Vegan MoFo: 30 days of Posting!

I made it!  This last day of Vegan MoFo and I posted each day!  I honestly did not think I would be able to, generally I do not have much to say.

I had good intentions of making something special for the MoFo finale however, I have extreamly sick today and yesterday.  Ashley was nice enough to come over and make me some soup.

It was very good, I think.  It was hard to tell since I am not sure I can taste much.  I hope I can get back to good health soon so that I can post more frequently (although not daily) and share more of my life with my reads.

MoFo was a lot of fun and I found so many great new blogs to follow!  It has been a fun month and I am sad to see it leave.

Threesome?

Fitting that after 3 brutal days of long hours at work, now, I am sick.  I blame the recycled air and neon lights.  I have another short shift to work tonight and it looks like I will be sick just in time for my days off.  Classic.

Since I did not have a bedtime snack, I found time to make myself a chocolate cake.  After my 17 hour shift (while feeling sick) last night, I decided to reward myself before bed with a quick threesome.  Me and two pieces of cake!

I hope that I will feel better and be able to make myself some soup or something tomorrow for the end of Vegan MoFo.  Until then, I will spend another night at work.

44 hours in 3 days

By tonight, I will have worked 44 hours in 3 work days.  It has been long and tiring.  It has not allowed me much time to cook, let alone blog.

On thanksgiving day, Ashley brought me a plate of food while I was at work.  It was very nice of her and she even used some soy chicken to try out my spicy cranberry sauce recipe.  They turned out really well and added nicely to the plate of stuffing and her mac and cheese recipe.  It was really nice to have some food on a long day, especially one that everyone else was eating all sorts of homemade goodies.

With a few hours off between sleeping and my next shift, I was able to whip up a huge bucket of pasta to have for work.  This has been a lifesaver.

Relaxing rainy night of basketball

It was a rainy but warm night the other day.  I had some soy mint chocolate milk in the refrigerator.   I heated some up on the stove and sat out on the porch and relaxed with my awesome mug.

Later that same night, I had my usual.  A large plate of zesty french fries while watching the game.  My team lost so in my sadness, I made some popcorn to brighten my mood and hope the next game would go better.

Yellow Gravy

This is the gravy I used for the mini  veggie pot pies.  It would also make a nice topping for some mashed potatoes or even steamed vegetables.

Yellow Gravy

4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
1 cup of vegetable broth
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast
2 tablespoon of onion (chopped)

1 tablespoon of oil
1 tablespoon of oregano
1  1/2 teaspoon of corn starch
1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon of marjoram
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1/4 teaspoon of sugar


In a sauce pan, bring the oil to low heat.  Add the turmeric, garlic, and onion and allow to cook for 5 minutes.  The garlic should not begin to brown.  Add the vegetable broth, corn starch and mix well.  It will not thicken immediately.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.  Reduce heat to as low as possible and allow to cook for 15 minutes.  This should not quite simmer but be close.  Stir frequently.

After about 15 minutes, it will be thickening slightly.  Personally, I like my gravy with the small (garlic and onion) chucks in it but adding the mixture to the blender for a quick puree will make it nice and smooth.

Miniature Vegetable Pot Pies

For those that regularly read my blog, it is obvious that I am far from a baker.  As I have said before, I have some great cheesecakes, and can tear apart a muffin pan but beyond that, I struggle.

This time of the year I think fondly of my Nana.  She had the best pie recipes in the world.  I know most people think their Nana did but, they are wrong.  Sorry.  No one has ever been able to master her crust since.  I have tried and can never get it to roll out.  Thinking outside the box and knowing my limitations, I have opted to take baby steps.

Craving some nice holiday pot pie, I used my Nana's recipe with my filling and went for it.  The results were surprisingly awesome.  I think my Nana would have been proud.

Today I was very motivated to make something awesome.  Occasionally, I bring food with me to work and share them with my co-workers.  Many of my co-workers have read or regularly read my blog and we talk about food often.  The other day, I received a sweet and humorous text message from some co-workers.  I hope this does the trick!

Miniature Vegetable Pot Pies

Crust

2 cups of flour
1 cup of vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons of cold water (roughly)

In a large bowl, add the flour and shortening.  Gently, with a fork, fold the shortening into the flour.  The mixture will begin to get dry, add 1 tablespoon of water and continue to fold.  If the dough is sticking to the fork and is wet, add more flour.  If it is still dry, add more water, very little at a time.  I end up adding about 2 tablespoons but many people many need less.


Filling

4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
2 potatoes (cubed)
2 cups of water
1/2 cup of eggplant (peeled and chopped)
1/3 cup of peas
1/4 cup of corn
2 tablespoons of vegetable broth
1  1/2 tablespoons of oil
1 tablespoon of onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon of oregano
1 tablespoon of green pepper (chopped)
1 tablespoon of textured vegetable protein (TVP)
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon of jalapeno pepper (chopped)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon of pepper

In a pot, bring the water to a boil and add the potatoes.  Boil for 20-ish minutes until the potatoes are soft.  Strain and set aside.

In a saute pan on low-med, add the oil, garlic, onion, and jalapeno pepper, and heat for 2-3 minutes.  The garlic will begin to give off a pleasant aroma.  Add the green pepper, corn, peas, eggplant, oregano, crushed red pepper, salt, and pepper, and allow to fry for 4-5 minutes.  Add the TVP and vegetable broth and mix well.  Reduce the heat to low.  Allow the TVP to hydrate for about 5 minutes.  Add the potatoes and mash lightly.  This should not be mush but should not have large chucks of potato either.


