Vegan MoFo: Post 19 - Pasta two ways

I have a confession.  I was really really stressed last week.  So much so that I went to the Dean of students and cried and had to get an extension on my extension for my problem set.  So much so that I forgot to order my CSA.  So this is what I came up with using the remains of what I had leftover.  There is a lot of pasta involved.

On the bright side, I finally made the V'con mac daddy (with remaining arugula) !  And esme's sauce is always welcome.

Vegan MoFo: Post 18 - Attack of the ugly food

Delicious, though.

When I have a surplus of chard, I make AfR caldo verde.  There's really no other choice.

Hoisin-mustard soba noodles with garlicky stir-fried zucchini and beet greens.

Vegan MoFo: Post 17

Roasted beets with jalapeno garlic beet greens.  This was way too salty for me because I hadn't yet realised that the beet greens that come in my CSA are naturally salty (the ones you get back home are sweet).  But it looks pretty.

Vegan MoFo: Post 16

Sometimes I make pretty food.  This didn't follow any recipe it's just soft polenta, five-spice kabocha and butternut rings, and basil smothered zucchini all drizzled with hoisin sauce.

Vegan MoFo: Post 15

Bialy, seitan of greatness, salty maple carrots.

Vegan MoFo: Post 14

Lemonade with Purple Basil Syrup

Vegan MoFo: Post 13 - Bowls

I'm switching over to numbering my posts instead of numbering my days.  Some days I just have more work than time to blog and other days I have more blogging time than food to post about.  So let me tell you about my bowls.

Garlicky chard, quinoa, and black bean bowl photographed pre-addition of tahini dressing 

Arugula and black bean brown rice bowl with minty red wine vinaigrette

Vegan MoFo: Day 12 - Hark! A recipe!

Soy-Gochujang Glazed Tofu with green bell peppers and mint

• 1 block extra firm tofu
• 2 T soy sauce
• 2 T rice vinegar
• cornstarch
• coconut oil for frying

• 2 T soy sauce
• 1 T rice vinegar
• 1/2 T gochujang
• 2 T sugar

• 1 green bell pepper, sliced
• 6 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1/2 cup loosely packed mint leaves

Press the tofu for 20 minutes and cut into 1/2"-1" cubes.  Combine soy sauce and rice vinegar in a bowl and marinate tofu for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, mix together soy sauce, rice vinegar, gochujang, and sugar.  Coat tofu cubes with corn starch and fry in coconut oil until crisp and golden brown.  Remove from pan and drain on a paper towel.

In another large pan, heat 1 T coconut oil over high heat and sauté green peppers until they start to brown.  Add garlic and let sizzle for a minute.  Place reserved tofu cubes and mint in pan and pour sauce over.  Toss to coat and serve.

Vegan MoFo: Day 11 - Things I Made on Sunday

Broiled butternut squash

Basil-parsley walnut pesto pasta with garlicky sautéed kale

Persimmon!

Mmmmm.

Vegan MoFo: Day 10 - Things I Made on Saturday

Hey guys, it's a really really busy week.  I have three problem sets, two short essays, a longish paper, and a talk to put together, so y'all will have to deal with just pictures for a while.

Chopped purple basil

PPK Puffy Pillowy Pancakes with purple basil syrup

Pantry zucchini rancheros in the pan

Vegan MoFo: Day 9

Pumpkin alfredo, breaded tofu cutlets, smokey sautéd red chard.

Vegan MoFo: Day 8 - Soup for a Rainy Day

Rain in Pasadena is always exciting.  Coming from Boston, I thought I wouldn't miss rain ever, but now rain reminds me of home.  When it rains, I always crave either dal or soup.  Since my grandmothers are back in Boston and DC, dal is out of the question.  As a child of Indians I live in constant fear of attempting dal and it not being good enough.  So I decided on soup.

• 4 carrots with tops
• 1 stick celery
• 1/2 red onion
• 1 large russet potato
• 4 cups chickenless broth
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 2 T chopped parsley
• salt and fresh ground pepper
• canola oil for sautéing

We first separate the tops and chop the carrots and celery and slice the onion into half-moons.  Then, sauté in a 4 qt pot until onions are translucent.  Meanwhile, chop the potato into 1/2 inch cubes and add to pot with the broth.  Salt to taste, bring to a simmer, and cover until potatoes are soft.  Chop carrot tops and add with parsley and soy milk, simmer 5 minutes more, and serve.

Vegan MoFo: Day 7

With great deliciousness comes a great number of dishes to wash.  But deliciousness is always worth it.

I roasted some sweet potatoes and mashed them with a good amount of sautéed garlic and minced serrano peppers, soy sauce, and a couple drops of toasted sesame oil.

I then breaded some tofu cubes Isa style with shichimi togarashi instead of the herbs.  She's right.  This was definitely the quickest and easiest part of my dinner.

