Date Night Food

Friday night we had a nice date night that started with Cafe Sunflower and then was followed by the symphony. We started with pear in a wine sauce with endive. No picture because I forgot. It was refreshing though. I had the ravioli with butternut squash (I think) and tofu ricotta. They’ve switched from using regular ricotta which rocks!

And Kevin got the lemon chicken.

Oh, and we split a piece of strawberry cake. But I was too interested in tearing into it to take a picture.

I’ve had pretty consistently good food at Cafe Sunflower over the years. My only complaint has been trying to find the hidden non-vegan items. But the server this night asked us right off if we were vegan and then gave us the whole rundown of the menu and what we could and couldn’t get or substitutions that could be made. Other vegetarian restaurants should take note if they’d like to gain the trust of vegans.

Papa Chorizo Frittata

Or, how to use up that half a package of veggie chorizo languishing in your freezer. I’ve been really happy with veggie omelet, quiches, etc. that I’ve tried in the past. So when I saw Alicia’s recipe, Papa Chorizo Frittata, I immediately marked it for future use. Tofu, potatoes, chorizo, roasted red peppers….what’s not to like? Plus, it’s gorgeous!

It was missing something green, and since I like to be a bit balanced, I picked up some callaloo at the market this weekend since they actually had it. If you haven’t tried this green, do. It’s really tasty. I ended up using a jamaican recipe as a vague guideline, but deviated quite a bit, so I’ll go ahead and tell you what I did.

 

  • 4 cups callaloo, washed and chopped
  • ¼ cup boiling water
  • 2 tablespoons sun-dried tomatoes, not the oil packed ones
  • 1 med. onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • ½ teaspoon dried thyme
  • ¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste

Cover the sun-dried tomatoes with the boiling water. Set aside.

Add oil to a large deep-sided skilled heated on med-high heat. Add onion. Cook stirring occasionally until softened. Add garlic. Cook a minute more. Add tomatoes and their water and thyme. Stir. Add callaloo and cover pan. After a couple of minutes, callaloo should be wilted. Stir and replace cover. Cook a few more minutes until callaloo is tender but still bright green. Salt to taste.

Here’s the happy dinner: Papa Chorizo Frittata, Callaloo and sliced oat bread I made this weekend.

Corndog Bread, what?

Okay, so I still have a serious backlog of VeganMofo posts to read. But I have made it through a bunch of posts and marked a ton for future fixin’. One of those was Corndog Bread. Oh hell yeah! I knew I’d have to get on that pretty soon. And soon was a few days ago. There’s really nothing to it. I just cooked 4 veggie dogs on the George Foreman, sliced them and tossed them in a standard cornbread recipe. I think I used the one in Veganomicon. Next time, I think I’ll try it with seitan sausages for a more grown-up flavor. But I bet kids would go nuts over this. And what better to go with it than roasted sweet potatoes and a big pile o’ collards!

Pancakes for Breakfast

Here’s another lazy post…I didn’t even cook these. Kevin made pancakes for breakfast Sunday morning. I think he said he used this recipe. We dressed them up with Earth Balance, pecans and maple syrup. The apple is just there to kind of pretend like this is healthy. They were really nice. Good fluff, not too thick, nice taste. A winner! I think Kevin is going to be in charge of pancake making from now on. Hey, it’s morning, where’s my breakfast??? 🙂

Oh, and also, I imported all the VeganMoFo feeds into my rss reader. Wow, that’s a lot of vegan food blogging. My productivity at work just took a major hit.

Seitan Sausage & Hot Dog Bun Payoff

So it seems like a month ago or something that I put out tweets that I was making seitan sausages and buns from scratch. It seems kind of weird to say “from scratch” considering that’s about how I cook everything. Anyway, I usually don’t go so far as to make my own hot dog buns. But then, here they are:

hot dog buns

I used Bryanna’s Fluffy But High Fiber Hamburger and Hotdog Bun recipe. For the first ingredient, I used EnergE Egg Replacer because I didn’t have the other things and it’s mostly potato starch anyway. Seemed to work fine. These are all full of whole grains and yet not heavy. I’m not sure I’d call them fluffy exactly, but they are really nice. One thing they don’t do is keep a little “hinge” when you slice them like store bought hotdog buns. I didn’t really think of that. In the future, I’ll experiment with shaping these so the sausage can be wrapped in bread. Even so, the sausages weren’t too messy to eat.

The sausages? Right, I made the steamed seitan sausages that every other vegan food blogger did months ago and probably already has a freezer full of them. I just used Julie Hasson’s original recipe. Next time I’d probably punch up the seasoning a little. I like a really spicy sausage. These had great flavor though. Steaming them was no problem. I just used one of those metal steamer baskets that you fit into the bottom of a pot to steam vegetables. Even though the bottom is rounded and not flat, I was able to stack all the sausages from this recipe into my pasta pot without a problem. 

Don’t be freaked out when you first unwrap these from the foil. They’re still moist on the outside but dry out pretty quickly. I’ve had them both right out of the fridge and into the George Foreman grill and frozen, defrosted partially, then into the grill. It’s crazy convenient to have these just hanging out in your freezer. Sometime soon I’ll incorporate them into some other recipe rather than simply eating on a bun.

seitan sausage cabbage kale salad

Oh, and that’s the Cabbage Kale Slaw from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen next to it. And here’s a slaw extreme close up:

cabbage kale slaw

I had the slaw a couple of days later for lunch at work with sunflower seeds sprinkled on it. It held up just fine and possibly got a little better.

Yes, there’s more food. Asian Baked Tofu from The Candle Cafe Cookbook, Teriyaki Quinoa from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan, and some stir fried baby bok choy.

asian baked tofu teriyaki quinoa baby bok choy

Jimmy Crack Corn Crack from Alternative Vegan and Chipotle Kissed Red Bean Sweet Potato Chili from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.

sweet potato chili