Foods from my new home!

If you’re still reading this, I guess you’ve gotten used to the fact that I seem to be unable to make blog posts regularly. I’ve sort of accepted that fact myself, as well. However, I just noticed the last post I made wasn’t even from this year, and it’s already June 2011! So I guess it’s about time for a little update/catch-up post. Since I last posted here, my boyfriend and I went and found ourselves our own apartment, which means two things for this blog:

1. I now live in a large city with a number of vegetarian restaurants, a vegetarian butcher’s shop, and a bunch of other interesting specialty stores. I used to live in a tiny village, so this is pretty big for me.

2. We now have our own kitchen!

Both of these changes should provide me with plenty of food blogging material! Sadly, however, I haven’t been taking many interesting food shots so far. During the winter I tend to go into slumps where I hardly use my camera at all, mostly because nothing I make ever comes out looking pretty without good natural lighting. Now that summer’s almost here, though, I’m trying to take my camera with me more often. This also made me realise that I probably need a new one, because some of the buttons are broken and it really is kind of old… but I’m cheap, and it’s still working, so it will have to do!

When we’d just moved and didn’t have that many ingredients around in our kitchen, I was really happy to find simple recipes like this Cheater Grilled Cheese from a PPK thread. It’s super easy and flexible, and delicious served with a generous helping of ketchup.

From that same pantry meals thread, I also made these blueberry muffins. Simple and tasty! The recipe isn’t that different from other blueberry muffins, so I guess muffins are just pantry-friendly by nature!

This was one of the first actual meals we made: The Unfried Fried Rice from Appetite for Reduction, a tasty peanut sauce from Vegan with a Vengeance, and a few pieces of grilled tofu made with a marinade from 500 Vegan Recipes (I think it was the recipe for Tofu Satay). I made a few slight changes to each recipe, and they came together wonderfully! We had similar meals a few times after this and they were all equally yummy.

Irish Stew with Potatoes and Seitan from Appetite for Reduction: good solid comfort food. This was the second time I made this recipe and I think I liked it better the first time, but that was mostly due to the type of broth I used. My seitan making skills aren’t perfect yet, either, but I’m getting better! As you can see, I subbed frozen peas for the green beans, which made this dish pretty pantry-friendly as well.

Toast with roasted red pepper hummus and cucumber! Kind of speaks for itself, but I wanted to post the picture ’cause it’s such a tasty combo.

Chickpea Wingz! I might have posted about these before, but they are really great! They’re a wonderful combination of the Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon and the Tempeh Wingz from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk, united in one recipe by Celine from Have Cake Will Travel. Both those recipes were already favourites of mine, so the idea of combining them is genius! I think they’ve also finally convinced my boyfriend that chickpea cutlets are actually delicious, versatile, and not scary, so I couldn’t be happier.

While I adore big fluffy pitas stuffed with falafel and veggies and tahina, sometimes a tiny pita just can’t hold all the stuff I want to cram into it! That’s why falafel salads are awesome. And I can just have my bread on the side.

Now, this sandwich was excellent. We got it from De Vegetarische Slager, Den Haag’s vegetarian butcher’s shop that makes delicious (and, apparently, realistic) vegetarian and vegan meat analogues. My lunch (pictured above) consisted of saté and coconut peanut sauce on one of their homemade bread rolls, while my boyfriend went for a meatball sandwich. I think it’s really awesome that these people are able to mimic meat dishes so well! I’ve shared their faux meats with my family a few times and everyone agrees that while the taste is delicious, it’s the texture that makes their products so unique and meat-like. My boyfriend and I would probably buy their stuff a lot if we had more money, but for now I guess it’s just for special occasions. I can’t wait to have lunch there again!

Here’s a yummy pumpkin-topped puff pastry thing from a local restaurant called Baklust. I’ve posted about the place before, and this cute little cafe is still one of my favourites!

And for dessert, a slice of orange coconut cake from that same cafe. It was good, but apparently they now also offer vegan chocolate cake, so I clearly need to go back to taste that one too!

Whew! I think I’ve covered most of what I wanted to share, so hopefully my next posts won’t be as random and picture-heavy!

Stew with Dumplings

Oh, hi there, poor, lonely food blog. I didn’t mean to abandon you during the last days of MoFo! :(

I haven’t been cooking much lately, partly due to homework and other things, but also because that toothache I mentioned earlier keeps coming back and apart from being annoying and painful it also makes me lose interest in food. Ugh. I have another appointment at the dentist at the end of this month, though, so hopefully my teeth will finally be back to normal after that!

For now, the cold cold weather has made me appreciate soups and stews even more than usual. I really wanted some comfort food yesterday and turned to a delicious recipe I’d only made once before, the Vegetable Stew with Herbed Dumplings from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk! (part 2 of the zine). It turned out perfect! I couldn’t really get a picture of it yesterday, so here’s one from last year:

I added peas that time because the introduction to the recipe mentions them and I had them around, but I agree with the author that this stew is perfectly delicious without them. I can imagine how this recipe would be good with other veggies added, too, but I didn’t have many ingredients on hand so this was perfect for me with just the potatoes, carrots, and onions. Best of all, I still have leftovers so I’ll go reheat those now for another yummy lunch!

VeganMoFo 2010!!!

As many of you probably know, today is the first day of VeganMoFo! To celebrate, I made these wonderful Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk.

They don’t taste as pumpkin-y as I’d expected, but they’re very delicious anyway. In fact, I’m pretty sure I could live off these… I think I’ll try to freeze a couple for later before we eat them all!

Anyway, about this month: I did MoFo last year as well and managed to post almost every day, but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do that this year as well. I’ll be away from home for a couple of days throughout the month, possibly without internet, but I’ll try to post as much as I can on the other days! I did make a little list of goals that will hopefully give me ideas to post about:

• Use my cookbooks more often. I have a collection of excellent vegan cookbooks full of recipes I’m sure I’d love, but I don’t cook from them as often as I’d like to. I just need to do the planning and make sure I have the ingredients I need. Maybe I can do a thing where I only cook things from a single cookbook on a specific day? I did that last year with the Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook and that was fun! Oh, and if I can’t find anything to make from my cookbook, there are also loads of recipes from foodblogs I’ve bookmarked but never tried out…
• Make more interesting to-go lunches! As I mentioned in my last post, I have to pack a meal several times a week, and when I’m in a hurry those meals tend to get boring and not very healthy. I have been looking at various bento blogs lately, though, and they’ve made me realise that my lunch box could be so much more interesting! I think this could be great if I just take a little more time to prepare those meals.
• Make brunch. Sure, we eat pancakes or waffles or tofu scramble for breakfast every now and then, but it’s been a while since I made an elaborate brunch with multiple dishes. During MoFo last year I cooked for my family every Sunday morning, and that gave me the opportunity to try out a bunch of awesome recipes from Vegan Brunch, which is one of my favourite cookbooks. I’d like to do something like that again!
• Make more shopping trips just for the food and post about them. I know there are vegetarian shops not that far away from me that I’d love to visit someday, but I never go out of my way to actually shop there. Or maybe I could visit a Chinese supermarket, for instance, and post about what I find there. We’ll see, but I’d like to do something like this!

That’s I have right now, but maybe I’ll add more ideas when I think of them. In any case, I hope I’ll be able to do at least 20 posts! I should be fine, but even if I fail miserably, I am definitely looking forward to reading what everyone else comes up with. Whooooo, MoFo!

Oh, and happy World Vegan Day!

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