January Vegan Food Swap

This month I participated for the first time in the vegan food swap.  Cat from The Verdant Life will assign someone for you to send items to (and someone is assigned to send you items), and you end up with a box of goodies in the mail!  It was pretty fun to receive a box of goodies, all of which I had never tried before, by the way.  You can participate in future months by visiting the registration page.

Donna sent items to me, and her blog is located here.  She sent me some neat items!

She sent a garlic and onion spice blend from The Gourmet Collection. I haven’t tried it yet, but I love to roast vegetables, so I’m sure I will start using it for that ASAP.  Also I received a dark chocolate bar with almonds from Trader Joe’s. That did not last long!!

Donna included a container of Hot and Fit Cereal Earnest Eats. I actually take oatmeal to work every morning, so I will be taking this to work to just leave it there. I am excited to try it!

Snack-wise, Donna sent a bag of roasted chickpeas, cashew crunch from Mrs. May’s Naturals, and Pop’d Kerns!  I love snacking, so all of these items are perfect for my tastes.

She also included an awesome mortar and pestle.  I have a tiny one that I don’t really use, because I can’t put much in it.  This is a bit bigger and is made so items won’t fall over the side. I imagine using it a lot.

Thanks to Donna for the box! It was a lot of fun to receive!!

Ethiopian Lentil Bowl

Tonight I made a recipe out of the great cookbook Simply in Season. The Ethiopian Lentil Bowl recipe looked so simple I thought, how good can it be?  But I have loved every recipe I have made from SiS (great job recipe testers!), so I decided to give it a try.

 

My husband and I found the dish to be extremely delicious!  Adding sweet or hot peppers, potatoes or peas, would be a great way to bulk this up a bit.  It’s wonderful on it’s own though.

The recipe can be found online here, but I recommend the cookbook.  It isn’t a vegan or vegetarian cookbook but it is much lighter on animal products (or easy subs can be made) than most conventional cookbooks. It has a lot of great information about hunger and diet, and their method of recipe testing created a book of fab recipes.  Enjoy!

November, the month of lentils

I started my November theme a few days early when my husband and I went out to eat.  We went to our regular Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal.  They have a two-sided dedicated vegan menu, so it is among the best options in Lincoln for vegans wanting Indian food.  They have tofu and mock meats available, but I generally go for the bean and lentils dishes.  I haven’t called the other Indian restaurants in town to verify whether they cook with ghee (or if they will leave it out), so we generally go here.  The owner/chef is very nice, as well.

This week I had the taj dal, which is make with split yellow lentils.  It is served with saffron rice and is quite delicious.

 

Tonight I will be cooking out of the classic seasonal-based cookbook Simply in Season.   I haven’t cooked much out of this since going vegan, as there are a number of dishes with meat and dairy, but most recipes are plant-based or easily veganizable.  I’ll be making Ethiopian Lentil Bowl, which uses red lentils. More on that tomorrow!

a few words about failure…

Today I have seen more than one person post about their failure to stay on theme, go fully vegan, cook all the recipes they planned, etc during this Vegan MoFo.

I definitely understand those feelings, as I felt some of that last year, but that is the thing about goals…they shouldn’t be something we use to punish ourselves but instead a way to propel ourselves forward and reach a bit higher.

I would say only about half the posts I made about cheese were the ones I actually intended. Some days cooking seemed like a chore or a cheese-related recipe wasn’t going to work out with what I had in the house, so I did something else instead.

Looking back at all the pictures I took, which is nice way to see what I did accomplish this month, I am happy with what I was able to do even if most of it was not in my original plan.

We shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves, and while we should acknowledge what we feel, I hope everyone can reflect on their experience and think about the things they did well and how without the goal, they may not have achieved even those things.

♥♥♥

Cindy

A Month in Cheese: My Vegan MoFo Wrap-up

Here we are at the last two days of October, and I’m so glad to have fully participated in Vegan MoFo this year. I signed up last year and did post for awhile, but I did not hit 20 posts. This year I posted 20 for my theme, as well as additional off-theme posts.

In this post I want to collect all the recipes, links, products, and books I used this month.  I also want to include recipes and products I didn’t get around to working on, as well as cheese recipes that I found during October.

