Wild Rice Salad with Miso Dressing

This is my new favorite salad and I need to sing its praises!

Last week Molly and I teamed up to tackle this recipe. She provided most of the ingredients and the kitchen, I brought over some wild rice and did the cooking.

It was so good.

We both liked it so much that we made plans to make it again this week. A double batch.

Bulgur Chickpea Salad

Do you say "chickpea" or "garbanzo"?

I grew up saying garbanzo, but everyone over here seems to prefer chickpea. Both are nice, I suppose. Last week I made a bulgur salad to use up some left over bulgur I had sitting around. Turns out, it was delicious. The original recipe is here, but I'll write out my changes below:

Added 1 small cucumber sliced into coins
Half the amount of oil
Half the amount of lemon juice

If you add just a bit of (soy) feta, that's delicious too!

World Go Vegan Week

This week, October 24-31, is World Go Vegan Week!

Curious to try out being a vegan but not ready for the commitment? Now's the time!

Check out some delicious vegan recipes at:
Vegalicious
VegWeb

And a few of my favorites:

Vegan Zucchini Brownies

Bean Dip Provencal

PS: I'm not vegan myself... just a vegetarian walking pretty close to the line.

Pretzels

In search of a new baking adventure, I decided to test out my pretzel making skills. No, not the soft pretzels... I've never really liked those. I'm all about the hard and crunchy kind.

After searching a few blogs for recipes, I came across this one here. It called for a beer bath, but I wasn't up for that this time. I also just used a baking spray on the bites instead of the recommended egg wash. And although it doesn't look like it, I did top the pretzels with sea salt. It's been a few days and the grains have crumbled off.

The next time I bake these I want to experiment with nutritional yeast and make cheesy pretzels. We'll see... it was kind of an all day event!

Herb-Fantastic Ciabatta Bread

It's really hard for me to make homemade soup without making homemade bread. The two go so nicely together. Thankfully, an old friend from Sarah J Anderson days shared a recipe for ciabatta bread that requires only one minute of prep time. It's amazing how easy and how delicious it is.

Yesterday morning, since I hoped to make soup in the evening, I prepared the dough and headed to school. Eight hours later the bread baked while the soup simmered, and I shared it all with a special out of town dinner guest who happened upon my doorstep.

[Oh, and it's vegan. The topping is nutritional yeast, garlic powder, sage, thyme, and oregano. The soup was split pea.]

Vegan Rice Krispie Treats

I love being a vegetarian. Not only do I feel healthy and happy... but you get to be silly excited about the simple things. Like marshmallows.

I love marshmallows. Most of the foods I miss (there are only a few!) from my pre-veg life include marshmallows. (Rocky road ice cream and the Rocky Road candy bar are the most prominent.) As you can imagine, the gelatin free marshmallow making process is a bit of an ordeal. Several manufacturers have attempted to produce a yummy veg-mallow with varying degrees of success. There was even a scandal, people! Having sampled a few different brands, my absolute favorite are Dandies. Like, whoa. So good. (So expensive). But so good.

Having sent out a plea to my lovely friends and family, I received two packages of Dandies in the mail just in time for camping season. Delicious s'mores ensued. Now that it's far too hot to camp (or even be outside during daylight hours), I decided to use up the Dandies in a batch of rice krispie treats. The best part is that you can follow the recipe on the box (ok my box had a weird recipe for cereal fruit cake but I'm pretty sure that's regional, yours should be normal) without any of the adjusting often required to veganize.

I totally made a half batch a few days later to use up the remaining marshmallows. They are definitely on my list of specialties to collect while stateside this summer.

Too Simple Chickpea Salad

Last week I decided to run a few errands and eat lunch in the park instead of driving all the way home before my pottery class. I quickly grabbed a chickpea salad from the supermarket and a stack of pita bread. I was so pleasantly surprised at just how delicious the salad tasted! I liked it so much I made it myself the next day...

You know how food you eat outside on the grass always tastes better than the food you eat inside at the table? I was a little worried that the magical taste would be somewhat diluted when eaten indoors... but nope. It was even better.

I made it again today after school with not quite as tasty results. Still good... but make sure you use high quality chickpeas, it really makes a difference.

Too Simple Chickpea Salad

1 can chickpeas
1 small cucumber
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon paprika

Drain and rinse the chickpeas. Cut cucumbers into small pieces.
Combine olive oil, lemon juice, and salt in medium bowl. Mix well.
Add chickpeas and cucumber.
Sprinkle top with paprika.
You might want to play with the salt and lemon juice a bit to get it just right.

