Exciting Food and New Toys

Monday morning started with my favorite indulgence - a chocolate banana protein shake made with Silk PureAlmond in Dark Chocolate flavor.  There's just something about the dark chocolate that's so much more rich and sinful-seeming than regular chocolate soy or almond milk.  I love this stuff. 

When I got home from work I had an exciting package waiting for me at home.  I needed to buy some things from Amazon to use up a credit that was expiring, so I used the excuse to buy a few random things off my wish list - the kind of things I wanted but would probably only really buy when I needed to round out a $25 purchase for the free shipping. 

First exciting acquisition: a Firefly keychain!  Obviously, this is my favorite TV show, so it's nice to have little reminders of it around.  I'm always just a bit happier when I wear one of my Firefly bracelets, so I thought it's always good to bring a little more Firefly into my life :) 

Second acquisition: yet another cookbook ... Great Chefs Cook Vegan.  From the Amazon description:

"Great Chefs Cook Vegan includes recipes from 25 of the greatest chefs, including Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Charlie Trotter, and many other James Beard Award-winning chefs.  Each chef provides a delicious three- or four-course vegan meal, complete with beautiful photography of mouthwatering dishes like Baby Beet Salad with Pistachio Vinaigrette and Chickpea Fritters, Sweet Pea Ravioli with Sautéed Pea Leaves, Stuffed Baby Bell Peppers with Sunflower Seed Risotto, and Chocolate Cake with a Chocolate Truffle Molten Center."

I haven't tried any of the recipes yet - they do look awfully complicated! - but I will be sure to update when I do! 

For dinner I made something a lot simpler than anything out of that book is likely to be.  I used leftover cashew cream from Friday's dinner to make pasta with asparagus, peas, and sun dried tomatoes.  Even Josh, who's not a fan of asparagus, said we should add the recipe to our usual repertoir.  Not the healthiest, but definitely simple and delicious!

Scottish Shortbread Cookies

Before our move to Silver Spring, I spent a little time going through our cookbooks to see if each one was worth keeping or if it should be passed on to Goodwill.  When I picked up the Williams-Sonoma Cookies book I got from a friend in college, I really didn't think I would be keeping it.  After all, you can find pretty much any cookie recipe you want online, and I figured everything in the W-S book would be full of eggs, milk, and butter.  And for the most part, a lot of the recipes were.  But there were a few recipes that seemed like they could be easily veganized (substituting Earth Balance, etc.).  And there's something to be said for browsing easily in a book rather than searching for something in particular online.  It opens you up to all sorts of new cookie possibilities!  Plus, I'm a huge cookie fan, so how could I get rid of such an important resource? 

 

Well, I'm so glad I kept this book!  Still feeling Scotland withdrawal, I decided to make Scottish shortbread cookies Monday, and fortunately I remembered that there was just such a recipe in the W-S book.  And even better, the only non-vegan item in the recipe was butter.  Thanks to Earth Balance, it was an easy substitution, and the cookies came out perfectly! 

 

Not only were they incredibly easy to make, they tasted amazing!  I had three straight out of the pan.  Half the batch went to Josh's parents' house when we visited for dinner Tuesday night.  And by mid-day Wednesday the last of the cookies were gone.  I'll definitely be making these again soon.  In fact, the current plan is to whip some up to take to work to share at lunch Tuesday.  Maybe I'll have to make two batches ... one for me, and one for everybody else! 

Sweet Cornmeal-Coconut Butter Drop Biscuits and Chocolate Tofu Dessert

Monday morning I tweaked my usual morning protein shake by using coconut water leftover after making coconut whipped cream to top the chocolate cakes for Saturday night's dessert.  I mixed the coconut water with banana, frozen mango, vanilla protein powder, flax seed, and a little vanilla soy milk to fill the cup.  It looks like a total mess pre-blending, but once it was made it tasted delicious!

Mid-morning I decided to try another recipe out of Vegan Soul Kitchen - Sweet Cornmeal-Coconut Butter Drop Biscuits.  Sometimes its hard for me to pick a recipe out of a cookbook when there's no picture to entice me, but these biscuits sounded so delicious I couldn't resist! 

 

And the recipe didn't disappoint.  The preparation was really simple and the ingredient list wasn't too difficult to obtain.  Coconut butter required a bit of hunting before I found it at Whole Foods, and I definitely could have done without the sticker shock.  I'll just have to find lots of excuses to use coconut butter in the future.  Maybe more biscuits?

 

One thing I need to keep in mind next time I make these is to put the rack closer to the top of the oven rather than the middle - the bottoms of the biscuits got closer to dark brown than I would have preferred. 

 

Of course once the biscuits were made I had to sample a couple with a delicious lunch of leftovers.  I reheated leftover fajita fixings from Arcos along with roasted rosemary potatoes from The Laughing Pint.  It was a ton of food and all of it delicious! 

 

Once I finished up with work I headed downstairs to the building's gym to read Solaris on the exercise bike and then do so many squats my legs felt like jello afterwards.  My book club meeting for Solaris is Thursday, and even though it's a short book I've found myself slow to read it.  I will really have to push to finish it in time. 

 

By the time I finished at the gym my boyfriend was home from work so after a quick shower I got right to work on dinner.  We have had some Gardein beefless tips in the freezer for a while now, so despite my boyfriend's strong objections I decided to cook some up for dinner.  He's pretty strongly against fake meats unless they are in veggie burger, fake deli meat, or possibly breaded fake chicken form. 

Hoping I could make them to his liking regardless, I sauteed the beefless tips in oil, then added chopped mushrooms and leaks to the pan.  And of course I served a few biscuits on the side.  Unfortunately, my lovely preparation was not enough for him and after a few bites he gave up and only ate the biscuits.  Whomp whomp.

 

A while later he made himself a sandwich using Asmar's tuna for dinner.  I guess I won't be buying anymore Gardein beefless tips ...  I thought they tasted fine, but I definitely wouldn't consider them stellar enough to make them for myself while my boyfriend has to eat something else. 

 

For dessert I served myself some chocolate tofu mousse leftover from making Saturday's chocolate cakes.  It seems so odd, given what it is (chocolate chips, melted Earth Balance, and tofu blended together) but tastes so good.  The only thing is that after storing in the fridge it needs to come back to room temperature to get that mousse-y texture.  It tastes like  a delicious chocolate indulgence but is actually pretty healthy because of the tofu.  I think I've stumbled on something really amazing here!