Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Holy Seitan!

Note: Spell check is not working and I'm to tired to pick over every word. Blame blogger.

I was correct in assuming that I wouldn't be cooking much with Joe gone to Vegas. I only made two things while he was away that are blog worthy. The first of these is the Blueberry Lemon Muffins from JVB. I subbed half of the white flour for whole wheat pastry but left the rest of the recipe alone. Colleen is right about the tang of the lemon complimenting the blueberry, everyone loved these.

I do have one small gripe. The recipe calls for the zest of 2 lemons and 1 tsp. of lemon extract. What is that all about? Why not just use fresh lemon juice and scale back some of the nondairy milk? I was not in a place to go figuring that out, but I will next time. It just doesn't make any sense.
The other thing that I made while Joe was away was Sloppy Joannas from Yellow Rose Recipes. These are the best sloppy joe's I've ever had! I not usually a huge fan of tvp but these were great. Joanna reccomends blending the veggies and sauce if you've got picky kids. I thought that was a great tip and implimented it. The kids still wouldn't eat this but I loved it.
No, I'm not going raw. Some how I came across these coconut lemon cookies at Gone Raw. The recipe sounded so simple, cashews, lemon juice, lemon zest, agave, coconut. I thought it would be a good snack for the kids and they sounded tasty to me.

My picture is not picking up any of the awesome yellow color. These cookies are tart with just enough sweet for them to not be overwhelmingly sour. They totally kill a sweet craving and I don't care how many the kids gobble down. The cashews have to soak for 4 hours before you put these together and after that they hop into the dehydrator for 12 hours. I highly recommend these.
Blackbean Tortilla Soup from little vegan monsters. This is not kid friendly. It has some pretty good spice to it. I don't think that I could have handled the heat if it weren't for the avocado, sour cream and tortilla strips.

I have never liked black bean soup but this recipe caught my eye and sounded good. I've only ever seen black bean soup that is all blended up. This soup has a broth with the beans swimming in it. We loved it!
I want to fish out some of the spicy beans and make nachos with them. Yum!
For breakfast this morning I made Classic Currant Scones from JVB. Again I subbed out 1/2 the white flour for whole wheat pastry. I am not a raisin fan but the currants in these scones have a nice tart bite to go along with thier sweet. The scones have the dense flaky texture I expect and were lovely with Earth Balance and jam. The kids were happy, too.
Joe got home from Vegas on Friday night. Saturday night I hit the road and went to spend the night at my moms. I also had my friend Teresa over. For dinner I made Potstickers from little vegan monsters. We sucked them all down and I forgot to take a picture.
While I usually have one vegetable or another going bad in my fridge at any given time, these potstickers were so good that I couldn't stand the thought of the leftover potsticker vegetables going bad. I also promised Joe some potstickers and we had ate all of the others.

So, today I chopped up the rest of the vegetables, seitan, tofu, and other ingredients in order to make some more. I have never been a giant fan of seitan. I'll eat it but I don't go gaga over it. This is the most amazing recipe ever. Potstickers are definietly time consuming but not really difficult.
Again they were a giant hit and the whole family ate them for dinner.
With all of those ingredients I ended up making 6 dozen. Four and a half dozen are frozen in this bag. I bet ya'll want to come over now, huh? I can't say enough good things about this recipe. I used white flour instead of spelt but that was the only alteration. It took about 2 hours to put all of those together.

That's about it. Thanks to everyone who voted for my entry in the Vegetable Love contest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So glad to hear you enjoyed the lemon cookies! Here is the link. Cheers, Kandace

Jennifer said...

I can't believe your kids would eat the Sloppy Joannas! It looks delicious!!! Those coconut balls look good too. I made coconut treats last night too, but they're not nearly as healthy.