What The Hell Does A PinkHairedGirl Eat?

from Veganomicon

So once a year I impulse buy a sugar pumpkin because they are so little and adorable, and then it sits around my kitchen for two to three weeks and then I make this saag. This time I managed to bake the pumpkin ahead of time, making it reasonably quick and easy to make the actual saag. Which is good, since my friend Marisa and I made this after our hula hooping class, and we were starving.

To go with it, we made some basmati rice with cumin seeds and coriander pods, and breaded eggplant with indian spices. For the eggplant, we made a mixture of bread crumbs, curry powder and garam masala, used it to bread the eggplant, and sprayed it with olive oil, and baked it. It turned out so yum! The saag was great too, even though we were impatient and didn’t let the onions cook long enough. (Is it just me, or is it impossible to cook onions to long? They just get better and better the longer you let them sit there.)

Local: eggplant

From Veganomicon

I was going to clean my house this weekend, but then I made cookies instead. Now when people come over, I just give them a cookie and they get distracted from the fact that my house is dirty.

These cookies are freaking delicious, although they have a frightening amount of sugar in them. I’m a freak for almond flavored desserts – I love marzipan – and I think that these might be My All Time Favorite Cookies. (I may have to make a batch of these cookies and have a Battle of the Cookies to make sure.) The dough for these cookies is sort of dry and hard to work with, but the end result is so worth it!

Ah yeah, it’s the Italian Baked Tofu from Veganomicon again, cause that’s how I roll. I like the whole “stick this in the oven and go” aspect of this, especially when I can remember to stick the tofu in the marinade before I leave for school in the morning. I also love how the leftovers from this are great in a billion things, from salads to sammitches.

And speaking of salads, lately I’ve been making my own salad dressing from whatever I have in the fridge. This time I had a half can of coconut milk to use up, so for this dressing I blended coconut milk, miso, rice vinegar, garlic, and sesame oil together in the food processor. The result was delicious! Super fatty and not a traditional salad dressing at all, but very tasty.

Local: Tofu, salad fixins

Chili from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, Corn Pudding from Veganomicon

1. I am obsessed with eating food in bowls, right now.
2. I did not eat all of this food, I finished the salad and realized I had way too much food and then didn’t eat any of the chili.
3. I would not normally make this corn pudding, because I am just not that into corn. I don’t hate corn, but I generally find it insipid and avoid it when possible. But everyone on the internets was all “This corn pudding is awesome, I love it, I want to have ten billion of its babies, etc” and also corn was on sale at my local market (5 ears for $1!). So I made this. Cutting the corn off the cob was really annoying and covered my kitchen in corn, but other than that it was really easy to make. The result? Tasty, but still made of corn. If I liked corn, I bet I would make this all the time. As it is, I’m glad I tried it, but it’s not going into regular rotation any time soon.
4. I made a giant batch of chili from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen (my standard chili recipe) to take camping with me, and then we ended up just eating bread and hummus all weekend instead. So then I ate chili for the next week and a half. At some point I added some pasta to it change it up a bit, an idea I got from some blog I read that was tasty, but meant I extended my chili eating time even longer. This chili is still super tasty and I recommend it, but I am not making it for a while.
5. Salad is good for you. I used some hummus-like dip I made instead of dressing, it turned out well.

Local: Salad fixins

Risotto recipe from my mom, tofu from Veganomicon

So I called my mom to get her recipe for beet risotto and she was like “Uh, you know, make risotto and put some beets in it. Maybe some balsamic vinegar at the end?” She also recommended I add beets both at the beginning of the recipe and at the end for more of a variety in texture, which I did. I shredded the beets in my food processor, because I am lazy and like shredded beets. I think when I make this again I’ll use fewer beets and add the greens in for more of a balance of flavors – this ended up being too sweet for me, almost sweet and sour thanks to the balsamic. My mom’s beet risotto is much tastier, so know this can be good if I tweak it enough.

I love Isa’s Italian baked tofu, it is so yum, I make it all the time. You can’t go wrong with garlic/white wine/lemon juice/olive oil.

