MoFo #28 - Vegan Unplugged - duh

If you know who Sandy is and you don't have a copy of Jon Robertson's Vegan Unplugged and a 5 day pantry stash, well, then you'd better make some plans to evacuate on over to my house.

Keep the book with your pantry stash.  This is one instance where I recommend a real book over an e-book.  Not so helpful if your battery has run dry...

But to keep you entertained while you're still charged, check out Jon's novel Permelia Lyttle's Guide to the End of the World.  I won't dish any spoilers, just read it already.

And don't forget, animals need a plan, too!  Gary the cat's emergency pet preparations.

Here's my current emergency can stash (emergency Buffy DVDs to the left for power/laptop power, but no internet/cable situations.)  To keep the stash fresh, if you have the means, donate what you don't use to a food pantry at Christmas and replenish for the new year.  The full recommended 5 day list will only run you about $70 bucks and can be found for less if you shop store brands and for sales.

Right now despite it not even being stormy yet, I'm in the "using up fresh stuff I have" phase.  However, I'm prepared to be off the grid and will probably cook some emergency grub even if we don't lose power.  I had a lot of fun cooking unplugged during Irene last year where I didn't even lose cable.  Here's a sample.  Hit the links for the original blog posts...


White Beans and Greens Soup

 Nicoise Salad

Pasta with Creamy Pumpkin Walnut Sauce

Layered Tortilla Skillet

 Last Resort Lasagna

Sweet Treat Chocolate Truffles

Stay safe everyone!

Mofo #23 Eat more vegetables

There's just no way around it.  I'm a lazy MoFo.  Here's tonight's random vegetables over rice in a totally improvised sauce.  Looks like a big ole' brown mess in the middle, but there's onion, green pepper, garlic, eggplant, mushroom, roasted turnip, and roasted sweet potato.  It's topped with natto, avocado, and black sesame seeds.  

Pretty photo it's not.  But delicious it is.  - Yoda

Natto is one of the weirder Japanese ingredients.  It's fermented soy beans in a soy mustard sauce.  Sometimes the sauce has seashells and stuff in it, so if it does, just discard and substitute with soy sauce.

Rice with random vegetables

1 cup short grain rice
1 cup water

1 sweet onion minced
1 green pepper minced
2 cloves garlic minced
1 small eggplant cubed
1 portabella mushroom cubed
2 turnips cubed roasted
1 sweet potato cubed roasted

1/4 cup dry white wine or saki
1 TBS thai curry paste (red or green)
Soy sauce
1/4 cup tahini

Cook rice in rice cooker (because rice cookers are awesome)

Saute onion, pepper, garlic until browned.  Add eggplant, mushroom, turnip, and sweet potato, (mine were already roasted, so if raw just add water and extra time until they are cooked) add wine, curry paste, soy sauce, and tahini and heat through.

Serve over rice.  Add natto, avocado, and black sesame seeds.

MoFo #7 Sesame Miso Vegetable Noodles

Vegetable inspired Asian noodles.  

Eggplant, yellow squash, kale, shiitake mushrooms, and squash blossoms were part of my CSA haul this morning, so it doesn't get any fresher than this.  Rice noodles became the perfect canvas.  A little sesame paste, miso, ginger and soy sauce to round out the sauce and voila, the perfect Sunday brunch.  Garnished with squash blossom leaves and black and tan sesame seeds. 

Sesame Miso Vegetable Noodles

Peanut oil

Vidalia onion

Garlic

Ginger

Summer Squash

Japanese Eggplant

Kale

Shiitake Mushroom

Miso paste

Tahini

Soy sauce

Rice Noodles

Boil water for the rice noodles.  In a sauté pan, heat oil and sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until caramelized and brown.  Add squash, eggplant, kale and mushrooms and about a 1/2 cup of water to cover.  Cover pan and let steam for 10-15 minutes.

Cook noodles according to package directions.

Add to the pan about a heaping tablespoon of miso, tahini, and soy sauce to taste to make a creamy sauce.

Add cooked noodles and sauté to combine. Serve with a garnish of squash blossoms, and sesame seeds.                                                             

MoFo #5 - You got cookie! So Share it Maybe?

Vacation this year included a trip to California with a wedding in Berkley.  We were there just before all the students came back and had a lovely lunch at Gather.  Eco Friendly and I didn't even have to ask if anything was vegan.  

It was a brisk day out so the soup was perfect.  I don't even remember what was in it, but it was warming and delicious.

The Pizza had a fantastic nut cheese with a spicy kick.

I couldn't resist the vegan chocolate chip cookie!

 You got cookie?  So Share it Maybe!

MoFo #3 - Salt & Vinegar Kale Chips

Dude, it's salt & vinegar chips, but on kale!  This super snack is local, raw, and vegan.  New York Naturals rocks.  They use the whole leaf, so there are some stems, but they seem to stay whole better than other kale chips I've found.  You don't end up with a huge pile of crumbs at the end.

I don't even need words for this.  Snacking heaven.  Not too salty or vinegary either.  Perfect balance.

MoFo #1 - Weird Al Yankovic

I was having trouble coming up with a MoFo theme this year, but was trying to come up with something to do with entertainment. I was flipping through the channels and found the Weird Al Yankovic episode of Behind the Music.

Weird Al has been vegetarian and mostly vegan since 1992. So to start off vegan mofo 2012, here's a link to Weird Al going to be a jedi.  Cheers!




Also check out Vegan Sci Fi  who pretty much has the vegan entertainment idea all the time.