more nomicon nummies.

I felt so sick for most of the weekend, that I wasn't very interested in eating. How sad is that? By Sunday night I felt much better, so I celebrated by cooking some good stuff.
Chickpea Noodle Soup from Veganomicon. It was perfect for a chilly, rainy night. We both loved this soup, it is so flavorful! I'm not very familiar with using miso at home, so it was nice to finally use miso in a successful dish. As you can see, I went crazy with the noodles.



The soup was so easy to make that I was still itching to make something, so I whipped up the Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon.
These. fucking. rock.
I love them so much. They're not much to look at, but the depth of flavor the berry preserves imparts along with the soft, brownie-like chewiness makes these the best cookies ever. Oh my. I want to eat these everyday.

two posts in one day, but one is a cop-out survey

I've seen this food blog survey floating around the internets a lot lately. Here's mine.

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?
vanilla soy milk for drinking (Zen Soy) plain rice milk for cooking (Pacific)

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?
Mmm. I'm not very good at planning. I did purchase ingredients for chickpea noodle soup, so that might happen soon.

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?
salt. melted earth balance.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?
There's been so many! Once I tried to re-create a tofu cheesecake recipe from memory, and I forgot the step where you bake it. Yes, I forgot to bake it. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't setting after hours in the fridge. I was making it to bring to my husband's (then boyfriend) parent's house.

5. Favorite pickled item?
The only pickled foods I like are pickles. Not those sweet kind, either.

6. How do you organize your recipes?
By smearing oily fingerprints over pages in cookbooks. :)

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?
trash, disposal, recycling


8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods...what would they be (don't worry about how you'll cook them)?
tomato sandwiches, tofu scramble, coconut curry tofu

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?
making my own grilled cheese sandwich in mom's iron skillet (gasp! not vegan!)

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?
Purely Decadent Cookie Dough & Sharon's Coconut Sorbet

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?
ah, the mighty stand mixer.

12. Spice/herb you would die without?
Garlic. Does garlic count? If not, then pepper.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?
Vegetarian Times complete cookbook. It's completely useless.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?
Only strawberry, and only preserves.

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?
chocolate cake! or any good vegan dessert, really.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?
I love 'em all, but tofu is used most in our house.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?
Breakfast at night.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?
Dust, and sometimes Miles the cat.

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.
bag of frozen berries, expired tofurky sausage, fillo dough roll

20. What's on your grocery list?
list? what is this list you speak of?

21. Favorite grocery store?
Life Grocery, Harry's

22. Name a recipe you'd love to veganize, but haven't yet.
cannolis

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa's because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?
Yeah That Vegan Shit
Have Cake, Will Travel
Cake Maker to the Stars
... and so many more.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?
Sjaak's Dark Chocolate Caramel Bar. Mmm.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?
It's all a bit extravagant, since money is scarce.

whew.

For once I made it through Thanksgiving with very little cooking. Which is nice, because the time to do it simply was not there. We usually host a vegan Thanksgiving potluck at our house, but we passed that gauntlet on to some friends because... you guessed it...time. I don't have time to clean the house for guests, or cook yummy meals much lately.
My contribution to the potluck was one of the desserts, and rather than do a Thanksgiving/Autumn themed dessert, I went with something everybody likes. Chocolate chip cookies! But I had to go a step further and make cookie sandwiches, with frosting in between. As you might know, my current favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe is Dreena Burton's. I had every intention of making them for the cookie sandwiches, too. Until I realized just how much maple syrup I would have had to use in order to make 50 cookies/25 sandwiches. About ten bucks worth of syrup, at least! So I pussed out and used the pre-made Moo-Cluck cookie dough that we sell in the store. I'm so glad I did too, because it was a real time saver. I made the frosting from scratch, of course. It's the vegan buttercream frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.
Here they are, all ready to be toted away:



We shared Thanksgiving with Ken's family, as usual. We had fun and ate way too much. My mother in law always makes a Tofurky and vegan trimmings, so we were all set. I brought a batch of fresh baked garlic rolls from the Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide, just so I wouldn't feel like a total cooking slacker.



I really can't say enough about these rolls, or Kris' cookbook. So awesome.

I'll leave you with a picture of Ken and our niece Lydia. She's adorable and Ken is pretty cute too, with his pink antenna headband.

tofurky day.

nataliedee.com

I forgot the usb cord for the camera at work, so I can't upload any food pictures. D'oh! I will try to do a real entry tomorrow.
I hope everyone enjoys Thanksgiving!

cranberry sauce from a can

I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving. Geez.


nataliedee.com

We've been really busy this week, so there have been no exciting kitchen experiments. But Christy and I did see Tori in concert this past Wednesday. This will be my 8th (?) time seeing her live in the past 12 years.
Happy Birthday to me!



That song is actually my blog's namesake.
If you want inside her well,
Boy you better make her raspberry swirl...

Okay. Hopefully I can cook or bake something wonderful this weekend.

pure evil.

