Kosher for Passover, as interpreted by an atheist

Since some of our co-op members keep kosher for Passover, our co-op is doing the same. Tonight I served a simple mushroom, kale & tofu dish (modified from Real Simple) over quinoa (which is a seed, not a grain, apparently, and therefore okay.) The side dish was baked sweet potato fries.

I love sweet potato fries, they're so simple & tasty. I know I make them often, so I hope no one else is sick of them :) I did finally figure out why some of them kept coming out mushy though. I was using my airbake pans to roast them, and the pans weren't getting hot enough to really sear the outsides. That's great when you're making cookies, less awesome with vegetables. The ones I made on a standard cookie sheet lined with foil were perfect. Need more regular cookie sheets, I guess!

I feel like I am finally getting back into my stride after a really bad funk the last couple weeks. I know my meals had suffered some, but hopefully that's all behind me now. Sometimes, mama-ing is just HARD.

Giant Chipotle White Beans

I have long-adored Heidi Swanson. This recipe for Giant Chipotle White Beans caught my eye a few months ago and then, literally days later, a friend brought it to my house for dinner so I got a chance to try it.

It had been on my mind to cook it for coop and I jumped on it this weekend. I veganized it by leaving out the cheese and David and I both agreed that we like it better this way. It's a layered dish made up of a base of the bean, kale, adobo and tomato bake with the addition of whole grain breadcrumbs and a drizzle of fresh cilantro pesto.

I served it with marinated tomatoes and bell peppers (due mostly to the fact that the lettuce I had been hoping to use for salads went bad) and crusty bread. I wish I'd snapped a photo of the dish b/c I love the look of it with its enormous white beans but we ate the whole dish before I had a chance to take one. Actually, I ate most of it. David likes the dish, but not as much as me who really really really loves it. :)

One of these days, I'm going to have to break down and get Swanson's cookbook. Absolutely every recipe is wonderful and I love her attentive culinary process. When I make a Swanson dish, I never feel that I'm just slapping ingredients together. Yesterday, with Citizen Cope playing on the player and a Dos Equis on hand, cooking this dish was really fun.

Curry!!!!!!

Last night I served a Indian tofu curry to the co-op. It is a recipe I created and it orginally called for seitan, but after it was tried by some of my testers, they suggested tofu. They gave it rave reviews and I have to agree, we thought it was delicious. And even better with the tofu. I served it with brown rice and chickpea patties. The chickpea patty recipe came from vegweb. It had more of a falafel taste to it. Which I was not going for. They were tasty and the boys liked them which is great since Arthur is Mr. Pickypants. Josh loved the meal. Hope everyone enjoyed it as well.

Ribollita soup & salad

It was a warm day today! Almost too warm to pull off this soup!

I served a Tuscan-style soup called Ribollita. It means "reboiled," which is reference to the fact that it tastes even better the next day, and in true Tuscan form, it is UGLY. According to The Soup Peddler, their cuisine is usually a bowl of brown mush, and that's exactly what mine looked like! I must have gotten something right, even though I couldn't find the exact recipe. I did my best to recreate The Soup Peddler's version of this soup.

I had hoped to serve this with some sort of baked fruit dessert, maybe pineapple upside down cake, but it was just too hot to turn on the oven this afternoon. I'll manage my time better next week & get the baking done in the morning. Instead of a dessert, I put together a simple side salad. Since the soup is so hearty, and full of vegetables, beans, and bread, it really limits the appropriate sides, but a lighter salad worked well I think. I hope it was enough food for everyone.

The carrots, kale, and herbs in the soup were all from my garden, so this meal cost about $10. (!)

Monday's meal sponsored by Wheatsville

Coming off a very busy week and an out of town guest in for the weekend, I really had no time to cook for Monday's meal, especially since I had to go back to work today. So, I used my 10% off owner's coupon at Wheatsville that was expiring yesterday to provide the following meal:



That would be popcorn tofu served with buns, shredded lettuce, orange bell peppers and tomatoes, pesto and pecan white bean salad, a kosher dill pickle and an Endangered Species vegan dark chocolate square.

I forgot to send along a fancy vegan mayo, but I just added regular veganaise to ours. Yum!

It is wonderful to have really good vegan options in town for days like today, when all I could do with the limited energy I had was pack food in containers and send it along. Okay, I did shred the lettuce and slice the peppers and tomatoes, too.

With the discount, it wasn't super expensive - about $37 for all four meals. Plus, I was able to restock my Organic Mexican Velvet Roast coffee, which helped me get out of bed this tired, tired morning.

Stu......

Stu. Who is Stu? I meant to say "STEW". Ha ha. For my co-op meal this week, I made an Irish stout stew. I veganized the recipe from allrecipes.com. It was served with mashed potatoes and cupcakes for dessert. We liked the stew. The cupcakes were a bit of a disappointment. The recipe if from VWAV and it is the lemon cupcake recipe. There was not enough lemon in the cupcakes. I was going for a strawberry lemon cake and could not taste any lemon whatsoever. The icing tasted lemony, the cake, not so much. Of course cupcakes are always a hit with the men in my family, so they didn't care whether or not there was enough lemon.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

St. Patrick's Day fare

Since tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, I decided to get into the spirit a day early & made a corned "beef" and cabbage dish, served with a brown gravy, baked colcannon patties, and a basic soda bread.

All of the recipes were from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, and yet again, they were wonderful! I added too much soymilk to my colcannon puffs, so they flattened out and became patties, but YUM. They were all gone before noon at my house, and my husband ate most of them. He kept asking, "Can I have another?" to which I would reply, "You're eating kale! Have as many as you want!" Casper even chowed down on two of them! Definitely making those again.

I had to make two rounds of soda bread, since the first recipe was an epic fail. Switched to Susan's recipe she lists with the corned "beef," and it worked much better. I'll leave out the sugar next time though. I prefer a saltier soda bread.

All told, the meal cost about $20.