It's art, duh

October is hug a vegetarian month. Bring me my hugs right now people!

In celebration of this lifestyle, and because I feel it is my personal calling to keep the domestic arts from being crushed under the behemoth weight of the drive-through window, I’m going to share how to save money by making your own vegetable stock.

It bugs me that chicken stock costs so much less than vegetable stock. I personally value the life of a chicken more than the life of a carrot, so I think that vegetable stock should cost less. But then, the capitalists didn’t ask me. . .

To keep from reinforcing the grocery industry for over-charging for vegetable stock, I am now making my own at home. You need a slow cooker, which, in my opinion, is one of humanity’s greatest invention, rivaling sliced bread and indoor plumbing.

To prepare stock, I toss together the following ingredients in my slow cooker and then I allow it to cook on low all night. It is pleasant to wake up to the aroma of soup filling your home, and in the fall and winter I love to welcome people to my home with the smell of home cooking. The next morning, I strain out the vegetables (press on them gently to release the juices) and then I feed the potatoes and carrots to my dogs so nothing is wasted. I use the stock in recipes like French Onion Soup, Quinoa Corn Chowder and other favorites. The recipe is very flexible, so toss in what you have on hand. When I compare the cost of an onion, potato, carrots and a few dried herbs to 4 to 5 dollars for 32 ounces of stock, I feel like I am budgeting my resources well by making my own. Plus this recipe tastes a lot better than the store-bought variety, has less sodium and is MSG-free.

Recipe:
one scrubbed potato quartered
one carrot (or a handful of baby carrots)
celery stick
2 quartered onions (sans top, bottom and skin)
½ t peppercorns
a bay leaf
1T soy sauce
Some recipes call for a little bit of torn up nori – a seaweed sheet – I haven’t tried it but it sounds good
½ t salt
Anything else you have on hand that sounds good
Enough water to almost fill your slow cooker. Mine holds about 8 cups. If yours holds more, use more ingredients.

Happy stock making! I’ll share some stock-using recipes in the coming weeks.

BBQ Vegetarian Chicken Pizza baked by Jessica Payne

Ever since I got my first bread machine in about 1999, I have loved making pizza and calzones. Making pizza at home is SO much less expensive than buying it. Most of my recipes are bastardizations of someone else’s ideas. But, this is a recipe that really, truly I totally made up. After seeing meat eater after meat eater devour barbeque chicken pizza, I decided to make one for devotees of a vegetarian lifestyle.  Here you go and enjoy!

Pizza Stone
A well-seasoned pizza stone is a critical part of making a good pizza in a regular oven. I’ve had mine for about 12 years. I had another one, but I could never get the seasoning quite right for it, and so I chucked it. Follow the instructions to season it, and the stone will absorb moisture, preventing the gag-inspiring soggy crust. You can also keep your leftover pizza on it in the fridge.

Crust

Preheat oven to 500 degrees with pizza stone inside.

In your bread machine mix
2 cups bread flour
2/3 cup warm water
about a tablespoon of yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Follow your bread machine’s instructions to make the dough. Mine mixes up dough in just 50 minutes. Yours may take longer.

Sauce:
1 small can tomato paste
1 small can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon dry oregano
¼ generous cup barbecue sauce

Toppings
Cheddar or sharp cheddar cheese
Defrosted and chopped into bite size pieces Quorn or Morningstar vegetarian chicken nuggets (I use the spicy ones)
Slices of red pepper and red onion

Once bread machine finishes mixing dough, roll it into a round crust. Place (carefully, don’t burn yourself) on the preheated pizza stone at 500 degrees, and poke it with a fork to prevent air bubbles. Return to oven for 5 min to bake the crust. Remove pizza stone and crust from oven and cover in toppings. Return to oven and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the bottom of the crust is slightly browned. Slice it up and eat!

I asked my friend, Portia Early (Smobergirl) to fill us in on the smoothie health craze. Thanks, Portia!

This has been one of my favorite power smoothies I’ve ever made since my kick starting in July 2010. I make one smoothie almost every morning for my overall well being. I bought a Vita-Mix blender after a breakup (don’t ask) and it’s been my new boyfriend for about four years making fruit shakes until I worked with an holistic therapist who told me to make a basic breakfast smoothie with a base of kale, any fruit, maca powder, chia seeds, flax, and hemp protein. I’ve been doing that religiously for about a year.

Here’s my gorgeous, chocolate acai smoothie. Acai is a superfruit from the Amazon, and the way it’s harvested does not harm the rainforests. You can find a puree in the frozen section of most health grocery stores in packets from the brand Sambazon. I also use Amazing Greens powder which has acai, as well as flax and maca. So that’s been pretty convenient for my diet. I also got these gorgeous black and red currents from the farmer’s market which add a sweet-tart luxuriousness.

1 scoop Chocolate Amazing Greens powder
1 packet frozen acai puree
1/2 cup currants
1 cup water
3 kale leaves

You can add ice if you want a thicker consistency.

Cheers!~Smobergirl

Its tomato harvest time and varieties from heirloom to cherry are plentiful. If you have an overflowing garden or even a farmer’s bushel, this is my favorite way to keep them from spoiling before you can use them. In a pinch, it also works with Roma tomatoes from the grocery store.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to a low temp, 250 degrees or less. Chop tomatoes into 1 inch-ish chunks and spread in a single layer across a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray (I use as many cookie sheets as my oven will hold). Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake for 6 to 10 hours until the tomatoes resemble plump sundried tomatoes, but are not black and crispy. Store up to 3 weeks in a Tupperware or baggie in the fridge. Serve on pizzas, in pasta or on salads, or eat them like candy.

