Vegan Food Swap Reveal: October 2012

Vegan Food Swap Reveal:  October 2013

Last month I signed up for Vegan Food Swap, a swap set up by Cat at The Verdant Life so people can exchange boxes of vegan food, kind of like pen pals exchange letters.  I received a box from Shannon over at Gingerysnaps.com.  Follow the link to get a look at her site!  It was great fun checking the mail to see if I had received a box and when it got here it was almost like Christmas!  You can see in the pictures what I got.

I’ve got to be honest, I did wait to open the treats until the entire family got home, but then everything except the Seitan was gone in about 5 minutes flat.  There are five of us altogether and we just put each thing onto a plate, cut it into five pieces, and ate it.  The hands down favorite was the Sweet and Sara Brown Rice Crispy Treat; they managed to get it to taste like the marshmallow had been toasted!  Next was the Ain’t She Sweet Gourmet Vanilla Oatmeal Creme Pie.  The great thing about this was that the cookie AND the filling were flavored with a sweet spicy filling—wonderful!  

  The rest of treats were inhaled as fast as the ones I just talked about.  The Chocolate Canoes were like chocolate Twinkies that were dipped in more chocolate!  If vegan treats weren't so expensive, I would have ordered the Almond Butter Bites for Halloween handouts.  I would definitely look at keeping these on the dining table for after school treats.  The Seitan Quick Mix is still in it’s bag, waiting for me to get the time to make something with it.  I still don’t know what I want to make with it, but have it down to 3 or 4 things.  I’ll be sure to post once I am sure.

Thanks for the great food, Shannon!

If you want to participate in the next Vegan Food Swap in January 2013, go to this link and sign up:  The Verdant Life
I sent my box to Julie and The Singin’ Vegan.  Go check her site out! 
It was so fun to choose food for someone else to enjoy--the hardest part was deciding what to send and what to put back....

Citrus Orzo Pasta Salad and Pumpkin Pie

Tonight I made pumpkin pie and Citrus Orzo Pasta Salad.

The salad is:
16 ounces dry orzo
3 medium lemons (or limes, oranges, whatever citrus you love)
1 can asparagus spears or 1/2 package frozen spears (I like the frozen better)
2 tomatoes
lemon zest

Cook the pasta, run water on it to cool, and pour into a large bowl.  Dice tomatoes and add to pasta.  Juice all 3 lemons and add juice to pasta.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Add the asparagus last—either drained from the can or, if frozen, steamed, cooled and then added.  Cut into 1-inch long pieces.  Stir gently.  Serve with more lemon wedges.  My daughter and I think that there can't be too much lemon, ever.

 Here is a picture of the pumpkin pie.  I just used the recipe on the back of the can, substituting soy milk for the evaporated milk and enerG egg replacer for the eggs.  I also reduced the amount of milk to 10 ounces.  Then grate fresh nutmeg on top.

Dalek Costume for Comic Con 2011

I thought I would post my daughter’s Comic Con costume from last year.  She and my husband built a Dalek, from Doctor Who.  She had a great time and won first place in the costume contest for one of the categories.  (I don’t remember which one.)

Ironman Minecraft Costume for Comic Con 2012

My daughter, Guilian, has spent the past couple of months making her own Minecraft Ironman costume.  Today she unveiled it at Comic Con.  Very cool!  She and her friend, the one holding the Minecraft Chicken that Guilian also made, had their pictures taken by Wil Wheaton, who Tweeted it.

Hummus

Today we went grocery shopping and stopped at a food trailer called Food To Go.  We got the hummus tray and it really looked nice!  I do not eat added oil in my food when possible and I could taste oil in the hummus, so I only had the one bite, but what a great bite it was!  I usually make my own hummus at home, so I recognized the taste of fresh lemon right away, but I also tasted roasted cumin—yummy!  I will be trying that in my next batch.

I also ordered a portabella burger, which I shared with my partner—he really did get almost half of it!  It was perfect!  Sorry I didn’t get a picture of it, it looked so good that we just dove in.  It was made with a ciabatta roll, two mushroom caps, lettuce, tomato, and red onion is thin slices. Mmmmmm……

Happy Eating!

Leftovers

Today was boring, just a leftover kind of day.  I had oatmeal and pineapple for breakfast, beans and rice for lunch, and Gardein Chipotle Lime Chiken Fingers for dinner.  It was a good day and hopefully I will get around to cooking some new stuff this weekend.

Beans and Greens Over Rice

Tonight’s dinner was beans and rice—really good!  I used Steuben Yellow Eye beans, a variety that I found at Whole Foods.

2 cups Steuben Yellow Eye beans
Enough water to cover by 2 inches in the pressure cooker.
Cook in pressure cooker for 45 minutes once pressure has been reached.  

Let pressure reduce and remove lid.  Add the following ingredients:

1 can fire roasted tomatoes
1 large diced onion
1 rounded teaspoon diced garlic
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 teaspoon sea salt
10 grates of pepper grinder
3-4 handfuls of whatever greens you like, I used spinach, bok choy, and kale

Cook without lid until greens have wilted.  Taste and correct seasoning as needed. 

While the beans were cooking, I prepared rice in the rice cooker.  Serve the beans and broth over the rice and eat.