My Birthday Food Fun, 2012

Yesterday was my birthday, so in keeping with posting on places to eat, I'm including the restaurants that we went to to celebrate.  To be even more helpful, I'm including the actual addresses of the restaurants, just in case you make the drive.  :-)  My daughters also made my cake, and my mom made a pudding pie, mmm-mm.

 The first restaurant is Andy Nguyens (2077 Broadway, Sacramento) that is a Buddhism-influenced vegetarian restaurant.  My mom took me there on Friday for lunch to start the eatin' early.

We started with a simple soup that the waitress described as "broth with vegetables."  She really sold it with her vibrant description, don't you think?  My mom held the spoon up for your viewing pleasure.  There was some basic soft seitan in there as well.

Next came the Treasure Rolls, which we thought looked beautiful.  To make it vegan, they subbed out the veggie ham for veggie shrimp.  It had a nice peanut sauce to go with it.

This is my mom's dish, Supreme Wisdom, which is so apropos.  It was was seitan and veggies in a coconut milk broth.  The jasmine rice was on the side.  When I asked about the side salad that was mentioned on the menu, we were told that the pot stickers were the salad.  So now you know: pot stickers are salad.  Inside it appeared there was mashed tofu with some indefinable veggie.

My dish was the Limitless Compassion, which is true if you have a good story.  I didn't bother showing you the "salad" again.  My dish was mock beef and veggies in a spicy sauce.  I have no idea how the peppery substance got on the plate.

All in all we liked the food.  The restaurant has changed since the last time I was there about five years ago, but it's still similar to what it was.  I was not overly impressed to the point that I wouldn't investigate our other vegan Asian treasures around town.  But, it was satisfying.

For dinner on Saturday night, my parents took us to Thai Takieng (4400 San Juan Blvd., Fair Oaks), the same place we went for G's birthday last year.  I like this restaurant, and every time I go, I like to try something new off the menu.

 

I started with a bowl of Tom Kha: Artichoke Soup.  And artichoke soup it was!  Can you see them floating there?  Besides artichokes, there were button and straw mushrooms in a coconut milk broth,  And that was about it.  It was very simple, but for a girl who loves artichokes, mushrooms and coconut milk, it was great.

My main dish was Pad Kra-Prao:  Chili and Thai Basil Stir-fry.  I had my choice of tofu or mock meats, and I chose mock chicken.  I wish now I had just stuck with tofu to soak up the flavors more.  Without sounding boastful, I like my own seitan: I can flavor it just right, and most restaurant versions are kind of bland.  The sauce and veggies here were great, and it was just spicy enough.  G and I shared brown rice to go with it.

 

Here is my birthday cake.  SR made the batter for the cake, and GR made the frosting.  It was delicious!

Here is the chocolate peanut butter pudding pie that my mom made.

Er, my dessert plate shows my fondness for pudding pies.  Ahem.  I loved my cake, though, too!

Hope you enjoyed the food tour of my day.  G's turn comes up in two weeks.  And, as usual, for two weeks he says I'm too old for him.

Sausage and Cheese Muffins

I developed this recipe a few weeks before Christmas to see if they would turn out, and they did.  So, I presented them on Christmas morning for my family, including my parents, to enjoy.  They are hearty and a tasty way to start the day.

Just a note: You'll see that I'll be using flax seed thickener, instead of EggReplacer, in my savory dishes.  Just trying to incorporate more flax in our diet.

Sausage and Cheese Muffins
Ingredients:
1 Tbs. olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped small
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 pkg. Gimme Lean sausage style, diced small
1 pkg. Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet cheese, cheddar style, shredded finely and divided
2 cups of flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. flax seed meal
3 Tbs. water
1 and 1/2 cups plain rice milk
Non-stick spray
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  In a large pan, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the garlic and green onion, and saute for one minute.  Add the diced sausage to the pan, and cook for five minutes, until it has browned.  Stir occasionally.  Add half of the cheese to the sausage mixture and stir until it has softened and blended in, about one minute.  Set aside to cool while you work with the rest of the ingredients.  In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.  In a small pot, mix together the flax seed meal with the water.  Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it is thickened, about a minute or two.  Add this, along with the rice milk, to the flour mixture.  Using a hand mixer, blend on medium low speed until incorporated.  Add the sausage mixture, and stir well with a spoon.  Spray a cupcake pan's wells with the non-stick spray.  Fill wells to the top with batter.  Top with the remaining cheese.  Bake for 40 minutes.  An inserted toothpick will not come out clean because of the cheese and sausage inside the muffin, but after 40 minutes, they will be done.  Makes one dozen muffins.  These freeze great, as well, if you want to double the recipe.  Feeds five hungry vegans.