Happy Boy

Chopped up tempeh

In case you have never cooked with tempeh, here is a quick primer.  Tempeh is a high protein food. It is originally from Indonesia. It is a fermented soy item that comes in a brick. Uncooked it looks a little bit like pressed brains, because when fermented  it forms curds that are then pressed together.  It has more calories than tofu but is much more edible and easier on the gut.

This is Todd’s favorite recipe of all time. He always asks for it. It is the first thing I ever cooked for him, and I lost the recipe for several years before I yielded to his requests to figure out my own version.

Here goes:

Tempeh Peanut Curry Stir Fry

Stir frying veggies

The Veggies:
Almost any mix will do. You need about 8 cups of raw veggies to feed about 4 people. I use:

Red Onion
Garlic
Mushrooms
Carrots
Green Beans
Zucchini

But feel free to try your own favorites.

The Tempeh:
Buy it at either Whole Foods, Sunflower Market, or in the natural food area of some Smiths. I use one or two bricks chopped into 1 by ½ inch rectangles. You can buy extra and freeze it.

The Sauce:
This is the important part and is pretty easy to go wrong, so be careful. The biggest mistake I have made is to add too much sweetener. This is my modification of a recipe by ethnicvegetarian.com.

Sauce

Sauce:
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
4 Tbs. agave nectar
4 Tbs. miso
1 Tbs. sesame oil
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1.5 Tbs. chili powder
1 Tbs Oregano
2 Tbs curry powder (or for a more delicious dinner, substitue Cali’s Natural Foods Curry Paste. If your curry paste isn’t potent enough, add more)
1/2 cup water, more if needed

Instructions:
I stir fry the veggies like you normally would and cook up some rice as I make the sauce. For the sauce, I combine all the ingredients and then heat it in the microwave, not to get it hot, just to melt the peanut butter to make it easier to stir. Stir and taste to see if it needs more spice, it should be very spicy. When the veggies are almost cooked add the sauce, mix together and serve over rice garnished with peanuts.

Final product

Chick pea Avocado Taco Salad

Avocados, also known by the weird nic-name, alligator pears, are in season right now. They were super cheap a few weeks ago, but you can probably find large ones for 80 to 99 cents this week. These big berries are full of unsaturated fats that American diets tend to lack, in other words they are good for you. I wanted to share a couple of my favorite avocado recipes; these are quick and easy and make a great weeknight meal. As you know I’m on a mission to promote dining in to help all my friends save money to spend on art. Even if you are a beginner cook, you shouldn’t be challenged by these easy recipes. They can also easily be made vegan by skipping the cheese and sour cream.

Here goes:
Chick Pea Avocado Tacos

mini tacos in sombrero

Smoosh one, two or more ripe avocados (they are ripe when they aren’t hard) in a bowl. Mix in a tablespoon of lime and chopped cilantro, and as much fresh garlic as you can stand, per avocado. Add rinsed, drained garbanzos from a can. Serve cold in a soft corn taco shell with lettuce, salsa and sour cream. Season with salt.

You can also serve over lettuce for a taco salad. Or make mini tacos (like the ones I made for Princess Kennedy’s birthday) by quartering corn tortillas, baking them till crunchy and then topping with chick pea filling.

Avocado Pesto Pasta

Avocado Pesto Pasta
In a blender or food processer, combine ripe avocados, lemon juice, cilantro and garlic. Blend until smooth. Toss with your favorite cooked pasta. Top with sundried tomatoes and parmesan. Serve hot or cold. If you don’t have a food processor, just finely chop the cilantro and garlic, and then smoosh the pesto ingredients together with a potato masher. Don’t forget to season with a little salt.

Granola

If there is one thing I love to do, it is sticking it to the corporate America “man” by figuring out how to make their products myself at home. I’ve dyed my own yarn, sewn my own clothes, but my primary  talent at replicated mass-produced goods seems to be in the kitchen.

Hungry Dork

Todd loves granola. But I don’t love for him to eat it. It’s expensive, high in fat and calories and something about buying prepared cereal makes me feel like I’m contributing to Satan’s control of my pocketbook, heart and mind.

So, I set out on a journey to make a low fat, nutritious and homemade granola for my baby. Rarely have I made anything that delighted me as much. I’ve been so pleased with it that it’s become my favorite gift to give friends. I’ll be out today at Craft Sabbath at the Main Library from 1 to 5 p.m. with samples and tasty treats for sale. I’ll also have vintage gifts for mom.

 

Satisfied Man

Creamy Tomato-Basil Bisque, mug by Zach Medler

I set out yesterday to feed an addiction. Trader Joe’s edamame hummus – it haunts me. I dream about it. I can’t get it out of my mind. So I decided to make my own. It would be easy, it would be perfect. Edamame hummus, pita crisps and tomato soup was the menu.

The edamame hummus made a big mess. And it turned out mediocre. However, I stumbled upon the simplest, most delicious tomato soup recipe known to man. Go. Make. Eat.

We’ve got a few weeks of rainy April weather left, so pair with a grilled cheese for instant comfort.

This is a vegetariantimes.com recipe:

Creamy Tomato-Basil Bisque
1 tbs. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 28 oz. cans fire-roasted, diced tomatoes
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. dried basil
1 bay leaf
2 ½ cups vegetable broth
1/3 cup half and half or soy creamer
¼ cup chopped fresh basil

Directions
Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic, cool 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, dried basil, bay leaf and broth. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Remove bay leaf.
Puree soup in blender or food processor until smooth. Stir in half and half as you reheat. Season, garnish with fresh basil and shredded mozzarella cheese, if desired.