Mock Duck with Coconut Curry [Vegan Mofo]

Okay, so I owe this blog at least two days of multiple posts for Vegan Mofo.

Oh! And, I won something! I was super-excited to see my name up at the Vegan Mofo Blog. They have been doing daily giveaways, and I WON the So Delicious giveaway! Yay me! Ok, on to the food...

Mock Duck is easily one of my favorite foods, ever. It's the key in my favorite Laab Salad, it is my favorite pizza topping and my favorite at-home stir fry with curry sauce ingredient, as pictured above.

The curry was simple: one can of coconut milk and a couple spoonfuls of green curry paste. The stir fry: I sauteed onions that were thinly sliced and roughly chopped, then added the mock duck. Make sure to THOROUGHLY rinse the weird oil that they are canned in, and then I chopped the pieces to be more even in shape and size. I added a bag of frozen veggies that had asparagus, carrots, mushrooms, and other veggies. The whole thing is served over brown rice, but easily could be noodles instead.

Chickpea Pot Pie With Whole Wheat Crust [Vegan Mofo]

I missed another day for Vegan Month of Food! Yikes! I'm actually doing much better than I anticipated I would, so that's great.

For today's entry, we have a delicious Chickpea Pot Pie. It was the first pot pie I've made from scratch, and it was AWESOME. Don't know why I haven't been doing this for years, because I love pot pie, and those Amy's pot pies can get expensive!

Ingredients:
onions, frozen mixed vegetables, butternut squash (diced), russet potatoes (diced/cubed), garlic (minced), wild rice, chickpeas.

For the crust, I kind of looked at other recipes I found on the internet, and I liked the recipe from Apartment Therapy @ The Kitchn's technique: freeze everything: the flour, the mixing bowl, the fork/cutting instrument, butter. I used only whole wheat flour and mixed in with a store brand of margarine that we recently found (it doesn't taste that great, I prefer Earth Balance for my stick butters). The crust was good, but I think I'd like some white flour in there next time, or even making a bottom crust as well.

For the sauce, I used Road's End Golden Gravy packet. It worked great. I used some flour to help thicken it after I added a lot of water for the rice to cook in. I seasoned with salt, thyme, and sage.

I finished in the oven until the crust was done. Excellent dish. I liked the wild rice as something different and the chickpeas went really well with everything.

Onion Tater Tots with 3 Sauces [vegan mofo]

So...a simple post for Monday. I made a few things on Sunday, but will post them throughout the week. Until then, a shot of Onion Tots from Ore-Ida. Three Sauces - Sriracha, Grey Poupon, and ketchup. They were pretty good.

Reusing Containers[Vegan Mofo]

Reusing is the second component of the Three R's of Recycling [reduce, reuse, recycle]. I love to reuse or re-purpose containers (or anything, really) and make them useful beyond their regularly expected lifespan.

I recently began reusing glass soy sauce bottles for canola and olive oil as well as for balsamic vinegar. Once I finish a bottle of soy sauce, I run it through the dishwasher to clean it out thoroughly and fill it with various liquids.

The top picture shows the bottle with canola oil. It's handy because the spout/pour top looks like this:


That top allows me to pour oil in a controlled way for cooking or oiling pans. I use the same bottle for balsamic vinegar:


And I used a glass Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce bottle for olive oil.

I am rather obsessed with reusing any and all glass containers: pickle jars, salsa jars, any condiment jar. They are great for storing soups, dry beans, flour, sugar, leftovers. Plus, if I get sick of them, they can still be recycled.

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.

Birthday Explosion, Part 1 of 2: Evergreen Restaurant

[A stack of fried tofu appetizer from Evergreen Chinese Restaurant.]

It was my birthday at the end of August, and I celebrated with food. This is the first of two parts of my birthday food adventure. For my birthday dinner, I decided upon Evergreen Chinese Restaurant, one of the best Chinese restaurants in Minneapolis -- particularly for vegans.

It has an extensive list of what can and cannot be made vegan, including what may have whey or casein, those tricky dairy ingredients that seem to slip into everything. Almost everything on their huge menu can be made vegan, and they have tons of meat or vegetarian dishes so everyone can be satisfied.

The food is awesome because of the sheer amount of flavor injected into every bite. Take, for example, the Three Cup Tofu:



I get this dish almost every time I go to Evergreen. I don't know how they get that much flavor into the tofu, but there it is: garlic, green onions, other mystery ingredients and sauce that equal pure bliss.

