Sloppy Joannas

Still working off of my store of ingredients, Friday I poked around to see what I could make for dinner. I was going to make cheesesteaks again, but when I defrosted my chunk of seitan it didn’t smell quite right. When in doubt, throw it out. So what else to do with these sub rolls? Sloppy Joannas from Yellow Rose Recipes popped in my brain. I’d never made them but sure enough I had all the ingredients. Well, I didn’t have tomato sauce but I had tomato paste. Dilute with some water and tada! tomato sauce. Just for fun I tossed on some cheddar Daiya.

These were pretty good. They didn’t totally rock my world. I probably need to adjust the seasoning to my taste. They’re probably spot on for sloppy joes and I just didn’t eat those very often. Actually, I haven’t had since I was a kid. Kevin thought the Daiya tasted kind of weird with the sandwich innards. I didn’t think it was that off.

Also, the frozen french green beans from Trader Joe’s rule. They are going to become a freezer staple for me.

Random Collection of Food

I don’t feel very writey right now, but here are a few food pics that have been piling up.

The Cajun Tofu from Yellow Rose Recipes has turned out to be a great quick week night dinner star. Once you have the spice mixture around, the rest can be made up of staples I keep around. This time we had it with some of the collards that are filling my freezer and some hash browns that cooked up quicker because I diced ’em smaller. Oh, and that’s a little bowl of home made apple sauce.

When I saw this fairly quick recipe for bread bowls, I knew I’d eventually be dumping come Cholent from Veganomicon into them. I was right! The dry milk powder was replaced with soy milk powder.

Trying to keep the healthy cruise diet going, I baked up some Asian tofu and ate it on a salad of raw kale and bok choy seasoned with sesame oil.

And finally, this Peanut Butter Quick Bread recipe looked interesting. I thought it would be even more interesting as Peanut Butter and Jelly Bread. So that’s what I did. The bread itself is not all that sweet like a lot of quick breads, so the jelly does not make it too sweet. I veganized by using a flax egg and soy milk as replacements. The recipe worked in both bread and muffin form.

A tale of two muffins

What’s better than baking a batch of muffins? Baking two! For the first batch, I modified the Zucchini Muffin recipe from Yellow Rose Recipes to make it carrot and zucchini. Not much of a modification…just reduced the zucchini and added grated carrot. I also skipped the raisins and opted to toast the pecans in a pan before chopping and adding. We’ll call these the healthy muffins. They have a really small amount of oil and are light on the sugar but they’re still sweat enough and don’t at all taste like hippie food. Plus I got to break in the whole nutmeg I picked up at the Indian market. Wow, does that make a difference! I even cut back the amount a bit so it wouldn’t overpower.

carrot zucchini muffins 

And these Hearty Spiced Cocoa Muffins we’ll refer to as pure evil. This might be my first try at a recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  The heavy reliance on Ener-G Egg Replacer in the book made me a bit nervous as I don’t like it in everything. In this case I had nothing to worry about. They came out perfect and kick much ass. The cinnamon, cloves and cayenne pepper go so well with the chocolate and the higher than usual amount of salt really makes the chocolate flavor pop. I just stuck with the chocolate chips and did not add any nuts. 

Hearty Spiced Cocoa Muffins 

I think it’s kind of funny that I chose to photograph the “evil” muffins against black and the “good” ones against white. Hmmm… Oh, and my helpful tip of the day, well, and probably of the year because I don’t really hand them out, now do I? How often does a muffin recipe make exactly 12 muffins? Not often, right? I have these little muffin cup sized ceramic ramekins  that I use for mise en place, salsa, etc. They’re also perfect for overflow muffin batter. See above. No wasted batter!

Butternut Squash Lasagna

butternut squash lasagnaOkay, so this isn’t so much a quick, throw it together on a weeknight after work kind of recipe. But it’s definitely worth all the pieces and parts that go into it. This is also the first time I’ve worked with a vegan béchamel sauce. It came out really nice. I was surprised. Makes me want to revisit some old ovo/lacto recipes I used to make. Oh yeah, I should say it’s from Yellow Rose Recipes. I’m tired or I’d rave more about it instead of just going to bed.

Vegan Brunch

Okay, yeah, it’s been almost a week since the vegan brunch I had at my house, but finally here are some pictures.  Below we have Chocolate Chip Brownie Waffles from Veganomicon, biscuits & yeast gravy, fruit, Indian spiced greens in the crock pot, and sweet rolls. vegan brunch 1 Here the coffee cake on the far side comes into view.vegan brunch And a better look at those sweet rolls, some “sausages” and hiding in the back, Beer Battered Seitan from Yellow Rose Recipes, Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from Vegan with a Vengeance and whole grain waffles. vegan brunchOh, and this wasn’t all. We also had sweet potato hash browns, a fruit salad, some potatoes maybe and probably more stuff I’m forgetting. Let’s put it this way, this was the only meal I ate this day. So much yummy food!  And since the “chicken” ‘n waffles didn’t really show up well on the table, here it is as blurry leftovers:chicken and waffles