Omelet You In On a Secret*

Diner Home Fries, Loaded Omelet, Tempeh Bacon Revamped

I finally made the omelets from Vegan Brunch.  Well I actually only made one omelet, on the fourth or fifth try. It took me a while to get the batter to the right consistency and then there was the matter of my flipping "skills". I will do a much better job next time, but my omelet failures did not go to waste. I did the next best thing and turned them into scrambled "eggs".  I finished cooking them up and then scrambled in the veggies that would have been omelet filling. It didn't look nearly as lovely, but it tasted great.

Afterward I started thinking of all the things I could make with scrambled egg type bits. Fried rice was the first thing to come to mind. The second was something we ate a lot as kids- hot dog and eggs. My dad would slice the hot dogs into rounds and then scramble them into the eggs. We would eat them in burritos with lots of ketchup. We would also eat hot dogs and potato burritos, which I am tempted to make with any home fries that survive my brunch week menu, but I'm not sure there will be any.

My "brunch week" wasn't too well planned out but I knew for sure I wanted to have tofu scramble, omelets,
"Fronch Toast" and maybe even waffles for dinner. I've done two out of the three so far. I have to double check whether or not I have molasses because the gingerbread waffles from Vegan Brunch sound really good to me right now. If I don't have any I will probably make the VWAV pumpkin waffles, those are delicious!


*There are no eggs on this plate!

Put the "U" in Reuben!

A week ago we went to see Forks Over Knives. Even though I like to think I know more than the average person about why we should stop eating animals, there is always more for me to learn. Also it reminds me that I need to go further than just "stop eating animals" and eat a hell of a lot more plants. I'd been in a health slump for a while now so this was exactly the reminder I needed to get back into gear and recommit myself to eating healthier, or at least making more of my own slightly unhealthy food (fried tofu!). Plus more cooking = more blogging, yay!

My new love for about a year now has been veganized Reuben sandwiches. I first had one at Real Food Daily so that was my benchmark for what they should taste like, having no remembrance of the meaty version. I tried another at Floré, and would have liked that one better, if I could find the tempeh. It was in strips and it seemed like they got lost in all of the avocado and cashew cheese, both of which were delicious, but I needed a bit more bite in my sammich. I will give them another chance next time I am out that way.

Since I can't always travel an hour just for a sammich, I tried making the RFD version at home. I unwisely did not figure out a way to reduce the recipes so I had way too much dressing and cheese spread with no one to feed it to. However, I did enjoy eating reubens for a few days without having to sit in traffic to get to them.

Luckily my favorite cookbook queen, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, saved the day like always. I don't know how I hadn't noticed her recipe for Tempeh Reubens in Vegan With a Vengeance, which is the first vegan cookbook I ever bought. I had almost all the ingredients, so I only needed a few items from the grocery store and I was ready to go. These sammiches turned out amazing and the first round was gobbled up too quickly to get a photo. I tried to get one of today's round two, but I was in such a hurry, I still didn't do it justice. Needless to say I will definitely be making these again. I'm glad I found a scaled down recipe that isn't as fussy with the ingredients without sacrificing any flavor. I didn't even miss the cheese since I had all that avocado goodness. They're fairly easy to make so get on it!

Reuben-Where You Been?

After making copies of some recipes a year ago, I finally made something from the Real Food Daily Cookbook today. I am so proud that my Total Reubens turned out totally awesome. It was a three step process to make the Reuben-style tempeh, Thousand Island Dressing and Tofu Ricotta Cheese but it was all worth it in the end. I marinated the tempeh since yesterday afternoon and made the other two spreads today. I wanted to make all three yesterday so they'd have time to chill/set, but it still worked out well. I couldn't find yellow miso for the ricotta so I had to use white. I think it came out just fine, but will try it again with yellow another time. I could just eat the ricotta on chips or crackers, which is what I probably will do since I didn't reduce the recipe and have quite a bit left over. Luckily we had an avocado on hand so we added that to the sandwich too since that's how we order it when we're at RFD. I have plenty of everything to make more sandwiches tomorrow so I'll have to get a picture of that one if I can stand to leave it alone for that long. My sister grilled ours in the pan, but I am a notoriously bad flipper so I might just toast the bread when I make them myself. We might go to brunch on Sunday so now I'm not sure what to order, but I will definitely get my own copy of the cookbook when funds permit.

