Slowly but Surely, Short and Sweet

Slowly but surely I'm getting used to "my" new kitchen. I live on the first floor of my new dorm building, which is thankfully the floor where the kitchen is located. Last semester, I didn't have a stove at my dorm. Well, I have one now, and there's no turning back.



Forgive me for getting stuck on things, but I really wanted to try another French toast recipe. And it just so happens that the café/bakery I work for sells homemade French baguettes for $1. Normally I make French toast with whole grain bread, but Isa's "Fronch" Toast (from Vegan with a Vengeance) is a special occasion.



I didn't follow the recipe exactly, so here are the ingredients I did use (scaled down to one serving):

1/2 cup vanilla soymilk
2 tablespoons gluten-free all purpose flour (I used Bob's Red Mill brand)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon canola oil, divided (for the pan)
5 slices stale French bread, each sliced 1" thick

The recipe calls for chickpea flour, but I already had the gluten-free flour, which contains chickpea flour. It tasted fabulous. I used nooch instead of cornstarch. I substituted ingredients expertly this time, if I do say so myself! I cooked mine in a non-stick pan, so I only needed a spritz of cooking spray and a half teaspoon canola oil for each side of the toast. I served the end product with 2 tablespoons hot agave nectar for dipping (I'm out of maple syrup).

I usually have the most energy to cook in the morning, so I woke up a little earlier to make something a little more special than weekday morning microwave oatmeal:



I won't apologize for how ugly and messy this looks. I don't care - it tasted good! I call it Oatmeal-Carob Pudding, and I ate it as a hot breakfast. The idea is that it's like rice pudding but made with oatmeal; however, it is much thicker and more satisfying than normal oatmeal.



Oatmeal-Carob Pudding
An adaptation of Chocolate Covered Vegan's Oatmeal Raisin Pudding

Serves 1

1 cup cooked quick oats
1 tablespoon agave nectar
2 teaspoons carob powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup vanilla soymilk
3/4 cup bananas, sliced

To make one cup cooked quick oats, microwave 1 cup water and 1/2 cup dry quick oats on high for 1 minute and 30 seconds. Heat all ingredients except vanilla in a pot over medium on the stove. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat, stirring occasionally. Simmer 20 minutes, or until reaching desired thickness. Serve hot in a bowl with 3/4 cup banana slices. (You can also add the banana during cooking and whip it in with the oats to make a super fluffy pudding. I think I prefer this way, as I like hot melty chunks of banana!) Stir in the vanilla extract last - if you cook it, you may not be able to taste it in the final product. You may need to let the pudding cool for a while - it should be very hot!


Moving in another direction, I feel like I have some explaining to do. You may have noticed that I've been doing a lot of breakfast posts. Part of the reason for this is that I am so busy during the school day, but here's the second, more minor reason:





The vegetarian "restaurant" on my university's campus is a sad excuse for a restaurant, and a sad excuse for "vegetarian," but its one redeeming quality is its fresh, homemade pita "chips" and hummus. I didn't try them until the end of last semester, because I always assumed they were made with butter - until I asked. To me, the pita triangles aren't "chips" at all, because I don't think they're crispy enough to classify as chips. But they're served hot, are made with olive oil, and are just plain addicting. The hummus is surprisingly tasty as well, because it's fresh and not store-bought. So I just get a salad at the vegetarian restaurant and have them put some cold tofu on top. The restaurant does have a stir-fry section (which is where the tofu came from), but this place has the "sad excuse" theme going on... And as you can probably guess, their stir-frys are pretty nasty-tasting. I avoid them. But I've been enjoying my meals there this semester, now that I have pitas and hummus to look forward to with my salad.

I'm going to Whole Foods to do some grocery shopping on Saturday, so expect more food from me soon! And this concludes my short and sweet post.

I've Been Busy...

