tofu is a Vegan Crunk tester, kale from Cooks Illustrated
This may be a revolutionary step in my transition from beet hata to beet lova - I am actually just eating them by themselves all roasted up with olive oil. Of course, I'm pretty sure everything becomes delicious with enough olive oil. I just cut the beets up into chunks, mixed them up with olive oil, salt, pepper, and this "Parisian salad herb" mix from Penzy's that's got dill and chives and stuff, and then roasted them at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes. Boom, delicious! (You know, for beets.) I'm a big fan of recipes where you just stick stuff in the oven for a while, they usually turn out great and it's just so easy.
I first had this tofu in fried form in the great
wafflewich, and I loved it breaded and fried, but the marinade was so good I really wanted to just try the tofu by itself. Plus I'm always looking for new baked tofu marinades, I love me some baked tofu. This tofu came out tasty - savory and almost bland, but in a good way. I really liked the way the nutritional yeast flavor came through.
The braised kale was amazing. Cooks Illustrated always has these super long explanations of their recipes and the scientific explanation behind what they're doing and what not, and while I totally nerd out over that shit, in this case I was sort of like "So what? It's freaking kale, just saute that shit for ten minutes with some garlic and olive oil." But then I tasted this kale, and it was so delicious, all super tender and sort of melty and really intense, like the kale flavor got all concentrated. Cooks Illustrated: Once more proving that nerds are awesome.
PS. The boyfriend recently got me a t-shirt that says "Nerds 2
2 ever", it is my new favorite thing.
Local: Kale, tofu, beets
stuffed peppers and greens from Veganomicon, Ciabatta from Cooks Illustrated
This is the first time I've made bread using a biga/poolish (the little chunk of bread dough you leave out overnight to ferment), and it was widely acknowledged as the best bread I've ever made. The recipe made two loaves so I froze one of them, because we never manage to finish more than one loaf before the bread goes stale, but then I had friends over the day I made this and they finished off the entire first loaf (by itself! Without peanut butter or earth balance or anything on the bread at all). I cleverly veganized the recipe by subbing soy milk for milk, and I also used active dry yeast instead of instant yeast. (I use active dry yeast because I bought a giant sack of it at Costco, I just let it sit in whatever water is required for the recipe for ten minutes before I add it to the other ingredients and it works fine.) The only trouble I had with the recipe was shaping the loaves - the recipe clearly says that you should press the dough flat with your finger tips before putting it in the oven, and it has a picture and everything, so that's what I did, but my loaves came out kind of focaccia shaped instead of the nice rounded ciabatta loaf shape they have in the picture in the magazine. Maybe I pressed too vigorously ? I don't know.
The creole stuffed peppers were very good, and I'd like to give a big shout out to smoked paprika, because I am pretty sure that's where their greatness comes from. I do wish they'd had some rice mixed into them though, because in my head you can't really have stuffed peppers without rice. I also kind of liked that the peppers were cut in half lengthwise and then stuffed, instead of cutting the top off and stuffing them - I think it's a much larger stuffing to pepper ratio this way.
The collard greens were easy and delicious. I used the easy veggie broth + liquid smoke version of this recipe, and it was still super good.
Local: Peppers, collard greens 
seitan veganized from Cooks Illustrated, rice from The Indian Vegetarian
I successfully veganized a Cooks Illustrated recipe! I took their tandoori chicken recipe, and subbed soy yogurt and seitan. It turned out really good, all tangy from the yogurt and nicely complex from the spices. I realized I've actually never had tandoori anything before that I remember, so I'm not sure exactly how this is supposed to taste. (I expected it to be spicier than it actually was - it had lots of spices, and it was a nice complex, rich flavor, but it wasn't hot-spicy.) Regardless, it was very yummy, and relatively easy to make. Mostly I was just thrilled to successfully veganize something from Cooks Illustrated - I love them and their science nerd approach to cooking, but half of their recipes are always like "Meat with more meat and some eggs."
The rice was very good, lightly jazzed up with some cumin seeds and coriander. For once, rice turned out perfectly for me - I think maybe the secret is that this time I actually bothered to rinse the basmati rice before using it. This was super simple to make, barely more trouble than regular rice, but had a nice slight fanciness about it that complemented the seitan.
Local: Salad fixins 
Potatoes from Veganomicon, Glaze from Cooks Illustrated
This was a "What can I make with things I have lying around?" dinner. I love the vcon lemony roast potatoes, and I added some sun-dried tomatoes because 1. sun-dried tomatoes are awesome and 2. I just bought a giant jar of them at Costco. These turned out all lemony and tangy and delicious.
The grilled tofu was an attempt to veganify some a glaze for grilled chicken in Cooks Illustrated. It didn't work super well - the glaze was really tasty, but the tofu didn't really absorb it very well. I think this would have worked well with tempeh, since tempeh sort of has its own flavor going on anyway. It might also have worked better if I had baked the tofu in the glaze. 
from Cooks Illustrated
I apologize for the extreme crappiness of this photo, but I was very drunk when I made this pie. I came home from a beer festival with some friends, did a load of dishes, and baked a pie. Well, "pie-like thing" - you caramelize the apples on the stove in a skillet, and then put a pie crust on top of it and stick it in the oven. I had already made the pie dough and prepped all the apples, so when I got home drunk, all I had to do was throw the apples in the skillet.
After everything was prepped the pie came together in about twenty minutes, or as my friend Jessie said, "Less time than it took [name redacted] to vomit." And it was delicious. The apples were soft and sugary, and the crust on top was flakey and buttery. It was much easier and quicker to put together than a regular pie, but just as pie-tastically delicious. I even cleaned the skillet after I was done, and I never do that when I'm sober.
Local: Apples