Supper and the Single Girl

Vegan Meals and Random Thoughts

Monday, April 30, 2007

Plantains, yay!

When I was growing up in Florida a less enlightened person, I loved Cuban food and (blush) arroz con pollo. I especially loved the plantanos or plantains that came on the side. So when I saw a packet of three peeled plantains at Trader Joe's today, I had to get them. I had on hand a box mix of Casbah Saffron Rice, which can be Middle Eastern or Caribbean. Hey, it takes only 20 minutes to cook, including the time to heat the water to boiling. It's quick and easy--in fact, everything on my plate was quick and easy.
After pressing the tofu, I mixed up some garlic powder, Mexican seasoning mix, and oregano and dredged the tofu. I put it in a baking dish with a cut-up onion and a 14.5-ounce can of chopped tomatoes (note to self: next time, use more tomatoes) and baked it at 350 degrees for half an hour, turning the tofu slices midway through. The plantains, you just slice and saute, then drain on paper towels. The riper the plantain is, the sweeter, and these must not have been terribly ripe because it had the starchiness of tostones as opposed to the sweeter maduros. This is the only negative to buying plantains peeled.
I'm going to be tinkering with this recipe, I think, mostly with the amount of ingredients. I may try cutting the tofu differently to get more spicing as well. If I get this perfected, I'll let you know.

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Monday, April 23, 2007

'Bobs on the Barbie






Okay, so it's not really a barbecue, but "Grilling Kabobs" would have been a really dull title, don't you think? I bought a container of mixed up chopped onions and peppers (and a couple of mushrooms--what's up with that? I want more shrooms, dammit!), threaded them with some tempeh chunks on leftover skewers from the last kabobs I bought, brushed on some Annie's Naturals Paradise Marinade and grilled them in my lovely grill pan that I so adore. I had way more veggies than I had room for on the skewers, so after the skewers were done, I just tossed the unthreaded veggies in the grill pan and stirred them around for a bit until they had cooked up some. I also had some Lundberg's rice pilaf and cooked that up, for a nice, healthy (I hope) dinner. The rice could use a little more flavor--maybe next time I'll use half broth and half water to cook it or toss in some seasonings. But it's still pretty good, and I'd get it again.
Earth Day was yesterday, Sunday. And everyone talks about global warming and how to be environmentally friendly. The local paper was asking its readership for their tips, so of course, I wrote in. I said, go vegan and gave a few stats on just how wasteful the animal products industries are and how horribly they pollute the earth. And yes, I backtracked a bit; I realize not everyone can or will go vegan. But just sharply reducing your consumption of animal products will help. And to my suprise and delight, they published my letter, although a little hacked up. The EPA itself states that runoff from factory farms pollutes groundwater more than all other industrial sources combined, and the UN states that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. Don't believe me? Know a skeptic? Have them Google "animal products global warming" and see how many hits you get that say, yes, meat production causes some serious environmental problems. And just because meat production is worse than SUVs, that doesn't give you a pass. If you must own a car, find a more fuel-efficient one. The supply of oil on the planet is finite, and your monstermobile isn't helping matters.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Pizzaaaaaa

So I finally tried the newish vegan cheese called "Sheese", a European cheese substitute that has made its way onto our shores. I had the Mozzarella flavor hanging around my fridge, and I made a fabulous pizza with it. I used a recipe from Sarah Kramer's La Dolce Vegan, but needed to double the recipe to cover my nice large pizza pan. It also says to bake for 10 minutes before putting the toppings on, but it seemed crumbly, so I may not bake it before putting the toppings on and try it that way. I opened a can of tomato sauce, cut up some mushrooms and an onion, mashed a coupla cloves of garlic (needs more garlic), and grated the cheese under and over the toppings.
And maybe saute the onions before putting them on the pizza, I don't know.
As you can see, the cheese doesn't get very melty, but I kind of appreciate that, as I've had pizza with the Follow Your Heart cheese at a couple of local restaurants, and I don't know why, but the FYH comes out practially liquified--blech. I like it sort of chewy but melty.
It comes in rounds, sort of like a brie, and I have read that it's best to grate or melt it. At one point I just held the grater over the pizza and ran the piece of Sheese over it, which I should have done in the first place instead of using a prep bowl--save a dish to clean.
Sadly, the pizza totally fell apart while I was putting it away, but I'm sure it will still taste good. I also think the Sheese sort of an acquired taste, but many things worth eating are.
Anyway, we had a lovely taste of spring, and then it turned unpleasantly cold around the beginning of the month. We even had a dusting of snow last weekend--snow! in April!--that vanished by the end of the day. I have read that Washington in April is really weird weather-wise. It has gotten as low as 15 degrees and as warm as 95 degrees. I suppose one thing to be grateful for is it hasn't gotten to 95 (yet) because in my apartment building they don't turn off the heat until mid-April; if the temp climbs above 65, I'm almost too warm!
If you want to get some Sheese for yourself, both Vegan Essentials and Pangea carry eight or nine Sheese flavors, but they both say you don't want to get it too warm. I wonder if the hour-and-a-half Metro trip up to Rockville would be problematic...

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Monday, April 09, 2007

Smokin'



If you like smoked foods--and I guess I don't, or I didn't cook it correctly--check out Smoke & Fire Smoked Tofu. It was sitting around my fridge, so I decided I may as well heat it up (sauteed it in a pan) for dinner. I was at Whole Foods today and picked up a couple of vegetable skewers (and fruit because there are chunks of pineapple in there). I slathered them in Annie's Smokey Maple Bar-B-Q sauce (which I do like). There are two skewers per package, and I stored the second one in the container in which it came. And of course, I had my old standby, a baked potato with Earth Balance margarine.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with prepackaged, precut veggies. If it gets someone to eat more fruits and veggies, then precut, packaged fresh (or even frozen) veggies are fine by me. Just avoid most canned veggies as they are lacking in nutrients. Yes, I buy canned tomatoes and tomato sauce and paste, and I buy canned beans (such as black beans or kidney beans, always checking for a low sodium level), but I wouldn't touch canned green beans, carrots, peas or corn. And sure the precut veggies are a little more than whole veggies, but if you're unsure how to cut up a butternut squash, or you want to make sure you like it (I kinda do), consider it a savings of time instead.

That said, I still make my own seitan. It just tastes better and has a better texture when I do.

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