Surprise! Romantic Acorn Squash

So I have this other vegan book. It's got a cookbook section, but it's mostly a guide to living as a vegan. It's called

The Vegan Girl's Guide To Life by Melisser Elliot.

So in this book, there's a recipe that really piqued my interest.

Apple Sage Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash Pg 166

I decided to make it apple sage quinoa because I freaking love quinoa and I had a huge bag of it from when I went to the co-op and bought it on sale. :-]

So here's what you need for this deliciousness:

quinoa (or rice), powdered sage, salt, pepper, dried cranberries, raw hazelnuts (yum!), diced celery, chopped shallots, chopped apple, olive oil, and some GLORIOUS ACORN SQUASH.

Now, the actual recipe calls for ingredients for 4 servings, but I didn't want to buy TWO acorn squashes because I only want to make a serving for myself...so I got enough ingredients for two servings (each serving is half an acorn squash). 

Alas, acorn squash is super-fun to play with. When you cut it in half, it looks like little orange hearts full of seeds and stringy crap!

Which leads me to explain the title of my blog post. While making this dish, I realized that it would be a perfect romantic dinner. A) the squash is shaped like hearts, B) the meal is so pretty looking, C) It has all kinds of pretty little flavors like hazelnuts and cranberries and squash.

Anyways, I made this little romantic dinner alone in my apartment and kinda got mopey about the fact that I was ALONE WITH TWO HEART-SHAPED SQUASH HALVES. Hahahahaha.

So, moving on with the recipe. You then throw the celery, apple, shallots, and spices into a pan and freaking sautee them with the olive oil.

I have to say, I didn't really like the smell of the sage cooking with the apples. I think it's a personal preference...but still. Smelled odd. I got nervous.

So then you throw in the cranberries and hazelnuts! Yeah!

So while all this is happening, you're supposed to have the two squash halves baking in a 450 degree oven for like 30 minutes. (They get SUPER shiny after this, I don't know why....)

So when everything's done cooking, you throw the quinoa-pile (or rice-pile) into the squash. Then you cover it in tin foil and bake it for 10 minutes. When it's done, it should look like this:

TASTY!

So again, it looks all romantic and shit. So here I am, alone in my apartment and watching 30 rock, with my two acorn squash halves glaring at me.

So I decided to share my other half with Kenneth.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 2/5

Lots of chopping, lots of waiting, lots of baking / sautee-ing.

Deliciousness: 3/5

Surprisingly not too impressive. Although I'm not a huge fan of sage, so who knows. 

Prettiness: 5/5

LITTLE ORANGE HEARTS FULL OF COLORFUL CRAP.

Scone Glory!

This recipe is from none other than…

Vegan With a Vengeance by the beloved Isa Chandra Moskowitz. 

I chose to make:

SCONES pg 42

So, I work at Starbucks. And oftentimes, I can eat a free pastry here or there because it is expired. Unfortunately, the blueberry scones are basically my favorite things on the planet and they’re definitely not vegan. So I decided to make some scones of my own to bring into work. TAKE THAT, NON-VEGAN BLUEBERRY ASSHOLE SCONES!

Isa’s scones seemed easy enough to make, and I had most of the ingredients already.

So first, I made the ‘vegan buttermilk.’ Basically you mix ¾ cup of the milk of your choice (I chose soy milk because it was on sale at Uwajimaya this week! Eeee!) and 2 tsp apple cider vinegar.

It was really weird, because when you mix in the vinegar, the milk seems to like….get chunky and thick. I guess that’s good? It all worked out in the end, so I HOPE it’s good. Either way, I threw it in the fridge to use later in the recipe.

Then, you mix up 3 cups of flour, 2 tbsp baking powder, ¼ cup sugar, and ¼ tsp salt in a big ol’ bowl.

So after you get your hands all flour-y, Isa tells you to mix in 1/3 cup of vegetable oil (I used canola because it’s all I had and I’m a broke ho)…

And then ½ cup of soy cream…

And then the vegan buttermilk chunky crap!

At this point, you’re allowed to throw this glorious dough into piles on a baking sheet and bake the scone-babies in a  preheated 400 degree oven. But my love affair is with BLUEBERRY scones. So alas, I need some freaking blueberries in my scones.

Unfortunately, being a broke ho means making compromises here and there. So. The packet of blueberries I wanted was $5.39!!!!! WHAT?! But sitting next to it was a packet of blackberries for $3.29…. Guess which berry packet came home with me that night?

That’s right. The blackberries seduced me with their plump, fragrant beads of juice and their smaller price tag. What can I say? I’m a sucker for cheapness and juiciness.

