Dinner - July 27, 2008

Dinner Menu:

Jalapeño Poppers - stuffed with soy chorizo and vegan queso - Lee!
Lee!'s Fried Tofu - "Tofu Notepads with Crap on top" - Lee!
Black bean & veggie enchiladas - Amelia
Cashew Cheeze Sauce - Amelia
Busy Day Cupcakes with Strawberry Agave - Amelia

Total spent on dinner:
$36.04 at HEB


Lee! and I like to make Sunday dinners extra special because there is usually a house meeting afterwards and we like to make delicious food to put everyone in a good mood. A delicious meal is especially important if we have something important on the meeting agenda, like hosting our Veganniversairy in the garden next week.

Black Bean enchiladas with Cashew Cheeze Sauce


This is always a crowd pleaser! I soaked 8 cups of black beans for a few hours and then cooked them as usual. For the filling, I chopped up three small onions from our CSA, 3 bell peppers from CSA, green onions, and about a million green squash and ripe tomato. I sauteed the onions with garlic and cumin until the onions were translucent. I then added the cubed squash and cooked them for about seven minutes just to mingle the flavors together.
In a large bowl, I put about 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast and three chopped green onions. When the beans were ready and cooled, I squashed up the black beans into this mixture. I then added the the onion/squash filling. We have one boarder who is allergic to tomatoes, so I set aside her portion in a separate bowl. I mixed in the tomatoes and mixed the filling to a uniform consistency.
Using a 1/2 cup scoop, I portioned out the filling onto flour tortillas and rolled them to set in a pan. I then topped with cashew cheeze sauce and baked them at 250 F for 30 minutes. Since everything is pretty much cooked to begin with, the oven is really just a warming step.

Cheeze Sauce (adapted from a recipe from Blossoming Lotus in Portland):
makes 4-5 cups of sauce

2 cups cashews **
1 cup filtered water
2 red bell pepper
1 block tofu
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
two green onions
2 tablespoons shoyu
1 tablespoon salt

** raw cashews are best but the ones I bought at HEB were the roasted/salted kind, so I ended up just washing off the salt in a colinder.

Lee!'s Fried Tofu: "Tofu Notepads with Crap on Top"


Tofu planks breaded and fried, topped with tomato and basil

Jalepeno Poppers stuffed with Soy Chorizo and Vegan Queso:


We've had a staggering abundance of Jalepenos from both of our CSAs and were at a loss on what to do with them all until Lee! thought up these little beauties. At this point in the dinner, Lee! was wearing a colorful apron and cursing from all of the burns on his hands.

Busy Day Cupcakes with Agave Strawberry Sauce:


This is a great recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, veganized of course. We are out of white bulk flour so we used whole wheat instead, so it turned out less desserty and more bready. Also, our giant oven isn't a convection oven so baked goods never turn out beautiful.

The Verdict from house members:
Delicious!
High on oils and fried foods.
It was interesting.
Needed a salad or something fresh.

I agree with these sentiments. I'd rather have a salad than more fried, but sometimes Lee! is hard to convince :)

What we listened to while cooking:
Suicide Machines - Destruction by Definition album
Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man
Akon - I don't remember :)
Fergie - Fergilicious (I was busy workin' on my fitness)
Justin Timberlake - Cry me a River
The Temptations - Greatest Hits
R. Kelly - Ignition (remix)
Outkast - Bombs over Bagdad
Deelite - Groove is in the Heart

Until next time!!