Love Your Neighbor as Your Elf

Well y’all…we have a LOT to talk about this week and some interesting glimpses into the future. We prepared several dishes this week that we’d like to share. If you remember, last week we talked about yet ANOTHER cookbook that we’d actually discovered on one of our cookbook shelves. We can’t BELIEVE we had not perused it or tried any of the recipes. Well, those days are over. The cookbook is Vegan Bowls by Zsu Dever. Here’s the link to her site and book.

http://www.zsusveganpantry.com/2015/09/vegan-bowls-is-now-available.html

The recipe we chose to make was Sambal-Glazed Tempeh Bowl. We are big fans of tempeh AND Sambal, so this was clearly our inaugural elf-fort. So, we got our ‘mise en place’.

You see the cookbook along with the Sambal Oelek, Low Sodium Tamari, Rice Wine Vinegar, Organic Sugar, Lime, and Tempeh (we typically use LightLife tempeh as it’s easy to find). What you DON’T see is the primary reason for the ‘mise en place’! The recipe calls for basmati (or long grain white rice). We always use brown rice and COULD HAVE SWORN we had some but did not. And we were not about to drop everything and run to the store. So, we looked for suitable options (quinoa being one and pasta being another). We opted for brown rice pasta (not pictured). Well, a lovely marinade composed of the liquid ingredients and some water is reduced by half and then the sliced tempeh is added to soak it up for a bit.

Heck, we were already in love, having tasted the marinade…really spicy and delicious. The tempeh is then grilled (or sautéed as the case may be here, since we do not have a grill pan…yet).

The second substitution came as the 'green or vegetable' component of the bowl. We had some wonderful baby bok choy on hand so we went with it rather than the broccoli in the original recipe. This was sautéed along with julienned carrots, sesame oil, tamari, and vegetable broth (which to your Elf means The Gentle Chef’s Chicken Bouillon).

A half cup of pumpkin seeds (pepitas) was toasted and seasoned with Chinese 5-Spice ONLY once again, our 5-Spice larder was bare…so we subbed Berbere (the Ethiopian spice we love). We cooked the Brown Rice pasta twirly things and then put the bowl together.

We could not BELIEVE how good this was. Like we posted on our Elf FB page, if we operated a Vegan/Plant-based restaurant, this would be on the menu!

Next up was a recipe from the book we featured last week, Eat Vegan on $4 a Day by Ellen Jaffe Jones…Delectable Lentil Soup. We are soup fanatics and always have at least one soup on hand for a quick lunch of supper meal. This time, we chose to utilize the convenience of the slow cooker AND, of course, we were missing one of the ingredients (the fire-roasted) tomatoes. We said to ours-elfs, ‘what the hell’ and forged ahead tomato-less. We were also a bit short on the lentils, so used split pigeon peas (aka Toor Dal) instead! See?

We threw all the ingredients (carrots, potatoes, onion, celery, garlic,and spices) into the slow cooker, cranked that sucker up and walked away.

At the end of the day, here’s what we had…a lovely lentil soup with lots of flavor, though of course, you know we add cayenne to everything. Served with some crusty toast and a Pinot Grigio, we were good to go!

AND THEN….AND THEN… it was time to start working on our plant-based options to take to our annual Fourth of July at our BFFs, the Dees. Bein’ it’s summer and all, we made the awesomest dessert ever (arguable, of course) called Summer Berry Pudding. We have used Michael Chiarello’s recipe for years and it’s never failed us.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/michael-chiarello/summer-berry-pudding-recipe-1946806

But, if you Google Summer Berry Pudding, you’ll find a plethora of recipes that are available. We have always doubled the recipe for the berry ‘sauce’ or puree used to coat the bread since the bread does soak it up pretty quickly and there’s nothing worse than running out when you’re only half-way done! In any event, the whole or coarsely chopped berries are heated with sugar until juicy

and then the pudding is layered with the coated/soaked bread. Here’s what it looks like just before the final layer of coated bread is placed on top.

