Saturday, January 28, 2012

It's About Breakfast, Allison

Good morning, world.  Yesterday evening I had a glorious time shopping at Whole Foods.  Seriously, you're probably thinking that shopping at Whole Foods should not give me that much pleasure, but it does.  And I got the ingredients I needed to recreate WaterCourse Foods' Amsterdam Hash.  Yes, that is the name of the dish.  Don't get any ideas now, just click on the link to refresh your memory.


OK, so I didn't exactly recreate the home fries... I went with mashed potatoes, so I could have it ready for lunch- or dinner-type meals.  And I also used the no-egg scramble recipe from The Jazzy Vegetarian.  (It's still a tofu scramble, but I kind of like that TJV called it a "no-egg scramble.")

Anyway, I now make an excellent mushroom gravy, and while I've told this to my sister and one of my cousins, I'll just put it out there that you should invite me over for Thanksgiving because of my mushroom gravy.  It is that awesome.

I also made some oven-roasted Brussels sprouts for kicks, and I made a Tofurky breakfast sausage link.  I only ate half of the said link.  I could have done without it, and now I know better.  No need for the fake meat when it comes to this dish.  Should have known that from the WaterCourse version.  All in all, it was a success in my book.  It took me ninety minutes to make everything, but I really didn't mind.  I love that cooking is creativity in action.  I never saw it that way until recently.  The floodgates are open...

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Dipping into 2012

Oh, hi there, blog reader! I didn't see you there. Please, sit down and make yourself comfortable.

It's a new year, and with that comes new goals!

Oh wait, haha, I just consulted my 2012 list, and I didn't include goals about cooking. Anyway, it's a new year, and there are new recipes to try!

After searching for fresh artichokes in San Jose last month to no avail, I carried my craving for artichokes over into 2012. I decided to make the vegan artichoke dip from Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. (I couldn't find any soy Parmesan at Whole Foods, so I used nutritional yeast, and also, I didn't have any paprika to sprinkle on top.)

The result: DELICIOUS! I had it (not the whole thing) with tortilla chips.

Members of The Kind Life website said on the forum board that the dip tastes even better the next day, so I can't wait to eat the leftovers!

In case you're interested...

Ingredients I used:
2 8.5-ounce cans of artichoke hearts
1 cup Vegenaise
1/2 cup nutritional yeast (Alicia's recipe called for 1 cup of soy Parmesan - I only used half because it was my first time using/trying nutritional yeast [mmmmmm])
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped (Alicia's recipe called for 1 garlic clove, but I loves me some garlic!)
Optional: Paprika (well, it wasn't optional for Alicia, but I made it optional, heh heh)
Tortilla chips (Alicia suggested crackers or endive leaves, but I already had tortilla chips on hand)

What I did:
Honored Alicia's directions and then took my own. Haha, that was a 10th grade English class reference. But seriously, I drained the liquid from the artichokes and mashed them in a mixing bowl (tore some apart even more with my hands). Then I added the Vegenaise, garlic, and nutritional yeast. Mixed it all together and put the dip into the baking dish which you see above and baked for 30 minutes at 300 degrees (I'm sure you could use a higher temp, but I didn't want it to burn while I checked Facebook, so I used a lower temp). Devoured a portion of the dip and burned my mouth in the process, but it was worth it.