Game of Thrones cookout

For this Game of Thrones watching party, Jeff fired up the grill. I choose the Gardein burger because I hadn’t had it before. Really “meaty.” Probably the closest in texture to real meat that I’ve had. Although how would I know at this point, really. It’s been at least 16 years since I’ve had meat.

Simon made a poblano potato salad which was delicious, we brought a cabbage crunch salad, Jeff made tots and a toppings bar and Star made mac & cheeze. We make it so hard not to over eat with all these goodies.

And I didn’t help that situation at all by making a cheesecake for dessert.

Falafel and kale slaw

Falafel isn’t that hard to make, but when I saw frozen bags of falafel balls at Trader Joe’s and they were vegan I decided to try them out. These were really good. No complaints at all. I whipped up a quick tahini sauce to drizzle on top. It was tahini, hot water, garlic and lemon juice, I think.

The Kale Slaw with Red Cabbage and Carrot is another recipe from the Whole Living Kick Start Cleanse. And another winner. Of course you pretty much can’t go wrong with kale. And this is another one that sticks to mostly seasonal produce. Also, it’s pretty!

French White Bean and Cabbage Soup

Apparently I’m really excited about Fall and Fall foods. My last photo upload into wordpress was pretty much all bowls of food. Soup, stew, chili. Maybe I’ll get them posted before Vegan Mofo starts so I don’t have to rename the blog “Look at this bowl of crap I’m eating!”

Dried beans have been on sale at Kroger so I stocked up. They’re not that useful unless you cook them. So I soaked and slow cooked a pound of white beans. Now it’s time for a white bean party. The internets told me about this recipe for French White Bean and Cabbage Soup. I just realized when I looked up the recipe for the link that I totally forgot the parsley and liquid smoke. It was good anyway, but I have one more serving left so I’ll add those goodies and see if it becomes Next Level. This is the kind of soup that might make a good stand in for the traditional sick day chicken soup. Nice and brothy with just enough potato and bean for it to be reasonably filling. That grilled cheese with Daiya on the side helped with that also.

Oh yeah, I’m working on getting my blogroll back up. I lost it when I switched hosts and am trying to recreate from my Google Reader feeds. I’ll probably go up in pieces so consider it a work in progress.

 

 

A first look at Vegan Soul Kitchen

A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen. Lately I’ve been all about quick and easy food. So I picked the Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage to make first. It went nicely with some rosemary seasoned Pork style Match Meat patties with apricot sauce and steamed broccoli. The recipe turned out to be a really nice way to spruce up plain old cabbage with stuff I’m going to have on hand anyway. Next time you have a half a cabbage hanging out doing nothing, here’s a quick and easy way to use it up.

Seitan Sausage & Hot Dog Bun Payoff

So it seems like a month ago or something that I put out tweets that I was making seitan sausages and buns from scratch. It seems kind of weird to say “from scratch” considering that’s about how I cook everything. Anyway, I usually don’t go so far as to make my own hot dog buns. But then, here they are:

hot dog buns

I used Bryanna’s Fluffy But High Fiber Hamburger and Hotdog Bun recipe. For the first ingredient, I used EnergE Egg Replacer because I didn’t have the other things and it’s mostly potato starch anyway. Seemed to work fine. These are all full of whole grains and yet not heavy. I’m not sure I’d call them fluffy exactly, but they are really nice. One thing they don’t do is keep a little “hinge” when you slice them like store bought hotdog buns. I didn’t really think of that. In the future, I’ll experiment with shaping these so the sausage can be wrapped in bread. Even so, the sausages weren’t too messy to eat.

The sausages? Right, I made the steamed seitan sausages that every other vegan food blogger did months ago and probably already has a freezer full of them. I just used Julie Hasson’s original recipe. Next time I’d probably punch up the seasoning a little. I like a really spicy sausage. These had great flavor though. Steaming them was no problem. I just used one of those metal steamer baskets that you fit into the bottom of a pot to steam vegetables. Even though the bottom is rounded and not flat, I was able to stack all the sausages from this recipe into my pasta pot without a problem. 

Don’t be freaked out when you first unwrap these from the foil. They’re still moist on the outside but dry out pretty quickly. I’ve had them both right out of the fridge and into the George Foreman grill and frozen, defrosted partially, then into the grill. It’s crazy convenient to have these just hanging out in your freezer. Sometime soon I’ll incorporate them into some other recipe rather than simply eating on a bun.

seitan sausage cabbage kale salad

Oh, and that’s the Cabbage Kale Slaw from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen next to it. And here’s a slaw extreme close up:

cabbage kale slaw

I had the slaw a couple of days later for lunch at work with sunflower seeds sprinkled on it. It held up just fine and possibly got a little better.

Yes, there’s more food. Asian Baked Tofu from The Candle Cafe Cookbook, Teriyaki Quinoa from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, and some stir fried baby bok choy.

asian baked tofu teriyaki quinoa baby bok choy

Jimmy Crack Corn Crack from Alternative Vegan and Chipotle Kissed Red Bean Sweet Potato Chili from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.

sweet potato chili