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.

Pretty Pictures

Hi all, long time no blog.  There's a recipe in the works, but I haven't written it down yet.  So in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures from over spring break.  Excuse the quality; I left my SLR in California so I had to use the iPhone:

Vegan Pho with seared carrots, zucchini, red bell pepper, and tiny shiitakes

Pho the next day: chickpeas and red bell pepper

Tempeh asado with Oaxacan-style mole from Viva Vegan