So, since blackberries are FUCKING HUGE, I chopped them up into smaller pieces.

It looked like blood splatters all over the walls behind the chopping board (oh, blackberries, how juicy you are!)

MURDER OF THE BLACKBERRIES.

So after getting blackberry blood all over myself, I threw the dead blackberries into the dough.  YUMTASTIC.

Then I put spoonfuls of dough on parchment paper on a baking sheet and I flattened the tops out a bit. I sprinkled sugar on the tops of the scone-dough-piles.

Then I baked them for 12 minutes!

THEN I TOOK A STAGED PHOTO OF A BREAKFAST I MIGHT ENJOY INCLUDING MY BLACKBERRY SCONE DELIGHTFULNESS.

JEALOUS?! YOU SHOULD BE. THAT BANANA IS ORGANIC, AND THAT TEA IS PASSION-GREEN TEA MADE WITH STEVIA. I AM ONE PRETENTIOUS NATURAL-FOODS BITCH.

The scone looked so cute sitting on my plate that I decided to take a close-up picture of it.

ISN’T HE CUTE?!

CAN’T. DEAL.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5

Super easy to prepare, one of the most simple baking recipes ever. I did get creeped out by the buttermilk thing, and the dough was a sticky mess, so I knocked it down a star.

Deliciousness: 5/5

IT’S A SCONE THAT TASTES LIKE IT LEGIT CAME FROM A VEGAN BAKERY. YUM.

Prettiness: 4/5

Blobs of dough, yes. But blobs of dough TIE-DYED with blue and pink because that’s what juicy blackberries do to your scones.

Best Mashed Potatoes EVER (probably because they're Irish)

Yes, yes  - another recipe from Color Me Vegan! I swear I will be branching out.

This dish is called

Irish Mashed Potatoes with Kale (Colcannon) Pg. 120

I chose this recipe because the ingredients are fairly inexpensive and won’t go bad terribly quickly. So in reality, I wasn’t expecting much.

Holy shit on a motherfucking stick. I was IMPRESSED. This recipe makes me want to eat my own hand when I think about it now.

You basically make mashed potatoes the regular old way. You peel and chop up some potatoes, then boil them!

That's what boiling potatoes look like!

Then, while they're boiling to death, you sautee some onions, kale, and minced fresh garlic together.

Onions!

Onions with the kale! [[There's garlic in there now, too!]]

Then, when the veggies are done cooking, you let them chill out while you mash up the now-tender potatoes.

These potatoes are mashed up with some vegan butter and some salt and pepper. BUT. The deliciousness of regular old mashed potatoes isn’t enough to make them IRISH. Irish mashed potatoes must include the kale and onion delightfulness PLUS

boiled soymilk [[or whatever kind of milk you like]] with nutmeg. YUM.

So then, when you mix in your cooked kale/onion/garlic mixture with the creamy nutmegy potatoes, you get this!

AND THEN WHEN YOU GET THIS

 YOU FREAKING EAT IT

AND THEN YOU EAT IT SOME MORE.

So if you can borrow Color Me Vegan from a library, a friend, or if you want to go ahead and buy it (an investment I feel is infinitely worthwhile)

MAKE THIS CRAP. IT WILL MAKE YOU SO JOYFUL.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 3/5

It doesn’t require any magnificent skills to make this recipe, but it does take a while. Probably an hour’s worth of waiting around for this dish to be done. [[Well worth it, though!]]

Deliciousness: 5/5

Definitely a comfort food! Mashed potatoes have NEVER tasted better!

Prettiness: 3/5

Looks like a typical side dish, mashed up potatoes with greens and golden onions. Not eye-catching, but still appetizing!

Beany-Lemony-Potatoey Dish of Gloriousness

Alrighty fools, this one's from Vegan On The Cheap, written by Robin Robertson. [[New favorite cookbook!]]

What's so great about this cookbook is that all the recipes cost less than or equal to $2 per serving. Awesome, right?! Plus, the recipes are fairly simple (inexpensive meals would have to require few ingredients) so they also all seem super easy.

So, I have this casserole dish. And I hadn't used it yet. So I figured....since I'm gonna be forcing myself to try all my cookbooks out, I may as well force myself to try all my kitchen tools out!

I chose to make:

White Beans and Lemon Potatoes with Olives and Tomatoes Pg. 165

First, you chop up the potatoes and sprinkle some olive oil, fresh crushed garlic, salt, and pepper on them. Then you bake the suckers.

The recipe told me to cut the potatoes up into 2 inch pieces...I didn't know if it was supposed to be cubed or what, so I decided to just slice them up. I also figured that would mean they'd cook faster. And circles are freakin' cool.

