Monday, October 12, 2009

Uhoh Spaghettios!

Ingredients
8 oz Eden Vegetable Alphabet Pasta
2 Trader Joe's Sausage-less Sausage
2 Campbell's condensed tomato soup
boatloads of basil
half of a white onion chopped
3 cloves of garlic minced
EVOO
red pepper flakes
soymilk

I made the pasta. While the pasta drained, I put the EVOO and the onion in the pot to saute the onions. Then I added garlic and red pepper flakes. I was cautious but probably should have added more red pepper flakes. After that I added the tomato soup and basil. Now I basically did this recipe so I could try out my new immersion blender - but I'm not sure that the immersion blender did much! The original recipe suggests using soymilk at this point; I forgot and didn't add it until later. Instead, I added the sausage to the sauce in order to heat it a little, and then readded the pasta. At this point I realized there wasn't nearly enough sauce for all of the pasta, so I added soymilk. It was only a generous splash, but still I think it reduced the flavor down.
This much pasta means I'll be eating this for the week I fear.

It tastes good, but just not as deep of a flavor as I'd like.

Suggestions for next time:
If I had it to do again, I'd go with 4 oz of pasta and/or bigger more traditional pasta. The alphabet pasta grew a LOT
I'd also add a lot more basil. Now, to be clear, when I said a boatload I mean I chopped up probably 4 tbsp of basil. I think even more would awesome.
There was also some heat missing from this recipe. I would eager up the red pepper flakes or
maybe get spicy sausage.

The alphabet pasta would be great for soup, but it was so small that it made the consistency very mushy (squishy perhaps?).

This recipe is a modified version of this recipe

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Vegan Month!

I just discovered that this is Vegan month! I feel recharged in my desire to blog recipes daily so I can commemorate the month!

For now, I'll go with posting a link to the LA Times daily recipe for Vegan food.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/vegan-month-of-food/

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Spicy Sweet Potato wedges

Ingredients:

3 sweet potatoes (2 pounds), peeled, cut lengthwise into ¼-inch-thick spears

2 tablespoons EVOO

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

½ tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 425ºF. Place oven racks in the upper third and lower third of oven. Lightly oil 2 rimmed baking sheets.
2. Combine potato spears, oil, rosemary, cumin, salt, and cayenne in a large bowl; toss well to coat. Arrange potatoes in a single layer on baking sheets.
3. Roast potatoes, rotating pans and tossing potatoes every 10 minutes, until lightly golden and tender, about 30 minutes.

As a warning, I made this a second time but was not very careful about measuring the cumin & cayenne - it ended u p becoming a feat of strength to eat an entire potato wedge! Be very careful with measurements!

It's even low carb! (click for original atkins recipe)

Mexican Pasta

This dinner was really an excuse to use up leftovers and yet, somehow, it turned out super delicious! The best part is all of my ingredients were purchased at Trader Joe's which meant this was an incredible cheap meal. Next time, I'll keep track of prices to calculate the cost. But I think it was maybe $15 total and it made 4-6 healthy servings.

Vegetable rotini pasta
half of the soy chorizo
1/4 cup (or so) of plain pasta sauce.
corn tomato-less salsa
fresh cilantro

Basically I made the pasta. While the pasta drained, I put my leftover chorizo in the pasta pot, added the jar of salsa, and some pasta sauce to cover. I added the pasta back and stirred. Then I added chopped cilantro to taste.

The chorizo made this pretty spicy. This recipe might be better if I had used only 1/4th of the chorizo. Definitely a complete meal. If you're not vegan, I bet some queso freco crumbled on top would be great, too.

Vegan Corn Chowder

I love getting spark people recipes daily. Most of them aren't things I'd make, but some of them inspire me to modify recipes to make something very tasty.

I modified this original recipe to make it vegan and more interesting!

1 Tbsp EVOO
diced celery
diced onion
diced green & red peppers
10 oz frozen whole kernel corn
1 box of Trader Joe's harvest medley (chopped squash, yams, etc)
1 cup water
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/4 himalayan sea salt
black pepper to taste
1/4 tsp paprika
2 tbsp flour
2 cups soy milk

more fresh parsley to serve

For all the vegetables, I followed the Rachel Ray rule for soups that nothing should be too big to go on a spoon. I like my vegetables a bit coarser, though, so they were big chunks in my soup. Also, I doubled my entire recipe, although not too exactly, but I found this recipe pretty forgiving.

Directions:
1. In my big soup pan, I heated the oil. Then added the celery, onion & peppers to saute for a few minutes.
2. Then I added the corn, harvest medley, water, salt, pepper, and paprika. Once the water boiled, i brought the heat down to medium and let it cook (covered) for 10 minutes.
3. In a glass jar, I mixed the soy milk and flour. (add & shake the ingredients).
4. Add the flour mixture to the soup. Then add the rest of the soy milk.
5. Wait for the soup to boil and then remove.

Serving this with fresh parsley was very important. I think a little more layered heat - perhaps more paprika? maybe a little finely diced jalapeno when I'm sauteing the vegetables? - would add more depth to this soup.

Regardless, it was super hearty for a meal & tasted great for days.

Raw Mango Avocado salad

My modified version of this recipe (to make it totally raw) was
2 large mangos, chopped. (I peeled it one time, but I think the peel is delish, so I'd keep it the next time).
2 medium avocados, chopped
1 lime, juiced.
1/4 cup of cilantro finely chopped - or really to taste.

After that, just mix all the ingredients. The combination of flavors here is incredible. All fresh ingredients makes it wonderfully raw, too1


Original recipe

Orange Quinoa salad

"Mix cooked couscous or quinoa with orange zest and juice, olive oil, maybe honey, sliced oranges, raisins or dried cranberries, chopped red onion and chopped almonds. Serve over greens, or not."

This salad was not very exciting. I made it with quinoa, cranberries and no honey with friends; the large quantities of left overs may have turned me off in the end. It definitely got better with age.

I'm curious what it would be like with different oranges.

It's also from the New York Times article.

Chickpea Tabbouleh

"Roughly chop cooked or canned chickpeas (you can pulse them, carefully, in a food processor) and toss with olive oil, lemon juice, lots of chopped fresh parsley and mint, and a few chopped tomatoes. Call this chickpea tabbouleh."

I gotta say, laziness set in and so I did not chop or pulse the chickpeas. This recipe was okay, but I think it lacked some depth. If I made it again, I'd up the amount of parsley to make it almost absurd and eliminate the olive oil.

This recipe is also from that New York Times Article

Mustardy Cucumber Salad

A nice cucumber salad: Slice cucumbers thin (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), toss with red onions and salt, then let sit for 20 to 60 minutes. Rinse, dry, dress with cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard; no oil necessary.

The quality of the mustard I think is more important than I give it credit for. It reminds me a lot of this Whole Food's Recipe. My mandoline slicer makes both of these recipes significantly easier.

Both of these salads are great as left overs the next day.

Also, for those raw foodists out there, I used Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar and Himalayan Sea Salt. Of course, the mustard makes it not raw; I'm not really sure how to work around that.

To find the full list of summer salad's, check out the New York Times post here

Welcome!

So I'm starting a blog to consolidate all of the recipes I find online. My goal is to make the ones I place on here and discuss them. First couple of posts will be recipes I've already made.

For the outside viewing public, I'm (mostly) vegan and ate raw foods for a little while. I'd like to go back to the raw diet, though.