I have been making some food

So I have been busy building food, and looking for recipes that will use up the goods that I have stashed away and you get a recap, enjoy.
First up,

Quinoa bread:



I made it largely from the recipe found here http://bakingsheet.blogspot.com/2005/12/whole-wheat-quinoa-bagettes.html but I changed it up a bit. On it is this fancy vegan peanut butter stuff I found at the evil wal-mart, dark chocolate and white chocolate. They are rather tasty (and now gone *grin*) and I was quite pleased to find something like that there. My ingredients list looked more like this:

1 cup whole, uncooked quinoa
2 cups warm water (about 105F)
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups rye flour
2 tbsp vital wheat gluten
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp olive oil

Vegan Blueberry Pancakes and Tofu Scramble:



The tofu scramble is just tofu cooked like one would scrambled eggs and I added mushrooms in. The blueberry pancakes were made from this recipe (from herehttp://www.veganconnection.com/recipes/blueberry.htm but I halved it):

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/8 cup rye flour
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup soy milk
1/4 tablespoon egg replacer mixed with 1 tablespoon water
1/3 cup blueberries
In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add milk and egg replacer and stir just until flour is moistened. Set aside for 5 minutes until the skillet is heated and stir in blueberries right before pouring.Heat non-stick skillet over medium heat; spray lightly with non-stick spray, if necessary. Pour batter by scant 1/4 cupfuls onto hot griddle, making a few pancakes at a time. Cook until tops are bubbly and bubbles burst; edges will look dry. With pancake turner, turn and cook until undersides are golden. Place on warm platter; keep warm.

Fig Newtons:

This is my happy recipe, I wanted to make them without any refined flour, sugar etc. so I peered at a bunch of different recipes and largely built my own.



Filling:
(based off a recipe from fatfreevegan.com)
Ring of dried figs
4-5 pitted medjool dates
1 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tbsp. water
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ginger
pinch of nutmeg

Place in food processer and grind to a paste.

Dough:
I cant find the recipe I based it on but I believe it was
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1-2 tsp vegan butter
1 tbsp maple syrup
scant 1/4 cup water

Cut butter into flour and add maple syrup and water to mix into a dough. Split into two portions. Roll 1st portion out into a thin rectangle, spoon fig filling in two lines along dough, place second portion of dough, rolled out, on top, and cut between filling. Pinch the edge of the dough to seal.

Bake in 350-275 oven for 25-30 minues.

Eggless Egg Salad:
This is a rather tres good recipe, and me mere even liked it (although I didnt tell him the main ingredient was tofu, hehe) from here http://www.isga-sprouts.org/ but I did do some altering around but not much.



3/4 package FIRM TOFU
Small onion minced
1 medium carrot, coarsely-grated
1 stalk celery, finely-minced
1 small bell pepper, finely-minced
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup ALFALFA sprouts

Cut the tofu into dice-sized bits. Add onion, carrot, celery, pepper and seeds. Mix gently. Add the mayonnaise (below). Chill. Place Alfalfa Sprouts on wrap, add salad.

The Mayonnaise
1/4 package SOFT TOFU
2 teaspoons Chinese sesame oil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Whip the first 5 ingredients in a blender or food processor. Keep the machine going, and gradually drizzle in the oil. When all oil is in you should have a nice, creamy, eggless mayonnaise to add to your eggless egg salad.

Vegan Cinnamon Buns:



Based off recipe from http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_33926,00.html

Dough:
1/4-ounce package yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup warm soymilk
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegan butter
egg replacer of one egg
3 1/2 to 4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

Filling:
1/2 cup melted butter, plus more for pan
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins, walnuts, or pecans (I put them in a chunk of the batter and left the rest of it with just the cinnamon and sugar)

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside. In a large bowl mix milk, sugar, melted butter, and egg replacer. Add 2 cups of flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast mixture. Mix in remaining flour until dough is easy to handle. Knead dough on lightly floured surface for 5 to 10 minutes. Place in well-greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
When doubled in size, punch down dough. Roll out on a floured surface into a 15 by 9-inch rectangle. Spread melted butter all over dough. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over buttered dough. Sprinkle with walnuts, pecans, or raisins if desired. Beginning at the 15-inch side, role up dough and pinch edge together to seal. Cut into 12 to 15 slices.
Coat the bottom of baking pan with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Place cinnamon roll slices close together in the pan and let rise until dough is doubled, about 45 minutes. Bake for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

And that is it, I think.
I did make the BBQ ribz today but no picture yet, tis dark out now. I also have plans to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies but its getting kind of late, so it might not happen here tonight.

