Grill, baby, grill.

Recently, Red and I got a new grill. This week, we fired it up for the first time! On the menu? Veggie kebabs, savory tofu, and coconut rice!

Here are all the kebabs lovingly lined up on the grill. Notice how thoughtfully Red made an all-onion kebab so I wouldn’t have to pick them out!


We’ve got green peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and fresh pineapple. Red so bravely slew and skinned the pineapple, fearsome prickly thing that it was.


Instead of adding the tofu to the kebabs, I marinated it overnight in a teriyaki-ginger sauce (this one, if you care, and you should because it was yummy) and Red grilled it in slabs. Notice how he got the perfect grill marks!


Onion close-up for all of you who, ahem, like that sort of thing:


De-skewered and ready for nomming:


Here’s the rice. We used 30-Minute Vegan’s recipe, which is reliably easy and delicious. The black-eyed peas make it really satisfying all by itself, too.


Final product:


It was the perfect almost-summer dinner. We felt so completely suburban that we had to watch The Wire to recover.

This ‘n that.

Apologies for the half-assed nature of this post, darlings. Since I’ve taken pictures of food we’ve made recently, I feel obligated to share them with you, my lack of photography skills be damned. Enjoy!

First off, three meals from Appetite for Reduction:


Smoky Tempeh & Greens Stew is a great example of a dish that I didn’t think would work, but it does. Splendidly. I was a little skeptical of the tomato base (wouldn’t it be like pasta sauce?) and lima beans (childhood dinnertime traumas), but when everything gets together, it’s party time. The greens are dealer’s choice, so we used kale. This is savory and satisfying, and prompted at least one, “Oooh, that smells amazing!” from a coworker. Cue impromptu tempeh lesson.


We don’t usually make multi-part meals, but this time we did, following Isa’s suggestions for complementary dishes. Here we have Broiled Blackened Tofu, Pineapple Collards, and Butternut Coconut Rice. The rice is creamy and satisfying enough to be a meal on its own, and the tofu is very tasty (I could have left it in the oven for another few minutes, but the broiler makes me paranoid). As for the collards—I love ‘em, and any dish that lets me eat pineapple out of the can while I cook is a winner. (P.S. You know I saved the leftover juice and drank it with some vodka later.)


“Are you sure you want that?” I asked Red when he chose Tempeh Helper for dinner. More accurately, I wasn’t sure I wanted it; nooch sauces tend to taste less like cheese and more like old socks, so I just avoid them. But we made it anyway, and lo and behold, it was yummy! So easy, too. I get what Isa was going for—that out-of-a-box weeknight goodness, with the powdered sauce packet that will still be good a hundred years from now and is probably flammable. Next time, we’ll add more peas. Or will that ruin the nostalgia factor?

From Vegan with a Vengeance:


Red wanted breakfast for dinner, so we made Fronch Toast and Tempeh Bacon. He has cemented his place in our household as tempeh bacon-slicer, because he gets the pieces perfectly thin and even in a way that I can never hope to. Knife skills, he haz them. And thin is definitely the way to go with tempeh bacon—the thinner the better, because then you get lovely little crispy strips of savory smokiness. Usually we make our Fronch Toast with sandwich bread, but this time we did it Isa’s way and used a baguette. Let me tell you: It’s tasty, but a pain in the ass to eat. Regular bread is easier to slice. If we never do the baguette thing again, I won’t miss it.

And finally, from 30-Minute Vegan:


This is the Monk Bowl, and it is super-delicious in that “I’m so healthy” way. Most of the 30-Minute Vegan recipes are like that, actually. I’ve never been good at baking tofu, but I tried it again this time, and it came out very well. It will never get as crispy as pan-fried tofu, but whatever, it’s less fat and much less work. To speed things up, we deployed some frozen edamame and a bigass bag of mixed Asian veggies from Costco. (I know, I know, Costco is evil and those vegetables sure as shit weren’t organic.) Topped with a splash of tamari, the Monk Bowl is good eating, even if it does have “I’m a damn hippie” written all over it.

Thanks for helping me clear out my camera! I’d promise you a more socially relevant post soon, but we all know it would just be pictures of Lucy and maybe some story about how I scandalized my husband by scooping mold out of the applesauce jar because the rest of it was still totally edible.

