Grilled Cremini & Garlic sandwich.

Chomp.

It was under 100F yesterday when I left work, so I stopped at my local New Seasons Market and picked up FOOD to COOK for dinner. I was surprisingly productive last night with my bit of cooking and cleaning for a party this weekend! I almost turned on my oven and roasted local red potatoes with dill and then considered roasting tempeh.... Thankfully for my cats, I held onto my sanity and simply ate my sandwich.

It was beautifully easy to assemble - I halved local creminis and tossed them in a golden balsamic vinaigrette with large slices of garlic, cooked them on my cast iron grill pan, threw them on top of baby spinach, in an organic olive ciabatta roll from New Seasons (splurge!) added a large slice of local tomato and there was dinner. If I hadn't forgotten my vegan staple jar of Vegenaise at work months ago, I would have likely added some.

Grilled garlic = amazing.

Sesame Beer Grilled Fiddleheads

I brought fiddlehead ferns home from the farmers market to play.

Hello, I live in Portland, so I've tried them before, but had yet to cook with them.  We know they're a hip piece of produce, and I finally picked some up last week at the downtown farmers market and was told to make sure I cook them well! 

So, they were marinated briefly in organic Deschutes Green Lake Ale ale and tamari, tossed onto my grill pan, tossed some more, tossed with coarse sea salt, black pepper and sesame seeds, and then tossed onto my plate, forked into my mouth, etc.  I'm always a fan of the burnt tamari (I mean, cooked) taste, and I dig how these came out.  Beer grilled asparagus just may be in my future.

For now, some balsamic grilled asparagus 

Smoky Collard greens and Lightlife tempeh bacon 

(Lightlife tempeh review, coming soon!)

This means I'm only a week behind!  

Last week's haul from the Wednesday downtown farmers market: cucumber, fiddleheads, asparagus and strawberries.  Earlier today I  picked up lettuce, strawberries, my love: garlic scapes, orange cherry tomatoes and a couple beefstake tomatoes. Holy friction, tomato and berry season is approaching!

P.S. Check out the new Stumptown Vegans Podcast here!  

It's with Chad Miller and Josh Hooten, two founders of the Let Live Conference, later this month in Portland.

Sweet; Grilling

Sweet.  

Irish Whiskey Creme Kisses.  

Another Post Punk KitchenVegan Cookie Book tester.

The second Vegan Cookie book tester of the day - 

I made both of these to take to a fancy vegan dinner party last weekend.  

It was Indian themed and fabulous.

Espresso Fudge Brownies

Grilling.

I live in an apartment with no immediate place to grill outside, so I contently do all of my grilling in a  cast iron grill pan on the stove top.  I bought it almost 2 years ago for less than $15 at Ross and it's consistently fun to use.  I have a foreman grill stored somewhere but those lines and flavor do not compare. 

Sadly my handy and environmentally wise oil mister died so I've resorted to packaged olive oil spray again lately, but that's a poor excuse and I'm aiming to get a new one soon.  Briefly marinate some tofu or seitan, toss some veggies in oil/herbs/salt or dressing and bam, you have dinner to grill and eat alone, over pasta, grains or in a sandwich.  

On Sunday, I grilled the following for my lunch at work:

Grilled Golden Balsamic and Braggy Tofu, 

Asparagus with olive oil, coarse sea salt and pepper

Grilled Eggplant slices with olive oil and coarse sea salt.

Sandwiched withVegenaise, flavorless tomato that I picked out &  field greens on a french baguette.  Enough for two meals!

more...Sweet.

Nature's Path AgavePlus Granola.  

Their newest addition to the cereal game - with sunflower seeds and oats!  I received two boxes from the company and as Evan from Bjorked Off! knows, I rarely buy or eat cereal - but this stuff is great.  Not too sweet at all.  Personally I'll take agave over honey any day, ethics and flavor-wise.  I thought the sunflower seeds would annoy me, 

because they're just annoying, but they didn't~

Blood Orange + Roasted Brussel Sprouts + Garlic

This past weekend I had some time on my hands and wanted home cooking.  I've been so busy that I haven't been cooking as much as I like to, which is on a very regular basis.  On Friday night I made a spicy bbq sauce, threw in some Cast Iron seitan with its broth to marinate, and got to work on Sunday making a great late lunch.

Blood Orange and Garlic Roasted Brussel Sprouts, Mac and Cheeze, 

BBQ Grilled Seitan

The seitan is was cooked on my cast iron grill pan and basted with additional sauce.  The mac and cheeze is the Lower Fat New Farm take, made with gluten free noodles since I like them better in baked mac, but the sauce was not gluten free - I'm out of tamari!   Some of the grill lines are scary, but trust me, it was killer.  In a seitanic way.

