Squirrel’s Vegan Kitchen

I’m very excited because this Saturday Jennifer McCann, who does this little blog, you may have heard of it ;), Vegan Lunch Box, is coming to the store to drop off our books (5 days early!) and to do a book signing. I was lucky enough to preview the cookbook to review it for Herbivore and it is everything we ever could have hoped for and more, so I’m really excited to meet her and get some signed copies for the holidays. And I do believe that Shmoo will be there too! I’ll definitely report back this weekend with pictures.

We needed to hurry and finish up the Real Food Daily tofu ricotta cheese I made last week and we already did pasta, so I decided to make some calzones. I love pizza and adore marinara sauce in excess, so having a calzone that I can dip to my heart’s content is just heavenly to me.

I used a great oatmeal pizza crust recipe from aTxVegan’s blog. It was really delicious and nice change of pace from a traditional pizza crust. I added a heaping teaspoon of Italian spices to it. Inside we had black olives (olives are growing on me lately, thanks to Lebonese food), cremini mushrooms and sundried tomatoes along with a healthy smear of the ricotta cheese. I always lightly pan cook my mushrooms before adding them to pizza so they don’t leech water all over the place. Nothing’s worse than soggy pizza dripping with mushroom water.

After that I wanted something sweet and I was eyeing my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but I’m going to be doing some special recipes from that this weekend and plus I didn’t want something too sugary. So I pulled out Vegan with a Vengeance (I think the spine is going to crack soon) and paged through it until I got to these guys:

These are Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins. But I really wanted some banana and had been eyeing a lone banana on our counter this evening, so I replaced the soy yogurt with a mashed banana and decreased to oil and soy milk about a tablespoon each to make up for the extra moisture. I also only used 1/2 cup sugar and 1 cup wwfp with 1/2 all-purp. I normally always make muffins jumbo size, but for some reason these were just asking to be made regular sized. So yummy.

Last Friday when I went to Food Fight Chad gave me a little treat. Locally we are blessed to have an incredible vegan bread company called Dave’s Killer Bread. It is the most wonderful bread you could imagine. There are several different varieties, including wheat-free, and I love them all. Well, I guess Dave tried making some mini baguette style loaves and brought them in to Chad as a treat and he was kind enough to share the wealth with me. I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, so I picked up some chik’n nuggets while I was there.

I finally tracked down the vegan Caesar dressing I’d gotten hooked to in Phoenix! I thought it would be easy to find here, but it was not. So I used this delicious loaf of Good Seed bread to make 2 spectacular chik’n Caesar salads with it. Yes, it’s faux meat, but this is a serious comfort food for me. Back in the day I would eat chik’n Caesar day in and day out and this bread! Oh, it was incredible! We had some Mexi-Snacks with them, which are kind of like vegan Doritos. Dave’s brother owns the company Nature Bake, which also makes bread (not all varieties are vegan), as well as the kick-ass vegan cookies I reviewed for the latest Herbivore.

Saturday for work I went to a Give Green gift event with about 60 other vendors. It was meant as a way to get out there and buy things that are local and ethical for your holiday shopping. Portland may be a vegan mecca, but it’s also full of meat-eating enviromentalists who aren’t always receptive to what we’re doing, so I was a little worried about how the festival would go. I was relieved, however, when I saw that Blossoming Lotus was going to be there, as well as a vegan bakery and chocolate maker. Yay! So I had plenty to eat all day.

Raw cashew hummus with raw seed crackers. Very, very good.

And this, well, it looks gross, but it was great! Cauliflower enchilada with green sauce on top. I’m not all sure what was going on in it, but it was super good and a new way to have cauliflower, for sure. Jim hates cauliflower, but loves Mexican food, so maybe I can sneak some in that way.

Yesterday Jim spent the day, while I was at work, lovingly cleaning the kitchen so it was spotless when I got home. Today, I lovingly destroyed it while doing another batch of bulk cooking. Last week I made a stew and a chili, so this week I opted for pilaf and soup.

This pilaf is a hodgepodge of an herbed basmati rice mix from Trader Joes, some quinoa, frozen peas, sauteed onion and red lentils. I had some extra firm tofu to use up, so I cut it into strips and marinated it in some toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, crushed garlic, sage and rosemary. I baked it for about 40 minutes, turning it every 10. Jim can’t eat things quite as plainly as I can, so I imagine he’ll be drenching these containers in teriyaki sauce, but it will be tasty all the same.

