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.

VeganMoFo Day 10: White Pizza vs. Chocolate Pizza!

I did something kinda crazy last night, and decided to make a white pizza AND a chocolate-crazy-awesome pizza. I know, I know, I'm so crazy on my friday nights! White pizza was comprised of the VWAV pizza crust, a cashew-tofu ricotta, and some teese cheese on top. A bit on the dry side, and could have used a wetter sauce to help it along. Better the next day, reheated with extra teese on top! Now, this chocolate pizza, was some kind of wonderful. I had split up the pizza dough before the heavy kneading part, and mixed in a little sugar and cocoa powder to make the chocolate crust. It is spread with Dark Chocolate Dreams (I have an addiction to this stuff!), topped with bananas, chocolate chips, maraschino cherries, and Dandies! Seriously, so so good. Fabulous for some Lost watching (I'm almost to the end of season 2 and officially hooked!) on a relaxing friday night.

Hello!

The internet has been quite dead this past month, yes? I took a little break too, to enjoy some end of the summer-ness. Lots of painting and cooking and loungin' away from the computer. I'm going to Portland, OR in a few weeks for vacation too! I need to start planning what I'm going to do (i.e. narrow down the places I want to eat at, haha). I found this jaw-dropping list of vegan and vegan-friendly food carts from Jess' blog and I have some serious deciding to do.


This morning I wanted something different than my usual pancakes/waffles for sunday brunch, so I decided to go for some crepes from Vegan Brunch. I made a white peach sauce and the lemon-cashew creme filling (from VB) for the innards, and it was quite the tasty meal. White peaches are my favorite! We used to have a white peach tree in our yard, growing up, and it would be bent over in half from the weight of all the peaches by the end of the summer. So many yummy pies and peach bread!


Grilled eggplant with apricot bbq sauce on homemade foccacia bread.


I've made these chocolate-chip zucchini muffins twice in the last two weeks! I used the Vegan Brunch recipe for Zucchini Spelt muffins, but used whole wheat flour and added chocolate chips. Zucchini baked goods are incomplete without chocolate for me!


I picked up a small package of Teese last week and fresh figs were on-sale at Whole Foods, so I decided to make some fig and olive pizza with a whole wheat crust! I also made one with fresh tomato and basil, but forgot to take a picture of that one. Delicious! That's some homemade sauce on there too with all the heirloom tomatoes and regular tomatoes I got in my CSA last week.

Last week's brunch was chocolate chip waffles (I love my chocolate chips, what!) Waffles are always pretty to photograph. :)


I've been buying extra at the farmer's market for the last few weeks, and freezing stuff for winter months when I'm going crazy on root veggies. I always forget to do this! Gotta do tomato sauce soon. I've found it's a whiz to make homemade sauce with the Vitamix. No peeling skins or deseeding! Homemade sauce is the best.

Melty pizzzzzzza!

I tried to go to a craft fair this past saturday, and got there around 5ish to find that it ended at 4pm. D'oh! It kinda took awhile to get there too (as it is impossible to go north-south in brooklyn very easily.) Good thing I had a backup! I've been wanting to try Pizza Plus, in Park Slope, for awhile now, but again, I never find myself in that area too often. Anyways! They serve up a whole vegan pie (with teese I think!) with toppings of your choice! I took foreverrrrr to decide, but went with mushrooms and sundried tomatoes in the end. Look! They even made it all melty! I love my slices from Vinnie's, but they do NOT know how to melt the teese. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome. We even got to eat outside in the backyard. Afterwards, Nik and I got some bubble tea to go (he got coconut and I got peach) and headed off to Prospect park to walk around. I'm not too keen on the tapioca balls, and thought I just ordered the plain tea, but the balls still came in it. I couldn't even swallow them, but made myself keep trying. Not too bad once you get used to them. Peach tea rocked though! The park was beautiful. It was supposed to rain that evening, but had cleared up, so I think a lot of people had stayed inside. It was nice strolling around with not that many people out. Oh, and we had some cute duck sightings!



I've been craving all things lemon lately, so I made the golden vanilla cupcake recipe, from VCTOTW, with added lemon zest in my bundt pan (I did have intentions of doubling the recipe, but completely forgot until everything was all mixed together.) For the top, I just mixed the juice from one lemon with confectionary sugar until it was a bit pasty and drizzled over. Mmmmm.