Puppy Bowl gluttony.

Unless you live under a rock on the moon, you know that yesterday transpired one of the most legendary athletic events of our time. I speak, of course, of Puppy Bowl VII.

If you’ve somehow managed to never experience the amazing cuteness and guileless joy that is Puppy Bowl, hie thee to that link up there and watch the recaps immediately. The suckiest of days can be brightened by puppies rolling and tackling and chewing on stuffed footballs (and, it must be said, occasionally on each other). If you fancy felines, the Kitty Halftime Show is a spectacle all its own. The chicken cheerleaders looked kind of bored and the hamsters piloting the blimp weren’t manning their controls very diligently, but luckily all disasters were averted.

Such a hotly anticipated sporting event calls for plenty of nutrition-optional snacks, am I right? Puppy Bowl is the one day a year when I deep-fry things. (I initially mistyped that as “deep-fry Tings,” and I don’t know about you, but deep-fried Tings might just kill me with awesome). Our game-day standby is buffalo tofu, but this year we decided to add to the fun with Hell Yeah It’s Vegan!’s mozzarella sticks.

I was quite nervous about the mozzarella sticks, because vegan cheese can be fickle even when superheated oil is not involved. Here’s me, mid-preparation, batter-covered Lady Gaga hands and all:


Ready for freezing (a crucial pre-frying step):


Red handled the frying while I hovered nearby. (Note: We used peanut oil, and I am a total convert now. It beats the hell out of canola oil for all your high-heat endeavors.) Despite my fears, HYIV’s recipe worked exactly as promised, and the rewards were reaped with a generous side of spaghetti sauce (out of a jar, because what else did you think?):


They were really good! Of course, deep-fried Styrofoam would probably taste good, but I quite enjoyed my vegan mozzarella sticks. They held together very well and were appropriately gooey, if only for a minute or two. They firm up quickly, as HYIV notes, but if you’re down for DIYing your own greasy diner food, these are right up your alley.

The buffalo tofu was less fraught, because we’ve made that before. We decided to go for the gold and make two pounds this year, and that almost did me in. It took a while, probably about an hour, to fry all of it. I was tired of battering by that point, and Red was tired of frying. It was all worth it, though:


This tofu is always delicious, with a nice crispy coating and messy sauce. Why am I trying to sell you on these? Just go make them. I have decided that buffalo sauce on anything is never wrong, and I never even liked buffalo wings, so there. We have so much left over, I’ll be snacking on it all week.

Red tried to be the healthy one by adding dippable veggies to his feast:


I didn’t even bother. We settled in to scarf our noms and squee over the puppies. This year, there were two adorable pittie contenders! Way to go, Animal Planet, for including bully pups and promoting their adoption.

This little lover is Thirteen, a pit mix from Ohio. Look at those ears! And that perfect little eyepatch! Photo courtesy of Animal Planet.

Sweet Sadie is an APBT from Connecticut. I love brindle pups! Photo courtesy of Animal Planet.

Of course, I also nibbled some Tings during the second half. I didn’t take a picture of them, though. Once the game ended, it started all over again in a never-ending loop of cuteness. Calorifically sated, I curled up in the recliner to doze off to puppy yaps and referee whistles (and David Duchovny’s wonderful voice during the Pedigree commercials) while Lucy, true to form, spazzed at the sight of a stinkbug in the dining room. If only every Sunday was this great.

For those about to rock: TofuPalooza!

It’s no secret that I enjoy cooking for omnis. The food I make is damn fine, and I like getting compliments on it! Okay, that’s not the only reason. I also love helping people realize that vegan food is not the bland, sad-face-making stuff they might think it is. Sticky pasta, salad-bar rejects, or—Goddess forbid!—health food? Not at my table!

My sister and her boyfriend had wanted to come over for dinner for some time. She is quite adventurous in her palate, and he is…not so much. When I realized that he had had but one tofu experience, and that it had been bad, I knew I had to remedy this tragedy. (For what it’s worth, his ill-fated introduction to tofu had been in miso soup. ‘Nuff said.) My sister requested my special tofu with mushrooms in mustard sauce, a no-fail recipe that she loved when we lived together. With that in mind, I set about preparing a menu. On Friday, we rocked out vegan-style.

