Hit by a Pitch

Do you guys know about pudla? It’s so good I kind of want to evangelize it, and I’m not a fan of evangelizing. Pudla is basically a vegan omelet-like thing made with chickpea flour.

I followed this awesome recipe and it’s seriously the easiest thing ever to make. I added green onion, cilantro, and a bunch of spinach. After flipping, I added some shredded Daiya jalapeno garlic havarti. When the pudla was done cooking, I put the pan under the broiler in the oven for a few minutes to melt the “cheese.”

This is delicious and it’s super filling and keeps you full for a long time. Amazing.

First, you should listen to this awesome song. I’m going to post my epic reggae playlist soon, I promise. I’ve been in a reggae and friends phase since like March and it’s the best. Put some reggae on while you’re just, like, hanging around at home making dinner or cleaning or whatever and I guarantee it will increase the awesomeness of your experience by a noticeable amount.

I swear this isn’t going to become a blog where I tell you about everything I eat, but one thing I’ve noticed about vegan meals is that they sometimes require a bit of effort. This is fine because most of what I eat requires a bit of effort, but sometimes you’ve worked all day and then worked out and your husband is out in the yard building a chicken coop and you just don’t feel like doing much. Also, I’m trying to rely less on store-bought fake meat products, but damn I really like them, especially when they’re vegan and made with organic ingredients. I suppose there are worse things.

Anyway, here’s a vegan dinner that isn’t impressive but will take you about 15 minutes (for real) to make:

• Thinly slice some baby bok choy, which is the best. Heat a little oil in a pan (cast iron is good for this) and stir-fry bok choy. When it’s almost done cooking, add some tamari and sweet chili sauce. Stir and cook a little more. Sprinkle on a little cornstarch, stir, and cook for another minute or two.
• In a separate pan, prepare Gardein Mandarin orange faux chicken according to package directions.
• Microwave some organic edamame and sprinkle with sea salt.

Here we are enjoying our meal at our kitchen island thing, which seats two. I really miss our dining room table, which is currently occupied by our brooder.

So, I ended up eating my quinoa salad for breakfast at work because I had leftover vegan pizza for lunch. And it was really good!

Last night we made regular and vegan pizza. The vegan pizza included homemade vegan pepperoni, spinach, basil, green pepper, and onion, as well as a generous amount of sauce and a mixture of Daiya mozzarella and cheddar. Obviously, vegan cheese does not taste the same as dairy cheese, but I thought it was just as good. This is awesome!

I’m generally all about home-cooked meals but often, when we don’t have any leftovers, I end up taking frozen meals to work for lunch. I always get fancy organic frozen meals, but still, I’d rather bring something homemade if at all possible.

So this week I decided I’d try something crazy: I’d make something ahead of time to bring for lunch during the week. Groundbreaking! I mean, not really. People do this all the time. I’ve just never been so, well, plan-aheady.

I decided I really wanted some kind of quinoa salad. So I took to the internet and found a recipe for “Orange Cranberry Quinoa Salad,” which sounded just odd enough to be kind of fun. I made some changes and voilà, I have something I’ll look forward to eating on Monday at the office. Yay!

I hope to make “Vegan Lunchbox” a regular thing here, but seeing as I don’t really have regular things, who knows what will happen.

Also I’m sorry I never give you estimated times when I post recipes. I never find them useful. Every recipe ever is like, “Total time: 15 minutes,” and it takes me an hour.

Quinoa, Carrot, Cranberry, and Garbanzo Salad

Today Soren busted out my Fisher Price schoolhouse from the 70s. He set up the dog like so and declared, “The dog will be the teacher.” I’m pretty sure that’s the best idea anybody has had in a while.

Later, I took a nap with someone I will argue is the prettiest cat ever.

As you might infer from the (lack of) content here lately, I’m in a funk. I’ve been grumpy and kind of sad and short-tempered for a few weeks now. My theory is that it’s because of the goddamn shittastic weather we’ve been having and that when the weather gets better, which it’s bound to do any time now because there’s only so many 20-something-degree, snowy days you can really have in April, things will start looking up. I hope, anyway.

Oh, one other thing! I made tofu satay with peanut sauce for dinner again tonight and I realized something. As I’ve been sort of fumbling toward quasi-veganism (the quasi being because at this point, I think it might be realistic for me to become vegan but I don’t see the point of not eating the eggs from my own chickens because that’s just silly), one of my biggest concerns has been peanut butter ice cream, which is pretty much my favorite thing in the world. I tried making vegan chocolate ice cream once and didn’t like it, mostly because of the coconut milk factor. I like coconut milk in spicy Thai food, but not in dessert items (for the record, I am firmly anti-Samoas and think they are a crime against cookies). So I was down on vegan ice cream until I realized that coconut milk actually works with peanut butter and, in fact, I’d like to make vegan ice cream that tastes exactly like a sweeter version of the peanut sauce that goes with tofu satay, red curry and lemon juice and all. Someone has probably already done this but I don’t even care. It’s my next dessert mission. I guess the fact that I have a dessert mission means I can’t be in all that much of a funk after all.

Here is another crappy iPhone photo of my dinner. The brown plate really adds an extra something special here, I think. Appearances aside, this meal was awesome.

As you may know, Ben does most of the cooking, but once or twice a week, I make dinner. I’ve been feeling like I’m in a dinner rut lately, so I picked up an issue of Vegetarian Times and decided I’d make something that seemed good and different from the kind of thing we usually make. (I tend to make Asian stuff with lots of veggies and Ben would be happy to eat nothing but burritos and pizza until the end of time.) I found a recipe for “Thai Sloppy Joes.” That sounded just weird enough to be interesting.

I did add a bit of tamari (I like my salt) but other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. Holy shit, they were really good — so good I’m writing this lame-ass post where I didn’t even bother to come up with my own recipe just to tell you that you should make these because they’re awesome. I’ve never really even liked tempeh — it always seems too dry, but the sauce in this really eliminated any dryness. And do put some arugula on top. (I prefer open-faced sandwiches because the organic buns we’ve been getting tend to be a bit much; when everything falls off I just use a fork.)

Serve with a side of kale chips. You probably already know how to make those, but if you don’t, here’s how I do it. Tear the leaves by hand, removing the big stem/veins and then tearing into bite-sized pieces. Wash in a salad spinner and then toss with olive oil and salt (I use sea salt from a sea salt grinder, ground on the smallest setting, and Ben uses regular salt) (when in doubt, err on the side of adding less oil and salt than you think you need). Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or so, stirring and redistributing kale chips halfway through baking time. Enjoy!

As for what I’ve been up to, I spend almost all my internet time lately perusing the chicken coops section of backyardchickens.com. We have a pile of supplies (including the prettiest paint color I think I’ve ever seen) and a rough plan and hope the weather stops sucking so we can start construction soon. Gertrude and Josephine will be 5 weeks old tomorrow (Margarita is a week younger) and the thing about chicken coops is that building one always costs twice as much and takes twice as long as you think it will, so we need to get on that. Today I learned all about chicken coop ventilation. Hot damn my life is exciting.

Do you ever go to restaurants and order something that’s always delicious but it never really occurs to you to make it yourself? That’s how my relationship with tofu satay was . . . until tonight, when I made some and holy shit, it’s just as good as what you get at a Thai place and so easy to make.

I followed this recipe from Vegetarian Times but made some changes to the tofu part, like so:

Ingredients

• one 14-ounce package (organic) extra-firm tofu: cut into quarters lengthwise, then cut each quarter in half lengthwise, then cut each piece in half widthwise
• 1/2 cup tamari
• 1 teaspoon turmeric

Directions

Mix tamari and turmeric well in a bowl, add tofu, lightly shake to coat all tofu with tamari/turmeric mixture, cover, and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight. Shake the bowl occasionally and flip the tofu pieces once.

Preheat oven to 400F and generously oil a baking sheet. Drain tofu and stick on skewers (I used four). Place on baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Flip and bake another 20 minutes.

For the sauce, I followed the VT recipe exactly.

Holy shit you guys. Ben is working tonight so it’s just me and Soren and we devoured these things. I felt bad because Soren asked for more and there wasn’t any, so now he’s eating lima beans, which he loves for some reason. (Full disclosure: While at the store earlier, he declared that he only likes to eat “white food.” Whatever, guy.)