Biscuits with lemon curd

I made some amazing vegan lemon curd a while ago and needed an excuse to use it up, so I made one of Mr. HVC’s favorite foods, biscuits!

I tried a new recipe I found online, subbing in white whole wheat flour for the AP flour.  They came out so good and fluffy!  The white whole wheat adds a nice nutty flavor.

With a little butter and some spread, they were a really yummy dessert.

I even made a little baby biscuit out of the extra dough for Rhodie! He was pretty stoked.

I can haz more, mom?

Too cute!!

A vegan food diary

Inspired by all the great “What I Ate Wednesday” posts, I decided to do my own little food diary entry today.  I think it’s really helpful to see how other vegans construct their meal plans and it gives me ideas for things I can do to mix up the inevitable weekday monotony.  Today was a lot of purchased foods because I got up too late for breakfast at home and was super busy at work.

Breakfast: Berry Upbeat smoothie from Jamba Juice

Lunch: vegan hummus wrap and Peet’s soy pumpkin latte. The wrap was pretty disappointing–bland hummus and the veggies consisted of shaved carrots and purple cabbage. Who thought that sounded like a good idea??

Snack: salad from my university’s cafeteria

Dinner: leftovers from a pretty disappointing casserole I made last week from the new book One Dish Vegan. It’s layers of butternut squash, potato, cauliflower, spinach, and walnut parmesan with a white sauce drizzled on top. It was super bland even though I added loads of fresh herbs and made extra walnut parm. It also makes for terribly unattractive food porn. Sorry, folks!

So, not my proudest day of food but at least it was pretty healthy! 😛

A hearty fall dinner

Time to use up those roasted veggies! Last night we had a big pile o’ veggies along with some quinoa, baked chickpea cutlets from the PPK, and mushroom gravy. We should do this more often because it’s one of Mr. HVC’s favorite meals! This was especially good with the roasted sweet potatoes, because the meal needed a little sweet to counter all the savory.

The gravy is based off of this non-vegan recipe, with some modifications:

Mushroom Gravy:
-1/4 cup Earth Balance or olive oil
-1 onion, minced
-1 tsp salt
-16 oz diced mushrooms (I just pulse ’em in the food processor)
-4 cloves minced garlic or 2 tsp granulated garlic
-1/4 cup white wine
-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
-1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
-2 cups water
-1 tsp dried thyme
-1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
-1/4 cup plain non-dairy milk

In a medium pot, saute onions in oil with salt over medium heat until they start to brown, about 10-15 min. Add mushrooms and saute 10 min or until they have lost most of their water. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds, until fragrant. Deglaze with the wine or equivalent amount of veggie broth. Sprinkle in flour stir that mix for a few minutes. It will be blobby and will start to brown. Add soy sauce, water, thyme, and pepper. Whisk to combine and bring to a simmer. Keep stirring for a few minutes until the gravy thickens, then mix in the soy milk and taste for salt. If it needs more savoriness, add some more soy sauce or a little bit of Accent (avoid Accent if you’re sensitive to MSG).

When in doubt, roast

Two MoFo posts in one day! Trying to catch up a bit 🙂

When I looked in my fridge yesterday I felt pretty overwhelmed by all the veggies.  A combination of being sick and busy left me with a fridge filled with 2 weeks worth of CSA veggies, farmers’ market finds, and some generous gifts from friends with overflowing backyard gardens. Everything was nearing its prime so I decided to cut it all up, toss with some olive oil, salt, and pepper and have a roasting party.

Onions,  baby sweet potatoes, carrots, yellow crook neck squash, and button mushrooms:

Purple & white cauliflower and green beans:

Fancy tomatoes…the end product wasn’t super photogenic so here’s they are pre-roast:

Garlic:

Whew, half a fridge condensed down into a few tupperware containers!  It’s so easy, too. I actually prefer to broil veggies because I have a cruddy electric oven that doesn’t bake very well. Broiling increases the heat and adds some nice smoky char. Some of this we’ll have over quinoa along with chickpea cutlets and the rest might make its way into a roasted veggie soup.  Yum,  I’m excited!

I still have a bit more work on my hands though! Look at all those peppers!

Vegan pinto beans at Chipotle! :)

Apologies for my MoFo absence! I’ve been a bit sick and fell off the MoFo wagon. 

