I'm a person again!

Greetings, dear readers!

Yes, you read right: when I am in school, I feel like I'm a little bit less than a person. My room is a mess, I get exempt from washing dishes, and the phone doesn't ring because my friends know of my semester-long hibernation from which I cannot be awoken. Those are not the traits of a full person, are they? Who gets exempt from dish-washing? Why does my room get to be messy? How come I can't be surrounded by the love of my friends? Ah, yes, because I have to study, and write papers, and attend lectures. Awesome.

But now... oh yes... I am done school. Maybe not forever, but with my last exam of my Bachelor's degree written, and my last essay completed (as of this morning at 1 a.m., minus the editing that it definitely needs), I get to be a person again! I get to wash dishes (joy of joys!)! I get to clean my room (amazing!)! And, best of all, I get to alert my friends and family of my reappearance out of hibernation!

All of this doesn't mean that I've stayed out of the kitchen, though. As many people who list cooking and baking among their hobbies know, cooking up a hearty, wholesome meal is therapy in itself. Even with deadlines approaching, I made sure to spend a decent amount of time in the kitche. And, thanks to my duty as a Happy Herbivore recipe tester, I had plenty of excuses to take a break from studying.

So, below I have a few photos to share of my culinary distractions explorations during the last two weeks of the semester since my return from Italy. But before I get there, I have to express my delight at having all the time in the world to bake! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I'm going to make croissants (well, I'm going to try!), and cookies, and English muffins, and cakes! And I get to peruse food blogs without feeling guilty about leaving homework behind! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Ok, I'm done. Here are photos.

Enjoy :) And please allow me to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy holiday. May you all be blessed with happiness, good health, laughter, warmth, and love.

Vegan in Suburbia

Broccoli, carrot, and chickpea casserole from Vegan with a Vengeance

Foodeater's recipe for mac and cheese with Daiya, second time around, with brown-rice pasta and a mixture of mozzarella and Cheddar-style Daiya

Oh, Heaven...

Happy Herbivore's fabulous Chicky Seitan, for her upcoming cookbook

Happy Herbivore's fat-free pesto on Nonna's home-made gnocchi

Pesto blessed with tomato sauce

Happy Herbivore's baked sweet potatoes

My curried tofu (thanks to Patak's!) with broccoli, onions, and orange bell pepper served atop a glorious mix of red rice, millet, flax seeds, and barley. I just mixed 4 tbsp of Tikka curry paste with 4 tsp. of soy milk and added it to the pan after frying the tofu and lightly cooking the veggies.

The complete meal :)

Sweet-potato and Swiss chard fritters à la Emeril--ridiculously awesome, by the way, and ever so simple to prepare.

That's it for now! :-)

EDIT: How could I forget! In the rush before leaving to Italy, it was my best friend Maritsa's birthday and my Nonno and Aunt's birthdays. I made a birthday cake for Maritsa and lasagna (for the vegans at the party) for Nonno and Zia Franca's celebration.

Red velvet cake with buttercream frosting (recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking)

Me and the birthday girl with cake, soy milk, and, ahem, post-shower wet hair.

Slice of heaven. LOOK AT THAT ICING. Mmmmmmm

Sorry, Bijou, no cake for you!

Hello, Daiya lasagne. I love you.

Melty, melty goodness.

Why have one slice of heaven (heaven comes in the form on cake and lasagne) when you can have two? (This isn't my plate, by the way. Ha ha ha)

Ok, I'm done for real now! Thanks for reading :-)

Vegan in Suburbia

Italian Escapade and More Photo Collaging

Greetings!

For shame! My last post was on the 22nd of October? Oi, school does really make me nonexistent.

Well, I was going to not post until I was done exams, but I figured I'd end up with an obscenely large photo collage (not that that's a problem, since who dislikes food porn?), since goodness knows I'll be taking breaks from studying in order to cook or bake (hopefully cook since baking and studying is a bad combination: I tend to want to eat when I'm studying, which is why I chew loooots of gum during finals. My dentist loves me).

