Vegan MoFo! Post #7: Frickin Pumpkin-Spiced Coffee!

Ugh, I'm STILL sick! I literally slept all day today - hence the sore lack of MoFo posts on my end lately. I don't think I've been ill this long since...maybe ever? I'm seriously on my 12th day of this flu thing. I normally avoid taking any extra medications, so as to build up my body's ability to heal itself (even if that's not scientifically accurate, I believe there is some psychological merit there), but this has been so bad so long that I decided it was some time for antibiotics.

It's a bummer that the past few days, I haven't been well enough to continue my planned themes (Foods That Heal, Cultural Cuisines, & Vegan On A Shoestring Budget). However, as promised, here is the recipe for the Frickin Pumpkin-Spiced Coffee! that my roommate made the other day. It's so obvious it's nuts, but I seriously never thought to do this.

Enjoy, and stay well, people! I will have much more MoFo magic for you within the next few days. I should be back to normal by then. :crosses fingers:

O l i v i a ' s  F r i c k i n  P u m p k i n - S p i c e d  C o f f e e !

...perfect for fall. :)

...also a great trick if you're short on money --> use cheap coffee and spice it up to cover over the flavor. Voila. Gourmet coffee.

Ingredients:
-coffee beans, freshly ground
-pumpkin pie spice

You'll also need a French press. I think this would clog up an electric coffee maker. Er, maybe it wouldn't, but a French press = coffee done right (actually, chemex pot = coffee done right, but I'm not financially there).

Prepare your beans as you normally would, grinding them coarsely and putting them into the French press. Then, add approximately 1 or 2 teaspoons of the pumpkin pie spice and stir it around once or twice. Steep your coffee as you normally would, using boiling water. That's it. I almost flipped out when I realized I could just add whatever to the steeping coffee beans!

The Barebones Vegan: Another Quick Dish for Less

Orzo-Steamed Spinach

I'm going to tell you about a recent dish that my boyfriend and I invented, called "Orzo-Steamed Spinach." Well, technically, it was mostly me that invented it, but I'll give him credit for getting me to love orzo. :-)

There are a lot of ways in which this dish is awesome. Allow me to elaborate...

• It can be made in less than 10 minutes.
• Its ingredients are either very cheap or, if they're expensive, they are the kind that last a long time. I have listed the prices after each item on the "shopping list" for this dish, below. Although the Earth Balance is pricey, it will last you a while, provided you use it as a condiment and not for baking. Same goes for the sea salt and pepper, which you may even already have. As for the organic baby spinach, it's much more economical to buy the huge container, as the price per ounce is significantly less than that of the smaller containers (trust me, I checked!). Plus, it's a hearty vegetable, so you won't have to worry about it rapidly going bad, so long as you keep it refrigerated.
• It's a great way to consume a large portion of green vegetables without having to go the salad or green smoothie route (which you may be sick of!)
• You only have to dirty one pot, yet you get two hot foods.
• Cheap and/or long-lasting ingredients, plus quickness (seriously under 10 minutes to make!!!), means that it's the perfect "eating for several days in a row" meal when you're mega-busy and don't have time or feel like meal-planning - like during finals week! or a week when you have to work late every night! or while you're writing your dissertation, like me!
• It's really delicious, despite its simplicity! 
 

So here's your ingredients shopping list:

1. a box of "orzo" which is a type of pasta shaped like little, flat footballs (1 store-brand box costs about $0.99 or less here in LA)
2. Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread (usually about $5.99)
3. the huge, 16 oz plastic container of organic baby spinach (I think this cost me something like $5.39)
4. sea salt (prices vary depending on container size)
5. black pepper (prices vary depending on container size)


And here's the recipe:

I'm not going to list the ingredients because they're just the 5 grocery-list items above. So, what you do is cook at least a couple "servings" (say, 1/3 of the box) according to the package instructions. When the orzo is done, stir in a teaspoon or more of the Earth Balance and mix it up real good. Hey, you could even use olive oil if you wanted. Put a mound (really, go nuts) of the fresh spinach on a plate. Cover the spinach some of/all of the hot orzo. Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper. Wait a few minutes for the hot orzo to "cook" the spinach a bit. Makes more than enough for one person.

This is meant to be a light meal or an accompaniment to something else, say, a heap of white beans (which are also cheap and easy to prepare!).

My camera phone doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea. In this particular photo, you'll see I added some yellow peppers. This was only because we had some from our CSA and I wanted to try them out.

For other cheap, easy ways to be vegan, see my other Barebones Vegan posts.

Junkaaay Mondaaay Pita Pizza

There exists a junkie in all of us.

I'm sick with a cold (for the first time in OVER A YEAR!!) which means I am pounding lots of health food and vitamins today. However, for dinner, I decided I really needed some junk. It just felt right.

One of the things I love about being vegan is that my concept of what constitutes "junk" is probably still a lot healthier than average. Yep, my pita pizza has whole wheat "crust," no cholesterol, and, best of all, it's cruelty free.