Also delicious with any variety of baby tomatoes. Sweet corn would be good too.

Eat with fresh pita bread.

Bread Abroad

Now that I'm finally settling in to my new apartment (and new life) here in Abu Dhabi, I thought I'd take advantage of my last few days off of work. What better way to spend the day at home than by baking bread?

I looked to my usual basic bread recipe because I knew I had all the ingredients on hand (subbing soymilk for dairy, olive oil for butter). Then I added 3 cloves of garlic sauteed in olive oil and various shakes of thyme, oregano, and sage. As a fan of savory breads, I was pretty happy with what popped out of my oven. The flavor is mild but present and the texture is on the course side. A nice country styled loaf in this big new city of mine.

Bagels

I have never been so excited to open the oven. I was watching the timer count down and calling out the minutes... What could possibly get me so worked up? Homemade vegan bagels, of course!

Last Friday while in a restless mood, I heard this story on NPR. One of the takeaway points (for me at least) was the frugality of making your own bagels. I was intrigued.

I researched a few recipes and found, well, kind of a horrible one. It seemed pretty easy and basically too good to be true. So little effort. Turns out... soggy bread is not very appetizing. And it's never good when your mom admits to "choking it down." I won't even share that recipe with you...

Luckily, I know of a little something called perseverance. Yesterday I found a new recipe and tried again. If you were present in the kitchen you would have heard me exclaim, "Wow! These bagels are already light years ahead of the other ones!" at just about every stage of the process. I was a little giddy with excitement.

Here's the recipe I used. I added a half teaspoon of garlic powder for flavor as well as about a fourth of a cup (I didn't really measure) of nutritional yeast for flavor and protein.

I liked the entire process of bagel making so much (from the kneading to the eating), I'm actually making them again right now. But I also think listening to this goodness contributes to the enjoyment.

"Nothing really changes..."

Part of our dinner conversation tonight and only loosely related to this (finally sewing-free) post. A friend (and former market bag model) has a birthday tomorrow... so we celebrated tonight by making a delicious dinner.

The recipe for the main course is Lazy Day Peanut Noodle Salad from 101 Cookbooks. Pretty tasty. The only change we made was adding a few teaspoons of sugar to counter the strong vinegar flavor. Teamwork tastes pretty good.

For dessert I baked a mini birthday Housewifery-Out-of-Control Pie, my favorite pie flavor. The original post about it is here, in case you missed it last summer. Thanks to my mom for offering up some fresh picked raspberries today.

Happy Birthday, Darby!

Vegan Shortbread Stars

When I was in Los Angeles I had this tremendous craving to bake shortbread cookies. I finally got around to it a few days later. I thought it might be a little tough to find a vegan recipe, but nah... there are quite a few out there. I picked through and finally settled on this one from Get Sconed. It's fun to find local blogs. I decided to make mine stars and skip the ganache. I also made them a bit thicker so baking took closer to 12 minutes.

I would happily bake these again and am thinking about bringing them along to an upcoming beach trip.

Olive Bread

Maybe I should start a tradition of bread baking over 3 day weekends.

Today I was ultra giddy to make olive bread. I was inspired by my new vintage cute as a button sifter. A lovely birthday gift from Molly.

I used this recipe. It's pretty good but not fantastic. I think I might substitute some of the water with olive juice if I make it again. I think that would give it a little extra bite. And I'd put in more olives. I was shy of the recommended cup.

8 Dozen. In Keith's Face.

Or just one. I've been looking forward to making more of these all week. More to come.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here's my contribution to the Thanksgiving table today.

Recipe:
Bean Dip Provencale
15 oz can of white kidney beans, drained with 1/3 liquid reserved
1 clove chopped garlic
1/3 cup fresh or 1 1/2 tsp basil
1/4 tsp rosemary
1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives

Put everything but the olives in the food processor and whiz.
Pour into a small bowl.
Stir in olives
Serve with breadsticks, crackers, anything you like

Originally from The Big Book of Vegetarian

And really, I can't mention Thanksgiving without bringing up the 40,000,000 animals that were slaughtered in honor of today. Someone else pointed out that's more than the human population of California. Eek! I wouldn't mind hugging a turkey today. They are really quite interesting creatures.

Crackers Are Expensive...

and I love them. So I made my own. I was so excited to make these all week. And being excited about making your own crackers is something you can only share with certain people. Sometimes it's a lonely existence.

For my first time, I'd say they are pretty good. I need to roll out the dough a bit thinner next time. A few were too thick so they didn't turn out crunchy enough.

