September 8th, 2008

Say "Yes!" to France!
In honor of the bike-in movie at Spider House tonight, The Triplets of Belleville, we decided to make a French meal.

Ashley versus the groceries.
The large bucket is for collecting coconut water and you can clearly see the giant stack of tofu beside her.

OKAY, FIRST WE NEED A SALAD

1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup shoyu
10 cloves garlic
1 cup oil
a little pepper
=
the best salad dressing on the face of yum!

This dressing was stupidly good. We ate it over greens and spiralized beets. It would also go well with a cold noodle salad.

VEGAN QUICHE - 5 kinds

We made the quiche crust from scratch and saved about $10 by doing so. I used the recipe from Veganomicon and let it chill for about 30 minutes.

While I prepped the quiche innards of tofu and tempeh, Ashley prepped little bowls of veggie fillings to go in the quiche. Pictured above is tomato and basil.

To prepare the tempeh: simmer 3 tablespoons earth balance with fresh diced garlic and scallion. Add 1/3 cup shoyu and 1 cup water. Simmer tempeh for 20 minutes.

This is the filling for the quiche:
1.5 blocks of tofu
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
4 tablespoons yellow mustard
4 tablespoons shoyu
Mix in:
green onions
cooked and spiced tempeh, one block

Quiche mixture all mixed up - woo hoo!

Little quiche before baking. Look at what a good job Ashley did on those crust ridges! I baked this little guy for about 1.5 hours at 350F (our oven sucks and everything takes 2x as long).

Basically I repeated the above steps (making the basic filling in the blender, then adding the veggies and mixing them all together) for the rest of the quiche.
Finished Quiche: tempeh, tomato/basil, squash, pepper x 2

RAW SOUP

In a blender, Ashley mixed up whole lot of greens (basil, broccoli, celery), garlic, dill and cashews with coconut water. Salt and pepper to taste. I think we made 4 blender fulls to feed our crowd.

SPICY COCOA TRUFFLES

Coconut Meat, 1 cup
Almonds, 2 cups
Cashews, 1 cup
Dates, aprox. 5
Agave, 1/2 cup
Vanilla Extract, 2 tablespoons
Cocoa Powder, 1 cup
Cayenne Pepper, 1 teaspoon
Nutmeg, 1 teaspoon
Cinnamon, 5 teaspoons
all blended into yum and altered to taste.

Don't forget the secret ingredient!

Using a ice cream scoop, I made individual truffles and put them in the freezer to harden.

CAN'T WE EAT NOW?

Salad with spiralized beets (raw)
Creamy garlic dressing (raw)
creme of celery soup (raw)
Quiche: tempeh, tomato/basil, squash, pepper
Spicy Cocoa Truffles (rawish)

What a spread!

The Verdict from house members:
- Many members ate the dessert before and after the meal (quelle surprise!)
- The soup was a big hit
- The quiches that we let cook longer turned out better
- People actually like beets!!!

What we listened to while cooking:
Dolly Parton - Little Sparrow (whole album)
Eels - Blinking Lights and other Revelations (whole album)
The Faint - Misc. songs

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!!