From Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Vegan Italiano cooking
I am a cookbook addict (self-diagnosed).
I can spend hours in the cookbook section of the book store. I am afriad to actually count how many are on our counter, but it's getting to the point where I need to start thinking about increasing my storage capacity.
The problem is that despite all of these cookbooks in my arsenal I always seem to find a recipe online somewhere that I want to try. This doesn't seem like a problem but when my wife doesn't see a return on our investment she starts to question my purchasing decisions.
This problem was averted this past week and my wife spent the good part of the past week scanning a couple cookbooks. One of them was Donna Klein's Vegan Italiano.
She found 5 great looking recipes and instructed me that "we will be making these". Well it wasn't quite like that but she did offer some encouragement in this direction.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we we only able to make 3 of the dishes. We originally made them Saturday night but they turned out so well that we made them again Sunday night!
The neat thing about this book is that the author states that "...this is an authentic Italian cookbook, no tofu or other food substitutes are required...". I was impressed not because I have an aversion to these substitutes (which I definitely don't) but this means that:
- I most likely have all of the ingredients required by a majority of the recipes
- I won't have to make a special trip in to the city (we live in the "boonies" now) in the event I don't have an ingredient (I can go to the "regular" grocery store)
- my family & friends could easily eat these meals and not be freaked out by "that weird Vegan food"
The biggest thing is...it's Italian food! Pasta, sauces, spices, herbs...how can you go wrong!
I'm glad my wife urged us to break into this treasure trove this weekend and we can't wait to try out more of the recipes.
I took a couple of snap shots of the finished products for your viewing pleasure.
Here is the Marianted Olives and Cherry Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta:
Here is the Spinach & Eggplant Lasana:
I can spend hours in the cookbook section of the book store. I am afriad to actually count how many are on our counter, but it's getting to the point where I need to start thinking about increasing my storage capacity.
The problem is that despite all of these cookbooks in my arsenal I always seem to find a recipe online somewhere that I want to try. This doesn't seem like a problem but when my wife doesn't see a return on our investment she starts to question my purchasing decisions.
This problem was averted this past week and my wife spent the good part of the past week scanning a couple cookbooks. One of them was Donna Klein's Vegan Italiano.
She found 5 great looking recipes and instructed me that "we will be making these". Well it wasn't quite like that but she did offer some encouragement in this direction.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we we only able to make 3 of the dishes. We originally made them Saturday night but they turned out so well that we made them again Sunday night!
The neat thing about this book is that the author states that "...this is an authentic Italian cookbook, no tofu or other food substitutes are required...". I was impressed not because I have an aversion to these substitutes (which I definitely don't) but this means that:
- I most likely have all of the ingredients required by a majority of the recipes
- I won't have to make a special trip in to the city (we live in the "boonies" now) in the event I don't have an ingredient (I can go to the "regular" grocery store)
- my family & friends could easily eat these meals and not be freaked out by "that weird Vegan food"
The biggest thing is...it's Italian food! Pasta, sauces, spices, herbs...how can you go wrong!
I'm glad my wife urged us to break into this treasure trove this weekend and we can't wait to try out more of the recipes.
I took a couple of snap shots of the finished products for your viewing pleasure.
Here is the Marianted Olives and Cherry Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta:
Here is the Spinach & Eggplant Lasana:
Friday, February 5, 2010
I’ve UnFriended Myself
I’ve left Facebook…for the time being.
I guess I just didn’t fit in with my circle of Facebook Friends. It seems like I didn’t have anything to offer.
Everyday I would see peoples’ recent kill numbers in Mafia Wars or that someone found a lonely sheep on Farmville. Just the scores that some people were racking up on that week’s video games were discouraging enough.
I just didn’t fit it. Did I want to fit in?
I joined Facebook to connect with people…family, friends, old classmates…the usual. I would get excited when someone I knew long ago would “Friend” me. I would write back to them trying to get caught up, etc but never hear back from them. I certainly would see their results in the latest Facebook poll, what celebrity they “are” or their progress in the aforementioned games.
Even when I posted something (a picture of a dish I just made, or a funny snapshot) I typically would get sarcastic replies…for that I could always count on.
I did meet quite a few people though. Fortunately, I can still follow their updates over on the Twitter.
I guess I kind of see Facebook as high school and Twitter as college. Not in the intellectual sense, but in high school you’re pretty much stuck with what you have (almost like family) but at college the chances of you finding someone or a group of people with like ideas rose dramatically (by no means am I insinuating that the content on Twitter is any more in-depth than Facebook).
