Happy Vday!

Belated, but I hope you had a love-filled day yesterday! I made some homemade Spinach-Mushroom-Tofu-Ricotta ravioli's (heart-shaped of course), and a key-lime pie for dessert.  I used Vegan Dad's pasta recipe and just kinda made up my own tofu ricotta with added mushrooms and spinach. Key-lime pie from Vegan Pie in the Sky! Delicious!

Honeymooning: Bangkok, Thailand Part 3

One of my most favorite things that we did the entire trip, was take a cooking class at May Kaidee's. Seriously, this was so informative, fun, DELICIOUS, and made me so excited. May Kaidee's has two locations, one in Bangkok and one in Chiang Mai. Our class was made up of nine adults and two little kids (one was a baby, and the other kid was around 3-4 yrs old.) Half of the class was from Holland and half was from the U.S. We all donned our aprons and went through eight different dishes, taking time to eat and enjoy each one after cooking it. It was so great. We were each setup at a wok, sharing it with one other person (so, Nik and I were together,) and they would demonstrate the recipe first, and then we would make it ourselves. We would switch places at each dish, so that one person would be assisting with ingredients and reading the recipe, and the other would be in control of the wok. We made Tom Yam soup, veg stir fry, Pad Thai, Massaman Curry, Green Curry, Fresh spring rolls, Som Tam, and Mango with black sticky rice. So, all the favorites! The class lasts the whole morning (or afternoon, if you choose that time slot,) and fills you up! Everything was vegan, except you had the option to put an egg in your Pad Thai, if you were vegetarian. 

I've already made a few curries and some soup since I've been back and I looooove how confident the class made me feel in making some very basic dishes. Very much looking forward to expanding on Thai cooking this year...

I took some photos, but only with my phone, so excuse the blurriness in some of these!

Making Tom Yam Soup

Tom Yam Soup

Basic Stirfry

Pad Thai

Making Green Curry, my fave!

I could eat Green Curry for weeks.

Nik making Massaman Curry

Massaman curry. Loved the surprise addition of pineapple in this dish. 

Aww.

We made spring rolls with a peanut sauce on top. They had us "decorate" our own. This was mine...

...and this was Nik's. Hee!

Nik shredding the young Papaya to make Som Tam, or spicy papaya salad

Som Tam in the making.

Plated Som Tam

Mango with Black Sticky Rice. This was SO GOOD. SO GOOD! 

Bits & Pieces

Vegan brunch! 

I have a love/hate relationship with Summer, with the love side mostly being that all of my favorite fruits and veggies are in abundance. LOVING all the fruits lately. Blackberries made an appearance in my CSA this week and I always feel a sort of nostalgia with them. My sisters and Dad and I used to go out in the late summer, dressed in long sleeves and pants, into the back woods by our house to pick ALL OF THE BLACKBERRIES. No seriously, we would pick so many. And then my mom would make pies of deliciousness out of them. A fond childhood memory!  

Whole Grain Sweet biscuits with homemade jam made from the above blackberries and strawberries

Mushrooms Out of a Box

So I recently acquired one of these fun "Grow Mushrooms Right Out of this Box" kits and I decided to chronicle the daily growth of the Oyster Mushrooms. Holy cow, they grow so fast! Seriously, nothing for the first 3ish days and BAM, there such a change from the morning to the evening in size. Once they started growing, I harvested them five days later! So much fun and they were super-delicious. After I harvested this batch, I soaked it again in water and turned it around and more are sprouting out from the backside.

First day of growth

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 4

Day 4

Day 5

Harvest

Turned into stirfry! 

Homemade Pasta!

Nik and I received a KitchenAid Stand Mixer with the pasta-making attachments as a very super-generous wedding gift (I do have some posts about my wedding last month coming up in the next week or so! Waiting for official photos!)  recently, so you can imagine my excitement to dig in and play around with them. I went simple for the first time, using Vegan Dad's recipe for homemade pasta, and it worked wonderfully. Seriously, this was so easy. I thought it would be this time-consuming thing that should only be reserved for Sunday dinners or special occasions, but no, this was way easy. I took my time and it was still under 45 minutes, prolly half hour now that I know what I'm doing. Woo! I don't have a pasta drying rack, so I just laid them out on a tea towel and that worked fine. So pretty! I made a simple lemon-garlic-butter sauce and lightly sautéed some asparagus and scallions to mix in. Delicious.

