non-quionoa vegetable stew!

friday night i made quinoa vegetable stew from the "moosewood restaurant: low fat favorites" cookbook, except i made a few changes. namely, i had no quinoa. but nevermind that, nevermind that.

its basically a vegetable saute - done with whatever i had on hand - onion, garlic, pepper, onions, and zucchini.

as well as corn and tomatoes...

and spices - cumin, a bit of cayenne...

oooh - plating! couscous!

stew!

cheese!

monkey / gorilla cakes!

so, i had a huge pancake craving for dinner. i could see it coming miles away - since i missed national pancake day and haven't had any in ages. and, as luck would have it, one of the most fun vegan food bloggers out there, "chocolate covered katie," is having an awesome contest wherein you make pancake roll-ups and are entered to win a whole bunch of products courtesy of artisana.

and so, i thought, "why not make pancake roll-ups?" yes, why not.

i decided on this recipe, because i wanted to use up some spelt flour and because moby is cool. alongside the spelt we have wheat bran (didn't have any oat), baking soda, salt, and soymilk. some rogue cinnamon may have snuck its way in there.

and a little stevia, because one needs some sweetness in one's pancakes. and, yes, that is a blurry "sense and sensibility" in the background, because one needs some jane austen while one makes pancakes.

and, no, you don't see any blueberries up in there. instead, i used a banana and some unsweetened coconut.

and so begins the fun game of heating the pan and creating the tester pancake. we've got bubbles!

successful flipping!

mmm. yes, they taste like "healthy" cakes, but one sees nothing wrong with that.

yet it is at this point, looking at the finished batch, that one runs into a problem. and by "one," i mean me. you see, these are thick and fluffy and lovely...but they do not really appear conducive to, um, rolling.

but one must do the best one can. a little slater of all-natural, organic, creamy peanut butter...

a makeshift roll with some added banana (ignore the fact that it looks like a burrito about to fall apart)...

and some more banana on top, alongside some powdered sugar and a little drizzle of pure maple syrup.

i was going to christen these monkey cakes, but they were too big to be monkies. plus, i could only eat half of them. instead, i believe they are gorilla cakes. i dedicate them to joe, a gorilla who lives in the st. louis zoo.

thanks for the inspiration, katie!

mushroom and spinach frittata with tempeh bacon!

our recipe tonight is a favorite of mine - it comes from the 'moosewood lowfat favorites' cookbook. i can't find the recipe online, but i think i can give basic instructions here.

to begin with, you play the fun game of 'watch the spinach shrink.' rinse off around 10 ounces, and put in a pot and cover with a teensy bit of water. in just a few short minutes you go from this:

to this...magical!

in the meantime, chop up a bit of onion and some garlic and saute for five minutes. you may notice that the picture below looks suspiciously as though it contains a nice sized shallot, and not onion. this is because i had no onion, but i had a shallot. sometimes, in life, one must compromise.

here we have some mushrooms and thyme. add them to the mix and let everything shrink a bit and brown up...

in the meantime, we move on to the eggs. i think this is 3 eggs and five egg whites. usually one less whole egg, but the veggies were a little less in amount than what i usually have, so there we go. add the spinach, the mushroom/onion mix, some fresh dill, and a bit of feta cheese (i used low-fat)...

then, back in the pan we go.

while everything is cooking (around 8 minutes), i thought i'd break this baby out:

i'm a big fan of both tempeh and bacon, but i don't really eat the former anymore, so i thought this might be fun. into the pan with a bit of oil they go...

or, in my case, you put it in two pans, because they biggest one you've got now contains frittata. but don't let the smaller bunch burn, like i did. boo.

in the meantime, check the bottom of the frittata using a rubber spatula. when it looks well browned, put a large platter on top of the frying pan and flip the frittata onto the platter, and then slide it back in the pan so the other side can cook. here is a lovely picture of the flip onto the platter. you will look awkward doing this, but you will feel proud and accomplished when it is done.

and here we are. lovely. its good with potatoes, toast, or fruit. even tempeh bacon, this ease of which was quite nice, although i think i prefer the taste of tempeh that i've marinated.

