Baking Up New Projects!

I think I am running out of ideas for bizarre foods. If anyone has any ideas please feel free to comment below.

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With my hectic schedule, I am surprised that I was able to bake not once, but twice!

Good ol’ faithful Vegan chocolate chip cookies. Soft, delicate and VERY good.

The need for quick energy foods in our fridge has been in high demand, so I baked up a batch of apricot, strawberry & oat bars. I added more strawberry jam and 1 extra egg white, so they came out a little more moist than I wanted.

Throughout the week, I’ve been getting groggy in the afternoons. To combat that 3 o’clock slump, I’ve been having earl grey tea with a splash of soy milk. So far this method has been working, however, on a few other occasions, I was so exhausted that I ended up taking naps instead.

I have also been purchasing food from school, which is not healthy for my figure or my budget. Next week, I’ll be eating homemade and nutritious sandwiches instead.

Croissant sandwich: cheese, sprouts, tomato, romaine lettuce.

Kind of like this sandwich! Filled with sun dried tomato pest, mayo, tofurky deli slices, red bell peppers, and mixed greens on sprouted whole Grain bread.

Red, ripe strawberries complemented the sandwich nicely as well as iced coffee.

Another rarity that has been happening—homemade dinners! lately Long and I have been resorting to eating out or frozen entrees. Gasp! So Long cooking, even if it was just one night this week, was a huge plus!

“chicken” & bell pepper sauté with quinoa.

Even made a trip to Home Depot!

I’m starting a project that I’ve been wanting to for a while. Check back later to find out what I’m working on.

I’m bakin’ and I’m cookin’

ah…that’s my poor attempt at thinking of a creative title in relation to a song by Lykke Li, I’m good I’m gone.

Baking some of Dreena’s Delicious Vegan Chocolate chip cookies. The Ipad was very useful.

After making a mess in the kitchen…

The cookie dough. I had some leftover and had me a little treat. No need to worry about getting sick: the dough has no eggs!

Viola! So delicate. So sweet. SoOo good!

    

On the Dinner tonight: Pad See Ew

In Khmer and Thai See Ew means soy sauce. So this dish is basically lots of soy sauce, hence the name.

I normally don’t measure when I cook, but here’s the best that I can do to let ya know what I’ve done in the kitchen tonight. The measurements are rough estimates. You should adjust the amounts as you prefer.

You’ll need:

• 1-2 TBSP canola oil
• 1-2 tsp. dark soy sauce
• 1 TBSP light soy sauce
• 1-2 tsp. regular soy sauce (use the best quality—Maggie)
• 1 bulb garlic, fresh garlic you probably need less. I also just like to have a lot of garlic. I’m seriously not exaggerating here.
• ~1/2 cup of sliced carrots
• ~1/2 cup of broccoli
• Probably 3 cups…? noodle sheets (we didn’t have the sheets, so we used the thick pho noodles. they work fine too).
• 3 eggs Eggs
• 1/2 cup of Tofu triangles
• cilantro, optional

To get that dark brown color unique to this dish, you add LITTLE BIT of dark soy sauce. I added about 1 – 2 tsp. Then you do a little mixing, while making sure that every noodle strands (or sheets) are coated evenly.

And we’re mixing…   

and mixing…

mixing…

Evenly coated. 

Get your tofu cut and marinated in regular soy sauce and a little bit of canola oil. Chop your broccoli

Beat your eggs

Chop your carrots

And mince your garlic. LOTS OF It!

Fry the tofu. We had the rest of our tofu baking in the oven. You can fry or bake. If you’re going to bake, preheat your oven to 400 F then add your tofu triangles and bake for 20-30 minutes.

Remove tofu and cook the carrots, broccoli until slightly tender. Then add the garlic and eggs. Cook the eggs for a few minutes then add the noodles.

If you decide that you want more eggs or garlic after adding the noodles, simply shove your noodles to the side of the pan and crack the eggs on the side. You can hover the part of the pan where the eggs are over the center of the heat to quicken the cooking.

Add tofu and stir until everything is mixed well.

At the end add a few teaspoons of sugar to sweeten it up a bit. I prefer unrefined sugar.

Serve hot with sriracha garlic hot sauce.

Don’t forget to sign up for the 10K Training Challenge!

Deadline to sign up is December 31st. Challenge begins January 1st.

I’m just going to copy and past what I wrote in my last post:

What is the challenge you ask?

Now you all can participate with me! The challenge is to train for a 10k as well. If you sign up for this challenge, you do not have to actually run a race. You can if you want to, but what this challenge is all about is to set up a training plan and also to start off 2011 on a good note.

Who is this challenge is good for:

• Those who need to train for a 10k race,
• Those who need to get back into the running mode,
• Those who are trying to lose weight,
• Those who need a healthy new year’s resolution,
• Those who need motivation to set up an exercise regimen
• …or those who just like to join challenges in general.

I’ll post the training regimen up in the next few days. Whoever is up for this challenge, please leave me a comment stating, Yes you’ll  train with me. Deadline to commit is December 31st 11:55 pm.

