#57-65

I finally made the bread from Urban Pantry. I did put it together Friday night, and baked it on Saturday. It is a whole wheat and barley mix, all whole grains. I was expecting a bread that would need an axe to cut, or something that would need to be dunked in a gallon of liquid to deal with the dryness. However, this was an incredibly soft and moist loaf of whole grain bread, very much like sandwich bread in that sense, but also a little bland-tasting. To me it didn't feel like a loaf for eating just to enjoy the bread. I give this one a B.


After baking the bread, I also made two different recipes for roasted flavored chickpeas from Peas and Thank You. The pumpkin spice ones were hard not to eat all by myself as a snack as soon as they cooled off. I will enjoy adding these to salads, or just chewing on them alone. They are sweet and spicy and delicious. The lemon-rosemary were not quite as good, but it could be because the flavor is much stronger; these will work better as a topping than on their own and I think might make an interesting addition to an Italian-inspired pasta type dish. The pumpkin spice chickpeas (#58 for you all out there counting) are an A+, the lemon rosemary (59) a B+.

For dinner on Friday and the momentous number 60, I cracked open 30 Minute Vegan Taste of the East again and made the tofu variation of Peking seitan (or Daffy's relief). The sauce was amazing, though I think I may dry bake the tofu before adding it to the dish when I make it again, or I will try the seitan variation, or use the sauce with beans and greens. I'd give this one a solid B+.


We had friends over for dinner on Saturday, home-made pizza, limeade, broccoli salad, and for desert, another new recipe from Peas and Thank You, the almond joy cookie bars. You may notice from the picture that they are in rather abstract shaped bars instead of little rectangles or squares. I must confess, I couldn't wait long enough to take the cookies out of the pan and they broke apart because they were still a bit too warm. My fault! Or perhaps I should blame Sarah Matheny, since the cookie bars were just too awesome. I adore the cookie, chocolate, and coconut combination, and even my company, who confessed he usually doesn't like coconut, couldn't stop taking seconds and thirds. I give this one an A+.



For number 62, I made another East inspired dish. This time it was Japanese-style roasted vegetables. The recipe recommended a tomato, a zucchini, and some baby bok choy, but I had a lot of baby bok choy just waiting for some love. The marinade was slightly spicy and tangy, but it had an odd aftertaste. It was an edible and healthy lunch (as usual, I used about half or less of the recommended oil), but I don't think that I will use this recipe again. This was a C.

For numbers 63, 64, and 65, I made a rather involved recipe for Potato and Chickpea Enchilada Casserole out of Terry Hope Romero's Viva Vegan. It involved making tomatillo sauce (not salsa) as well as pine nut crema to melt on the top of the assembled enchiladas with their filling. It looked beautiful, and it took a lot of effort to get it that way. However, both the Baker and I felt it was lacking something. I wanted a little more chewy-ness to the filling, the Baker said the texture was okay, but that he thought the filling was on the right track, just was a little bland. He gave it a B-, I'm more of a C with this one. Both he and I rated the tomatillo sauce highly (A-), and will definitely make and use that again. The crema was a little off in texture, though I think I glopped it on just a little too thickly and it didn't get the chance to brown properly most of the way through.


Now that school has started, it is likely I will slow down a bit on the new recipes, especially since I've got tons of auditions this weekend. Who knows what opportunities they might bring!