...but not in the kitchen. I went back to school this past week and had to make a cross-country drive to get to my college. Then I had to move everything out of my old dorm room and move into my new dorm building (which, by the way, has a STOVE and an oven in the common room!!), and if that's not enough, I had to miss school on the first Friday back to compete in an out-of-state school tournament, which took up my Thursday evening and all day Friday and Saturday. Whew. It's nice to have a Sunday to relax after all the hectic-ness... Oh wait, no, today I have a nice stack of Chapter Ones to read across the board, in all my brand-new college textbooks.

Of course, before I returned to school I had to make some quick good-bye meals in my family kitchen. I will dearly miss that kitchen this semester.



I think I drank my body weight in maple syrup this winter break. Just kidding! But I do think I had maple syrup a lot with my breakfasts, if you add up all the times I made vegan pancakes and French toast this break. Thank goodness I am physically active every day, and that I have an ongoing love affair with steamed vegetables to balance it out.



I don't have breakfast for dinner very often, but it's nice and nostalgic (think: the old days at IHOP) when I do. I had French toast again, but this time I used a recipe containing tahini from Veg Web (recommended by the lovely Vegan Noodle). I scaled back the recipe and only used one tablespoon of tahini in the dipping batter, but I should have used more because I could barely taste it. Too bad. It's my own fault that I just can't make myself follow directions sometimes.



Here's a kick-butt, super-filling, super-healthy breakfast I made one morning. Add a glass of unsweetened soymilk (my favorite), and it has all the food groups! This was definitely a great start to the day.





The breakfast consisted of steamed mustard greens, orange wedges, fat-free 100% whole wheat pumpkin spice muffins (pcrm.org), and a Chicago Diner tofu scramble containing tahini, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and soy sauce.





I've only made one thing since I've come back to college: a Ruby Red Vegan twist on Ashasarala's unbeatable hot cocoa recipe. What's better than dairy-free hot chocolate? A dairy-free, vegan mocha! Since I don't have soy whipped cream on hand (I've actually never tried it), a dollop foamed soymilk does the trick. I am so blessed to own an espresso machine. I made the mocha with steamed soymilk, a shot of decaf organic & fair trade espresso, cocoa powder, unrefined sugar, pure vanilla extract, and the tiniest little pinch of sea salt. You can made Ashasarala's hot cocoa on the stove top if you don't have an espresso machine. I just put the cocoa, sugar, vanilla, salt, and water mixture in a small bowl in the microwave, stirring to dissolve the clumps. I got the cute new mug for Christmas!





I'm so sorry to have neglected the blogging community for the past week and a half! I still love you all. I have just had barely any leisure time for the computer; I have not fallen off the planet. But I'm back and settled in, so hello again, everyone!

I Don't Really Miss Cheese, But Still -

I had a good experience with Little Caesar's Pizza a while ago: They made me an awesome cheeseless Vegetarian Pizza. Their website explains how Little Caesar's recognizes that the number of vegetarians in the United States is increasing and that they wished to accommodate these people by producing pizzas without any animal products. Their site states that ordering a Vegetarian Pizza without cheese would fit the requirements of a strict vegetarian (a.k.a. vegan - that's us!) diet. The same goes for the Crazy Bread: Ask for no cheese or butter on both items, and you should be safe.

So our family ordered from Little Caesar's again this week, and I had high hopes for another delicious pizza. But my dreams were shattered and ground into dust when I opened up the half-cheese, half-no-cheese veggie pizza and saw cheese seeping over the "half" line onto "my" portion of the pizza! Arrrrr! I threw a hissy fit over it - I had been excited all day to get this pizza, and my slices were inedible! My dad had to drive all the way back to the pizza place to get it replaced. The new pizza was quite delicious, though. They tried a little harder the second time: There were more veggies and they were arranged more nicely, the dough wasn't scrawny and misshapen, and it was nice and hot and not cheesy on "my" side of the pizza! The moral of the story? Little Caesar's, take the time to make my pizza right the first time, or I'll just make you re-do it!

You'd think after this experience that the sight of cheese or even vegan cheez would disgust me to no end. But no... Now silly Ruby Red Vegan decides that, even though she doesn't really miss cheese, she is going to dip into the world of vegan cheese substitutes for the first time.



