Holy Mole`! An Enchilada Dinner

I know I just fixed a Fiesta dinner a few weeks ago, but that was when my son had 103 fever and tonsillitis and didn't get to eat any of the food. So he asked me to fix enchiladas with mole sauce. He LOVES mole. I've only tasted it a couple of times.

I began my grocery shopping with a trip to the farmers market on Saturday morning. I got squash, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, onions, broccoli (finally!), and the world's biggest zucchini! The zucchini was 50 cents and it's bigger than the butternut squash!




I found a recipe in my Whole Foods Market cookbook for Easy Mole Sauce. Easy, yes; quick, no. I just added a couple of ingredients to the recipe - sesame seeds, garlic, carrots, mexican oregano, and cilantro. I made the sauce on Saturday. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to end up with, but here it is:

I really struggled with the preparation of the enchiladas and would welcome any suggestions. The filling is delicious. I roasted the butternut squash and an onion and some garlic. Then I mashed it and added in a can of black beans, chili powder, cumin, cayenne, cilantro, salt and pepper.

Then I warmed the corn tortillas and filled and rolled them. Now something is really wrong with me because for some reason I decided to trim the ends of the rolled up enchiladas. They just looked more uniform and there was none of that extra, empty tortilla just laying there. Anyway, the dilemma was how to keep the enchiladas moist since I did not have a sauce to top the enchiladas with. I planned on covering it with foil before baking so they would steam, but I was really worried they would dry out. Here they are ready to bake.

They held up fine during baking, but they cracked as soon as I plated them. A red sauce topping would compete with the mole. Do you think a mild salsa verde sauce would be okay next time?

I also made Arroz Rojo. It is basically 4 cups prepared brown rice with tomato sauce, vegetable broth, carrots, onion, green chiles, green onions, cilantro, mexican spices, and peas, but I forgot to put the peas in!

For our other side dishes I made a guacamole salad and broccoli with almonds, raisins, and garlic vinaigrette.

See how the tortilla is already cracked? :(

But Chase is happy and that's all that matters to me. He said the mole sauce was the best he had ever had. (He's so good to me!) I told him the sauce was just 40 calories per 1/4 cup, so he asked for a measuring cup so he could limit himself to one cup. He only ate half of that - it's pretty rich. I liked the mole too. It's different. The flavor is complex and not too spicy.

For dessert I made Vegan Diva's Peanuttiest Blondies. They are awesome! I'm not one for following recipes exactly because I always feel the need to add my own touch to it, but I did follow this one. EXCEPT I ran out of peanut butter and HAD to use a couple of tablespoons of Better Than Butter, but you couldn't tell the difference. How did I do, Diva?

Baked Rice Rolls & Persimmon Dipping Sauce

Did you know you can bake your spring rolls made with rice paper? The rice paper bakes up super light and crispy.

I made a filling of my beloved broccoli slaw, cilantro, hemp seeds, a tablespoon of Bragg's, and a dash of sesame oil. Of course any filling of your choosing would work.

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil. Put a tablespoon of canola oil in a small dish and have a brush ready to brush the rice paper. Since the wrappers have to be moistened before rolling, you must brush them with oil or they will turn out gummy instead of crispy. (I made 4 rolls and used less than half of the tablespoon I poured out.)

Have a dish towel ready to roll the wrappers on.

Prepare the rolls: Put warm water into a pie pan (or any pan large enough for the wrappers) and dip a wrapper into the water for about 20 seconds or until softened. Put the wrapper on the dish towel and brush the surface with some oil. Spoon a good scoop of filling onto the bottom of the wrapper. Fold the bottom of the wrapper over the filling and brush with oil. Fold in the sides, then continue rolling up, brushing with oil as you go.

Place the roll seam side down on the baking sheet and bake 15 to 20 minutes, turning once, until browned and crisp. Repeat until all filling is used.

I had an overripe persimmon I used for a dipping sauce. I pureed the pulp and added a teaspoon of Bragg's and a teaspoon of rice wine vinegar.

Give it a try! It's a nice change of pace from spring roll wrappers and they're gluten free.

It's World Vegan Day?!?!

How come I didn't know it's World Vegan Day? And it's my 1st vegan birthday! I remember because I started Eat to Live the day after Halloween last year ("just one more tootsie roll").



