tempeh bacon

I went to Indonesia with my dad and stepmom last winter and one of my favorite discoveries there was tempeh. Seriously. It's like a vegan dream come true. It has so much flavor. I made tempeh bacon tonight while Zach was out with a migraine and it is incredible. Well, I didn't let it cook enough to get crispy like bacon, but it still has a lot of flavor. I've never cooked bacon in my life, haha.
I got it from this recipe, but had to modify it a little bit (I didn't use all of the maple syrup-- I have an aversion-- and I used paprika in lieu of cayenne.)

I used about 2/3 of a package of tempeh, slice them up really thin and threw them in the marinade. For some reason, the marinade wasn't as liquid-y as I would have liked. I might go with more soy sauce next time.

Anyways, I threw the bacon in with a lettuce-orange-tomato-carrot salad I made. Eat tempeh, everybody.

Graham cracker biscuits.

So, the graham crackers didn't turn out as terribly as I thought they would. In fact, Zach ate two or three. They actually turned out more like biscuits because I didn't roll them out enough, which is okay except I can probably only eat a half of one instead of three, haha. They're not too sweet, which is fine since I guess biscuits aren't usually sweet...
In all seriousness, I am happy with these. When I make these again, I'll be sure to roll the dough out more and sprinkle more cinnamon and sugar on them. Also, we ran out of agave and I didn't really want to use honey so I just added a little more brown sugar (I would suggest adding regular sugar, unless you have agave or want to use honey).

I had to buy all purpose flour (it calls for both whole wheat and all purpose), but I made sure to get unbleached and unbromated. I also had to buy margarine, but I bought the Albertson's brand for 1/2 the price of the Earth Balance cost.














Recipe: (from Vegan Yum Yum**)

Graham Crackers
Makes at least 24 3×3″ Crackers

2 1/2 Cups Graham Flour or Stoneground Flour or Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine
1/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 Cup Agave Nectar (or a little more sugar mixed with water)
3/4 Cup Water

Mix the all the dry ingredients together. Cream together Earth Balance and sugar. Add vanilla and agave and beat with a whisk until smooth. Add a little of the flour and a little of the water to the earth balance/sugar mixture and combine. Continue adding in flour and water, a little at a time, until all flour and water is added. Work the dough with your hands until everything is evenly combined.

Divide dough in half and cover. Let rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Preheat oven to 325º F. Roll out the dough into a rectangle that measures approximately 11″x15″. Trim edges. Using a knife or a pizza cutter, cut the dough into squares or rectangles (I cut mine into 3′x3′ squares). Prick the squares with a fork.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 325º F or until the crackers are turning golden brown around the edges. You can sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of the crackers during the last 10 minutes of baking if you like.

Remove from the baking sheet and let cool on a wire rack. See the video above for visual directions.

** Look up the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook on Amazon. We seriously use it the most out of all of our cookbooks.

graham crackers!

Going to attempt these (just the crackers) today...wish me luck



Edit: Oh, did I say I was making graham crackers? I actually meant graham cakes. These may or not be posted soon....

Creamy, cheesy polenta

(Sorry for the bad picture quality. I used my camera phone because I was too lazy to get the camera--oops!)
Once upon a time, Zach and Christina went to Winco to buy some bulk items. We accidentally got...20 cups of polenta and we just made our first polenta meal since we bought it. Anyways, we made the soft broccoli polenta Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book Appetite for Reduction. Man, was it good. It was really easy to make and the only thing we needed to buy was broccoli. I didn't exactly follow the directions (covered it at first, then uncovered it for the last 10 minutes...it was supposed to be the other way around), but it turned out great! Zach said it tasted cheesy to him and though I haven't had cheese in many moons , I agree.

The ingredients were simple:
4 cups vegetable broth (we used bouillon cubes)
salt to taste
a few pinches of pepper
1 cup polenta grits
4 cups chopped broccoli

You slowly pour the polenta into the boiling broth, while whisking it in. Then add the broccoli, turn the heat to low, and leave it uncovered for 15 minutes (or entirely ignore the rest of the instructions and do whatever you want). Make sure you stir it quite a bit; after the 15 minutes, turn the heat off and leave it covered for 10 minutes.

Then eat it and be sooo full!

We're alive!

We didn't die! We still eat. This semester just really started to take its toll on us and we are tired. We'll be back soon :)

Easter Brunch

Happy Easter to everyone! We had a really good Easter complete with brunch, a bike ride, church, and a really good dinner.

We don't go to church until one o'clock so we were pretty hungry. Since it IS Easter, we decided we wanted to have something good and Easter-y (what? That's an adjective, right?) rather than just snacking. While I did important things like read vegan food blogs, Zach made us some real good french toast. In fact, it was so good that I forgot to take any pictures of it.

