Squirrel’s Vegan Kitchen

Thanks to everyone for all your camping suggestions. I have to admit, we’re not going real camping. We will be sleeping in a tent at a campground at a music festival, with food vendors, water, toilets and the like. I have yet to truly go camping and while being out in the wilderness sounds great, I think I would like it better with a cabin to retire to. For now, I’ll just enjoy listening to people jam on guitars under the stars and fumbling with my Maglight in the middle of the night in a Honeybucket.

There is supposedly vegan-friendly food there, but I don’t want to hold my breath, nor buy food for two for every meal, so I’m going to make some serious muffins, maybe some granola bars too and bring nuts, fresh fruit, plenty of water and Clif Bars and hope for the best.

And now, the food!

Yum, yum! This was from a dinner we had a couple of weeks ago- it was so, so good that I forgot to take a picture until we’d moved on to seconds!

Manicotti filled with Real Food Daily ricotta cheese, with the addition of 1 cup of fresh basil, and some seasoned and grilled zucchini on the side, it was delicious! I also spread some garlicky Earth Balance on some French bread loaves (not Italian, I know) and browned them under the broiler for some serious garlic bread, but of course that was all eaten before I remembered the camera.

For dessert, the mother lode:

Vegan tiramisu! As you can see, this isn’t set up like a traditional tiramisu, with the ladyfingers and all. The thought of all that bored me, so I went with a tiramisu layer cake, which I’ve been seeing a lot more lately. I used a 6″ pan, which made a classy looking cake, the perfect size for a party of 4. The bottom layer had some coffee baked into it and the top layer was plain. Each layer had holes poked into it and espresso drizzled on them and it was filled with a creamy marscaphony filling involving Tofutti cream cheese and Kahlua. For the icing, I just firmed up the filling with a little more sugar and garnished it with some chocolate shavings. Yum! While I don’t drink coffee, I have a deep love for things with that rich flavor and aroma.

Not Italian (but it has zucchini in it!) but tasty nonetheless:

Herbed chickpeas and zucchini over a ricey pilafey thing from, where else, Trader Joe’s. The pilaf has Mediterranean couscous, red quinoa, orzo pasta, baby chickpeas and some other random grains. The chickpeas were cooked with sauteed onion and garlic and loads of herbs (oregano, sage, thyme, basil) and in the last few minutes of cooking I tossed in some diced zucchini.

Finally, a good reason to bust out the spelt flour I scored at Veg Fest:

At a recent trip to Food Fight I bought a new cookbook called Little Vegan Monsters. Naturally, my fingers did the walking to the back of the book and I found myself paging through the desserts. The majority of the book is wheat free and when I saw these brownies and remembered my flour, I knew I had found my calling for the evening. I was a little concerned with baking with pure spelt flour and not a blend, like I normally do, but these brownies quickly showed me that I was wrong to ever doubt the holy union of flour and chocolate. I added a half cup of raspberries to the mix and they were delicious. The spelt flour had a crumb and mouth-feel like the middle ground between white flour and whole wheat pastry flour, it wasn’t as delicate as white, but not as gritty as WWPF. I see big things in store for spelt and I.

I hope you all are doing well! More food and adventures to come!

Courtney! Please email me with your address and which apron you would like at squirrelsvegankitchen [@} g mail [dot} com.

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone! I have a lot of thinking and planning to do!

Okay, so I’ll admit, I’m a summer slacker! Who can blame me, there is fun to had that doesn’t involve being on the computer at home.

So, as I accumulate pictures for a giant post, I thought a giveaway would be fun!

One lucky winner will get a free apron! You can see the choices here. There is the “Damn Tasty Vegan” apron, which is brown with a 2-tone green screenprint, or there is the “Vegan Master Baker” apron, which is black with white and orange lettering and nifty silver whisk.

Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing. The drawing will be random, but just to make it fun leave a comment with your favorite foods to pack when you go camping. Jim and I are going to be taking a trip in a few weeks and I need to start planning!

ETA: I forgot to write when it ends! Entries will close on Friday morning and I’ll announce the winner in the afternoon.

Yesterday Jim and I did Portland’s annual Night Ride. The Night Ride starts at Portland’s Amtrak station at sundown and is a 15 mile (actually it was 16.3, but whatever) journey through Portland at night, with 1,000 other people. People are encouraged to come in costumes or pajamas and they have contests for the best dressed. Too self-conscious for costumes, Jim and I opted for our pajamas.