On sunday, I spent a couple hours in the kitchen making the bundt cake, some homemade Rosemary-thyme foccacia (from VCON, with 2 cups whole wheat, 1 cup white), and some seitan. I always bake my seitan, because it's always too chewy-gross when I boil it and too mushy when I steam it. Hooray for sammiches! And hooray for sunny sundays, in which I am free to spend my time in the kitchen!

It's Pizza Time!

So, I attempted to make homemade Pita bread this past sunday, and while they came out quite yummy tasting, they weren't so functional in a pita-type way. They kinda half puffed up (some not at all) so they really couldn't be split in half, and they were on the smaller side, so folding was no good either. So pizza is was! I made some homemade olive hummus (mmmm, so tasty! ), using two cans of chickpeas, one can of black olives, a bunch of olive oil, one onion, and 2 cloves of garlic (salt and pepper to taste). I used the beanball recipe from Vcon, but subbed chickpeas for the kidney beans, lemon juice in place of the steak sauce, and used thyme, dill, and mint for the spices. They made some yummy falafel-like balls of yum. I used the pan-fry method. This was a really fresh tasting pizza and my mouth was dancing from the mix of flavors. Woo!




I had all these leftover pitas (recipe made 12!), so I decided to make a more traditional pizza the next day. I made a pesto with some broccoli rabe I had frozen from one of my CSA pickups a month or so ago, and I made the Cashew Ricotta (which I am madly in love with!), from VCon. Peppers and Shiitake mushrooms on one pizza, and leftover beanballs and peppers on the other. Yum! These made really good pizza crusts and I will probably try this mini-pizza thing again, as I liked making a few varieties. It also reminded me of those personal pan pizzas that I used to get from Pizza Hut, when I was younger, for "Book-it" or "Books across America," or whatever that was called. I wish I could still read for pizza!! I wonder if they still do that.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Today was a great day for the new year. Nik and I went out to dinner last night and stayed local at a bar nearby to ring in the new year. So much fun! I slept in superrrrr late today and made a fabulous brunch of chocolate chip pancakes and a tasty smoothie (1 frozen banana + 9 frozen strawberries + 1 orange + 2 tbs. of pineapple juice concentrate + a couple tsp. of flax seed + enough soy milk and cold water to fill 3/4 of the mixture in the blender=the PERFECT amount for two people. mmm). I spent most of the day making Isa Pizza, from VWAV. I made my own dough, pesto, cashew ricotta, and pizza sauce ALL in the new vita-mix. Fantastic! I like how it keeps dishes to a minimum too. And I've never had a good enough blender to make pizza before! So exciting! And it makes it in like 2 seconds! Okay, I'll stop talking about it now. I'm sure the novelty of it will wear off soon (no it won't.) I used the new pizza stone and it made some to-die for pizza. Nik proclaimed this "the best pizza ever." nom nom.





I've been painting most of the night, so I shall have some new goodies to scan in and share with everyone tomorrow! Happy night!

Pizza and cutiecakes

I made some pizza the other day, so that I could bring it to work on friday for my secret santa holiday party (they were having pizza and i didn't wanna feel left out). This is the first time I have been super-proud of my crust too. I used the VWAV recipe and I managed to get it real thin and yummy. Funny enough, I think the mega-radiator heat that was going on in my kitchen might have had something to do with it. I didn't even let it rise all that long after the initial rising time. Maybe a half hour before I started rolling it out and stretching. Miracle heat! I put some roasted broccoli, carrots, scallions, garlic, spinach, and tofu ricotta on it. Mmmmm. My pizza looked way better than work's pizza. Hmpf!


I also made some mini cupcakes to bring in for the shindig. They are the chocolate VCTOTW recipe with raspberry preserves spread on the top and some piped fluffy buttercream (with a pretty pink stripe!) and some dark chocolate raspberry shavings on top. They were so cute! Mini cutey-cake army!



Tomorrow, I have the day off, so I'm gonna super-bake lots of cookies and other yummy things to give to people and to bring home to my family. I leave tuesday morning and am gone until sunday. Yaay spending time with the family! I'm also REALLLLY looking forward to not working for nine days! Huzzahh!!