Yesterday I went out with Mr. HVC for lunch at Chipotle and saw a sign announcing “Beans for Everyone!” That’s right, bacon has left the building and their pinto beans are now 100% vegan. Woohoo! I celebrated by getting sofritas, with guac, and 50-50 black pinto beans. Damn tasty.

I’m in the SF Bay Area, so we’re lucky to get these goodies before the east coasters but I hope it makes it to everyone else really soon!

Tomato basil sauce with polenta

I’m always looking for a recipe that will change my mind about polenta, so when I found this one on epicurious with rave reviews I was hopeful!

The sauce is a mix of cherry tomatoes, shallot (I subbed red onion), garlic (I doubled the amount), basil, olive oil, and S&P that gets baked in a little parchment packet.  I was out of parchment so I just used a ceramic dish.

Before:

After:

The polenta (I used the pre-made stuff from Trader Joe’s) is browned in the oven next to the sauce.   I thought the sauce was really nice and fresh and I liked the crispy polenta, but I still don’t see the appeal, taste-wise.  What are your favorite polenta recipes?

Vegan meetup brunch at Calafia Cafe

I had brunch with my veg meetup group today and got a great vegan pizza!  In place of cheese was a savory garbanzo bean spread and it was topped with grilled radicchio, grilled red onion, and kalamata olive-jalapeño tapenade.  I also got a delicious avocado, melon, cucumber juice blend.

One of the meetup girls mentioned an ice cream place called Tin Pot Creamery around the corner so we checked to see if they had any vegan options.  Damn, Palo Alto, I love you so much.  There was a blackberry lime sorbet *and* a homemade vegan peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream!  It was so creamy and delicious, I was over the moon.  What a great way to start the weekend 🙂

Favorite hot fudge sauce

When I was a kid we always had a jar of hot fudge sauce in the fridge.  I think it might have been Smuckers brand, and whenever we had ice cream we’d heat the jar up in the microwave and ladel huge spoonfuls of fudge on top.

I hadn’t had hot fudge in ages when this memory hit me a while back and I decided I wanted to keep a stash of vegan sauce handy like we had in my childhood.   This recipe is based off the one in Joy of Vegan Baking and is super easy, chocolatey, and adaptable. 

Hot Fudge Sauce
-1 Tbs corn starch (or your thickener of choice) dissolved in 2 Tbs water
-1 cup sugar (or maple syrup or agave nectar)
-6 Tbs cocoa powder
-pinch of salt
-1 cup non-dairy milk (less if using liquid sweetener)
-1 Tbs Earth Balance (or coconut oil, coconut cream,  or cashew cream)
-1 Tbs vanilla extract

Combine dry ingredients in saucepan.  Add milk and cornstarch. Heat to boiling and simmer a few minutes with constant stirring until thickened.  Remove from heat, stir in margarine and vanilla.  Store in a sealed jar in the fridge.

Favorite chocolate chip cookies (vegan and whole wheat!)

We had a late night hankering for chocolate chip cookies and made my favorite recipe.  As an added bonus it just happens to be whole wheat too!  I use either flax meal or Ener-G in place of egg and Earth Balance or homemade margarine in place of butter. If you use Earth Balance, I’d use 3/4 cup instead of a full cup or it’ll be too greasy.

Usually I just use plain chocolate chips (Ghirardelli or Guittard semi sweet) but this time I did half white chocolate chips.  So good! I got these from Vegan Haven in Seattle and they’re the best vegan white chips I’ve found.

Sausage, peppers, and onion sandwich

We got a ton of peppers in our CSA box last week so on Sunday Mr. HVC made this recipe (not vegan, from the food network) for sausage, pepper, and onion sammies. The only thing we changed about the recipe was the amount of oil (from 1/4 cup to 1 Tbs) because the veggie sausages can just warm up in the pan and don’t need to be fried.

I’d never tried the Tofurkey Italian sausages before and man, they were really good!  I like that they’re made mostly from tofu and vital wheat gluten, and the texture was also really nice. We’re not much in the habit of buying veggie meats (I think it’s because there weren’t a lot of good products around when I went vegan and they were also expensive/hard to find so I just learned to do without?), so I don’t know which products are good. I was super happy to find something quick and easy and meaty enough for Mr. HVC.

This was also a really quick, partner-friendly recipe — 10 min to prep veggies, 15 min to saute. Easy!