A slightly smaller pan is placed over this top and weighted to smush the pudding together (we used heavy cans). We learned the hard way to place the weighted pudding on a lipped cookie sheet before placing it in the ‘frig for an overnight stay. The first time we did this, we were cleaning out the lower part of the ‘frig for few days. Using some non-dairy ice cream (we love So Delicious Cashew Cream in Cappuccino, pictured, or Salted Caramel) just added another level of decadence to this delicious dessert.

Two other dishes we prepared for our Fourth of July evening were a Red Lentil Pasta with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, steamed broccoli, Delight Soy Chicken Nuggets and Plant-based Andouille Sausage (home-made, of course). Tossed with some lemon juice and EVOO, you have a nice meal

AND

a Tofu Scramble with Zucchini, Orange, Red and Green Bell Peppers, Peas, and Kalamata Olives. We added a touch of White Balsamic Vinegar to give it a bit of ZING and served it with Pumpernickel Toast.

So, there you have the week. It was fun and busy.

NOW, for some interesting and hopefully delicious news that happened to coincide with our growing concern over the AMOUNT of money we have been spending on groceries!! We have never been good planners as we tend to cook by impulse. Heck, we may plan out two weeks worth of menus which all go to hell in a hand-basket if something catches our eye or we decide ‘we don’t want that’. A vegan friend of ours, Gigi Carter, sent us information on a Meal Delivery plan from The Green Chef that includes vegan meals. So, we thought we’d sign up for it to see if that would cut down on the amount of food we buy (and ultimately waste) AS WELL AS provide interesting food concoctions that we might not try otherwise. Starting July 14, we will be receiving 3 days worth of entree meals which include all the ingredients portioned our for the recipe. That STILL leaves us 2 days to cook recipes up from the recent cookbooks we’ve been featuring for our supper/dinner as well as lunches and breakfasts. We will run a comparison with the cost of the home delivered meals (and the rest of meals we will prepare) with the previous weeks of shopping expenses. Hope that makes sense. We also want to share our experience with ease of preparation, flavors/taste combinations and menu variations.

Let’s make this now a Vegan Wrap until next week. In the meantime, always remember to Look for the GOOD, be an EXAMPLE of the GOOD, and ACT for the GOOD as HARD as you can, in as MANY WAYS as you can, EVERY DAY that you can. In other words, “DO EPIC”!

Your Elf

Land of the Free and the Elf

Thanks to all y’all (that’s plural for y’all) for reading the little mini-post of last week…Music City Elf. We had a great response to it! So this week, we want to catch you up on three recipes your Elf made from her new cookbook Eat Vegan on $4 a Day by Ellen Jaffe Jones.

http://vegcoach.com/

So many folks talk about how expensive it is to ‘go vegan’ and truth be told, it can be pricey when exotic and/or hard to find ingredients are listed. So without further babbling on, here we go. There are some really interesting recipes in this book, so we started out with a soup, a breakfast and an entrée. We actually used all of them as a supper meal since we pretty much prepare our own breakfasts and lunch.  Big Solid likes to eat cereal for breakfast and your Elf likes avocado and tomato. We also like to eat at different times, usually depending on gym time and hunger level. You can almost always find a bowl of lentils and a container of brown rice in the refrigerator for a quick, healthy and tasty lunch. So, our first elf-fort was the soup…and the recipe is titled Minestrone with Pasta Shells. We have l earned oh so the hard way to get our ‘mise en place’. Pictured below are the ingredients at the ready.  Dried Kidney and Great Northern beans,

followed by chopped Napa cabbage, The Gentle Chef’s Chicken Bouillon powder (this stuff is the BOMB!), green beans, carrots, onion, garlic, fire-roasted diced tomatoes, celery and whole wheat pasta shells.