I’ll spare you the boring details of how very badly our house needed cleaning, but thanks to Red, we were able to seat our guests at a functional dining-room table, complete with candles and tablecloth. I forgot to take a picture, and it’s all messy again now, but please admire my adorable sister and her man instead:

Because I cannot do anything without making an unholy production of it, we had a spiffy menu:

TofuPalooza 2010

Backstage Pass Biscuits
With sweet potato and a hint of nutmeg. They only look innocent.

Mosh Pit Tofu and Mushrooms
With savory mustard sauce on a bed of quinoa. It’ll rock your ass off.

Glam Rock Green Beans
Steamed and brightened with dill. David Bowie says, “Eat your veggies!”

VIP Lounge Chocolate Mousse
The secret ingredient? We’ll never tell.

Let there be soy!

It may sound healthy, but don’t be fooled. I followed the Golden Rule of Feeding Omnis: fat = love. And this meal had plenty of it. I fried that tofu to within an inch of its life, made sure there was plenty of Earth Balance for the biscuits, and topped the mousse with soy whipped cream. Ironically, the mousse was actually pretty healthy, since I made it with silken tofu. (Seriously, that mousse? Stupid-easy. Melt some chocolate chips, blend with the tofu, and chill. You’re welcome.)

Our guests loved their meals, and I loved the wine they brought. After dinner, we played Clue and drank coffee with Kahlua and extra whipped cream. It was a lovely evening, and I thank my sister and her S.O. for sharing it with us. There are no plans yet for TofuPalooza 2011, but I’ll be ready!

Orange tofu and carrots. Nom nom nom.

This is a little something I created along the way to becoming the lazy vegan genius that I am. It is easy, delicious, and fabulously good for you thanks to all the carrots and orange juice and whatnot. Your eyesight will thank you, and so will your taste buds.

Marinade:
1 cup orange juice (pulp or not; your call)
2 T. sesame oil
2 T. soy sauce or tamari
2 T. maple syrup (agave would probably be good too)

Whisk all that together. Add a block of firm, drained tofu, cut into whatever shapes and sizes you like. (I prefer cubes.) Let it bathe in all that tangy, orangey goodness for a few hours or overnight or whatever.

Retrieve the tofu from the marinade. Keep the marinade—just put it in a small saucepan because you’ll need it later. Sauté the tofu in a medium-hot skillet with just a touch of oil (it’s pretty oily already thanks to the marinade). You know how you like your tofu, so when it’s as crispy or brown as you like it, go ahead and remove it from the pan.

Chop a bunch of scallions and a few carrots—four or five is good, but if you have a glut of carrots, more will certainly not hurt you.

[Yesterday, our carrots still had their greens. I didn’t want to consign them to the compost, and my best friend the Internet assured me that they are edible. I chopped the leaves and discarded the stalks, which can get woody. The leaves added a pleasant texture and didn’t taste weird or bitter or anything. Don’t be afraid of your carrot greens!]

Add those scallions and your carrot greens to the skillet and sauté for a minute or two. Add the carrots and stir well. Sauté for a few minutes, then cover and let steam, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are done to your liking.

While you’re doing all that with the vegetables, gently heat the marinade in its wee saucepan. When it bubbles, add a little cornstarch (about 1 T. mixed with an equal amount of water) and stir to thicken.

Toss the tofu back in with the carrots and scallions. Mix well, then pour the sauce over everything. Let simmer for a few minutes until heated through. Enjoy over rice, or quinoa or couscous if that’s your thing. I don’t know your life.

Buffalo tofu. Need I say more?

A month or so ago, Red and I were at a hipster-ish restaurant-bar here in town. It’s the kind of place you go for the atmosphere, I guess, if the atmosphere you’re after is waiting an hour for your food and being ignored by ironically bearded waiters and waitresses who don’t brush their hair. There’s a massive moose head hung on one wall, and no matter where I sit, I can still see it. Kitschy Western stuff is everywhere and the menus are made from old record sleeves. They do have vegan food, though. And garlic fries that are pretty much the only reason we go there at all.