Just a quick update first, though: I went to Italy last week for a two-day conference in the town of Frascati, jsut a half hour away from Rome. It was the fifth regional conference on emigration. I was the youth delegate for Montreal and well over 100 people attended from all over the world. Basically the conference is held in order to help the various Lazio associations around the world (Lazio is the region in Italy in which Rome is found and from which thousands of people have emigrated over the years) find strategies to keep in better contact with the mother region and how to keep customs and traditions alive overseas and throughout the upcoming generations. I ate very well, naturally, since pasta and pizza that are eggless are not at all hard to come by, though I did not have dessert (not a huge deal, since cholesterol-laden croissants and butter-filled cookies are not my bag). I definitely had soy chocolate ice cream on the last day of my trip, though! Allll right. Here are some photos of what I ate:

Ok I'm freaking out because the hotel (which was paid for like the flight was) provided slippers. The hotel was called Villa Vecchia and was enormous, comfortable, and beautiful.
Candies, some of which were vegan, provided in the room of the hotel
Pasta with olive oil, artichoke, and garlic

Ubiquitous yet always delicious grilled veggies

Not the greatest photo but oh my goodness, was this delicious! Grilled veggies on pizza

Blessed chocolate soy ice cream with Claudia :)

Now for images of home-baked goods, that is, baked in my home. Drum roll, please?

Peanut butter cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar by Isa Chandra Moskowitz for Matt's graduation (I ran short on peanut butter so I added vegan chocolate spread) filled with chocolate icing (left over from my sister's birthday cake)

Godly risotto (base recipe from Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein) with additions by me

Sunny blueberry muffins (recipe by Isa Chandra Moskowitz from Vegan with a Vengeance) for my yoga class

 Delicious vegan frittata (recipe by Happy Herbivore)

Banana-marshmallow muffins (recipe by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau in The Joy of Vegan Baking), modified by me to include marshmallows! I had no idea that they would explode when I sought to make these today. I guess I have that little experience with marshmallows. But dude, get your hands on some Dandies. These things are amazing and taste just like "regular" marshmallows. No joke.

Breakfast bars (recipe by Happy Herbivore), filled with date puree and vegan chocolate spread

 

I think that's it for now. I'm off to make dinner now and then to disappear for the next two week, as assignments are due and one exam will require studying for more than a week. The joys of being a university student!

Be blessed, eat well, and happy preparations for the holidays. See you all in two weeks, and I thank you for reading.

Vegan in Suburbia (and beyond)

Poking my head to make an announcement and send some love

Picture me poking my head into your humble abode just for a sec. I find the image amusing, but I hope it doesn't creep you out too much.

(Silly how I am smiling to myself right now.)

Hi!

I've been baking and cooking as usual but I'm mostly working on, well, working off the chocolate cake (see previous post) I consumed (read: devoured) over the past weekend for my darling sister's 27th birthday.

But the reason for this blog post is to promote a cookbook by the fabulous Lindsay Nixon (a.k.a. Happy Herbivore)! I "met" her over the summer on Twitter and did some copy-editing for her on her e-book called Backyard Vegan. We kept in contact and, at the end of September, she asked me and a bunch of other veg*ns (the * is a wild card for vegan or vegetarian and everything in between and outside) to be her testers for the cookbook which will be released in about a year.

But don't let me give you all the details: head to www.happyherbivore.com to learn more and to try out some delicious fat-free vegan recipes to get an idea of what will be included in the cookbook. Also, visit the flickr group where Lindsay and her testers will be posting photos on a regular basis of the culinary concoctions to be included in the book.

This is so exciting, and I'm thrilled that Lindsay asked me and the others to be a part of this. It's splendid to be able to not only bake and cook up some delicious vegan recipes but feel great about eating such wholesome foods.

