BBQ Tempeh Pizza

I needed to use my sourdough starter Tuesday night (or else throw it out), so I whipped up this BBQ Tempeh Pizza:



I'd marinated some tempeh in a mixture with soy sauce, barbecue sauce, vegan Worchestershire sauce, and probably some other spices I can't remember right now. Then, I pan-fried it in a little more olive oil and coated with more BBQ sauce. The "cheese" is just a basic nutritional yeast cheese sauce. Then there's black olives and baby spinach.

The crust is made from starter, whole wheat pastry flour, olive oil, and salt. Unfortunately, since the starter is fed with sugar each week, the crust was a little too sweet for a pizza. I mean, it was okay. I definately ate the whole pie (not all at once! I just finished the leftovers tonight). That starter, which is commonly known as Friendship Starter because it's passed down from friend to friend (or in my case from my grandma to my mom to me), is better used in sweets like cinnamon rolls.

I'm going out of town this weekend, by the way. So I doubt I'll be blogging tomorrow since I'm leaving after work. And I won't be back until Sunday. I'm going to visit my boyfriend in Nashville. We're going to Mellow Mushroom and I'm so excited! We don't have one here and I've heard they have tempeh and tofu as pizza toppings. I'll let you know how that turns out.

For now, I leave you with this. It's a stolen survey from Chocolate Covered Vegan's blog:

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was a few month shy of graduating from high school in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I was probably spending all my time with my best friend Sheridan, making home movies of ourselves moshing to Beastie Boys songs. Or memorizing all the words on Green Day's "Dookie" album.

2. Five favorite snacks?

Primal Strips vegan jerky
Roasted, spicy mixed nuts
Cupcakes
Dark chocolate bars
Chips and salsa (or vegan cheese dip)

3. Favorite things to do?

Cooking!
Blogging about cooking!
Working on my cookbook
Playing with my 4 kitties and my puppy-dog

4. What would you do if you were a millionaire?

I would go tio culinary school and open a fancy vegan restaurant, start a vegan magazine, give some to PETA, buy a hybrid car, and move somewhere really cool where they have lots of vegan options.

Good Gravy!

For the past couple days, I've been having whole wheat biscuits with sausage soymilk gravy for breakfast.



Now, you may be asking yourself, "How does Bianca have the time to make a fancy breakfast like that before work each morning?" And even if you weren't, I'm going to tell you anyway. Each Sunday night, I whip up a big batch of something that can be easily heated up throughout the week for a quick but satisfying breakfast.

In this case, I made a batch of Butter-Soymilk Biscuits (one of my cookbook recipes), but I substituted whole wheat pastry flour in the recipe for the first time and I was pretty impressed. Other than being a little bit more brown in color, they tasted the same as the all-purpose flour biscuits. I kept a few out for the next couple days and froze the rest. I'll thaw them as needed, so they don't get all gross and crumbly.

For the gravy, I made a large pot of soymilk gravy (just soymilk, whole wheat pasty flour, and some spices) with bits of cooked Light Life Gimme Lean vegan sausage crumbled into it. Though gravy tends to thicken when refrigerated, I've been taking a small amount out each morning and mixing it with a little extra soymilk before microwaving it. The extra soymilk brings it back to life. The result is a re-heated breakfast that tastes as fresh as the day it was made.

South of the Border

I had a Mexican day ... well except for the biscuits and gravy I ate for breakfast. For lunch, I had leftover Chocolate-Chipotle Chili that I prepared on Sunday afternoon. I got the recipe from the Urban Vegan's blog (click on the link for the recipe).



If you adore dark chocolate, you MUST prepare this recipe! It's to die for. The chocolate gives the smoky chili a depth of flavor that is unexplainable. It doesn't make the chili sweet as my friend Greg expected. When I told him I was making chili with chocolate, he was like, "Ew, that's disgusting." But then again, Greg doesn't like chocolate (because he is not human).

But Greg came over while I was cooking and sampled the chili. He was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, adding chocolate to chili is pretty common in Mexican cooking traditions.

For dinner, I made a quick Taco Salad before heading out to see my friend Sooj's new band, Tricky Pixie.



Here's what's in it (and the order it's layered in):

10-12 tortilla chips, crumbled
Handful of arugula
Half a can of seasoned black beans (cooked in chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, and onion powder and then cooled)
1/4 can corn
Handful of vegan cheese
one green onion, chopped
3-4 sliced black olives
2 Tbsp. salsa
2 Tbsp. Southwestern Ranch

To make the Southwestern Ranch, I blended two tablespoons of Organicville's Non-Dairy Ranch Dressing (the best stuff ever!) with 1 tsp. chili powder, 1/2 tsp. cumin, and 1 tsp. nutritional yeast. Yum!

