Travelin' hippie slop!

This was our back to Default dinner in hotel room in Reno after Burning Man. Greasy, delicious, hot, didn't come from a vacuum sealed bag, had tons of vegan protein, and someone else cooked it. CHECK!

These are from Golden Flower Vietnamese Restaurant in Reno, which we could see from our hotel room window. It's a big open room that was populated with a bunch of just-post-grimy Burners, so takeout was a nice option.

After an eleven hour Exodus from the playa, and sleeping sitting up in the compact car on the side of Highway 447 from 2am to 6am, and then running all over Reno finishing up Burning Man returns and errands, this was a lovely dinner. Also breakfast before flying out the next morning.

Refrigeration, reschmidgeration! It's amazing how Burning Man can lower your food safety standards. (Another reason I'm glad I'm vegan.)

Whaddya want? WE KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!

To be as responsive as possible to our readers, it's food porn all day here in the dangr.blogspot.com world headquarters!

Clockwise from bottom right: twice stuffed baked potato with Daiya, veganaise with chili-garlic sauce, fried marinated tofu on top. This was leftovers dinner. yay!

TOFU TOFU TOFU! Overnight marinated tofu on the left, same partially baked in our adorable but slow toaster oven. (Confidential to E&K: DON'T JUDGE. The lines were stronger before I turned the pieces over to put them back in the toaster oven. I swear.)

Overnight salt-soaked russet potatoes with garlic and rosemary. Not yet done: finished images MAY follow.

CRITICALLY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
The food porn will continue until morale improves. That is all.

Here's just a list...

Now here's just a list, of some stuff.

Actually, this is from going through and trying to clean up my January 2012 photos. I need to either do a better job of labeling/foldering them, or take fewer. It can take hours to go through and process them when you get behind the 8 ball.

We made Oaxacan chili chocolate cookies (as well as a couple other kinds of cookies) for all of our building staff at Xmas. These had a little heat to them that took a couple seconds to kick in, and were either loved or hated: the building manager loved them; the maintenance engineer had to get his kids to eat them. J and I both thought they were delicious.

I can't remember, or tell, from the image whether these were chives, or fresh basil. Either way it was tasty. 

J loves my flash fried brussels sprouts with garlic, so they are making a repeat appearance on this blog. (Just search for "brussels" in the search box. Even I was a little surprised at how many times brussels sprouts have shown up. Possibly second only to tofu and onions.) 

Sometimes I get a hair up my ass and do things like buy #10 cans of pinto beans and garbanzo beans. Then have to use them. Top portion, clockwise from left: pinto bean chipotle hummus, roasted red pepper hummus, UltraGarlic(tm) hummus; then in larger bottom container is a sushi tofu salad with a pinto bean patty on top.

This is a pretty classic food porn picture from my kitchen: onions, and tofu. Yum.

This is those same onions, fancified a little with fresh ginger.

Nothing too strange about wanting to get the last little bits of olive oil out of your container, is there? 

So why, then, would it be strange with shampoo, even if it requires duct tape? 

Stuffed mushrooms. 

A shockingly tasty vegan airplane breakfast on a Delta flight ATL-SFO. (Love the free upgrades on cross country flights!) 

Lemon zest is photogenic.

Fancypantsy Steakhouse* Valentines Day Dinner

Look, just 'cause we don't do gifts doesn't mean I can't make J a fancypantsy steakhouse* dinner for Valentines Day.

(*Vegan, of course.)

Here are the plates. Clockwise, from the top of the lower plate: grilled marinated tofu "steaks", "creamed" spinach, caramelized onions, and in the center, fresh tomato salad with organic julienned basil from our herb garden. And a dessert wine. Yeah, for dinner: we're sophisticated like that. (Which is clearly further shown in the bottom of the image, by J dressing up for dinner in her very fancypantsy painting scrubs.)

We apparently liked the food. This is after seconds for both of us.

I have to say I didn't like the creamed spinach as much as some past recipes I've made, but it was still pretty good, and J liked it. It was a little sweet for me from the soy milk (I used plain, but next time will go get some unsweetened.)

