breadcrumbs in small batches. Put them on a cookie sheet greased with some olive oil and cook them at 350 til cripsy and brown. No need to use the entire eggplant. Save a portion of it for later. I used about 3 slices per sandwich (makes 3 sandwiches) and then ate some while I was waiting for everything else to cook, so maybe slice like 12 slices to bread and bake.

While that's baking... make the slop.

-olive oil
-half an onion, chopped
-some sliced portabellas
-half a package of Yves Ground "meat"
-1/2 a package of tempeh (I like the flax one)
-1/2 jar of spaghetti sauce of choice
-chopped garlic (or garlic powder)

Sautee the onion and garlic in the oil, add the mushrooms and sautee a little longer. Then add the tempeh. At this point you might need a bit more oil. Add the spaghetti sauce (about half a jar) and then the ground "meat" and simmer that for a little. Taste it and add more garlic/basil/oregano/pepper/salt as needed. You can add other italian-friendly veggies here like diced tomatoes, green pepper, etc. Whatever you have.

While that's simmering, take a baguette (I use the Whole Foods one sliced into thirds) and make sandwich sized cuts. Then cut it open almost completely (like they do at Subway) leaving one part attached like a hinge. At this point I scoop out most of the bread because I like to be wasteful, but it's up to you. Throw some lettuce (or fresh spinach like I did) on, followed by some eggplant slices, and then pile on the slop.

SHIT THAT'S GOOD.

I didn't think to take a picture until it was halfway devoured and it looks totally gross and unappetizing in the picture, but...

om nom nom nom.

Delicious Pesto Party Dip

-1 can of cannelini beans
-1 can of lentils
-fresh basil to taste (I used about 1/4 c)
-fresh parsley to taste (I used about 1/4 c)
-1 TBSP of tahini
-dash of salt
-1 tsp of olive oil
-the juice of one lemon
-3 cloves of garlic

-1 baguette, cut on the bias (to maximize surface area)
-olive oil


Empty most of the water out of the bean cans, but save it as you may needed it for added moisture at the end. Food process everything.

Slice the baguette, put some tin foil on a cookie sheet, and smear some olive oil on it. Put the baguette slices on the cookie sheet (rubbing each side into the oil), and broil until brown, flipping all of them over halfway through.

Garnish with some parsley sprigs.

Hungarian goulash

While I suspect my mother’s Hungarian Goulash’ is more Midwestern than Eastern European, it’s something I’ve been wanting to make for awhile. It was one of my favorite foods as a kid and it is incredibly easy to make. Perfect for fall when you are sick of all your normal soups and stews.

-12oz seitan—I use Ray’s wheat meat, which I believe is PA-local… any seitan will do
-one small yellow onion, chopped finely
-garlic to taste, finely chopped (I used 3 cloves)
-1.5 c. water
-3/4 c catsup
-2T Worchestire Sauces (I use Wizard’s, but there is a recipe for a vegan kind here in case you can’t find Wizard’s… recipe courtesy of Jenny Lewis)
-1T brown sugar
-1t salt
-2t paprika
-2 heaping tablespoons of cornstarch dissolved in 4-6 oz of cold water.
-pasta (cooked) my mom always served it with the wide, flat egg noodles, so get a pasta shaped sort of like that. I use the mushroom-cap shaped guys at Whole Foods

In a skillet sauté the onions, garlic and seitan in some oil until the onions are translucent. Add sautéed mixture to a pot and then add the rest of the ingredients (except the cornstarch and pasta). Simmer for 20 minutes. Stir in the cornstarch water to thicken and heat for 1-2 more minutes. Serve over pasta.