Big Ol' Cooking Bonanza!!

Finally!

Yesterday I recovered from a week of the food blahs (I've defeated the dreaded lentil soup!!)... and spent most of the day cooking. It was really fun.

I made vegetable broth, followed by a quadruple batch of "faux chicken" seitan from La Dolce Vegan. I really like those seitan recipes in LDV, they're easy to follow and I like their firm texture. So, I've got a few seitan dishes in mind for this week...

Then, I made two delicious recipes from "Real Food Daily," a great cookbook. I made "Butternut Squash & Corn Phyllo Rolls" and "Spinach Phyllo Triangles" using whole wheat phyllo. These were great recipes!! Not quick, but not difficult either. And, since I was in the mood, it was really fun to spend time assembling them.

I cooked them up for dinner and served them with salad, kale (just for me), and applesauce for dessert. The little phyllo guys were quite filling, so I ended up eating my kale at lunch today! The phyllo rolls and triangles were also both big recipes, so we've got lots in the freezer ready to cook up some time in the future. Ahhhh, a tasty meal, waiting on standby!

Next, I got busy with lots of baking! My aunt S came over so that we could make her birthday cake together. It was fun cooking together with her. We made a nice big chocolate sheet cake, using the Vegan Chocolate Cake recipe from Joy of Cooking. Also, we subbed half of the oil with applesauce, and the cake came out AMAZING! She was having a Vegetarian Mexican Feast birthday party, so I wanted to decorate the cake in a thematic way. I was inspired to decorate the cake like one of those beautiful embroidered Mexican blouses... so I did some internet searches... and it came out perfectly! So festive with all the colors...

Then, we made some cupcakes for my brother's superbowl party. S made the "Sexy Lowfat Vanilla Cupcakes" and I made the "Basic Chocolate Cupcakes" from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. This was my first time using this cookbook. I replaced half of the oil in the choc cupcakes with applesauce. Both batches turned out great! There were 11 of each flavor (some of the choccies didn't make it into this picture)

After they had cooled, I frosted half of them with the Chicago Bears team logo, and the other half with the Indianapolis Colts logo.

Finally, I made a batch of the Almond-Apricot Cupcakes from VCTOTW... wowie!!! These are soooo good!! I made these for the yoga book club meeting that I moderated today, but I tested one last night to make sure that they would be delicious (hee hee, I needed some sort of excuse!). Oooh, they are fabulous, it's a great combination of flavors, and I especially loved the almond meal in the cupcakes. Also, I'm not a big frosting person, so I liked these because of their simple fruit glaze and almond sprinkles. I will definitely make these again, and I think you should too! Aren't those red foil cupcake liners pretty?

Tonight's Vegetarian Mexican Feast was simply amazing! My aunt's friend from Mexico made some super delicious rice and beans, both of which were very delicious. The rice even had brocolli and cauliflower in it. Then, we cooked up some of the seitan I'd made yesterday after marinating it in some simple fajita marinade.

Here's a big batch of delicious roasted veggies: onions, zucchini, and bell peppers that my aunts S & L made. mmmmm...

And here's the whole buffet:

beans, rices, 3 kinds of salsa, guacamole, seitan fajitas, salad, roasted veggies, roasted butternut squash, corn tortillas...

And lastly, here's my tasty plate. It was so good that I was extra gluttonous, and returned for a thoroughly unneccesary second serving! hee hee. Mm! I'll be going to bed tonight with a happy belly ... how lucky I am!