Anyhew, 2 weeks!! Hooray!
Hermit

Vegan for a week and the eating is good

Well, it was a weeklong foray into eating vegan and I must say that I don't think it would be that hard switch over except for eating out and prepared food because they are awfully sneaky about using animal products. I actually think that I might have just kept with it but I have some eggs and cheese in the fridge and I would feel bad about wasting them.

So here is the exciting food that was consumed:
The first day I made eggplant parmesan, good but not all that photogenic, so no picture of that one. You can see a picture of it and the recipe here though.
I also realized that the Haagen Dazs Raspberry Sorbet I had just procured qualified, so twas demolished aussi.

Then I decided to try some baked goods since they generally involve eggs and milk. Poked about to find some recipes that I had the ingredients for. So I made up these biscuits as per this recipe:

Drop Scones or Biscuits

1 cup white flour
1cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 1/4 cups soymilk mixed with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice

Preheat oven to 400⁰F.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Stir in soymilk mixture with a fork. Stir quickly to moisten the dry ingredients. Drop the mixture by large spoonfuls onto lightly greased or non-stick cookie sheets, far enough apart so they don't touch.

Bake in a 400⁰F oven for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown on the bottom and beginning to color on the top.

Biscuits were not too fancy looking either so no pictures, they weren't bad but definitely just a plain biscuit, kind of like bread, good with the eggplant dish.

Next up was blueberry muffins

These were tasty, I didn't note any weird yucky flavours or anything. Recipe was from some website that I didn't note the name of but I altered it a bit anyways.

3/4 C soymilk
1/2 C applesauce
1/4 C water
1 C whole wheat flour 1 C all purpose flour
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 C blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Mix wet ingredients. Mix dry ingredients. Add blueberries to dry ingredients and coat with the flour mixture. Mix together and bake at 400 degrees for about 18 minutes.

I spent a long time looking for a dessert type recipe that I had everything for and finally fixated on cinnamon buns.

Very tasty indeed, although I think I skimped a bit on the margarine in the filling part so it was a bit dry. My big issue was the icing , cream cheese isn't vegan although there apparently is a vegan substitute that can be purchased. I looked around and finally decided on a sugar and milk concoction, however I was out of icing sugar, no problem, just wiz some granulated sugar up in the blender. That was not terribly successful.

A trip to the store ensued and me builts some homemade vegan cream cheese.


1 tub of firm tofu
3.5 T cashew butter
4.5 t lemon juice
Remove tofu from package and place in a clean dishtowel, squeeze to remove moisture, continue squeezing until very little water remains. Place all ingredients in blender and puree until smooth. For me the blender wouldn't mix it so I added some of the tofu juice until it would blend, even so it didn't get completely smooth but I think that is largely because of the age of the blender. Refrigerate, it will thicken as it cools.

With that built and icing sugar acquired, I could have me some cream cheese icing for my cinnamon rolls. Mix up some cream cheese with icing sugar, vanilla and some vegan margarine if you like and voila, icing.

My nice warm, iced cinnamon bun, yum yum!
And lastly, to use up my veggies in the fridge, I built some sloppy joe goo.

• 1 tablespoon light olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 10- to 12-ounce package tempeh, any variety, finely crumbled
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
  
• 1 tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
  
• 1 maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon each: chili powder, basil, parsley
  
• Whole wheat rolls or pita bread
• Shredded lettuce

Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the onion until it is golden. Add the crumbled tempeh, celery and green pepper and saute over moderate heat until the tempeh is lightly browned.

Add the remaining ingredients (except the last 2), stir well, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Serve hot on whole wheat rolls or in pita bread with shredded lettuce.

This was a bit bland, I think because I vetoed a fair number of the originally called for spices, but on bread with lettuce, it isn't too bad at all.

And there you have it, a notsoshort summary of my vegan week.

Hermit