eggplant and cauliflower curry!

switching things up to some food with both a recipe and pleasing results: eggplant and cauliflower curry that some random blogger posted to the post punk kitchen website.

i pretty much followed the recipe, except i supplemented the individual spices for a mix of curry and garam masala that came from an international market somewhere in st. louis.

here we have the spices, onions, cubed eggplant, and the requisite eight(!) cloves of garlic:

and here we can see most of the other ingredients: cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, tomato, and cilantro...before they basically get cooked down.

here is the finished product, over some brown basmati rice. it was good! however, for the first time, i made something so spicy that i almost couldn't eat it. a swig of dairy milk was indeed called upon. i'm afraid i might be forced to eat the leftovers alongside some plain greek yogurt. so be it.

random meh vegetable soup!

and, because i'm on a roll, this will be the third post in a row to be filed under humiliating confessions. what's on the agenda is a soup i made on november 30 (according to the date on my photos), and...it was just ok. meh.

see? and you thought everything i ever make is fabulous. well, sometimes it isn't. the only thing that's kind of a bummer is that this one came from a recipe, and i can't really direct anyone to the problem, as i can't remember where the recipe came from.

let's see if we can figure out anything discerning from the pics, which are officially two months old.

i know: these are onions!

carrots!

potatoes!

broth and bay leaves and...stuff!

some rather nice-looking kale!

i have absolutely no idea why i made soup with pretty much the same ingredients as other vegetable/kale soups that didn't taste very good. all i remember is that i tried a different recipe from the one that turned out amazing and delicious, and that in itself is a decision which defies reason and logic, and which i am left to ponder for another day.

frozen lunch and sweet potato fries!

continuing in my series of humiliating confessions, here's one y'all will be happy about: i ate a frozen lunch the other day. yup. for shame:

yup. it was two dolla and vegan, so i thought i'd try it. also, i like beans and sweet potato and kale and polenta and plantains. look at the lovely picture on the front. let's see if it matches up:

ok - it looks like poo. thankfully, for the most part, it tasted pretty good. but, it was high on plantains and low on the sweet potatoes and kale, and i would have preferred the opposite ratio.

so then i took the large sweet potato sitting on top of the fridge, and decided it wanted to be baked sweet potato fries. i peeled and chopped into little fry shapes, sprayed some foil on a baking sheet, and sprinkled with garlic salt.

after 30 min (turning every 10), i took them out and ate them. they could have been in for longer, but i was hangry. the end.

peanut butter toffee cookies / worst post EVAR!

this, my two blogger readers, is my worst post ever, ever-ever.

this is because all i have are two very bad pictures and no recipe. why even include it - you ask? well, its important to learn humility.

so.

when i was in philly last week i went on a sudden dinner date at a good friend's house. they did dinner, and i was to bring dessert. i had just enough time to do something short that didn't require running to the store, so i settled on cookies. specifically, the bag of toffee (i think it was hershey's heath bar toffee bits with chocolate?) in the cabinet.

usually, when i make toffee cookies, its just plain, straight up...you know...toffee cookies. but the recipe on the back of this bag advertised peanut butter toffee cookies, and that is what i made. i cannot give you the recipe because the bag is now in trash that's a week and a half old and at a dump somewhere, and, oddly enough, i cannot find it online.

but...here is what they looked like coming out of the oven...

and on a plate ready to go into the car, still warm...

yup - we can all say it - worst pictures ever. but, the bright side is that these actually tasted good. i think i like plain toffee best, but everyone needs some peanut butter now and then.

black bean and sweet potato chili!

i made sweet potato and black bean chili last night, because it was time to cook and i realized that i thought we had all the ingredients.

also, i decided to just kind of wing it, for once, and not really follow any specific recipe. and, you know what? it worked! also, its kind of impossible to mess up chili.

i chopped up an onion and some garlic and let them brown for a bit. in the meantime, i chopped up the biggest sweet potato EVAR, along with some carrot coins, and popped them in the microwave for a few minutes to get a little head start in the softening process, since i was hungry.

i added cumin, chili powder, and some chipotle to the onions/garlic, and, after a minute and a spash of water, dumped in the sweet potatoes and carrots with a small amount of tomatoes in juice.