After cooking the beans for about an hour, we stirred in the tomatoes,

then the remaining vegetables, bouillon powder and garlic.

We decided to cook the pasta separately after experience has taught us that the pasta will stay al denté if added rather than continuously staying in the soup liquid. We used fresh Italian parsley from our little herb garden and dove in. We really meant to take a picture of this wonderful soup as we enjoyed it at supper but forgot. SOO…here’s a shot of just the soup after we’d eaten all the pasta up. It was delicious although there was one curiosity…minestrone is an Italian soup yet there were none of your typical Italian herbs in the recipe. No basil, no oregano, no thyme or combination thereof. And to be honest, we did add some at the end of the cooking period to boost the already nice flavors.

This soup also freezes well and we have a good meal waiting for us in the freezer. The estimated cost per serving of this soup it $3 per cup (and that’s 12 healthy servings). You can certainly add some crusty rustic bread to make it even more substantial.

The next recipe sounded so good, we jut had to give it a go…the breakfast dish called Chorizo-flavored Scramble. We adore Tex-Mex and all variations on that theme. This recipe has a BUNCH of ingredients it but don’t let that deter you. This dish is outstanding. So, here’s our ‘mise en place’: Onion, Apple Cider Vinegar, Raisins soaked in warm water, Garlic, Cumin, Oregano, Red Pepper Flakes, crumbled Tofu (we always use extra-firm organic), Tamari, Agave, Turmeric, Lightlife Vegan Bacon (a word about this later), and Boca Crumbles.

First, we cooked the vegan bacon

…and we have to tell  you that this is not a particularly exciting and tasty vegan bacon. Seriously…we much prefer (and this recipe gives us the impetus) to make our own vegan bacon using The Gentle Chef’s wonderful recipe. In fact, we devoted nearly a whole blog on a step by step of how to make this Bacon, with Chef Skye Michael’s permission as well!

http://the-elf-in-the-kitchen.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-elf-also-rises.html

Anywho, back to the Scramble. After frying up the ‘bacon’, we let it cool off a bit and then crumbled it up. We then sautéed the onion and garlic

and added everything else. Of course, we’d drained the raisins. This was cooked until really heated through and through.

Then we threw in the crumbled bacon and served over crumbled Fritos (or you could use any tortilla chip) topped with shredded Daiya Vegan Cheese (remember that we DO NOT LIKE the Daiya shreds…get the block cheese and shred it yourownself).

The estimated cost of this dish per serving is $.75 (10 servings). Since we added the Fritos and Daiya cheese, the cost would go up slightly. The recipe does suggest to serve with tortillas, which are much cheaper. We are just suckers for Fritos. Oh! And we probably pumped up the red pepper flakes and added some cayenne…you know we like spicey!!

And, the final recipe from Ms Jones book was another winner…Sesame Bok Choy. We typically get the baby Bok Choy at Mr. Chen’s (our go to Oriental Grocery) but this time, we opted for the BIG OLE Bok Choy. This recipe does NOT disappoint. If you’ve never tried Bok Choy, by all means do. It’s good, cooks quickly and is a change of pace from the same old green stuffs. And, being a cruciferous vegetable, it’s very good for you. Check this out.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280948.php

We chopped our Bok Choy after washing it thoroughly, gave it a whirl or two in the salad spinner thingie, tossed into a large deep pan to sauté along with the carrots, green onions and garlic.  Remember that a little toasted sesame oil goes a long way, so don’t overpower your vegetables with too much…been there, done that.

Bok Choy cooks quickly so keep an eye on it…maybe two to three minutes. See how it cooks down?

We finished it off with some of The Gentle Chef’s Chicken Bouillon powder, soy sauce, minced fresh ginger and agave nectar. The recipe calls for this dish to be served over quinoa or brown rice..we chose pasta.

We also had prepared some Butler Soy Curls with a nice soak in a delicious broth, drained, and then sautéed.

