Week 6: Snacks and Soup

Recipe: Low calorie not-fried cheese sticks
Verdict: Yum. Definitely try again

I got this recipe from Hungry Girl: 200 under 200. The recipe uses Fiber One Original cereal and egg substitute.

This light cheese stick gets cut in half and dipped in egg substitute.
Then they are shaken in a Ziploc bag of blended Fiber One and seasoning.
They are then baked in the oven. I did not get a picture of them after baking, but they looked pretty much like this, except with cheese oozing out.
They were served with Chef Pastorelli pizza sauce, possibly the best pizza sauce ever. Since I don't eat cheese, I did not get to taste the cheese sticks, but Rob tells me that they are excellent and should definitely be served at our next party!!


Recipe: Blooming Onion
Verdict: Ok. Will not try again.

Take a sweet onion. Cut in sections almost to the root and place in water to allow the onion layers to open up.
Again this recipe is a Hungry Girl recipe and calls for Fiber One Original and egg substitute. It was very difficult to cover each little piece of each layer of the onion with the egg and the cereal.
Here it is after baking. It was not super pleasant to eat, since the coating was very uneven and clumped in areas. I really like onions, so I couldn't stop eating it, although I did remove a lot of the coating :) There was a dipping sauce recipe to go with the onion, but since it sounded a lot like Thousand Island dressing and I already had some in the fridge, I just used the pre-made Thousand Island. It went well with the onion.


Recipe: Fresh Asparagus Soup with Parmesan Crisps
Verdict: Yum. Will try again.
Modifications: I made half of the recipe. I used garlic instead of shallots. I added red chili pepper flakes.

I got this recipe from Vegetarian Times online. Here is the beautiful asparagus, all cut up and divided in piles.
Asparagus cooking in veggie broth with seasonings.
Meanwhile, I made some parmesan crisps. The recipe called for lining the cookie sheet, so I used wax paper.
Unfortunately, the paper stuck to the bottom of my crisps. Ooops.
Second attempt. No wax paper. Success:)
After the asparagus is blended, lemon juice is added.
Rob's soup with parmesan crisp.
My soup with croutons(a slice of bread cut in cubes and baked).

New Product: Vegan Kung Pao Chicken

We had tried this product before at a friend's house, but this was my first time preparing it myself. It is expensive, almost $6 for this box. I misread the directions. It cooks in the oven at 325 degrees, but should be wrapped in foil. I did not wrap it in foil, so it took a lot longer to cook than the package stated. I even turned the temperature up halfway through because I got impatient.

I served this with one of our favorite salads, ginger salad. I got the recipe from an old Vegetarian Times. It is basically ginger soaked in lime juice, cabbage, tomato, crushed peanuts, soy sauce, a little sesame oil, garlic, and it is yummy. The kung pao chicken really complemented the ginger salad. It was amazing. However, I think that the servings of the vegan chicken were really small, and the calories really high. What you see on this plate is two servings and over 400 calories.
Overall, I really like this product. However, because I watch my calorie intake closely during the week, I would normally pass this item up. Also it is pretty pricey for what you actually get. I will probably buy it again, but it will not be a regular item on my grocery list.

Week 5: Chocolate Dipped Madness

Recipe: Chocolate dipped stuff
Verdict: Yum. Definitely do again.

I bought some strawberries today at the produce store, and it inspired me to melt some chocolate and start dipping. I have made chocolate dipped strawberries before, but I wanted to try something new. I started by melting some chocolate chips in a double boiler(basically the chips are put in a pyrex bowl that sits over a pan of boiling water). Doesn't it look yummy? Smells good too :)
Remember the mini moon pies from last week? Well, I decided to cover them in chocolate to make them more like a real moon pie(This was actually Rob's idea). As you can see I used tongs, so I wouldn't burn my fingers. Mmmmm.

Here are the strawberries I bought...

Yum!

I had a little chocolate left, and I decided to try dipping a different fruit: mandarin orange.
They looked really funny after the dipping :)
Here is everything after some time in the refrigerator. The moon pies were phenomenal!! Wow! The orange slices popped in my mouth. They were also tasty. And of course, chocolate covered strawberries are always good.

Week 4: Mini Moon Pies

Yes, I missed week 3, but for week 4, I bring you Mini Moon Pies. The recipe can be found here on the Vegetarian Times website. Here are the ingredients I used.

Before they went in the oven, they looked like little poops

But after baking, they looked good :)

Here they are cooling

The cookies are really good alone. They taste like little brownies in cookie form. But the recipe called for some marshmallow cream sandwiched between two cookies.
I really liked them. My fiance thought they would be better with ice cream in the middle.

Cupcakes!!

