I know it's January but I have been making salads like it's June. I have been making all the salads from Salad Samurai, aiming to make all the ones from the Winter chapter by the time the season leaves us. This one is actually from the Fall chapter, and it's called the Collard Sweet Potato Crunch Bowl. It called for cubed sweet potato but I had roasted mine whole and it was too soft to cube. So I just scooped it on top and it was none the worse for it. Those Sriracha and Smoke Pecans are really addictive. I had extra from this salad and I totally ate them all at work the next day. I shared. Swear.


I got Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen for Christmas and have made a few things from it already. This is the White Lasagna with Butternut Squash. It was really good. It has tofu ricotta, an alfredo sauce and pureed roasted butternut squash. Alex is really not into any of those things so I had this all to myself the whole week. I shared with my coworker, who as of late has had vegan aspirations!


Alex does, however, really like Mexican food and he helped me make burritos the other night. I made spicy lentils with some taco spices and tomato sauce, some sauteéd diced onions and peppers and rolled them inside along with some avocado slices. Some brown rice and black beans on the side, and other than the large quantity of food, there's not too much to be ashamed of, healthwise. Not that it has ever really stopped us before, but I have been aiming for healthier alternatives.

 Speaking of appropriate winter gear, I received some new winter boots today! They are from Native Shoes, a Canadian company based out of Vancouver, and all of their products are vegan! I was in search of a vegan "bean boot" and these looked to be a good fit. They are similar in style but without the leather and shearling. They had a bunch of colors but hardly any that were left in my size. This color combo seemed acceptable enough, and after trying them on I love them!!



While in curry-mode I made this sweet potato curry with adzuki beans and cauliflower from
Isa Does It. It was a thai-inspired curry with red curry paste and lots of lime. It was very seasonal and delicious.


I made this salad from Salad Samurai but this is actually from the Spring chapter. It's the Green Curry Lentil Salad. It was super spicy but good. It was sweet from the pineapple and crunchy from the toasted coconut. I added Lemongrass Tofu to the salad even though it didn't call for it because it was dinner. Everybody wants a little tofu in there when they eat a dinner salad. If they don't then tell them I said Yes they do.


Okay this one is definitely from the Winter chapter of Salad Samurai. It is called Sesame Noodles In The Dojo. I have been to Dojo in the West Village on Terry's recommendation and was not a fan, but then after reading the intro to this salad recipe learned that they overhauled their entire menu and the restaurant sort of fell flat. The Dojo she once so highly recommended is now just a really generic pan-asian sort of place. These sesame noodles are a tribute to a dish once prepared so well by the restaurant back when. Plus noodles? In a salad? I'm there. I added Beyond Meat but this really didn't need it.

 
Speaking of noodles in salads, here is the Pad Thai Salad with Asparagus and Tofu from the Spring chapter. I know, I can't stick to the right season! What gives? This salad was pretty good but the asparagus didn't shred into ribbons the way I thought they would and were a barely noticeable addition to the salad for a pretty good amount of work. It took forever to shave the asparagus spears, and most of the asparagus was left behind once they couldn't be shred anymore. Maybe the really big husky stalks would have worked better for this, but I always find the skinny ones in the store. The salad overall was good, but benefitted from some Golden Mountain Sauce drizzled on top!


I've been doing my best to keep making smoothies, which is really no problem, aside from the time it takes to peel chop, blend and drink. I have been kind of in a protein-shake-mood lately. I have finally been able to work out again after my shoulder injury healed. Well -- it didn't exactly heal. I got shot up with some concoction of steroids at the doctor and was put on a high dose of anti-inflammatory drugs. It feels pretty good most days by now. I am hoping by the time I go back I will not need any further treatment. In the meantime I have been cranking out the Chaturangas and planking until I drop. I made Alex do a 45 minute Nike Training Club workout with me this morning. It was fun to work out together yet funny. Do couples work out together? Or is that supposed be separate?


