Wheatball Sub (Sorta-Kinda)

I realized I never actually followed up with the wheatball sub I made a while ago.

The official recipe was from Vegan On The Cheap.


So I made the wheatballs from Vegan On The Cheap (and that adventure can be witnessed here: http://veganspired.blogspot.com/2011/07/meatballsno-wheatballs.html)

I also made the marinara sauce from Vegan On The Cheap and will be posting all about that a little later, when I upload the pictures. You can always buy some marinara sauce, though. :)

Finally, I made the cheezy sauce from Vegan A Go-Go! and that adventure can be witnessed here: http://veganspired.blogspot.com/2011/07/say-cheeze.html)

So have you ever had a meatball sub, back in your carnivorous days? Because if you remember what that's like, it's easy to replicate it with these ingredients. Just put some wheatballs, cheezy sauce, and marinara sauce on a toasted bun. Thanks, Vegan On The Cheap, for such straightforward directions! :)

I could NOT, for the life of me, find vegan sub rolls though. I must have been looking for an hour at three different grocery stores. And NONE to be found. :( If anyone knows of any brands, let me know! I didn't check Whole Foods so I guess I'll try that next time.

Since I had no rolls, I kinda just threw all this together on a plate and ate it like that. The innards of a wheatball sub. :)

Now imagine that on a nicely toasted, warm, wheat roll....DELICIOUS.

It felt so delightfully decadent!

LOOK AT IT UP CLOSE!

NOM NOM NOM.

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 5/5
If only I had found some vegan rolls! Alas, it was still simply DELIGHTFUL and satisfying. The combination of the nutty-cheesy flavor of the sauce with the fresh tomato-y flavor of the marinara with the spicey wheatballs was freaking awesome. No other way to describe it but: Italian Decadence On A Plate.

Ease of Preparation: 5/5
As long as you have wheatballs, marinara sauce, and cheezy sauce on hand, this is easy as HELL to slap together.

Prettiness: 5/5
Now this wasn't on a roll...but I can imagine it on a roll...and it's pretty schmexy.

Meatballs???.....No, WHEATBALLS!

I've been MIA on the blog for awhile....I've had a weird past couple of weeks, so forgive me!

Anywho, I am going to make a WHEATBALL SUB in a few days. To make this delightfulness, I need to make (ahead of time)

A) Wheatballs
B) Marinara Sauce
C) "Cheese Sauce"

FIRST, LET'S MAKE WHEATBALLS!

This recipe comes from Vegan On The Cheap. :)

So to make wheatballs, you will need chickpeas, raw mushrooms, tomato paste, soy sauce, olive oil, wheat gluten flour, bread crumbs, fresh parsley, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, paprika, dried basil, and dried oregano. Yeah, it's a lot of stuff. Get over it.

You're supposed to put the chickpeas, chopped mushrooms, parsley, and minced garlic into a food processor and chop it up till it's coursely ground. I am not fancy enough to have a food processor, so I mashed the chickpeas with my hands and I chopped the mushrooms up really fine, and I chopped the parsley up really fine, and I mixed the garlic into this delightful batter.

After that, you basically mix in all the rest of the shit until all the ingredients are well-dispersed and the smell delights you.

Then you're going to knead the dough! Heehee! The cool thing about this is that you eventually find that kneading the dough will bring out the elasticity of the wheat gluten. The batter will become more rubbery and connected.

Then you're gonna make WHEATBALLS.

If you want, you can just put all the wheatball dough into one giant wheatball.

With this, you could probably play a game of bowling. Unfortunately, the olive oil in the wheatball will make your bowling ball slicker than the other kids' bowling balls, they will all get jealous, and claim you're cheating.

So instead, you can make one tiny wheatball...

And turn it into a clown nose.

Or, you can just use a bunch of tiny wheatballs as legitimate wheatballs, then put them on a lightly oiled baking sheet, and bake them at 375 for about 20 minutes.

You know, do what you want.