I was invited to a cupcake decorating party this weekend, so I decided to make some cupcakes for my new recipe. I have baked cakes before, with varying degrees of success, but never cupcakes. I tried a new recipe from the book, Hello Cupcake. The decorating ideas came from the same book. The recipe was very easy to make. I would have taken some process pictures, but my camera battery died. Probably the hardest part was piping the batter into the cupcake cups. I had to put the batter in a Ziploc bag, cut off the corner and pipe. However, I had never done this before and overfilled the bag. I ended up with two very chocolatey hands and a large mess. The recipe was supposed to make 16, but I ended up with 12 perfect cupcakes. I can only imagine that the extra batter ended up all over my hands, clothes and kitchen :) Here is a picture of the completed cupcakes.
After allowing the cupcakes to cool, I packed them up to go to the party. I decided to use store-bought frosting, instead of making my own. I had so much fun at the party. The first design I tried was the penguin. I made three penguins. For the body, I stacked a cupcake, a small ring donut and a donut hole, all held together with chocolate frosting. After that the body is frozen so they will harden and stay together during the next stage. Next, we heated up some chocolate frosting with a little black food coloring and dipped the penguin body into it. After that the decoration begins. The white part of the body was supposed to be a marshmallow, but since marshmallows are not veggie friendly, I used vanilla frosting. The eyes are vanilla frosting with a mini chocolate chip, and the beak is a Starburst cut in half. I was supposed to make two feet with Starburst also, but I skipped the feet, since Starburst are also not veggie friendly. Here is one of my penguins:

Another design I made was a cat. This one is just piped vanilla frosting. I cut the corners off a wafer cookie to make the cat ears and used mini chocolate chips for eyes. The nose is a red cake decoration, and the other features are piped chocolate frosting. I made it to look like my kitty cat.
I also made the horse design. First, I cut a slit in the cupcake. I cut the corner off a wafer and then inserted it in the slit. I then frosted the cupcake with dark chocolate frosting. A Circus Peanut was attached to the wafer with frosting. The eyes, nostrils and mane were piped frosting, and the tail is part of a pretzel.
Unfortunately, traveling with cupcakes is not an easy feat, and there were some casualties. These three fell twice before they got home. Ooops!
The penguins were safely packed in a container, but still there were some injuries. Bob fell over and lost part of his stomach. Ouch.
Suzy suffered a small head injury. I don't envy her the headache, still she looks happy.

Enchiladas and Rum Cocktails

This blog is a new project for me. I am a vegetarian who cooks at home a lot. Recently I have been feeling a little bored with my cooking. I have gotten stuck in a place where I make the same recipes every week. Wanting to change things up a little bit, I have decided to challenge myself to try a new recipe every week. My first new recipe is enchiladas. I have been wanting to try this for a long time. Yesterday, as we were walking past a Mexican restaurant, my significant other and I were enticed by the smell of enchilada sauce and decided it was time to try making our own enchiladas.
Here are the ingredients. I found a simple recipe on the enchilada sauce can and modified it a little to make it vegetarian.
The recipe called for one and a half cups of cooked ground beef. I modified by using one and a half cups of veggie crumbles from Morningstar Farms and a cup of black beans seasoned with McCormick taco seasoning and hot sauce.
The tortillas were warmed on a pan. The recipe called for shortening. I didn't have any, so I tried butter, which created a lot of smoke. I then tried oil. This cut down on the smoke and worked pretty well. The tongs worked great for turning the tortillas.
After heating the tortillas, I used the same pan to heat the enchilada sauce. Then the tortillas were dipped one by one in the sauce. Again the tongs worked great. After dipping, the tortillas were filled and rolled up. I made one group with cheese and one without, since I do not eat cheese, but the people I was eating with do :) Each tortilla was stuffed with a little of the crumble/bean mix, with a little cheese in the cheesy ones. The stuffed tortillas were rolled up and placed seam-down in a baking dish. The remaining sauce was ladled over the top of the enchiladas, and the cheesy ones were sprinkled with cheese. Then they were put in the oven, which was preheated to 350.
They stayed in the oven long enough to heat them through and melt the cheese. Basically I left them in there long enough for me to make the garnishes. Here's a picture of the baked enchiladas.
Here they are with all the garnishes. I made guacamole (mashed avocado, a little vegan mayonnaise, garlic, hot sauce, salt and pepper), salsa fresca, chopped lettuce, and chopped onion. As an afterthought I wish I had also had black olives and sour cream. Next time :) The enchiladas were delicious, and not one scrap of food was left over.
For drinks, we made our version of mojitos, for the first time. No recipe, no measuring.... just rum, mint, lime juice and a little club soda.

Yummy

We also tried a rum martini, another new recipe. Rum and a little dry vermouth shaken with ice, then served straight up.
It was an excellent meal, and I can't wait to try my next new recipe.