Kale with Oyster Mushrooms and Garlic

I'm a BIG fan of mushrooms and always have been.  Of course I love the humble white button and its cousin the brown crimini, portabellos big or small, shitakes, straw shrooms, a woody-eared shroom, and enoki, but, I've never had oyster mushrooms before.  So, when I saw them for sale at the farmer's market, I thought I'd give them a try.  I brought them home with some fresh kale and made a fantastic dish for lunch that took less than ten minutes to cook.  The mushrooms released an incredibly savory liquid that added so much flavor to the dish.  I am definitely sold on oyster mushrooms now!

One thing on the recipe: I normally like to list ingredients by measurement not weight, but the vendor sold her shrooms by weight, and I didn't think to see how much of a cup they were.  I'm thinking a cup to a cup and a half.  But, you can just guesstimate.

Kale with Oyster Mushrooms and Garlic

Ingredients:

1 Tbs. olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 pound of oyster mushrooms, bottom end trimmed, approx. 1 and 1/2 cups
1 lg. bunch of kale, approx. 8 to 10 cups, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium heat.  When hot, add the garlic and cook for one minute, until the garlic releases its fragrance.  Add the mushrooms and saute just for five minutes.  Add the kale and mix well.  Cook until kale just starts to wilt and is a beautiful bright green color.  Season lightly and serve immediately.  So addictive that it's hard to stop eating from the pan after you're supposedly done.  Feeds five hungry vegans.

Winnie the Pooh Cake with Natural Colors

I recently went to my first sobriety-celebration party for a relative, a first for me, and it was so fabulous.  It was wonderful cheering someone on who was proudly saying they were alcohol-dependent-free.  Of course, I had to make a cake for my gang, as it was a full-on potluck with desserts.  I've been going through a craze lately (the last few years) of collecting various cake pans, so I thought this was as good a time as any to pull out one of my Winnie the Pooh pans and practice with my homemade colors.  I simply used my  White Cake with White Butter Cream Frosting  recipes for the cake and frosting.  I've been stowing away liquids in the freezer from colorful foods I've been cooking for this purpose, such as artichoke water, asparagus water, beet water, etc.  If it's got vibrant color, I freeze it.

So, this was my first attempt at making these colors, and I've already learned a few things.  In the future I'm going to reduce the liquids in a pot, before freezing, to concentrate and deepen the colors.  I noticed this time that if I added much more, the frosting would have been too thin.  Also, be careful of colorings that already have flavor, like turmeric.  It added a nice color, but too much more, and the flavor of the spice would have dominated the sweetness of the cake.  As it was, it tasted like a spice cake, which was just fine.  You'll also notice that poor Pooh's left eye, eyebrow and his nose are hard to distinguish from each other.  I had planned to outline his shirt, facial features, and his arms in a dark brown, but we were running late and the frosting hadn't dried, so Pooh had to come as he was.  Take this as a starter cake, and build on it.  As I improve my methods, I'll share them with you.

Winnie the Pooh Cake with Natural Colors

Ingredients:

White cake batter- you can use my recipe White Cake   
1/2 cup soy milk
Non-stick spray
All-purpose flour

White butter cream frosting - you can use my recipe White Butter Cream Frosting
2 Tbs. leftover liquid from boiling red and orange beets, divided
1 tsp. chocolate pudding mix or cocoa
1 tsp. turmeric

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Make White Cake as usual, following my directions, but adding in the extra 1/2 cup of soy milk.  Spray your cake pan with non-stick spray and lightly flour, tapping out the extra.  Pour in cake batter, and bake for 40 minutes.  Cool in pan on cooling rack for fifteen minutes.  Invert onto cake platter, then invert back onto cooling rack to finish cooling.

When the cake is completely cool, make frosting according to my directions.  Place two dollops of frosting on cake platter to hold cake in place, and put cake on platter.  Pull out 1/2 cup of frosting and put in a small bowl.  Mix with 1 Tbs. of the beet liquid, until well incorporated.  Using a butter knife or a small paint brush, frost the area that is Pooh's shirt and tongue.  Pull out 1 Tbs. of frosting and put in an even smaller bowl.  Mix well with the pudding mix or cocoa, and paint on the facial features.  Use the rest of the frosting to make Pooh's fur.  Mix with the other half of the beet liquid, along with the turmeric, and frost Pooh's body.  This ends up having a hint of the turmeric flavor, which I thought was tasty.  Feeds five hungry vegans for a couple of days.

Savory Stuffed Peppers and Christmas, 2011

We had another great Christmas this year.  I have some pretty hysterical pictures of five-year-old JK completely ecstatic over the celebration.

As usual, I made a big breakfast buffet for my family and parents and then made some dishes to bring to the family potluck for dinner.  I decided to bring stuffed peppers for dinner, and they were super tasty.  I've got the recipe below, but first we have to cover some highlights.