Vegan MoFo: Day 6 - Return of an old friend

It's fall.  With the thermostat firmly above 80, I am bringing the knit ties anyway.  And with stubbornly being in the fall spirit comes pumpkin.  So I'm bringing back my pumpkin tofu scramble.  New and improved with CSA additions and SLR photos.

Spice Mix:

1 t sage

1 t thyme

1/4 t nutmeg

1/4 t allspice

1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1 t salt

The Scramble

4 cloves garlic
1 small serrano*
1 T canola oil

1 package extra firm tofu

3/4 cup pureed pumpkin

1 massive handful arugula

Vegan MoFo: Day 5

My weekend in food.  Friday when I went to Doomie's I got myself an order of buffalo wings to take home.  If I lived closer to Hollywood and made more money, I would eat these every day.  Anyway, I got a decent picture of them in the day time yesterday.

I also got my first farm share box today!  It was really exciting look at how pretty it all is!

Vegan MoFo: Day 4

So today I decided on a whim to go to Amoeba and check out what they had.  Very luckily so, since I found a signed copy of Who Killed Amanda Palmer in the used bin for $8.  Anyway, since I was in Hollywood anyway my only real choice was to go to Doomie's.  So I did.  And had a vegan bacon cheeseburger with onion rings.

However, unluckily for you, dear reader, Doomie's is quite dark and things do not photograph well.  So I'm going to leave the burger to your imagination and present you with last night's dinner:

Two large small handfuls of spinach, a quarter avocado, a splash of simple syrup, and enough water to blend.  Who knew something so simple could taste so great.

Vegan MoFo: Day 3

I treated myself to an ABC cookie today to celebrate the acquisition of a working Caltech ID, so dinner was extremely late (read: 9:30 pm).  I just tossed together a bowl of steamed spinach, sautéed Italian field roast that I found in my freezer, and half an avocado over a bed of leftover quinoa and topped it with good old miso-tahini dressing and worcestershire.  Because as we have established, I put worcestershire on everything.  Have a pre-sauce pretty picture:

One of these days I'm going to get around to grocery shopping.  Or eat everything in my pantry and then starve.

Vegan MoFo: Day 2

Well, shame on me.  It is day two of Vegan MoFo and I still haven't gone grocery shopping.  So let me tell you what a broke and lazy college kid eats when it's once again too hot to cook anything elaborate and he actually hates salad.  Noochy garlicky savoury oatmeal.

This probably wins the prize for ugliest thing I have ever eaten on a regular basis, but it tastes awesome in a junky comfort food kind of way, so don't judge.  I make this all the time when I'm broke or busy or just plain lazy.  I sauté half an onion or a couple of cloves of garlic, chopped in a pot.  Then take half a cup of quick cooking steel cut oats (the Trader Joe's kind) and cook it in 2 cups of water in the same pot with a few splashes of apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, and vegan worcestershire until it's a kind of gross soupy mixture.  Then I add 1/8-1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and pour the entire mess over a large handful of spinach.

I'm sure you can all imagine how disgusting this looks about now, but let me provide you with a photograph anyway.  It's surprisingly good for being what amounts to my equivalent of living on ramen.

Vegan MoFo: Day 1

Long time, no blog!  It's only Monday, but it's been quite a week.  I flew in from PDX last night where I'd just spent 3 days hanging out with the lovely Mars and his adorable dog.  Anyway, I've been back in Pasadena for 24 hours and suddenly it's Vegan MoFo.  It's 106 degrees fahrenheit outside, and the last thing I want to do is turn on the stove.  And I have no food.  Because it's 106 degrees outside.  So what do I do?

Well, earlier today, I walked to Trader Joe's.  And came away with a giant bag of spinach, a box of beautiful peaches, and four almost overripe avocados.  "But that doesn't make a meal," I thought to myself while eating pickled beets out of the jar with chopsticks and talking to my good friend choirqueer.  "I want dinner!"  Choirqueer told me, just eat the avocados.  But as good as avocados are, they are also not a meal.  And then I realised the answer was in my hands.  Beets!  These spicy maple beets that I picked up at Burlington Pride last month must be the answer.  So I figured I could stand the heat for 20 minutes and fired up the stove to cook some quinoa.  Less than an hour later, I present you with...

Spinach-Quinoa Salad With Umeboshi-Sesame Vinaigrette

Because somehow, "it's too fucking hot to cook salad" didn't sound quite as nice.

This salad was pretty freeform.  First, I cut up:

- 1 Peach
- 1/2 Avocado

Then I tossed about 1/2 cup cooked quinoa with two large handfuls of baby spinach.  My hands are not very large.  If you are not a tiny human being, I suggest using just one large handful.

Finally, I mixed:

- 1.5 T Umeboshi Vinegar
- 1 t Toasted Sesame Oil
- 1 t Dijon Mustard
- 1 T Sugar

You can leave the mustard out.  I just put mustard in fucking everything.  Tossed the spinach-quinoa mixture with the peach and avocado, topped with some pickled beets so as not to dye everything purple, and then poured the dressing over it.  Et voilà!  Too hot to cook immediately turns into a tasty summer salad.