Recipe roundup, leftover style.

I have been ultra busy, but as always, I have been cooking and eating.  This post will be a round up of some of the dishes I have made over the past week or so.  We will be talking a lot about leftovers today.

I hate to waste food.  The only dish in this post to use ingredients that were specifically purchased for a recipe is the green bean casserole I made.  The rest are odds and bits that were hanging around in the fridge, too small to make a meal, but perfect to add to a few other morsels to make a great meal.  When ever I pull like that off, I am very proud.

I made a delicious green bean casserole using this recipe.

My only adjustments were to use two tablespoons of flour, white mushrooms, and a 16 ounce bag of frozen french cut green beans.  I added more flour, because the recipe wasn’t thickening the way I wanted it to.  I would highly recommend making this casserole.  I have never liked the one that uses  canned soup, but this dish is amazing.

As you read in a previous post, I made so-so enchiladas. I had a little leftover enchilada sauce that I hated to waste, so the Sorta Enchilada Pie was born.  Here it is before it went into the oven:

This pie used a lot of leftovers, yippee! I layered three tortillas in the bottom of a greased Pyrex pie plate, making sure the whole bottom of the pie plate. Next, I layered some shredded cheddar cheese on the tortillas, then a layer of my homemade salsa (see recipe below).  Next, I added a layer of chopped, about to be inedible  red and orange peppers and I diced up a tiny hunk of red onion to add to this layer.  I covered the veggie layer with some more salsa.  Next, I mixed the remainder of the enchilada sauce with about 1/2 cup of black beans and spread the beans on top of the salsa and topped the whole pie with more shredded cheese and a sprinkle of chili powder.  I covered the pie with foil and popped it in the oven on 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes, just long enough to warm the pie and melt the cheese.

The consensus on the pie? It needed more cheese.   Also,  I think some black olives and jalapeno peppers would have improved the flavor.

In case you were wondering about my homemade salsa, here is the recipe:

Mandy’s  Fresh Salsa

1 or 2 cups fresh chopped tomatoes ( I prefer to make this in the summer when the tomatoes are fresh, but any tomatoes will do)

1/2 cup chopped red onions

A squirt of lime juice

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, and chili powder to taste

1 seeded and diced jalapeno pepper  (optional, but remember to wear gloves when cooking with fresh jalapenos)

Mix together and refrigerate for a least one hour to let the flavors meld.

My last post mentioned the Celebration Roast.  Since I hate to waste food, I decided to doctor up what was left of the roast along with some other odds and ends in the fridge.  I sauteed garlic and red onions together in olive oil and added the mushrooms, cooking until tender.  I had mushrooms on hand because I bought too many for the green bean casserole.  I sliced the roast into strips and added the remainder of my bottle of a bottle of Pickapeppa sauce (about 1 and 1/2 tablespoons) and a few dashes of liquid smoke.  As you can see here, I let it cook down for a little while in my cast iron frying pan.

The good thing was, all of the other ingredients killed the overwhelming sage flavor. I used a sesame seed bun leftover from earlier in the week and spread on it some nacho cheese jalapeno dip.  I spooned some of the roast and mushroom mixture on the bun and dug it.

It was tasty, but because I don’t think I will ever buy the Celebration Roast again, I would use seitan to make this in the future.

And there you have it, a week or so of meals in review.  I love the challenge of using leftovers, don’t you?  For my next trick, er, recipe, I plan on using the leftover black beans and some sweet red peppers to make some sort of spread/dip.

I hope you all have a great day and keep cooking!

This is a post about a sandwich.

I bought a Celebration Field Roast for Easter dinner, but I didn’t eat much of it because I was too stuffed with all of the delicious side dishes my mom made. Since I am the lone vegetarian, no one shared it with me, but everyone did sample it and said it was tasty. I liked the roast and I smothered it with my mom’s homemade milk gravy. I came home with almost a full Field Roast and I was unsure what to do with it. When in doubt, make sandwiches!