You'll see in one of the pics below what my buffet looked like.  I made:
Scrambled Tofu with broccoli, mushrooms and spinach
Sausage and Cheese muffins (recipe on a future post)
My mom's fruit plate
Chocolate chip cookies
Oatmeal cookies
Brownies
Lemon Sugar Loaf (recipe on a future post)
Coconut Caramel Happy Birthday, Jesus, Cake

For dinner:
Savory Stuffed Peppers
Tofurky
Dessert:
Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Glaze (recipe on a future post)

Just a note on the peppers:
I made enough for 22 people, so you can definitely halve the recipe or more for your needs.  Or, you can make the whole batch, and freeze what  you won't eat in the next few days.  I also cut my peppers in half, but you can use fewer peppers and keep them whole.  With all the food at the potluck, I thought having a whole pepper would be too much for some people.  I also used white rice to appeal to more people, but brown could be used, of course.

Savory Stuffed Peppers

Stockings hung with care, even for the dogs and cats

Breakfast Buffet (fruit plate hadn't yet arrived)

Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Glaze (for potluck dessert)

R.I.P. - Here lies the blank spot where there was a great photo of the kids, but GR was embarrassed and pleaded with me to remove it.  The caption is below.

All the kids enjoying JK's new superhero masks.  They seem to have suddenly taken on the powers themselves!

GR and JK delivering our annual Christmas cookies to the firefighters.

Now, on to more of the recipe photos:

Here are the peppers, washed and waiting for the water to boil.

The stuffing being sauteed.

Blanching the peppers.

Completed peppers, ready to go!

Savory Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

11 green bell peppers, tops trimmed, seeds and heavy pith removed, and halved lengthwise
1 cup white rice, uncooked, prepared according to package directions
2 Tbs. canola oil
1/3 cup chopped shallots
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 - 12oz. pkgs. Lightlife Smart Ground, original style
1 - 15oz. can of black beans, drained
1 Tbs. dried oregano
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 - 15oz. cans tomato sauce, divided
Non-stick spray

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Fill a very large pot about two-thirds full with water, and bring to a boil.  This will take some time, so you can prepare the rest of your dish while waiting.  Cook the rice and set aside.  In a large pan, heat the oil over medium heat.  Add the shallots and garlic and cook for two minutes.  Add the Smart Ground and mash with a fork or potato masher, so there are no big lumps.  Cook for two or three more minutes, stirring often, so it doesn't burn.  Add the beans and spices and cook until heated through, about three or more minutes.  Add the rice and stir well, so it's thoroughly mixed.  Add two cans of the tomato sauce and mix well.  Spray two baking dishes with the non-stick spray.  If the water is boiling now, carefully dump the peppers in it and boil for five minutes.  Drain in a colander in the sink.  Using tongs, place the pepper halves cut side up on the baking dishes.  Spoon the filling into the well of each pepper - use every last drop of it.  Spoon the last can of tomato sauce over each pepper.  Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.  So good.  Feeds five hungry vegans and seventeen close friends and family.

Cheesy Saucy Bread

So sorry for the delay in putting out a post.  There's been a lot of personal stuff going on, so I really haven't been online at all except for financial necessities and homeschooling materials.  I'm hoping to get back to a regular schedule of posting about two times a week again.

Anyhow, on to the recipe: this is a completely indulgent bread, and I use that term loosely.  My family thinks it's simply cheese pizza, but no, I'm calling it Cheesy Saucy Bread, and that way it can be served alongside other dishes to make a complete meal.  It's super easy, too, so I hope you have fun making it!

Cheesy Saucy Bread right out of the oven

A slice of Cheesy Saucy Bread alongside a pasta dish and roasted veggies

Cheesy Saucy Bread

Ingredients:

1 - 15oz. can tomato sauce
1 Tbs. tomato paste
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

1 pkg. Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet cheese, Monterey Jack style, finely shredded

2 lg. loaves of ciabatta bread, cut into quarters or halves, depending on size.
Directions:

Heat top broiler in oven.  Put all the ingredients for the sauce (tomato sauce through pepper) into a medium pot.  Cook over medium low heat for ten minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomato paste is well absorbed.  Place the sections of bread on large baking sheets.  Spread the sauce evenly over the bread.  Sprinkle the cheese over the sauce.  Place bread under broiler for four minutes, or until cheese melts.  Serve with pasta and roasted veggies for a complete meal.  Mm-mmm, good.  Feeds five hungry vegans.

Peach Cream Cheese Spread

This is a very easy recipe that is similar to my Strawberry Cream Cheese .  I made it with the last of the summer's ripe peaches a couple of months ago.  It's simple and delicious, perfect for a breakfast bagel.  I'm going to continue to experiment with different kinds of fruits and will post those that are just as delicious.

A close-up of that beautiful Peach Cream Cheese Spread

Now, it's being shy

Peach Cream Cheese Spread

Ingredients:

1 8oz. tub of vegan cream cheese, room temperature
1 ripe peach, diced small
Bagels - plain or sweet style
Directions:

In a small bowl mix together the cream cheese and fruit with a spoon.  Chill for about an hour.  Spread on bagels.  Feeds five hungry vegans.