Ah... Vegan comfort food!

I have been so incredibly lazy today.  I did spend about half an hour cleaning up the kitchen (kind of…), and I started a load of laundry (at 5:00), but other than that I haven’t really done much of anything today except up my post number on PPK’s forums.  Shameful…

In an effort to redeem myself, I decided to make a nice dinner for Sean and me, since the kidlets are with their dad this week.  I really wanted mashed potatoes, and I knew I had a few left that needed to be used pretty soon before they started sprouting.  I made them with some soy milk, Earth Balance margarine, and about a clove or so of minced garlic.  I made the basic broiled tofu recipe from Veganomicon.  Then I steamed some broccoli and cauliflower.  I put fresh garlic pepper over everything and sprinkled some crushed red pepper over the tofu.  Simple flavors, easy preparation, and delicious to boot.  And lots of leftovers!  All those things make me happy.  ☺

Creamy and delicious!

Sean put himself in charge of dessert.  He really wanted to try the whole Vita Mix ice cream thing again.  This time, we left the lid on.  *grin*  Yay no more broken tampers!  He was going to make strawberry, but we didn’t have quite enough strawberries for what the recipe called for.  So he added some peaches and a frozen banana to get the fruit weight up to where it needed to be.  Then he added some coconut extract.  I think that almond would have been nice, too.  He used what was left of the vanilla soymilk we made yesterday.  Despite running the blender just a bit too long (it shut itself off—yay overheating!), it ended up perfect as soft-serve ice cream.  The coconut extract was a little stronger than I would have liked—maybe we should scale it back a little bit next time.  But it was creamy and light without being overly sugary sweet.

I have decided that in the name of keeping myself sane, I’m going to start making a monthly meal plan.  I’ve had to throw away so much stuff that I bought and never used because I either forgot about it or changed my mind, and it’s just sickening to me.  I’m still going to try to incorporate at least one or two new recipes a week since we’re embarking on this vegan journey, though.  After all, when you eat the same stuff for 36 years, a drastic change like going vegan means you have to experiment to find what you like and what you don’t.  Without some wiggle room for experimentation, this new lifestyle could get really boring really fast.  And it requires more than just veganizing old recipes.  Doing this is going to make grocery shopping a lot easier, too, which will hopefully save us some money in the long run.

I’m not expecting myself to turn into June Cleaver overnight, but I am hoping that I’ll have made a decent dent in my new stay-at-home-mom persona by the end of the year.  So now I’m armed with a master shopping list, a 30-day meal planning calendar, and a dream…  Wish me luck!

It may not look that appetizing, but at least it knows how to keep a smile on its face!

I had a sweet potato that really needed to be used before it started sprouting in my cabinet.  Since the Indian dish I made on Saturday went over so well with the kids, I thought I would try a recipe for Sweet Potato Dahl that I’ve wanted to try for a few weeks now.

I kept the spices dialed back for the kids since they still don’t really do spicy stuff, and I added Sriracha to the adults’ portions.  Since it looked kind of, well, unappetizing (to say the least…), I tried to keep things whimsical and made a smiley face on Sean’s.  It actually tasted okay, but I’m still trying to figure out why it is that every time I make a recipe with red lentils, they turn to mush.  I only have this problem with red lentils; never with green or any other color.  It’s weird.  And frustrating.  And the end result made my dinner look like someone else had already eaten it and barfed it back up.  Not the best choice for a transition food for the oh-so-particular kidlets.  They ate it—albeit begrudgingly and on pain of dessert withholding.

I’m planning to submit a slightly different picture to Post Punk Kitchen’s “food porn” thread.  I’m pretty sure it will qualify…  ☺

I did get the kids out of the house and we spent an hour or so at the pool.  I got my daily dose of Vitamin D and an opportunity to start reading a new book, and they got some much-needed exercise.  Despite the barf-dinner tonight, they’ve been pretty good all evening—probably because they’re tuckered out.  Yay tired kidlets!

Ahhh... Healthy chips that don't *taste* healthy!

I found a new favorite junk food today:  RiceWorks Rice Chips.  The Sea Salt and Sweet Chili are both available at my local Giant Eagle, are super tasty, and vegan!  The kids even liked them.

Spicy, super creamy black bean dip--excellent with RiceWorks chips!

