Tuesday night we had a Southern-style meal that we all collaborated on: I made honey-barbecue buffalo wings (vegan, of course!) and garlicky greens (kale), while NT made jerk-spiced sweet potatoes and AS made skillet cornbread. Mmm-MMM!



Wednesday we tried something completely new: leek and bean cassoulet from Veganomicon. You make this stew in a cast-iron skillet, then drop balls of biscuit dough on top and bake it in the oven. I really liked it; it was homey and comforting. AS helped out with the biscuit dough and NT had cooked up a batch of beans for me over the weekend, so it was also not labor-intensive at all. I took a photo while it was still in the skillet and one after I dished it out.

OK, bit of catching up to do:

Saturday night (Jan. 17) we took it pretty easy with mac & cheese (plus a vegan version for me) and tofu chili dogs. (Thanks CouponAddict for implanting the suggestion in our brains in one of your comments!)



Sunday, Jan. 18, NT made us a lovely roast dinner: Tofurkey vegan roast, mashed potatoes and lemony Brussels sprouts, with the rest of the chick'ny sauce and some stuffing leftovers that were in the fridge.



Tonight, NT cooked again (we're really savoring his cooking as much as possible before he goes back to school this week!) and made a vegan version of spicy crispy beef (he calls it "spicy crispy vegan" ) over rice. The "meat" is this dehydrated stuff that you soak in water before cooking. I guess because the pieces are much smaller, we like this a lot better than the "chicken nugget" version we tried awhile back.

Friday night we had a real splurge, something we hardly ever do. But we had all accumulated some spending money and we'd wanted to go to this restaurant for a long time.

Restaurants must be pretty used to people photographing their dinner, because no one commented.

So here are some of the things we tried at moto-i, the largest sake microbrewery and I think the first one outside of Japan. They do mostly small-plate Japanese bar food. It cost us $52 apiece, but we all tried more food than we needed and had quite a bit of sake; we could easily hang out there for less than half that price.

Here's the tofu miso soup:



Veggie dumplings with some amazing dipping sauce:



Grilled eggplant (I loved the sweet soy glaze, but it didn't turn me into an eggplant fan):


One of my personal favorites, the tofu bun:


And our three desserts we shared--mochi, sake-infused fruit and coconut sticky rice, and doughnuts:





If you're ever in Minneapolis and want a completely unique experience, I would recommend this place. And the servers have all been educated and trained to answer questions about sake-making!

Whew, I'm still digesting--I way overestimated how much to make tonight, and then it was too tasty to stop eating.

Tonight I made "chicken" enchiladas with sides of refried beans and guacamole.



Sometimes I go for prepared ingredients--honestly, I think Mexican food tastes pretty great either way. But tonight I went all out: cooked up pinto beans and fried them, and made my own enchilada sauce too (from an online recipe).

The trick with a good Mexican meal is not to repeat the same spices in all the components. So the enchilada sauce had the spiciness, the cumin, the chili powder, and the enchiladas had onions, cheese and oregano; the refried beans just had garlic, salt and pepper; and the guacamole was just avocados mashed with some fresh lime juice and a bit of salt.

Delicious, but I made way too much. Groan...

Last night we ate at our friends' house. They're quite adept at cooking vegan, having cooked for me often over the years, but they're also doing a cleanse where they only eat vegan, mostly whole-foods meals, so last night's was especially healthy.



There was sweet-and-sour red cabbage, Thai chickpeas over rice, and--my personal favorite--lima bean salad with sweet chili dressing. That is going into the lunch rotation when the weather's warmer! I had no idea that lima beans could be so huge and have such lovely texture, like butter beans. They've always been smaller and pale green with a weird texture whenever I've had them.

I've been faithfully taking photos of dinner but haven't gotten around to loading them onto the computer, so here are three nights of dinner.

Sunday night: Mock chicken satay over rice. Loved the marinade, but we won't be getting this mock chicken again. It's a kind you rehydrate in water before cooking, and it just doesn't have a nice enough texture or ability to soak in the flavor, compared to other mock meats.