In addition to the fried tofu at the top of this post, we got the fried spring roll appetizer:



And for a second entree, we ordered the Pepper Fired Mock Pork:



We also tried the seaweed knot appetizer, but did not get a picture of those.

All in all a delicious time!

Coconut-Squash Curry Sauce - Two Ways

I have been cooking lots of new foods as well as trying new eateries lately, but I have not had proper posts about it. As the photos have been piling up, I have been putting off blogging more because I can't think of a time I will have to sit down and post all of them. Then an idea came to me: just do one or two posts a day for a while. Constant content for the blog, small amount of time to put it together.

Perfect.

So, enough jibba-jabba, let's talk about food!



This is AMAZING. In the words of Mr. Coconut, "the best thing I've eaten in 6 months." I was gifted a butternut squash from a co-worker's garden, and was pondering what to do. Butternut Squash soup? Just steamed? Roasted? So many possibilities...I saw I had a can of coconut milk and just started to experiment.

I began by peeling and cubing the squash, throwing it into a pot with a little water and steamed it. This was a medium-large squash, so there was a lot there, several cups of cubes. Then I added the coconut milk and some red curry paste. Stir stir stir. Mash mash mash. Whipped out the emulsion blender and pureed until smooth. It was really thick and soup-like. I added salt to taste, and then decided to add canned pineapple with the juice (not syrup).

While all of that was going on, I was boiling rice noodles and steaming frozen broccoli. Then, I decided to make semolina pasta as well because it seemed to be a great sauce for pasta. It was!!!

So, this sauce is really versatile. With the pasta, it was reminiscent of butternut squash ravioli. With the rice noodles, we added soy sauce and sesame seeds for more of an Asian flair. Either way, awesome. I will be honing this sauce more in the future. I would add onions, garlic, broth, and maybe more coconut milk.

Here's another photo:

Pasta with Spinach, Sauce and Sausage

This was an impromptu dish for dinner. I had some Gimme Lean hanging around, so I took about half the tube and seasoned it with red pepper flakes, oregano, and fennel seeds. I shredded some onion and garlic into a pan, sauteed, and added the sausage. Then cooked it until browned up to my liking.

The sauce was another experiment from a few days ago. We have no red sauce in the house, but TONS of tomato paste. So, I figured I would try to make sauce from that. I started by shredding half an onion with a grater, and roughly chopped 4-5 small cloves of garlic. I sauteed these in a pan with some olive oil. Added some oregano and salt. I used 2-3 cups of "not chik'n" broth for more depth and 2 cans of tomato paste (the small 6 oz ones). I just kept simmering and stirring and adding water as needed to smooth everything out. It turned out great! I've been rather impressed with myself for that sauce.

For this specific dish, I made elbow macaroni and spooned over some fresh spinach. I poured the sauce over the noodles and put the sausage bits on top. A super-yummy dinner!

Night Grillin'

Ah, night grilling! We decided it was time to grill, but got distracted and before we knew it, darkness had taken over. But that did not deter plans for eating grilled food!!!

I sliced a bunch of zucchini, thanks to a giant zucchini gifted to me by a co-worker. I used my mandoline to slice both crinkle-cut style and regular slices. I marinated in olive oil and my fave, Montreal Steak Seasoning:



Next, I used the mandoline again for thick-cut potatoes and onions to put into a foil packet along with olive oil, salt and whole peeled garlic cloves. Here's a picture of the packet:




Everything on the grill:



Just the 'burgs (we used Boca Big Burgers):


My bun awaiting the 'burg (yes, that is a zucchini slice under the onion):

Chik'n Strips with Edamame Vegetable Blend and Quinoa

A simple meal, with Morningstar Chik'n Strips, a steamer bag of frozen veggies (Mukimame Vegetable Blend from Target) and quinoa.

Peanut Curry Sauce from Ruam Mit Thai

Not the best picture, from inside a box of takeout, but this is one of the BEST dishes around. Pha Ram Long Song from Ruam Mit Thai in Saint Paul. DROOL: Red curry, coconut milk, crushed peanits, served over steamed spinach and (the way we order) with fried tofu. Can also be done with mock duck, but they fry the tofu to order, so it's always delicious. Plus, they separate everything out for takeout so nothing gets soggy. yum yum yum yum

Accidentally Vegan: Keebler Jumbo Fudge Sticks

I found these in my day to day perusing of junk food as being accidentally vegan. These are the peanut butter flavor, as opposed to the original vanilla flavor. I much prefer the PB flavor. To be clear, the mini fudge sticks are not vegan, but the jumbo ones are. Weird, I know.

Not healthy in the least, but a nice sugar bomb.