Cappucino Cupcakes

My friend Nathan celebrated his 29th birthday last night (his birthday was actually on Feb. 20). We gathered at his house before going out to a few Midtown bars, and I brought over a batch of Cappucino Cupcakes from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World."



Nathan loves coffee-flavored things, so these were perfect. The creamy filling is an espresso pastry creme made from silk tofu, instant coffee, vanilla, and some other stuff. The cupcakes themselves were flavored with two tablespoons of instant coffee powder. I drizzled the cakes with Quick Melty Ganache (also from the cupcake book) and dusted them with cocoa powder.



They were a huge hit. No one at the party was vegan, or even vegetarian. When I told them the cupcakes were made with tofu, they couldn't believe it. I also used whole wheat pastry flour in place of the recommended all-purpose, and no one could taste a difference.

Hippy Dippy

I made this Curried Carrot Dip from the Veganomicon to spread on my Wasa crackers:



It's delightful! And I would never have thought of adding curry to a mix of food-processed cooked carrots. It's also got a little olive oil, sunflower seeds, and garlic. Yum! The carrots are cooked, but when I eat it, I keep thinking I'm eating a raw dish. And it makes me feel all healthy the way raw foods do.

I've been eating two Wasa crackers with the carrot dip every day this week before going to the gym after work. I used to eat Luna Bars and Clif Bars as a pre-workout snack, but then I realized that Clif Bars have like a million calories. They're fine as a meal replacement, like for breakfast. But not as a snack when I'm going to be eating a full dinner a few hours later. Luna Bars have less than 200 calories, so I'll continue to eat them sometimes.

The Wasa Multigrain crackers only have 45 calories per slice, and I'm only using about one tablespoon of dip per cracker. It's enough to fill me up for an intense hour-long workout. Tonight after Fight Club (my boxing class), I'd definitely worked up an appetite. But the dip kept me satisfied through most of the class. There's nothing worse than working out on an empty stomach.

I'll probably be experimenting with other dips and spreads soon ... more to come ...

She Uses ... Tangerines!

"I know who a girl who/ reminds me of Cher/ she's always changing/ the color of her hair/ she don't use nothing/ that you buy at the store/ she likes her hair to/ be real orange/ she uses tangerines."

Remember that Flaming Lips song from the 90s? Well, I don't use tangerines to dye my hair (I use NatureTints from Wild Oats, but that's another story). I do use tangerines to marinate my tofu, thanks to the Tangerine Baked Tofu recipe in the Veganomicon.



It all started with the $1.99 asparagus I picked up at Kroger Monday night. It's the lowest price I've seen on asparagus in a year, so it must be in season somewhere nearby. I had plenty of FarmSoy tofu lying around, and sweet potatoes that were going bad. So I whipped up the Tangerine Baked Tofu, roasted asparagus, and mashed sweet potatoes.

The tofu was perfect (but when is anything from the Veganomicon not perfect)! I'll definately make this again. It's easy and uses mostly ingredients I keep on hand (tangerine juice and zest, agave nectar, lemon juice, soy sauce, oil, cumin). It wasn't overly sweet or citrus-y.



I probably used a little too much olive oil on my asparagus. I drizzled it over the stalks pretty liberally. Tasted great, just probably more fattening than it could have been. Also added minced garlic, lemon juice, capers, sea salt, and ground black pepper. Roasted at 425 for 15 minutes.

The mashed sweet potatoes are from one of my future cookbook recipes. One of my favorite comfort foods!

Love Muffins!

I had Whole Wheat Berry Love Muffins for breakfast!



I used a recipe sent on the Farm Animal Reform Movement's "Meatless Monday" e-mails. It was recipe for the week of Valentine's Day, so the muffins in their picture were shaped like hearts. And they only had strawberries. I believe the original recipe came from "My Sweet Vegan," by Hannah Kaminsky. I figure it's okay to re-post since it was sent out in a mass e-mail by FARM (see recipe below).

The recipe called for one cup of frozen strawberries, and I only had a half-cup of frozen berries left. They were strawberries I'd hand-picked last spring on the Lansing's organic farm in Millington. I picked soooo many last year that I wound up freezing several bags and making five or six jars of strawberry jam. It's a good thing berry season is approaching because I'm on my last jar of jam, and I used the remainder of the frozen berries for this recipe.

I substituted a half-cup of frozen blueberries for the rest. So my muffins were more like patriotic red and blue muffins, rather than cute, red-specked Valentine's ones. But that's okay. Valentine's Day is over, and they were very tasty.

Here's the recipe (note: I changed the flour to whole wheat instead of all-purpose).


Whole Wheat Berry Love Muffins

1 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup evaporated cane juice sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup soymilk
1/3 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup frozen berries, thawed and sliced

Preheat oven to 375, and grease 12 muffin pans.

Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir in soymilk, oil, and vanilla. Be careful not to overmix.

Fold in berries. Pour batter into muffin tins, 3/4 of the way to the top.

Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean.