Category: photo

Everyone loves cube food

I have many pieces and parts of food around but no planned meals. I know a lot of people roll that way every day, but it’s very unlike me. I plan out what I’m going to eat for a week, go to the store and get ingredients, and repeat in a week. But Thanksgiving threw things off. I haven’t quite recovered from braving the DeKalb Farmer’s Market pre-holiday crowds. Noobs.

So time to improvise. Here’s what I came up with:

Seitan O’ Greatness Hash

1 tablespoon canola oil
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 medium yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1 cm cubes (yeah, I used metric, sue me)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 cup Seitan O’ Greatness, cut into 1 cm cubes
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat up oil over medium high heat in a saute pan. Add onions and fry for a minute or so. Add potatoes and turn heat down to medium. Cook stirring from time to time until potatoes are almost done. Add garlic, bell pepper, seitan, salt and pepper and continue cooking until potatoes are done. Note, I didn’t need any pepper because I used the higher amount when making the Seitan O’ Greatness. Also, the seitan is totally optional. Makes 2 big portions. I ate mine with a big pile of green beans.

Seitan O' Greatness Hash

Anyway, that’s about as close to a recipe as you’re going to get out of me. Well, unless I veganize the chocolate doughnut recipe that came with my pan for the Holiday Bake Off at Cosmo’s Vegan Shoppe.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

See, some people had a huge meal Thanksgiving Day. Other people, like me, ate normal amounts on T-day and use the extra time off to cook some of those time consuming items that don’t fit well into our daily lives when what we really should be doing is cleaning the house. Anyway, today’s decadence was the Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk issue #2.

I think the last cinnamon roll I had was a couple of years ago when I was in Washington D.C. and made multiple trips to Sticky Fingers Bakery.  These were worth the long wait. And the prep time. I even held off on the morning coffee just so I could have the two together. The only problem I had is one that I always  have…the rising. I’m not sure if I’m looking for something more dramatic than is going to happen or what, but whenever recipes say something is going to double in bulk, I just don’t see it. Judging from pics from other bloggers who have made these, I think I am short a little bit of rising, but they didn’t seem to turn out dense, so I think they’re fine. The pumpkin flavor was really subtle and seemed to add color more than flavor. Hmm…now that I’ve put down 3, I should work them off by cleaning the house.

Before glaze

pumpkin cinnamon rolls

After glaze

pumpkin cinnnamon rolls glazed

Seitan Log

I’ve been seeing posts from people who have made this Seitan O’ Greatness for months and months and finally yesterday I made my own. I’ve made seitan plenty of times, but never baked it and never one with this much flavor in the dough. The texture comes out much firmer than the boiled seitan. This one will be perfect to use as sliced lunch “meat.” It’s much tastier than store bought fake meat. I had a few slices for dinner last night and the only downside I see is that it does get kind of dry when you slice and eat it that way. I think it’ll be really tasty chopped up small in a spaghetti sauce. I have this big ol’ log. Plenty to experiment with.

seitan o' greatness

seitan o' greatness

Mmmmmmm…..doughnuts

Today I’d like to give thanks for the fact that there is such a thing as a mini doughnut pan. And that someone has worked out a vegan doughnut recipe. And that I wasn’t too hungover this morning to put the two items together.

Here they are all nekkid straight out of the oven. I had pretty good luck getting just the right amount of batter in the pan. Only a couple started to muffin top on me. I doubled the recipe and ended up with 36 doughnuts. I only have the one pan and had to bake in 3 batches. The last batch was definitely more spongy and air-filled than the first. Keep in mind if the holiness bothers you.

nekkid mini doughnuts

For these I used the glaze in the link above.

glazed mini doughnuts

And for these, I used the chocolate ganache recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World.

chocolate mini doughnuts

Don’t you wish you’d saved room?

It’s not dessert, but it might as well be

Okay, so the second recipe I tried from Veganomicon wasn’t a dessert, but it was indeed sweet like candy. The Sweet Potato-Pear Tzimmes end up glazed in a candy like coating from the mirin, maple syrup and juice from the pears. If you’re looking for a Thanksgiving size, definitely try this.

Sweet Potato-Pear Tzimmes

Tonight I made an old stand-by, Winter Squash Risotto from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure. If you haven’t tried pressure cooked risotto, you need to. Stirring is for suckers plus this only cooks for 5 minutes. Squash, sweet potatoes…can you tell I’m eating in the season?

Winter Squash Risotto