Vegan Mofo IV Day 3: Tempeh Helper

For tonight's dinner I made Isa's Tempeh Helper. I had most of the ingredients on hand since I've been wanting to make it ever since I read it on the ppk blog. Why the procrastination? I have no idea, but I won't let it happen again. It turned out great, even though I made a teeny tiny mistake.

Instead of using Frontier Chicken Broth powder for the helper and for the sauce, I only used two tablespoons of c.b.p. in the sauce. I thought they were the same until I was starting the sauce and didn't have enough left in one packet and opened another.Why were they two different colors? Oh because they are two different powders! Since it was my first time making it, I'm not sure how "off" it is for mixing flavors. I definitely want to try it again using all chicken or all veg broth powder.

I'm starting to get a head cold so I was too stuffed up to really taste it, but my sister said it was good and my niece ate hers up without too much resistance. She usually tries to pick apart new dishes to find an excuse to not eat them, but tonight she was open to it. She loved the cheezy sauce. We also had some sauteed spinach which I mixed in with my second helping and gobbled it all up. You're supposed to feed a cold, right?

That's it for now. I've got to get some tea, take Penny for a final walk and start resting so I can be a better mofo mañana.

dinner thyme

I don't know how not to say this in a way that doesn't sound nerdy, but tempeh and I are friends now. The first few times I tried to cook with it were complete misses. I would keep buying more so I could try again but I would get discouraged and conveniently forget about the bricks of protein in the refrigerator (until it was time to toss them out). I always feel horrible when I waste food and money so I stopped buying it since I knew I was not going to cook it.

Then Vegan Brunch along and saved the day. The "Basic Scrambled Tempeh" looked so wonderful in the photo I had to give it another chance. The ingredients were so simple, it would be tough even for me to mess it up. The first time I made it I admit I wasn't sold on the "earthiness" of the tempeh. It was good but I thought it needed something. I made it again and it turned out, all it "needed" was a bit more salt. I also added another bell pepper. Now I eat scrambled tempeh at least once a week, usually on Thursdays for some reason. I made a few ingredient swaps: sweet onion instead of red, spinach instead of chard and yellow instead of red. I think I'll be out of thyme in a few more weeks. I've never blown through it so fast.

Now that tempeh and I are friends there is only one problem, my sister wants to be friends with her too.

tempeh'd by the fruit of another

Yesterday I got three cookbooks in the mail from Melisser, The Urban Housewife. If you have been living under a rock and do not read her blog, you better start. Then you can say you read it before she moved to Vienna and think you have more cool points than the rest of your block. Are there cool points for knowing/reading more blogs than other people? I'll bet there are. Anyway since she is moving and cannot take everything with her, I was lucky enough to score a few cookbooks. I got Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, The 30 Minute Vegan and Yellow Rose Recipes. It was tough to not take all of the books she was selling, but I still have so many underused ones that I need to crack into. I just needed a little kick start to get the inspiration going again, and I definitely got one.

I am really excited to try new recipes from these books and from others in my collection as well. Even though I've gotten better at cooking some things still freak me out, like making my own seitan. Other things remind me of how picky/foolish I used to be, like using mint. So I think those are two things I should give myself a time limit on trying because even if mess up the seitan (I only ever tried once) or don't like the mint at first, at least I gave it (another) chance. All enthusiasm aside, I haven't really made anything "new" in a while. Last week was full of repeats: cookies 'n' cream cupcakes, scrambled tempeh, egg mc vegans with diner home fries, to name a few. Our menu for this week was already planned so I didn't want to make anything too large or complicated. I went easy on myself and made the "Pan Fried Tempt-eh!" from e,d,&bv.

It was a cinch to make and was delicious just with a few squeezes of lemon as the author suggests. I added steamed veggies and brown rice to make it into a meal. Also so I could save some for my sister to try. Otherwise I could have quite easily ate all of it straight from the pan. It was crispy and crunchy on the outside but still chewy on the inside. My mom even liked it, which says a lot since she usually does not want to try my food without asking a ton of questions first. Then she usually makes a face of some sort. But who can say no to fried food? I know I can't.