Healthy vs. Junky

When Andy was away for two weeks, in addition to a smoothie a day, I ate some other things, too. The last few times I've been home alone I have experienced severe lack of motivation to cook much more than noodles or toast. But not this time! This time I did cook some stuff, but it wavered between being mega-healthy, and mega-junky. All delicious, though.

I started by making a raw cabbage salad, with grated carrot, nigella seeds, and a little bit of olive oil and vinegar.

I often came home from work and snacked on such healthy delights as cucumber (or carrot) and cannellini bean dip.

I made a bowl o' potatoes + beans + carrot + spinach + garlic, which was a pretty healthy dinner.

But then I ate an entire dinner of nachos - not the loaded kind of nachos that Andy and I usually have, which match the junkiness of chips with healthy beans & veggies. These nachos were reminiscent of the sort of snack you can get at takeaway shops (at least, where I grew up). The snack which consists of a container of tortilla chips, smothered in melty-processed "cheese" from a tub. I say "cheese" in quotes, because I suspect it was more chemical than anything else. But, for some reason, I wanted to eat that, so I made a vegan version, using the recipe for Nacho Cheeze from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.

It was good, but I actually kind of liked the veggie- and bean-centric meals better. I dare not tell teenage-Theresa that this was the case, though.

One Dish Round Up

For the past few months, I have been testing recipes for Carla's in-the-works cookbook about one-dish meals.  Andy and I tested a bunch of recipes around christmas, and then took a few weeks off from testing, before another big spurt in the last few weeks.  Carla has recently discussed a slight change in direction with her publishers - so I won't be testing any more.  However, I have really loved the recipes we have tested, so I'll post some photos here to give you an idea of the excellence that Carla manages to come up with.

 

 White bean peanut dip tastes like yummy peanut sauce, in dip form.  What else could you want?

Carla's spiced oven wedges have become a popular side dish, like here with sausage rolls.

Baked lemon tofu with green beans reminded me of an excellent flavour combination that I haven't taken advantage of in a while - lemon pepper.  Duh, but yum.  

Cream Sausage & Tomato Pasta was really easy to pull together, and very yummy.

The sauce, bubbling away on the stove after maybe 10 minutes of prepping and cooking.

 

Franks & Beans, which we actually served as "Bangers & Beans" using sausages, was super tomatoey and hearty.  Served with a side of creamy mushrooms, and some toast, this was almost brinner.

One of our favourite recipes is Carla's Crumbed Seitan.  The crumb mixture is a lot more interesting than our usual, so we've had this a few times.

 All fried up, these schnitzels are crispy and tasty.

We had them once with garlic mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy.

Then another time we served them up with mashed sweet potatoes (the ones with purple-red skin and white insides) and Easy Cheesy Gravy from Ultimate Uncheese.

And the leftovers from that were turned into parmas - a jar of enchilada sauce and some leftover cheesy gravy, and popped in the oven for a few minutes.

Two cuisines meet in Ethiopian Sweet Potato Stew, which matches the spices of Ethiopian cooking with the peanut stews of Western Africa, with sweet potatoes and chickpeas.

Seitan, marinated overnight in Thai BBQ marinade and then baked with some veggies and frozen spring rolls, made for a really yummy and really easy weekday dinner.

Red Seitan Curry required more effort than the last meal, but was well worth it on a Sunday evening.  The seitan is cooked in the curry itself, so it is full of flavour with a texture that is quite different to typical seitan.

Corn bread scones were simple to make, full of flavour, soft and delicious.  Declared by Andy to be the best corn bread I've ever made.

We served our scones with Kidney Bean & Sweet Potato Chilli, a thick and herby stew which we topped with jalapeno slices.

We made the chilli with a mix of orange sweet potatoes, and these beauties with an ugly white exterior but a brilliantly violet inside.

The chilli was reincarnated later in the week as Chilli Muffin Loaves, light little muffins with chunks of sweet potato and bean throughout.

Home made tofu is beautiful when marinated and baked, and Carla's Pan Pacific Marinade didn't disappoint.

My advice is to keep your eyes peeled for Carla's cookbooks, because if the recipes I've tried are anything to go by, they will be excellent.

