Tag: avocado

Easy enchiladas mole

This Doña Maria ready-to-use mole sauce was a favorite to keep on hand for quick meals. It disappeared for a while but it finally showed up again at Buford Highway Farmer’s Market. Full disclosure: I have not contacted the company to check if the “natural ingredients” are indeed vegan. Maybe I should actually do that…anyway. (Update below post) Last time I posted about it, we ate it in the form of an enchilada stack. This time, I rolled up Trader Joe’s fake chicken strips fried up with onions and garlic and Daiya in flour tortillas, stuck them in a square pan, dumped the mole sauce all over then sprinkled with Daiya. Baked it for around 25 minutes at 350F and it was food. To keep all the food mud colored, we had it with a side of refried black beans, from a can all lazy like.

UPDATE: So after I posted this, I went ahead and wrote the company asking about the “natural ingredients” to make sure they were vegan. And they are! Here’s the response:

W00t!

Poblanos, Quinoa and Beans

Normally I really like this recipe for Stuffed Poblano Chilies with Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Wow, I guess I’ve been making it for almost 15 years. Sometimes I’ll mix some chorizo with the mashed potatoes. This time I threw a bunch of kale in with the potatoes towards the end of the cooking time. So back to the “normally” qualification up top. I got some weird poblanos. They’re hot. Just stinging hot. Serrano hot but without the flavor that normally comes with a pepper. So I’ve been eating them, but haven’t really enjoyed them as much as usual.

Now this Mexican Quinoa was another story. It’s a very easy side dish and it can easily be varied by using different salsas. I used Whole Foods’ store brand of chipotle salsa. This was perfect.

The beans are just some pintos that were hanging out in my freezer from a big batch made in the slow cooker. Originally the were going to be turned into refried beans, but I got lazy when it turned out Kevin wasn’t going to be home for dinner and just put them on my plate as is.

Lots of brown food, but better for you brown food.

 

Composed Quinoa Salad Platter

Now here’s a good one for summer. Healthy, light and room temperature or cold. Actually, I’d vote for room temperature on this one. Remember the sources for recipe by email I posted a few days ago? Well, that’s how I found this recipe by Nava Atlas. I browsed the veggie recipes I’d collected for inspiration while making my shopping list. Kevin doesn’t like olives so I didn’t use them. And I substituted almonds for the pumpkin seeds. And the red bell pepper is there, I just chopped it up and tossed it in with the bean salad. This also made great leftovers for lunch the next day. I tossed it with some baby salad greens that needed to be used up. You could make this really pretty to serve like Nava does, or just kind of throw it on a plate like you see here.

Sushi Sushi!

Look, we’re eating out again! I do miss cooking but there’s just been too much other stuff going on lately. That’ll get worse before it gets better. And then I’ll be doing more cooking than ever before. I’m sure I’ll bitch about that too.

Kevin and I hadn’t been to RuSan’s for sushi in a while. Sure, I know that if you’re a fish-eating sushi snob, RuSan’s isn’t all that great. But as a vegan, it’s fantastic! I love ordering lots of different small things and putting together a meal that fits your tastes and appetite.

I started off with potato yakitori.

And then had three different sushi rolls:

I don’t think I’d had the Kaiware Daikon (radish sprout)  Maki before. Tasted very cleansing. I can see getting it every once in a while.

Tempura Spinach Maki. See, you can justify eating something fried when it’s spinach, right? Right?

I get the Avocado Maki almost every time.

Others that are in my rotation: teriyaki zucchini maki, tempura tofu maki, tempura banana maki, inari nigiri, and some others I am forgetting. See, lots of vegan options!

Tofu and Vegetables in Ginger Cilantro Broth

Early into VeganMoFo, I saw this recipe on Mo’s blog and it totally appealed to me. Especially since I think we were in the middle of the great flood of 2009. What’s more appealing on a gloomy day than an lovely bowl of soup. Especially one with such bright flavors.

I did make a couple of small changes. There were only a few sad looking jalapenos at the farmer’s market so I grabbed a serrano instead. And I chucked in a sliced clove of garlic with the ginger because I just couldn’t help myself. Oh, and I almost forgot, I also chopped up a couple of romaine lettuce leaves and chucked them in the bowl. This was really easy and totally satisfied the pho craving I’ve had lately. Well, for now. But it’s easy enough to bust this out another time pretty quickly.

obviously, im not a food stylist...
obviously, i'm not a food stylist...