In the meantime we can all run on our own, but the 10K training challenge won’t officially start until January 1st.

Ecolissa is giving a 20% discount

with the coupon code: vegan20

Check out Ecolissa.com for some vegan friendly clothing and accessories.

 

Also just to let you know the people at Ecolissa has not compensated me in anyway to have me promote them on my blog. I just like to support other vegan friendly groups as much as I can.

You can also visit their blog here to get some more info: Ecolissa blog

This one takes the cake!

More muffins! This time I made Apple Muffins. They reminded me of apple pie, especially when they were baking in the oven. Find recipe here via Food Network.

They came out looking pretty nice. The cinnamon topping sort of looks like chocolate powder doesn’t it?

The only complaint is that even though I used muffin cups, the muffin pan still came out dirty.

 

Dinner one night were a repeat of Wednesday’s dinner, but this time even better! I made my own garden burger patty. I have made them in the past, but this one takes the cake!

Chickpea Veggie Patty

Serves 4

estimated Nutritionals Per Patty:

Total calories ~230, Total Fat: 10 g, CHO: 29 g, Fiber: 6 g Protein: 8 g

1/2 a green bell pepper

1/4 of a chopped onion

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 Tbsp of tomato paste

1 can of garbanzo beans

1 egg

1/2 cup of bread crumbs (I used old sourdough bread)

oregano, s + p, red peppers, chili powder, cayenne pepper.

I sautéed the bell pepper, onion and garlic on a skillet using about 1 tbsp of canola oil for about 5 minutes. At the end I added the tomato paste. Cooked it until it was evenly incorporated.

Then I drained the chickpeas, mashed them with my hands, added the bread crumbs, egg, and spices. Gave it a good mix. Then I added the sautéed mixture. I used a fork to mix the rest of the ingredients together. Then when it was cool or warm enough, I used my hands and shaped them into 4 burger patties.

Then I sautéed each patty for about 3 –4 minutes on each side. Using no more than 1 total of 1 Tbsp of canola oil.

When it was nicely cooked I laid out my sprouted burger bun with mayo, mustard, relish and ketchup. Topped with a bit of lettuce. And had a side of brussels sprouts, carrots, and potatoes.

They were super good. If you haven’t made patties before, I really recommend making this. It’s very easy to make.

Baked apricot bars & Indian pizza

A while back I baked these Apricot Bars. You can find the recipe here at Food Network. This recipe I followed was not the healthiest (lots of sugar with white flour). I think next time I’ll try tinkering with the recipe a bit. I was tempted to alter the ingredients, but it was my first time making snack bars, so I wanted to see how it would taste first. Normally I make sweet desserts in the form of cookies, cakes, pies, croissants, ice cream…. I don’t know why I didn’t make these bars sooner—they’re SOO easy to make!

 

Look at that gorgeous golden hue of those apricot preserves!

  

I also made Indian pizza with lentils as a quick dinner. I got the idea of making Indian pizza after reading Aarti’s (FNS winner) blog. I didn’t have her recipe, so I just winged it. I went to TJ’s and bought a bunch of items that might go well as an Indian pizza. I found mango chutney, chipotle salsa, a bag of frozen naan (imported from India), which I would not recommend if you’re used to eating whole wheat products. I personally prefer TJ’s Whole wheat naan in the bread/cereal section.

Anyway, the whole thing was super easy to make. It came out sweeter than I had hoped for (prob because of the mango and salsa), but it was pretty good for a meal on the spot. For the lentils I combined veggie broth, garam masala, cumin, and a few other ingredients that I can’t remember off the top of my head. This is what happens when I come up with great recipes without writing them down immediately. They were super good—I think better than the Indian Pizza. Lastly, there was the side salad topped with Annie’s Woodstock dressing and nutritional yeast.

A light lit up.

This evening I opened my baking cabinet and found a bag of Guittard chocolate chips. I began snacking on them and found myself enjoying them quite a bit. I haven’t been able to enjoy chocolate, especially semisweet, as much as I once did, but there was something about this bag of chips that tickled my taste buds.

While munching, I flipped the bag over to read the back (as I often do) and found their recipe for a batch of chocolate chip cookie. It was as though a light lit up above my head as I smiled—all of sudden I felt the urge to bake.

An old hobby that saved me from insanity so many times in the past has come to the surface again.

As I am reading the list of ingredients, I begin to mix them without reading the instructions as if I’d been doing it for years. Everything all so familiar. The sounds of the mixer whirling, butter squishing and blending together with the sugar, the drop of the egg into the smooth batter, even the sound of the poof of air as I added flour was like the sound of music to my ears.

 

Ok ok..I know I said that I’d make this blog about food, but I just couldn’t resist this adorable picture of Lulla sleeping under our coffee table. Believe it or not, she even sleeps under our bed! Our cats sleep under our bed, but they’re about 6-9 pounds each. Lulla is about 40 pounds.