VEGAN MOFO!

Apparently, next month is the Vegan Month of Food. The idea is for food bloggers to try to post something every weekday. EXCITING! MOTIVATION! Participants are going to be put into the PPK RSS feed, so that is pretty rad.

Bring it on, October!

Also, just for fun, here is a picture of my friend Shmoo's cat, Isabelle.



She is such a beautiful little princess!!

Ok, bye.

more potatoes, tofu, roasted veggies, heirloom tomatoes!

I picked up these beauties at the farmers' market this weekend...



I decided that they would have enough flavour to hold their own in a very basic sauce, and I was right! They were so very lovely.

I used about the amount of tomatoes that you see in the photo above, or maybe a handful more.

I cleaned the tomatoes and cut them in half, heated some olive oil and garlic in a pan, and then tossed the tomatoes in.

I simmered them until they were a bit liquid-y, added 1 teaspoon of sugar (they were pretty tart), and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I then continued to let them simmer on low heat until they reached a more sauce-like consistency.

SO SIMPLE!



The rest of dinner was composed of some roasted mushrooms and zucchini; some leftover "burger" mix (see earlier post), simply pan fried instead of floured into burger form; and some stips of marinated tofu.



Roasting veggies!
Mushrooms were cleaned and rubbed with olive oil before tossing them into the oven preheated to 350F. They stayed in there for about 10 minutes before I added the oiled zucchini chunks to the mix (it takes less time to cook). They probably stayed in for another ten minutes. I don't usually time roasted vegetables, but rather test them periodically to see what's what.

The tofu was the "Marinated Asian Tofu" from the Veganomicon.

The whole thing was sprinkled with fresh cilantro.

All-in-all, pretty delicious dinner.

Curried tofu stuffed peppers; potato, pumpkin and black bean "burgers"; greens.

The other day i made a lot of potatoes... a lot! I had a huge pot full of boiled yellow potatoes, so I decided to mash them up with some other delicious things that I had kicking around the kitchen.

"Burgers"



- Large saucepan half full of potatoes. (ok, so that's a pretty ghetto description, but i don't really know how to quantify the potatoes)
- Half a can of pumpkin puree (make sure that it is NOT pumpkin pie mix!)
- One bunch of chard, chopped and blanched for three minutes.
- One can of black beans, rinsed.
- LOTS of garlic.
- Several tablespoons of olive oil.
- Salt and pepper.

This delicious mess was formed into patties, and then patted with flour. They were then fried in a hot pan with a bit of oil for about 3-5 minutes on either side.

I also sprinkled them with some Sheese, "cheddar style" fake cheese.

Stuffed Peppers
The peppers were stuffed with a crumbled curried tofu, and some really lovely green tomatoes that I picked up at the farmers' market. The peppers were rubbed with a bit of olive oil, before being stuffed, and tossed in the oven at 350F for roughly 12 minutes.



Tofu, roughly:
- 1 package of extra firm tofu, crumbled.
- 2 teaspoons of peanut oil (but any oil will do, really)
- 1/4 teaspoon each of cardamom and ground ginger.
- 1 teaspoon of curry powder.
- 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds.
- several splashes of tamari.
- 1/2 teaspoon of chilli paste.
- garlic!!

The greens were just a mix of random things picked up from the farmers' market, and were tossed in lemon juice and flax oil.

nori strips and hummus.

Ok, so this is one of my less fancy photos of food, but making a post without a photo seems silly.
I am not normally one for food with a lot of packaging, but a friend recently introduced me to these little snack packs of seasoned nori, and they are the greatest!
This weekend, I ate them like crazy. I also had made a bunch of hummus, so I ate them together, and it was even better. Woot!



Since nori is a sea vegetable, it's packed with all sorts of vitamins and minerals, as well as omega-3s (and 6s, but 3s can be harder to get).

My hummous isn't incredibly special, and recipes are abundant enough on the internets, so I won't bother posting one here. To your standard hummus mix, I added a HUGE bunch of basil, and probably about twice as much garlic as your average bear.