And I made some corn chowder at Jim’s request and I got to use a fun new item I bought at Trader Joes last night: green garbanzos! Those green blobs that look like peas are actually garbanzo beans! I couldn’t resist trying them, even though they weren’t organic. They are slightly softer and more moist than a regular garbanzo, but basically taste the same. They’re definitely more colorful than the usual beige, though. I wonder how gross green chickpea gravy would look…

Tonight we went on a weekday date, which is something we never do. We went to our absolute favorite restaurant, Ya Hala, for dinner. This isn’t the best picture, but it gives you an idea.

Clockwise we have: falafel with tahini sharing a plate with some lightly fried cauliflower, baba ganouj, an bowl of olives, fresh, puffy pita bread, veggie kibbeh (my favorite!!!), tabouli, and hummus. Including a 25% tip this spread costs us a mere $20. The kibbeh is AMAZING! It looks kind of unappealing, in person it looks kind of like raw hamburger, but it’s a tomato and bulgur pate that rawks my sawks like none other. Ya Hala is really close to our house and because it’s so cheap we eat there a lot.

After dinner we walked down the block to a renovated movie theater from the 40’s and saw “The US vs. John Lennon”. Even if you don’t like or don’t care about John Lennon, the cultural and political events surrounding this movie, that time period and those issues so eerily echo what is happening today, I high recommend seeing it. If you like John Lennon, well, that’s just a bonus. It’s less a movie about John Lennon than it is about him being a high profile supporter of dissent and peace during an adminstration that was not too happy about free speech. Sound familiar?

Yay for productivity! Today I got our front entry way painted, ran some errands, sewed and started up a shop at Etsy to sell my tofu pouches and some other stuff that I’m working on. If you’re not familiar with Etsy, it’s a really great outlet if you make stuff and it’s a wonderful place to find one-of-a-kind gifts and support independant crafters.

Last night for dinner we had black bean burritos.

Simple tortillas with some black beans, lettuce, salsa, Tofutti sour cream, guac and on Jim’s some shredded cashew cheese that I made last week. Simple and yummy.

For a Halloween dessert I made Dreena’s carmel sauce from Vive and served it with a sliced Jonagold.

It was very good, but I used rice milk and it left a bit of an aftertaste, so next time I will use soy.

Today I wanted something slightly sweet, but not too sweet and nothing that required leaving the house for ingredients. I tend to get stuck on a cookbook and continue making things from it, so once again I turned to Vive. When I saw the title for the Squirrely Scones, how could I say no to that?

Very good. Spread a little more than they rose, but that was my fault, because I only had half of the amount of baking powder and I added some more baking soda to compensate, but I didn’t have any cream of tartar to mix in, which leads me to…

Whatcha Eatin’ #4: Cream of Tartar
Growing up I always thought that cream of tartar was related to tartar sauce, which repulsed me, so I would omit it from recipes. Cream of tartar is actually acidic residue that is a biproduct of wine. CoT is acid from grapes that is neutralized with potassium. CoT is the activator in many kinds of baking powder, which is why when you’re in a pinch you can replace baking powder by mixing equal parts baking soda and cream of tartar.

I was able to catch Mr. Squirrel moments before crawling down, snatching a peanut and making a getaway… and then coming back in 2 minutes to steal another one.

Product review!

My brother-in-law sent us this popcorn from Seattle, but it’s actually from Hawaii, but was purchased at an Asian grocery. Confused yet? It’s called Hawaiian Hurricane Popcorn: Mochi Crunch and Nori. I was really pleased to see that some label reading was done to ensure that it was vegan (although it was sent to us wrapped with a bow made out of feathers on top, but hey, he’s trying). First you pop the popcorn and dump it into a provided bag and then add the mochi crunch and nori bits. Then you open the “buttery sauce” which isn’t very healthy (partially hydrogentated oils), but I figure for as seldom as we consume hydrogenated oils, we’ll live. Jim was a little Noried out after a little bit, but I really enjoyed it. It was lightly sweet and lightly salty and a little greasy and oceany tasting. I guess oceany isn’t usually a positive way to describe something, but it’s seaweed, so what do you expect? I think we’ll enjoy the rest of it on movie nights, with some cold cans of Blue Sky.