The best costume I saw was one of a guy dressed up as someone from Ghostbusters. He had a complete suit and a homemade ghostpack (I think I made out a chainsaw housing in there somewhere). There was one rest stop showing short films about bikes and another that had a disco party. It ended around midnight, back at the train depot. We had a lot of fun and for two kind of out of shape people slept really, really well.

This morning required a breakfast for champions, so I decided to treat us with my absolute favorite breakfast food: crepes. Recently I was reminiscing about high school French class and making crepes smeared with Nutella, so at Food Fight the other day I indulged in some
Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter made by Peanut Butter Co. Oh lordy, Nutella was never this good.

I smeared the crepes with the Chocolate Peanut Butter and then topped them with some soy yogurt and pureed dark sweet cherries (from frozen). The creaminess of the yogurt combined with the cherries and the chocolate was amazing. On the side we had roasted potatoes with onions, garlic, zucchini, and sweet corn and some apricot slices on the side. It was a heavenly breakfast. Jim isn’t a big fan of crepes, but he said these were the best he ever had and he wished we had more. Yay! Now I just need to get him to start requesting crepes and we’ll be in business.

There are a lot of vegan candies out there, intentionally or otherwise. Food Fight recently got in some AMAZING peanut butter cups, they also carry the Sjaak’s filled chocolate bars, which are incredible. There are Tree Huggin’ Treats, which are also tasty, albeit a bit too spendy for my tastes. But the missing treat, IMO, has been Peppermint Patties. I LOVED Peppermint Patties (and Junior Mints) back in the day and wanted some for Jim’s Christmas stocking this past year, so I was excited to find these patties by The Vegan Baking Co. I should have known better, from how dissapointing their peanut butter cups are and the fact that they make candy but call themselves a baking company, but alas, I ordered some and was let down. First off, there was not nearly enough chocolate and way too much peppermint filling, the balance was all thrown off. Secondly, the filling was gritty and far too sugary sweet. With much sadness, I gave up.

Then, this weekend, I decided to try my hand at it. I’ve been working on some vegan caramel lately (it’s not quite right yet, hopefully I’ll have it figured out soon and I’ll let you all know) and have been playing with corn syrup. You can find organic corn syrup at a lot of health food stores now, I’ve even seen it at Fred Meyer. Anyway, I decided to try my hand at making some Peppermint Pucks, and I’m happy to say I was very successful.

Oh boy, did I have a happy husband! He kept eating at the filling long before the patties were anywhere near completion. And to help spread the joy of chocolate, and the joy of making yummy things and not having to run your oven during the summer, I’m putting up the recipe on my recipes page. So check them out! It makes a lot, but they are extra good stored indefinitely in your freezer, then they are cold and refreshing.

As a side note, from mistakes I’ve made in the past, be sure you use peppermint extract and not just mint extract. Mint extract tends to be spearmint, which makes things taste less like a treat and more like toothpaste.

Well, I’m certainly having a busy summer, I’m not sure about all of you. Beautiful weeks and dreary weekends have finally relented and we’re having beautiful weekends too, so between taking some yoga classes, cycling, and keeping busy with some new projects, I’ve been away from the computer and from cooking as much. But, I have a backlog of pictures to share and some yummy food has, indeed, been noshed on.

Through the great Stumptown Vegans blog I discovered a new pizza place flying under the radar- Pizza Fino in North Portland. Jim and I threw on our shoes and jumped in the car at the chance to try a new pizza place. It is owned by the same woman who owns Bella Faccia in NE, so their roasted red pepper and white bean sauce will seem familiar to some local vegans. We loved the classy-hipster decor and all the vegan options! 2 vegan sandwiches, 3 appetizers, 2 pastas, soups, salad and, of course, pizza!

Jim couldn’t hold back from starting in on our appetizer, the delicious Ci Ci al Fino. Roasted garbanzos with an eggplant, olive and mushroom puttanesca on top, with loads of fresh herbs. The flavor was amazing, the only thing missing, IMO, was some sort of bread to eat with with and to sop up the juices.

