Filled with tofu scramble (and their tofu scramble is amazing), bell peppers, chipotle soysage, onions, and potatoes. POTATOES you guys.

These hashbrowns are cubed potatoes cooked in a cast-iron skillet with some onion and garlic, then rubbed with taco seasoning, and finished off in the oven. They went in the burritos along with some black beans I simmered on the stove with some chipotle peppers.

If you tell a kid you're taking them out for ice cream, then decide not to go, you're pretty much the grinch. If you tell your friend you're meeting them at Beyond Sushi Friday afternoon, then cancel, you're the worst friend ever. It'll take weeks for sushi to leave the brain. But worst of all, if you plan to make Injera crepes with your injera starter this weekend along with an Ethiopian feast, and then your starter fails??? That is suffering. You pretty much have to make it anyway. I can't see how you could come back from such a hardship without a substantial substitute for injera and tons of WAT.

I kept thinking I was only going to make 4 stews. I had a stockpile of cabbage shreds from golabkis last week, so it was clear I was to make Tikil Gomen with it. I've been wanting to make shiro for a while, so I thought I would make that too, along with Atkilt Alecha, because Alex loves green beans. At the farmers market I found this little awesome sugar pumpkin! I thought it could rock the house if it got roasted and mashed with berbere and simmered in the best apple cider in the world, also found at my local farmers market too. And it did, folks. The house was rocked.

While I was cooking the Tikil Gomen and Atkilt Alecha, I was like... how are you gonna leave off the lentils. Lentils are everyone's fav. So I simmered them too. Then I thought about that awesome Avocado salad we had at the last few Ethiopian places we've been to in the city, and I thought it would be easy enough to make too. Then I thought we needed another cold dish, and Butecha is so fun to make, and so I made that too. Then I thought of how much I miss mushrooms and never make them anymore because Alex doesn't like them. I love mushrooms, guys. I can't live without them. So I made Ingudai tibs too. Then I forgot about my pumpkin in the oven, and mashed it up with a ton of berbere and niter kibbe, and simmered it in my awesome apple cider I got. I toasted the seeds up in my skillet while it simmered, and noticed that when the seeds get really hot, they start to spin SO FAST! Then they pop and fly out of your pan and at your face, so be careful. Cool, though. This morning I found one on my floor and thought it was a bedbug. Nope. Just a pumpkin seed. Phew. So yeah, that's the story of how I went from making 4 dishes to 8. They ruled though, you gotta believe me.

All vegans long for delicious breakfast food. When you go out to breakfast, you'll find that it's the least customizable meal for a vegan. Staples include french toast, bread soaked in eggs, then fried. Also just eggs, to eat. Then of course bacon, sausage, ham or whatever meats you can jam on your plate to start your day off right. Thanks for the continental breakfast.

So yeah breakfast is something we hold dear to our hearts, because it is so unusual to eat it anywhere but in your own home, cooked by anyone but you. But you do it right, so keep doing it. No breakfast buffet I've ever been to had scrambled (or cubed!) tofu with greens, avocado, baked french toast with berries. They did have potatoes though. But with all this Whole Foods making non-vegan potatoes chutzpah going on, no potatoes are safe. Unless you ask. And they say yes, they are vegan. Then they're safe.

Yesterday I tried to make this pizza on a tortilla, and alas, it was too floppy. Today, I made in on pizza dough, and it was awesome. It's all the stuff you would probably want in your burrito, just on a pizza instead. We've all OD'ed on burritos by now, because of their delicious, easily-vegan convenience. It's time to eat our beans and guacamole on something else for a change. I mean I'll probably have a burrito, like, tomorrow, but for tonight-- Variety! Break free from the burrito pack with the Burritzza!

To be "good", I scooped up the leftover guac with endive spears instead of chips. I'm such a good vegan... 

Burritzza!

Do you feel that you're sophisticated, but also casual? Type A, yet many times Type B? Love trying new things, but also hate change? Need things like sushi, bulgogi and dim sum in your life, but after a really long hard day, crave nothing other than mac and cheese? Maybe you're exactly like me... These dumplings have a lovely sophisticated look on the exterior, but inside, there's a crispy, crunchy, salty tater-tot. The essence of young America, at it's finest. 

I learned a very important lesson from Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero, that American food is more now than ever a conglomeration of other nations' cuisines. I'm sure my kids will grow old one day with visions of homemade vegan sushi, tortellini, and Thai noodles as their great American pastime. American food is happening now. Let's make it everything we want it to be. First, let me stuff these tater tots inside these dumplings. 

Beer glasses make rather handy cookie/circular cutters.

Dumplings got a sweet view.