I was going to make a Grilled Cheez Sandwich with tomato, but I forgot to buy tomatoes!

I used Galaxy Vegan American soy slices. I had to fry the sandwich, microwave it, and then toast it to get it to melt this much. It didn't taste exactly like cheese - it didn't really taste like much of anything - but it wasn't bad.







What be this?



It's Mac Daddy from Veganomicon! The Cheezy Sauce is excellent! I'm a big, big fan of nutritional yeast, and the sauce was very noochy. Mmm, mmm. My macaroni was made out of quinoa flour and corn flour. I really liked that part, too! It's weird that the finished concoction didn't taste as yummy as the separated parts, but I have leftovers so I'm hoping it's one of those things that is fantabulous once reheated. But the funny thing is, the Mac Daddy was so much more delicious than real mac 'n' cheese. Then again, I haven't had mac 'n' cheese in years and years: I abandoned it after I had one too many packets of Easy Mac. Gag.

These yummy Pumpkin Spice Muffins from pcrm.org are fat-free and very simple, but are so so so delicious and rich-tasting! I got the idea to make them from one of VeggieGirl's old posts.



An impromtu Vegan BBQ Chik'n Sandwich:





I'm the pancake queen! I can't stop making them - I'm obsessed. I can't control myself: I just wake up and my hands start making pancakes!!! These ones are Banana-Chocolate Chip.



Thanks for all the tahini recipes you guys offered up after my last post! I didn't realize so many others were having a hot love affair with that good ol' sesame seed paste... But I've joined the fun, too!

An Itsy, Bitsy, Teenie Tahini

Once upon a time, I was set free to explore the city of Chicago all by myself. Where did I go? The Chicago Diner, of course.

The visit I speak of was my first time to set food in the legendary diner. What did I order? The Scrambled Tofu Deluxe, of course.



Ever since I went to the Chicago Diner, I've wanted to go back to Chicago. But that hasn't happened. So I decided to take matters into my own hands by purchasing The Chicago Diner Cookbook. I recreated my Scrambled Tofu meal using the recipe from the cookbook, which claims to be the "basic" recipe used by the diner.



The taste of the scramble didn't necessarily blow me away, and this is hard to explain, but it was immensely satisfying. I'm not sure if the idea of eating at the Chicago Diner again made me really nostalgic, or if tahini is just pure magic, but the scramble was quite perfect in every way. The combination tahini and seeds in the recipe that lended a "buttery" flavor to the tofu, a desirable flavor for healthy, cruelty-free food. The scrambled tofu from the Chicago Diner Cookbook has become a comfort food for me: One I love to eat because it reminds me of old times, not because it is the best thing I have ever tasted. And because of the memories, eating it makes me feel nourished and whole and satisfied. And another word, because I know posting about tofu scrambles on a vegan blog can be really cliché: this is not your average scrambled tofu. Among its ingredients are tamari, tahini, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds.

Eager to use my new jar of tahini again, I found a recipe from the Veg Triathlete blog for a Greenie Tahini Bowl. I had to try it!





So good! I'll definitely be making this again!

And to conclude my tahini post, following is a final meal that contains my newly discovered, beloved tahini:



Okay, so I cheated, and the only tahini in this meal is just spread on dry, toasted Ezekiel bread (simple, but actual very tasty). The real point of the picture was just to show you my homemade Sweet Potato Fries. If any of you are in the mood for these babies, just crack open your copy of Vegan With a Vengeance. My last post showed sweet potato fries from a vegetarian restaurant. I wanted to make some at home, but found that both times I did so, they turned out soft! I turned up the oven temperature, tried baking them longer, and even put them under the broiler but they just won't crisp up! Maybe I should just chalk this all up to the fact that deep-frying produces the best, crispiest fries. But I don't want to accept that. :(

And for good measure, hear are some more pancakes!



Based on the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Pancake recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, these Carob-Carob Chip Pancakes were so decadent and rich and fabulous, they didn't need any extra maple syrup poured on top. I ate them plain! :) Just a touch of the optional almond extract suggested in the recipe adds a world of flavor difference!