Assembly

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Take about 2/3 cup of the dough and roll it out with a rolling pin.  With a biscuit cutter (or a jar, or any other circular utensil that you can either cut around or can itself cut) cut as many circles as you can out of the dough,  The max I could manage was 2.  I found the dough much easier to manage in smaller amounts, if you can roll it all out at once, feel free.  With a sharp ended spatula, pick up the circles and set them aside.

Once the dough has all been rolled out and cut (I was able to get 24 circles - 12 pies) take 1 1/2 tablespoons of the potato mixture and place in the center of half of the circles.  Gently pat the potato down so that is will fit.  There should be enough room on all sides to be able to connect the circle doughs.  There will be about half of the potato mixture remaining.  Eat it, it is good.

Once the potato is in half of your circles, take the circles that are empty and place them on top of the filled circles.  Gently, pinch all sides of the circles to seal the circle doughs together.  Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Serve with gravy.

Cranberry Sauce

Recently, I posted a recipe for some spicy cranberry sauce that could be used to tofu, tempeh, soy chicken, etc. and there was a strong response.  It seems like many people did not know what to do with their cranberry sauce.  Well, me? I eat it.  With a spoon or fork, in a bowl.  It is delicious.

Cranberry sauce is incredibly simple to make.  I though I would share my recipe in case people are not happy enough with theirs.  Your cranberry sauce should be good enough to sit down and eat with no other food around.  It does not need to be a topping.  Consider this an side dish or even a dessert.

Cranberry Sauce

12 oz of cranberries
3/4 cup of water
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of maple syrup
2 teaspoons of corn starch
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of vanilla


In a pot, add the water, sugar, corn starch, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon, and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, add the cranberries and cover.  Boil for about 10 minutes or until most all of the cranberries have popped open.  Occasionally, I will pull out the masher and give it one or two mashes.  There should be numerous cranberries that are still nearly whole and the sauce should be thick.  It will become thicker as it cools.

Cranberry sauce is a staple at my holiday dinners as a child.  It was always something I enjoyed.  Slightly bitter and very sweet, it was always a winner.

Pizza and Ryan Harvey

Ashley and I wanted to continue our lazy Sunday with some pizza before we went out that night.  Ashley has turned me on to what she calls Salsa Pizza.  We picked up some non-dairy cheese, some dough, fresh tomatoes, fresh cilantro, the final green pepper from my garden, fresh onion, and some soy peperoni.

the final pepper from my garden this year

The dough rolled out perfectly, we chopped some garlic and tossed it in some hot sauce, spread it over the sauce and added the cheese and veggies.  This pizza was an excellent dinner to compliment the assortment of pumpkin items from our breakfast.

That night we headed to WonderRoot to see Ryan Harvey play.  He is a political folk/punk singer from Baltimore.  It was a lot of fun and nice to see Ryan play.  If you have never heard Ryan Harvey, go check him out, you can download all of his songs for free on his website.  We stuck around for a few songs from The Wild but they were a little too "pop" punk for my taste.

Pumpkin Explosion! the muffins

As I said in my last post, in addition to the pumpkin pancakes from yesterday, I also made some pumpkin muffins.  These were very tasty.  Light and fluffy but still a good early in the day treat that will tide a person over.  The addition of the oats on the top was also ascetically pleasing!

Pumpkin Muffins

1  1/2 cups of flour
1 cup of pumpkin puree
1 cup of raisins
2/3 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
1/2 cup of oil
1/2 cup of apple sauce
1/2 cup of coconut milk
1 tablespoon of oats (uncooked)
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon of cardamom
1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine all dry ingredients, except oats, in a bowl and mix well.  Add the oil, apple sauce, coconut milk, pumpkin puree and mix well.

This should create a deep orange / brown wet mixture.  Spoon 3 heaping tablespoons full of the mixture into a total of 12 cup cake liners in a cup cake pan.  With the tablespoon of oats, evenly add the oats t othe tops of each muffin and bake for 35 minutes.

Let cool for 1 hour.

Quickly, I am coming to really enjoy pumpkin!  As a kid, my mum would occasionally toast the seeds and I really enjoyed them as a salty snack but now, I can get into the whole pumpkin.  Delicious!

Pumpkin Pancakes

A lazy (and rare) Sunday off and Ashley and I had planned to head out to Dough in the morning for some stealth breakfast.  Sadly, they opted to do a stealth dinner instead.  With effort to make due, we had our own stealth breakfast.  We made some pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin muffins!

Interestingly, as we were making them, I looked at Ashley and asked "have you ever had pumpkin pancakes or muffins?"  She said "nope".  My response? "Me either.  I don't really think I like pumpkin."  She chuckled and said "me either."

To our surprise, these pancakes were great.  The pumpkin did not over power the traditional pancake flavor and the texture was almost silky.  We were both surprised full after each gobbling up a plate full.  Despite being full, we neither of us could wait to try the muffins.

If I blog about the muffins now, what will I post tomorrow?  Patience.

Pumpkin Pancakes

1  1/2 cups of flour
1  1/4 cup of non-dairy milk
5 tablespoons of pumpkin puree
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1  1/2 tablespoons of vegan margarine
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of cardamom
1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Allow the margarine to soften to room temperature.

In a large bowl, combine and mix all dry ingredients.  Then add the pumpkin puree, margarine, non-dairy milk and mix well (a hand mixer works best).  This should be a wet and smooth mixture.  Heat a flat frying pan on med-low heat with a bit of additional oil or vegan margarine.

Once hot, pour pancake batter onto pan, the cakes should be about 6 inches from side to side and you should get about 6 pancakes.  Cook until most all of the bubbles that form pop, then flip.  Each side should cook about 8 minutes.