Good-bye Summer!

I'd like to say that we welcomed in autumn with some hearty, root vegetable meals, but it was more like a good-bye to summer! It was really nice and cool this weekend - felt like a perfect fall day - but on this first day of autumn it is over 80 degrees! Blech. So I had my last smoothie for lunch and some fresh fruit.

Pictured here is the long-awaited Moroccan-Infused Vegetable Phyllo Rolls, from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan (ED&BV). Since I made that spanikopita a few weeks back, I've been looking for ways to use up the extra phyllo. It's so easy to work with - I'm glad I tried it again! I think I'll try the Walnut, White Bean and Spinach Phyllo Rolls next week.
Here's a picture of those babies going into the oven, glistening with olive oil. Thank god it's heart-healthy! No cholesterol there :) My only complaint was that the recommended sauce was way too sweet. It overpowered the flavor of the rolls. And that's saying A LOT for me, since I have an incredible sweet tooth. Three good stars, maybe three and a half ***





My husband's meal of the week was the Mediterranean Tortilla Pizzas, from Dreena's other book, 'The Everyday Vegan.' These were not quite as good as the phyllo rolls, also because the sauce was too sweet - what a coincidence! The tomato paste in the sauce was just too thick and sweet for us. The toppings were awesome (roasted garlic, artichokes, roasted red peppers, sun dried tomatoes = yum!!) and the thin, tortilla crust was different. A little hard to slice and eat, though - rather messy! Two and a half to three stars ** We made these together - not hard!






We had extra tortillas left over from the pizzas, so we ended up making Veggie-Sizzle Burritos (OK, so I made them while husband watched his football team - how stereotyped are we!) also from ED&BV. These were pretty good. My husband ate the two with the (non-vegan) cheese and went back for a third! We served them with some good salsa. Funnily enough, the Tostitos brand salsa is one of the most flavorful, fresh and simple ones out there! I like my burritos soft, not oven-baked, and I've made something similar myself before, but I was just so happy to have found another recipe that my husband liked. Three stars!***




My muffin supply in the freezer is getting pretty low, since I worked all summer, so this weekend I whipped up some Easy Pleasin' Oat Bars, from Vive le Vegan (yes, Dreena strikes again!). I always add dried fruit, and more than she calls for. They are nice and firm - one of my favs! Three stars ***
I did make the last hummus out of her ED&BV cookbook, which was the Kids' Dynamo Hummus. It has raw cashews, nutritional yeast and flax oil, all great ingredients. The flavor? Outstanding. A little cheesy, beany, and mellow - yum again! One of my favorites. Now that I've made all these hummus recipes, I can't decide which is my favorite? Possibly the olive-sundried-tomato one.

And that about wraps it up for this week of food! I'm off to make another Dreena recipe tonight, one with summer seasonings as we say good-bye to summer and hello to my favorite season!