Not a better way to spend one's labor day. This might be the first one I've ever had off. Yay America. 

March is here and I couldn't be happier. Spring is a good time of the year to clean house, especially your pantry. I always find all sorts of surprises in my pantry when I reorganize it-- probably because my pantry is all spread throughout my small apartment in order to give everything a home. I have a "flours" shelf, and often find that extra bag of powdered sugar that I didn't know was there, or a huge unopened bag of quinoa flour I bought for some cookies I never made.. etc. Today was my lucky day, because I found 2 giant bags of cashews! I sort of felt like I won the lottery. The cashew lottery. The best kind of lottery.

With them I made a new recipe-- an Irish Potato Pie! Is that a real thing? No? Okay good, then it was my idea. I suppose it takes inspiration from a french gratin, but Irish stuff is like waaay way cooler than french stuff, so I'm referring to this baby as an originale. 

Intended for but not limited to St. Patrick's Day fixings. I can't see this not going over fabulously at a potluck. Unless you have, like, really weird friends.

Ethiopian has become my favorite cuisine to eat over the last year or two. It's served differently than most other cuisines serve their food, almost family style, but literally, you all share one plate. Instead of forks and knives, you use sourdough crepes to pick up the food and eat it. And damn, are those crepes good. Since the arrival of Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero, I've been wanting to make Ethiopian food at home more, and since her book includes a slew of recipes from the spice blend to the crepes, I went to town. Or stayed in my kitchen. You get the idea.

The spice blend, berbere, is really fun to make, especially if you're easily amused by making spice blends. I don't normally make such blends, but it is pretty fun to make, and not difficult at all. Also, all the recipes call for a spiced oil, called nitter kibbe, which is made in a large batch ahead of time along with the spice blend. It's great and buttery and full of yellow turmeric which at any moment may strike down upon your counter and turn it neon yellow. For a while. Good thing yellow is my favorite color.

Traditionally, they make these huge (I mean really huge) crepes and serve them on a (really) huge platter with piles of stews or dishes on top of the crepe. Since, I don't have a way to produce such large and beautiful crepes, I made smaller ones and served them on individual plates. Also, crepes are kind of a bitch to make. I'm not very good at making them. I found the smaller pan I tried, the more success I had. But I still didn't have boatloads of successful crepes. I did however have some. And with those, I shoveled delicious Ethiopian food into my mouth. Purpose served.

When I get Ethiopian food at a restaurant, I always get the vegetarian sampler, because I could never imagine getting to eat only one of these dishes per visit. The more variation, the better. When you're making it at home, it results in cooking like five dinners worth of food in preparation for one dinner. So basically, it was a ton of work. But it was totally worth it, and I will totally do it again :) 

I made this big spread for my friends, who seemed pleased by the authenticity of the dishes.  I think it's all about the spice blend. That's what gives it that perfect restaurant-quality. From the left to right, I made ingudai tibbs, which are portabello mushrooms in berbere sauce, but'echa, which is chickpea shallot and jalapeño eggy crumbles, Seitan tibbs, which is seitan in berbere sauce, yemisir wat, a spicy berbere lentil stew, and potatoes and green beans in berbere sauce. My favs were mushrooms and the egg-like chickpea crumbles, though all were good.

For dessert, I made the Ethiopian Chocolate Flourless Torte, the last recipe in the book. It's silken tofu-based, with a little berbere spice. I made this during testing, but used cayenne for mexican chocolate cake, my fav. This worked just as well. I could taste just a hint of spice. I suppose that's how it outta be. I'm always tempted to put way too much cayenne or spice thinking I won't taste it otherwise and they turn out ungodly spicy. These tasted kind of brownie-like, which is good. Everybody like brownies, right?

Overall, I had a great time cooking, a great time eating, and a great time hanging with my friends and feeding them delicious food! I'll raise a spicy brownie to many more dinners like this one :)

Mashed potatoes are sort of the best food ever. I've always been in love with mashed potatoes. I have to try pretty hard to remember how the mashed potatoes my dad used to make tasted, but I can kind of still remember, though it's been years since I've eaten them. They were great, anyways. However, they taste nothing like my go-to mash-up these days, which also tastes great. Mashed food is awesome. My mashed potatoes has evolved, as many of my favorite dishes have, over the past couple of years. I used to load them up with dairy stand-ins, like tofutti cream cheese and earth balance. And they were good. But sometimes you can't even taste the potato. And I like the way potatoes taste! This is a sort of straight-up vegetable mash recipe, but try it and tell me you don't get what I mean when I say they taste potato-y in a way that you'd never understand from eating mashed potatoes from a restaurant.