Fridge disasters!

So my fridge died on Monday. After a couple of days calling the landlord with no answer, I walked over to find that their phone line died. A week of dying? Anyways, I get a brand new fridge on Sunday. Until then, I should toss out everything in the fridge that didn't get rescued aka taken to school and put in the fridge.

Anyways, all my cooking has to involve nothing from the fridge that does not make leftovers. What a challenge. Tonight: Pasta.

Sauce: garlic, olive oil, nutritional yeast, spices.

Pasta: tubes.

yum. i hope.

Birthday Adventures!

So tomorrow is my birthday. It just seems strange to think about, seeing how it doesn't feel very "birthday" like to me. No party. A couple cards. Humm. Not that I ever made a deal out of my birthday but I'm getting older and I guess I now see it is just a reflection of something. Something deeeeper than I want to talk about one here.

Wow, what a downer! It isn't that bad! Spent the day grading papers and email chatting with a new friend. Fun!

Today's cooking: Smoothie and bread. Yeah, I'm not eating enough these days because I'm sick! But once health returns I'll eat the rest of my kitchen, don't you worry!

One the agenda is a vegan chocolate cake for my birthday celebration tomorrow. The local burrito place gives you a free one on your birthday! And they have lots'o'veggie options! Yesterday I got a bbq tofu burrito. I wonder what my birthday burrito will contain...ohhh!

Anyways, the cake. I'm making a cake. Chocolate cake. My only other vegan friend tells me he'll love it, but I think everyone will love my cake. When has anyone ever turned their nose up to my cookin? Not since I can remember. I'll post some recipies later. I am battling some dinner (pbj on fresh bread!) and the final ministack of papers. That is, if my email checking habits and daydreaming don't pull me off course! Arr, matie!

Carrot Muffins...yay!

Made the carrot muffin (finally!). Here goes the recipie. They turned out good, they are still hot so hopefully they'll still be great tomorrow. If the last that long.

Carrot Muffin

2 c flour (I use half/half unbleached and ww)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 oil
1/2 c sugar
2 tb ground flax seed
3/4 c soymilk
1 c finely grated carrot
vanilla and cinnamon

Mix all the dry stuff minus flax, including carrot. Mix all the wet and the flax. Mix together. It will be a stiff dough of sorts. Put in muffin tin and bake 20 min at 400. Yumm.

makes 12 or so. yay!

I have a little old oven that barely holds my muffin tin, so watch times and stuff. This is just worked for me!

YUM!

Corn..umm...what was that again?!

So last night was a major cooking night. Yay! Not only did I make some bread (I've had cravings for pbj--not any more!) but I also had a couple friends over for dinner. It was a last minute thing, mostly because I made this "awful" stuff and I wanted help eating it. But instead of facing them with the original creation, I doctored it up and then, with the help of veganlunchbox.blogspot.com, I made the corn pone recipie and baked that up. Yummers! The bean mixture was pretty uneventful. That was why it was unyummy. But after some spicing up it was really good. Sometimes I'm soo dense! Here is what I did:

Rice and Bean Veggie Whateva

1 c each cooked brown rice and black beans
1 large can crushed tomatos
1/2 a small bag of mixed veggies

I put that all in a pot with 1/2 can of water and some salt and cooked it. No wonder it was dull! For the corn pone, I used two cups of the above and added some spices

paprika
cumin
chipoltile chili powder (found this at the co-op--great stuff!)
salt/pepper
garlic powder

Then I put the corn bread mix on top--yumm, this was great. Wish I had leftovers *drool*. Tonight, maybe some homework and carrot muffins. Wish me luck!

Hey! What the heck am I doin?

Oye, I would say sorry for not posting anything but not many people read this, I'm sure.

So today I'm grading papers and then I will try to make this carrot-muffin recipie I've been talking about for half a week. We'll see how fast these papers get graded. Right now, they aren't.

Cory is very interested in helping grade, or helping me not grade. Nothing says "I love you" quite like getting a fat cat on top of everything you're trying to do. Silly cat.

Oatmeal, friend!

Tonight was oatmeal night. Another long, dull day. Oatmeal is so easy to make, I don't know why you would want to buy little packets of the stuff when all you have to do it toss it on the stove with some water or soymilk. Sheesh, the things they do to food to make it more "appealing".

I find that just normal rolled oats make a more satifying oatmeal, one that has texture and a more nutty flavor. The "instant oat" variety, heck, the only reason I have that is because I saved it from camp each summer (they have to get rid of the leftover food and, yay, I always get all the more-or-less "healthy" stuff). Its good for cookie and bread making.

Oatmeal is soo simple to make. No recipie needed! Just cover the bottom of a small pot with dry oats, add water to cover plus a bit more, and put on med/low heat until its all cooked up. I add some sugar and a bit of salt, but you can put whatever you want in. Yumm.

Your heart will thank you.

Pizza tonight

Today really sucked. Well, it wasn't today as much as just not wanting to get out of bed this morning to go to a meeting at school. Whenever I'm in a bad mood I don't like to cook. I don't want to eat. Except pizza. I could eat that stuff anytime, anyplace. Well, as long as its vegan, of course. So I end up making my own pizza and its the best, if I do say so myself.

It's easy-cheesey too. I just make a crust, spread on some fake cream cheese, sauce, and top with some nutri-yeast. I also add sliced up veggies, garlic, spices, whatever I have laying around. Delish. Tonight is just red pepper and garlic. Yum. Recipies? Sure.

