picture fail, recent menus, stuffed mushrooms

Since the last time I posted (VeganMofo ’09 fail) I’ve made a few pretty awesome meals, and gotten only one good picture from it all. I’ll tell you about the menus anyway!

Homemade “Asian” marinated seitan, pan-fried and served over brown rice with fresh broccoli and peanut sauce. Mango coconut milk smoothie. I think I had half a can of lite coconut milk during this meal. Hello fat!

Chestnut-lentil pate served with tart, thinly sliced apple, and ciabatta toasts,
Cauliflower and garlic stuffed mushrooms, adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance; basically replaced the seitan with cauliflower at Isa’s suggestion (picture follows, sorry for the blurriness!),
Roasted asparagus (olive oil, salt, and freshly cracked pepper),
Broccoli potato soup with fresh herbs, also from VCon. I used Fresh cilantro and parsley instead of dill and mint, and
Pumpkin cake (from VCon without the struesel topping) with Tofutti cream cheese frosting.

Last night’s dinner was:
Bruschetta (fresh tomatoes, garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper) with grilled french bread,
Grilled tofu,
Roasted asparagus, and
A minestrone type soup.  I went crazy with the pasta at the end though, so it was more like a pasta stew. Ingredients included:

1 large onion
2 large cloves garlic
1 small stalk celery
1 parsnip
2 carrots
1 large roma tomato (no canned tomatoes in the house, otherwise I would have used them!)
2 or so pinches dried oregano, 1 pinch marjoram
Salt and pepper
6 cups veggie broth (made from my favorite no salt bouillon cubes)
Too much farfalle (bowtie, butterfly) pasta

I also received some amazing homemade granola bars for my birthday from my friend Sarah, who is starting Woodside Bakehouse. Everything she touches turns to edible gold! But, you know, like, in a tasty way.

the many ways of frozen bananas

Let’s face it: monkeys know their fruit. But unless there are snow monkeys that somehow store tropical bananas in the winter, monkeys don’t got it all, folks!

I’ve spoken before of how I love bananas with peanut butter on toast or in bread pudding, but never about how awesome they are frozen. Baking sweet things with thawed frozen bananas is kind of a lifesaver when you want something sweet and healthful in a pinch (thawing them makes them mega mushy and easy to mash). Or not healthful…for instance:

These chocolate chip banana pancakes from Vegan with a Vengeance are super fast and make an awesome brunch with a glass of cold soymilk. No syrup necessary!

This banana bread satisfied a craving of mine recently. I hadn’t eaten dessert for almost a month (after a total sugar overload during a visit to New York), and this was just a little stepping stone to getting back on the sugar horse, though I haven’t been eating it too often since. You can find great pictures and an alternate recipe here, though I pretty much stuck to the original.

My tweaks:

1. I didn’t have any applesauce, so I used a bit more banana and a little soymilk.
2. Ok, I used a lot more banana. I like my banana bread almost pudding-y!
3. Used a bit less than the 1/2 cup of sugar since the bananas are so sweet already.
4. Used half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour.

Mm mm good. And don’t forget, frozen bananas can be blended with peanut butter and non-dairy milk to make an amazing protein shake, too.

It saddens me to imagine what life would be like if monkeys were strictly carnivorous, so I guess I’ll save my imagination for something else!