later on came salsa, more tomatoes, black beans, and, at the last minute, some frozen organic corn...

here you see some chili pictured with a bit of cheez and a lovely organic blue corn chip. easy-peasy, as the cool kids like to say.

vegan banana muffins!

while i'm on a banana-posting roll, i think its time i share with you my awesome vegan banana muffins. these were a necessity. because i bought a bunch of bananas, went to philly for a week for a conference, and came back. and the bananas were still there.

i give you 'exhibit a' (or should it be 'exhibit b'?):

yup. lovely. good for nothing, except baking. so, i found a recipe for healthy muffins that used up four of them. thank you, recipezaar.com! these were quite simple, and mostly bananas. here they are all mashed up with spices and sweetener and stuff:

and here they are just before baking. you'll notice the super-cute addition of a sliced banana piece on top of every muffin. this, my friends, was all me. i am so creative. that, and i didn't want to waste the last banana.

look how pretty they are coming out of the oven:

you know, when piled together, the banana slices kinda make the muffins look like one-eyed alien creatures, do they not?

banana oatmeal breakfast cookies!

around the time of the lentil soup, i decided healthy cookies were in order, and went with 'vegan cookies invade your cookie jar's' banana oatmeal breakfast cookies. also, i had all the ingredients, including brown rice syrup and flax meal. because i am cool.

they also have oats and cranberries and, surprisingly, bananas.

remarkably, in making these cookies, i ran out of oatmeal, bananas, oil, cranberries, pecans, and agave. good job, nicole. here they are, pre-oven...

and post. yes, they look like blobs, but they're actually quite nice. bonus: you can taste the dough raw, which is not a bad thing.

lentil soup!

it might appear as if its been over two weeks since my last post. this is the longest time i've gone without posting in the few months that i've had my little blog, and that fact is both pathetic and sad. but, that is what happens when you travel and visit family and go to conferences and things like that. i believe i have six posts catch up on before i'm in the clear, so i'll see what i can do to make that happen as i settle into a daily routine, and, also, get. my. dissertation. finished.

so.

a week ago, i made a plain yet delicious lentil soup. i got the recipe from mark bittman's 'how to cook everything vegetarian,' which i received as a holiday gift and which makes me happy.

lentil soup is very easy to make. it involves cooking lentils for a long time with some broth, carrots and celery (again, i hate celery, but it is ok if it is cooked in soup and then either blended or removed, and is not the primary flavor) and spices.

while this is happening, carmelize a bunch of onions in a pan:

and then, you combine the two and mix using your brand new present, mr. immersion blender! and, while we're at it, i'd like to advertise the first thing i learned about immersion blenders: when in shallow waters, they splash. sometimes, you must pour your liquids into a smaller saucepan so that the immersion blender has a better time doing its thing and you don't get wet. true, you are dirtying another pan, but, hopefully, you won't make this mistake a second time. and, by the way, when i say 'you,' i mean me.

add a little salt and pepper, and you are done.

i ate the soup alongside a toasted everything bagel and cream cheese and smoked salmon spread that had travelled nine hours in the car from near the new jersey/new york border. i don't eat this very often, but, boy is it good. if you're ever in westfield, new jersey, i highly recommend 'bagel chateau.' they rock. over and out.

homemade magnolia cupcakes and the muffin man!

magnolia bakery in new york has the best cupcakes i've ever tasted...and i get to eat them once or twice a year. as it so happens, i was in ny for less than 24 hours a few days ago, and was sad because i couldn't remember the exact location of magnolia, and my Not For Tourists little booklet (which contains everything) didn't have the listing.

turns out, according to their website, there are now three locations - soon to be a fourth. and i missed all of them. sad.

but not all that sad, because my aunt and uncle happen to own the magnolia bakery cookbook. and, a few weeks ago, my cousin, jenny, made some and sent some down to me via some other cousins. and they were awesome - just like the bakery.

and so...(you can see where this is going) since i missed the actual magnolia, and happened to be spending the night at said aunt/uncle/cousin household...i made them. and, while i don't have the recipe to re-post here, i can tell you that healthy cupcakes these are not: lots o butter and lots o sugar. in short, these were my last big holiday treat.