The salad is just heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers with olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper. Yum! So summer and delicious.

Local: Beets, tofu, tomatoes, cucumbers

from Veganomicon

This was so tasty! Even my boyfriend, who was very suspicious about me adulterating gazpacho with beets, ended up loving it. I love both gazpacho and borscht, so I was like “Bring it!” and the tomatoes & cucumbers & beets were like “Oh, it has already been broughten.” I loved the earthiness of the lightly cooked beets, and the slight sweetness (my usual issue with beets) was nicely countered by the acidity of the tomatoes. I ate this for like, two weeks and I was still loving it at the end.

Local: Cucumbers, beets, cilantro

from Veganomicon

Oh hell yes, I made tamales. I’ve been meaning to do this forever but couldn’t find corn husks anywhere. (Which is ridiculous because I live in San Diego where tamale making supplies should be plentiful, but whatever.) Finally my boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend found some somewhere and bought them for me because she remembered that I wanted them, which is really just the nicest thing ever. These took a while to assemble, but they were pretty simple to make. My only qualm about the recipe was that the masa didn’t have salt in it, and it turned out pretty bland – if I make this again, I will definitely add salt.

my pretty tamales, all in the steamer

I also had problems getting enough filling in with the masa, but the end result with some avocado and salsa was delicious. And I am completely in love with the fact that I now have a big bag of tamales in my freezer that I can heat up whenever I want. I am definitely making these again and experimenting with fillings.

Local: Carrots in filling, avocado

Veggie burger from Joanna Vaught, Pasta Salad from Veganomicon

I’m finally getting the hang of this veggie burgers thing. This time I used black beans, carrots, celery, and rice along with some sesame oil, smoked paprika, and Braggs, and I mushed everything except the rice and vital wheat gluten up in the food processor until it was sort of a paste. Then I made big patties with the result – these turned out really good, and very patty-like, no crumbling problems at all.

To go along with it, I made the VCON pasta salad, but I doubled the amount of carrot and radish in it. This was super tasty, as usual. Together with the burger and some pickles, it made a great, super-summery meal.

Local: Veggies

Hummus is a Vegan Crunk tester, cucumber dip from Veganomicon, flatbread from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian

A “some assembly required” meal, one of my favorite kinds of meals. This one was vaguely Mediterranean. The black-eyed pea hummus is a Vegan Crunk tester, and it was a great twist on traditional hummus. (Bianca’s been doing lots of stuff with black-eyed peas lately, which I find exciting because I bought a bunch a while ago and discovered I had no idea what to do with them.)

We’ve been getting tons of cucumbers from our CSA, so to use some of them up I made the cucumber dip from Veganomicon. This dip is really easy to make, and it’s so good. It’s very refreshing and summery. And it has lots of cashews, which usually make things super yummy.

I made a sort of greek-ish salad with red onion and chickpeas and mixed greens to go with this, and made a bunch of flatbread to eat it on. The flatbread was surprisingly easy to make, and turned out very well. The recipe is from How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, and you just mix up the dough in a food processor, let it rest for half an hour, and then roll it out and fry it. I’m definitely going to start making these more often to go along with meals.

I had pickled beets with this, and pepperoncinis and olives, and it was fantastic.

Local: Salad fixings, cucumber

from Veganomicon

I was having some friends over to watch Sweeney Todd, and I wanted to make something vaguely “meat pie” like to go with the movie’s theme. So I made the seitan potpie from Veganomicon, partly because I’d made it before and knew it was delicious, and partly because I read that I could double the crust to make a true pie. I made two mini, single-serving pies like the one pictured above, and made a big pie in a casserole dish with the rest of the crust and filling. (I only had two little ramekin things.) This was delicious, and my (omni) friends were both delighted and slightly creeped out (given the movie).

To go with it, I made the roasted fennel salad from Veganomicon, since I had fennel from my CSA. This was really delicious – I especially loved the way the dried cranberries and hazelnuts went together in this.

Local: Carrots, celery, fennel, salad greens