All-American Dinner

We looooooooooooove the Morningstar Bacon Strips. Grandma Lydia was making me BLT sandwiches with them when I was 10 years old; it was my first introduction to meat substitutes. Luckily Target is fully stocked with them, and at less than $4, we've found our chief supplier.

Last night's dinner: BLT sammies, boiled corn, and roasted potatoes with rosemary.

It was just so good. We brushed the veggie bacon with a reduced balsamic vinegar and honey glaze that we used to flavor our kale a few days ago, and then stuck the strips in the broiler for a few minutes until they were slightly charred. The sandwich was simple: toasted bread with mustard, fresh lettuce, slices of tomato and the bacon. An easy sammie idea! Unfortunately the bacon strips are not vegan. Argh.

Roasted Red Potatoes with Rosemary (vegan)

4 red potatoes, cut into one inch cubes (we kept the skin on again)
1 full sprig of Rosemary, chopped
1 TBSP olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Toss diced potatoes with rosemary, olive oil and S&P in a bowl and spread out on to a foil-lined baking sheet. Roast in the oven for about 25 minutes. Yum.

BBQ Chili and Corn Muffins

Wow, we are way behind. I could conjure up some stories to tell, but we're sitting here and falling asleep at 9:30pm (so cool).

On Sunday we still had some veggies leftover from the last CSA, and the temperature dipped below 70 - whoa - so we thought we could somewhat justify a hearty chili.

Spicy Barbeque Bean Chili (vegan)
Chili's so great because you can throw whatever you've got in it... so that's basically what we did.

1/2 onion, diced
Most of a poblano pepper, seeded and diced
Corn kernels from one husk corn
1/2 tomato, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1.5 cups barbeque sauce (Greg's recipe will be posted at some point)
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 cup water
1 TBSP tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne
a dash of hot sauce
salt, pepper, and any other spices you deem fitting

In a large pot, sautee over medium heat the onion, poblano, corn, tomato and garlic in some olive oil until onion starts to become translucent. Stir in beans and coat the mixture with about a TBSP of flour, mixing as you sprinkle it in order to avoid clumps. Pour in the liquids, tomato paste, and spices; lower heat to a simmer, stick in the bay leaf, and sit and distract yourself for about 30 or so minutes.
We went a little crazy with the heat in this, but spicy=good.

We enjoyed are chili with some poblano corn muffins, using up the rest of the pepper left from the chili.

Poblano Pepper Corn Muffins (vegan)

This recipe is adapted from our absolutely favorite vegan cookbook: Please Don't Feed the Bears; if you want to cook vegan, you should own this book - it's cheap and all the recipes we've tried are super good. The original recipe makes cornbread, but we thought we would spice it up a bit - pun intended.

Dry Ingredients
1.5 cups corn meal
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup sugar

Wet Ingredients
2 TBSP melted Earth Balance
1 cup soy/rice milk + 2 tsp lemon juice
1 egg's worth of egg replacer

+ leftover poblano pepper, diced.

Mix dry ingredients into wet, or wet into dry, depending on your school of thought. Fold in poblano pepper and pour into pre-greased muffin pan. We got about 10 muffins out of the mix.

The original recipe, since it's for cornbread, says to bake for 20 min at 425 degrees. We baked our muffins at that temperature for 10 minutes, and they came out a little dry, though still tasty. Baking is most definitely not my expertise - upon reflection, probably would have made sense to have baked them at 350-375 for 12-15 min. Oops.

Late Summer Vegetable Delight

Last night we got a little fancy. We picked up yet another round of corn and zucchini from our CSA this past Monday and made zucchini and corn risotto with a side of vegan stuffed zucchini blossoms. Greg was in charge of the flower filling, so I'll leave that blog post for him.

As for the risotto, ugh. So good, but such a pain in the butt to make. Maybe it's the brand of rice we bought? We have no clue. But for some reason, every time we make it, although it's totally worth it at the end, it takes forever and our arms get sore. We decided to conquer the beast once more, thinking maybe this time it will actually take us less than an hour. It didn't.

Zucchini and Corn Risotto (vegan)

1/2 medium size onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1.5 cups arborio rice or risotto - for some reason rice labeled arborio rather than risotto tends to be cheaper, but it seems to basically be the same thing?
1/4 cup white wine
5 cups vegetable broth, heated
Corn kernels from one stalk corn (cooked)
1 medium size zucchini, chopped
1 TBSP Earth Balance
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat up two swigs around the pan of olive oil over medium heat and toss in chopped onion. Sautee for 4 minutes or so, until onion soaks up some of the oil (but not all). Add rice and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and stir on and off for about a minute or so, making sure the rice doesn't stick to the pan. Deglaze (Tamar's favorite cooking action word!) the pan with white wine and let alcohol cook off for about a minute while - yes, you got it - continuing to stir the contents of the pan.

Now for the fun part (it's fun for about 3 minutes, then we start to get impatient, grumpy and hungry).

The trick is to balance the stirring and the addition of the vegetable broth. Add one ladle of broth at a time, continue to stir rice and wait until most of the liquid has been absorbed before adding the next ladle of broth. Some people claim you have to continuously stir, others say you don't. It really depends how motivated you are - we stir, occasionally get tired, walk away to change the song on the playlist, come back to stir... you get the point. As your broth supply dwindles, add the zucchini and corn so that the zucchini starts cooking. Also begin to taste the rice to see if it's getting close to being cooked; we like our rice firm, but not crunchy.

You may use all the broth we say to use, you may use less, or you may run out and start using water - use your bite to figure it out, don't trust us. We had about 4 cups set aside of broth, and ended up having to add about a cup water to finish cooking the rice. It was annoyingly frustrating since it seemed to never end, but there was a turning point during which the rice magically cooked in a matter of a minute or so after we added the last batch of water.

When all is said and done - rice tastes nice and creamy, zucchini is cooked - stir in that tablespoon of Earth Balance and add sallt and pepper to taste.