Well, today is our actual 7 year anniversary! I guess it's a sign that we've been going out a while, since we had a pretty mellow day together. For breakfast I made us a special celebration treat - breakfast crepes!!! Yum. I totally freak out over how good these are... actually, we BOTH do. Musty eats his with maple syrup, and I eat mine with homemade raspberry jam and fresh lemon juice. Insanely delicious. We also had a huge bowl of apple slices.
For lunch we had "Giant Salad"... since we needed to atone for our giant breakfast. My salad had lettuce, "mirco greens" (sprouts), hemp seeds, yellow & red bell peppers, red cabbage, tomatoes, and carrots - all organic & from the farmer's market!
For dinner I tried something new and made some miso soup with carrot, parsnip, burdock, green onions, zucchini, and tofu noodles... I liked it enough to eat it, but Musty ended up getting some take out! Ha ha. What a funny anniversary dinner. I've never really cooked with Miso before, I am just learning about it. I sort of hobbled together some different miso soup recipes from a couple different cookbooks I've got. The fresh scallions that I added at the end made the biggest difference! By the end of the bowl, I was pretty much enjoying it. I also made us each a huge mound of collards.
Also, like Jess & Webly, I'll list out our planned vegan menu for Thanksgiving... My aunt L & I came up with this. There will also be a turkey for all the non-veggies, but this is the vegan's menu:
Stuffed Collard Greens with Zesty Tomato Sauce
Garlicky Brussel Sprouts (VwaV)
Mashed Potatoes
Veggie Gravy
Peas or Green Beans
Roasted Butternut Squash
Veggie Stuffing
Whole Soy Vanilla Bean Frozen Yogurt
Pumpkin Pie
Pear & Cranberry Tart
Holy Yum! I can't wait!
I just surfed on into your blog for the first time, and wow! You have some great stuff going on here. I haven't tried making crepes since I became vegan--haven't figured out what the best way would be to replace the egg--but your breakfast makes my mouth water. And your lunch salad... so beautiful, and you know it's just packed full of healthy goodness. I'm going to link you over at my blog, and see you often! Cheers!
ReplyDeleteThat salad looks amazing; my mouth is watering looking at it. Great colors!
ReplyDeleteI have had some terrible failures with miso in the past. It is really tough to learn which type of miso to use and how to get the flavors right. For soups, I think it really helps the flavor to make a simple broth by soaking kombu seaweed in water for a few hours or cooking it for 10 minutes before making the rest of the soup. Also, I tend to stick to the lighter misos and don't add nearly as much as some recipes call for -- usually only 3 Tbsp. miso for 5-6 cups liquid. I think the strong miso soups that have lots of miso must be an acquired taste!
Some other things I use miso for... I really like the stewed tofu and potatoes dish in VwaV. Changes I made were to use fewer mushrooms (seems like it would be just fine without them, too), use a little less tofu (and I also make sure I use very fresh tofu because it is not really marinated in anything in this dish), and I add the miso at the end (the recipe has you cooking it, but miso should not be cooked or all of the benefits are lost). Usually I make greens to have with that stew since there aren't any in the stew itself. I also make a pesto with basil, toasted walnuts, oil, and 1-2 Tbsp. miso, that is really good.
As you might have seen, I recently tried stuffed collard - so good! They're such a hearty, good for you, wrapping~
ReplyDeleteWhat type of veggie gravy do you use/make? I was going to use the tofurkey one, but I decided to buy the smaller roast that didn't come with it. I picked up a box of Pacific mushroom gravy for Thomas, but I wanted to try something new, as well..
Hi Laura!
ReplyDeleteWow, thanks for the nice comments! For crepes, I use a slightly modified version of the recipe in VwaV. The recipe in there is for savory dinner crepes, so I just reduced the salt and maybe changed one or two other little things, to make them more "breakfasty". If you have VwaV, I really, really recommend that recipe. It's amazing how they taste 100% like non-vegan crepes!
Hi Jen!
Awesome! thanks for all the miso info. Yes, I agree, I used less miso than all the recipes in my cookbooks called for. I also did the Kombu broth thing, which was neat. I hadn't ever done that before. I used a "mellow white miso"... which seemed like a better place to start than "deep red miso." :)
Also, I've made that recipe from VwaV a long time ago, but I think I'll try it again with your modifications. I also recall that it really needed veggies with it. Thanks for all the ideas!
Hi Jess!
Stuffed collards really are cool. It's neat how easy it is to turn them into wrappers, isn't it?
I'm ashamed to admit that in the past few years I've always just used Hain's instant vegan gravy mix for vegan gravy. This year I am considering making the Punk Rock Gravy or Mighty Miso gravy... not sure. Or I might just use that instant stuff again... I suppose I'll probably make both - one instant and one homemade. That way I'll have a back up if I don't prefer one!
:) Amey