In conclusion I have been keeping busy this winter with my favorite activities, like cooking, yoga, seeing shows, and playing bass. And making ravioli. These have a lentil & ricotta filling. Putting my ravioli pan to use!


Enjoy the rest of the season! There's much more fun to be had before it's over <33

Alongside, I made her Venezuelan Black Beans, which required "sofrito" which is mostly just an aromatic base of cooked veggies. I chopped for a while...


And then I had vegetable confetti! You can celebrate something with any leftover vegetables. Just kidding. Don't throw vegetables.


I used my bamboo steamer to steam the foil packets of seitan for this, but they wouldn't all fit nicely inside. After this, I bought a huge steamer pot suitable for tamales and steaming anything else the size of or smaller than a regulation-size basketball. So now I'm set up in steam-town.


The beans just had to be soaked overnight, but other than requiring a labor-intensive sofrito, they were the easy part.


I served it over her Yellow Garlic Rice, with a huge scoop of guac, and a Mexican beer, you know, for authenticity...


Ta-da. Dinner for 20. People-- not dollars.

After it came out of the oven I sprinkled crushed tortilla chips and covered it in guacamole, for authenticity, of course.

Begin with a lightly grilled whole wheat tortilla and some chipotle refried beans, as ridiculous an amount as you choose.


All my homemade mexican food must have lentil taco meat. The BF cries if I don't make it. I have recently learned of the vegan phenomenon of including roasted potatoes in tacos. I'm for it.



Now put on the generally acceptable taco toppings, be it grilled corn, tomatoes, guacamole, tofu sour cream, chopped red onions, pears, chocolate... whathaveyou.

The enchilada is filled with a red chile pesto and chopped avocado with sauteed poblano peppers and red onions. The rice is brown basmati with annatto powder and the beans are black eyed peas with chipotle chiles in adobo. It totally did the trick.

Avocado and Red Chile Pesto Enchilada

4 large whole wheat or corn tortillas
1-2 avocados, diced
1 red onion, sliced
2 poblanos, sliced into strips

red chile pesto:
2 cloves garlic, peeled
3 red jalapeño or fresno peppers
1 dried ancho chile
2 dried chile de arbols
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons nooch
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon chile powder

Place dried peppers in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let stand for about 20 minutes and remove them from the bowl. Pull out their stems. Remove stems from fresno peppers and add to a food processor with the reconstituted dried chiles, garlic and pine nuts. Puree until smooth. Pour in the oil, add the salt, pepper, chile powder, and nooch. Puree and taste for heat and seasonings.
In a large skillet, sautee poblanos and red onion in a little olive oil, if desired, until soft. Toss with 1-2 tablespoons of the pesto. Turn off heat.
Heat the largest skillet you've got over med-high heat, and spray with some canola oil. Lay a tortilla out and place some onions and peppers down the middle of the tortilla and add some chopped avocado on top of that. Drizzle another tablespoon of the pesto over that and fold edged over the filling.
Place the enchilada seam-side down on the hot pan. Sear for about 3 minutes, the flip over and sear 2nd side. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
Serve with Rice and beans!

It looks a little murky to be green, but green is the color of mostly all of the ingredients! This is chock full of good stuff for you, and hey, if you wanted to eat this 4 times a week, you could do much much worse. The broth is super spicy, because spicy chili is the bees knees. Or.. something.

