Mexican food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, life...

Long time, no food post! I assure you, it isn't because I haven't been cooking. My internet silence is due in part to a week and a half trip back to New England for the holidays, a re-stocking and re-modeling of my pantry and kitchen, and my forgetfulness of taking pictures before devouring my food. While visiting my homeland, I cooked a few Holiday meals with several items on the menu for each occasion, a few pies, about three hundred pierogi, and maybe a hundred cupcakes, none pictured. Though I don't have beautiful images to show you of my work during my travels, I can assure you that all the food was delicious, beautiful, and not made in vain. I also had a great time making everything, and spent much needed time with friends and family.

I am definitely going to be needing an iphone, if only for a sweet accessible camera through various apps with which I can photograph (and not forget to photograph) all of my creations and reproductions. But alas, I will not be getting one for a very long time, as I am what most refer to as flat broke.

But I can certainly make due with what I've got for the time being.

I've had the idea stuck in my head about making enchiladas for weeks. They turned out delicious, although it took me hours to prepare all the components. I made a chile-chocolate mole, adapted from Veganomicon that I've made about 20 times already so I've sort of morphed it into my own thing, though still loosely based on that original recipe. The mole served as the Enchilada sauce and I liked it a lot, but I think next time I'll try a more traditional sauce with more tomato. The filling is sliced red peppers, onions, seitan, garlic, avocado, red chile pesto, and brown rice. The pesto is garlic, red bell peppers, chipotle chiles, fresno chiles, onion, salt and tomato paste. The "sour cream" cooling element is the chipotle cashew crema I made, which is plain soy yogurt, cashews, chipotle chiles, salt and black pepper.

It is possible that it took so long because I have a tiny kitchen and dish-doing needed to happen frequently during cooking, switching pans, using and washing out blenders and food processors.. It was a production. Though, a tasty one!

This morning I made a tofu scramble with leftover enchilada filling and made it into breakfast burritos. I guess the addition of tofu makes me feel like I'm eating breakfast... It's kind of a rationalization, but I'm sticking to it. On a side note, yesterday I made baked falafel pitas for lunch with homemade hummus and cucumber salsa and decided that it is my favorite food in the whole world. Just sayin'...

This morning I read this really cool blog by this awesome chocolatier who made vegan devilled eggs, and I want to make them so bad, and as soon as I find an egg mold and make it my possession, I will. But as I was scrolling down and looking at the rest of her site I saw this sad post she wrote telling the sad truths of how mainstream companies make and manufacture their chocolate, and the steps she takes to make sure none of her products support such horrible industries, but also how people are unwilling to pay more for products that are made ethically using materials that don't harm the environment. It just made me really sad to realize how hard it is to do the right thing, especially when you have your own business, which I hope someday to have. What a buzzkill this world is...

Anyways you should definitely go on her site and check out her awesome work and maybe even buy some of her chocolates. Because there aren't a lot of people doing all the awesome things she's doing, because it's really hard. I hope that when it comes time for me to make the decision to buy something that costs more because it's responsible rather than something that's cheaper because it's cheap in ethics, that I'll make the right decision, because it's the right decision.

More light-hearted food pics and witty explanation will follow soon.
Thanks for reading.