He used one egg (1 tbsp flax + 2 tbsps water), 3/4 cup of soymilk, a tbsp of cinnamon, tbsp of sugar, dipped the bread in it, and sprinkled powdered sugar on top when they were done. They were really good! We saw a recipe that called for bananas in the toast, so we might give that a try next time.

Our local grocery store Broulim's sells this great bread called Grandma's for only $1.99, so we always buy that. We really like both the whole wheat and sprouted grain.

happy earth day!

(photo courtesy of: here)


Learn how to celebrate Earth Day right by visiting this website!
Also, a lot of people are having picnics, but I'll be at work all day, so have a picnic for me.

Hummus: reunited and it feels so good

Zach and I ate a lot of hummus while we were in Oklahoma and on the way home. When I was in 11th grade, I probably ate a hummus sandwich every single day. It's so good and not so bad on the health side of things. I've only ever made it once and it was a raw zucchini hummus. I thought I'd give a go at it while I have time (school starts on Tuesday!) and I made some low-fat hummus based on this recipe.

The recipe is really simple:
Can of garbanzo beans-- $1.09
a small handful of cilantro--59 cents
2 cloves of garlic (I might recommend one more, but I just threw in some more recipes to give it a little more flavor)--50 cents?
a whole lemon's worth of juice (a BIG lemon!)-- 59 cents?
Salt, pepper, & cumin to taste

I just played around with everything until it tasted how I wanted it to taste.

vegan dreams.

I've always said that the three things I missed most as a vegan were frozen yogurt, mac and cheese, and spaghetti-o's. Thanks to this perfect little vegan cafe/bakery in Salt Lake called City Cakes, the first two vegan dreams were fulfilled.

And just now I went over to theppk.com and found THIS!!
We will definitely, definitely be making this soon.


(photo link)

Fast Food!

This is a really cool list of the vegan options at different fast food restaurants. They didn't mention this, but Red Robin (my FAVORITE restaurant) usually has a vegan Boca burger. The one in Idaho Falls stopped serving them for awhile, but I requested them so often that they brought them back. I don't eat fast food very often, but this is nice when you're feeling lazy or are on the road.

http://godsdirectcontact.us/com/vegetarian/abc/veganeatinginanyrestanrants.htm

oh, polenta, you are so good!

My fondest (and only) memory of eating polenta in pre-vegan life was at a firehouse dinner when I was a kid. I probably ate it on a paper plate, too. Well let me tell you: have I ever moved on. We eat on real plates last night! Also, our polenta was a little more...refined (although it still came in a package).

We found the recipe on fatfreevegan.com: here.

It was real good. We chopped up the packaged polenta into little squares and used a ton of spices on it like rosemary, thyme, basil, and some other good-tasting things. We used about two teaspoons of each and used less than a capful of olive oil so the polenta wouldn't stick. While I was doing that, Zach sauteed onions, garlic, mushrooms, kidney beans, and veggie broth. It was a really fast dinner which helps when you're feeling reeeeally lazy because you laid in bed all day ;)

Also, I wanted to eat a lot of it because it tasted so delicious.

$$$:

Polenta-- $3.09 (faster, but buying a big bag of polenta and making it yourself is probably cheaper).

Onion--39 cents?

Kidney beans-- 59 cents

Mushrooms-- 70 cents

Spices, spices, spices

Vegetable bouillon-- 99 cents

Curry Lentil s^$%

Hello Everyone,
We are back to cooking. Hawaii was pretty cool, but now we're back and its time to make cheap vegan meals again.
We're trying to live on a budget and not spend lots of money. One way to do that is to cook things you already have in the house.
A few months ago we bought a bag of lentils and haven't really used them so we decided to use them. I didn't really like any of the recipes we found so we made our own. It's curry lentil stuff.

We boiled 2 cups of lentils. We added a few tablespoons of curry paste to the water as it all cooked together. In another pan, we sauteed onions with a can of cilantro-lime tomatoes. We threw about four tablespoons of curry paste in there because you can never have too much curry paste (actually you can; after some protest from our stomachs, we are taking a little break for a few days). When the lentils were cooked, we added the tomato/onion/curry mix to it, covered it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
While that was simmering, we made the world's easiest bread. Every once in awhile, we use recipes from a really cool money-conscious blog called 30 Bucks A Week. They had a recipe for chapatis which is like a very easy to make naan or a thicker tortilla. It was really, really good with the lentils and tasted better than just eating it straight off the fork. We ate the lentils over quinoa, too.

$$$:Lentils-- Really cheap in bulk. Maybe $1.50/lb or less.
Canned tomatoes--$1Onion-- ~30 cents
Curry paste-- $3, lasts forever
Minced garlic-- We bought a little jar for $1 and it lasted about 2 weeks
Quinoa-- We got a big bag at Costco for $9. We have had it since January and we still aren't done!