P i t a  P i z z a  C Y o F C - S t y l e

Ingredients:

Whole wheat pita bread from Trader Joe's (the regular size)
Arrabiata pasta sauce, also from Trader Joe's
Daiya cheese, mozzarella style
Olive oil

If using a regular oven, preheat it to 375. Otherwise, a toaster oven or your oven's broiler is fine. Drizzle some olive oil over a piece of pita bread and spread it around evenly. Make sure the "back" of the pita bread is facing up (you want the concave bowl shape so nothing spills out). Next, spread some Arrabiata sauce on top. Finally, add a generous sprinkling of Daiya (mine is usually so generous I can hardly call it a "sprinkling"). Bake in your oven/broiler/toaster oven for approximately 12 minutes (less for broilers, more for regular ovens, about the same for toaster ovens). You'll know it's done when the cheese is bubbling and the bread is a little crispy.

I like to top mine with dried, crushed red pepper for an extra spicy kick.

Get yr junk on.

What's your favorite do-it-yourself pizza?

Nanny Foodchain's Tarallucci Cookies! My FAVORITE

Like, oh my god, my favorite cookies ever were the ones my late Grandmother ("Nanny") used to make every xmas. She called them "tattalouch" but I think the more widely-known name is "tarralucci." Let's call them that so that people searching the vast interweb can find this recipe.

I've been wanting to resurrect this recipe for a few years now, but as the original recipe was not vegan, I knew it'd be a challenge. I also knew I could do it, and this year, I did. So here you go, the veganized version of Nanny Foodchain's "tattalouch"/tarralucci cookies.

N a n n y  F o o d c h a i n ' s  T a r r a l u c c i  C o o k i e s   O M G  M y  F a v o r i t e  E v e r 

Dough Ingredients:

5 cups flour
6 tsp of Ener-G Egg Replacer + 8 TB of water, thoroughly mixed together
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup Earth Balance
1 cup unrefined sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup vanilla soy milk
1 tsp lemon extract (a little more if you're feeling lucky, or use lemon zest if you're feeling fancy)
1 tsp vanilla

Icing Ingredients:

1 cup powdered sugar that's not processed through bone char
However much vanilla soy milk it takes to make the mixture into a pasty liquid
1 tsp lemon extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. After you mix the dough ingredients together, flour your hands, then take a chunk at a time and roll it between your hands until it forms a log. You'll want the log to be roughly the size of a small dog's turd. Think maybe the size of the turd of, say, a 2-month old Pitbull puppy named Sprinkles at a kill-facility. Once you have your log, twist it into a little, swirly pile. Repeat this process until you have no more dough.

Bake for roughly 10 minutes. Maybe more. The bottom of each "pile" should be golden brown around the outside. The insides will be cake-like.

Don't wait for the cookies to cool. Take your icing mixture and spoon it over each cookie. If you want, decorate by sprinkling Florida Crystals or some other form of vegan sprinkles on top. Hey, adopting Sprinkles is vegan, by the way.


Another hey, sometimes Nanny Foodchain liked to dye the dough red and green. You could probably get yourself just a little beet juice and dye the dough a nice pink OR red. Not sure if food coloring is vegan. I haven't used it in years. Anyone know?

I just want to bite into that lemony, vanillay, cakey goodness.

Swirly piles!!!!

haaaaaay.

And did you know these cookies are famous now?

Vegan MoFo! Day 3: Green Thai Curry

Hey there! For my Day 3 MoFo post, I'm going to tell you about the green thai curry I made!

I mostly followed the recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance, but with a few "grad student changes" (i.e., skipping any ingredients that would break my poor grad student bank and adding some ingredients that were much cheaper).


Here are the changes I made to the chile paste:

• I didn't have fresh lemongrass so I skipped that part. Looking back, I think this was probably a vital ingredient.
• Rather than grinding coriander seeds and cumin seeds, I used the powder forms of both. 
• I didn't have fresh cilantro, which was also probably rather important. Need to start growing more of my own herbs. Right now we only grow mint at my house.
• Didn't have shallots, either, so I used yellow onion. Seemed to be fine.
• I added an extra Thai green pepper. What? I'm a glutton for heat.

And here are the changes I made to the rest of the recipe: 

• I didn't use tofu. I ate all of my tofu. Woops. The SO told me that baked tofu probably wouldn't have worked out in a curry dish anyway, although I disagree.
• I added chick peas. This made me feel better about the lack of tofu.
• I added eggplant. Eggplant is one of my favorite veggies to work with. 
• I added some sliced up carrot.

I served the finished product with jasmine rice. One thing I loved about this recipe, other than the ah-mazing taste, is that it made a lot. I'd say this yields about 4 hearty servings, if you make it the way I did with the extra veggies and jasmine rice. Next time, I'll aim to add shiitake mushrooms, too. I think the earthy shiitake flavors would make this even closer to perfect.

Also, I must say, I never realized how easy it is to make your own chile paste. I mean, it's basically just a few types of peppers + spices + water all ground up together. Again, I wonder how this simple fact evaded me for so long? I feel a new obsession coming on.

And now...for the food porn:

Chile paste, just waiting to be added to the coconut milk and simmered into glorious aromas.

Yep, there's some wafting happening up in here.

iViola! A dish that's pleasing to all of the senses.