The final dish looked like this.

and it was AWESOME!! Just the Bok Choy recipe with quinoa or rice averages $1.00 per serving (10 servings). So there you have an introduction to some of the recipes from this really cool cookbook. We will try to cook from this book frequently and report out!! AND!! LOOKEE what we just found as we were straightening up the gaggle of vegan cookbooks we have collected over the past 5 years.

As you can see, we’ve already marked a couple of recipes to try—REAL SOON!! And we end this little bloggery with the mention of ONE MORE cookbook. Chef Skye Michael Conroy has a new cookbook out that we just downloaded. He has been working on this for quite a while and we are eager to see if we can even BEGIN to make some of the plant-based seafood inspired recipes he’s developed. Check out this link to see what we are talking about.

https://thegentlechef.com/gentle-chef-cookbooks/the-gentle-sea/

So until next week, we wish you a safe and Happy Independence Day! Celebrate this great country with some great vegan food! AND, always remember to Look for the GOOD, be an EXAMPLE of the GOOD, and ACT for the GOOD as HARD as you can, in as MANY WAYS as you can, EVERY DAY that you can. In other words, “DO EPIC”!

Your Elf

Music City Elf

Anyone on the planet lately KNOWS that your Elf went to a Book Convention the weekend of June 22-25 in Nashville TN. The convention was titled UtoPiAcon and featured authors from all over the country. The featured genres were Young Adult/New Adult, Paranormal Fiction, Fantasy and Supernatural. We primarily went to see one author in particular whose books we love and who we’ve always wanted to meet…Amy Harmon. She is as lovely and sweet as she is beautiful; she delivered the keynote address on Friday morning.

We were so excited to meet her!!

More about ‘Amy and The Elf’ a bit later on, as we had a most excellent adventure.

Now, as most vegans know, sometimes traveling, especially in the South, can be a challenge so we packed up a cooler of food stuffs we knew we’d need…such as non-dairy creamer for coffee, avocados and tomatoes for breakfast, our lemon/ginger/turmeric tonic, and hibiscus tea. On the way through Memphis, we HAD to stop at Raw Girls Food Truck (WE LOVE RAW GIRLS) to stock up on some pre-packaged meals to sustain us in the event we could not find vegan options close to the convention or where we were staying.

We bought some of their wonderful Watermelon Gazpacho, Black Bean Pasta and Pesto with Fresh Corn and Tomato/Jalapeño, a Raw Burger, and Chocolate Ganache. UtoPiAcon was held at the airport Marriott in Nashville and we were staying about 10 miles east. Your Elf spent much of her life in this area so there were relatives and friends to see and we needed to be close to both. Plus, the Elf’s Little Mama is buried in the area as well and it’s been a while since we’ve paid our respects in the form of a yellow tomato (Mama's favorite).

Thursday evening was spent with family and we had a lovely meal at the Olive Garden in Mt. Juliet TN. Did you know that Olive Garden now has online identification of vegan and vegetarian options? Your Elf had a HUGE salad and a breadstick or three. AND, we had one piece of the Chocolate Ganache from RAW GIRLS for dessert…it was yummy!! A planned lunch Friday with a friend and former work colleague fell prey to the rains/storms of Tropical Storm Cindy, so we decided to eat-in at the Marriott. And BOY HOWDY, are we glad we did! They have a Rice Bowl on their menu that was easily veganized by omitting the jack cheese. So, that’s what we ordered. OMG! What a delicious meal! We selected the Brown rice (white optional) with sweet peppers, roasted corn, onions black beans, avocado, ‘housemade’ pico de gallo. It was wonderful! Friday evening, we opted to stay in our room and eat from our Raw Girls selections. We had the Black Bean pasta and it was yummy!! And yes, we did get quite a few 'worm' responses when we posted on Facebook.

And we polished off the Chocolate Ganache. Slept like a log—which is rare for The Elf.