Monday night: Polenta with tomato sauce, and oven-roasted garlicky zucchini (which NT had cut up and put on top of his polenta by the time we remembered to photograph it). The polenta, we all agreed, was slightly on the soft side, but still delicious, as were the sauce and zucchini.



Tonight: Chickpea cutlets (thanks Kashi for reminding me to try this recipe!) with "amazing chick'ny sauce" (a recipe I randomly found on the Web and use ALL the time), lemon-butter-pepper broccoli, and AS's famous biscuits. (Well, famous in our home.)

Friday night I made Penne Vodka from the Veganomicon cookbook. (Penne again--I'm seeing a real trend in my diet!) We had some more of the whole-wheat focaccia.



The recipe uses fresh basil and is really rich and flavorful. We had extra basil and were going to use it the next night, but it had already wilted. Stupid basil! The creaminess comes from almonds instead of a dairy product.

Anyway, we didn't mind at all because we had plenty of toppings for our next meal--pizza! AS makes a great crust with half whole-wheat, half white flour, and NT makes the sauce out of tomato paste and spices because it's WAY cheaper than the packaged stuff. We used all sorts of toppings--onion, green pepper, vegan pepperoni, banana peppers and jalapeno peppers, corn, olives, artichoke hearts...I think that's all. We had guests, so we made a lot of individual pizzas with the toppings tailored to taste.

Last night I made Braised Seitan with Brussels, Kale, and Sundried Tomatoes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Veganomicon. We had it over whole-wheat penne (can you tell we love pasta in this house? ). I use canned mock duck from the Asian grocery store; seitan is relatively cheap to make, but I've never gotten the hang of it. I try now and again, but mock duck is such a handy (if slightly pricy) replacement. Both are just made with wheat gluten, flour, water, soy sauce and flavoring, and mock duck is also fried.



This is such a strange recipe. We've had it before so I knew it would be good, but I was struck all over again how incongruous the ingredients seem. Brussels sprouts and sundried tomatoes? It just seems like some random stuff thrown together, but when you taste it, you realize it all works. Mellow, comforting, hearty, slightly sweet but savory, lots of nice textures going on: It's just a great winter treat. Once you assemble the ingredients and get the pasta water boiling, cook time is only about 15 minutes.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and this recipe makes a TON! When you mix it with a whole package of penne, we had three hearty servings plus four moderate-sized leftover portions. That bowl in the photo? I was only able to eat about half of it.

OK, you're gonna laugh. We had friends over for dinner last night, and even though we had the camera on the table we completely forgot to take a picture. Ordinarily this doesn't matter, because we've got extra that we can photograph in the pan, or leftovers in Tupperware. But this time we didn't have any leftovers. I racked my brain for some way to photograph dinner (short of regurgitating it and...OK, that's enough) and finally realized we did have extra--of the sauce.

So last night's dinner was homemade fettuccine (by NT) with pesto, cherry tomatoes, broccoli and mushrooms, and...here's the leftover pesto sauce.



UPDATE: However, NT helped me save face somewhat by photographing the gorgeous chocolate-marzipan croissants that AS slaved over for hours last night, and that I'm about to have for breakfast. Thanks NT and AS!

Tonight NT made a vegan version of classic British home cooking: cottage pie.

It doesn't photograph as well as some of the other dishes, but damn, it was good! UPDATE: Approximate recipe by NT follows photo.



INGREDIENTS
For the filling:
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 bag Morningstar crumbles (equivalent to 1 lb. ground beef, browned)
1 cup black beans (I’d normally use pinto, but we had a bag of black beans in the freezer)
1 T veg Worcestershire sauce
1 t pepper
½ t salt
1 t chili powder
½ cup water
2 T cornstarch
1 t Marmite (optional)

For the topping:
3 medium spuds
1 sweet potato
Margarine
Soymilk
Pepper
Grated cheese/soy cheese (optional)

Cook spuds for 10 mins, then mash/rice with marge and milk, season with pepper.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sauté onions and garlic med-med high.