RATINGS:

Deliciousness: 5/5 
They taste hearty and have an AWESOME texture. The very Italian-y spices make them taste very homey, comfort-food-ish. 


Ease of Preparation: 2/5
If you have a food processor, I'm sure this is super easy. But I had to chop everything up myself. :(

Prettiness: 5/5 
They're definitely way cuter than meatballs. The combination of ingredients gives it a rich variety of colors and textures. Super fancy looking. 

Vegetable Fiesta Time

So, it's been awhile since I posted. But I'm BACK!

So one day, I went to Ikea with my friend Wanda and bought a giant pot. It was like, 10 bucks. Ikea rocks my world.

After I bought my giant pot, I decided to make soup.

SO HERE'S THE SOUP I'VE MADE! It's from Vegan On The Cheap!

Summer Garden Soup Pg 69

This delightful soup appealed to me because it literally is chock full of veggies. I often crave veggies, especially really hearty ones like carrots and sweet potatoes and squash, so this recipe looked SIMPLY DELIGHTFUL.

So in your pile of veggies, you'll have:

Onion
Garlic
Potatoes
Carrots
Green Beans
Squash
Tomatoes
Zucchini

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS SO MANY VEGETABLES TO APPEASE MY VEGGIE-LUST.

So you're going to chop up the onion, carrot, potatoes, garlic, and green beans first. Mince the garlic, cut the beans into 1-inch pieces. Chop the rest however the hell you want. <3

On a side note, this onion made me sob. I rarely ever sob because of onion chopping, but this one was a real tear-jerker.

I use a few tricks to prevent myself from onion-cries. First of all, I ALWAYS chill my onions. Second of all, I usually open all my windows and chop by a window so the onion fumes go outside and don't get trapped in my little apartment (this is where I failed this time). Finally, I always chop super fast so my onion doesn't get warm and start secreting those stinging chemicals before I'm done chopping it!

There are other tricks, however, to prevent onion-cries:

- Wear goggles
- Burn a candle nearby
- Chop it under running water
- Hold a slice of bread in your mouth while you chop

So after you've finished crying over your onion, you will  heat up some olive oil in a giant pot.

Add your chopped veggies!

While your first batch of veggies is simmering, you will chop up the rest of your veggies.

I think I was supposed to buy a summer squash, but a bought a winter delicata squash instead. Woops! :-]

Anyways, you will have chopped zucchini, chopped squash, and chopped tomatoes to throw into your pot.

Now that you've got that going on, you will throw in your soup stock. I use this better-than-bouillon stuff they sell at Madison Market (it's vegan and tastes JUST like chicken stock!) but you can use whatever you like.

You can even go super-hippie and use your own vegetable stock you've made by chopping up a billion vegetables. Look at you, you little hippie-vegan-freak!

I'm really just jealous, though, because I want to be a super cool hippe-vegan-freak.

Once your soup has been simmering for about 20 minutes, you will add some fresh parsley and fresh basil to the mix. The smells will delight you. :-]

Give your soup a few more minutes to cook, and it's ready to go!

SOUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

(PS: The recipe called for white beans to be put into the soup too, but I thought the soup was already chunky enough with the veggies that the beans would just weigh it down. I may have put some barley into it if I had some on hand, though...:-]

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5
Lots of chopping! But really, since it all goes into one batch of food and it's hard to mess up simply cooking stuff in a big pot, it's overall not that difficult.

Deliciousness: 4/5 
Really satisfying, hearty soup. However, I would probably not have cooked the potatoes in with the first batch of vegetables becasue they got overcooked and mushy. I also would probably add some more fresh herbs to the mix.  A little fresh oregano never hurt anyone!

Prettiness: 2/5 
For being such a veggie-filled soup, this ends up looking pretty mushy and kinda unappetizing. The veggies, being cooked pretty well, don't look as vibrant as they did when they were fresh.

Pho-k You! (Not really, I Love You!)