I told Jackie of The Vegan Diet that I made the Warm Pumpkin and Chickpea Salad she posted yesterday and I promised to post a picture. You would never know if I didn't admit it, but I only had a sweet potato and used that instead of pumpkin. Jackie posted 2 delicious sounding recipes for pumpkin salads, and this one is really, really, good. It has a tahini dressing, which I lightened up a little by cutting down on the oil, and raw onion and cilantro. Yummy!




I want to post pictures of my kids on Halloween too! Chase's bones are painted on, and his gf won a couple a costume contests for her jungle woman outfit.




Just a couple of additional thoughts: I talk about my love for my new asian supermarket a lot. But I want to pass along a warning that I learned from my son. I showed him my new favorite rice cracker snack mix. It had one especially fun cracker that was round, the size of a marble, and had something rattling inside of it. Then he reminded to be careful of fish as an ingredient, and sure enough - no more fun crackers for me. I'm usually insanely careful to read labels. I just get excited when I find gluten free snacks. So, a reminder.


One last thing: I was having my oil changed Saturday morning, and one of the guys behind the counter was telling his coworkers about how he prepared his wonderful Thanksgiving turkeys. Then I heard him tell them that the secret to the best tasting vegetables and fish is to steam them in the top rack of your dishwasher on the "dry" cycle. They gave him such a hard time. "Do you wash them in there too before you steam them?" I have actually heard of this but have never ever considered attempting this. It just seems wrong to me.


Have any of you done this? Would you? (with veggies, of course!)



Happy World Vegan Day!

A Wicked Fun Dinner

I had my son and his gf over for a Halloween dinner tonight and we had A BLAST!!! On our menu was:

Jack-o-lantern Sandwiches
Black Bean and Spider Web Soup
Ghos-tados
Missing Bloody Fingers (Fries w/ketchup)
Pumpkin Roll Cake

I was planning on a soup and sandwich dinner and thinking about cutting the bread into pumpkin shapes, then I remembered I had this vintage sandwich maker called a Toastite. It makes round hot sandwiches you cook on the stovetop. This is a Toastite.

So here's what we did. We took our bread and painted on jack-o-lantern faces using food coloring and water. Mine is the plain ugly one.


I'm sure the last time I used the Toastite we made ham and cheese sandwiches, but tonight we had dried tofu (my new fave tofu from the asian market), sauted onions and peppers, and barbecue sauce.


Then you just close up the sandwich in the Toastite and set it over the flame.


You can take a peek after a couple of minutes to see how brown they are getting.


In the meantime, we ladeled out our soup and used tofu sour cream to pipe on the spider webs. My bread face was ugly, but I did have the best web!


I found some corn tortillas in the freezer yesterday and decided to cut them into ghost shapes and bake them. They are topped with chili powder, maple sugar, and a little salt. Ghos-tados.


Here is Chase's dinner. He gets credit for most of the photography tonight. Poor child never gets a hot meal anymore!

I think he may have discovered a way to get kids to try tofu. He dipped his in the food coloring!

The sandwiches were so good. I think another good filling would be something with a chickpea gravy. There's limitless possibilities.

BLOGGER WON'T LET ME ADD LINE BREAKS TO THE REST OF THIS POST. SORRY IT LOOKS ALL JUMBLED.

After we all talked about how full we were and couldn't eat another bite, I brought out the cake. It's a pumpkin cake with chocolate filling. It was moist and chocolately and somehow we all made room for a couple of pieces.

After I baked the cake this morning, I couldn't leave half a can of pumpkin hanging out in the refrigerator, so I baked pumpkin raisin mini muffins. I used Dreena's pumpkin raisin bread recipe from The Everyday Vegan.

Here are the soup and cake recipes.

This soup has a lot of flavor layers in it, intensified at the end with a little cocoa powder.

Black Bean Soup:
1 pound dried black beans

1 medium onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced thin

2 bell peppers

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

2 teaspoons Spicy Montreal Seasoning

1 tablespoon cumin

2 teaspoons oregano

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Bragg's

1 teaspoon pimenton (smoked paprika)

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

Soak the beans (overnight or quick method), then rinse and put in a large soup pot with the onion. Add 9 cups of water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for an hour.

Add the remaining ingredients, except the cocoa powder, and cook for another 1 to 1-1/2 hours.

Remove the bay leaf. Use an immersion blender and puree about half the beans (or more if you prefer). Add the cocoa powder, adjust seasonings, and add water, if necessary. (I added almost a cup of water at this point, and again when I reheated it.) Cook another 15 minutes.

