It’s been
quite an eventful week at the Elf’s. If you remember from last week’s blog, we
were taking Marley the Wayward Poodle to the Veterinary School at MS State for
further surgery to repair a broken leg.
Well, the surgery was going to be a complex ‘fix’ with an extended
recovery time, during which he would need to be kept subdued and quiet. Marley
is a very high strung, reactive and anxious boy, so after painful deliberation,
the decision was made to have the leg amputated. He is now home and seems to be
doing well, although we’ve had some obvious back-sets in his behavioral issues
since he’s still pretty painful. So, we’ve been pretty pre-occupied with him but
were able to get some significant cooking in while he was in the hospital.
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Our FatFree Vegan
Kitchen dish for the week was Eggplant Parmesan
The Elf LOVES
Eggplant Parmesan and has veganized several recipes. However, this recipe also
notes that it is soy free and can be gluten free if you utilize gluten free
bread for your crumbly topping (which we did not). In any event, we got all our
ingredients together for our ‘mis en place’ for both the eggplant
AND the sauce
As usual, with
any elf-fort that occurs in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen, there is always drama. We
KNEW we had some brown rice flour SOMEWHERE…had just SEEN it the other day. But
could we FIND it when we needed it…NOPE, NOT HAPPENIN’, NADA. Fortunately we
DID have whole wheat pastry flour, so that worked just fine.
We did have
one question which we fired off to Susan (who’s so responsive and helpful) and
that was “would it make a difference if we did not peel the eggplant?” Her
response was that sometimes eggplant peel has a tendency to be tough so she
peels hers. We chose to be daring and keep the peel.
We made the
batter and carefully dipped our eggplant rounds in to coat both sides and baked
accordingly turning them after 20 minutes. A word of advice here, since we were
cooking on parchment paper, it’s very helpful to give the slices a bit of time
to cool slightly before trying to turn them or you wind up with most of the
batter still on the paper. This is a bit labor intensive but heck, we were all
in.
Then we
started the layering with the baked eggplant rounds, a low fat lite pasta sauce,
the ‘cheesy’ sauce and a sprinkling of the ‘parmesan’ which finely ground
cashews and nutritional yeast.
Now, The Elf got a little worried
about the sauce as it was fairly thin but it did thicken up once baked. The
final topping of a crumbled slice of whole wheat bread ground with some of the
parmesan for a bit of added crunch.
Finally, we
were ready for the oven.
And here is
the final result. It was DELICIOUS!!
We will definitely do this again but will
most likely skip the batter coating. Poor Big Solid doesn’t know what he’s
missing by not being an eggplant fan. However, he DID try a square of it when
he got home and said “Pretty good!" which is high praise from someone who is NOT an eggplant kinda guy.
Our FatFree Vegan
Kitchen selection for this Thanksgiving week is “TA-DA”—Creamy Vegan Broccoli
and Rice Casserole.
We are spending Thanksgiving with our BFFs,
The Dees and it’s always fun to take a good vegan dish. They are so sweet to
invite us we don’t want them to go out of their way to make extra stuffs for ‘the
vegan’—it’s the least we can do! Plus, chances are they might even LIKE it!
And, we will substitute our old standby sautéed Chikun Shreds for the
chickpeas. Already looking forward to it!!
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Before Big
Solid left, we had one of his favorite dishes and that’s just a plain ole
vegetable stir-fry with sautéed ‘chikun’. It’s such a quick and easy meal and
so very good. We keep at least two batches of The Gentle Chef’s Chikun Shreds
on hand at all times. That stuff is outstanding.
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And last but
not least, of course, we had our Vegan Night at Gigi’s last night. Our hostess,
Gigi, opened her home, heart and kitchen to us yet again as she and her husband
Kevin wind down their lives her in Mississippi. Our loss will be Dallas’ gain
in the coming year. We are planning one final hurrah in December. Here’s Gigi
in all her glorious self.
The Elf took a
big old pan of Cauliflower Fried Rice with, you guess it, those pesky Chikun
Shreds, a peanut butter pie and a lime tart. We thought the tart was going to
be an EPIC FAIL but we salvaged it from the VitaMix and finished it off in the
Cuisinart. We really struggle with our VM…wish someone in town gave lessons!
There were about 12 folks gathered to eat good vegan food, make new friends and
enjoy the camaraderie.
This is what
was left of the Cauliflower Fried Rice
The Peanut
Butter pie which was veganized after seeing a recipe on Facebook. The pie
itself is vegan but the recipe calls for a chocolate ganache that uses heavy
cream. All we did was make a ganache from 16 oz of dairy free chocolate chips,
a can of full fat coconut milk (heated and poured over the chips) and a wee bit of
vanilla. This picture was taken before all of it was consumed.
And finally, the
Lime Tart. Not our favorite but we were sick of it before we even tasted it! Everyone
else seemed to like it as there was not a piece left to bring home. The Elf
used a combination of recipes for this tart, so rather than confuse folks with
all those links, we’ll post the recipe next week. And is The Elf's wont, there is a story behind this tart.
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During this
Thanksgiving season, Mail Order Annie (appearing as Locohontas) wishes every
one of The Elf’s readers the very best of holidays. We have so much to be
thankful for so let’s rejoice in our blessings and DO EPIC!!
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