The brussel sprouts were the true showstopper of my culinary day. I've conferred with my sister, and we don't remember ever eating brussel sprouts growing up.  Our mom loved green vegetables, but I'm guessing she had been subjected to poorly made brussel sprouts herself or simply heard the rumors, and didn't see the point in passing that on.

Organic brussel sprouts

$1.49/lb from New Seasons Market

I've only had them since living in Portland these past 4.5 years, because you know, I'm a farmer's market devotee so how could I not try them?  I'll eat them steamed now and then, like at the Bye & Bye and hanging out with bbq or peanut sauce, but I prefer them roasted with garlic.  I first roasted them at the end of 2006, and to amuse myself, let me reference my post from late 2006 post - Balsamic, Orange and Garlic Roasted Brussel Sprouts.

Ready to roast - tossed in a lightly oiled pan with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and whole cloves of garlic.

Citrus Star.

After roasting 12-15 minutes at 400F, I tossed the the 20 or so halved sprouts with the freshly squeezed juice of one small blood orange, coarse sea salt and black pepper.  

Roast an additional 5 minutes, and you're done.

Here's an Eastern Bowl I ordered at the Bye & Bye last month...

Asian. Grilled. Tofu.

Tofu. Marinade. Cast Iron Grill Pan. 

Side of Hoisin'd Veggies. Long grain brown rice.  

Lunch.

Lunch, lunch, lunch.

The Asian Marinade recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance and Veganomican can be found here.

I don't really feel the need to talk much on this post, I've left the message to the grill lines and fu.

Another reason to love/hate Portland, OR....

I don't mean to jump the gun, but in a week or so, Portlanders will be able to buy containers of freshly simmered, locally made seitan at Food Fight!  It's called Cast Iron Seitan and the makers are Homeskillet LLC - who just happen to be Isa Chandra Moskowtiz and her awesome husband Justin, who's really doing all the work.  

I was happy to be given a sample and used half of it for yesterday's lunch.

Peanut Noodle Bowl

To keep things appropriately charming and tasty, I decided to grill the seitan over peanut noodles ala Vegan with a Vengeance for yesterdays's pleasantly made-at-home lunch on a leave-early-from-work snow day (and then it stopped snowing, holla).  

Naturally I changed the recipe a bit - I grilled the seitan and red bell pepper instead of sauteeing, omitted the onions, added raw julienned carrot with the cucumber and as for the sauce, I used locally made Thai and True yellow curry paste and a squeeze of fresh lime in place of dried coriander (ew).

I have never gotten my seitan as perfectly textured via simmering, and this stuff is darn wholesome and convenient, and made with something resembling love.

Huxley's a fan.

Maeve from Strawberryrock stopped by and had herself a bowl and a couple cookies.  I rarely cook meals for others these days so there was a little bit of casual excitement.

Mocha Mamas.  

Another test recipe for Terry and Isa's Upcoming Vegan Cookie Book.  

This post will mess you up.

Hot sauce glazed tempeh, from Veganomicon (which I've been misspelling for the past year as Veganomican, oops). Isa threatened to disown me as a tester if I didn't fix that.
With steamed kale with sea salt and chickpeas with parmesan.


The messing you up part? See below. Half a soy chicken from Fubonn, glazed with a Gai Tod Garlic style sauce and yellow bell pepper. I could NOT eat this, even try it, but Thomas was all about it.



I'm not a big faux meats gal as it is, but this is messed up! I'm not actually exclaiming that, just a little creeped out. It even smelled 'chickeny', though it was literally just molded and frozen into the birdy shape. Would you eat it?



I was really happy with this meal because it was a very 'use what's in the fridge' concoction:
vegetable fried rice with cashews and sesame chili baked tofu. The fried rice has portabella mushroom, cashews, yellow bell pepper, carrots and zucchini.



I ate a meal like this 2 or 3 nights last week:
steamed millet cooked in the rice cooker with veggie buillion, grilled japanese eggplant, tofurkey italian sausage, tofu, olives, parmesan and fresh spinach.



Mac 'n' cheez from What the hell does a vegan eat anyway?
grilled japanese eggplant and reallllllly garlickly sauteed spinach.



This is what I made for myself on soy chicken night:
Peanut soba noodles with pan fried tofu and carrots.. I made the peanut sauce with a lowfat coconut and water base and it was so creamy and good.



Can you see the big ole mason jar in the back? That's the signature drink from "Bye and Bye" - a new vegan bar in NE Portland, along with the BBQ platter. Check out our recent review on Stumptown Vegans. I wish this place was in SE Portland near me!