Pumpkin Roll Cake with Chocolate Filling:

3/4 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1 teaspoon allspice

1 cup pumpkin puree

equivalent of 3 eggs

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour a 10 x 15 baking sheet.

In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, and spices. Add in the pumpkin puree, egg replacer, and lemon juice, and mix well. Spread the batter evenly into the pan and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Place a damp kitchen towel on a flat surface and sprinkle it liberally with powdered sugar. Turn the cake onto the towel. Beginning with the short side, roll the cake up with the towel. Place on a cooling rack for 20 minutes.

Prepare filling:

1 box silken firm tofu

1/3 cup brown rice syrup

1 tablespoon vanilla

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tablespoon canola oil

dash salt

Place all filling ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

When the cake has cooled, unroll it and spread the filling on it. (You will have some left over. Refrigerate it and have pudding later!) Immediately re-roll, without the towel, and wrap it in plastic wrap. Place it seam side down on a platter and refrigerate until ready to serve.

The cake is super moist and would also be great with something other than a chocolate filling. I'm sure it would be much prettier with a white filling, but I was going for an orange and black Halloween look.

We had so much fun preparing this dinner and eating too much!

P.S. to Michelle who asked for my tortilla soup recipe. I don't post recipes unless they are original (copyright issues!). Otherwise, I just let you know where you can find them. That recipe was from Real Food Daily.

Aloo Panak & Mochi

Tonight I had potatoes and fresh spinach that needed to be used, so what else was there to make! I diced two small white potatoes and put them on to boil. I diced an onion and sauted it until it was golden brown, then added garlic, cumin, coriander, tumeric, salt, and red pepper. When the potatoes were done, I added in the spinach, let it wilt, then added in the potatoes and let it simmer just a few minutes to let the spices bloom.



I also tried Mochi for the first time (inspired by Bazu!). I found a hemp and flax seed mochi and cut a one inch square. It baked at 450 degrees for 8 minutes, which may not have been quite long enough. It was definitely odd looking after baking. I pulled away the insides, which were still quite doughy, and was left with - well, not much. I was hoping to fill it with cooked apples and peanut butter, but I ended up just cutting wedges of raw apple and topping it with a dollop of peanut butter. I'm sure I can improve on this recipe!


If you haven't figured it out yet, I live in Austin, Texas. I grew up here. Austin is the birthplace of Whole Foods and home to its awesome landmark store. I love Whole Foods and always have, ever since it was the Safer Way grocery store in a tiny little space only frequented by "hippies." There was a strange commentary in our local paper today by a regular columnist about Whole Foods' animal compassion policy. My first thought was "this clearly shows the uncompassionate nature of meat eaters and why they refuse to accept the vegetarian way of eating." If anyone is so inclined, I wish you would read this short article and tell me if you think Whole Foods is hypocritical (but don't hurt my feelings!). I don't fault John Mackey for being vegan and a business person. Perhaps I have a skewed view.

You can find the article here: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/27kelso.html

Thanks. And see ya Sunday!

Squash Rings with Cranberry Rice

I love summer and summer squash, but there's nothing quite like the colors and tastes of all the beautiful winter squashes. I had never made rings with acorn squash before. I think the halves plate just as pretty. But when I found a beautiful organic acorn squash over the weekend, I decided to bake rings. The squash is easy to cut. The skin is thin, and wherever it wasn't too tough, I ate it. I glazed the rings with a mixture of Bragg's, agave nectar, rice wine vinegar, and crushed garlic. I don't like sweet veggies (like the mashed sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows - ick!). For me, the squash is sweet enough on its own.

I added onions, mushrooms, toasted almonds, dried cranberries, and leftover glaze to the brown rice. It was completely delicious, the perfect marriage of sweet and savory.

I also made something just for me - gluten free banana muffins with chocolate chips and toasted almonds. Mmmmm - breakfast!




I was asked to post my recipe for Oatmeal Whole Wheat Pizza Crust, so here it is:

2/3 cup warm water
one package quick rise yeast
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
3/4 cup oats (quick or old fashioned)
1-1/3 cup flour

In a small bowl, combine water, yeast, oil, and sugar. Let stand 10 minutes or until foamy. In a mixer combine flour and oats. Add in the yeast mixture and blend on low speed until moistened. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead one minute. Shape it into a ball. Place in a greased bowl, then turn it over (so both sides are greased) and cover. Let rise in a warm oven for 20 minutes or until doubled in size.

