Sweet Almond Milk Couscous [recipe]

A short post... I needed a quick lunch/dinner tonight because hubby and I had tickets to see Oasis in concert with special guest (and my absolute fav solo artist) Ryan Adams. I chose this Sweet Almond Milk Couscous recipe I found in the food section of my local paper a few weeks ago. It's actually a Mark Bittman recipe, and it was delicious. As you can see, we paired it with a salad.

For breakfast I made the vegan biscuits and gravy recipe from another one of my favorite cookbooks, Vegan with a Vengeance. I love this recipe... it is sooooo yummy. I love the bean-based gravy... it rocks!

--Sweet Almond Milk Couscous--

2.5 cups almond milk
1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup regular or whole wheat couscous (I used whole wheat)
2 teaspoons grated/minced lemon or orange zest (I used orange)
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 to 1 teaspoon rosewater (optional, I omitted it)
1 cup sliced or chopped almonds
1/4 cup shelled pistachios (optional, I included them)
1 cup chopped dried apricots

This recipe is uber easy! Combine milk, sugar and salt in a pot and bring to boil. Then add the couscous, zest and cardamom. Cover pot and cook for one minute before turning off the heat and letting it set for 5 minutes. After the time has passed, fluff the couscous with a fork and add rosewater if using. Then gently stir in the nuts and apricots. And enjoy! ;)

Vegan Chickpea Patties w/ Shiitake Gravy, Mashed Potatoes

My hubby is home! :) For the past 10 days, my new hubby was in Mexico on work-related business, but he came home today and I wanted to make sure that his first evening home included a delicious home-cooked meal.... vegetarian, of course! :) I chose to make the chickpea "sensation" patties from the book Eat, Drink and Be Vegan... yes, I love this book and have been using it a lot lately! LOL The chickpea patties have been a sensation in the blogosphere ever since the book hit the shelves. And with good reason... they are delicious. My omni hubby doesn't like whole chickpeas, but he does like hummus; I was hoping he'd go for this recipe so I could lose my chickpea patty virginity. He was quiet in the car when I revealed what I was making for din-din... it made me nervous, LOL. I wanted the meal to be special, not unappealing. I started to think I made the wrong choice. But once I started cooking them, he commented that they smelled good... and when he dug his fork into them and took a bite, a reassuring "Oh yeah, these are good" was all I needed to hear... score! :-D I served the patties with real mashed gold potatoes and we smothered both in a vegetarian mushroom gravy I spied at Whole Foods Market. OMG, Whole Foods! That's one of the best things about living with my hubby... he has a Whole Foods just five minutes away. I've been there twice in the past week. My Mecca. I'm a happy woman. :) But back to the gravy... it was awesome but it's not vegan as it contains heavy cream. Not pictured is the yummy salad we had with the meal.

If all goes well tomorrow, I'll be making vegan biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and a new couscous recipe I clipped from my local newspaper for lunch... I'll share the recipe if it's any good! :)

Vegan Biscuits and Gravy

This... I've been waiting for this dish ever since I went vegetarian about 7 years ago. Biscuits and gravy was one of the few meat dishes I truly missed consuming. Don't ask me why. For the first 20-some odd years of my life, biscuits and gravy never even came close to touching my lips. Then, a steady boyfriend of mine--who had a country flair--introduced me to Cracker Barrel and biscuits and gravy. It became a treat, something I only had when we went out to breakfast. It's definitely in the comfort food category. Maybe that's why I missed it so much.

I mentioned briefly a while back that my sis gave me Vegan with a Vengeance for my birthday in February. I can't believe it took me so long to try one of the recipes. Oh, I eyed them all many times over the last few months as I flipped through the pages. They all looked so scrumptious. But I had heard this book contained a vegan biscuits and 'sausage' gravy recipe--aptly titled "Baking Powder Biscuits and White Bean Tempeh Sausage Gravy"--and that's what I had been longing for.

Oh. My. Gawd. This recipe truly is to die for.

The biscuits were divine. The tempeh 'sausage' crumbles were awesome. Put them together... perfection. I'm not exaggerating. Even though I believe I made a boo-boo in the recipe, this dish still completely made my weekend after cookin' it up Saturday morning (especially since I had enough leftovers to repeat this heavenly breakfast on Sunday morning, LOL).

The only thing I'm going to do different next time I make this, is I'm going to add only some of the crumbles to the gravy. The recipe doesn't really say how much crumbles to use. In my haste, I mixed the pureed bean mixture in the entire pan of crumbles, which quickly ate it up. Thankfully, I had another can of white beans and I made another batch of the bean mixture, but it was still very thick, even after trying to dilute it with veggie stock. Therefore, I think most people only put in some of the crumbles, not all of 'em. Which makes sense because then you can have some crumbles leftover to mix in with your favorite spaghetti sauce or something.

I should also mention that this was my first time eating tempeh. I had been wanting to try it for so long but never knew what kind of recipe to make. This turned out to be the perfect recipe for losing my tempeh virginity!!!! ;-p

If you're a biscuits and gravy fan... buy this book and try this recipe. Heck, even if you're not a biscuits and gravy fan, try it... this recipe is the sh*t!

Preview: I made another VwaV recipe tonight for dinner... but I'm going to wait to rave about that one until tomorrow's post. ;)