And just in case you don't get a chance to head over to flickr, here's one of Lindsay's recipes that I made the other day. It's vegan frittata, a deliciously-basic recipe to which you can add basically anything. I added bok choy that I bought on a whim and chick peas.

Have a great rest of the week, and I look forward to sharing more photos (teasers!) about Lindsay's cookbook.

Much love,

Vegan in Suburbia

P.S. I found out last week that I'll be attending a conference in the town of Frascati, in the region of Lazio, Italy, at the end of the month! I'm absolutely psyched, even if it means I'll be missing school and, thus, still working on projects for a few hours a day. I'll be taking photos of my vegan culinary adventures, but I'm most excited about picking up some delicious vegan Nutella. Muahaha. Stay tuned :)

The making and final product of a Twilight cake

Greetings!

I hope you are well. I'll keep this short and sweet, since I finished work at 4, got home after picking up some supplies to make my older sister's birthday cake, made the cake, served it, and have yet to do any school work--and it's 10:30 p.m. Yes, my darling sister turned 27 today, and she requested, or should I say kindly demanded, that she be provided with a Twilight birthday cake. Yes, Edward Cullen charms not only 14-year-olds, as we all know.

So, along with the help of my mum and best friend, Maritsa, here's what I came up with. Please note that, because of all the preparations involved with making the cake, I hadn't a chance to eat dinner, so I ate cake. Two pieces. Okay, three. 

Tomorrow morning, the treadmill and I are going to be really intimate....

Happy birthday, Jess! May you be blessed with love, happiness, and health, and here's to another 27 times four!

Vegan in Suburbia

P.S. The recipe for the cake is by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau and can be found in The Joy of Vegan Baking (I added apple slices to the top of the bottom layer [whoa] and increased the baking time and threw in some dark-chocolate chunks); the recipe for the icing is by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero and can be found in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

For Daiya: A Collage of Love

I have a new love. Her name is Daiya and she is beautiful. She is vegan cheese, and I love her. She provides me with delicious vegan pizza and macaroni and cheese that tastes even better (because it tastes like actual cheese and not powdery nonsense) than silly KD (even though we all loved KD before we met Daiya).

Here is a collage in the form of a recipe that Daiya took over and made sacred. The recipe is by the brilliant FoodEater and can be found on the blog To Live and Eat in L.A. I modified the recipe in the following ways: I put 2 tbsp of Earth Balance, 2 tbsp of whole-wheat flour, 1 3/4 cup soy milk, and 4 slices of regular Tofurky. The next time around, I might adjust the ratio of pasta to cheese and increase the amount of pasta (or slightly--no, no reducing the cheese. Muahaha).

Enjoy :)

Vegan in Suburbia

P.S. Behold the STRINGS of vegan cheese!!!! (I'm not normally one to use multiple exclamation marks. Please bear that in mind.) And behold my drunken photo skills on the last photo. Ha ha. Drunk on cheese.

Viva Granola + Daiya + Pizza in My Tummy = Love

Let the photos speak for themselves. Tasty vegan cheese is finally here.

So it was a simple recipe. I followed Betty Crocker's (haha. My mom has this ancient book with really simple recipes, most of which are easily veganized and sound scrumptious) recipe for whole-wheat crust, threw on some canned tomato sauce (how un-Italian of me, I know) left over in the fridge, sliced mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, and Daiya Italian Shreds, and voilà: Heaven in pizza form. (Next time, I'm totally putting more cheese.)

By the way, I got my wicked fix of cheese from Viva Granola Vegan Store. Check 'em out!

Love,

Vegan in Suburbia

Splashing Photos onto a Page with a Few Accompanying Words

Hi, friends!

I hope everyone is having a pleasant week so far. I've been somewhat slaving over an essay that I submitted today (yay!) in my Petrarch and Boccaccio course, so I haven't had time to blog or do anything other than the usual utilitarian stuff on my computer. But here I am, just peeking in to do what the blog title states: splash some photos onto my blog! I just realized that it's 12:30 a.m. (where did the night go?), and after an almost 12-hour day at school, it's probably best I hit the sack sooner rather than later.