you see before you one of the trays of cupcakes right before they went into the oven. the liners were picked out by jenny, btw.

and here they are, puffed up, after the oven.

but, everyone knows the real star of magnolia cupcakes is actually the icing. its butter, a bit of milk, and a million cups of powdered sugar. here we are halfway in AKA 6 cups. i lied about the million.

look - its turning pink!

as for frosting the things, i was told magnolia does not use a piping bag, and so i did not, either. sugar coma / bad flash heaven.

and, finally, i salute my uncle emy, who wants to be known here as 'the muffin man.' he's been on a muffin kick lately (everything from blueberry to weird muffins like pizza), and is a muffin-baking fool. as i made my coma cupcakes, he made some healthy oatmeal apple raisin muffins. and he wants everyone to know they were indeed healthy, and contained no butter. here they are, in all their glory.

thank you and please have a nice day.

red velvet cake!

my dad is into cakes - he likes making them and eating them and giving them as presents when invited to other people's homes. he was on a lemon cake kick, but, when i was home, he wanted to make a never-before-attempted red velvet cake. because my step-mom had one and liked it, and he likes to make her happy, which is nice.

i was his sous chef. as sous chef, i can't tell you what was in the cake, i just followed directions. but, i did get to help operate the glorious kitchen aid. oooh.

and i assisted in the dying of the batter, which is what makes it red. sorry to reveal the big mystery, folks. p.s. that is my dad's hand, not mine.

oooh - red batter!

red batter in a springform pan pre-oven!

and here they are - ready for frosting!

and then we frosted it...three days later.

this is because of what might be referred to as 'the frosting debacle.' see, what my dad wanted was to make frosting. buttercream frosting. however, when we consulted the holy cooking bible aka the joy of cooking, we found that we couldn't even understand the instructions for real french buttercream frosting, let alone make the stuff. i recall that it involved heating twice to different temps, double-boilers going in a different part of the oven top, and beating in butter one tablespoon at a time...and there were 24 tablespoons.

instead, it got late, we went to bed, and circumstances were such that we didn't do anything with the cake for three days. instead, i broke down and, by request, bought a duncan hines container of buttercream frosting. only took two seconds!

i must also point out that, when my dad frosted the cake, he did not wait to hear any of my tips, such as frosting the crumb layer first. and so....it turned out to be one big crumb layer. we decided it looked pretty, and all agreed that three days stuck to the bottom piece of a springform pan definitely induced more crumbs than normal.

it was still good, in case anyone was wondering.

tacconelli's pizza!

happy 2010 everyone!

in order to ring in the new year, i give you my first meal out: tacconelli's pizza.

its in philadelphia, my home town. its not in what we might refer to as the best suburb of the city, but this hole in the wall restaurant can't be moved, due to the brick oven built into the place. you can read all about it here (click to get to their website).

its also possibly the best pizza i've ever had - at the very least, its definitely in the top three. let's put it this way: when going to tacconelli's, one must call the restaurant starting ten am in the morning, and reserve the amount of pizza's you want for later in the evening. if you call as late as eleven, they may be out for the day. they only have the one fabulous oven, you see, and they can only do so much.

one of the plaques on their wall is from zagat - its one of the best restaurants in the country and is rated 'extraordinary' - pretty cool for a hole in the wall with horrid decor and practically no menu.

"what's this about the lack of menu? surely you jest," you ask. well, i'm not. here's a picture of their menu from the restaurant, which we did not need, as we knew exactly what we wanted:

see, i wasn't kidding. four items - although you can certainly vary the toppings. and, if you look closely, you'll notice that the only side available is hot peppers. no salad, no breadsticks, nothing. although it is byob. and, what did we order? four people and two pies - and we brought both beer and wine, which i did not partake in due to fear of migraines. but that is another story.

we stuck to the basics. first up was the awesome white pie, which we ordered with the classic combination of spinach and tomato:

its hard to overestimate this crust and the power of garlic. amazing. my dad's favorite.

in the other corner, we have the regular pie - lots of sauce and little cheese:

this one is my stepmom's favorite. mine too...

we all agree that two pies isn't enough. we're debating on what goes on top of the third.

tricky. tricky.