Say It With Cupcakes
Yesterday at my knitting group we had a little going away party for one of the ladies who is leaving us for a job in Indiana. So of course I had to bring cupcakes! This is probably the fourth time I’ve brought cupcakes to my knitting group and they always go over really well which is good, especially since I’m the only vegan there. I made a batch of my standard chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and I also tried a new recipe for strawberry cupcakes.
The recipe is from the awesome book The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. They are super yummy and have a nice strawberry flavor throughout, I’ll definitely be making these again! And while I was baking and decorating these little lovelies, I was wearing my new Pirate Cupcake Apron that I bought from Dog Bone Art’s Etsy Shop:
And heads up, we’re almost at 100 posts here and we’ll be having a contest very soon to celebrate 
-Kala
So why does John hop anyway?
Way back in March, I gave Kala a copy of the Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry, and at long last we made something from it. The dish of the day: Creole Hoppin’ John and to add a little green I improvised a spicy sauteed spinach. For the uninitiated Hoppin John is spicy black-eyed peas and rice.
It was a very tasty meal and the only tweak I made was adding a bit more heat to it. It was fairly easy although a bit time consuming with soaking the beans and the rice overnight and a longish cooking time the next day. Besides being good the first night it was amazing the second day, I think I might even like it a bit better on the second day. This will be a recipe we will try again in the future.
–Shane
Photos by Kala
We gotta fritatta
This week when we went about planning meals for the week I wanted to make something from one of the new cookbooks that have been coming out. We opted for the Fritatta from Vegan Brunch by Isa Moskowitz. Since I can never leave good enough alone I replaced the chard the recipe called for with spinach, if for no other reason we had a bunch of spinach in the fridge. Beyond the green substitution I followed the recipe as written. It was very tasty, and very easy. The only changes we might make next time is perhaps adding a few minutes to the baking time to get a bit more of a crust to it, and maybe adding a few mushrooms into the mix.
–Shane
Photo by Kala
Anniversary Eatin’
Yesterday was our one year wedding anniversary (yay for us!) so of course there had to be some fancy eatin’ going on. Well, as fancy as Ecopolitan can be For those who aren’t local, Ecopolitan is an organic, raw, vegan restaurant in Minneapolis that serves all sorts of yummy goodness. I had the Not-Cho Cheese Plate which is pine nut “cheese” on greens with bell pepper, cucumber, marinated mushrooms, onion, cilantro, cashew sour cream, and hot sauce:
Shane had the Pesto Pasta which is pine nut pesto on zucchini noodles with tomato, marinated mushrooms, and walnuts served on balsamic dressed spinach:
It was all crazy delicious and usual! We had planned on getting a dessert there but we had a super sucky waitress so we opted for Oatscream shakes at the Wedge instead (I got strawberry, Shane got mocha.) Yay for yumminess!
-Kala
Eden Pizza
Today for lunch Shane and I decided to try someplace new, well new to us anyway, we went to Eden Pizza in the Midway area of Saint Paul. Since I found out that they had a pizza called “Vegan” I had to go and see if it was any good. Since we weren’t crazy hungry, we split a Vegan personal pizza which comes with a thin crust brushed with garlic infused olive oil, red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and green olives. The crust was quite crunchy which isn’t my favorite thing in the world but overall the pizza was pretty good. Next time I think we’ll get something with more of a sauce though, if you ask, they have a marinara that’s vegan (their standard pizza sauce has cheese in it). The also have a Thai pizza that sounds really good, the Thai Mock Duck that’s topped with Thai sauce (we asked and they said this was vegan), mock duck, onion, broccoli, swiss (we’d leave that off of course), cilantro, and crushed peanuts. It’s a tiny place and the service isn’t exactly stellar – no waiter while we were there, just the pizza chef – but I think we’ll be back or at least have a pizza delivered.
-Kala
Big Yummy Salad
I’m not usually much of a salad eater but I had an incredible one the other day at Ecopolitan and had to try to recreate the yumminess. Mine of course wasn’t as awesome, but it was still delicious! I used a bag of greens, red onion, bell pepper, avocado, raw mushroom taco filling, salsa, kalamata olives, and some cashew “sour cream” from the book Everyday Rawby Matthew Kenney.
-Kala
Strawberry Banana Scone
Dear vegan scone from the Wedge, if I blog about you, will you magically regenerate in the fridge so I can eat you for breakfast? Pretty please?
-Kala
Tandoori Wraps
We had this wrap quite a while ago but we just haven’t gotten around to blogging about it. Meals around here have been pretty boring since we’ve been sick, I don’t think anyone wants to see lots of pictures of toast But back to the wrap! The recipe came from this bargain book we got at Half Price Books called Wraps. We paid two dollars for it and it’s actually a very good book, full of yummy looking recipes ripe for veganzing:
Shane made this wrap, it’s fully of ricey veggie goodness and seasoned with bottled tandoori sauce. Easy and delicious!
-Kala
Portobello Burger
This isn’t the prettiest picture ever, but it’s all I could manage this afternoon! This is my breakfast, leftovers from last night’s portobello burgers, and it’s great! The recipe is from Jae Steele’s book Get It Ripe which Shane and I scored this week at Half Price Books for only $8, muah ha ha. We let the leftover mushroom caps sit overnight in the marinade and I think I might like them even better on the second day.
One more thing, I’m writing on the Veganetsy Team blog every Friday now so check out my first post and show it some love, it’s full of owl-tastic goodness :)
-Kala
Spicy Tahini Stew
Isn’t it pretty? And it tastes just as good as it looks! This was our dinner for tonight, the Spicy Tahini Stew from the Swell zine. I ordered this cute little zine recently and just had to make the stew, it has all of my favorite ingredients: chickpeas, tahini, tons of veggies… and the recipe did not disappoint, it was super easy to make and was really delicious. The only mod I made was that I added garlic, but then I add garlic to pretty much everything savory.
If you haven’t bought yourself a copy of Swell yet, you’re really missing out, it’s got a bunch of really tasty looking recipes and it’s only $3!
-Kala