Sean whipped up a batch of black bean dip and the four of us finished off a bag of the Sweet Chili ones with dinner tonight.  I think that’s the only thing that kept Daniel going through his Sweet Potato Dahl.  They remind me a lot of Doritos, but they’re way healthier and—best of all—no dairy, no hydrogenated oils, and no icky bad stuff I can’t pronounce in the ingredients!  They totally satisfy my craving for a salty, savory snack.  We’re definitely going to have to keep these around!

Tonight for dessert, we’re having tofu chocolate pudding with the Nasoya chocolate-flavored tofu I found over the weekend.  I’m really excited about it.  We made it in the Vita Mix with a slightly tweaked version of their recipe.  Since we had chocolate tofu and chocolate soymilk already, we left out the 2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate and the 5 tablespoons of margarine the recipe called for.  We also added some crushed Newman’s Own chocolate crème cookies to the blender during the last couple of seconds for an extra dose of yumminess.  We also added a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch, since I really wasn’t seeing anything in the recipe that was going to make pudding set up after being blended with just milk and sugar.  We’ll see what happens with that; it’s in the fridge as we speak.

I thought that we were going to have a grown-up movie tonight, but it’s starting to look like that isn’t going to happen since it’s after 9:30 and I haven’t seen Sean in over half an hour.  We’ll see, though.  Maybe it’ll just be a late-night showing.  ☺

UPDATE:  Even after sitting in the fridge for a full 24 hours, the chocolate tofu pudding never did set.  *sigh*  Oh, well.  It made a really tasty chocolate soup!

Awesome tofu scramble for a lazy Sunday brunch.

Yet another big cooking day today.  I’m starting to feel like I’m living in my kitchen lately.  At least the blender kind of took a break today—just one juice drink this morning for breakfast, and then it was eerily silent for the rest of the afternoon.

We all slept late this morning, so breakfast was more like brunch.  I found an awesome tofu scramble recipe a few weeks ago, and that was what I used to make the concoction pictured above for the adults.  The kids wanted cereal, so everyone was happy.

On Saturday, Sean found a picture of vegan cheezy fries somewhere and insisted that he wanted to make them for himself.  I was sent out on a quest to track down The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Jo Stepaniak since apparently the “cheeze” recipes in there are awesome.  I have to admit, the one we tried tonight turned out pretty good:

Yummmmm....

It was particularly awesome over the fries:

Double yummmm....

After dinner, we took the kids and the dogs for a nice long walk—exactly what all of us needed after such a filling dinner.

I watched “The Meatrix” animated series of shorts tonight.  Very informative without being too in-your-face, and keeping a sense of humor.  I think that’s part of the problem that most vegans run into in daily life:  too many crazies out there who give us all a bad name.  I’ve been at this for about a month now, and even though it’s starting to get easier, I still don’t know if I actually feel vegan yet.  Of course, I can’t even explain exactly what that means or how a vegan should feel on a day-to-day basis, but still, I keep thinking that there’s supposed to be something else, something life-altering that hasn’t happened yet.  Maybe it will eventually, or maybe it won’t.  For right now, though, I can find comfort in the knowledge that I’m doing my part to try to stop the suffering of those who cannot speak for themselves.  I may not be sneaking into livestock auction houses or slaughterhouses or puppy mills with a video camera to expose the wrongdoing that’s going on there; but I can stop adding to the consumption that creates the supposed need for factory farms and mass-market killing.

I am glad that I made the switch, and I’m glad that Sean made the switch with me.  Even the kids have gotten involved, and they’re interested in the new things I’m making for dinner every night instead of the ongoing cycle of mac and cheese or spaghetti.  I’m still floored that they liked the Indian food I made on Saturday.  That reaction just opened a whole new realm of possibilities for dining experiences at home.  I think tomorrow’s dinner might be something involving sweet potatoes and some naan bread perhaps?

Now *this* is the way to do tofu!

I have tried to make decent tofu for years.  It’s always been fairly daunting to me, though.  First, there are all those different kinds:  silken, firm, extra firm, silken firm…  ACK!!  The old me would say, “Screw it—we’re having chicken tenders instead.”  Unfortunately, with the whole vegan lifestyle, the chicken thing is pretty much out now.  And so commences my ongoing battle with tofu.

After spending entirely too much time on VegWeb.com (I swear, it’s the site of the gods for new vegans—we probably would have starved these last few weeks without them), I finally figured out what I’ve been doing wrong.  You see, I thought it was enough to just drain the liquid out of the package of tofu and go to town.  Little did I know that even extra firm, pre-cubed tofu can turn into a crumbling, sad mess unless you press the bejesus out of it first.

