I'm back, armed with mexican food

I have been cranking out the mexican recipes lately. I think enchiladas are my favorite mexican vehicle, but I'm sure I will change my mind about that by the end of this post. After much travel and day-tripping around to different states, cities and restaurants, I am finally back in my kitchen, spatula in hand, poised to scramble.

Enchilada, above, is filled with seitan, salsa, chiles, onions, peppers, and "queshew". You like it? I thought of that this morning. I ususally make the ppk queso. It's delicious and queso-y, but it takes a little too long for me to throw together at a moments notice, because when the queso craving hits... well, we could all be dead by then. So to save the planet, I came up with a quick version.

Tacos are my favorite mexican vehicle now, so I made a bunch of tacos this week to satisfy my craving for the blood of young tacos worldwide. I actually played this incredibly amusing game while I was on a plane this summer, where I make columns of categories of the elements that make up a dish. The first column was nationality or ethnicity of the dish. The next column was full of strange or curveball kinds of veggies. the next column was full of dressings or sauces. The last column was the vehicle the dish would come to be in. I numbered each column and made my boyfriend pick a bunch of numbers, 1 from each column. I came up with- 1.American 2.fennel 3. slaw 4. taco. This was obviously the most appealing sounding of all of my combinations, and so this little taco was born with a silver spoon in its tortilla. It's BBQ seitan with a fennel/onion/mango slaw and some guacamole, because what do I eat without guacamole?

The classic staple taco in my house is lentil meat, tomatoes, guac and 'queshew'. I will say it as much as I can.

One year in college, my best friend and I spring breaked it to florida and ate keylime pie at every single place we could find it. I haven't had keylime pie since, so I was compelled to change that. I made this one out of Vegan Pie In The Sky with some cashew whipped cream. I feel like I ate more whipped cream than pie. But doesn't that always seem to happen?

My friends and I decided to throw a thanksgiving in July party this year, because thanksgiving food somehow tastes better in July, because it seems forbidden. You're supposed to cook with in-season flavors! You have to wait until the end of autumn to rightfully enjoy thanksgiving food! So this was kind of fun and rebellious. I think I'm the only one who gave the rebelliousness a second thought, but my food tasted all the better for it. This was our dessert- Pumpkin spice cupcake with maple buttercream and a candied pecan.

So what did you do this summer?