What is next? I will keep posting on this blog and find that the idea of a theme seems to be a nice way to keep posting regularly. Since it is fall, I have been thinking a lot about cooking from the pantry.  For November I will focus on lentils.  I would like to use a number of different kinds and have a list of recipes I will work from. In December I want to continue along that line of thinking and focus on beans.  I am extremely excited about my theme for January, as I will cook various homemade vegan meats.  There are a lot of great recipes out there, so I want to tackle a bunch of them.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back at it in a few days.

Recipes:

1. Tofu Misozuke from Recipe Renovator*
2. Hot Artichoke Spinach Cheese Dip from Tofu ‘n’ Sprouts (post #3)
3. Homemade Labneh (yogurt cheese) (5)
4. Greek-style Yogurt from Fat Free Vegan (5)*
5. PPK Cashew Queso (6)
6. Homemade shredded cheese from Recipe Renovator (12)
7. Easy Macaroni and Cheeze from Fat Free Vegan (14, pictured above)
8. Vegan cheeses (almond feta, cashew goat, cheddar) from Vegetarian Times*
9. Roasted Red Pepper Cheddar from Olives for Dinner*
10. Smokey Cashew Cheese from Olives for Dinner*
11. Deep Fried Ricotta Puffs from Olives for Dinner*
12. Coconut milk Mac and Cheese from Olives for Dinner*
13. Vegan Mozzerella from Olives for Dinner*
14. Nacho Cheese sauce from Fo’ Reals Mom*
15. Smoked Coconut Gouda from Vedged Out*
16. Sun Dried Tomato Macadamia Nut Ricotta from The Naked Kitchen*
17. Coconut Milk Vegan Pizza from Colorado Vegan*
18. Easy Cream Cheese Wontons from The Unintentional Vegan*

Cookbooks:

1. VegNews Cheese issue  (vegan cream cheese, post #1)
2. Joanne Stepaniak’s The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook (Port Wine Uncheese, 7)
3. VegNews June 2012, “Greek Classics” (tofu feta, 15)
4. Bianca Philip’s Cookin’ Crunk: Eating Vegan in the Dirty South (tofu cottage cheese, 19)
5. Miyoko Schinner’s Artisan Vegan Cheese (tofu cheese, 20)

Restaurants:

1. Yia Yia’s, Lincoln, NE. (8)
2. Native Foods Cafe, Downtown Chicago (18)

Products:

1. Tofu Misozuke from Rau Om (post #2)
2. Teese cheese (3)
3. Tofurky pizzas (4)
4. Daiya cheese (4)
5. Amy’s vegan margherita pizza (11)
6. Punk Rawk Labs cheese (16)
7. St Martaen cheese (17)
8. Galaxy cheese products*
9. Dr. Cow*
10. Heidi Ho*
11. Sheese*
12. Parmela*

*Products/recipes not tried during Vegan MoFo, but I want to try later and hope they are useful to you!

Tofu Cheese: Vegan MoFo #20

I made it to twenty!  I will write a formal wrap-up post Tuesday or Wednesday to consolidate the recipes/links I used this month, along with a list of the items I did not yet try OR recipes others posted during the month.

I returned home from a business trip to find that Artisan Vegan Cheese from Miyoko Schinner had arrived!  I haven’t looked through it much yet, but I know I will be making many of these recipes.  I saw the tofu cheese recipe immediately, because it looks to be a tofu misozuke recipe, but one that only takes a week (not 2 months like the other recipe I want to try).  I decided to get it started today.

Here is the marinade:

and with the tofu:

This sits in the refrigerator for a week, so I will update when it is complete!

Tofu Cottage Cheese: Vegan MoFo #19

I used to eat tons of cottage cheese before going vegan, and it is probably the one cheese I miss sometimes.  I was excited to see a recipe for tofu cottage cheese when I received Bianca Philip‘s Cookin’ Crunk last week.

I made this tonight, because it is very quick to put together.  The package of tofu at my local store was only 14 ounces, but the recipe calls for a whole pound.

I think I would want more “whey” and for a bit more salt, so I think I’ll double the mayo/yogurt when I next make it.   I’m not sure I would eat this plain as I used to eat dairy cottage cheese, but I like Bianca’s serving suggestion for eating it on toast with Marmite.