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Punch down the dough. Remove from bowl and shape into four 6-inch crusts or one 12-inch crust. Partially bake for 10 minutes before adding toppings.

One of my friends and I watched Top Chef last season and it was pretty entertaining. Season 2 started last week. I missed that show, so I promised to watch last week's episode and this week's episode tonight. Anybody else watching?

Pizza and a Beautiful Salad

It was just me and my son tonight, but it didn't stop us from having a great pizza party. I baked a whole wheat oatmeal pizza crust, and we topped it with my homemade sauce, carmelized onions, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, red & green bell peppers, dried tofu, and a little pineapple. CB wanted to dip his slices in ranch, so I made that too. Here is the pizza before it went into the oven.


Here's a slice ready to eat, topped with nutritional yeast.



I also made my nightly broccoli, this time mixed with cannelini beans and sundried tomatoes.



Ever since I found my favorite restaurant's house salad recipe on the PETA website, I've been dying to make it. I finally made my version of it today. I promise it is the most beautiful and best tasting salad I've ever eaten. It's a mix of greens, cucumbers, radishes, purple cabbage, carrots, red bell pepper, apple, pineapple, and mango. It's topped with golden raisins, dried cranberries, candied pecans, hemp seeds, an avocado, and edible flowers. It has a tiny amount of dressing which is 1 tablespoon Bragg's, 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon maple sugar, and 1 teaspoon agave nectar.



Hard to get a side shot in a glass bowl, but even the leftovers are beautiful.



This is our awaiting table.



CB was too full for dessert, but not me! I made a cocoa banana marble cake. This was my first time at marbling. I obviously need more practice. The cake has 4 ripe bananas in it, so it is very moist - no frosting necessary. I hope it freezes well.

Now I've got to start planning my Halloween menu.

Saturday Evening Post

What a weird day. I was so looking forward to my "knife skills" class at Whole Foods this morning. It was taught by my favorite chef, Jamie, and it never hurts to brush up on your skills. I picked out my station. My station had the 12-inch chef's knife. It was huge! I'm used to 8-inch knives, and my hand is sore after 2-1/2 hours of chopping and slicing. After practicing cuts on onions, potatoes, carrots, etc., we were paired off to prepare soup, salsa, and pico de gallo. I was paired with a 49-year-old man who told me he had never prepared a meal in his life. So we start preparing the sweet potato and kale soup. (He had never heard of kale or chipotle.) I took the sweet potatoes and he took the onions. After a couple of minutes, I heard him say "uh-oh." Well, his knuckles weren't quite curved under enough and he had sliced off a nice chunk of skin below the nail of his left middle finger. He was washed and bandaged and given a glove to put on. That glove filled with blood in no time. How appetizing is that? Needless to say, I went into high gear to prepare the entire menu myself.

So there were these 2 giant jalepenos to chop, which I did. When I went to wash my hands afterward, there was no soap at the sink. Yeh, I could have left the kitchen and gone to the public restroom, but I didn't. I just kept chopping. I AM SO STUPID! MY HANDS ARE ON FIRE, and from what I hear it will last for 3 days! I baked cookies this afternoon and having my hands near a hot oven is just unbearable. I am as stupid as my partner was.

Otherwise, the class was great. Jamie said when she was in culinary school, the instructors would come by and measure each piece of whatever they diced to make sure it was uniform and the proper size!

Thursday night I went to an open house at Whole Foods. They were previewing their holiday foods. I was pleased to find a platter labeled "Vegan Antipasto" which was a delicious variety of grilled veggies with a balsamic vinaigrette. There was also wonderful potato pancakes with an onion-apple topping. I also shopped. I found some items I had read about on other blogs and wanted to try; mainly, Sunshine Burgers and mochi.


I had to have a burger right away. I didn't have any tomatoes, so I used lots of ketchup!

And I sprinkled hemp seeds on my steamed broccoli.

Here's the almond crisp cookies I made this afternoon.


The recipe is interesting. I adapted it from the "12 Best Foods" cookbook. Remember when that list came out a couple of years ago? It's one of my favorite cookbooks. Aside from the section on salmon, it's very veg friendly. Anyway, the recipe has no butter and just 1-1/2 tablespoons of flour. I was supposed to get 24 large cookies, but I only got a dozen regular cookies. So I'm not sure if they are 55 calories or 110 calories each. But they are nice and crispy and will go with our pizza party tomorrow night.