Anyway, we were there for some friends’ going-away party. Here’s where it gets interesting: sometime during the course of the evening, someone ordered the Buffalo Tofu appetizer.

I was skeptical, as I don’t really go for super-spicy things. But my non-veg friends raved about it and practically forced a piece into my mouth. After which I said:

“Sweet fancy Moses, I must learn how to make that!”

So, this past weekend, that’s what I did. Armed with a 19-oz block of Trader Joe’s extra firm tofu and this recipe from All Hail Seitan!, I got to work. The tofu had been frozen, so it had a chewier, spongier texture that maybe helped it soak up more of the batter. At any rate, the batter was the easy part. I’m iffy about deep-frying or even semi-deep-frying things, as it’s pretty terrible for you and all that oil is just a disaster waiting to happen. (Come see the Jesus-shaped olive oil stain on our carpet if you don’t believe me.) But, when in the land of greasy, buffalo-sauce-coated party food….

The frying commenced. All was going well, too—the tofu bites were crisping up nicely, and I set them on a wire baking rack to drain onto paper towels. La di dah. Then, I tried to flip a cube of tofu, it stuck to another cube, scalding oil flew everywhere, and I dashed for the sink to run my arm under cold water. I don’t even think I had time to yelp, it happened so quickly. Now, anyone who’s ever done any cooking has been burned at least a little by spitting oil. It just happens. It’s not a big deal. This was, to quote Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

I didn’t think it was a problem at first. I washed my hand and arm off, figured out pretty quickly where the oil had landed, then enlisted Red to help finish frying the tofu. Once it was drained, we didn’t bother with All Hail Seitan!’s fancy buffalo sauce recipe—we just doused the tofu in Frank’s Buffalo Sauce and chowed down. Let me tell you, it was good. A little vinegary for me, but that can easily be fixed next time. Red declared it definitely as good as buffalo chicken wings. See for yourself:


What was not good was the way my hand looked. I had three small burns across my knuckles, but they hurt like holy hell and I was afraid they’d blister. Oil had also gotten on my thumb and forearm, but not as badly. We had to go to the grocery store anyway (I love MOM’s! have I told you that?!), so I pitifully presented myself and my sore hand to the coolest health-and-body-care department manager ever, Ellie. I told you about Ellie here, but she is so nice and always helps me find what I need. I told her I thought I needed arnica gel, but she gently corrected me and hooked me up with calendula gel instead. I slathered that stuff on the second it was paid for. It felt even better after an hour in the fridge, you better believe it. Once we were home and the groceries safely stowed away from Lucy, I took a nap. (What, you’re surprised?) It took me a few minutes to find a sleeping position that was comfortable for my hand, but I did it.

Long story short, my hand is on the mend. It did blister, which was kind of gross, so I wrapped it up for a couple days. This proved to be a great sympathy-getter from my coworkers, at least until I told them I had the stigmata. It looks rather like I’ve been in a bare-knuckle fight. It’s slowly progressing from hurting to itching, which is a good sign. The burn on my thumb is almost completely gone, and the ones on my arm didn’t even blister. I think I’ll live. I also think I’ll let Red do the frying next time.

It counts as food.

We had a weird, sleep-deprived weekend. Beastie Girl, who survived her surgery in fine style, chewed off her bandage while we were living it up at a wedding reception. Red’s parents, who had stopped by to check on her, gave us a call, so we split early to go home and fix her. However, I enjoyed a very delicious vegan meal at the reception venue: wild rice and a puff pastry filled with roasted red pepper and other delicious veggies. Weddings can be very hit-and-miss, even when the bride and a bridesmaid are vegetarian, so I was very touched that my friend cared enough to make sure I received a tasty vegan dinner.

After we re-bandaged Lucy, we were so tired we just let her sleep with us. This resulted in half-assed sleep for everyone except Lucy, and Red and I woke up late and groggy. (I napped later, of course. As a matter of fact, so did he.) We did very nearly nothing all day, then ate popcorn and watched three episodes of Mad Men before bed.