Smoky Beans with Quinoa and Corn

A spin on one of my favorites, Smoky Beans and Rice, this time with quinoa and kidney beans rather than black beans and rice. Any bean will do, as would any grain. I added corn to this one for something extra.

I made a TON of quinoa and have been using it for everything: beans and quinoa, broccoli and quinoa, quinoa as hot cereal in the morning with soymilk and dried or fresh fruit.

I sauteed onion and garlic first and in another pan heated veggie broth. Then I added two cans of kidney beans, drained and rinsed, to the onions and garlic. I added in frozen corn and just when it was getting un-frozen, I added a ton of quinoa to the ratio I preferred, and mixed everything. A few drops of liquid smoke, another big stir, and then added some veggie broth and allowed it to simmer until the broth was absorbed by the beans and quinoa. The liquid will absorb more after cooking, so keep that in mind.

New Blog Design

Whoa, changes!! I have been playing around with layouts and designs, and like this new book-background one so far. It brightened up the blog a lot and I'll stick with it until I find an awesome coconut image to use as a background.

Hopefully I'll be back to posting more regularly because there are a lot of things I want to make and also a lot of restaurants I want to try out in the coming months.

Quinoa, Broccoli, Potato and Tofu with Curry Sauce

This was dinner for today.

I boiled some russet potatoes that I cut up into smaller pieces to cook faster, and while those cooked I made some quinoa and marinated tofu that I cut into cubes. I marinated in a sauce I made: soy sauce, dijon mustard, hoisin sauce, pickle juice, hot sauce. I then sauteed onions and garlic until soft, then set aside and started to pan-fry the tofu cubes.

At this point I started steaming the broccoli.

The quinoa was about done, as were the potatoes. I put potatoes aside, and then boiled water to dissolve a bouillon cube and curry paste in for the "sauce".

After the tofu was done to my liking, I set it aside, rinsed the pan out and then started to reheat the onions and garlic. Once it was getting hot, I added the potatoes, quinoa and broccoli, then stirred everything together. I added the curry sauce and heated until some of the liquid absorbed into the potatoes and quinoa.

I served in bowls with the tofu on top, a few shakes of sesame seeds to finish it off.

Indulgent Dessert: So Delicious Coconut Ice Cream Bowl with Toppings

This is a bowl of 2 flavors of So Delicious Coconut Milk Ice Cream, my hands-down favorite vegan ice cream. The flavors of "ice cream" are: Cookie Dough and Mocha Almond Fudge.

I cracked a sugar cone over the ice cream, and then some chopped cashews. Finally, I covered the whole mess in Hershey's Hard Shell Chocolate Topping. This stuff turns into a hard chocolate shell in a few seconds once it makes contact with cold items, like ice cream.

Needless to say, this was delicious and indulgent and awesome.

4th of July 2011

Not a food photo, though I did make some grilled food for 4th of July. I also played a lot of chess outside with Mr. Coconut.

I grilled up marinated tofu inside a foil packet, we also grilled veggie dogs and potato/onion/garlic foil packets.

I failed to photograph any of this, but at least there is a photo of one of the chess games.

Boca Burger with Peas, Corn and Mashed Potatoes

Nothing spectacular, other than the Burger Shark in the potatoes. Just a pan-fried Big Boca Burger (slightly larger than the regular-sized patties) with mashed potatoes and peas and corn. Some Earth Balance for butter, salt and pepper.

Bowtie Pasta with Green Pepper Strips

I was out of red sauce, but also had a lot of pasta and a lot of green peppers to use up. What to do?

This was the result. The peppers were a nice change from my usual broccoli or spinach. I just cut up 3 green bell peppers into strips and sauteed with onions and garlic. I like my cooked peppers to still have some snap in them, but you could cook until your desired texture. I might try to do more of a julienne cut next time, but this worked for a simple quick dinner.

Curry with Tofu, Broccoli, Cauliflower and Red Potatoes

This may not look that impressive or pretty, but it was DELICIOUS.

Just as the title says, this is tofu, broccoli, cauliflower, and red potatoes with coconut milk curry sauce poured over it. I served it over brown rice.

The method

I pan fried some cubed up tofu, using garlic, onions, and soy sauce. While doing this, I already started steaming cut up red potatoes and allowed them to start cooking. Before they were done, I added a bunch of frozen broccoli and cauliflower to steam them as well. I made the sauce with one can of coconut milk and some red curry paste. Yum yum yum!

The potatoes added a great texture and rounded out the dish with a "full" mouthfeel.

Here's another photo to see the whole bowl: