Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh

Yesterday, I surveyed the contents of my refrigerator to see what I needed to use pronto.  I have portobella mushrooms that I still need to make into some delicious dish.  I also found a package of tempeh that needed to be used by May 20, 2011.  Since I have never used tempeh as a main dish, I decided to go for it.

I looked through a dozen cookbooks before deciding on Hot Sauce-Glazed Tempeh in Veganomicon.  (Find the recipe here.  Find the nutritional information here.) I served it with roasted Brussels sprouts and a baked potato with Earth Balance.  I wasn't sure what the tempeh would taste like, but the recipe was very simple.

First I cut the tempeh in half and then I cut each half diagonally to make triangles.  I boiled the tempeh for 10 minutes.  Next, I threw the ingredients together, added the tempeh, and let it marinate while I fixed everything else.  My tempeh isn't as dark as some of the other pictures I've seen, but I think that is because I used chardonnay for the wine instead of a red wine.  Also, I was feeling lazy, so I used reconstituted lemon juice in place of the fresh and 2 teaspoons of garlic powder in place of the crushed garlic cloves.

I grilled the tempeh on an indoor grill that cooks both sides at once for about 7 or 8 minutes.  It was very tasty.  I thoroughly enjoyed tempeh cooked this way.  I had enough left over so I had a quick dinner of tempeh and Brussels sprouts tonight.

I liked this dish so much that when I stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some So Delicious Creamer and Pleasant Morning Buzz coffee, I picked up another package of tempeh.  DEFINITELY, I will be making this again.  I'll also be trying the Smoky Grilled Tempeh in Veganomicon soon.  The recipe is here, but be forewarned that the name of the entry could be considered offensive if you are offended by profanity.  Just look down past the title.  :::smile:::

Lazy Sunday Mornings

It's 11:34AM and I have just now popped the Applesauce-Oat Bran Muffins from Veganomicon in the oven.  My youngest son, Derek woke up at 10:30AM, which is a full hour ago.  This is surprising as my oldest son, David is still asleep.  He is usually the earlier riser.  David and I are normally waiting on Derek to wake up for Sunday morning breakfast or we have to wake Derek up when the food is done.  Not today.  Derek is awake and he and I planned out breakfast.

I offered waffles, but Derek said no.  Then, I offered to make the Lower-Fat Banana Bread Muffins from Veganomicon that I had made a couple of weeks ago.  Derek said definitely and could I add some chocolate chips? I said sure and began to gather ingredients. That's when I discovered that the bananas I thought I could use were a day past usable.  So, I went onto Plan B.  Plan B was to search through my cookbooks for another muffin.  All I had to do was look at the next page in Veganomicon and I found my recipe.  Amazingly enough, I had everything I needed, including whole wheat pastry flour.

I followed the recipe pretty closely.  I used almond milk instead of soy or rice milk.  I only had a half cup of unsweetened applesauce, so I used half unsweetened and half sweetened.  I only added about 1/4 cup of raisins (if that).  We are not big raisin eaters here.  I will admit that my tastes have changed since adopting a vegan diet and raisins taste better and sweeter to me now than they did when I ate the Standard American Diet.

I made 6 jumbo muffins sprinkled with large decorator sugar (for my sons).  Although the sugar and half cup of sweetened applesauce will add more calories to my muffins, these are a calorie bargain.  If I had made 12 muffins, they would be a scant 100 calories (see the nutritional information here).  I figure the 6 jumbo muffins are about 225 calories, which is actually much lower than the 352 calories the Low-Fat Banana Bread muffins sported.

The muffins smelled heavenly when they were baking.  And, they taste as good as they smell.  One test I use is how do my sons like them?  David is the picky eater, so I pay attention to him.  He went back for a second muffin.  The muffins passed the family-friendly test.  These are definitely a keeper and will be in my rotation of Sunday morning treats.

Thunderstorm Blues

It's been raining in Chicago for the past decade.  OK, not the past decade, only the past 5 years or so it seems.  I heard recently that this April may be the cloudiest on record.  It's been crazy.  It's rained every day for the past week, at least, and will rain again tomorrow.  Everything is starting to turn green and flowers are starting to bloom, but all of these clouds and rain are damn depressing.

On top of the rain, it's my week to work late.  That means that I am working until at least 6 PM or 7 PM depending on how much of the staff wants to work overtime.  Monday and Tuesday, I worked until 6 PM.  Tonight, I worked until 7 PM.  One of the best things about my late week is that I can accomplish a bit more during the morning before I go to work.

Yesterday morning, I made Butternut Tofu Stuffed Shells.  I knew I would be working until 6 PM and wouldn't get home until at least 7 PM.  The Bulls game started at about 7:10 PM.  There was no way that I wanted to be cooking out in the kitchen when the game was on.  I love the playoffs and am particularly happy about the Bulls being in them.

I had roasted a butternut squash over the weekend specifically to make the shells.  I mixed it with the tofu, lemon juice, and spices.  While I was combining the tofu mixture, I cooked the shells and rinsed them in cool water.  Then, I just left them in the colander until it was time to stuff them.

I read all of the reviews on VegWeb.com for the shells recipe.  I decided to dice two links of Tofurky Italian Sausage made with Sun Dried Tomatoes and brown it in a tablespoon of olive oil.

I added it to the tofu mixture before stuffing the shells.  I ended up making 24 shells.  The recipe calls for 16 to 20 shells.  I only had 24 in the box, so I cooked all of them.  I think my butternut squash may have been a little bigger and the sausage gave the filling a little more volume.  I used about a jar and a half of sauce (32 oz. total).  After all of the shells were stuffed, I put the casserole in the fridge until it was time to bake it.  I kept 18 shells at home and took 6 shells to work in a small pyrex dish and baked them at work for lunch.

My son put the casserole in the oven at about 6:15 PM, which gave me time to stop and buy some bread to go with it.  I got home at about 6:55 PM and the meal was ready to eat at about 7:10 PM.  It was perfect timing.  I didn't tell my sons that it was vegan shells and they couldn't tell the difference.  At some point, I will tell them, but it's nice that my sons liked it and ate it the same as they would have if it had been filled with fat laden dairy.

This morning, I wanted something for breakfast, but I didn't want anything I had in the house.  I had enough high fiber bread with peanut butter, enough oatmeal, enough high fiber cereal, and enough steel cut oats.  I had 4 ripe bananas that I needed to use, so I pulled out a few vegan cookbooks and went searching for a recipe.  I ended up choosing Lower Fat Banana Bread from Veganomicon. 

One of the ingredients in the recipe is molasses.  I have only recently started baking with molasses.  As you can see from the picture above, the wet ingredients were a dark chocolate brown from the molasses.  I did make one alteration, which was that I added cinnamon flavored applesauce instead of regular applesauce.  It added a tad more cinnamon flavor and a tad more sweetness since it was sweetened applesauce.  I had regular unsweetened applesauce, but the recipe only needed half of an individual portion of applesauce and I didn't feel like eating unsweetened.  :::grin:::

The batter wasn't quite as dark once the dry ingredients were incorporated into the wet.  I used a whisk to mix the wet ingredients and then used a wooden spoon to stir the flour mixture into the molasses/banana mixture.  I was careful not to over mix the batter.  Instead of making bread or 12 regular sized muffins, I made 6 jumbo muffins.  My sons prefer the bigger "deli" sized muffins, so I usually make them.

I sprinkled some large decorator sugar on the muffins before baking.  I think it's made by Wilton.  It took me a long time to find it.  It was another request by my older son so my homemade muffins would be more like deli muffins, which always come with the large sugar sprinkles.  The muffins turned out fabulous!  The sugar sprinkles added just the right amount of sweet.  This recipe rocks.  I love the flavor the molasses added to the muffin.  This was the perfect morning breakfast for me today.  It was a perfect match to my cuppa joe.  This is definitely a repeat recipe!