I can't wait to try some flavored pastas, like spinach or sun-dried tomato. And lasagna!

Blog Tour! Whole Grain Vegan Baking Book

Blog tour time! Today, I'm gonna talk about my huge love for Whole Grain Vegan Baking. Yesterday you heard from Mihl and tomorrow you will here from Jess! Check out the full schedule for Celine and Tami's blog tour here. 

So, it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Celine and Tami's recipes. I've been recipe testing for them for awhile now, years even, and their latest book to come out, Whole Grain Vegan Baking, is up there on my all-time-favorites list of cookbooks, like ever. I've made a lot of the recipes from this book, during the testing stage, and still after. There was a lot to learn from this book and it definitely gave me some major love for whole grains that I did NOT have before.  I learned that Spelt flour is the best ever AND I WANNA PUT IT IN EVERYTHING. I have a newfound love affair with Barley flour, and I never ever would have known that. I learned that I do not like Amaranth flour (to each their own!) Most importantly, I learned that whole grains taste waaaay better than plain white flour once you have a good, balanced recipe to work from (we've all tried to make "healthy" cookies or something that turned out tasteless and bleh before yeah?) There is a certain depth in the flavor of whole grain baked goods that I have come to appreciate and even prefer over the standard white flour varieties. Win!

I have lots of favorites from this book, including the pizza crust, the pitas, the kale quiche, the wild mushroom & arugula pie, Speculoos DOUGHNUTS, sweet potato waffles, coconut-spice granola, the english muffin bread, Pull-apart Cinnamon Bread, and so so many more. Seriously, there is something for everyone in here.

Anyways, for this stop on their blog tour, I wanted to devote this post to your sweet tooth. Because, mmm sweet tooth. I was on kind of a no-sugar kick for the last few months leading up to my wedding, and what better way to break that restriction on myself with some tasty (healthy-ish) sweets!

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CONTEST TIME!

Also, CONTEST! Weee! Celine, Tami, and their publisher have graciously offered up one copy of Whole Grain Vegan Baking to a lucky reader here.

*EDIT: Winner has been chosen, thank you! Congrats to Becca!

To enter: Leave me a comment, by Monday at Midnight EST, telling me a bad experience you have had with whole grain baking. Let's let it all out, therapy-style, and then never think about it again, because you are going to make so many delicious whole grain recipes when you get this book!
*Don't forget to leave your email address!
*Unfortunately, this contest is only open to those in the U.S. and Canada (I'm sorry...) The publisher will ship it straight to the winner

I will pick a winner on Tuesday, via Random.org. Good luck!

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Speculoos Doughnuts!

Sweet Potato Waffles!

Whole and Oats Cookies. (hehehe)

VeganMOFO: Happy Halloween?

Happy Halloween? The hurricane definitely put a damper on Halloween this year, but we're trying to make the best of it. Nik and I carved our pumpkins before the storm and I think they look pretty good, yeah? It's crazy that another year of VeganMOFO is over and that it is freaking NOVEMBER tomorrow. Crazy-pants! Hope you have a good one!

xo,

Michelle

VeganMOFO: Post-Hurricane Sandy

East River is relatively back to normal today.

Hello! Checking in to say I'm okay. We were with the lucky few that didn't lose power and didn't suffer any damage to our property or to ourselves. We lost internet/cable, but that was no big deal in the grand scheme of things. It got a bit scary last night in the peak of the storm, with the wind and all the sirens and the smell of fire in the air. So many folks without power or shelter today. It was pretty heartbreaking to read the news last night and this morning... 

Nik and I took a walk around our neighborhood this afternoon, to survey the damage, and just to get out of the house for a bit. Our area did okay during the storm, save for some fallen trees and some construction zone flooding and lots of debris.  Some photos on our walk:

Tree in the local McCarren Park

See those big flood lights standing up? Now the one laying down...

Construction site in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

This water is not supposed to be here...Construction zone right by the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Vinnie's was open today, so I had a vegan eggplant parm slice.