Sm’love Pie: Candied-Pecan, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pie.

Oh, Pie

One of my coworkers is holding a bake sale for an Alzheimer’s Foundation tomorrow.

Of course, I happily agreed to bake something.

And this is not just some pie, it is a heavenly, heavenly creature.
Always on the lookout for new opportunities to try recipes from Veganomicon, I chose this one.
My recent obsession with chocolate & peanut butter combos lead me to this recipe:

Smlove Pie.

If you want to follow along, find the recipe on the Vegan Superheroblog or on Mad Vegan in the Kitchen.

Check out the pictures.

Candied Pecans

Chocolate Tofu Cream

Pie..

Oh glorious Pie

Leftovers were utilized and turned into mini pies for the house mates 🙂
They couldn’t believe that these were vegan!

Pretty damn sure this is gonna sell well at the bake sale.

Have a good Monday night!

Day 34: Wir trafen uns in einem Garten

Since enjoying peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast every day at my friend’s house last week, I’ve been craving peanut butter. This is bad, since I normally was proud to be resistant to the stuff. However, I managed to find a way to incorporate it into vegan meals!

The first one I made because I was interested in tasting pak choi, also known as chinese cabbage or bok choy. Never heard of it before I started researching more vegan recipes. This one was absolutely gorgeous, great as a side or on its own!

(Image from jungle seeds )

Pak choi recipe from the Veganomicon (slightly modified):

You need:

• 3 Pak chois
• 1 tbs oil
• 1 tbs chunky peanut butter
• Soy sauce
• Sesame seeds

Stir fry the pak chois, nicely cut up, in the oil. When they start to wrinkle, add peanut butter and soy sauce. Steam for a few minutes, then serve. Sprinkle sesame seeds on for extra decoration.

Lots of recipes in Veganomicon, including this one, ask for the use of peanut oil. Lacking this vital ingredient, I opted for using olive oil instead, but adding a dash of peanut butter to the mix instead worked wonderfully! Very creamy, yummy, peanut-y (although to be fair probably less healthy).
The peanut butter works really well here, especially since using crunchy gives you little pieces of nut in your stew that make for an interesting mix of textures.

The pak chois came out very nicely. I’ll definitely buy them again, and you should consider trying them if you’ve never before. They are also rich in vitamins and iron, protein and calcium.
For more infos on pak chois check out Dancing Gecko’s Post , VeganHope gives a good list of recipe links, and this recipe also sounds delicious.

And this I randomly threw together as dinner last night, once again incorporating the peanut butter:

Extremely simple Courgette-Stew:

Stew is probably not the technical term for this.  It is not really a stir fry either though. Either way, it was very quick and very yummy, so here we go:

You need:

• Courgette (Zucchini)
• Mushrooms
• Baby potatoes
• 1 tbs oil
• 1 tbs of crunchy peanut butter
• Some herbs: Thyme, Oregano, Basil.. Whatever floats your boat. I used an Italian 5 Herb mix.
• some water

Heat the oil in a sauce pan. Add the vegetables, all cut into bite-sized chunks, and stir. Fry until they are a bit crispy. Then add the peanut butter, the herbs and some water, some salt. Stir thoroughly until the butter is melted and well spread around the leaves. Then put the lid on your sauce pan and steam for a couple of minutes. I am really bad with estimating times, so I won’t give a specific time here. You’re done when the potatoes and the courgette are as soft as you like them. The peanut butter/water/herb mix should have formed a bit of a nice, creamy sauce for the vegetables. If you want more, feel free to add some Vegan Cheese Sauce to it, I’m sure that would be a nice addition as well.

Lastly, I have had this song stuck in my head the whole day. ‘Wir trafen uns in einem Garten’ by 2Raumwohnung. ‘Jaaa, dann denk ich an was andres!’

Have a good day!

Day 30: Random news.

Today is easily the most unproductive day ever. Lots of thoughts flowing around in my mind. This might be caused by the fact that I’ve been knee deep stuck in work for the last few days, but I will try to sort them out anyway. Here we go..