Chickpea Cutlets, Brown & Wild Rice, and Butternut Squash

I skipped lunch today (bad, I know).  But, I was busy at work, so I only had high fiber oatmeal, and a couple of cups of Joe. That was it.  I wanted something good for dinner.  Dinner is a mix of several things.  I bought some Roasted Butternut Squash with Grapes and Sage at Whole Foods and need to eat that.  But, it's a side portion, not a meal.  I threw a mixture of different brown rices in my rice cooker.  But, that still didn't make a meal.  So, I pulled out my vegan cookbooks and began searching.  

Lucky me, I found a recipe in the second cookbook I grabbed ... Veganomicon.  One of the pictures in the middle of the book caught my eye.  It was Chickpea Cutlets.  Of course, the picture has them being served with gravy, but I don't know which one since it doesn't say by the recipe.  BUT, the steps to make the cutlets and the baking time was good for a Monday night, so I began.

OK, I cooked a 1 pound bag of dried chickpeas yesterday and made a wonderful Chipolte Chickpea Dip from the Fat Free Vegan website that looked like hummus.  It is excellent.  I will be taking the rest of that into work tomorrow to share with my BFF for lunch.  That still left me with 3 cups (at least) of cooked chickpeas.  Think I left any out to use this week?  NO, Silly!  Why would I do that?  Nope, I froze them all.  So, I grabbed a can of chickpeas from the pantry shelf and rinsed them well.  I measured out a cup for the Chickpea Cutlets and then I tossed the rest to my dogs, one chickpea at a time for a snack.  (All three of my dogs love them!)

The cutlets were really easy to pull together and form into patties.  The ingredients are all basic ingredients that I had in my kitchen.  (I LOVE those kind of recipes!)  I decided to bake mine over frying them.  Although, I may like them better fried, and I'll try that at another time.  However, when I flipped the cutlets over on the baking sheet, the bottom side had browned nicely and looked crispy.  YUM!

The rice was done well before the cutlets, but the beauty is, I cooked it in my rice cooker, so it will stay piping hot on the "Keep Warm" setting forever without scorching the rice.  Plus, I could feed the girls (my 3 dogs) a healthy portion of brown rice for dinner.  :)

How was the dinner?  It was good.  I ended up putting coarse ground Dijon mustard on the cutlet, and that was a perfect match.  I either need to make the Mustard Gravy in Veganomicon or the Mushroom Gravy.  Also, I do think I'd like these pan fried much better.  Instead of making the 4" by 6", I'd rather they be a little thicker and smaller so they are less dry.  All in all, not bad for my first try.  I'm glad I made them.  Chickpeas are my favorite bean, so I will definitely make these again with some slight alterations.

Veganomicon Penne Vodka

I recently ordered the cookbook, Veganmonicon from Amazon.  Someone in a vegan Yahoo! group recommended it.  I was reading old blog reviews by Cooking the Vegan Books and came across a review for this recipe.  The review is actually from February 16, 2009, but it was right on time for me today.

The sauce has a little zing to it due to the crushed red pepper.  The almonds made it amazingly creamy.  The fresh basil added a wonderful taste and aroma to the dish.  It took me about 40 minutes from start (turning the stove on to boil the water for the pasta) to finish (topping the bowl with chopped fresh basil).  It was truly a delight.

The test for this dish is that I made it for dinner for my sons, too.  When my youngest son came out to get his bowl of pasta, he asked me if it was a vegan dish.  I have to admit, I said no.  To divert his attention from the vegan question, I told him it had vodka in it.  :::smile:::  Technically, I wasn't lying to him.  He put a tablespoon of shredded Romano cheese on his, so his dish was only vegetarian, not vegan.  Same for my oldest son, but he didn't ask me if it was vegan.

My youngest son scarfed his pasta down and then went back for another full bowl of pasta.  He really enjoyed it.  My oldest son ate all of his, too, but I suspect the almonds, although mostly mixed it, still were too grainy for his tastes.  (Although neither son knew there were almonds in the sauce.)  Next time I make it, I'll use the immersion blender longer to make it creamier and less grainy.  After they eat it the next time, I'll tell them it's a vegan dish.  I figure if they really like it two times, then they won't blink when they learn it's vegan.