Crust

1/4 c blender grain*, crusted oats/wheat, something
1/2 c hot water
1/2 c warm water
spoonful of sugar
spoonful of yeast
1/2 tsp salt
flour

Set the grain/oats/whatever in with the hot water to rehydrate. Set aside until it looks "rehydrated".

Put the warm water in a bowl with the sugar and yeast. Let sit until the yeast makes the top all foamy looking. When its ready, add the drained "rehydrated" stuff, the salt, and enough flour (1-1.5 cups for me depending on the "rehydrated blend"). Mix to make pizza dough. Then put it in an oiled bowl in the oven or someplace warm to rise. Let double in size. Yay! Pizza dough.

Pizza!
1 recipie dough (above)
corn meal
toppin' stuff (You can use whatever, I provided my pizza version above)

Roll out the dough, using corn meal to cover all surfaces. Not only is the cornmeal a good anti-sticking agent, but it gives the pizza crust a nice texture. Great!

Put on a tray or whatever. I use a pizza stone that I preheat in the oven, so I just make my pizza on a cutting board. Put on toppings. Cook for about 20 minutes in a freak'n hot oven. Like 450-500 degrees. That makes a good pizza. Remove when its done. Cool and eat half of it.

Rice Milk Disasters

So today I tried my hand at making some rice milk. After soaking some brown rice for a while and blender-ing it, I thought I would try to run it through the juicer (I read online that "juicing" your soy/rice milk will make it really smooth). Well, that just put rice milk all over the wall and made a big mess. So, back to getting some soy milk. I can't handle this mess. I"ll try again...later.

Toffee Adventures

My sweet tooth kicked in last night so I thought I would make some toffee. Sure, its got butter and chocolate but both are easily subsituted. Betty Crocker, watch out!

So I get my "butter", some sugar, and water in a pot. Below is the recipie, from Ms. Betty herself:

1 c butter
1 c sugar
1/4 c water

combine in pot, cook until hardcrack (300 freak'n degrees!) Pour onto cookie sheet, top with choco-chips and some chopped nuts. Cool. Crack. Eat.

The first problem was noticed after the 'butter' melted. There was totally a yellow vs. clear liquid floating in that pan. Wadever, keep cooking it. When it hit hard crack, i poured it out to notice that some of the "butter" didn't mix with the sugar-yumm, thus producing a pour that was toffee and bright yellow oily-ness. *tears* But I let it cool, thinking maybe that toffee-like later would be edilbe. We rinsed the "toffee" off in the sink and patted it with towels to get the liquid butter-stuff off. What was left was pretty good, if i say so myself. Put some chips on that and popped it in the oven to "soften" it up good, spread them out and topped with pecans. Yum!

For a nightmare start, the toffee wasn't tooo bad. Perhaps I'll look for a more solid stick o'butter-stuff next time. I noticed after the fact that Betty said to not use "butter spread" but, hell, that was all I could find that was vegan in the store. I'll go to my store and check out something made vegan vs. too cheap to include whey. LOL.

Meow, my special little girl. Just trying to learn how to post pics, friend. Wow, so I figured out how to add pictures. Anyways, let me introduce you to Cory, my baby. I adopted her a little over a year ago and she is such a cuddlebug! Don't let that "leave me alone" grumpy face fool you. She has her own spot on the bed and thinks the first thing I need to do in the morning is pet her for a good half hour as she attempts to stick her head up my nose. She's a sweetie!

Quinoa and Blackbean Burritos

I had a late night at school and came home to find a yummy quinoa and blackbean burrito waiting for me in my freezer. A few weeks back I got my cook'n on and made a mess of these as "microwave" burritos so I would never be hungry again.

Quinoa an Blackbean Burritos

A cup each: precooked quinoa and black beans
one each, chopped up: big onion, red/green pepper
some oil

Ha, take your chopped veggie friends and heat up in a big pot with a little oil. Cook until tender and then mix in your quinoa and beans. You can also add some salsa (fresh, premade, wadever), seasonings, salt'n'pepper. Whatever.

When the filling is to your liking, get out some tortillas. I use some whole wheat ones I found at the store (tortillas are something I'm just not good at making...yet!). Put some of the filling in the middle. Fold them up and nice and purdy. It isn't so much a "wrap" but you'll want to fold the ends up too so that its a nice, contained pocket. Do that until you run out of tortillas or filling.

You could freeze at this point or I like to bake mine to get the tortilla a bit harder and so it stays together a little better. I cook for about 10-15 minutes at about 350. Being a poor college student, I don't have an oven with a temp knob so I guess a lot. Let cool, baggie them up, and put those friends in the freezer! I take them to school and nuke them or put them in the oven to bake them up good. Enjoy!

Welcome to my Veggie Kitchen!

Hey! I'm going to be special and create my own blog. Wa ha ha!

I'm a grad student and enjoy my vegan cooking. So I hope to make a page with some recipies (I cook a lot!), thoughts, and some other stuff. We'll see.

But now that I've taken the first step I'm wanting a sandwhich...so I guess I"ll have to make some bread. I find a lot of my recipies on one of three cites: vegweb, the post punk kitchen, and the vegan chef. When I figure out how to be cool and add links and the like I will. Until then, use google.

Oh, I really am making bread! I think I've finally found my favorite recipie, but I'm still working on finalizing it all. It's off vegweb. It's a nice, tender loaf for being half whole wheat. The first time I think I didn't add enough flour and it spilled out of the pan. Opps. Round two is on right now. Wish me luck.