Weekend Food Adventures

This weekend, I've been cooking up a storm.  I'll have lots of new recipes to post, but I just wanted to talk about the cooking adventures.  On Wednesday, I was in the mood for dessert and experimented making some chocolate chip cookie bars (which turned out really well), and some peanut butter "kiss" cookies like the kind my grandma makes (peanut butter cookies with a hershey's kiss in the middle).  Of course, I can't use hershey's kisses, so instead I used some Ghiradelli baking chocolate (the semi sweet kind is vegan).  I took a basic peanut butter cookie recipe from peta, and tried to modify it, but it wasn't quite sweet enough, so I will be working on that more.  Desserts in hand, I went over to a friends house where we do pretty much weekly Vegan cooking.  This week, we made a really interesting avocado pesto pasta dish.  It was really tasty, but to make it even better next time, I'm going to add sauteed veggies to the pasta.

After a wild goose chase on Thursday, I picked up my first batch of produce from my farm CSA at Uncommon Grounds.  It's from a southern Wisconsin farm called Harvest Moon.  In this batch I got spinach, rhubarb, asparagus, cilantro, radishes, chard, and garlic scapes.  I'm in the process of finding a recipe for the chard and scapes, but I've used most of the spinach, rhubarb, and asparagus.

Priya was up this weekend, so that meant a lot of cooking.  We made my Aunt's Fruit Pie, and then some Apple Sage Sausages and Quinoa.  We played Taboo with some friends, attempted to get drunk and pretty much failed (although we discovered fruit smoothies with pomegranite schnopps are delicious).  The next day, we had star fruit and made strawberry rhubarb pie.

On Sunday, a friend of Michael's and mine from from his work wanted to have a dinner party with Vegan food, and cheese and wine.  I'll talk more about this in a separate post.

Chickpea and Kale Pasta

I made this recipe as an experiment, not expecting it to be very good.  Surprisingly it was delicious.  It's a great way to sneak in a good portion of kale, and the chickpeas and pasta compliment each other  very well.  I got the idea for the recipe out of a book called Leafy Greens.

Kale:
Take about a pound of kale (2-3 cups), wash and rinse it, and then cut the leaves off the stem.  I threw away the stems because they take even longer to cook than the leaves, and detract from the taste.  Chop up the remaining green.

Add them to a pot of boiling water for about 15 minutes (kale takes a long time to cook, but don't let them get to smushy)

Pasta:
Standard directions, use one of the larger shapes or perhaps spaghetti would work too.  Cook about a pound.

Skillet (put this in about 7 minutes after you start the kale):
Add 1 tbsp olive oil in a skillet on medium low heat and add:
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 red pepper
4 tbsp minced parsley
salt and pepper, to taste
1 can chickpeas, drained

As soon as the kale is done, add it to the skillet as well.  Fry everything for another minute, then toss with the (drained) pasta.

Gardein Beef Stir Fry

Gardein makes some great mock meat meals that are pretty high in protein and tasty.  They have recently started selling some gardein beef tips at a nearby whole foods.  Michael really likes them, and after I made this recipe said it was the kind of thing we should make once a week.  Our version of meatloaf.  

This recipe should make enough for 4 people.

In a saucepan, start preparing 2 cups wild rice.  I think its the standard 1 cup water for every 1/2 cup rice and it cooks for about 40 minutes.

About 20 minutes into the rice, chop up:

1/2 a red pepper

6-8 broccoli crowns

6 brussle sprouts (or some cabbage finely sliced might work as a good stand in)

5-7 asparagus tips

2 scallions (or 1/4 cup finely diced onions)

3 or 4 cloves of garlic

Combine these and a bag of the gardein beef tips into a frying pan with a few tbsps olive oil, cover, and saute them for about 10-13 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Once the vegetables soften, it is done.

The next step can be done in one of two ways.

You can put some of the wild rice on a plate, top with the veggie mix, and then drizzle some ginger sauce on it (the kind I mentioned in this post).

Or, combine everything in a large bowl and pour on maybe 1/4 cup of the ginger sauce (not so much that its soupy, but enough that it coats everything) and mix well.

Rosemary Veggies and Potatoes

This is half a remake of this recipe, and half a new experiment that had a different flavor I liked.  Basically, it involves more veggies.

Peel and chop 1 potato into cubes.  Put into a frying pan with a few tbsp of olive oil on medium-high heat.  Let them fry while you chop the other vegetables, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to brown all sides and adding more olive oil if needed.

Chop
3 stalks of asparagus
3 brussle sprouts (really tasty in this)
4 broccoli crowns
1 scallion
2 cloves garlic
8-10 sugar snap peas

When the potatoes look soft (you can poke them with a fork), add these to the frying pan as well.  Cook for about another 5-8 minutes, until vegetables are tender.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Foster Kittens - Little Kevin and Little Man

First off, no I did not get to name the foster kittens.  I would have named them something awesomely nerdy like Spock and Tuvok.  Kevin is a workable name, but I can't think of a good nickname for little man, besides just little or something unrelated.

That being said, the kittens are awesome!  I got them this morning and they are adapting well.  Right now they are sleeping, after exploring all day.  They are very jumpy, but I am teaching them that pets are good and so is being cuddled.  We'll see how the first night goes and if they'll keep us up all night.  The other cats are somewhat disgruntled and want to know what sort of party is going on in here and why they can't come in.

I get them for about 2 weeks, until around the 21st.

While at the PAWS foster center, I noticed they had a goal on their white board for fostering.  1,200 kittens rescued from Animal Control this year.  So far it was somewhere over 400.  They provided food and a carrying case, and a long list of numbers in case something goes wrong.

Updates as time goes on, but so far I'm enjoying the experience.

Little Kevin

Little Man

Foster Kittens

Quick, fun update:
I get my foster kittens on Monday!
I got permission from my landlady to take in 1 or 2 sets of foster kittens for a few weeks each.

Fostering kittens basically works like this.  When warm weather hits, mother cats start having kittens.  Lots of them.  When they're found and taken to Animal Control, there's so many it overwhelms them.  They call other local shelters.  However, kittens derive a large portion of their immune system from their mother's milk, so if they are not with her, they will be too immunocompromised to be able to stay in the shelters.  So, for the period until they are old enough to receive their shots and be spayed/neutered, they need foster homes to help take care of them.  Shelters will only agree to take as many kittens as the have foster homes for, so after Animal Control fills up, it has no choice but to euthanize some of the kittens.  By taking in two foster kittens, that's two less that will be put down.  Then, once they're old enough, PAWS (the shelter I'm working with), will put them in their adoption center and find homes for them.

I'm really excited to be able to help.  To me being vegan is about doing less harm and more good in the world whenever possible (ahimsa).

Pictures will be posted.  You are warned of the impending adorable-ness.

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Treats

I made this vegan version of rice crispy treats (gelatin free) for the pizza party the other night.  It's pretty simple, and topped with the same stuff that you put on puppy chow.

Treats:
1 cup sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 cup peanut butter
6 rice crispy cereal

Combine the sugar and corn syrup in a saucepan and put on medium heat.  Cook until the mixture becomes bubbly, stirring so it won't burn.  Remove from the heat and add the peanut butter.  Put the cereal in a large mixing bowl and put the mixture on top.  Mix well.

Spread the mixture in a 9x13 in. pan.

Topping Sauce:
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup vegan butter
2 tbsp vanilla

Melt all together in a small sauce pan.  Pour the sauce over the cereal in the pan.

It's good warm, or chilled to completely harden the chocolate topping (otherwise it will stay the consistency of the peanut butter).  Cut into squares and serve.