Okay, guys, I have a whole jar of tahini awesomeness in my fridge! What else should I make to satisfy my tahini-craving tastebuds?

P.S. You're not allowed to say hummus!

The Food Speaks for Itself...

I thought that would catch your attention! Aren't they gorgeous?

I recently had the privilege of dining at Green Vegetarian Cuisine & Coffee. I ordered the Sesame Chik'n with Brown Rice & Sweet Potato Fries.



Click on the pictures to see the bigger version!

The Sesame Chik'n plate consists of seitan strips "tossed in a sweet and tangy sesame sauce" dotted with mushrooms. This is the third time I've had this dish at Green, and I love it so much I've been afraid to order any other menu item. It's the worst feeling to order an item other than your "regular" at a restaurant, only to be disappointed and wish you were eating your usual! Even though Green is a vegetarian restaurant, I doubt their delicious sweet potato fries are prepared in a "healthy" manner (My best guess is that they are trans-fat free, but still deep-fried and not baked.) Oh well. The only three times I've had fries in the past year were all at Green. French fries can be part of a healthy diet as long as I eat them in moderation! :)



My dad ordered the Vegan Blueberry Pancakes. I tried a bite, but I like my pancakes better! (I guess I should say Isa's, Terry's, and Dreena's pancakes. I got the recipes from their cookbooks, after all!) Green's pancakes were thick and flaky, and quite delicious, not to mention HUGE! A "small stack" was actually two huge, chunky, plate-sized pancakes! Before I return to my out-of-state university, I'd really like to go to Green one last time and try their Vegan Sweet Potato Pancakes: That's one pancake variety that will be new to my taste buds!

Speaking of pancakes, I tried my hand at the Blueberry Carob Pancakes from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan again, since they came out too runny last time. The second time's the charm, in this case!





I also made Vegan French Toast Sticks this morning. To make some yourself, just toast your bread of choice (I used Ezekiel 100% Flourless Sprouted Grain bread), cut it into strips, and then proceed with your favorite French toast recipe. I tried to make my batter extra-fancy this time, adding almond extract and ground nutmeg to my usual vanilla and cinnamon combo. It turns out that I like the simpler French toast better. But it IS fun to be able to eat breakfast with your hands, by making French toast into sticks and dipping in hot maple syrup! I added powdered sugar after I took the picture, silly me.



Yet another item I prepared this morning was Sunny Corn Muffins from Vegan With a Vengeance. I wish I had a jumbo muffin tin! I like big, honkin' muffins, not wee little babies!





Celine-inspired goodies always hit the spot, and her Cappuccino Muffin Tops are no exception! However, my version can no longer be called a "cappuccino" muffin, nor a muffin "top," since I used a normal muffin tin and cocoa powder instead of cappuccino powder.



I am really all over the place in my post today! To continue and make a theme out of my randomness, I have a new favorite meal at Pei Wei Asian Diner!



Teriyaki Bowl with Vegetables, Tofu, & Brown Rice, at your service. Absolutely delicious, it was! The Blazing Noodles with Vegetables & Tofu is my second favorite. There's a Pei Wei less than ten minutes from my house, so it makes for a great meal when I don't feel like cooking.

Vegan Italiano inspired me to make a "Calzone" Sandwich today for lunch. The "calzone" contains spinach, mushrooms, onion slices, a chopped garlic clove, olive oil, salt, and pepper. It was great and super fast because all I had to do was stick the assembled calzone into my ToastMaster sandwich maker, and presto! Lunch is served!





Here's a photo of my super-easy, go-to tofu:



This Maple-Soy Glazed Tofu hails from veganyumyum.com and tastes fabulous layered on top of buckwheat soba noodles. After I boiled the noodles, I quickly stir-fried them in a skillet with the remaining glaze from the tofu.

