Hot Child in the City

This weekend was hot. Damn hot. Hot like I actually didn't mind having to go into work because at least they've got air conditioning. I spent a fair amount of time lounging in front of a fan with a frosty beverage to cope with the heat. Oh, and I also made some tofu scramble.

The tofu is scrambled with sun dried tomatoes and mushrooms, seasoned with thyme, cumin, turmeric, paprika, and a bit of salt. Aren't the spices pretty?

Thanks Joe, you're quite the Trader

Alright, I'm little Miss Semi-Homemade on this dinner tonight. Maybe someday I'll get a real job and be able to spend my weekends at home making yeasted pizza dough from scratch and lovingly simmering tomato sauce on the stove all the live long day. That would be the life. Sigh.

In reality I spent the whole day at school; consequently, in order to make dinner I have to get by with a little help from my friends. (Not Paul and Winnie, I wish.) I mean Trader Joe's. So here's what I've got to show for it.


I started out with some TJ's whole wheat pizza dough. It's basically ready to go, just needs 20 min at room temp to relax. I cut it in half, stretch it all out, and fill up calzones for Sean and I.


This one is mine, filled with a whole week of leftovers. Starting from the bottom: TJ's pizza sauce, my homemade pesto, TJ's meatless-balls, some FYH soy cheese, artichoke hearts, olives, shiitake and enoki mushrooms, spinach, and somehow some shredded carrots ended up in there too.


Sean basted the tops of the calzones with a mixture of olive oil and a nice dark Porter beer. Actually his beer "accidentally" spilled into my little bowl of olive oil and we just went with it. You can't tame innovators. Lucky for us, it did make for a rich and tasty crust.


In the end, we enjoyed our pesto-Porter-mushroom-meatless ball calzones. Not bad for dinner on the fly. Trader Joe would be proud.

The Big One

I suffered through a 2 hour mind numbing meeting today in a stuffy conference room. I would have comfortably lapsed into a nice little nap in the back, were it not for the person sitting next to me that was eating peanuts, one at a time, crunching them loudly directly in my ear. Now I don't mind peanuts, in fact I love them. But my eardrums can only handle so much. I had to retreat deep into my happy place in order to maintain sanity. And maybe I was hungry for lunch or maybe I just really love muffins, but baking muffins was what I was thinking about.
These are Cherry Almond Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance, they bake up nice and tall, they'll cure what ails you.

Pass Me the Green

Pesto! I have both basil and mint plants growing on my balcony. They are most often used in preparation of happy hour mojitos, but come in handy when life demands pesto.

Angel hair is my particular pasta of choice to pair with pesto. I dare you to convince me otherwise.

Make Crepes, Not War

These crepes were made with the audio accompaniments of repeated gunshots and blaring sirens. No, there isn't an impending revolution in graduate housing. The sounds were coming from inside my apartment, specifically from the television where my husband was very involved in a heated session of Grand Theft Auto on his playstation. "Stop starting gang wars and come eat your breakfast!" Something I don't get to say everyday.


I use the crepe recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. The batter is basically flour, water, salt, and olive oil. It comes together really quickly, especially if you've already chugged two cups of coffee.


I make the crepes one at a time on my favorite non-stick skillet and stick them in my toaster oven while subsequent crepes are being cooked. I don't turn the toaster on; rather, the heat and steam from the crepes is trapped in the oven so the crepes stay warm and don't stick together. When I'm all done cooking I've got a heaping, steaming pile of crepes. (Coprophiles, go back and read that sentence again, get your mind out of the gutter!)

The crepes were filled with strawberry soy yogurt and Ligonberries. Rolled up and topped off with strawberry sauce, they satisfy the gangster in everyone.

Good Coffee or Great Coffee?

My husband and I start our weekend mornings off very differently. I embrace Saturday morning by sleeping in. My husband, however, wakes up at the crack of dawn and putters around on his computer for awhile. He eventually brews a huge pot of coffee in hopes that I'll wake up and cook him breakfast. This particular morning, his sly tactics succeeded in coaxing me out of my beauty rest.

I take my coffee on the sweet side, with a scoop of Nestle Quik chocolate and warmed chocolate Almond Milk. Occasionally I top it off with Soyatoo vegan whipped cream, so by this point it no longer really counts as coffee; it's more of a caffeine laced hot cocoa.

Long Duck Dong

I just noticed that all of my previous posts have been about breakfast and dessert, or dessert-like breakfasts. By looking at this blog you'd think I subsist solely on cupcakes, donuts, and waffles. And you'd be pretty much right.

But I do occasionally prepare myself a balanced meal for dinner.


I made a trip to the Asian market this weekend; I narrowly avoided a parking lot fender bender, bought baby bok-choy and a shitload of shiitake mushrooms on the cheap, marvelled at the 50lb sacks of rice, and bought canned seitan. It was quite a trip, as I'm sure you can imagine.


This vegetarian mock duck is made from wheat gluten, making it high in protein and cholesterol free (try not to be distracted by my amazingly long fingers). I had to dare myself to buy it, because who really buys canned faux duck? Before this weekend, certainly not the likes of me. But the can was only $1.39 so I figured I could take the risk.

The mock duck was pan-fried with some sliced shiitake mushrooms, and served alongside steamed rice and baby bok-choy with caramelized shallots and sesame seeds (recipe from Veganomicon cookbook). The mock duck/mushrooms were seasoned with soy sauce, mirin, sesame oil, and a generous squirt of Sriracha hot sauce.

The verdict?

Pretty damn tasty for a $1.39. Two amazingly long thumbs up.

The Triumphant Tofu Omelet

You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and you're not at all hungry for breakfast?

Nope? Me neither.


This weekend's breakfast challenge was the vegan omelet. The recipe is a tester from The Crack of Noon, the vegan brunch cookbook from the Post Punk Kitchen. Yes, it is tofu based! But don't be scared, it actually tastes pretty good...


The omelet's flavor is derived from one secret ingredient that combines with everything else to mimic a traditional omelet in texture, taste, and likelihood to massively overeat. Kala namak, or black salt, adds the egg-y flavor but can be an elusive ingredient. I took a field trip to my local Indian market to pick some up. I went a little overboard in the spice aisle, picking up several little spice packets (so cute! so cheap!) but that's another story.

When the omelet was done, filled with sautéed mushrooms and covered in lots of fresh black pepper, it reminded me of the eggs that my dad makes. Which was sort of cool but sort of unsettling, being that it's been several years since my last experience with eggs. But my basic omelet instinct came back immediately, and I hoovered the tofu-melet down no problem.