Pizza Party

Andy and I have pizza pretty regularly -- like about once a week.  Lately, it seems that Friday night has positioned itself as pizza night in our house.  Our preferred base of choice is the pizza dough recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, with the addition of an extra tablespoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons of gluten flour.  We just throw everything into the breadmaker, and then after the dough cycle is finished I stretch and throw the crusts (for real!) to get them nice and thin.  To avoid repetition, however, we mix up the toppings (and also because we often have limited veggies by Friday).  Here are a few of our recent pizza creations...

Here are two foccaccias -- caramelised onion and kalamata olive; and roasted garlic and herb.

Sauteed veggie pizza with tomato sauce.

Mexican pizza.  Instead of sauce, refried beans.  Topped with capisicum and tomato, and then guacamole when it came out of the oven.

BBQ Capsicum Lovers Pizza.  Tomoto sauce, red and green capsicum, and vegan pepperoni drizzled with BBQ sauce.

Cheesy garlic bread pizza.  To make this, mash together a whole head of roasted garlic, 1 T. margarine, 3T. olive oil, and 2T. nutritional yeast.  Season with salt and pepper, and spread onto the crust.  This is so yummy we always eat the whole thing, straightaway.

Two pizzas here: Broccoli; and Za'atar with fresh tomato.

Here's a close-up of the broccoli pizza.  Melty White Cheese from Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook and mince broccoli.  This was a bit of a throwback to the broccoli and mozzarella pizzas they served in my high school alongside cheese & pepperoni, and which I ate while convincing myself I was so sophisticated.

Thai Pizza -- peanut sauce, homemade tofu drizzled with a spicy soy sauce mixture, red capsicum and cucumber.

Roasted garlic and caper foccaccia.

This is a deep dish cheese & pepperoni with capsicum, and a tomatoey sauce underneath.  The pepperoni is one of our favourite ways to use okara (which I will post about soon).

And another Mexican pizza, this time with beans and corn, seitan chunks, capsicum and guacamole.

What is your favourite pizza topping?

Americana

Although I'm from the USA, I have never been patriotic.  I cringe whenever I hear a US president say something about his 'best country on earth', or 'God bless America'.  I think it was a fine country to live in, but I just can't manage to get teary-eyed over the star spangled banner -- not even close.  Even when I lived there, the 4th of July was probably my least favourite holiday.  Sure, it was a day off, but it was during the summer, so between school and the kind of jobs I had when I lived there, that was never an issue.  I think fireworks are loud and not that exciting.

I realise I'm a grinch, which is why I surprised myself on July 3rd this year, when I thought 'Oh, tomorrow is the 4th.  Maybe we should have hotdogs'.  I think the real reason is that I had been toying with the idea of making vegan hot dogs for a while, but just hadn't gotten round to it.  In any case, I went off googling and came up with this recipe.  They were pretty easy to make, and following one of the suggestions in the comments, I steamed them in the pressure cooker which took less than 10 minutes.

But unlike in America, where the 4th of July is a summer holiday with cookouts and beach visits, it is winter here.  And while Townsville is warm, it still feels like winter.  So instead of hot dogs in buns with salads, we winterised this most American of meals.  We covered our hotdogs in a warm, fluffy blanket.

Basically, I wrapped them in pizza dough, with a bit of tomato sauce (ketchup) and vegan cheese inside.  Since we had the oven on to bake these, we had roasted potatoes, and spicy baked beans on the side.

I didn't feel any more love towards the USA than I ever do while eating this meal, but it was yummy anyways.  Regardless, you should make those hotdogs because they are easy to do, ridiculously cheap, and taste like hotdogs, with no scary ingredients.

And of course, I just had to make apple pie for dessert.  But again, I winterised this, following the recipe for Gingerbread Apple Crumble Pie (or something similarly titled) from Vegan with a Vengeance except with a splash of brandy mixed in with the apples.

This was really yummy, but the filling was so juicy, even with a generous dose of cornflour mixed in, that the bottom crust was pretty soggy.

The only thing that would have made this meal feel more 4th of July for me is corn on the cob, because that was a summertime staple when I grew up.  In my new family, corn on the cob is still very popular.

Winter dinners

Winter is the best time of year in Townsville for fresh local veggies. It’s finally cool enough and dry enough for flowers to set into fruit and vege, and since Townsville gets an average of 320 sunny days per year, plants tend to go well here.

Thus, our dinners have been chock full of veggies lately. They’ve also been very comfort food-ish...

Vegan mac and yeast with peas and carrots, and topped with whole meal bread crumbs.

Served with a leafy green salad with tomato, cucumber, raw corn and tofu fetta (from the Uncheese cookbook).

Lentil soup with tomatoes, carrots, potatoes and green peas, and topped with toasted sunflower seeds.

Pie, veggies and salad. The pie is filled with a mixture of eggplant, potato, carrot, rocket and radish greens, tied together with vegemite gravy. On one side of the meat pie are garlicky green beans. The other side is potato and sweet potato baked with kalamata olives. And the meal was finished off with a salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa sprouts and roasted garlic. This was a very filling and satisfying meal.

For a wintery dessert I made the Banana Crumble from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I followed the optional suggestion and added some frozen mixed berries to the banana filling. This recipe was pretty good, but if I make it again I will use less sugar, because this was sickly sweet. I’ll probably also use a different recipe for the topping—Vaala’s crumble recipe is hard to beat.

Gnocchi two ways.

A quick dinner we have every now and then is gnocchi. I’ve never tried to make my own, although I’d like to, some time. This is the “quick and nasty” store bought kind—which is actually not that nasty, but rather chewy and carby and delicious.

We usually just cook gnocchi the usual way—boil it for a minute and then cover with sauce. This sauce was really good, and a labour of love. Our basil plants were clearly dying, so Andy picked off the last of the usable leaves. I got the mortar and pestle from the cupboard and pounded the basil leaves with some garlic, sunflower seeds, salt and pepper, and nutritional yeast. Once it was mostly smooth, I mixed it into some crushed tomatoes for a cheesy, basilly sauce.

Served up with a big ol’ salad, full of sprouts, raw corn, tomatoes, avocado, tofu fetta (from the Uncheese cookbook), cucumber, and lettuce from a friend’s garden, this was a well-rounded meal.

Recently, however, I have become switched on to the phenomenon of fried gnocchi. Instead of boiling, they get cooked in a skillet with some oil and whatever veggies are on hand.

In this case, I combined the gnocchi with some chopped green olives and garlic. Then at the last minute I stirred through some balsamic vinegar, which kind of caramelised in a yummy way.

Boiled gnocchi are light and fluffy and fantastic, while fried gnocchi are chewy and hearty, but either way they are really good.

December and January meals...

In the midst of travelling, holidays, and mango season, I have been cooking and eating at home. I just haven’t posted about it. But I’m heading off this weekend to Canberra for a three week visit to do research in the archives, do some field work (tent embassy on Invasion Day!) and get some writing done. Thus, I feel like I should get caught up a little while I still (vaguely) remember what these photos are showing!

Creamy pumpkin spaghetti. The sauce is so simple, and easy to mix up. This one has mushrooms, onion and spinach. Then mashed spinach and soymilk were mixed in to make it a sauce, and some herbs and seasonings.

One slice of a yummy pizza. My half had mashed and herbed silken tofu, seitan, olives, fresh tomato and “tropical spinach”. Andy’s half had all that plus BBQ sauce. This piece was near the centre, so you can see the dividing line between the two halves.

This is not a great photo, but it was a pretty great dinner. We found cauliflower for pretty cheap a few weeks ago and wanted to recreate our cheesy cauliflower casserole—without using the oven. So I followed the recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook for ‘Cheez Please Soup’, leaving out some of the extra liquid. I also added some nut butter and miso to make it a bit tangier, since I found it was a bit bland. Then, after the sauce was blended smooth, I added some cauliflower and let it all simmer until the cauli was tender.

On the side, I sautéed some garlic with “tropical spinach”, grated carrot and soy sauce. We picked up a giant bunch of this greenery from the market for $2, thinking it was a great deal. Well, let me tell you—it’s not. “Tropical spinach” must be the term for tough leaves on inedible stalks. We had to pull all the leaves off the stems, and they stayed chewy and stringy after cooking. $2 not well spent.

I used the rest of the cauliflower (we got a pretty big bunch!) to test a recipe for Urban Vegan's upcoming cookbook--Gobhi Aloo. More cauliflower than potato, deliciously spiced and healthy!

This is a pad thai-style stir fry with rice noodles, carrot, zucchini, tofu and tomato. Always yummy.

And finally, the only actual January meal of the bunch, and a joint effort. Andy made potato pancakes, below the olives. I made a tabouleh-style millet salad. We collectively made some falafels (not from scratch, but a just-add-water mix), on top of the millet. And we collectively sautéed some onions, mushrooms, and broccoli. A very filling, very yummy dinner.

I’ve got a few more catch-up posts coming your way!