VCON Chickpea Noodle Soup

On a chilly day, after a not-quite fight with the bus driver, come home to Veganomicon's Chickpea Noodle Soup (follow link for recipe). Miso gives it a vaguely chickeny (not in a bad way) savory taste. Adding extra leafy greens (I used collard greens) is a good idea. Oh, and I used rice instead of noodles to use up leftover rice, throwing it in about 5 minutes before the soup was done.

Vegan YumYum's Roll-up Lasagna

I've been in a bit of a kitchen slump recently. We have all these fruits and vegetables in the fridge and I'm at a loss as to how to combine them successfully.

Happily, one of the vegetables was a gigantic eggplant, so I got to try out Vegan YumYum's eggplant and pine nut rolled lasagna. It was a bit labor-intensive since I had to fry eggplant slices, but turned out delicious and totally worth it. I subbed some of the pine nuts with cashews since I ran out of the pine nuts. It's really rich, what with the fried eggplants and pine nut cream, so a good one for these wintry months.

The lasagna is also tofu-free and, as pointed out by Lolo, much less messy than other cheese-free lasagna's because it's rolled up. You can also totally adapt the filling - spinach, tofu ricotta, etc.

If you're wondering, the brown flecks are bread crumbs.

kitchen flops: semolina pudding

A semolina pudding recipe I came across in Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian sounded too intruiging to pass up. Semolina (usually used to make pasta) in a dessert?

I made a few adaptions to the recipe, the worst being subbing yogurt with tofu cream cheese, which killed it, and resulted in a funky dessert (bad funky). In taste tests throughout the process (read: licking spoons), it was great, but I guess that tangy cream cheese flavor the overall taste off.

The semi saving grace was an optional rosewater glaze that gets put on post-baking. To make it, combine 3 C confectionar's sugar with 1-2 teaspoons of rosewater (I used one, and even less might be better) and 1/2 cup of water (or soy milk) and whisk til smooth. Try it anywhere a regular glaze would go, like scones, cakes, or doughnuts if you're that kind of girl or boy. I'm barely a glaze girl at all, so we'll see what becomes of the cup or so that remains.

Tiramisu & Pasta Della California

Things have been busy. I went to Boston really briefly, for a few days, to visit my cousin who was also visiting.

Before I left I made some note-worthy things: the Pasta Della California from Veganomicon (recipe here) and the tiramisu from the Candle Cafe cookbook. The pasta was incredible, and highly recommended - who knew lots of garlic, broccoli and avocados would taste so incredible together?

The tiramisu was really good as well - very light, and with tofu used to replace all that dairy.

Boston was fun, despite the freezing weather (snow, snow, snow), but it served an important function in making Seattle seem warm in comparison.

Besides that, I recently got a book entitled "Creating a Life Worth Living" by Carol Lloyd which is quite similar in subject to "The Artist's Way," if you're familiar with it. The idea is to figure out what you really want to do with your life & career through a workshop-style week-by-week program with exercises to do and questions to think about and the like.

In an attempt to fill up the countless of hours of my day, I joined a gym that just opened in my neighborhood and am meeting with a personal trainer today. This is scary because, despite a brief gym-intense phase as a college freshman, I have avoided and disliked gyms for much of my life.

My other endeavor began last night: a writing class I signed up for many moons ago had its first session yesterday. The class seems like it will be really focused on pushing towards a structured and eventually completed piece ready for publication, whether it's a book chapter or essay. The other class members seem really diverse in their backgrounds and also what they want to write, so I think it should make for an interesting experience. I feel nervous about exposing myself through my writing like this - but I'm sure I'm not the only one in the class, so here goes nothing.

Pancakes

Pancakes make things better. I really wanted to make these after I saw them on Bethany's blog (scroll down). They're from the Candle Cafe Cookbook, so it was an added bonus since I haven't made much out of it yet. The texture is really spot-on, and of course with maple syrup and margarine, they were worthy of being the first breakfast of the new year.