January February 2008 cooking and coughing

Here are the recipes that I made in January and February 2008. It's a lot considering I've been tortured w/ a cold. Here is my whiney saga:

• First real week in Jan: bad cold. cold ends that week.
• The rest of January - no more cold, but a dry hacking cough.
• February - take asthma type meds for 10 days.
• Apparently that is not enough to stop me from coughing. all that coughing and crappy lung action leaves me wide open for cold # 2 at the end of Feb.
• I go to the doc and get more icky asthma meds. What fun! Will it last another month? It better not.

VWAV / Veganomicon

Ethiopian Seitan and Peppers and a pseudo ingera. Yummy! I might have used up the last of my berbere on this even though I don't think they called for it. Berbere is an Ethiopian spice mix. I actually made that mix myself when I did a bunch of trolling around for recipes. At the time I also boiled, dried out, then ground up my own pulses for the recipes. I obviously had too much energy.

The injera recipe is something I found on the net a long time ago and i can't seem to resurrect it. This recipe is very similar to making pancake batter instead of waiting for the teff to ferment and be proper ingera (something I still haven't mastered). The result is like a teff pancake. It's not as good as the real deal, but it's good enough if your closest ingera source is a 45 minute drive.

Matzoh Balls - Totally worth the effort. Though there wasn't much effort, just lots of do this and wait type steps. I made the broth recipe (use peppercorns and bay leaves).

Lemon Bars. at first I thought that they were just ok. Then they grew on me. I'm starting to wish that i had some more. Notice how i did such a great job on the sprinkling of powdered sugar. glop glop glop.

Eggplant Potato Moussaka. Sort of looks flat and dry. The flatness is because i didn't make enough layers. I will use a smaller pan next time. It was very tasty.

Lemon Coconut Bundt Cake. This was good, but it dried out pretty quickly. Needed more zest in the cake itself. I added lemon icing, I'd say that is a must. I sort of like the lemon lime coconut cupcakes in VCTOTW better.
Acorn Squash Pear Adzuki Soup - This is a sweet delicious soup. I'd add hot peppers next time. The soy sauce sauteed mushrooms that go on top are soooooo good! I forgot to add the adzuki beans for the first couple of bowls (oops). I liked it better w/out them. That was the first time that I had adzuki beans and I think they are gross. The are too firm.

Black Bean & Acorn Squash Empanadas - These were good, but the crust was a bit dry. They can handle being frozen.

Mac Daddy - This was only sort of ok for me. Not enough grease for my taste. Though I liked the texture of crumbled tofu and pouring some of the cheezy sauce over the top.

Pineapple cashew stir fry - This was amazing and worth all of the prep. I didn't like the quinoa boiled in pineapple, so I used brown rice instead. Make double if you like leftovers.

Rustic Beans and Mushrooms - These were really good beans. Lots of mushrooms. I made the bake in the oven casserole option w/ the breadcrumbs.
Strata - This is a good breakfast dish. It looks flat because I used a pan that was too big.







Sesame salad dressing - I love this dressing. Very easy to make and tasty x 20.

Apricot BBQ Tofu - This was so good! Not sure if the tofu pressing part is necessary, but I did it anyhow. I used dried apricots instead of fresh ones.


Grilled Yuca Tortillas - I liked these, but they tasted better a couple of days into eating them. So maybe make the inside stuff and let it sit in the fridge for 2 days.

Vegetarian Times:

Chicago Diner Burgers - The continuation of trying all 4 burger recipes in the July/August VT issue. The Chicago Diner Burger was very strange to make, but was tasty. Vegan cheese in pic is galaxy foods - not the rice one. There is also some vegan macaroni salad from PCC. I'm way too lazy to make macaroni salad.

Uncheese Cookbook:

Lemon Teasecake / lime variation. It was sort of a mess. I will call it a work in progress, since i think i messed up and didn't have enough water in the millet.

Granola pie crust - I will use it in the future to make a crunch granola bar. I won't use it for a pie because the pie filling makes it soggy and it's very good as a granola bar.

Chedda Cheese Block - This was sort of gelatinous for a fake cheese. It tasted really good mixed with pasta - very tangy. At some point, I'm going to make a mac and cheese casserole using this stuff.