So while those guys were cooking, I tossed together the rest of the recipe's ingredients. That included some white beans, some fresh parsley (YUM), some sundried tomatoes, kalmata olives, and fresh lemon juice.

I have a thing for fresh green things [[I once ate grass because it looked so freaking green and fresh]] so I almost just ate the bowl of this stuff. IT SMELLED SO GOOD!

So once the potatoes were tender, I threw this delicious green fiesta into the casserole dish and baked it for 10 minutes.

THE RESULT:

RATINGS:


Ease of Preparation: 5/5 
The easiest thing ever. Quick, and all you really do is slap a bunch of stuff together and throw it in an oven.


Deliciousness: 5/5 
Very fresh, toasty, and bright. The lemon juice and parsley combination really brought this dish together, and the white potatoes / white beans creaminess gave it a really scrumptious texture.

Prettiness: 3/5 
A messy little salad, looks kind of like any other potato salad, but the colors are awesomer than usual potato salads might be.

Thanks, Vegan On The Cheap! Definitely making this again. I'll probably put it in a pita and take it to lunch!

Sautauthig (...Say what now?)

Ok, I swear, this will be my final recipe from Color Me Vegan (at least for a while!)

Ok, so this recipe is called....

Sautauthig Pg. 95


Now, what the hell is that?!

It's a delicious polenta-porridge dish that was apparently concocted by Native Americans in colonial times. All it is, really, is cornmeal boiled up with some water and soy milk...

Mix in some blueberries and maple syrup....

Then, you FUCKIN' EAT IT.

For being SO SIMPLE, this is surprisingly delicious. And the odd thing was, I ended up not wanting very much maple syrup on it at all. I kinda wished I didn't put any extra on top. And usually I'm an extreme sweet-tooth (my Starbucks drink is a 5 pump toffee nut soy latte....I like my sugar :-D)

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5 
Super fast and easy, but there was a lot of constant stirring going on.

Deliciousness: 4/5 
I feel like maybe I could have tried a more varied fruit topping, like throwing in raspberries and blackberries too.

Prettiness: 3/5 
It kind of looks like a glob of blue and yellow messiness. A pretty glob, but a glob nonetheless.

Hiccu-mah!

This is another recipe from Color Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.

The recipe I chose is...


Jicama Slaw Pg. 175

Now, I'd never had jicama before. I do remember having talked to someone in a grocery store about it. She had this big brown ball hanging out in her cart, and I simply had to ask her what it was. She told me that it was jicama, and it goes very well in salads. She said it's a refreshing, crispy root vegetable and it's amazing.

So, two years later, I finally found a recipe that made jicama look delicious. It's basically a vegetable FIESTA.

Here's a picture of the delicious produce, just waiting to be thrown together in gloriousity....

The jicama is the giant brown ball on the right.

For this recipe, I peeled the skin off the jicama and then cut it up into matchstick-sized pieces.

YUMMMMMMMMMMM.

Then, as with all good recipes, you combine this fabulous, crispy, light, excellent vegetable with a bunch of other delicious vegetables to create a...

FIESTA OF DELICIOUSNESS X 10THOUSAND

This is about 3 pounds worth of shredded or chopped veggies. Carrots, cabbage, jicama, and cilantro (eee! favorite!) are all hanging out in this huge bowl. Awesome.

I freaked out with excitement and ate a few jicama slices....

Finally, to make this pile o' veggies into a slaw-ish style meal, the recipe asks you to create a dressing for it. Some of the ingredients are lime juice, chili powder, agave nectar, and rice vinegar. I improvised a little because I only had one lime (I probably needed about 4) and no chili powder. I ended up using lemon and lime juice, and a packet of guacamole seasoning I hadn't used. (VERY SPICY!)

It looks like a mess, but it smelled DIVINE.

In the end, I slapped some of this dressing on my pile o' veggies and created...

JICAMA SLAW: THE BEST 3 LB VEGGIE FIESTA ON THE PLANET!!!!

YEAH! I ATE IT WITH GLEE!

Now go make some and eat it with glee (with me).

RATINGS:


Ease of preparation: 3/5
There's no actual cooking involved, but there's a hell of a lot of chopping and slicing and peeling going on in this recipe.


Deliciousness: 3/5
It tastes like a very good, unconventional salad. It's nothing particularly special, except for the fact that jicama isn't a common veggie in many dishes so it's interestingly odd.


Prettiness: 3/5 
Basically just looks like a colorful salad / coleslaw / veggie-fiesta!