Add crumbles once onions are translucent and sauté 2 mins.

Add everything else, raise temp to boiling, then reduce to simmer for 5 mins.

Spray oil inside baking dish, fill with crumble mixture, then top with layer of mashed potato. Top with some grated cheese, if desired. Bake for 25 mins, or until potato nice and golden. I finished it off with 1 min under the broiler to crisp it up nicely. Let stand for 5 mins before serving.

Dinner last night was pad thai. We made it according to the Brooklyn Pad Thai recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, a wonderful cookbook.



Only differences last night: We were out of lemongrass so we omitted it. We used lemon instead of lime. And we added red bell pepper, which was OK but didn't really tie in with the flavors or textures--maybe because I'm so attached to Brooklyn Pad Thai as we usually prepare it. I generally use Splenda for the sweetener in the sauce, and Sri Racha Thai chili sauce for the hot-sauce ingredient (though a little less than they say, because Sri Racha is super potent).

If you haven't cooked rice noodles, ask someone who has. They're really easy but there are a couple tricks to getting them just right.

The best way to prepare this dish is by the book, which mentions to prep in two batches, otherwise the pan would get too full to stir. As you can see from my second picture, we divide the ingredients as we're chopping, half on each of two plates. Same with the sauce: I put half of each ingredient in one small bowl, half in another small bowl.



Then I prep one batch and put the pan in the sink to soak, we eat dinner, and then I go back and rinse the pan and cook the second batch to put in Tupperware for lunches.

Our lasagne was really more of a late lunch; our meal schedule was kind of screwy due to being out at our friends' party so late last night. But then NT threw together this amazing light meal: tempeh satay and mango salad with a soy-ginger dressing we got for Xmas from one of our friends. So here's a photo of our second "dinner" for Jan. 4.

Last night we were going to a party, so I forgot to photograph dinner in my haste. Luckily, we had leftovers, so I took pictures this morning. Not as pretty in Tupperware, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Saturday night was egg fried rice (and tofu fried rice for me); today was lasagne (real cheese and vegan cheese--the vegan was prettier because there was more left over, so I just took a picture of that one).

Last night we had red Thai curry risotto with mock duck.

Based on a local restaurant's specialty, this dish usually contains shiitakes, diced potato, peas, peanuts, sesame seeds and cilantro.

Last night it didn't contain any of those; instead it had carrots, red bell pepper, corn and toasted cashews. (NT's good at improvising.)

I learned a valuable lesson: Those other ingredients are just nice filler. It's all about the creamy, spicy curry sauce and the texture of the risotto!

NT had the idea to try and photograph what we eat for dinner every day this year. We'll see if we end up enjoying it enough to keep it up! If you want a recipe for anything homemade you see in this series, let me know and I will edit the entry to add it.

Last night we had whole-wheat penne pasta with lemon, pepper, sun-dried tomato and spinach (prepared by NT), with wholemeal focaccia (by AS).

Recipe follows photo.



Ingredients:
2T white wine
1t white wine vinegar
6 sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
2 tomatoes, diced
1T dried oregano
1/2 cup (packed) fresh basil OR 3T dried basil
1/2 onion, small dice
1 red pepper, medium dice
4 cloves garlic
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
1 bunch fresh spinach, chopped
1 jalapeno (1/2 seeds removed)
1T black pepper
penne pasta

Directions:
Cook pasta - time start of cooking to end when sauce ready
Sautee onion until turning translucent, then add garlic, jalapeno and red pepper.
Sautee 3 mins, then add wine, vinegar & lemon juice.
Sautee 1 min; add tomato, sun-dried tomato, lemon zest, pepper & herbs.
Sautee 5 mins, then add spinach; cook until wilted.
Drain pasta and mix into sauce.