Sweet and Sour Tofu and Vegetables

SWEET AND SOUR TOFU AND VEGETABLES is a quick and easy dish to prepare that is colorful and filling, served with rice and some greens. This dish served five.

Ingredients in Rice Cooker

2 cups — jasmine rice

3 1/2 cups — water 

1 bunch — chopped collards

 

Method

Use a rice cooker to cook up two cups of jasmine rice with three and a half cups of water, with a bunch of chopped collards in the steamer above.

Ingredients in Bowl

2 tblsp. — organic cornstarch

2 tblsp. — water

15oz — canned organic pineapple chunks and juice

1/4 cup — water

1 tblsp. — apple cider vinegar

1 tsp — sweetener like maple syrup or agave

2 tblsp. — tamari

1/2 tsp — ginger powder

1 touch — red pepper

 

Ingredients in Cast Iron Pan

1 — chopped medium onion

1 tblsp. — olive oil

1 tblsp. — toasted sesame oil

1 — carrot, thinly sliced

Optional — additional sliced vegetables (green beans, corn, peppers, broccoli)

1 block — tofu, cubed

1 sprinkle — salt

 

Method

In a bowl mix together two tablespoons of organic cornstarch in two tablespoons of water, adding most of a fifteen ounce can of organic pineapple chunks and juice. I let the boys drink and eat some of it. Also, I only had rings, so I chopped them up.

Vegan Shepherd's Pie

I never made a SHEPHERD'S PIE before, vegan or otherwise, but somehow I got it into my head yesterday that I wanted some. I consulted my Fannie Farmer cookbook to see what was in it normally, and then I just substituted what I wanted to use instead. One member of the family remembered it from cafeteria lunches as having a layer of corn under the potatoes, so you could do that if you wanted to, but it's not what I did. This didn't take long to make, but I had all the required ingredients on hand.

Most problematic for those of you without a constant supply of soy pulp from making soy milk every few days would be the soysage, which is made with the leftover soy pulp. I was thinking it could also be made with partially cooked beans, though I haven't tried that yet. I was picturing soaking and cooking some beans for about half an hour, then grinding them in a food processor, before using them in the soysage recipe.

Cherry Mousse Tarts

It's President's Day, and I wanted to make a cherry pie again (see last year's recipe), but my buying club out-of-stocked my frozen cherries today. When I stopped by the co-op, they didn't have any fresh, frozen, or canned. All they had was organic Tart Cherry Juice, so I bought some of that and while driving home tried to think how to use it to make a pie. Something gelled with agar flakes, also known as kanten, a seaweed product? Or a pudding made with arrowroot powder or organic cornstarch?

I decided in the end to make CHERRY MOUSSE by using both. I made eight little pie tarts and two big glasses of mousse.

Vegan Sushi How to Make It Video

Last night I made some VEGAN SUSHI, which isn't hard to do. Sushi means "pickled rice" and doesn't require any animal products. I like this meal because it only uses two pans. The tofu can be fried in a cast iron pan, and the sushi rice can be cooked in a rice cooker with the vegetables steaming above it, or it can be cooked in a saucepan with the vegetables right on top of it. The vegetables will rise up to the top as the rice cooks, and then can just be pushed aside to access the rice when assembling the sushi.

My tofu, though extra firm, fell apart during cooking last night. This wasn't so bad, as it was hidden within the confines of the nori wrapper during assembly. I cooked the tofu strips — or, in my case, ragged pieces, — in olive oil and seasoned it with tamari. 

I forgot to use sushi rice, I realized later. I used white jasmine rice, which is a smaller, less sticky grain. It still worked, but if you use sushi rice you will have an easier time rolling up your sushi. 

I used carrots, lacinata kale, scallions, and avocado for my vegetables, the first two steaming over the rice, the second two sliced thinly. 

To make this dish you will need a package of toasted nori sheets. You can find them in smaller portions than the size package I get, which contains fifty sheets. I try to buy mine when they are on sale, and I get them through my buying club. Or you could order them through Amazon. They will last a long time in a cupboard. 

I used sliced pickled ginger and pickled umeboshi plum paste to season the sushi when I was rolling them up. I made some wasabi paste with dry wasabi powder and water, and I added a slice of fresh ginger to some tamari, with these two items in little dipping bowls. All of these products should be available at larger supermarkets or health food stores, perhaps in the macrobiotic or natural foods section. 

