Spanakopita from Vegan with a Vengeance
Moussaka from Veganomicon
baklava from the internet
My friend Shannon throws these insane dinner parties where she deals with everyone's varying dietary restrictions by just making five times as much food. I've started contributing vegan dishes, and it's always super fun to come over early and cook with her and then eat until we all fall into a food coma. Her latest party was to celebrate her return from Greece, and I contributed the moussaka, spanakopita and baklava you see above. The other vegan offerings were dolmas and greek salad (sans feta). There was also tsatsiki and meat on skewers and carnivorous and vegetarian (in addition to the vegan) moussaka, and another baklava that had butter in it. It was pretty insane. There were about fifteen people there, and we all just ate until we couldn't eat any more, and then we lay around in the living room and rubbed our bellies.
I made the spanakopita filling and made and assembled the moussaka the night before. (Except for the nutmeg cream for the moussaka, which I made the day before and added right before putting it in the oven.) This is maybe the smartest thing I've ever done and definitely something I need to do more when I have dinner parties. Putting the moussaka together at a leisurely pace made it much nicer, since I actually waited until everything cooled down before I assembled it and wasn't burning myself on roast zucchini like last time I made it. And then the next day I didn't have to worry about it and had time to run around doing the billion other things that needed to be done.
We ran out of filo dough for the spanakopita, partly because I grabbed some filo that had been sitting around our freezer forever, and it turned out to be totally dried out and worthless, so we just put the leftover filling out and people ate it on pitas and it was fine. If I make the spanakopita again, I will definitely up the amount of spinach, I always end up with a way too high tofu to spinach ratio when I make the VwaV spanakopia, I even added some frozen spinach I had kicking it in the freezer after I had made the filling and it still seemed like not really enough spinach. It was still super tasty though, and people were like "This is tofu? Really? Whoa."
Shannon supplied the vegan baklava recipe, I think it was probably
this one. It turned out tasty. Other people thought it needed more syrup, but I kind of liked way it was light and not super overly sugary the way baklava often is. It was also very lemony, which was nice, although not how I usually think of baklava.
Then I ate leftover moussaka for lunch for a week and it was awesome.
Local: Zucchini, eggplant, tofu, bread (for bread crumbs)
from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen
Made with zucchini my friend Kaitlyn grew in her garden! This was super yummy, although also super drippy and hard to eat. I roasted the zucchini instead of grilling it - I used to think I disliked zucchini, but lately I'm super in love with roasted zucchini, which is good because it's summer and I'm suddenly awash in free zucchini. This also took basically no time to make, which was nice. Another tasty fresh-veggie filled summer meal. I ended up eating about half of the tomato/red onion/caper meal by itself as a little salad with my lunch over the next week, and it was tasty that way, too. The olives are on top instead of incorporated in the tomato salad because my boyfriend is an olive hater, so I left them off his sandwich.
Local: Tomato, onion, zucchini, bread 
from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen
Another pasta & raw veggies meal. The boyfriend says this is more saucy, but still not saucy enough. I subbed whole wheat spaghetti for Chinese noodles, and used chili-black bean sauce instead of adding crushed red pepper and fermented black beans. Delicious, took about fifteen minutes to make, and the only thing I need to use the stove for was making the pasta. A perfect summer meal.
Local: Tomatoes, basil 
from Pasta e Verdura, photo by boyfriend
Salad: Spinach, tomato, red bell pepper, pecans, baked tofu
Can you tell I was craving fresh greens? Pasta with a topping that could be a salad on its own, and then a salad on the side. Ever since summer started, all I want to eat is fresh vegetables (and pasta). Fortunately, we just joined a CSA, so between that and the farmer's market I've got plenty of veggies to eat. I think my boyfriend is craving more substantial (and more cooked) food, his response to the pasta was "Where's the sauce?" I liked it the way it was, I thought it tasted really fresh and simple, but I did add a little more lemon juice when I was eating the leftovers. I also had some of the leftovers with tahini sauce, which was really tasty. (Since I made a pound of pasta and the boyfriend is boycotting the leftovers, I've been eating this a lot!)
The recipe is from another cookbook I've rediscovered while moving, Pasta e Verdura by Jack Bishop. It's all recipes for pasta with vegetables, all vegetarian and many either vegan or easily made vegan by leaving out Parmesan cheese or subbing tofu ricotta. Most of the recipes come together fairly quickly, which is nice. Jack Bishop more recently wrote A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, which is one of my favorite cookbooks, so I am quite excited about rediscovering this one just in time for my veggie & pasta jonesing.
Local: Cucumber, mint, tofu, bell pepper, tomato 
photo by my boyfriend
I thought I'd mix it up by giving my tofu a little Mexican-style flavor. Plus it seemed like a good excuse to throw some avocado in there.
Ingredients: 2 tbl olive oil, 1 block tofu, 1 tomato, 1 can black beans, half an onion, hand full of spinach, 3 cloves garlic, 1 avocado, 2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp oregano, 2 tsp fresh cilantro, 1 tsp salt, dash pepper, 1/4 tsp cayenne, 1/2 tsp turmeric
First I heated up the oil. I sauteed the garlic for about thirty seconds, then added the onion and sauteed it for three or four minutes until it was soft and translucent. I added the spices and mixed everything around for about thirty seconds, then threw in the tofu, beans, and a little bit of water. After about six minutes I added the tomato and avocado, and stirred it around a bit for another couple of minutes, until the liquid was all gone. Then I added the spinach and cilantro and stirred everything around until it was wilted.
This was tasty, and I think it would have been stellar in a tortilla with some salsa.
Local Ingredients: Tofu, cilantro, avocado 
from How It All Vegan
The recipe for this is located exactly under the recipe for 
from The Moosewood Cookbook
I made this salad for the velodrome picnic on Tuesday as well. I was worried when I first took the eggplant out of the oven because it was pretty rubbery on the outside, but then I let it sit in the lemon juice & olive oil vinagrette over night and the next day it was crazy delicious and not rubbery at all. Eggplant is pretty much delicious no matter what you do to it, but this was extra delicious and really easy to make, it was pretty much "Chop stuff up, roast eggplant, let it sit around for a while."
Local: Eggplant, bell pepper, parsley, tomato 
from How It All Vegan, picture by ME with the fancy camera
Tuesday night the boyfriend & I went to the San Diego velodrome with two of our friends and watched bicycle racing and drank beer and had a vegan picnic and it was awesome. I made the faux egg salad from How It All Vegan because this stuff is like a super-delicious tofu-based form of crack cocaine. I think it's the large amount of veganaise that makes it so good. I used spicy dill pickles from the farmer's market in it this time, and it was extra good. We had this on crackers and sourdough bread and I spilled about half of it on my pants. Seriously, this is ridiculously easy to make and so delicious it will blow your mind. This time I made it straight-up old-school because I happened to have all of the ingredients, but I also like to sometimes swap the parsley for cilantro or add some wasabi powder to it or just throw in whatever I have around. I also usually don't add the full amount of veganaise on the theory that if there's only three tablespoons instead of a quarter cup in there, that makes it practically healthy.
Local: Tofu, pickles, parsley 
from The Indian Vegetarian, photo by the boyfriend
I'm in the process of moving in with my boyfriend, and amidst all the packing and sorting of possessions, I've rediscovered all these cookbooks I own but never use. These two dishes are from a cookbook called The Indian Vegetarian: Flavors for the American Kitchen, by Neelam Batra. I think my mom gave it to me, and I don't think I'd ever made anything out of it before. The rice dish turned out all right but pretty bland, but the asparagus was really delicious. I would never have thought to combine asparagus with tomatoes or cilantro, but it was so good. I will definitely have to try more things out of this cookbook, especially since I love Indian food but rarely cook it.
Local: Bell peppers, cilantro, tomato 
photos by the boyfriend
The second I saw 
We bought a magnetic white board for about fifty bucks at Staples, and mounted it in the kitchen next to the refrigerator. We ordered the tins from