For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, here’s a quick tutorial:

1.    Take tofu out of package and drain the excess liquid.
2.    Fold up some paper towels and put the tofu on top of them (preferably on a cutting board or something).
3.    Put more paper towels on top of the tofu.
4.    Place a weight (I used a 4-cup Pyrex measuring cup filled halfway with water) on top of the tofu.
5.    Walk away and forget about it for at least 30 minutes to an hour.  Or do what I did:  leave it pressing like that while you go to the store and get away from the kids for a couple of hours.

ED. SG – She left the kids with me while she went to the store.  She IS a good mother!

Ta-da!  Perfect tofu!  Finally a happy tofu party in my skillet!  ☺

I made the lovely concoction pictured here (I took the picture myself, I might add.  Rock-solid perfection on the first shot.  Yay me!!).  I am so ridiculously proud of finally kicking some tofu butt and having it look like stir-fry and not like scrambled egg whites.  This was a super quick throw-together-what-we-have-on-hand kind of dinner.  Just a huge green onion—courtesy of our CSA farmer friend—some minced garlic, and asparagus.  I marinated the tofu in some Bragg’s aminios for a little while and then threw it in with the veggies with some sweet/spicy Thai sauce.  And another thing I have learned about tofu:  it’s practically impossible to overcook it.  Good to know.  Serve that over Trader Joe’s frozen brown rice (it really is about the most amazing thing in the world–everyone should have this stuff in the freezer; you’d never want Minute Rice again!), and life is peachy keen.  In the end, it was a quick, tasty, easy dinner in less than 10 minutes (minus the two hours of shopping/tofu pressing).

We’re putting kids to bed early tonight so we can watch Earthlings in relative peace.  It’s really not kid-appropriate anyway—though if I really wanted to push the whole vegan ideal on them, this would probably be the way to do it.  I really don’t want to give the kids nightmares, though.  They have enough issues as it is already.

I bribe my children.  I admit it.  Sometimes, it’s something material.  Today, it was for pure fame and notoriety.

I wanted for them to get out of the house for a while today.  We took them to the grocery store first—granted, hardly the most fun trip for a kid—and then we went for a walk at Battelle Darby Creek.  I had them bring their cameras along and told them that whoever took the best picture would have it posted with my blog entry today.  Daniel won!  Those are his size-10 feet that you see there.  I hope his feet stop growing soon—or at least that he grows into them more.  As it is, he’s starting to look like he’s wearing clown shoes.  ☺

Sylvie was a little less than enthusiastic about the walk (and the picture-taking, as it turns out), and she was breathing so hard by the time we got to the top of the steps on the trail that she could barely talk.  I’m thinking that maybe daily trips out there and a few times up and down the stairs might toughen her up a bit.

Not too much new on the food front today.  I did make broiled tofu for the first time using this recipe.  Super easy, and pretty tasty, too.  I don’t think I used the full amount of oil, though.  I just used some that was leftover after Sean made sweet potato fries for the kids and added some Bragg’s aminos to it.  After I turned the slices a few times, I added different spices to each set of 4:  garlic pepper, Mrs. Dash onion and herb, and a spicy one.  I think the spicy came out the best.  I served them on sandwiches with hummus, spinach, and some green pepper strips.  Definitely a keeper!

Surprise of all surprises:  my children are coming to like veggie “hot dogs”.  Daniel had one for a quick snack yesterday and ate two more for dinner tonight.  And this was after he made fun of the tofu at the store earlier today.  Little does he know that he had it for dinner tonight!  *evil cackle*  I’m on a quest to make these children like healthy food if it’s the last thing I do!

I think tomorrow is going to be something with pinto beans.  Actually, I know it’s going to be something with pinto beans since there’s a pound of beans soaking in the fridge as we speak.  I had one recipe in mind, but I totally forgot to pick up fake beef bouillon at the store tonight, and I think I’m out of even the veggie stuff.  Hmm…  A different recipe may be in order.  I was planning to make bread tomorrow, but we’ll see how that goes.  I found a great whole wheat bread tonight at Whole Foods—it’s light and fluffy, sliced super-thin, fairly inexpensive, no artificial crap (I could actually read the entire label without having to consult a dictionary!), and from a local bakery.  With all of that going for it, it makes me wonder if I really want to continue on my bread-making quest…  I really would like to make my own, though.  It makes the house smell wonderful when it’s baking.