Wednesday, June 11, 2008

While the Cat is Away


...the mice play! My husband took a nine day hiatus to Colorado to grade AP essays (paid, thankfully), which left me with free range in the kitchen this past week! I made several things that don't get a photo, mostly because they were re-dos, but here are some of the new things I tried!

First up, this delectable Ginger-Macadamia-Coconut-Carrot Cake, with coconut frosting, from Vegan with a Vengeance. I made this for my last Veg Group meeting of the year (until the fall, that is). I wasn't happy with the frosting (way too runny) but the cake? Well, here's a comment from someone: "This is one of the best carrot cakes I have ever tasted." And then, "You'd never know it was vegan!" Ha, ha, ha....At any rate, Isa never lets me down with her baked goods (well, rarely), and I was completely pleased with this extremely moist, flavorful cake. Carrot cake and coconut are two things that I just adore, thus why I chose to make it "while the cat was away!" Four stars.

For lunch that week, I ate leftover Thai Chik-Un Pizza (another combo my hubby wouldn't have cared for, because he hates cooked fruit!). Dinner was the following multi-step but fairly easy meal: Indian Wraps from the Candle Cafe Cookbook. I'd been wanting to make this for a while, but since it called for coconut milk (which hubby hates), I hadn't made it yet.

First step, saute four different colored peppers. As usual, they called for more oil than I like, so this part was a little too greasy for me, but still good.
Next, grill or bake (I baked) some extra firm tofu, which was first marinated in a spicy dressing. Pretty good! Actually, not as spicy as I had hoped, considering how spicy good Indian food is.









Meanwhile, add the leftover marinade to a can of black beans with some green onions. Good! (Can't do that with a meat marinade, now can you?)








Then, saute some kale in lemon juice and garlic (yum!!) and cook some basmati rice in your easy-smeesy rice cooker (oh, so heavenly it smelled!). Wrap it all up and enjoy! I used an enormous whole wheat pita bread, which kind of sucked for this kind of a dish, as it was all crumbly. I ended up ripping up the bread and scooping up the filling ingredients, much like you would at a restaurant anyway, except usually with naan or roti. Good stuff! I think maybe even hubby would have approved. Oh well - his loss! Four stars for this one. Loved, the different flavors melding into one awesome mouthful after another.
Here's a closeup of one of those mouthfuls....












The only catch to having an empty house?....No one to help with all those dishes....:P

6 comments:

LizNoVeggieGirl said...

Welcome back!! Glad to read that you're okay, and still cookin' :0) Sorry about the dishes though!!

Lindsay (Happy Herbivore) said...

I usually have that mound of dishes when I cook too!

Wildflower said...

MMM... those Indian Wraps look heavenly! I'm so bummed I had to miss the last 2 veg group meetings! Hope all is well!

Anonymous said...

Everything looks delicious! I am happy to hear that you are able to enjoy some of your favorite foods/flavors for a bit!

Courtney

Anonymous said...

I used that coconut frosting on cupcakes once. I found that the trick was to get it nice and fluffy before adding the coconut. For this to be possible the margarine has to be not too warm, so it beats up nice and fluffy instead of heating up and getting runny. That was my mistake on my first batch anyway and it was runny. But the second batch was fluffy!

Virginia said...

I LOVE that carrot cake. It is my favorite cake ever and I agree that the icing is WAY too runny. I am glad that it isn't just me. I have to add about twice the amount of powdered sugar called for just to get it to stiffen up some, and then it just becomes overly sweet...but I do like things sweet.