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Posts tagged ‘food’

Jun 3

Golden-Tomato and Kale Pasta
6 Comments

Golden-Tomato and Kale Pasta

Golden-Tomato and Kale Pasta

Page 305. Summer is a busy time of year for me in Toronto. There are a lot of people to see and many social engagements to attend. Last week was the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, and I saw one film, G.B.F., and two documentaries, The Continental and I am Divine.

On top of that I caught up with old friends, Raquel, Christine, Alex and Alisha. In addition I attended the Rob Ford protest and the Veggie Pride Parade.

Sufficed to say I’m tired. Today is my first day of a month-long coffee detox, and I’m cutting alcohol out for two full weeks to let my internal organs heal!

But that doesn’t mean I’m slowing down. I’m still baking, and of course, I have plenty of recipes still to make from Martha Stewart’s vegetarian cookbook, meatless.

I’ve wanted to make the meal depicted on the book cover since I purchased it, but I admit that I had to trade the kale for spinach because that’s all I had in my fridge. Evidently I did have golden cherry tomatoes, ricotta cheese and plenty of garlic.

To add a little flavour I included some vegan butter to the recipe. It turned out pretty good if you ask me. The subtle flavours left a pleasant aftertaste on my palate.

Oh and welcome home Matt and Lisa! I hope Amsterdam and Paris were a dream.

May 28

Chocolate Vegan Cake

Easy to make vegan chocolate cake with blueberries

Chocolate Vegan Cake 2

If you follow my blog you’ll know that I’ve been experimenting with vegan baking lately. I’ve started simple, though of course the cinnamon rolls I made a couple of weeks ago were quite laborious to prepare. But they were so tasty.

For tonight I made a chocolate vegan cake. It was really easy, and I made the same frosting that I used for my blue velvet cupcakes. Try it for yourself and tell me how it goes.

Ingredients

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cup cold water

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients. Stir until smooth. Grease pans and preheat oven to 350 degrees and then bake for 30 minutes. Top with frosting and blueberries.

Chocolate Vegan Cake

May 22

Polenta
1 Comment

Basic Polenta

Polenta

Page 366. Polenta is an Italian dish made from ground cornmeal. It’s similar to grits, the popular cornmeal dish popular in the southern United States. Variations exists in North and South America. Polenta can be served as a cheese or herb-flavoured alternative to mashed potatoes.

For dinner tonight I wanted something simple, so I flipped to the back of the cookbook meatless and found an easy to make polenta recipe. Within 30 minutes I had a gluten-free and completely vegan meal, that I ruined by grating parmigiano-reggiano cheese all over it. I forgot! Whoops. It was too late to fix the mistake but it’s still vegetarian, so there!

Don’t hate me.

May 21

Cinnamon Vegan Muffins
7 Comments

Vegan cinnamon muffins

Cinnamon Vegan Muffins

My design skills need work!

I baked these vegan muffins tonight with vegan icing! I love cinnamon, it’s always a welcome treat. I need to confess that I now weight 200 lbs.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of whole-wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup of almond milk
1/4 cup of canola oil

Directions

Mix dry ingredients. Add almond milk and canola and mix until blended. Bake in muffin tin at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

May 21

Thirty-Clove Garlic Soup
2 Comments

Zucchini-ribbon “lasagna” with thirty-clove garlic soup

Thirty-Clove Garlic Soup

Page 107 and 155. I was hesitant to make lasagna because I had eaten store bought this weekend. Well, this recipe was simple to make so I figured I’d give it a go. The zucchini strips replace the pasta noodles, which makes the dish gluten-free. Which is probably why I feel so heavy at the moment. The crumpled tofu adds the protein to the rich tomato sauce. I added a lot of ricotta, because I was afraid that it would taste plastic-y but, the recipe called for it! In the end, it was satisfying.

I’m not always in love with all the meals in this cookbook, but I also figure that in the future I can tweak the recipes a little to suit my needs, and personal tastes.

The best part about today’s selection was the garlic soup pureed with potatoes. Garlic is well-known in its ability to boost immunity and help stave off colds. I didn’t serve it with bread like the book suggests, because I don’t want to gain a ton of weight.

One gripe I have is that the cheese these dishes recommend are expensive, like $50 for one brick. I don’t eat a lot of cheese, but now I’m going to have to, which means I’m also going to have to get a probiotic to deal with the bloating that comes with it. I’ll try to substitute with vegan cheese. We’ll see how that goes.

Life is hard!

Zucchini-Ribbon Lasagna

May 14

The final product!

Vegan cinnamon rolls

Before the oven

Before the oven

Well I outdid myself. I truly made this recipe work and it left me more satisfied than sex. Well, let’s not go crazy. Actually I kind of screwed up. This cinnamon rolls recipe is supposed to be made with raisins. But I forgot to include them in the 11th hour. Well, it didn’t really matter because I sprinkled them on top, but not before I drizzled the glaze all over these babies. That kind of sounds dirty. Get your minds out of the gutter people!

The best part about this breakfast favourite is that no animals were harmed in making it.

Recipe courtesy of Whipped Baking.

