Blueberry Waffles [Vegan Mofo]

I told you I'd make up for missing a post yesterday! Vegan Month of Food continues.... So I stumbled upon Krusteaz brand blueberry pancake mix at Target a few weeks ago. Shockingly, the mix seems to be vegan and it's a "just add water" mix---no egg or dairy substitute needed! Now, they are not healthy, mind you: imitation blueberry pieces is a big indicator of that. But hey, it's cool to find something that is super easy in a national chain store for when in a strange city or just plain lazy. They turned out great in the waffle maker, as you can see above. Here's a shot of the box:

MN State Fair 2011: Island Noodles [Vegan Mofo]

Argh! I didn't post anything yesterday, so I will make up for it today and tomorrow. Vegan Month of Food, or Vegan Mofo, is throughout the month of October this year. This is the fifth year of Vegan Mofo, and my first in participating. The idea is to blog about vegan food: with recipes, pictures, talking about favorite appliances or techniques, favorite ingredients -- you get the idea. Anything about vegan food! The aim is to post 20 days out of the month, or everyday if you can. My goal is to do as many days as possible. Follow the link above, or here, to veganmofo.com to find out more and see all the wonderful participating blogs and their awesome posts.

Ok, on to Day 8 for me (I've posted 6/8 days in October so far):

The MN State Fair takes over the last two weeks of summer every year here. I love it and go every year. There are a few vegan items here and there: snowcones are generally ok, lemonade, etc. The roasted corn stand is awesome - just as for no butter. One stand I found last year was the Island Noodles. I grilled the folks about ingredients to check for fish sauce, etc. Without my prompting, they told me it was completely vegan, and you could add chicken if desired.

Island Noodles are a stir fry of soba noodles and a TON of veggies: bok choy, peas, cabbage, broccoli, onion, carrot...they say it's 21 veggies, which I believe. Here's a shot of the giant wok:



A blurry photo of my container:



And a close-up of the inside, with my added sriracha:



It made my day for a satisfying lunch at the fair. I also had some corn and beverages as well as some awesome french fries.

White Bean Stew [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Mofo Day 6!

As mentioned previously, stews/soups are some of my favorite things to make. They don't take much effort, make the house smell great (and warm up), and it's easy to make a giant amount of food for many days (or months, with freezing).

Another no-recipe post, but the ingredients are onion, garlic, salt, white beans, carrots, wild rice, barley (I think, maybe brown rice instead). This was the first time I used dry white beans, and it was pretty easy. I just soaked the beans before going to work and let them sit all day. Then when I got home I cooked them for a while before putting together the soup. Next time, I will cook the beans longer so they are a little more tender.

I made this soup a while back. Tonight's dinner was rather boring, just pasta, broccoli, parsley and red sauce. I was too lazy to photograph it. Hopefully this weekend will bring more inspiration for foods!

Kidney Bean Stew [Vegan Mofo]

Tonight was Chipotle but I forgot a camera. I may be able to get a blurry cell picture from it, but was way too stuffed with burrito to want to try.

Instead, here is a bean stew I made a few weeks ago. Tomato-based, with kidney beans, mixed veggies, wild rice and barley or brown rice (can't quite remember, sorry!).

Simple, and it made a ton of food for several days for two people. Plus, it's really cheap!

Okra, Tomato & Potato Curry [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Mofo, Day 4!

So this is what I whipped up for dinner tonight, with delicious results!

A stew/curry of tomatoes, potatoes, okra, quinoa, curry powder, onions, garlic, spicy Rotel for more tomato-y goodness.

I didn't measure anything, really. This was an experiment to work on something in the future. I think that this is a great example of why I don't blog all my food. I feel bad if I don't write down a full recipe and measure everything, etc. By the time I even start thinking about that, I give up on considering blogging and just eat some food! So this is a great push to keep posting about food, recipe or not.

Coconut Curry Squash Sauce Revisited: Now with Okra! [Vegan Mofo]

Vegan Mofo is continuing! I hope I can actually keep up with this but fear that I will fall off the map again, so to speak. Ah well, revel in more delicious food experiments!

