Brunch for dinner

I love having breakfast food for dinner. Yesterday I made a pretty awesome breakfast-dinner of Scrambled Tofu and Roasted potatoes. (top picture).
For the tofu, I fried half a purple onion, 6 chopped cloves of garlic, one chopped yellow bell pepper and one chopped red bell pepper in olive oil. I then crumbled (or smooshed) in two packages of silken tofu. You can use firm tofu for this recipe, but silken tofu makes it turn out more like eggs. For spices I used salt, pepper, dill, turmeric, curry powder, cumin and paprika. It turned out really delicious and colourful.
This recipe is a great replacement for eggs. The only difference is that while eggs have their own flavour, with this recipe you add the flavour in the form of spices. Spices are very important to vegan cooking. I recommend playing around with them a lot in order to get familiar with their flavours. My favourites are rosemary and dill.
Spices were also the major factor in the potatoes I made to go along with the tofu scramble. I set the oven for 450 and then washed and chopped 4 potatoes in to bite-sized pieces. I never peel my potatoes 'cause there's lots of good nutrition in the peel. Instead I scrub them with a coarse brush under water. This removes the top layer of skin but leaves most behind.
The next step to this dish was mixing the potatoes with some olive oil (vegetable oil is also good) and a ton of spices. I then proceeded to covered them with the remainder of my Crousset brand Tuscan Bouquet spice blend. They were finished after about 35 minutes.
These potatoes turned out unbelievably good. They were gone in like an hour.

Tonight I made myself a Hummus and Vegetable Sandwich. Fresh lettuce (i like a lot of lettuce on my sandwiches), tomato, avocado, hummus, margarine and black pepper on flax bread.

Stephy's Sicky Soup

Yesterday I made my own version of Jana's Winter Sicky Soup from 'How it all Vegan' by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. I think I changed it enough to claim it as my own, so here's the recipe to Stephy's Sicky Soup:
You will need: 1 small butternut squash (peeled and cubed), 6 medium carrots (washed and sliced), 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 small onion, 2 leaks (chopped), 3 tbsp fresh ginger (grated), 8 cloves garlic (chopped), 12 cups vegetable stock or water (I use half and half), 1 pinch of cayenne pepper, 1 1/2 tsp curry powder, 1 tsp salt, 3 tbsp fresh rosemary (chopped), juice of half a lemon, 1 bunch of dandelion leaves (chopped), 1 bunch of kale (chopped), 3 tbsp miso paste, 1/4 cup green onions (chopped)

• In a large soup pot, saute the squash and carrots in the olive oil on medium-high heat for 10 minutes
• Add the onions,leeks, ginger and garlic and cook for 5 more minutes
• Add the stack, cayenne, curry, salt, rosemary, lemon and greens. Simmer on medium-low for 40 minutes.
  
• Remove from heat and stir in miso and green onions.
• Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.
  

This soup is great when your sick. The lemon and ginger really open up your sinuses and are great for you immune system. The greens and vegetables are full of important vitamins that will help you get better. Make this soup for yourself or someone you love!
Any other leafy greens can be added or stand in for the ones I used. Collard greens or spinach would also be good.

I'm siiiiiick!

:( I has a sick. Sore throat and runny nose and all that jazz.
But it's an opportunity for a blog post!

Right now I'm drinking hot vegetable broth. The dehydrated kind, you just pour boiling water over it and you have an instant soothing drink.
I've also been drinking a ton of tea. Mostly lemon zinger and lemon chamomile. Lemon is good when your sick. Honey would probably be good right now, I'm using Agave nectar instead. It tastes and looks exactly the same, but perhaps without some of the nutrients in honey. Honey is one of those grey-areas in veganism. Most will agree that it isn't vegan, however.
I've also been drinking lots of orange juice. I also discovered the best sick drink ever: a Fuzzy Navel! That's when you mix peach schnapps in your orange juice. If you're staying home from work anyways, you might as well get a little hammered.
Aaron is going to go buy me ingredients later so I can make soup. More on that later.

Today, dinner was Gardein lightly marinated meat-free dijon breasts, (Tee hee. Breasts), Artichokes, and Jasmine Rice.

There are a few different ways to cook fresh artichoke. They all start with cutting off most of the stem (leave about half an inch) and the top 3/4 of an inch or so of the leaves. Then I cook it like this:

• Put an inch or two of water in a pot.
• Add 1 tsp margerine, 1 tsp salt or garlic salt, and 2 tsp lemon juice.
• Put the artichokes in the pot, cover, and bring to a boil. (This is called broiling because you half boil, half steam the vegetable.)
• Cook for 15 minutes, turning over once.
  