I just love sandwiches. I think they are a wonderful thing to eat. This sandwich was pretty darn good and I might make it for tomorrow’s lunch as well.

What we have here is a sesame seed bun, two slices of grain roast, a slice of Cabot American cheese, a sweet red pepper, some spinach, and special sauce. I think red onions would have been great on this, but I was too lazy to cut one. As for the special sauce, I mixed Vegenaise, horseradish, Chinese mustard, and a squirt or two of Ken’s Lite Accents Honey Mustard dressing. This sauce was extremely tangy and tasty and I think I will use it again on meat analogs again.

All and all the sandwich was a success. I would recommend anyone trying the Celebration Field Roast. Locals, I picked mine up at the North County Co-Op.

Have a great day everyone and keep cooking!

Polka dots, enchiladas, and frogs.

We had some not-so-fresh flour tortillas in the fridge, so I decided to make enchiladas.  I love to make enchiladas because they are easy  to throw together and they are tasty.    I grabbed some Old El Paso enchilada sauce, a can of black olives, some chopped red onions, cheddar cheese, a spice mixture I mixed up, and made enchiladas.

I have made many batches of enchiladas, but the best ones I have ever made were the exploding enchiladas. It is worth your time to click on the link and read the story/see the photo. Those particular enchiladas were the most delicious enchiladas I have ever made.

This particular batch was mediocre. The tortillas were sorta stale, so they didn’t roll as easily as fresh ones would. I ran out of cheese, so they didn’t have the normal, delicious layer of cheese on top. Also, my spice mixture is simply hot paprika, white pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and garlic powder. I sprinkle the mixture inside the enchiladas and on the top of the whole thing. It gives the dish a kick.

Here is a photo of me and tonight’s enchiladas. This is the outfit I wore to work and would have been the outfit I would have worn tonight to the Robyn Hitchcock concert, had it not been canceled for this evening. Also featured, my cat Isabella and my frog potholders.

I hope you are all doing well. Have a great day and keep cooking!

Veggie burger, smeggy burger…eww gross title!

As a rule, I hate veggie burgers. I like the ones I make from scratch with beans…maybe I should post that recipe soon…but I just want convenience sometimes, just like everyone else.

Too many times I have been to a BBQ, subjected to eat crappy veggie burgers (wrapped in foil and then grilled on the grill) just to fit in and experience the whole BBQ ambiance. What can I say? I am a sucker for tradition, but a fuss ass when it comes to food. See previous entry about my hatred of mayo. However, today my life has changed and that is because of Amy’s Kitchen Bistro Burgers. These are delicious, vegan, and gluten free, for those of you who suffer from celiac. This is by far, the most delicious veggie burger I have ever put in my mouth, hands down. I found these in Target, when I went to buy ginger beer. I will come back to the ginger beer later. Anyway, I didn’t want to do a large grocery shopping, but I wanted something for tonight, so I picked these up and I am glad I did. Because I didn’t want to grocery shop, I am also out of bread. So how am I to eat my burger you say? Well, I decided to whip up some avocado spread to spread on top of the burger.

I had two tiny avocados that were just ripe to be used. I am out of tomatoes, so no guacamole for me. What’s a pugnacious veg to do? When in doubt, Sambal Oelek can usually fix anything. So, I mashed up the two avocados, cut up one green onion, shook in some lemon juice, and stirred in about a healthy tablespoon of Sambal Oelek. This was absolutely delicious. Sorry for no photos, kids, it was too tasty and I devoured it. But, if you can find Sambal Oelek at your local Asian market or if you have some on hand, I highly suggest you try this. You won’t be disappointed.

Okay, so back to the ginger beer. For the longest time, I didn’t really like ginger beer, as I am not a big fan of soda. But, I had a Grey Mule at a local place and really enjoyed it. I have some vodka that I would like to use up, so I decided that I will mix up some Moscow Mules. I bought the Archer Farms ginger beer, which I have never had. I hope it is good. I do enjoy Archer Farms Blood Orange Italian soda occasionally, so it should be tasty. But, since I was researching ginger beer online this morning (am I the only one who researches food?) I found a recipe to make my own. I would love to try to make it myself. Have you made it? Any tips?