Having lived in Florida from 2006 - 2010, I was used to seeing signs for Cuban sandwiches, authentic Mexican cuisine, and other hispanic goodies. When I moved to Seattle, I was suddenly overwhelmed with restaurants screaming

PHO! GET YOUR SAIGON PHO! AUTHENTIC PHO! VEGETARIAN-FRIENDLY PHO!

So here I am, my tan just starting to fade and my flip flops gathering dust by the doorstep, when I realize that A) It's getting cold as hell here in Seattle, and B) I do not have any good burrito places to keep my Florida ass warm.

So I decide to try this pho stuff.

For all you people who are not from the West Coast and/or don't know Vietnamese food overly well, pho is pronounced like 'FUH' and it's delicious and eerily addictive. It's basically just an Asian noodle soup with an asston of sprouts on top and a strong bite of cilantro. I easily spent about 20 bucks a week on this shit when I first discovered it. That was one very bad month financially, I'll tell you.

So while I was flipping through Vegan On The Cheap, I saw this recipe called Asian Noodle Soup. I was like 'wuhhhhhh' and then I was like 'WOAH DUDE' and then I was like 'NOM NOM NOM.'

The description said it was based on pho. So I flipped out and fuckin' bought the ingredients for this shit immediately.

Asian Noodle Soup Pg 70

So here's how this goes down.

The recipe asks you to cook some linguine or rice noodles, then drain them when you are done and save them for later. In my world, when you make soup, you just cook the noodles in the broth. So I skipped this step and made the broth.

The recipe calls for vegetable broth. I have this cool vegan chicken broth stuff that I use for all my soups because it's just delicious (and tastes like legitimate chicken broth so it's easy to fool nonvegans). So I made some broth.

How pretty!

Also, I'd like to point out that this recipe asked me to make seitan instead of tofu. I think that since tofu is cheap, and I like it, I didn't see any problem with this substitution.

So the next part tells me to cook up some onions, fresh ginger, and fresh garlic. So I chopped some up and threw it in a pan.

The recipe also calls for a 'neutral vegetable oil' but since this is an Asian recipe, and I have a large amount of sesame oil, I cooked the onions/ginger/garlic in sesame oil instead. Robin Robertson can kiss my ass if she finds this unacceptable.

Then you're supposed to mix the hoisin sauce and soy sauce in with the cooked veggies, then add that shit to the broth. So I did.

After that, you will want to put whatever form of protein you chose into the broth along with the cooked veggie mixture. DO IT.

So I cut up the tofu.

Exciting, no?

Then I threw all that shit into my delightful pot of broth, along with my uncooked rice noodles! I also was ordered by the recipe book to put some rice vinegar and asian chili sauce into the mix, so I FREAKING DID. YOU SHOULD, TOO.

The most exciting part is coming up!

PREPARE THE FANCY GARNISH!

Cut up the green onions!

On top of your soup will also be fresh sprouts and fresh cilantro.

I love to smell cilantro. I wish I could tape some fresh cilantro to my face all day long so all I was breathing was cilantro fumes.

On a side note, aren't ginger roots cool? Don't they look like tree trunks?

And what if....what IF....

WE PUT CILANTRO ON TOP OF IT TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A TREE?!

Ok. Sorry.

And now we're back.

NOW WHEN YOUR RICE NOODLES OR WHATEVER THE FUCK NOODLES YOU CHOSE ARE DONE COOKING, PLEASE PUT SOME SOUP INTO A BOWL THEN TOP IT WITH CILANTRO/SPROUTS/ONIONS AND EAT IT

DELIGHTFUL?!

I THINK SO, BITCHES.

RATINGS:

Ease of preparation: 4/5
Lots of chopping and stuff, but it all ends up in the same damn pot so it's not terribly noticeable if you fuck one thing up.

Deliciousness: 5/5
IT TASTES LIKE PHO-CKING PHO, BITCHES. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED.

Prettiness: 5/5
PHO IS THE MOST AESTHETICALLY PLEASING THING EVER (NO I'M NOT BIASED, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!)

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!