We got the vegan pizza, which comes with their roasted red pepper and white bean sauce, as well as their delicious marinated tempeh (it was Bella Facia’s tempeh that taught me to love) and your choice of 3 toppings. We chose black olives, mushrooms and artichokes. Wonderful! It was big enough to more than fill us and was $14, not bad for gourmet pizza, considering I’ve spent just as much or more on cheeseless Papa John’s and we all know how great that is.

Jim has been showing more of an interest in cooking lately and even came up with the idea to make lentil tacos.

He sauteed onions and garlic and then mixed in 3 cups cooked lentils with some taco seasoning. We ate them on tortillas with lettuce, Tofutti Sour Cream, salsa, avocado, and a spritz of lime juice.

Another Jim dinner was brown rice spaghetti with veggie meat balls and some sauteed zucchini on the side.

He seasoned the zucchini with this herbed pepper blend some friends of ours got us on a cruise that we’ve been using often.

A quick dessert:

A whole wheat chocolate cake mix from Bob’s Red Mill that I got at VegFest a few months back, baked with a handful of chocolate chips and a handful of frozen raspberries tossed in, topped with a light dusting of powdered sugar. Yum! It was so moist and chocolatey.

A yummy breakfast-for-dinner with lemon blueberry pancakes and some tofu scramble. The scramble had garlic curls, zucchini, black olives, potatoes and loads of herbs. I love scrambles because I make a heaping skillet full and the leftovers reheat for an equally yummy lunch the next day.

Pizza at home using one of the Rustic Crusts that I believe Dreena tried before. Nothing beats homemade crust, but this was tasty on a whim and was full of whole grains.

As always, topped with artichoke hearts, mushrooms, black olives and, at Jim’s suggestion, halved veggie meatballs. The meatballs didn’t really do it for me, but Jim loved it.

Ambitious and determined to enjoy fava beans during their limited season, I made a garlicky fava bean spread.

It took about 2 hours, start to finish, to work with the beans. First you shell them, then boil them until tender, then you have to get the thick, white skins off before you can do anything with them. But the dip was so good and I accomplished the busy work while watching Ghostbusters II, so it went by quickly. That movie has one of the best animal-revenge scenes ever filmed. When the evil goo is starting to take over the city it takes over this hoity-toity woman’s mink jacket and all the minks come back to life, attack her, then take off down the street. Anyway, I just threw the beans in the food processor along with some garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil and away it went. So yummy, well worth the work.

One of my most ambitious baking project yet- a wedding cake! But it wasn’t for a wedding, just for a Hawaiian-themed bridal shower.

I decorated each layer with icing and marzipan flowers. All three layers were a different flavor, but they all shared the same butter cream frosting.

The bottom tier was a pink champagne cake with a rum cream filling.

I made each layer separately, so they ended up two slightly different shades of pink. I had never even heard of pink champagne cake before my co-worker mentioned having it for her wedding, so I set about working on a recipe for one, making 3 practice cakes before the real one. This one turned out good, but I still want to perfect it.

The middle tier:

was the chocolate cake from the black forest cake recipe in DTV. I filled the middle with the raspberry filling from the blondie recipe in VwaV, less one tablespoon of cornstarch because I didn’t want to make it too stiff.

The top tier was lemon poppy seed with the same raspberry filling in it. The tart flavors really complimented the creamy frosting well.

The bride-to-be was very excited about the cake, as was I to make it, and everyone at my work seemed equally excited and impressed by it, but I was surprised to hear some of the negativity that was said behind my back about the cake. It was surprising because rather than it being the “ew, what’s in this weird vegan food?” variety, it was more along the lines of “why did she have to make this weird cake that none of us can eat?” Because you know how vegan food is exclusively for us, no one else can eat it. And then I got “compliments” like, “It was good, Kris. Obviously it didn’t taste like cake, but it was really good.” WTF? How does a cake not taste like cake? Seeing how only half of the cake disappeared (I have a lot of co-workers) and hearing the things that I did really took some of the wind out of my excited sails. I know that this is just the way things are when you have to work and live with omnivores, it’s just all that much harder when it’s something you spent hours working on and lovingly creating. Sigh. All that really matters was that the bride-to-be loved it, I suppose.

I hope that everyone is having a great summer and that you’re all enjoying the amazing produce that is at its peak right now. Happy cooking!