Abbey started the season off with a traditional carrot cake and cream cheese frosting for her mom's birthday, which was decadent and delicious. The cake itself was vegan, consisting of oil, spices, flour, carrots and sugar. No eggs or dairy. Though Abbey made a traditional cream cheese frosting for her mom to enjoy, I'm sure a tasty frosting could be made with Earth Balance and Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese. Next up was my mom's birthday. That day we had a blackberry cake (it had buttermilk, but still amazing) and two appetizers. The first was crostini topped with pesto and fresh tomatoes. The pesto was not vegan- there was a small amount of parmesan- but again, it easily could have been, either omit the cheese entirely or substitute a combination of almond meal and nutritional yeast. Although I've made quite a few pestos with no cheese and they were all fine.
Next, we had veggie meatballs in sweet and sour sauce. I modified the traditional recipe found over at About.com's Chinese Cooking pages, substituting pineapple juice for the water. after heating the sauce and letting it thicken, I tossed in thin slices of baby carrots, diced onion and green pepper, and some nice off-the shelf veggie meatballs from Veggie Patch. I poured that into a crock pot a little in advance so the vegetables would cook a bit.
Most of our weekday meals this week have been noteworthy. Abbey has made creamy soups with white beans before, and we got to enjoy one this week made with spinach and nutritional yeast. that's a piece of ciabatta doused with olive oil parked in there. We cooked the beans in a heavy dutch oven to the point that they were falling apart; all we had to do was stir and they instantly made a creamy base. She tossed in a thawed chunk of spinach and it was practically done.
Here's the third dish we made with pesto this last week- a pasta salad (high fiber Piccolini penne from Barilla) composed of cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, vegenaise and a drizzle of olive oil. Abbey topped it with shreds of basil, salt and pepper.
Many years back, Abbey and I had a favorite Chinese spot near the campus where we worked. They had some pretty good dishes, but the one the towered above was their rendition of Lo Han Jai. Also known as Buddha's Delight, it's a savory vegetarian combination of Chinese vegetables such as lotus root, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and cloud ears; bean thread; tofu and soy sausage of some sort. It's a like a festival of healthy things in a bowl; traditionally eaten on Chinese New Year's, presumably as a sort of toast to the diner's health. Hankering for that flavor, Abbey found a recipe which we adapted according to available ingredients. We baked cubes of tofu, then stir fried snow peas, sliced baby bellas, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, napa cabbage, bean thread, and added a simple sauce of soy sauce and vegetable broth (Imagine's Organic No-Chicken Broth was delicious for this purpose). It was fantastic.
Finally, Abbey came to the rescue for lunch the other day- I was trying to squeeze physical therapy and lunch into one hour; if it weren't for Abbey, I would have gone back to work hungry. She took some locally grown tomatoes and made a Spaghetti Pomodoro with them. The pasta was Racconto whole wheat spaghetti, the sauce consisting of tomatoes, whole black olives and olive oil. Nothing else was needed or desired.
I guess that's it for now! At least it is according to my camera. Abbey just whipped up an amazingly healthy granola that might be popping up here pretty soon as it has an impressive list of healthy ingredients, including buckwheat groats, flax, oats, pumpkin seeds and cashews.