Well gang, I need to do some house cleaning, so I will say good night for now. Until we meet again, have a great day and keep cooking!

It’s been a while, eh? Here, have a scoop of vegan potato salad and let’s catch up.

I am baaaaaaaaaaack!

I am sorry about my absence, so let me explain.   On February 13th, my mother in law succumbed to her battle with cancer.  My life has been in a state of flux since her death.  My husband has been traveling six hours one way between his childhood home and our home, at least once, sometimes twice, during the month to help take care of business there.   Needless to say, there hasn’t been a lot of cooking around these parts lately.  I am almost ashamed to admit, a lot of my meals have been less than inspiring (SANDWICHES!) and mostly eaten in front of my computer screen.   I never did make those cranberry nachos, but the cranberry relish is still in my freezer, desperately wanting to be eaten.

But, onwards and upwards, I say!  My mom in law was a great lady who did not “suffer fools” as my husband wrote in her obituary.  She liked my cooking and I think she would want me to keep on cooking, so cook is what I will do.   Since I want to honor her, look for a blog post soon about a dip that she turned me on to.   She called it “Sister in Law’s Dip,” as it was her sister in law who first made it for her.   I am going to dub it from here on out “Mother in Law’s Dip,” in honor of my awesome Mom M.  It is contains a stick of butter and it is out of this world. Next shopping day I will pick up the ingredients and make it for you all.

I want to change this blog’s goal a bit.   Sometimes I feel pressured to come up with some cool, new meal and write the recipe down, take an awesome photo, and post.  A lot of times, I just clean out the fridge, throw what I find in pan with some spices, and it usually turns out tasty.  So, to simply my life and actually get myself to post more, I am going to take photos of my food, much like I used to do on flickr with my Mr. Bento and my nightly meals, whether they are super awesome or not.  But, if you want the recipe and I didn’t post it, just give me a holler.  Don’t worry though, I will never stop sharing recipes when I make something that deserves to be written down.  I would also like to take photos of veggie meals I have at restaurants and give reviews of products that I try.  How does this new format work for everyone?  I promise this new format will make me update more.  It is bad when you are badgered about updating your blog in person (Hi Kari, I love you!).   If you are down with this new format to be, please let me know.  I love feedback.  Now on to potato salad.

It is widely known that I hate eggs and anything that derives from them, including mayo.  How I would look longingly at the bowls of coleslaw, macaroni salad, and potato salad at picnics and potlucks, cursing them and their creamy goodness, while I choked down another mustard and ketchup hot dog bun sandwich (veggies, you know what I am talking about).  When vegan mayo came into my life, my cold salad days began. Personally, I favor Vegenaise, but there are other brands you can try.  Heck, if you love real mayo, you can use that too. No worries my mayo loving friends.

I made this vegan potato salad for a recipe slam held at out local co-op and organized by some awesome minded, community thinking, folks. This was in January I believe, so I was totally looking forward to spring:

“Think Spring!” Vegan Potato Salad

4 cups small potatoes (red and Yukon gold are in this salad)
1 and 1/4 cups Vegenaise
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
1/4 heaping teaspoons of:
-Garlic powder
-White pepper (black pepper is fine)
-Mustard powder
1 scallion, chopped or 1/4 cup chopped onion (I prefer red)

Clean and boil potatoes, leaving the skins on.  Let the potatoes cook until they are fork-tender.  While the potatoes are boiling, combine the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl to make the dressing.  Drain the potatoes and let cool.  When the potatoes are cool, chop them into bite-sized pieces.  Mix the potatoes with the dressing and let the salad chill overnight or for at least two hours.

Tomato ladybugs:

Cherry tomatoes, halved
1 sheet of nori (seaweed)
To make the ladybug spots, use a clean paper punch to punch the nori sheets. To make the stripes, use kitchen shears. Moisten the tip of a chopstick with water and use it to arrange the spots on the “ladybug.”