There will come a day when I return to Facebook as that is the best way to stay easily connected with some people, but it will be at a much more manageable level.
At the very least this will free up some time to post here more often. Hopefully I can increase the quality and quantity of what I dispense here.
Hopefully…
I guess I just didn’t fit in with my circle of Facebook Friends. It seems like I didn’t have anything to offer.
Everyday I would see peoples’ recent kill numbers in Mafia Wars or that someone found a lonely sheep on Farmville. Just the scores that some people were racking up on that week’s video games were discouraging enough.
I just didn’t fit it. Did I want to fit in?
I joined Facebook to connect with people…family, friends, old classmates…the usual. I would get excited when someone I knew long ago would “Friend” me. I would write back to them trying to get caught up, etc but never hear back from them. I certainly would see their results in the latest Facebook poll, what celebrity they “are” or their progress in the aforementioned games.
Even when I posted something (a picture of a dish I just made, or a funny snapshot) I typically would get sarcastic replies…for that I could always count on.
I did meet quite a few people though. Fortunately, I can still follow their updates over on the Twitter.
I guess I kind of see Facebook as high school and Twitter as college. Not in the intellectual sense, but in high school you’re pretty much stuck with what you have (almost like family) but at college the chances of you finding someone or a group of people with like ideas rose dramatically (by no means am I insinuating that the content on Twitter is any more in-depth than Facebook).
There will come a day when I return to Facebook as that is the best way to stay easily connected with some people, but it will be at a much more manageable level.
At the very least this will free up some time to post here more often. Hopefully I can increase the quality and quantity of what I dispense here.
Hopefully…
Friday, January 22, 2010
Win a copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
Check out this site to enter to win a copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Hmmm, on second thought…
I was approached by a coworker today about bringing a dish in for our holiday luncheon. I could either do this or donate a dollar amount. I immediately realized this was an excellent opportunity to expose more of my circle of friends to vegan food!
One dish that I can eat over and over is ‘Creamy Macaroni and Cashew Cheese’ from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s ‘The Vegan Table’.
A friend of mine (who I have made this dish for before and thoroughly enjoyed it) overheard me offer this dish up and commented, “Well, you can’t really call it cheese” in a halfway joking manner.
I then started to quasi-defend it (only because we have this type of good-natured, sarcastic relationship) and replied with this :
“Well, the ‘cheese’ that is referred to in ‘Macaroni & Cheese’ is typically from a cow, but we don’t call it ‘Macaroni & Cow Cheese’ or ‘Macaroni & Dairy Cheese’, so the cheese can be looked at as a general term. Cheese is a product of milk, and we can get milk from a variety of sources…nuts being one of them (NOTE: Please forgive me if I am not completely 100% precise, but I figured I was close enough for the sake of the discussion). So I guess you could say that I am bringing ‘Macaroni & Nut Cheese’ to be more precise.”
No sooner than did these words come out of my mouth, that I realized just how this sounded.
Now, I know that some people can be turned off by their perception of vegan food, but I don’t have to help at all by offering them some of my “nut cheese”.
P.S. Colleen, I am sorry to have dragged your good name into this sophmoric story.
One dish that I can eat over and over is ‘Creamy Macaroni and Cashew Cheese’ from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s ‘The Vegan Table’.
A friend of mine (who I have made this dish for before and thoroughly enjoyed it) overheard me offer this dish up and commented, “Well, you can’t really call it cheese” in a halfway joking manner.
I then started to quasi-defend it (only because we have this type of good-natured, sarcastic relationship) and replied with this :
“Well, the ‘cheese’ that is referred to in ‘Macaroni & Cheese’ is typically from a cow, but we don’t call it ‘Macaroni & Cow Cheese’ or ‘Macaroni & Dairy Cheese’, so the cheese can be looked at as a general term. Cheese is a product of milk, and we can get milk from a variety of sources…nuts being one of them (NOTE: Please forgive me if I am not completely 100% precise, but I figured I was close enough for the sake of the discussion). So I guess you could say that I am bringing ‘Macaroni & Nut Cheese’ to be more precise.”
No sooner than did these words come out of my mouth, that I realized just how this sounded.
Now, I know that some people can be turned off by their perception of vegan food, but I don’t have to help at all by offering them some of my “nut cheese”.