The final product!

The final product!

May 13

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Triple A Bar

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On Adelaide St. is a bar I used to frequent back in my youth that was then called Laide. From what I have read, the owner had a baby and decided to change things around a little bit, name included. New and improved, Triple A is more open, lighter and sleeker than its former self. I observed a welcoming, comfortable urban bar with a friendly, familiar staff that instills a sense of community. The owner’s young daughter was present, and well-behaved which I appreciated immensely! Patrons were arriving to watch The Toronto Maple Leafs play the Boston Bruins, so there was a feeling of tension in the air as men clung to their pints in hopes that the home team would make it to fight another day. And they did. The Leafs won, forcing game seven in the first rounds of playoffs.

So, if you’re downtown and looking for a drink in a friendly, cozy environment check out Triple A! Chau.

Triple A Bar
138 Adelaide St. E.

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May 12

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Potato and Zucchini Hash

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Page 73. Breakfast is definitely the most important meal of the day. It’s what kick starts our metabolism and helps regulate our weight. But even more important, breakfast provides us with the energy to get through the day.

Torontonians are busy people, and many of us leave little time in the morning to eat. We usually grab something at Starbucks or the nearest Tim Horton’s, but it’s often unhealthy and high in calories. Just one muffin has over 500 calories if you can believe it. And don’t get me started on donuts. Of course these things don’t hurt if consumed in moderation, but if you’re eating them everyday, well, that’s another story.

Even if you’re too busy in the morning to prepare something big it isn’t hard to eat a bowl of cereal (I prefer Cheerios these days), or some yogurt with blueberries.

The weekend is probably the best time to prepare a more hearty breakfast. This recipe from meatless is an excellent meal to make on a Saturday morning. Or Sunday! I’m not picky.

It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to assemble and cook all the ingredients, but the end result is worth it. I decided to poach the egg, and to include a side of asparagus roasted in a tablespoon of olive oil, but butter would probably be more tasty. Depends on what you prefer, but either way the asparagus is a delicious addition, just note that olive oil is a lot healthier than butter. Sprinkle with some sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

You can find the recipe here. I substituted the russet potatoes with fingerlings, because that’s what I had in my refrigerator. Use what you have, is my motto.

Side note, I’m going to create a separate page on my blog with all the recipes I’ve duplicated from Martha Stewart’s vegetarian cookbook meatless. You’ll be able to find it on the top navigation within a couple of days with links to the posts.

Also, most of these meals can be found on Martha Stewart’s comprehensive website. I’ll also be writing an upcoming post about why I think gay people admire Martha so much. I hope it’s interesting.

Chau.

May 9

Italian Baked Egglpan with Seitan
1 Comment

Italian Baked Eggplant with Seitan

Italian Baked Egglpan with Seitan

Those are bread crumbs, not cheese.

Page 168. Three hours to cook one meal is a sin. A SIN! That’s how long it took me to make this dish. I couldn’t find any seitan nearby my house in Toronto, so I used tofu instead. Seitan is a more hearty meat substitute while tofu is much softer, but it worked for me anyway. They’re both rich in protein and absorb flavours easily. It’ll do pig, it’ll do.

Another ingredient that took me a long time to find was nutritional yeast, but rest assured, you can find it at health-food stores and even some grocery chains carry it.

You can check out the recipe on Martha Stewart’s website here. Also buy the cook book meatless from the kitchens of Martha Stewart. There’s my plug!

It did take a long time to prepare though, keep that in mind and give yourself the time to make it, you’re going to need every second.

This meal is entirely vegan, and filling. Tastes amazing!

May 6

Red Fife Loaf
2 Comments

Red Fife Loaf from Grainstorm mixes

Red Fife Loaf

The sugar has been unevenly dispersed!

You might recall that I won a raffle prize at a CNIB fundraiser about a month ago. I received a basket of Grainstorm mixes. These are fresh milled organic grains, sans toxic modern wheat or industrial-processing. Simplicity is their objective, with a slogan “Bake like it’s 1869.”

The Grainstorm website claims that their products are healthy, and are suitable for those with wheat sensitivities.

In my basket I received six packages of mixes, with baking directions on the back. I already made the Golden Kamut muffin mix a couple of weeks back, but tonight I went for the Red Fife loaf because the package promises that it goes great with a lovely cup of dark coffee. To sweeten the pot, all recipes can be made vegan, and the Grainstorm website offers a myriad of recipe alternatives for each of their mixes.

About Red Fife, they say:

“Red Fife is North America’s pre-eminent heritage wheat, native to Ontario and the grandfather of modern wheat. It yields less than half of modern wheat, and it tastes way better. Especially fresh-ground! This is the lightest of our muffin bases, both in taste and texture, so it works great for coffee cakes and other treats, but is also great plain as it has a wonderful, delicate wheaty flavor.”

The result is a lovely, fresh rustic experience that harkens back to a simpler time, when healthy was more important than sugar. Mmmmmm…. sugar. To satisfy my sweet tooth I sprinkled a touch of brown sugar on top of the loaf ten minutes before I brought it out of the oven. Delicious.

Peace out.

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