Pepper flowers and spinach or basil leaves:

Halve and seed a bell pepper and use a flower-shaped cookie cutter to cut out flowers and garnish with spinach or basil leaves.

So there you have it my friends, a proper update.  I hope you make this salad and bring it along to your potlucks and picnics this spring and summer.  If you do, it will kinda be like me being there with you.  I promise to not be as absent anymore.  Until the next time we meet, have a great day and keep cooking!

I have a cold. Achoo!

Oh gang, I am sick.  Sicky sick sick.  The kind of sick where all you want to do is drink liquids and blow your ever clogging nose.  Today is day four of THE SICK and I do feel better, but not fantastic.  However, I have a magic elixir that I drink when I either feel a cold coming on or am in the midst of a full blown snot attack.  In the beginning throes of a cold, it usually snaps me out of it and during a cold, it makes me warm and toasty.  In case you are one who is prone to colds, I am sharing my recipe with you.  This is in no way medicinal, but I do find it very comforting to drink when I am sick.

To make my concoction, I first boil the water for tea.  I usually use Sleepy Time tea or some other chamomile tea.  While the kettle is boiling, I put the following ingredients  in my big, ole brown mug:

-about a tablespoon or so of  Bragg’s Apple Cider vinegar

-about a tablespoon of lemon juice

-a healthy squirt of local honey

-a few good shakes of cayenne pepper

-a double shot of brandy (This is optional.  Of course, only add this if you are legal and don’t hop in the car after you drink it.)

Next, I pour the hot water in the mug, add the tea bags, give it a good stir as the honey tends to stick to the bottom of the mug, sit back and enjoy.

Even without the brandy, the drink is soothing.  The cayenne pepper is a nice kick, although I tend to be a bit heavy handed when I make it for myself.  If you don’t like spicy things, just a sprinkle will do.

I hope to be on the up and up soon.  I have a fridge full of groceries and no energy or appetite whatsoever to cook or eat.  Although, I did make a big mess of sauteed red onions, hot cherry peppers, and garlic for dinner the other night.  I wanted something I could smell and taste and this totally did the trick.  I have some left over and I might eat that today.

Have a great, sickness free day and keep cooking!

Hi, how are you?

Well, my hiatus lasted longer than I expected. I have missed this blog and although I don’t have a recipe to post tonight, I just wanted to stop in with an update.

I still haven’t been cooking much, but I have a few ideas that should be up very soon, including homemade croutons, spicy sweet jalapeno vinaigrette, and green bean and mushroom pot pie.

One thing I am dying to make is cranberry nachos. I had a flash of brilliance around Christmas and came up with the recipe. I froze the remainder of the cranberry tangerine relish I made and I hope to make them this weekend. If you have some leftover cranberry relish you froze or an errant bag of cranberries in your freezer, then this is the snack for you.  Keep your eyes peeled for the post, most likely on Sunday.

Well, gang, I am off to make tortellini with my Mom’s homemade sauce for dinner, but I promise to have a real food update this week.

Have a great night and keep cooking!

No food today.

I thought I should take the time to let you all know that I probably won’t be updating for a week or two. My mother in law is quite ill and I haven’t felt like cooking at all.

I have been making some body scrubs and whatnot, so I might put some of those up, but as far as food goes, I just don’t have it in me.

I will be back as soon as I can I promise. Until next time, have a great day and keep cooking!

Harvest Pizza

Sorry so long between posts!  Things have been busy around here.  Mark and I celebrated our two year wedding anniversary on the same night we celebrated Obama’s victory!

But let’s talk about autumn.  I love autumn and all of the things that go with it: falling leaves, crisp air, Halloween, and of course great, rib-sticking food.

There is a restaurant in town that makes a similar version of this pizza, only with real ham. I have never tried it, but I decided to come up with my own veggie friendly version, with a few tasty modifications.