P.S. Colleen, I am sorry to have dragged your good name into this sophmoric story.
Friday, November 27, 2009
A Tale of Two (Vegan) Thanksgivings
It is a long held tradition in my family that we have our Thanksgiving on the Sunday before the official Thanksgiving. It was started long ago as my parents ran a farm and didn’t really have holidays per se. I guess it doesn’t really matter what the business was, if you own it, then calling in sick and taking vacation is not a viable option to often.
Nevertheless, this tradition still holds after more than 25 years since my parents sold the farm.
I try to help out in providing food as my 80+ year old mother should not be held responsible for feeding upwards of 20 mouth that have a hard time staying shut (present company NOT excluded).
I’ve been exposing my family to my vegan cooking gradually over the past year. Some dishes have been hits and some have been misses. I can’t really say that I improved my win-loss percentage with this latest attempt (2 wins and 2 losses…which could almost be considered 2 draws instead) but I believe that I did accomplish something worthy…that I can (at some undetermined point in the future) host my own Thanksgiving and satisfy just about everyone.
Through Erik Marcus’s Vegan.com website I have been exposed to a veritable gold mine of information. Most recently, some amazing recipes from Robin Robertson. Mr. Marcus posted links to her 2008 & 2009 Thanksgiving recipe collection.
Although I wanted to make and eat them all I carefully chose 4 to present to my family:
Roasted Wheatmeat
I made a trial version of the seitan & stuffing last Friday night for my live-in food critic (which she responded to with rave reviews). I assumed some factor of safety and waited until Sunday morning to make the gravy, smashers and cheesecake (which proved to be a good assumption on my part).
So, a few people tried the seitan (my sister even asked to take some home), more enjoyed the mashed potato, no one consumed the gravy (only because I neglected to pass it…oops) and everyone who sampled the cheezecake became wide-eyed and displayed an expression reminiscent to that of a teenage boy watching his prom date descend the staircase (which apparently only happened in Disney movies from the 1970’s).
I made these same dishes 4 days later for my wife's family on Thanksgiving, but with not much better of an acceptance percentage. I must given my test subjects the benefit of the doubt though. Many of these dishes are my first try at them and they are being compared to dishes that they have been eating for almost 50 years.
But I won't give up, I'll keep on coming back. After all, Christmas dinner is coming up soon...
Nevertheless, this tradition still holds after more than 25 years since my parents sold the farm.
I try to help out in providing food as my 80+ year old mother should not be held responsible for feeding upwards of 20 mouth that have a hard time staying shut (present company NOT excluded).
I’ve been exposing my family to my vegan cooking gradually over the past year. Some dishes have been hits and some have been misses. I can’t really say that I improved my win-loss percentage with this latest attempt (2 wins and 2 losses…which could almost be considered 2 draws instead) but I believe that I did accomplish something worthy…that I can (at some undetermined point in the future) host my own Thanksgiving and satisfy just about everyone.
Through Erik Marcus’s Vegan.com website I have been exposed to a veritable gold mine of information. Most recently, some amazing recipes from Robin Robertson. Mr. Marcus posted links to her 2008 & 2009 Thanksgiving recipe collection.
Although I wanted to make and eat them all I carefully chose 4 to present to my family:
Roasted Wheatmeat
with Oyster Mushroom and “Sausage” Stuffing
Brown Gravy
Garlic Smashers
Ginger-Dusted Pumpkin Cheezecake
Brown Gravy
Garlic Smashers
Ginger-Dusted Pumpkin Cheezecake
I made a trial version of the seitan & stuffing last Friday night for my live-in food critic (which she responded to with rave reviews). I assumed some factor of safety and waited until Sunday morning to make the gravy, smashers and cheesecake (which proved to be a good assumption on my part).
So, a few people tried the seitan (my sister even asked to take some home), more enjoyed the mashed potato, no one consumed the gravy (only because I neglected to pass it…oops) and everyone who sampled the cheezecake became wide-eyed and displayed an expression reminiscent to that of a teenage boy watching his prom date descend the staircase (which apparently only happened in Disney movies from the 1970’s).
I made these same dishes 4 days later for my wife's family on Thanksgiving, but with not much better of an acceptance percentage. I must given my test subjects the benefit of the doubt though. Many of these dishes are my first try at them and they are being compared to dishes that they have been eating for almost 50 years.
But I won't give up, I'll keep on coming back. After all, Christmas dinner is coming up soon...
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