Yesterday, I woke up with a scratchy throat and the intense desire to do nothing again. Instead, I made buffalo tofu bites. (I’ll post pictures once we take them.) They were yummy and pretty easy to make, but I would have enjoyed making them much more had I not gotten a nasty oil burn for my trouble. This is why I don’t like frying things. It’s minor, but it hurt like holy hell. I would be more descriptive, but my mother reads this. It hurts worse than being tattooed, that’s for sure. Off we went to our hippie grocery store, where Ellie the health-and-body-care lady fixed me up with some calendula gel. Wikipedia tells me that calendula is a freakin' marigold, so there you go. Once we got home, I (you guessed it) took a nap.

Once I woke up, survived a two-year-old’s birthday party, and realized my throat was still scratchy, I started slamming the Emergen-C. (This is the food/not-food part.) I went double-or-nothing and dissolved two packets instead of one, chasing it with Amy’s Lentil Soup. That’s good stuff, if you didn’t already know. I grabbed half a dozen Emergen-C packets to bring to work, then crawled into bed and passed out while Red and Lucy watched Family Guy.

Long story short, I feel like ass today, so I’m declaring Emergen-C a suitable topic for Vegan MoFo. I spent a tense few minutes this morning Googling its vegan credentials, but it appears to be animal-free. Honestly, I’d probably still take it even if it wasn’t, because I have a whole box of the stuff and need to feel better. Think kindly of me as I suck it down with hot water and a side of “Is it time to go home yet?” I don’t have a fever and I’m not achier than usual, but my ears itch and my throat is grumpy. I’m tired and my head is a little foggy. It could be allergies, or swine flu, or Monday. Stay tuned.

Calendula officinalis photo ripped from Wikipedia. Emergen-C photo ripped from themadeiras.blogspot.com, but don't worry, I'm sure it didn't belong to them either.

Vegan, American-style.

I can be incredibly dense sometimes. Since I went vegetarian and then vegan, I’ve gravitated towards the kinds of recipes that are easiest to prepare. This makes sense to me, because even though I like cooking, I don’t really like to spend all that much time eating. Once dinner’s ready, I eat like I’ve been locked in a dungeon with nothing but cat food for a week. Then I go do something else. Weird, I know.

This means I usually make things that involve as few pots and pans as possible. Stir-fries, curries, casseroles, pasta dishes—you get the picture. The stereotypical American layout—meat, starch, vegetable—all but vanished from my repertoire. It was too much work! Too many dishes to wash! Really, why do all that when you can just as easily throw it all together in one delicious mélange? Add in the fact that many ethnic dishes, which are already vegan, use the one-pot formula. All was well.

And all continued to be well during the first year I lived with Red House. I'd only ever cooked for myself, and he liked what I made, so I didn't think to do anything different. I cooked (or we cooked, as he is quite the dab hand in the kitchen, especially when I need an onion chopped), we ate, and we were happy. Recently, upon the happy occasion of our marriage, he confessed that he (gasp!) missed the Standard American Platescape. How did I did not realize this? Was he crying a little inside every time I unveiled another chana masala or risotto? He still liked my cooking, he assured me, but the meat-starch-veg trio had yet to give up its hold on his palate. As he wrote the other day, our dinner of brown rice, fresh green beans with butter and dill, and Trader Joe’s Vegetable Masala burgers is more his speed. (Cue Offspring’s “Keep ‘Em Separated.”)

I balked at first, because dammit, I didn’t want to do more work in the kitchen! But then I realized that this might be the case for lots of people considering a more vegan life. It can be tough to abandon the foodways you love and start over with a steaming cauldron of weird colorful something that smells funny. (It’s the cumin, baby.) Lots of people, when they think of a vegan meal, mentally subtract the meat from that Standard American Platescape and have no idea what to replace it with. For Red, it’s easier to do it gradually. He loves veggie burgers, and while I have never felt such devotion towards those hockey-puck conglomerates of protein, I’m glad he’s found an animal-friendly substitute. Another favorite is BBQ tofu, paired with cornbread or polenta and green beans or broccoli. I am justifiably proud of my cornbread, and he would eat BBQ tofu every day if he could.

So I’m going to try to make more of an effort to put meals together in pieces, rather than falling back onto a one-pot solution. It’s interesting to see what goes well together, and how it looks arranged on a plate (something else that never concerned me). It might take a little more planning, but luckily, he’s around to help me. And to do the dishes.