I'm off to run my hands under cold water again.

Gado-gado

Gado-gado is an Indonesian mixed vegetable salad with peanut dressing. I made a low fat vegan version for dinner tonight. A true gado-gado usually includes fried tofu, fried onions, and hard-boiled eggs. The salad can be mixed or layered. My salad doesn't have any tofu. It is layered with these veggies in this order: mixed greens, purple cabbage, boiled white potatoes, steamed green beans, mung bean sprouts, grated carrots, roasted cauliflower, and sauteed red onions.

I used Spicy Peanut Butter Dressing from Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites.

Makes 1 cup

3 tablespoons peanut butter
1/4 cup water
1 clove pressed garlic
1 fresh chili (I used jalepeno), chopped
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 tablespoon Bragg's
1/4 cup diced fresh tomato
2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Put all ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.

This salad with the dressing was a great combination of flavors and really filling! Yes, I did eat it all.....

Sunday Leftovers (pictures)

Since Blogger wouldn't let me post all my food pics yesterday, I thought I would add them in tonight in a short post.

Here's my roasted veggies - fresh broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots in my cool new dish.


My mini tarts.......

Me and my reason for living and cooking. (I can't believe I'm showing this - I don't do makeup on Sundays.)

My reason and his gf......

I don't think I gave my son enough credit for his Crunchy Tofu prep last night. He is awesome!

Crunchy Tofu with Mango Jalapeno Aoili

It's been a drizzly, dreary (but not cold!) weekend, so I took lots of time reading through my gazillion cookbooks to come up with a Sunday dinner worthy of my son's visit. He loves tofu, and he suggested a breaded and pan fried version. I am AWFUL at frying, probably because I just don't do it that much. My son said he loves to fry stuff, so I came up with a veganized version of a Hot 'n Crunchy Chicken we ate years ago. The recipe is from a local 5-star restaurant (famous for cooking up elk, rattlesnake, and even kangaroo!). Crunchy needs mushy to go with it, so I also made smashed sweet potatoes and a roasted vegetable medley. My son likes unadulterated mashed potatoes, so that's why these are literally smashed with a little salt and pepper only.
Isn't that breading beautiful?!! I can say that because I take no credit for the recipe. We put 8 slices of tofu into a marinade of mostly fat free garlic vinaigrette and teriyaki sauce, and then some other stuff we found in the refrigerator. I made twice as much breading as I needed, but here's the recipe:

Crunchy Tofu Coating:
1/4 cup toasted almonds
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
1 cup cornflakes
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon red chili flakes
1 teaspoon salt

Mango Jalapeno Aoili:
In a small bowl, mix together:
1 fresh mango, diced
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 red onion, diced
1 large jalapeno, seeded and diced
dash of salt

In a food processor or blender, mix together:
1 box firm silken tofu
juice of one large lemon
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 tablespoon mango jelly
salt and pepper to taste

When combined, add to mango jalapeno mixture. Add in a 1/2 bunch of chopped cilantro and chill until ready to serve.

We began our meal with Millet-Spinach Soup from Nava Atlas' new soup cookbook http://blog.vegkitchen.com/wp-content/Soups%20front%20cover.jpg. It was wonderful and made a huge pot. It is very flavorful with a hint of curry powder and so filling.
I made an Oatmeal Whole Wheat quick bread to go with it. I haven't had a lot of luck with vegan breads besides cornbread, but this one turned out pretty good.

I think I may have stumbled onto a new kitchen tip. The millet soup called for fresh grated ginger. Since I had already pressed some garlic into the soup, I cut off a piece of ginger and pushed it through the garlic press, skin side up, and that worked better than any fancy ginger grater I've ever bought.

For our dessert I decided we should have something light. I rolled out some phyllo dough, cut it into six pieces, and put the pieces into my giant muffin pan. I cut up some fresh peaches, quince, and kiwi and put those into the shells. Then I made a pastry cream of silken tofu, brown rice syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla. I had enough leftover to make some mini tarts too, but apparently Blogger is limiting my photo uploads tonight.

The lighting for the pics is not so good today with such overcast skies.

I'm still cooking. We're having an office potluck breakfast tomorrow. I took a hint from Vicki at Vegetarian Family and am roasting potatoes so I'll have something to eat. I can see it now - my potatoes, along with six boxes of doughnuts and a sausage, egg, and cheese casserole.