Roasted Cauliflower, Beer Battered Tofu, and Thyme Tomatoes

Last night, I was snowed in and bored. I checked out www.vegansaurus.com, which is awesome, and I saw they were having a best of survey for www.vegweb.com, which is the GIANTEST compendium of veggie recipes EVER.
So I tried a few things that had at least made it to the survey. Pictured above is the marinade for Oven Roasted Cauliflower.
Ugly link: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=31174.0 This marinade smells and looks amazing. It's super garlicky. It also rocks because it's so simple to prepare- I mixed up the marinade and cut up the cauliflower (with scissors! you can just snip those florets out easy peasy), and stuck it in a tupperware in the fridge for a few hours. Then, at serious cooking time, I just dumped the whole mess onto a baking sheet and popped it in the oven.
Since I was roasting, I decided to use up my last two plum tomatoes. I think I saw a recipe for these things in Real Simple or Martha Stewart....but I can't remember!
These are super simple. Right after I prepared the cauliflower, I sliced the romas lengthwise, and put them in a lightly oiled baking dish. Then I Mistoed the top of them- do you know about the Misto? It's a refillable olive oil mister, and it kicks ass. Seriously. You can use so much less oil with this sucker. I just ran it across the tops of the tomatoes a few times, and then sprinkled them with dried thyme. I like to crumble the thyme as I do this, but only cause it makes me feel chef-i-er. Then a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper....pop 'em in the oven at 200 for 2 hours...then crank it up to 400 for 15 more minutes. Yum.


For the main course, I tried another Vegweb recipe: Beer Tofu. I thought I put a fancy link in here, but it isn't showing up, so here's the ugly one:
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=8462.0
This was yummy, but no Misto action is gonna cut it for a dish like this. Only attempt it if you're down with the kind of thing that has to drain on paper towels. I tried using only a tiny bit of oil, and it just was NOT happening. Once I caved and poured some more in, the tofu became little crusty nuggets of heaven. Mmmm. I switched up the spices, which is my favorite part of cooking...so I included a little of Paula Dean's Lady and Sons Salt Mix. Oh dear lord, if you haven't tried this, you probably shouldn't, because it has MORE SODIUM THAN SALT. I don't know how. It also probably has dehydrated butter mixed in with it because it is YUM-O, if I may mix up my food network starz a little. Also, BAM! That's some good stuff. I only used a little, but you could taste the deliciousness. Anyway, yes...even tofu-phobic Stella ate it happily. So you know it ain't too healthy!

Chipotle Review

Yum! This turned out wonderfully. It smells like heaven.

A little soupy, so next time I would sub a can of low sodium tomato paste or some tomato sauce for some of the water. This was the perfect amount of spiciness, though. And even more delicious for lunch today. I sprinkled some nutritional yeast last night, but today the flavors had settled in so well, I didn't even need it. Just scooped it onto some wasa crackers and chowed down. Hearty and warm..and enough to get us through this snowstorm. It's pouring down, but we still have power. and I think I might have this for the third time in 24 hours. Awesome.

Chipotle Chili in the Crockpot

Oh, god, I love my new crockpot. I love it's removable, dishwasher safe dish, I love it's stainless steel finish. I love my mother-in-law, who always gives good presents.
So today I just made up some chili, mostly because I want something to eat with this half an avacado I have left over from ladies' sushi night. And beacuse I am so in love with Nueva Cus=cina Chipotle Taco Seasoning. My friend Becky introduced me to it, and I think it's pretty easy to find. I can get it at Ingles, but not BiLo, and I heard it's at Earth Fare,too. I think I should give you the heads up that it has raisins in it...trust. You will love it! Unless you can't do spicy at all- this stuff is on the edge of mild and medium in the spiciness department. I'm pretty wussy, and it's perfect with a cold beer to chase it.
It's cooking now, so here's hoping it's good! I apologize for posting before I've eaten it...but I had some coffee this morning, and I felt productive. Who knows how I'll feel later? I'll pop back in and review it, I promise!
Ingredients:
In crockpot order, bottom to top:
Olive Oil ( I just used my Misto refillable mister, because I'm trying to keep it low fat up in here, but you do what feels right)
1 chopped onion
a few cloves minced garlic (I used 1 regular and one elephant)
1 chopped red pepper
1 thing of beef substitute ( I used Morningstar Farms frozen veggie crumbles, but whatever you want, baby)
1 can of beans (I used kidney- I'm trying to stop thinking that kidney beans look like tiny bodily organs. I'M TRYING.)
**Now, you could use dry beans, if you soaked them first, but be aware that there's some whack junk that can happen with dry kidney beans in the crockpot. Dangerous. Google that business.**
Some frozen corn...what feels right to you? I only want a little corn in my chili, so I used about a 1/2 cup or so.
2 14.5 oz cans of diced/crushed tomatoes (whatever kind floats your boat)
1 package of the AWESOME Nueva Cucina Chipotle Taco Seasoning packet, mixed into one tomato can of water, stirred, poured over all of it.
One can of low sodium V8 juice poured into the same can, topped off with water, stirred to get all the spices.

The liquid should cover all of the ingredients. There will be a few floaty raisins, but that's alright. They puff up and join the party. I put it on low for 8 hours, we'll see how it goes! I think it could easily be done before that. I threw in some steamed sweet potato, too, because I had some left over from sushi night. I dropped it in with the corn. You could add chopped raw sweet potato alongside the onion, if you wanted it to be sweet potato-y-er.

Hiya!

I'm 29 and I just starting eating, I mean really eating, vegetables about 3 months ago. Umm...and to make that worse, I have a four year old. I did choke down some veggies when I was pregnant, I swear!

I kinda just tried not to think about it, and I'm lucky enough to have stayed pretty healthy. I can see now that my diet had obvious tie in to my lack of energy and weight gain, though....but I'm married to basically Paul Deen. Cy makes friend chicken, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and bacon, pesto cream sauces...dude. Say no to that after 10 hours wrangling toddlers. I dare you!

But the guilt has been gnawing slowly at me, and a few months ago, I read Eat To Live, by Joel Fuhrman. It's pretty difficult to keep eating the processed junk after reading something like that. Around the same time, my rational, analytical physician's assistant friend Jess became vegan. Her main reason was pretty simple- cancer. Awesome. The evidence was overwhelming, and I have been about 90% vegan in my diet, at least, since then.

And guess what? Red peppers taste good! And I love clementines! And turns out, chipotle is really delicious! And I lost 20 pounds with out even exercising! And I feel really freaking good about the environmental and ethical impact of this diet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/26/palm-oil-initiative-carbon-emissions , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/top-10-recent-development_b_372351.html , also, if you've got the stomach for it, the book Skinny Bitch by Rory Friedmann played a big part in my decision.

So not only has my diet changed, but for the first time in my life, I am cooking on a regular basis. And I have some awesome resources, online and in print- especially Veganomicon, by Isa Chandra and Terry Hope Romero. But I love talking about food with friends, and I want an easy platform for that. So email me or leave a comment if you have some recipes to share! some basic guidelines:

1. Vegan- obviously! I am not really hardcore here, I eat cheese on occasion, and if some esoteric ingredient is not totally vegan, I'd probably use it. I don't know the backstory on V8, and I cook with it all the time.

2. Photos and colorful commentary encouraged! I'm particularly interested in how easy a recipe is, how time consuming, how spicy, and how intimidating it might be for kids or carnivores.

3. Give credit where credit is due. Source your recipe if you didn't make it up!