One last question - can anyone in/familiar with Seattle recommend a somewhere to eat or get delivery from late night? Thanks!

The cheesiest vegan pizza EVER

Thin, herbed crust pizza with roasted garlic pizza sauce, fresh tomato, red bell pepper, green chili pepper, collard greens, japanese eggplant and soy cheese.

I'm not absolutely sure how this happened - but low and behold we have the cheesiest vegan pizza I have never come across, and I've seen my share of fake cheesiness goodness and badness.
This was greatness.
The Follow Your Heart mozzarella had been frozen a couple days and sliced into thin squares. My oven was hot and ready, and my crust was very thin - even though these were baked on a cookie sheet, I think the delectably thin crust is what took it to meltdown central.

If you've never had Follow Your Heart before, it probably is the 'best' of the storeboughts widely available in the US, but nothing like real cheese. I prefer the mozzarella and monterey jack (thanks for the tip, ppk vancouver party!) on pizza, myself. I look forward to trying Cheezly when it comes to my area...one day. I've tried Scheese, but I just can't justify that price!

Let's cleanse our palates with this fresh farmer's market produce from last weekend:


Strawberries in August? Hell, yeah.

Another Italian tofu scramble.
with kalamata olives, fresh basil, tomatoes, garlic, dried oregano, chanterelle mushrooms, carrots, bell pepper and firm tofu.

Grilled and fresh dinner plate - fresh corn on the cob, fresh yellow and red tomatoes with sea salt, grilled broccoli, grilled creminis & japanese eggplant (brushed with white wine, olive oil & tamari). Can you tell with this plate that IKEA opened up or what?

A pizza from a couple weeks ago, heart shaped because I'm special.


That's all for now..Friday's my 25th birthday, so expect a cake or treat of some sort for the weekend!

Portland SE Bake Sale 7/28 and this week in food

Thank you guys for visting my last post and visually experiencing the Red & Black dinner!

I also wanted to invite those who will be in town this weekend, to visit the Southeast Division/Clinton street fair, where I'll be somewhere selling some baked goods - giant cookies, neon cupcakes, mini tarts, bars and more.

I'll be selling on SE Division between SE 21st/22nd, in the Butler Promotions lot across from Red & Black Cafe. Come check it out if you can!!

I'm feeling silly, though content about the whole thing. Plus, it's sooo close to my apartment I can't complain.

Onto blueberry appreciation week:

Blueberry Banana Coconut Muffins. Low fat, low sugar, whole wheat white flour indeed.


Blueberry Raspberry waffle, with roasted garlic tofu scramble in the back.


Aaaand last night's dinner:

Grilled chicken style seitan, eggplant, portabella mushroom, tomato/basil mixture, toasted pine nuts and a side salad. The grilled pieces were marinated in pesto, white wine, olive oil, garlic & balsamic vinegar.


So, stop on by on Saturday if you have the chance!

Free Vegan Cookies Reminder & Tarts with Webly

Reminder: This Saturday, 2pm - free cookies at Herbivore! Come sample some cookies I'll be making from Veganomican, plus a ton more from other fantastic PDX bakers.

Speaking of Herbivore, their new online edition is up for July, featuring my interview with Mr. Mrs. tofu of What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? If do say so myself, it's a great read, and features a mac & cheez recipe, and links to more.

By the way, if you have any ideas on who/for/of my vegan blog interview-ees, feel free to comment or email me~

Webly and I made Raspberry Coconut cream tarts on the 4th, based on her coconut pie recipe.
The crust recipe is from the upcoming Veganomican.

I made a few extra crusts, and she made some impromptu apricot-mango yogurt tarts, topped with mango nectarine, kiwi and raspberries.

Webly also helped me create a marinade for this tofu of fresh parsley, basil, rosemary, olive oil, tamari, mustard, agave, pepper, roasted garlic and fresh garlic. The tofu was baked for 20 minutes at 425 with spray oil, then marinaded for an hour, then grilled. Must make this again!

Vegan yum yum grilled corn salsa, with black beans. My favorite yum yum recipe yet!



And the grilling (panning) begins....

Altogether we had: eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, portabella, garlic scapes, white mushrooms, tofu, tofurkey brats and yves good dogs.
Other than the portabellas, the vegetables were simply brushed with olive oil, garlic, pepper & sea salt. The whole portabellas were marinaded overnight in red wine, balsamic vinegar, tamari, olive oil and fresh basil.


Eggplant-Tomato-Onion-Hazelnut Dip

The final of the fourth foods: salad

From last week - random dinner of whole wheat penne, fresh string beans and baby spinach, grilled tofu, portabella and sundried tomato and red wine marinara.