Miss Rachel

Tuesday was Sweetie’s birthday, and since I knew I had to work that night I decided we should have a birthday-inspired dinner the night before. I cooked up some chickpeas with garlic, onions, tomatoes and a bunch of spices. It wasn’t quite Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe, but I did follow the spice combination in her Very Spicy, Delicious Chickpeas recipe and dinner was indeed delicious and spicy.

I served the chickpeas over basmati rice. I used up all our brown rice, and I’ve decided to try white rice for a change.

For dessert, there was no question of what we’d have: cupcakes. I took VCTOTW out of the library again, and made some birthday cupcakes. (I ran out of sprinkles by the time I got to the last few.)

I put some candles in one for Sweetie and snapped a pic before he blew them out.

I’m not one for getting up early and cooking. Most mornings, I’m a sip-coffee-for-an-hour+ before doing anything kind of person, but on Sunday I decided to make blueberry muffins. I followed this recipe from Madhuram’s Eggless Cooking: Vegan Blueberry Muffins (leaving out the lemon zest and lemon extract because I don’t want lemon flavor in my blueberry muffins).

I also poured the batter into only 9 muffins cups so I’d have nice muffin tops.

Sweetie and I enjoyed them with some Earth Balance vegan butter.

They were a bit fall-apart-y, but I can’t complain about homemade muffins, fresh and warm out of the oven. I had two.

I’m a big fan of lentil soup, and a coworker was looking at a magazine that featured lentil soup that included some ingredients I don’t generally use in mine: curry and red peppers. I didn’t follow the recipe nearly, but I decided to try using those ingredients the next time I made lentil soup. The recipe also called for sweet potatoes, and while I usually use carrots, I just happened to have some sweet potatoes on hand so I used them. I sauteed some garlic and onions in a little coconut oil and curry powder. Then I added mushrooms, a red bell pepper and sweet potatoes, then about 3 cups of red lentils and 8 cups of water. I simmered everything for about an hour and a half, and that was dinner. Here’s my bowl which I served salted to taste with some freshly ground black pepper on top.

Greens make a nice addition to lentil soup, and although I didn’t have any available at first serving, I did add some fresh spinach leaves on subsequent servings. I just put a handful of greens in the bowl, ladled some soup on top and heated it together in the microwave. Spinach cooks so quickly, it was done in short order, and it looked really pretty too.

Last summer during farmers’ market season I discovered my favorite way to make pizza was with fresh, local tomatoes and zucchini. However, Joey blogged about a most delicious, winter-friendly pizza even though she said she didn’t like pizza (what?!). It featured caramelized onions, and I was intrigued.

While the onions were caramelizing on the stove, I made the crust and drained the tomatoes. After the crust had risen, I pressed it out and assembled the pizza: garlic, tomatoes, cheese (I used my latest vegan shreds discovery - Trader Joe’s - cheaper than Daiya and still good!), and I also added some sliced mushrooms I had hanging around. I put the pizza thus far into a 425 degree oven.

After 15 minutes I took the pizza out and added the onions and some marinated, sundried tomatoes. Then I baked it for another 6 minutes or so, and it was done.

I adore caramelized onions, and they work really well as a pizza topping so I can say that this pizza was an unqualified success. It will definitely be gracing my table again while I wait a few more months for local tomatoes and zucchini.

Most of the time I don’t follow published recipes, but there are some that I have tried that make such a good impression I return to them. One such recipe is Tatie Wawo-Runtu’s Spinach with Shallots from Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, an excellent cookbook that I recommend you seek out. The recipe is very simple: it just requires spinach, shallots, a chili pepper and oil. It requires a LOT of spinach - 2 lbs - but as you know spinach cooks down a great deal.

I toasted and steamed some Israeli couscous and served the spinach over it. Delicious!

Yesterday was my birthday, and although I enjoyed a delicious meal with Sweetie at one of my favorite vegan restaurants, It’s Only Natural, I was disappointed when I found they didn’t have much in the way of desserts. So I decided to make my own birthday cake in the form of cupcakes!

I followed your basic vegan cupcake recipeusing rice milk in place of soy and corn oil in place of canola and increasing the vanilla to 1 tablespoon. Also I didn’t do any sifting and they came out just fine. I topped them with your basic vegan vanilla buttercream frosting and sprinkles, put a candle in one of them and then Sweetie sang to me.

Then we enjoyed our cupcakes.

Yesterday I made up a curried pumpkin soup. Real(ly) quick. This method works really well with pieces of of squash, but since I had a can of pumpkin puree hanging around, that’s what I used. Lightly saute 2 onions,  a few cloves of garlic, salt and spices in some coconut oil. Add a can of pumpkin puree and a few cups of water. Let it all simmer for an hour or so, puree in the blender and you’ve got soup. 

And I’m taking some to work in a jar.