And here are another couple random things I've been making lately. On the right is a big ol' jar of homemade sauerkraut, which turned out delicious. And on the left, cayenne infused olive oil, with cayenne peppers from my friend L's farm in Kentucky.

Here is some of the sauerkraut plated, along with a tempeh breakfast wrap, the likes of which TSA is so concerned about. We initially feared it would taste strongly of anise, which the mason jar a friend gave us smelled heavily of, but it's actually just a tiny little hint. J's sister A (ummm, let's make her A3) liked it, and a little more biased, I think it's fantastic.

I'm going to continue experimenting with fermenting foods, in part using a recent purchased book I'm very excited about: Wild fermentation: the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture foods, by Sandor Katz. I'd really like to make the red miso on p.60, but am not at all sure I have the patience (or pantry space) to wait out a full year of fermentation. For comparison, the sauerkraut fermented in the mason jar on the counter for about three weeks before I liked the flavor well enough to put it in the fridge.

FOOD PORN! from 1,000 Vegan Recipes

You just can't get enough, can you? C'mon, admit it: you LIKE it when I do three posts in one day with food porn. (And if you ask nicely, you just might get that third post.)

This is another recipe I cooked from 1,000 Vegan Recipes, which I mentioned in a post earlier this month, when I made seitan with chipotle sauce.

This time around, I had some broccoli I need to use, so I considered the broccoli heavy options, and went with Chinese noodles with spicy black bean sauce, on page 239. I largely follow the recipe, though I used angel hair pasta instead of Chinese noodles (I didn't want to pay $4 a box for the noodles at Whole Paycheck, and I had a ton of angel hair sitting around.) I also added tofu, which was a very good call.

Stock shot of stock tofu, just beginning to fry.

Frying the broccoli stem first, since it needs a little more time than the florets.

Did somebody say broccoli florets?

The broccoli canoodling with the tofu. Hey, give them a little privacy, would ya?

Frying up some ONIONS! Who doesn't love onions? Not any reasonable person I can think of!

The onions get a bunch of fresh grated ginger.

Then you add a mix of soy sauce, spicy black bean sauce, chili paste, and cornstarch dissolved in water.

And you reduce it down a bit.

With the broccoli and noodles added.

Overall, it was very good, though I would ratchet up the heat next time.

Tofu Marsala

I had a 40% off coupon at Borders, so I did the natural thing: bought another cookbook. (J and I were just talking, and agreed that we might need to go on a cookbook diet, and get rid of some that we never/rarely use.)

I'm pretty excited about the new book: 500 Vegan Recipes. Here is a nice review of the book.

I made the Tofu Marsala on page 259, and was pretty happy with it. I tried hard to follow the recipe exactly, to give my first dish from the book a fair shot.

When I make it again, I'd definitely add a little more salt and pepper to the flour mix that you batter the tofu steaks in before frying them, and maybe some paprika or cayenne.

One of the few substitutions I did make was using a portabello mushroom instead of button mushrooms. I both like them better and thought the texture would hold up better, and they were quite a bit cheaper at Whole Paycheck.

Dredged in the flour batter mixture, they go into the olive oil. Kind of unattractive, no? Don't worry: it'll get better.

While the tofu steaks fried, I decided to get shitfaced through mixing cheap fortified wines. Actually, the recipe calls for 1/2c. of marsala and 1/4 cup of sherry.

Okay, starting to look quite a bit better.

Added the mushrooms, which actually drop the appearance a couple notches, if you ask me.

With the addition of the cheap foritifed wines. Woo!

Lidded and cooking for another ten minutes,

it results in something real tasty looking.

After flipping over the tofu steaks to ensure they are well cooked on both sides.

Unnecessary mid-process shot of taking the tofu out of the pan:

to dry some of the oil, while I finish up some kaffir lime rice:

to mix it with. Pretty damn tasty! I did add some sri racha sauce, but it would've been fine without as well. I toyed with adding a couple jalapeno slices, but was hungry enough that I just wanted to eat already.