a french dinner...

so the graduate student org on campus was giving out french composer series piano tickets for free! i snagged a couple tickets for tonight and plan on taking my special lady, but i thought it would be fun to make a "date" of it--complete with a fancy french (homecooked!) dinner.

needless to say, i didn't manage to find anything really french to make. i found a recipie for french dips using portabello mushrooms (yumm....shrooms...) but we thought it sounded too good to wait and made it the other night!

so, needless, i decided to combine elegant dishes with simple, heart satifying dishes. here is what i have planned and cooked for tonight.

great northern bean, garlic, and wine spread on wholegrain crackers
this is an adaptaion of the recipie veganlunchbox put together for the "valentines" day menu in satya magazine. basically, i had 1/3 of the stuff needed and improvised. it's delish though.

great northern bean and roasted garlic soup
this is taken from vegan with a vengance. except she uses a different bean. you can see the bean theme today, i pressure cooked a HUGE batch of gn beans this morning...ohh! must eat them up. haven't tried it yet, but it looks good. don't try putting it in the food processor, it will make a mess. i promise.

mini pizza with tempeh, veggies, and whatever i find
pizza is a classic favorite of mine, so why not mimic the pizza joint down the street and make some heart shaped pizza? i made a double batch of tempeh snasage crumbles (from v.w.a.v.) and just love putting them on homemade crust with sauce, tofutti cream cheese, peppers and onions, and some nurti-yeast. delish.

chocolate pudd'n with organic wildberry preserves
also from v.w.a.v. last time we made it (the way the recipie is writen) with the arrowroot it was like rubber. so i tried it with some cornstarch this time, so we'll see. i topped it with wildberry preserves. i don't know why, but it seemed fancy.