Harvest Pizza

1 package whole-wheat pizza dough

3 tablespoons maple syrup, use local when you can

2 tablespoons stone ground mustard

1 cup cheddar cheese

Half of a Macintosh apple, sliced into wedges

½ cup chopped red onion

½ cup dried cranberries

3-4 slices of veggie ham, diced

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spread the dough on a pizza pan. I almost always fail miserably at this, so if you have some special technique, go ahead and do it, and please pass it along to me.

Next, mix the maple syrup and mustard together, and spread it on your pizza, as it is the sauce.

Sprinkle the pizza with the cheddar cheese. This doesn’t call for a lot of cheese, because you want the other flavors to meld together, not overwhelmed by an excessive amount of cheese.

Arrange the rest of the toppings in any way you want. Me, I kinda just throw it all on and spread it out. This is a hearty pizza, so presentation isn’t all that important.

Pop the pizza in the oven for 15-20 minutes. This might be a bit gooey in the middle, so you may have to adjust your cooking time and temperature accordingly.

This is a great quick meal. It is a nice break from the traditional pizzas and it allows you to enjoy some of the tastes of this wonderful season.

The next time we meet, I will tell you all about black bean and black-eyed pea soup. Until next time, have a great day and keep cooking!

Triple decker grilled stilton and pickle sandwich.

Hi!  We have been back from England for almost two weeks, yet I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to update ye olde blog.  If you click my Flickr widget on this page, you can see the photos of my trip and the photos I took at the Sherlock Holmes museum.  Also, the October project is still continuing.

England was so much fun!  We got to hang out with great friends- both old and new, see some great sights, and eat some tasty food.  I hope to replicate some of them in the future, especially, the Sunday roast and the Cornish pasty.  OMG.  Cornish pasty.

While over in England, I became quite addicted to the to go sandwiches offered at places like Tesco and Sainsburys.  I loved the cheese and pickle sandwiches so much that when we needed to make dinner on the night we got back from London, I went to the local shop and bought some good cheese (red Leicester) and hard rolls and used our hosts pickle and salad cream to make us a few sandwiches.  I fell in love with the pickle so hard, that it kind of became a running joke for the whole week.  I brought back a squeezy container of the stuff in my suitcase and shipped three stateside.  You can’t find it in the grocery stores in the States, so when I run out, I will either have to order it online or hit up a local tea room that stocks British foods.  Our other speciality store that usually carried this sort of thing closed about a year ago.  Viva The Grand Onion!

I found it amazing that, as a vegetarian, I could go in to the grocery store and just pick up a to go sandwich without worrying about if it contained meat.  I also appreciated the large “V” marked on all things vegetarian.  Come on American stores, wake up to the veggie revolution!

Anyway, the majority of the sandwiches come with mayo.  Now, I hate mayo, or at least American mayo.  I actually quite liked the salad cream.  I think it is because the salad cream tastes a lot like Vegenaise, kind of sweet and tangy.  So with my newfound love of “salad cream” (or in my case vegan mayo) and a burgeoning obsession with Branston Pickle , I have created a version of a triple-decker sandwich that is not for the faint of heart.

The picture does not do this sandwich justice.  It was simply delicious.

Now, I don’t have a real recipe for this so bear with me.  This was a slap dash meal made to fill our bellies.

Mix about a half-cup of crumbled Stilton with about three tablespoons vegan mayo, sprinkling a little fresh ground pepper and garlic powder in the mix.

Butter a baking sheet and place four slices of good, dark bread on the sheet.  Spread about a tablespoon and a half of the cheese and vegan mayo mixture on each slice.  Next, squirt some Branston pickle on each slice, spreading it around a little to fully cover the bread.

Put the open-faced sandwiches in the over on about 275 degrees for a few minutes, just long enough for the mixture to get melty and gooey.  Take the pan out and put a slice of bread on two of the open faced sandwiches and stick them back in for a bit, so they get a little toasted.

Take the sandwiches out, place the remaining open-faced slices on the other sandwiches, and there you have it, a triple-decker grilled Stilton and pickle sandwich!

When we meet again, I will give you my recipe for an autumn pizza that is just delightful.  Until then, have a great day and keep cooking!