So here are photos with brief descriptions :) I guess we could call this a food diary of sorts....

And I ask your forgiveness for my nonexistent photo-taking skills and my ineptitude at figuring out a decent layout for this barrage of photos. Blogger seems to have changed the way photos are added to blog posts and if it was annoying before, it's even more so now. Well, at least Blogger provides me with a free spot for photos....

Fat-free whole-wheat pancakes by Happy Herbivore

(They have an orange tint because I added about a cup of puréed pumpkin to the batter.)

 

Maple-kissed Pumpkin Muffins by Happy Herbivore, moist and simply lovely. (Make the pumpkin variation of the sweet-potato recipe.)

 

Individual Pumpkin Muffin, about to be kissed by me!

 

Maple-kissed Sweet Potato Muffins by Happy Herbivore. These guys smell suspiciously of bran muffins, and I am in love with this characteristic of them. (As a kid, I somehow loved bran--I've always been special--and would relish eating the muffin top off bran muffins my mum used to buy. This muffin allows me to reminisce, even though it's a lot healthier than the bran muffins my mum and I used to consume.)

 

Two mildly different angles for this fabulous Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crust by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I made this for Thanksgiving at Matt's house. It pleased me that his family went crazy for it, because no one in my family likes pumpkin pie. It's quite satisfying to bake something with seasonal ingredients, so I guess that's the main reason why I baked this, even though I'm not crazy about pumpkin pie myself. For tradition's sake (tradition set by whom?), it's worth it. And darned good with vanilla ice cream, even though all the supermarkets either didn't carry or were out of soy ice cream. Weird! That never happens....

Maritsa and her family had recently ordered a whole bunch of Indian food, and she was telling me that they ordered vegetarian shahi korma at my favourite (Indian) restaurant ever, Pushap. I tried Indian food for the first time when I went vegan six years ago, so I'd never tried shahi korma before because of the cream it contains. So, Maritsa, brilliant as she is and confident in my optimism (maybe not in my ability, though) to veganize dishes, challenged me to create a vegan shahi korma dish. So together we did some research and found zero results for vegan recipes. So I gathered inspiration and compared and combined recipes from a few sites, mixed and matched some cream replacements--namely, plain soy yogourt and a can of coconut milk--, used veggie broth, added soy curls for extra protein (and to mimic whatever meats can be in shahi korma. Gross that they use lamb), and added some baguette bread for good measure. It was ridiculously tasty, and although my sister said it did not taste like "the real thing," she went for seconds, and that's as good a compliment as any. Oh, and please excuse the photos. It doesn't make for a very appetizing-looking dish, but trust me--it is.

These doughnuts were godly. They are Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Doughnuts by VeganYogini. I used Cocoa Camino Dark Chocolate with Orange Zest. They were so good that my uncle insisted on taking three home. And he did. In the first photo they are naked; in the second, they are dressed in pumpkin glaze.

Scrumptious Mushroom Stroganoff à la Happy Herbivore. It didn't last very long at Thanksgiving among the vegans.

Maple-glazed Veggies by Happy Herbivore (I used butternut squash and soy curls). This was awesome--simply said! I'd never had butternut squash before, and I have to say that this was a very pleasant way to eat it.

It's hard to tell by looking at it like this, but this Apple-Pecan Crumble was splendid. The recipe is in The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

 

 

This is my Thanksgiving plate that I didn't think I would finish. And this is proof that I am better as a cook or baker than as attractive dining company. Hmm.

 My very content vegan lover (he is wearing his glorious Battlestar Galactica t-shirt--that I have as well! Frakking right!) and, in the next photo, a happy veggie sister with a sneaky-looking me.

And, last but not least...

 

 

I finished my plate! (and had a wicked workout the following day)

Thanks for reading :) and have a pleasant rest of the week,

Vegan in Suburbia