I was gifted another butternut squash, so I decided to revisit the Coconut Curry Squash Sauce to see how to improve it.

This time around, I tried to write down a recipe. This is what I've got so far:


600g cubed butternut squash
60g onion
1 can (15oz?) coconut milk
15oz can garbanzo (chickpeas) drained and rinsed
2-3c baby spinach
.75 10oz frozen okra
2c broccoli
3t red curry paste
1t curry powder
salt


Ok. So that's my made up recipe. I will say that this time around my coconut to squash ratio differed quite a bit. I used less squash and still the same amount of coconut milk (1 can) to see if the sauce could thin out compared to last time.

I measured the squash and onion, and had cans of garbanzos and coconut milk. Everything else is a guess/estimate.

I cubed up the squash, and steamed it until soft with some water. In a separate pan, I sweated finely and roughly chopped 60g of onions in some olive oil with salt.

I mashed the squash, then added the coconut milk and onion and curry paste. I pureed with my emulsifier blender until smooth.

I added the frozen okra and broccoli, and waited until they were almost done before adding the spinach and garbanzos. Throughout all of this I would add salt to taste. Really, vegetable broth or cubes would have been handy, but I had neither. I think that broth is the missing element in this sauce and will add depth and complexity to the flavors. Next time!

As the rest of the sauce was cooking, I made rice noodles (which takes all of 5 minutes, really).

I served the dish over noodles and used soy sauce and hot sauce to season further. I also served over brown rice after the rice noodles were gone. All delicious. I hope to continue to work toward an actual usable recipe with this one day, but it's getting better!

Chik'n Salad Wrap [Vegan Mofo 2011]

Vegan Mofo Day 3 (ok, day 2 of me posting, but doing great so far)!!!


It's been great to challenge myself on making something blog-worthy everyday, even if my camera is full of fail and I hate it.

Tonight: Morningstar Chik'n Griller patty, heated and mashed up. Mixed in some Vegenaise, salt, pepper, dijon mustard, dill pickle juice, sweet pickle relish, and minced onion. I didn't have any celery or I would have added that, too. I heated up a tortilla, put a bunch of spinach on it, then spread the chik'n salad on top of the spinach and wrapped it.

Served with my sad looking potato chips. But they were tasty! I garnished it all with some flat leaf Italian parsley. I liked my wrap, even if I still hate my camera for frustrating photo shoots.

Hola Arepa: Food Trucks [Vegan Mofo]

More food truck coverage for Vegan Mofo!

Pictured above is an arepa, like a little patty of corn dough cooked on a griddle and split open and filled with various foods. This particular arepa is from Hola Arepa, a food truck in Minneapolis. This one is filled with black beans, tomato, pickled cabbage. I also got the side of chips as well as salsa and guacamole.

DELICIOUS. It was super tasty! I have been craving another one ever since. Hopefully I can get another before it gets too cold and they close for the season.

Birthday Explosion, Part 2 of 2: Food Trucks [Vegan MoFo]

[Give Beets a Chance: veggie dog from Magic Bus Cafe @ Food Truck Food Court.]

It's Vegan Mofo! AKA the Vegan Month of Food, an annual event of vegan food bloggers. I really wanted to sign up but failed to do so by the deadline. I am going to be participating anyway and hope to blog a lot this month. You can head on over to VeganMofo.com to find out more.

Today's post is the second part of my birthday explosion. I wanted more than anything to go to the various food trucks that have popped up all over Minneapolis/Saint Paul these past few years. On Wednesdays, there is a Food Truck Food Court in Saint Paul and I went there to check it all out.

We went first to the Magic Bus Cafe, a cool purple bus serving up veggie (and meat) dogs with various relishes and toppings. The one pictured at the top of this post is a dog with a beet and sauerkraut relish, the one below is a spicy dog with jalapeno relish. Sorry for the blurriness in these photos, it is incredibly difficult to take decent photos outside with my camera.



After chowing down on dogs, we hit up Gastrotruck and had two delicious black bean burger sliders.



Finally, we had to have dessert: cupcakes! These beauties were from Cupcake On The Go, the truck version of Cupcake. These were amazing and super-rich. Yummy! Fantastic birthday lunch.