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for day 4. I've got some good stuff coming up!

Vegan MoFo! Day 2: My Secret for Perfect Tofu

As a vegan of over 5 years, it's hard to believe I'd never made baked tofu...until yesterday.

Let me just say, wow. I tested out the recipe for Asian Style Baked Tofu in Veganomicon and it was probably the best tofu I'd ever tasted (I give Isa and Terry full credit!). Where has this recipe been all my life, and why did I wait until now to try it?

Succulent baked tofu, waiting to be added to a kale salad.

As for the "secret" tip to getting your baked tofu perfect (no matter which recipe you use), the trick is in the pressing*. Typically, I'll press my tofu for a mere 15 minutes, maybe 30 if I'm feeling ambitious. This time, however, I pressed for about 3 hours (flipping the tofu block over a few times throughout, so that the top and bottom sides get pressed equally). Pressing for longer, I found, created a firmer, chewier composition and a heartier texture. My boyfriend, who often makes baked tofu, noticed the difference, too. From now on, any time I'm going to work with tofu, I will press it for a few hours!

*For those not familiar, to "press" tofu, you must drain the water out of the package and then place the block of tofu between two hard surfaces. It usually helps if you wrap the tofu with thin cloth first - that way the moisture can absorb into the cloth and keep the tofu-hard-surface sandwich from falling apart.

Keeping it brief today; I'm at work for most of the day, then going to see Little Stranger tonight at Detroit Bar.

Vegan MoFo! Day 1

Happy World Vegan Day, everyone! What better day to say...I have an exciting announcement! I've signed up for Vegan MoFo, which means I'll be posting a food-related blog entry every weekday for the entire month of November. That's 22 entries! I'm pretty stoked, as this year, November promises many interesting food opportunities for me.

What are those opportunities, you ask? Well, first off, today my house got a brand new vegan roommate! We are already plotting to host our first vegan potluck this month. Date TBA.

Next on the list, I was the very lucky recipient of quarrygirl's Healthy Taste of LA 2010 drawing! This means I'll be heading to Redondo Beach on Nov 7th to watch renowned vegan chefs perform cooking demos and taste their samples. There will also be speakers on nutrition and veganism. I believe tickets can still be purchased, so if you're interested, here's some more info!

On Nov 14th, I'll be participating in the first annual Bitchcraft Trading Post. There, I'll be selling my cruelty-free jewelry and other products. While this isn't exactly "food-related" per se, art is one of the ways in which I like to disseminate knowledge about veganism.

Then there's Thanksgiving on the 26th. I'll be helping my mom with the cooking, and creating an entire vegan menu.

My birthday is Nov 27th. Hopefully the S.O. and I will be road tripping up to northern CA, where there will be lots and lots of vegan restaurants I've been dying to check out.

I've also got a few cooking projects brewing. Below, you will see my beautiful "pumpkin pie" pumpkin, which I hope to use for some vegan pumpkin pie. I'll also roast the pumpkin seeds, which went over smashingly at my Halloween party last night. (My recipe is at the very bottom. It's super easy and delicious, so you should try it!)

Next to a standard-size coffee mug, so you can get an idea of its size.

We're due for another CSA delivery soon, too, just in time for starting Vegan MoFo off fresh and local! I can't wait to see what's inside the box this time. I really, really hope we get more purple bell peppers. Those taste similar to the more typical bell peppers, but more "peppery" and they're also crunchier. The smell made me nostalgic for my late Grandfather's vegetable garden. He was always growing green bell peppers and marveling at their beautiful, shining skins and robust aromas.

Colors matter a lot to me. Purple is one of my favorite. So, naturally, I nearly jumped outta my shoes when we received this here purple pepper.

Speaking of peppers, I'm currently concocting my first, ever homemade curry paste! I'm following Isa Chandra's recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance, but with a few of my own tweaks. A word to the wise: if ever you choose to embark on such an endeavor, DO NOT touch your eyes or face after you touch the peppers, EVEN if you have washed your hands. Don't be like me and think that washing your hands will suffice. It won't. That capsaicin takes time to fully come off your skin. I touched my forehead tonight after chopping my jalapenos and Thai green chiles, and it was as though I'd applied Icy Hot to my forehead for the next hour. ;) Hey, come to think of it, perhaps I'll start using hot peppers instead of Icy Hot... (Kids, do not try this at home.)

R o a s t e d  P u m p k i n  S e e d s

Ingredients:

1 medium or large pumpkin

dried basil

garlic powder

ground thyme

ground cayenne pepper

dried rosemary

salt

Preheat oven to 350. Save the seeds after you remove them from the pumpkin. Rinse in a colander to get the pumpkin bits off. Spread them out on a cookie/baking sheet. Then sprinkle all of the spices onto your seeds. I always just wing it and go by what seems tasty, but if you're one for measurements, then I'd say to use about 1/2 tsp of each spice. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, checking occasionally. The finished seeds will be a golden color and slightly browned on the edges. Oh, and your kitchen will smell absolutely to-die-for fabulous.

Happy Dia de los Muertos!

The S.O. and I succeeded at making our jack-o-lantern creepy-looking, no?