Miles really is El Gato Diablo. Need more proof?

33 can suck it.

Tomorrow's my 33rd birthday. Whee!
Ken rewarded me for turning 33 by buying me a Natalie Dee shirt I have been coveting for a while:
Cupcake + Multivitamin = Super Breakfast!





From the looks of this picture I need to lay off the cupcakes, rather than celebrate them. But what a sweet shirt!

Also for birthday celebrations, we went to lunch at The Real Chow Baby. What a cool restaurant, seriously. You go through this buffet line and pick out ingredients for a stir fry- rice, noodles, fresh veggies, tofu, sauces, spices, etc. Then you drop it off for the chefs to cook it. They give you the option to put this white stick in it that means, "I'm allergic or vegetarian, and require a seperate wok". How amazing is that for a non-vegetarian restaurant?! All of their sauces were clearly labeled on the menu with ingredient lists and the word "vegan" on most (but not all) of them. My final dish was a stir fry with rice noodles, spinach, asparagus, garlic, cabbage and peanuts with peanut sauce and sesame oil.
I highly recommend this place! The only thing though, was it was jam-packed in there at 11:30 AM on a Monday. I can imagine how crazy it gets for dinner.
Tomorrow I'm going to live the high life and use the free dye-job birthday coupon my hair salon sent me in the mail. Ahh, the life.

the day that lunch is mysteriously absent

I had a good time finally getting back into the kitchen this morning. I was in the mood for muffins, but we were low on groceries. Luckily, we had enough stuff around to make the Blueberry Streusel Muffins from the Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide. I really love the simplicity of these muffins. They only take a few minutes to make, and they taste fantastic. Honestly, I enjoy these even more than the Blueberry Streusel Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking, not only because it's a quicker recipe, but because they simply taste better. The topping is nice and crumbly. Mmm. But hey, I'm not knocking the Blueberry Cake recipe. It was great when I made it, just a bit more labor intensive.



And for dinner I whipped up the Mac Daddy recipe from Veganomicon. It was a simple, solid vegan mac & cheese recipe. It turned out very tasty, although not much different than any other nutritional yeast-based mac & cheese recipes I've had. But if you're looking for a good "go to" kind of mac & cheese recipe, it's got all the positives you could possibly want in one.
-cheesy. Or is that cheezy?
-creamy
-yellow

I added broccoli to ours.



It was easy, and the recipe made enough to feed the whole world. Lunches for next week, woo!

kittehs are funneh

We haven't been doing a lot of cooking this week, so I haven't had much to post about. But I did find a funny video of a hungry kitteh!

ken made poundcake!

Ken baked this beauty from Veganomicon. I supervised, but he pretty much did it all. The whipped cream is this stuff, whipped like crazy in the stand mixer. The only way this cake could have been more perfect is if we would have had fresh berries with it.

I think Moe may jealous of the book. He's been hanging around it a lot.


Miles is just a crazy ball-buster, as usual.

pumpkin baked ziti! ...but no Bruce Campbell, unfortunately.

I got it! A copy of Veganomicon is finally in my possession. It's already covered in post-it-note bookmarks.
My very first recipe was not a dessert. Gasp! I know!

I decided to make the Pumpkin Baked Ziti with Caramelized Onions. And it was a wonderful choice, as you can imagine. I wish I wouldn't have gotten lazy and skipped the homemade bread crumbs for the top, though. But hey, it did involve making a batch of cashew ricotta. The cashew ricotta was a nice, rich version of ricotta. I will probably cut back on the lemon juice a bit next time though, because I think it was a bit too strong in the dish for my taste. Feast your eyes on the delicious dish in a mediocre photography format:






We paired the ziti with steamed kale seasoned with red pepper flakes.

Ken wants to make the Veganomicon Pound Cake tonight. How exciting!

true dat.

I have never heard anyone complain more about their job then our mailman at the store. At least he's nicer then the folks working the counter at the post office.


toothpastefordinner.com

pumpkin pretzels et cetera

We didn't really do much celebrating this Halloween, despite it being my favorite holiday ever. So while Ken was busy watching (sleeping during) the live episode of Ghost Hunters, I made a batch of Kittee's soft pumpkin pretzels.



These were very good, but not completely with an authentic soft pretzel taste. I'm pretty sure that's my fault, though as I didn't prepare in advance by purchasing atta flour. I substituted more ww pastry flour for it. I had fun making these! I've never made any bread stuff that required boiling before, other than dumplings. I wish I would have had pumpkin seeds for them, too. But still! Very good with mustard!

Over the weekend I decided to take our favorite butternut squash ravioli and batter/deep fry them. Yeah, I'm fat. Damn you, Paula Deen!



These were awesome with goddess dressing as a dipper.


In non-food news, I'm really enjoying Ken being with me at the store full time. I like getting random kisses throughout the day. Plus, we are going to be able to do more things together now. After we closed up on Sunday, we went for a walk on the Freedom Park trail, which runs behind the store. Good times.