Saturday was a MOST SPECIAL DAY!! We had a lunch date with Amy Harmon!! We were like a teenager we were so excited! We had decided on Ethiopian and Amy, being a food adventurer, was game for it, having never eaten Ethiopian cuisine before. We thought it smart to ‘pre-drive’ to the restaurant JUST to be on the safe side, as we are not that familiar with Nashville. AND IT’S A GOOD THING WE DID!! The first selection turned out to be a dud. The second selection was a bit farther away but we were assured it was quite good. After an initial failed attempt to find it, we did get there and it was quite nice. The place is name GOHA and the food is authentic Ethiopian.

https://www.facebook.com/Goha-Ethiopian-Restaurant-111337537378/

Amy ordered a sampler with a beef stew and your Elf ordered the vegan sampler.

Amy was quite the good sport, eating by scooping up her food with a piece of Ethiopian bread called injera.

The food was delicious and the owner, Dawit Lema was very helpful to Amy about what to order and how to eat. We LOVED our experience there and hope that Amy had a story to share with her family when she got home to Utah on Sunday. So, if you are in the Nashville area and have a hankerin’ for great Ethiopian food, by all means go to GOHA…it IS hard to find so it might be a good idea to have your phone handy to call. We almost missed it. Also, Amy won two awards at the Banquet on Saturday night for her Supernatural series The Bird and the Sword Chronicles. Well deserved because she is a brilliant author.

So, this is a short blog about a food/life adventure and meeting someone we never thought we would! Stay tuned as we catch up this weekend with some great recipes from How to Eat Vegan on $4 a Day! And Other Assorted Good Food Stuffs!

Daddy's Little Elf

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL  DADDIES EVERYWHERE!! And to the children that look up to them with wide eyes, a full heart and not a small bit of respect. If you are lucky enough to still have your Dad, your are indeed blessed. Your Elf’s Daddy has been gone a while now but there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think of him and wish we had ‘just one more day’. Daddy was a P-51 instructor during WWII at the ripe old age of 22, pictured below!

This remains one of our MOST favorite pictures of Daddy getting ready for a flight in his beloved P-51 Mustang at age 84. When he found out there was a Mustang at Bruce Campbell Field in Madison in 2005, he could hardly be still until he got to see it. And, not only did he get to see it, but he got to fly in it, thanks to Stan Musack, the pilot, seen helping Daddy into the plane.

It’s been a slow writing time for your Elf but we are working to get back on track. So, let’s get on with what’s been happening in the Kinky Elfery Kitchen. First off, we have purchased yet another cookbook. This is actually a cookbook we have purchased a number of times but wind up giving it away to folks who say that eating plant-based is too expensive. Over the next few weeks, we intend to prepare several of these recipes to disabuse folks of that notion. It’s expensive if you WANT it to be, just like any eating regimen. BUT, this cookbook by Ellen Jaffe Jones details not only great recipes but also some terrific tips on how to buy smart and economically.

So stay tuned next week as we try out a couple of recipes…we have several picked out, so we’ll see which ones get the green light. And FYI, not only does Ms Jones have a FB page that offers information, but also a website. We hope you’ll give her a looksee!

http://vegcoach.com/

As we mentioned in a recent post to our Elf page, since Big Solid (our elfin hubs aka Larry) read The Starch Solution by Dr. John McDougall, he has been very easy to prepare supper for…yep, a baked potato with all kinds of foodie extras. Shredded Daiya vegan cheese (not the pre-shredded kind but the block cheese you shred yourowns-elf), steamed broccoli, and sautéed mushrooms. Please forgive the paper plate!!