If you've never eaten a fresh artichoke, the way you do it is to pull off the leaves and scrape the white soft flesh off of their bottom with your teeth (where they were attached to the whole). Some people like to dip the bottom of the leaf in melted margarine or mayonnaise before biting it. When you are almost out of leaves, cut off the tiny purple ones in the center (with a knife pointed slightly down to get their bottoms). Now you have the heart of the artichoke sitting on top of the stem. You can eat the whole heart. You can eat the stem too, if you like, but some people find it bitter.
Artichokes are one of those under-represented vegetables that most people don't usually eat. But they're good for you, taste yummy, are fun to eat, and make a good vegetable dish for a meal with a few parts to it.

My jasmine rice turned out amazingly flavourful and delicious today. Here is how I cooked it:

• Chop one small onion and two cloves of garlic.
• Saute in a sauce pan with olive oil until the onions are tender.
• Add the rice and stir to coat it with the oil.
• Add two cups of water, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 a cup of frozen peas. Stir.
• Let cook until the rice has absorbed the water. Around 20 minutes.
• Let sit for 5-10 minutes then serve.
  

I hope you enjoy these recipes.

Kiwis and tea

My computer is working incredibly slow today. Also I've been trying to upload a picture to my new Twitter account all day and it just doesn't want to let me.

On to food, I've got a new recipe cooking in the oven. I shall report back after it has been sampled.
Yesterday I went grocery shopping and came home with a bag of organic kiwis (pictured above.) Try and tell me those don't look delicious. I looooove kiwis. Apparently they're also crazy good for you. Mad amounts of vitamin C and the like.

Aaron finally got turned on to tea while we were in Scotland. Yesterday I made us both cups of Celestial Seasonings Vanilla Hazelnut tea with vanilla soy milk and some sugar. It tastes like a cake. I've tried other vanilla hazelnut teas but this one is by far my favourite. Yoga Tea brand Tahitian Vanilla Hazelnut is also really good, it just tastes spicier.
In other tea related news, I bought a tea ball (is that what they're called?) so I can enjoy loose tea! Today I had some of the Mayan Chocolate tea I bought from 'All Things Tea' on Bloor street. (Also pictured above.)

Inventing

Today I have two recipes that I pretty much made up. MAKE THEM!

Today I made Lavender Pancakes. I adapted it from the pancakes recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance.
To make them you will need 1 and 1/4 cups of whole grain flour (substitute 1/2 cup for white flour, if you like), 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon, 2 tbsp canola oil, 1 1/2 cups of soy milk (or other milk substitute), 2 tbsp dried lavender (I bought mine in Kensington market), 1 tsp vanilla extract, 2 tbsp maple syrup.

• Put 1 and 1/2 cups of soy milk in to a sauce pan and heat to a simmer. I used vanilla Natura.
  
• Add the lavender to the soy milk and let it simmer covered on medium-low for 15-20 minutes. (You don't want it to boil. If it starts boiling, reduce the heat.)
  
• Strain out the lavender, saving the milk in a large bowl.
• To the soy milk, add the wet ingredients (including the maple syrup) and mix.
• In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir (ideally with a wooden spoon) until just mixed.
  
• Fry with vegan margarine.

Yesterday I made a pretty nifty lentil dish, which I shall also share with you:
You will need 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 cup of brown lentils (or any kind of lentils, probably), 1/2 cup of brown or wild rice (you can use a full cup of rice if you want there to be more food with more rice, just add more water so it all cooks), 1 purple onion, 1 red bell pepper, spices.

• Saute the chopped onion and bell pepper (plus some chopped garlic if you want, I add garlic to everything) in the olive oil for about 10 minutes.
  
• Add the lentils, rice, and 3 1/2 to 4 cups of water (if the water is all gone and the lentils don't seem tender enough, add some more water), plus about 1 tbsp of cumin, 1 tbsp rosemary, 1/2 tbsp of paprika, 1/2 tbsp curry powder, and 1 tsp salt. (Adjust the amount of each spice as you like, or replace some if you want.)
  
• Cook until ready (about an hour).
• Add a couple drops of hot sauce, or something else to make it spicy, if desired.
  

Banana Bread

The other day I made some pretty stellar banana bread from a recipe in 'The Joy of Vegan Baking'.
Now, I've made a few recipes from this book and so far every one of them needed at least one ingredient to be altered. This recipe needed about 1/4 less sugar. I also was going to add cinnamon, which I think would have turned out really well, but I forgot to put it in :-P.
Anyways, I learned for next time and this loaf was still pretty delicious. The recipe said to use a cup of chocolate chips and an optional cup of walnuts. I thought that would be too much stuff so I put in half a cup of each. It turned out perfectly. One cup would have been too much chocolate, especially the semi-bitter stuff I was using.
It was enjoyed by many.

Now Aaron and I are off to goth it up at PANIC.

Veggie chiken wraps

Yesterday I made veggie chicken wraps I used Dempster's ancient grain tortillas and stuffed them with lettuce, tomatoes cucumbers, purple onions and Yves faux chicken. They were tasty.

I'm having a bitch of a time trying to find another tattoo apprenticeship. Going around begging for a job sucks.