Chapatis-- water, flour, and salt! (You just throw everything in the food processor until it forms a sticky ball, let it sit on a floured surface underneath a towel for 15 minutes. Shape into little tortillas and cook on the stove top on both sides, switching when bubbles start to form.)

aloha mela kelikimaka mahalo sikisukumeekamoka

We are not blogging because we are not cooking because we are on our HONEYMOON in HAWAII!!!!!

Eating out all the time!!!


See ya soon.

Not Left Overs, Mom

Tonight we had left overs. . . kind of. We finished off last nights couscous and had it as a side.
Our main dish was cheesy bean and rice burritos. Mine had real cheese and Christina's had Daiya Cheese (vegan cheese). We used rice that belongs to my roommate. We made it with a vegetable bullion cube and added the rest of the can tomatoes and cut up a hand full of cilantro to add to it.
Along with the rice we added the black and kidney beans that we used last night for the couscous salad. It turned out really good and most important we didn't spend any money today on dinner. So the lessons you can take from this post are: Eat your leftovers and try to use food that you already have.

(sorry no pictures were taken, I blame Xtina(not really))(there are a lot of parentheses)

Total Cost of tonights meal = Free .99
(Besides the onion I insisted we buy and didn't use. I'm an idiot(There I go with the parentheses again))

We love you.

We made a couscous salad and it was really good.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Livestrong asking if I was "vegan-ish." I think that means kind of vegan, so I said "hell no, I'm all the way vegan" and deleted their e-mail. Not really.

They had a recipe for a Mediterranean couscous salad with roasted vegetables. It was 50 minutes of prep time and 45 minutes of cooking time and I just don't have that kind of time to be healthy. And I'm lazy.

Last semester when Zach worked almost every night, I ate couscous and canned vegetables. I'm still alive! So...we decided to take Livestrong's "vegan-ish" recipe and make it our own. We used vegetable bouillon cubes to make a broth to cook the couscous in and we added kidney beans, black beans, cilantro, tomatoes, lemon juice, and onions. It was really, really good! Maybe my taste buds were still stuck on canned green beans and couscous cooked with water, but it was great! Actually, I take that back. Zach liked it, too. We have a whole bowl filled of it, so we're going to eat it again tonight.










Price Breakdown:

Couscous: We buy it in bulk, but it is seriously the cheapest food around. I would say $1?
Tomato: 79 cents. We bought canned...
Kidney beans: 59 cents
Black Beans: 99 cents
Onion: 59 cents/lb? It was left over from a meal earlier in the week.
Cilantro: 79 cents, I think?

That's under $4. Cheap.

pad thai, pad thai.

(My old roommate Haylee got me these cute chopsticks on her trip to my city--SF.)

Tonight we used this pad thai recipe from the real great blog fat free vegan.
(I'm cheating because we're still cooking it, but I just tasted the sauce and it is soooo good.)

We adjusted because we didn't have things like rice vinegar and tamarind paste, but it still tastes great.

Our friend Tyler went down to Arizona a few weeks ago and brought us back a big tub of yellow curry paste that only cost us $4. If you're ever in Arizona, call Tyler (because I don't know where it is) and get some. For realz.

Post-meal (and nap) review:

It was incredible. The sauce was really flavorful unlike the pad thai we made last week. We still had half a package of rice noodles and used some whole wheat spaghetti noodles also. We threw in some broccoli and cabbage that were left over from last night's dinner. I recommend it to everyone. Love it forever.

Broccoli: 79 cents a head

Rice Noodles: $3? (but it lasted two meals)

Lemon: 50 cents

Ginger root: 9 cents

Green onions: 99 cents

Tofu: $1.99

We had peanut butter, sriracha, and curry paste already so that helped a lot. It was a very, very inexpensive and delicious dinner.

Cruciferous Halitosis(not really, but its really good)

Tonight we made creamy cruciferous with broccoli. What is that you ask? Well, let me tell you. It's cabbage and brussel sprouts (tonight we used broccoli instead of brussel sprouts)over rice or cous ous. You cook the cabbage and brussel sprouts with vegetable broth, nutritional yeast, a little cinnamon, soy sauce, and either red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper.
It's good stuff and cheap. We like it a lot. We made it last summer and have made it a bunch of times since. You should make it and eat it.

We found the recipe on fatfreevegan.com.

Cabbage = $2
Broccoli = 79 cents
nutritional yeast = $1 maybe, but I think it was like 50 cents.
we had the cinnamon, soy sauce, and red pepper flakes.

oh hey there.

Well, we started this blog because well... we eat, we're mostly vegan, and we're poor (in college). We try to reserve eating out for Friday nights and that leaves six other nights of having to put in some work and make our own.

We'll try to keep all meals under $10, vegan, and good. With our digital camera, we'll capture the food with crappy photos.

We lost the receipt for this one (which I anticipate happening a lot), but we made this Ethiopian dish from the fat free vegan blog. Everything was under $10 for sure and most of her recipes are really easy. Looking forward to some real recipes soon.