He could eat this every night and sometimes when the hours get away from us, it’s an easy mealtime solution. We have also discovered, thanks to Consumer reports magazine, new pastas made with alternative flours (gluten free-ish). We actually found some of these pastas at, of all places, Wal-Mart. The first one, and our Elfin favorite, is Red Lentil Pasta. It’s really tasty and quite beautiful, to boot. We made a nice supper dish by cooking the pasta and stirring in some sautéed mushrooms and lightly steamed broccoli. No heavy sauce, just a nice squeeze of Meyer Lemon and a wee bit of EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil). Here’s what the box looks like. Take a look at the protein count for those who feel vegans are always protein deficient. And, by the way, this pasta would probably not fall into the inexpensive vegan eating category!

And then the pasta cooked with the mushrooms added.

As a quick aside, we love to buy our mushrooms at Mr. Chen’s Chinese Grocery. They have great oyster and shiitake ‘shrooms by the bagsful/prepackaged at a very reasonable price…much more reasonable that some of the grocery stores in town. Shiitatkes and then Oyster.

And last, the full meal deal with the broccoli added. Not only was it quite delicious but also really pretty!! It did not last long at the ElfinHaus.

The next pasta we tried was the Chickpea Pasta.

Although a different shape than we are used to, this pasta does not cook up as nicely as the red lentil, and we are very careful not to overcook!! It’s a bit on the gummy side but has a decent taste. We added mushrooms, some chopped Plant-based Andouille sausage and Swiss Chard, again with the Meyer Lemon and EVOO.

It was good but we’ll opt for the Red Lentil from here on out. Another quick meal is ‘burger night’ using Gardein Meatless Burgers. This time we topped with Vegan Pimento Cheese (thank goodness for that block Daiya cheese and Just Mayo) and a home ‘growed’ tomato!!

We purchased one of those screen looking thingies to over fry our potatoes in and it works pretty darn good.

Last night, we went to one of our old Friday night pre-vegan ‘haunts’, Kathryn’s Steakhouse. Now that we are both vegan, we were still able to have quite a meal there and see some old friends. Big Solid had a HUMONGOUS baked potato with our own cheese/‘chicken’ and mushrooms. Your Elf had a great salad with our cheese and ‘chicken’ shreds with balsamic vinaigrette on the side.

You’ll notice the croutons piled up outside the place…we are not fans of croutons of any kind, ‘CEPTIN’ Pumpernickel croutons for gazpacho or split pea soup. We have learned the fine art of eating anywhere and making it plant-based. And, finally, this morning, we had our usual slice of pumpernickel toast, mashed half-avocado and freshly picked and sliced Cherokee Purple tomato. As you can see, we almost forgot to take a picture of it before snagging a bite!

To round out this week’s blog, we are anticipating a really fun week ahead both foodiness-wise and personally. Your Elf is heading for Nashville TN to attend a book convention (UtopiaCon) where her favorite author (Amy Harmon) will be delivering the keynote. We’ve long been fans of this talented writer who does not often get to this part of the country, so we are throwing ours-elf into the Element and hitting the trail to Nashville. AND, even better, it’s close to where the Elf grew up, so we get to see some friends and relatives as well. Nashville is quite the food mecca with ethnic restaurants galore and LOTS of vegan options. Not only will be have at least one recipe from our new cookbook (Vegan on $4 a Day) to share with you but also some great Nashville stories and vegan eating as well. Lastly, we've talked about the Elf's Daddy but we would be remiss not to mention what a great Dad Big Solid is. The kids are all grown up for sure but still rely on him for advice and support. He's never led them wrong yet--he has such a knack for helping people see both sides of a decision and choosing the most appropriate one. So, Happy Father's Day to Big Solid...you are the best! Shown here on his 70th birthday with daughter Lindsey Taylor and Granddaughter, Sara Powell. Son Powell and Grandson Benton were there but not pictured.

So, until we meet again, always remember to Look for the GOOD, be an EXAMPLE of the GOOD, and ACT for the GOOD as HARD as you can, in as MANY WAYS as you can, EVERY DAY that you can. In other words, “DO EPIC”!

Your Elf
(portrait by her Daddy in 1951 when she was 5)