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 "Corn Chowder in Winter"

I made this soup in the crockpot earlier this week, and it fed me a nice big bowl for dinner that night, as well as several lunches during the rest of the week. The recipe is from the book, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, which I think will become my Bible for cooking during the week.

I'm officially moved in with my hubby and have a longer commute to and from work now... which means I get home later... which means now by the time I cook, the evening is almost over! I hope to find some decent vegetarian crockpot recipes and perfect them to save time on weeknight dinners. I love slow cooking and don't do enough of it, but this is great inspiration so that I have more quality time with my hubby in the evenings. :)

It's also great inspiration to get back into food blogging so I can chronicle my adventures in learning to cook for our dual (vegetarian/omnivore) household.

As for this soup... it was yummy.. and vegan since it doesn't use any cream or milk... it relies on the pureeing of part of the soup mixture to thicken it.

I've got some great recipes lined up for this weekend... my hubby is returning from a work-related trip, and I wanted to make sure he had some good home-cooked vegetarian food to welcome his omni belly home. ;) So stay tuned...

Cashew-Ginger Tofu

Just a quick post to show you what I made for dinner tonight... Cashew-Ginger Tofu from the awesome book, Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. I almost didn't make this because I was feeling lazy and only cooking for one tonight... but I have a beautiful new food processor sitting on my kitchen counter and the thought of using it turns me on! LOL I powered that baby up to make the cashew-ginger sauce for this recipe (and made a little mess too while still learning the ropes of the machine...but hey, I'll learn!). I served it over brown rice that had been cooked in veggie broth. This dish rocked! The sauce was soooooooo yummy. I'll definitely be making this again for my new hubby! I know he'll like it! :)

Oh, and apologies for the bad photo... I'm still trying to find the best photo spot in my new house and as you can see, I haven't found it yet. :(

Mrs. T

Well I did it! I'm officially a Mrs! :)

My honey and I tied the knot at a historic mansion on a sunny and mild Halloween evening in Michigan. I could not have asked for better weather for our outdoor ceremony... I mean, 65 degrees F and sunny on Halloween in Michigan? That's unheard of! LOL Especially when just a few days before it was rainy, cold and threatening flurries! Someone was smiling down on us that evening though, because it was beautiful. The reception was held inside the mansion, and costumes were encouraged... it was a blast. :)

We honeymooned at the Walt Disney World resort, so stay tuned because I'd like to write an entry about my experience eating vegetarian in WDW. And, I'm only two weeks away from moving in with my hubby... once settled, I'll be adjusting to cooking for two and hope to chronicle my endeavors here. :)

Hope everyone is doing well, and I hope to be back to blogging soon! :)

Peeks in...

I didn't mean to just disappear into thin air... really, I didn't! Life has a way of pulling you away from things sometimes, and mine pulled me away from this blog.

I'm not giving up though. I will return.

I'm eight weeks away from my wedding (!) and in the middle of packing things up so I can shack up with my hubby-to-be. Once all that blows over, and I've had some time to settle into my new role as wifey, I hope to blog again. I'll be done with my bachelorette ways and cooking for two so I hope that'll inspire me to post again. After all, I'll have a new point of view to share... vegetarian adjusts to living (and cooking) with omnivore!

First I've got to adjust to just living with someone... I've been on my own for almost 10 years now.

So, if you enjoy my blog... please hang tight. I'll be back. It may not be until the new year, or it may be sooner, not sure. But I do miss blogging so you're not rid of me just yet! ;-p

In the meantime, my friend Erin (also a vegetarian) is blogging about her love of sweets over at Dessert Girl. Check it out if you have a sweet tooth! ;)

Tempeh "marmalade" knockoff

I know!!! I've been a very bad blogger... not blogging in what seems like FOREVER. I only did one post in March, how sad. :( And I apologize, because I'm not entirely sure just how much blogging I'll do this year, with my wedding only 6 months away now. The wedding plans are coming along fine, it's the other daunting tasks (like going through all my crap to get rid of stuff so I can move from my LARGE house into my fiance's SMALL house) that are making my head spin. O_o Thankfully, it's warming up in my neck of the woods and the spring weather has cheered me up a bit.

Anyhoo, you don't come here to read me vent, so I'll get on with the food that I'm actually really excited to post, discuss and recommend! As you may have noticed, this week VeganYumYum posted this mouth-watering recipe for "Marmalade Tofu with Kale and Lemon Pearl Couscous." It sounded divine and looked gorgeous! I forwarded the link to my fiance, with a note saying "This looks awesome, we'll have to try it soon." Today, I found myself needing to cook some tempeh before it expired. I love tempeh, but I'm still learning how to cook with it in recipes. Too lazy to hop on the Net and spend time searching for a tempeh recipe to try, my brain called up the marmalade dish, wondering what it would taste like with tempeh instead of tofu. I went to VeganYumYum and ogled the ingredients again... I didn't have marmalade, pearl couscous or almonds, but I had peach preserves, plain whole wheat couscous and extra mushrooms I needed to use. So I whipped up the marinade as listed on VeganYumYum sans the chili flakes, using peach preserves instead of marmalade... and I just stir-fried some kale with a little oil and green onion until it softened, then added in some mushrooms and garlic to the stir-fry. I took some short cuts and made changes, but they worked in a pinch and my dinner tonight was delicious! Definitely a thumbs up! The marmalade glaze was awesome.

I still want to make the correct "Marmalade Tofu with Kale and Lemon Pearl Couscous" recipe soon, but it's nice to know that the basics of his recipe are versatile enough to accommodate substitutions according to what you may have in your cupboard. So, thanks VeganYumYum! :)