p.s. this works great as leftovers.

falafel and yogurt sauce!

last week i thought it might be fun to make some falafel, and i got the recipe from mark bittman, once again.

this recipe is different from any others i've come across in that you don't cook the chickpeas. as in, they are kind of raw until you cook the patties. you start out the day before, by soaking a couple cups of chickpeas in a bunch of water. like this:

24 hours later, they look like this:

sometime in the middle of these two pictures, i made some sort of tzatziki / raita / yogurt sauce hybrid. you grate some cucumber...

and add it to some greek yogurt along with lemon juice, dill, and minced garlic. mmm.

while the yogurt is chilling...you turn back to the chickpeas. drain them and put them in a food processor with things like onion and cayenne and cumin and spices...

and parsley. forgot the parsley...

food processors are genius inventions. i tasted things at this point and had mixed feelings about the texture.

but it did not stop me from making little falafel patties and putting them in the oven to bake.

mmm. cooked falafel.

look! fixin's!

this was good. i think the homemade falafel was a success, but next time i might try a cooked chickpea version. also, i was a bit garlic-happy in my yogurt sauce. must remember that stuff is extra strong when its raw.

roasted veggie broth!

i've been meaning to make my own veggie broth for a while. like, years. i spend way to much money for it in stores, and its theoretically more economical for me to just make the stuff. i've had dreaded celery sitting the veggie bin in the fridge for a week - since the only time i will touch it is to add flavor to a broth and then toss it - and i knew it was time. oh yes, it was time.

also, i'm trying to be healthier and eat more veggies. so...i went with a slightly adapted version of the roasted veggie broth in 'how to cook everything vegetarian.'

to begin with, i roasted veggies. a bunch of them - drizzled with oil, for 45 minutes. here we have about half a bunch of celery, three onions, a couple parsnips, a turnip, a bulb of garlic, about seven carrots, and the world's largest sweet potato. i think that's it.

it was all too much for this pan, so we had a sous pan:

during those 45 minutes, i turned them, which was not a pretty enterprise. i also drank this tasty beverage, which you should buy should you get the chance.

ok. here they are coming out of the oven. mmm. roasted.

careful readers will notice that there are suddenly mushrooms in the amongst the other veggies that weren't there before. this is because i initially forgot them, and they were added halfway in.

the veggies went into the soup pot. and then, what's this? why, yes, i am deglazing the roasting dishes.

here you see the veggies, the 'glaze,' a whole bunch of parsley, some fancy soy sauce (i know!) and some salt and pepper. i would have put some wine up in there, but i forgot. at this point, something very sad happened. i put the two roasting dishes in the sink and began to fill them with water to soak for a bit. and then, about 30 seconds into soaking, the smaller dish randomly and spontaneously cracked and broke in three large pieces. i have no clue why. we will now have a moment of silence for my broken glassware that held many a batch of brownies. sigh.

but life must go on. and so, i added about 20 cups of water to the mix, and let the whole thing boil before i turned down the heat and partially covered the pan as it simmered.

for two hours...

at this point, i decided it was done - a slightly concentrated broth. and i had to get creative with the whole straining thing. i put this lovely pasta strainer on top of another cooking pot and started to pour straight broth.

everything was lovely until the cooking pot began to fill up.

so i moved on to cooking pot #2.

i mashed the veggies left in the big soup pot to release some of the broth, and them dumped them through the strainer. this time the weight in the strainer may have been a bit much and slipped into the pot multiple times, while i said very bad words.

and then i dumped the leftover veggies in the trash, and all of the broth back in one of the pots. again.

there it sat for a few hours, to cool down. then i ladled it out into freezer bags - ended up with around 15 cups. this was actually more work than i thought. but then again, i also went all fancy and roasted everything, which i wouldn't be doing if this was just veggie scraps. which, by the way, i have officially resolved to begin saving.

i started tonight - there is, as we speak, a piece of carrot in a gallon bag in my freezer.

along with these babies - what i will end up making with them is yet to be seen...