Tempeh Green Chili

2 8oz packages of tempeh
1 head of green kale
4 cups baby spinach
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 1lb tomatillos
2 jalapeño chiles
2 poblano peppers
3 leeks
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, Diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb mushrooms, quartered
5 cups homemade vegetable broth
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon corriander
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
1 can canellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 can navy beans, rinsed and drained
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup chopped parsely
1 avocado, diced, optional but warranted

Cut leeks lengthwise and chop off the tough dark green ends. Discard tough ends and slice the leeks into half moons. Separate chopped layers of leeks and place in a bowl. Fill bowl with water and slosh the leeks around so that the dirt and grit falls to the bottom of the bowl.
Heat olive oil in a large soup pot and add leeks, onion, mushrooms, carrots, and garlic and sauté. Rip the kale off the tough veins and rinse. Tear into bite-sized pieces and add to pot. Wilt kale for 2 minutes and add spinach. Wilt for about 5 minutes.
Peel tomatillos and rinse under water. Preheat the broiler. Place tomatillos, jalapeños and poblanos in a cast-iron skillet and broil for 8-9 minutes or until all tomatillos and chiles have split or blistered. Remove and let cool. Peel away the burnt skin and puree in a food processor. Pour mix into soup.
Tear tempeh into bite-sized chunks and place in a large skillet. Cover tempeh pieces with water and simmer about 10 minutes. Drain away excess water and heat tempeh over medium high heat. pour tamari over tempeh and stir. Cook 1 minute and turn off heat.
Now add corriander, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and paprika to soup and stir. Add broth and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and add beans. Cook 15 minutes, covered. Add tempeh and stir. Cook for 3 minutes and turn off heat. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped parsley and diced avocado.

Now I know not everyone gets amped about making 7 layers for just a dip. It's not like my mom is going to see this and go whip this up on a school night. This can be reserved for special occasions, with special friends. Or if you're like me, you could do a couple steps tonight and a couple steps tomorrow and have this on your table right quick. The choice is yours.

I don't know why, but I think of tacos as the ultimate family food. Don't you? Also, on a side note, I was thinking about that episode of LOST where Kate tells her husband she's a fugitive and yells through tears, "I Don't do Taco Night!!" Then I somehow caught that exact episode on TV last night, then produced a taco dip. This series of events led me to tacos, my ultimate purpose or calling in life. See? Life is sequential and purposeful.

*For gluten-free variation, I suggest doing this with tempeh crumbles. That could rock the house, actually, GF or not.

1 cutlet seitan
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped pineapple
2 chipotle peppers, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup pineapple juice
2 tomatillos diced fine, or 2 tablespoons tomatillo salsa
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

sliced onion
cucumbers, cut into matchsticks, both optional, for garnish
4-6 small round corn tortillas

Heat olive oil in  large heavy skillet. Cut seitan into small, bite-sized pieces and sautee in pan until browned and crispy on most sides. Remove from pan.
Sautee onion until lightly brown and soft. Add garlic and chipotle and sautee 1-2 minutes more. Add tomatillos and cook for 1-2 more mintutes. Then stir in pineapple juice and turn off heat. Taste and sprinkle with salt and pepper if you like.
Warm tortillas in steamer basket, oven, microwave, whathaveyou, for about 1 minute. To assemble tacos, spoon some seitan into the middle of tortilla. Then sprinkle with 1-2 tablespoons chopped pineapple, a few slices of red onion, cucumbers, and cilantro. Some guac never hurt anyone either.

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.

These ones are wrapped especially cute, kind of like a little ball or bell or something to that effect and then twisted into a little rose and knotted. We thought it would be cute to wrap the dessert tamales in different way. I tried and tried and failed and failed and then just decided I was going 'traditional-wrap' on all the tamales. Belinda, however, mastered the adorable bell-shape and is responsible for all the added cuteness of these tamales.


The dessert flavor we picked was Pineapple Coconut Raisin from Viva Vegan and I made a ganache to spoon over the top. The dough is all brown-sugary and awesome. I tackled a couple of these before dinner, and by a couple I mean 3, and so I had less space for more tamales come dinnertime, and everyone thought I was dainty and had a small appetite. Little did they know I pre-gamed on all of them.

So now the tamale-making door has been opened and now I aspire to make all kinds of tamales, sweet and savory, night and day, holiday or weeknight, in good times and in bad, tamales will play a prominent role in my life from here on. That is, when I'm not making cupcakes. Or pie.

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.

 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.