Our house is going veggie!

Today, my neighbour E. announced he is going vegetarian. He announced it with a sort of proud voice, and it was good to see him explain why. This makes me so optimistic. I saw it coming, in a way, since E. has many veg*n (yes – cool, regular expression kind of saying vegans and vegetarians in one) friends that he hangs out with a lot of the time. I was very happy to see it.

Veganomicon update

I am dying to try out new things from the Veganomicon. Tomorrow I shall go on a massive food shop, and got some plans for a couple of meals that people will be coming over for next week. I am excited! Pictures will be posted of course.

Approaches to Soy

I was never a great fan of milk, and was always the one to watch in awe as my flatmates went through copious amounts in few days. Therefore, I acknowledged the existence of soy milk, but never depended on it or even considered buying some. A couple of days ago, when I was making the Cauliflower potpie , I had to buy some for the sauce and was very impressed with the taste when trying a little bit after. Yes, it is weird and different – but since I am not a great fan of the taste of milk, I am certainly not complaining. It also happens to be a great source of Calcium so I guess that can’t harm…

A couple of days later, I also happen to find soy in my department’s fridge! I was majorly impressed. My era of drinking black tea is therefore finally over, instead comes one in which I shall try to explore the wonders of soy milk.

Vegan Cartoons

Definitely reminds me of quotations I posted in Day 18 post… : “Terrorist” and “unamerican”? Yup, these definitely come into place here.

by T Peyser

And this one found on Mark Stiver’s Homepage is also definitely true.

Vegan Diet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very true. It is so, so easy to be vegetarian and unhealthy, and almost as much with veganism. Not that I generally disagree with a heavy coffee-based diet, but personally saw the change in diet as a chance to also eat more healthily in general. Sometimes they say that green stuff is good for you after all..

Day 28: Still Vegan, and first approaches to Veganomicon

More or less just a quick update. I am still going strong on the vegan side, and can hardly believe it’s been a month already. I am also thinking more and more about keeping it up after easter, i.e. after the end of lent. It will of course be much harder not living alone (and just cooking for myself) over the summer, so we will see.

I also tried out the first recipe from my new Veganomicon . It was the Cauliflower and Mushroom Potpie with Olive Biscuit Crust. So, so good! I am ashamed to say I almost ate the whole thing in one go. At the end, I found myself panically stuffing the leftovers into the freezer to stop myself from eating everything. For a picture and the complete recipe, check out TofuCrossing.
Basically, it is a potpie of lots of vegetables, tossed into an amazingly creamy sauce, topped with a salty biscuit layer with olives. So. Good. And trust me, although it takes a bit of work, it is totally worth it. The creamy sauce makes for a perfect comfort food in a cold night, or any night really. Yum…
Re: the veganomicon, I found a couple of great sites that help . I love just browsing through the book, but have found quite a few of the recipes to be slightly intimidating to the fresh vegans like me. After having tried the potpie, I am much more optimistic since every little step was explained so well even a very inexperienced cook like me can manage perfectly well. Still, these blogs help figure out where to start in this massive book of vegan goodness:

• VegWeb offers reviews of almost every recipe in the book, given by many different people
• VegMuffinMancooks his way through the book and posts the results in the blog
• CookingForAVeganLover gives a list of people’s favourite recipes from the book.

Also, today I am starting revision for final exams: a whole 5 weeks early! Actually, I will start to revise right now. I mean, now. Yes.

Day 8: 1-Week-Vegan Anniversary and ‘Veganomicon’

Update: I have been vegan for a week –
and I am wellfed, happy and healthy 🙂
So that’s good news I guess.

In other news, I finally got around to ordering a vegan cook book. After looking around on the internet for what could be the best one, I chose Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook since it’s been reviewed as one of the most complete and comprehensive ones. One review I found was from Ex-Foodie , who seems to really love the book and tried out several of the recipes.

So I am excited for it to arrive soon now.