I used this recipe, but used nutritional yeast for flavor instead of the cheese powder to make them vegan. (And the dough was way too crumbly so I added a bit more water).

A box of crackers can run you about $3. For these I only needed to spend $.70 on instant yeast. All of the other ingredients are so basic, you're likely to have them on hand.

It's so exciting to have to buy one less item now at the grocery store. Crossing crackers and shampoo off the list.

Here's the no-shampoo update: It's been a week. No shampoo. 6 washes with baking soda. 2 rinses with vinegar. 3 separate touch tests. 2 separate smell tests (1 sober, 1 drunk). All positive marks and one inquiry of "Your hair smells good. How do you grow that smell?" Another question raised, "Does your hair absorb smells like baking soda does?" Still investigating.

Throw out your shampoo people!

Italian Prunes

One good thing about moving back near my family... reuniting with my favorite plums from childhood. We would go to my grandmother's house and fill grocery sacks full of plums... and eat and eat and eat. Now that I'm back in town during the harvest, I can take part again. So. I did.

Coming home with a box full of plums I knew the next day would be a baking day. There really aren't too many italian prune recipes out there, but I finally came across one that would do after a few changes.

Vegan Purple Plum Pie

4 c. sliced italian prunes
3/4 c. sugar
3 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. Earth Balance

Pit the plums and slice thinly, probably into eighths
Combine flour and sugar in a bowl, mix with plums
Pour into prepared pie crust
Drizzle lemon juice over top, dot with Earth Balance
Place top pie crust, cut to vent

If you need a pie crust recipe, this one is tops.

2 c. flour
1/3 c. water
2/3 c. olive oil

Mix ingredients in bowl until a ball forms, divide in half
Place dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a circle, this is your bottom
Repeat for top

Bake for 8 minutes at 350, reduce heat to 250 and bake for an hour
(Note: the baking time isn't quite right, I always end up baking the pie much longer, or turning the heat up and baking until it bubbles)

I've said before that my Housewifery Out of Control Pie was my favorite pie of all time both for taste and color... and I still stand by those statements. But this pie comes in a close second for color.

Vegan Zucchini Brownies

When some people are out running 5ks and other such vigorous activities... I sometimes prefer to nap and eat brownies. Specifically, these brownies:

I've made these brownies twice in the past week and a half. (Not just for me! I always share!) This is the recipe. (Note: The frosting is not vegan unless you make it vegan.) It's a good excuse to use up zucchini from the garden... which is abundant! If I had considered the amount of squash one zucchini plant produces each season... I probably wouldn't have planted four. We have a lot of zucchini over here...

Vegan Carrot Potato Soup

Hey. I used this...

...to turn these...

...into this!

Garden Update

So I came back from Peru (you can see photos here) to find that my garden had exploded while I was gone. Very exciting... except for the peas and green beans that I had not staked appropriately before leaving.

I really wasn't expecting the peas to grow 4 feet! That's more than a foot a week! Since I hadn't staked them properly they were growing all over the ground and tangling up on each other. I sorted it the best I could. (These were left over peas that didn't fit with the others that have a climbing net... that's why they are in a pot.)

My first harvest was this romaine lettuce. It was very crisp and just lovely. We made it into a salad after washing it very thoroughly... little bugs up in there!

With the salad we had Potato Corn Chowder in soup form (I didn't feel like washing the blender). It is a favorite soup to make and is great with summer corn.

It has been fun to come home and cook with all the fresh fruit and vegetables from the garden and the farmer's makert. Ah, the best part of summer.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies aka The Perfect Cookie

Let me tell you... on Friday I baked the perfect cookie. Previously, these cookies were good. But this time, seriously, I'm talking perfection.

These are the cookies I sometimes send to a friend in the mail when I want to brighten her day, and have her brighten mine by telling me how good they are. Because, they are good. Is there any uncertainty about how good I think these cookies are?

Before these cookies have always been a bit too dry and crumbly. I always figured it was because it was a non-vegan recipe that I veganized. I'd just add a bit extra water each time and work with it. This time... oh this time, I finally figured it out. On top of performing all other miracles, soy has proved itself the key ingredient. Instead of splashing in a dash of water, I splashed in a dash of vanilla soymilk. The result? Cookies slightly crunchy on the ouside, nice and chewy on the inside. Even my roommate who doesn't like raisins felt the cookie itself was good enough to painstakingly remove each raisin as she went, in order to not lose any of the cookie-goodness.