I don't use as much oil as Lolo's recipe suggests (low-fat cooking can taste great), and agave nectar is an equally apt substitute for maple syrup in the tofu glaze (producing Agave-Soy Glazed Tofu). I love sweet tofu! This is probably why I also like the Teriyaki Bowl at Pei Wei so much, haha.

And that catches me up with the backlog of photos I have been accumulating! Sometimes it's more fun to look at food photography than read an essay's worth of blogger babble, so I've relieved you from that duty today. :) You're welcome.

Pancake Heaven

Over the past few weeks, I've been making a lot of pancakes. So, for your convenience, here are all the pancakes I've made (starting with my most favorite and working my way down):



1. Blueberry Corn Pancakes, from Veganomicon

These are the best pancakes I've ever made. They came out to the perfect shape and thickness, tasting of a hint of lemon, and they had a wonderful texture even though I used 2/3 whole wheat pastry flour instead of only all-purpose flour.




2. Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Pancakes, from Vegan With a Vengeance

I will never, ever miss that mysteriously famous international house. These taste just like the Chocolate Pancakes at IHOP - minus the cholesterol and oversized portions.




3. Raspberry Corn Pancakes, based on Blueberry Corn Pancake recipe from Veganomicon

My version tasted great but the pancakes are better with round, perfect blueberries (raspberries tend to be squishier and the texture of the pancake is less satisfying because of this). I bet this raspberry variation could be improved by substituting lime zest for lemon zest.




4. Banana-Peanut Pancakes, based on Banana-Pecan Pancake recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance

These are super-thick and filling, with a very noticeable banana taste.




5. Blueberry Carob Pancakes, from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan

I'm not sure if I or the recipe was the problem, but these came out overly runny. There may have been too much liquid listed in the recipe, OR maybe the "sweat" off the blueberries after I thawed them in the microwave caused the trouble (I used delicious but frozen blueberries). Runniness aside, the amount of carob in the pancake was perfect. There was just enough sweetness without the carob powder overpowering the taste with bitterness - even though I use unsweetened soymilk in my pancakes. I will be trying this recipe again to see what went wrong - and maybe I'll add carob chips!


I have been privileged to try so many yummy vegan pancake recipes! Do you have any favorites? I want to try the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Pancakes again with carob powder and carob chips, and the Banana-Peanut Pancakes with pistachios or chocolate chips instead of peanuts.

I took my ice cream maker for a trial run last night, and here's what I made:



It's Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream! I got the recipe from Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. I made half a batch, which produced four half-cup servings for each member of my family; I used unsweetened soymilk to decrease the sweetness; and I added two chopped vegan Oreos to the batter. Yum! Not one of my family members has ever had vegan ice cream before, and they all LOVED it! The mint taste was perfect! I should have frozen it longer, but oh well. I'm not sure whether everyone inhaled their ice cream so quickly because it tasted good or because it began melting after a few minutes, but everyone was shoveling it into their mouths, haha! I also cooked dinner last night:



This is Fettuccine with Artichoke-Marinara Sauce from Vegan Italiano. It was very good; my super-picky sister said it "smelled funny," of course because she eats zero vegetables, but she ended up saying she really liked it. She was poking at the artichokes in the sauce, and asked what they were. I just danced around her question and said I had used a really chunky marinara sauce as a base for the pasta. (She wouldn't have eaten it if she had known they were artichokes!) Artichokes and tomatoes are a great pair. This dish would also be fabulous with some sliced green olives, which would further complement the artichoke-tomato combination.

I made Katie's Oatmeal Pudding for breakfast yesterday from Chocolate-Covered Vegan.





It's so easy to make and it's really filling and delicious. Oatmeal is such a great start to the day! Mine had dried cranberries in it (the recipe called for raisins, which I didn't have). Thanks, Katie!

I am definitely planning more pancakes and more ice cream (pumpkin or coffee, maybe?), and in my next post I'll share a recent meal I had from a vegetarian restaurant (I don't think any of you have been there yet!). I also got My Sweet Vegan in the mail yesterday, and I was screaming with glee all the way home from the mailbox when I got the package. Yay! Let the yumminess continue!