After the rice, vegetables, and tofu were cooked, the fun of assembling the nori rolls (what we call sushi) begins. Check out my video* to see how to do that. Don't try to put too much of any one ingredient in, or you will end up with cumbersome rolls. My boys prefer the smaller rolls. 

I don't use a mat to roll the sushi, and it seems to work out fine. One thing you will have to have on hand, though, is a very sharp knife, as anything less will not slice through the nori, and everything will fall apart. 

I think I made about seven rolls of seven pieces each last night. All I ate were some of the ends as I went along, and I was full by the time I was finished. There were four of us eating these, and everyone seemed to think they got enough. This is one of my family's favorite meals, and you can design the rolls to suit the taste of your own.

 

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ft-iQotQFY is the link in case this gets disabled again.

Cinnamon Sticky Buns

The children and I used to make CINNAMON STICKY BUNS years ago when the oldest were young and we had a weekly Education Bakery, wherein we baked cookies on Wednesday and started the dough for these buns, and then made bread on Thursday and drove the finished products around to sell to workplaces and friends to learn about measuring, cooking, time management, and marketing. These buns were always our top sellers.

 

Ingredients for Approximately 30 Buns

 

Dough

1 1/2 cups — cooked potato, reserving the potato cooking water (2 cups)

1 tblsp. — baking yeast

1 tblsp. — sweetener

1/2 pound — tofu, blended with cooked potato and 1 1/2 of its cooking water

2 cups — sunflower oil 

2 cups — unbleached white flour (2 more cups later)

2 cups — whole wheat flour (2 more cups later)

1/2 tblsp. — salt

Later, 4 more cups of mixed flours to knead the dough, so altogether about 8 cups flour

 

Filling

1 cup — maple syrup

1/2 cup — tahini

1 tblsp. — cinnamon

Sprinkle of salt

1 cup — pecans

Method

To start the dough, first cook a cut up large peeled potato in two cups of water. You will need one and a half cups of potato, so estimate how big a potato you will need. Remove one cup of the potato water and, when it is warm to the inside of your wrist and doesn't burn you, dissolve a tablespoon of baking yeast and a tablespoon of sweetener in it. I had run out of yeast, so I only used about two teaspoons, and that seemed to work fine. I also used rice syrup as my sweetener. Stir and let sit for ten minutes.

Red Lentil Soup

Raymond said the RED LENTIL SOUP was the best soup ever the other night, and though I didn't write down the proportions, I assured him I had at least written down the ingredients so I could duplicate it again some day. Now I seem to have lost them, but how hard could it be to remember? This soup will be a yellowish tan color, not red, when cooked, unfortunately, and it reminds me more of a yellow split pea soup consistency than of a lentil soup.

 

Ingredients

1 — large onion, chopped

8 — carrots, sliced

2 — stalks celery, chopped

2 tblsp. — olive oil

Several — garlic cloves, sliced

3 cups — dry red lentils, rinsed

4 quarts — water, with part of it vegetable stock if you have any

1-2 cups — various other vegetables if you have any lying around (not jicama)

1 tblsp. — vegan Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp each — thyme, parsley, turmeric, curry powder, sambhar powder (optional)

1 — bay leaf

1/3 cup — brown rice miso (after cooking is completed)

2 — limes, juiced 

Optional — Hungarian paprika, cayenne pepper (especially if not using curry and sambhar)

Method

Saute one large chopped onion and eight sliced carrots, five cubed potatoes and two stalks of chopped celery in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Start off in the most huge pot you have so you don't have to transfer everything later on like I did.

Throw in several sliced garlic cloves and about three cups of dry red lentils that have been rinsed. They clump together after rinsing, but they will behave once the water is poured on them. Pour in about four quarts (sixteen cups) of water. I did say to use an enormous pot.

Dandelion Greens, Baby Bok Choy, Linguine, and Sauteed Tofu Cubes with Tamari

They aren't growing around here, yet, but there were huge bunches of DANDELION GREENS at my co-op the other day. This very mild green is supposed to be good for your liver in the spring, but I couldn't wait. 

 

It's reassuring to know there is something edible right in your yard or a nearby vacant lot, if it comes to that, once it gets to be spring. Even when they are older they are still pretty good if you boil them twice and discard the water each time. Otherwise, when young, just steam them until they are limp and still bright green. 

 

I submerged the dandelion greens for about five minutes or so in the big pot of boiling water I used later to cook the linguine, and then I tossed them with a bit of lemon juice and olive oil and a touch of tamari. They aren't bitter when young, and I think the texture and taste is better than spinach.