Thursday, August 28, 2008

August 25th, Soup & Salad & Pie!

Dinner


We got a huge amount of butternut squash in our farm share so I boiled them up and put them in the food processor. There were also shallots, garlic, onion, shoyu, Braggs (of course), carrots and flax seeds.
I really wanted a giant salad so I spent the larger portion of the budget on greens, spinach, beets, corn, strawberries and pine nuts. I made a vinegarette out of mustard, balsamic vinegar, garlic, nutritional yeast, oil and salt and pepper.


Ashley brought home 20+ lbs of peaches
Dinner
So I made a cobbler! I added some rosewater and it was a nice touch.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

August 20th, Solo Dinner

Right now in the Co-op house, half of the people have moved out and dinners have been ill attended. I signed up to cook dinner by myself so I decided to make something simple that would be a salad, a main course and a side dish -- Spring Rolls!
Spring Roll Filling
Spring Roll Fillings
Spinach, Green onions, carrot matches, red peppers, mushrooms tossed with garlic and earth balance, purple cabbage, baked tofu (marinated in Shoyu and sage), and bean sprouts.
Spring rolls are the easiest, coolest dinner ever! All you need a is a shallow pan full of hot water and rice paper wraper. You soak the rice paper wrapper in the water for 15 seconds or so, and then place it in front of you and fill and roll like a burrito. I like to put them in the fridge so that they stick together better.

Spring Roll Spread
The Finished Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce
The dipping sauce is super easy too, it's just peanut butter, a little water and hot chili sauce (Cock sauce!) warmed in a pan.

Spring Rolls
Close up of Spring Rolls

Vegan Peanut Butter Pie
Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Pie
This was an easy dessert to make!
2 ready to eat Graham Cracker Crusts
2 bags of dark chocolate chips
1 block of silken soft tofu
2 cups peanut butter
Cocoa powder (to taste)
I wizzed these together in the Cuisenart and added more Peanut Butter and Cocoa Powder to taste.
I stuck these in a fridge until they hardened and grated a chocolate bar that had raspberries in it.

Vegan Peanut Butter Pie
Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Pie with Graham Cracker Crust and grated Raspberry Chocolate on top.
Mmmmmm.... weight gain!

Music Listened to:
Shalom Auslander's "Foreskin's Lament"
and Sex Pistols

Happy Veganniversairy!!

Veganniversairy Cupcakes


In honor of our veganniversairy, Lee! and I decided to host a potluck in our honor. He is celebrating five years, and I'm celebrating one!

Lee, 5 years and Amelia, 1 year

Lee! has a giant mouth. These cupcakes are Wasabi and Vanilla and made by my coworker, Andrea, at Dhaba Joy. Lee! has a love affair with wasabi peas so I thought that a wasabi cake would be a good treat from him.


One Year Veganniversairy
To celebrate, I got a vegan tattoo by Miss Annie Mess!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Dinner, August 3, 2008

Dinner Menu:
Dinner, August 3
Lemonade
Frito Pie with red, kidney and black beans
Squash Napoleon with tomato and baba ganoush
Funnel Cake with strawberries


Total spent on dinner:
$37.53 at HEB


Dinner, August 3
Here's a big shot of our kitchen so you can see how huge it is. We feed so many people that we are licensed as a commercial kitchen.


Dinner, August 3


Here are the eggplants, sliced and ready to roast. We get soooo many from our CSA that baba ganoush is a great solution for using them all up. These roasted for about 25 minutes before I scraped the meat out of the skin and put it in the cuisenart. I put about a cup of raw tahini, 5 cloves of garlic, juice of one lime (we are out of lemon), olive oil and salt.


Dinner, August 3


Tomatoes, Yellow Squash, Green Zucchini going into a 400 F oven to roast for about an hour.


Frito Pie:
Dinner, August 3
Two pans full!
8 cups kidney beans, 8 cups black beans, 8 cups pinto beans
3 packages soy ground
6 cups vegan queso spread on top
1 bag of Fritos spread on top
fresh jalepenos
fresh onions




Lee! funnels the batter and Grace watches.


Dinner, August 3


Grace makes the funnel cakes sweet with powdered sugar.

Dinner, August 3

The entire spread.
Our inspiration for this dinner was carnival food since it is just about the time for the state fair. We thought long and hard about making Fried Vegan Twinkies but time did not permit. We cut up about two cartons of strawberries and cooked them in Turbinado. We drizzled the strawberry sauce over the funnel cake.

What we listened to while cooking:
Sex Pistols - Bodies
Gnarles Barkley - Run (my favorite jam right now)
France Gall - laisser tomber les filles
Gumnaam (that song from Ghost World)
Ghost Mice
Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl - Uh huh, this my shit!

The Verdict from house members:
Francois said that the Napoleons were the tastiest thing he's eaten in the house
Clayton commented on how fancy it was