Pumpkin Pudding

Jay, god love him, has issues with recipes. In that he doesn't use them. Whoever's reading this might be thinking, "But, Maggie, you don't really use recipes either. You're always changing things or throwing things together." This is true, but I have several cookbooks, and the internet, and I look at recipes a lot. I look at other food blogs; I look at random cooking sites; I watch videos from everyday dish and food network. I have a lot of contact with recipes, and even though I almost never follow one to the letter, I generally use them to get an idea about proportions of ingredients, or what flavors might best complement each other.

When I say Jay doesn't use recipes, I mean he really refuses to even look at them. And in terms of complaints about boyfriends, I know this one is minor, but it's super dooper annoying because it can be so wasteful. I'm sure I don't have to remind you all of the pumpkin pie failure soup. There was also the bread that resembled a bowling ball, at least in texture.

The only upshot here is that he lives with two additional people who can generally rescue his unfortunate baking mishaps. The credit on this one goes to John. Jay tried to make pumpkin muffins. Who makes muffins without looking at a recipe? Jay does. They came out really dense and wet, but not altogether inedible. They just needed a little something extra. John made an orange maple syrup sauce and poured it over the top of them, turning them into delicious individual pumpkin bread pudding delights.

BBQ Tempeh and Lemon Dill Coleslaw

This is kind of awesome. John made a special bbq sauce with orange juice and rind, brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar and poured it over some prefab garden vegetable tempeh. Then he baked it with some sauteed onions and peppers, and I made some creamy lemon dill coleslaw.

The coleslaw was just half a head of cabbage, sliced, mixed with some vegenaise, salt, pepper, dill, celery seed, and lemon juice. I like it really lemony so I used the juice from a whole lemon, and just enough vegenaise to moisten it. The lemon coleslaw and the orange bbq sauce made a nice pair, but I wish I'd done something kind of Asian-inspired, like ginger and lime coleslaw. Maybe next time.

Peach Cobbler

What? Stop looking at me that way. There has been weather and we've been cleaning the house and here I am with more food love for you.

This is a peach cobbler. I bought an enormous bag of frozen peaches from my local food co-op and I needed to use it. I was feeling sad about the winter and wishing I'd saved more lovely summer and fall fruit, and then all of a sudden there it was, like a beacon: ginormous bag of frozen peaches! I decided cobber was the way to go because it's so easy.

This one was made with flour and a five grain cereal blend and some baking soda and some soy milk and oil. Basically a rough biscuit dough. I put the peaches in a casserole dish, dumped a cup or so of sugar on top, and then spread the dough around. I baked it at 350 until the dough spread out and firmed up and looked dry. It was delicious and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Speaking of which, I posted something on facebook last week about the sausage apple stuffing and a friend posted a comment with something like "Sausage?! Was it vegan sausage?!" And I responded with this:

"Yeah, I actually am talking about vegan sausage. I dispensed with the superfluous words like soy or fake or vegan when describing my food a while ago. I just expect people who know me to assume, correctly, that I mean the vegan version of whatever I'm talking about."

If anyone reads this, what do you think about that? Do you generally modify the words when talking about your food? I just find it cumbersome and unnecessary. Thoughts?

Also, I added a tag. It's "local." I'm going to go back and stick it on a few previous entries.

Fettuccine Bolognese

I'm calling this a fettuccine bolognese. I'm not really sure what a proper bolognese is, but m-w.com tells me it's a tomato sauce flavored with meat. Well, this is a tomato sauce, and it's flavored with fake meat, so that's close enough.

I made my basic marinara, with onions and garlic, a can of crushed tomatoes, a bay leaf, some red wine, salt, pepper, and a bunch of Italian spices. Then I stuck a couple of Tofurkey Italian sausages in the food processor, ground them up, and added them to the sauce.

I know this isn't terribly exciting, but it was terribly delicious, and it's the easiest way I've found to make a really "meaty" pasta sauce.

I'm going to be playing a lot of catch up this week, I have posts ready to go about the following foods: pumpkin pudding, peach cobbler, homemade bread, bbq tempeh and coleslaw, spaghetti bolognese, aloo ghobi, and (coming up tonight) vegetable samosas.

Stuffed Squash and Sausage Stuffing

My roommate John had a birthday today. We had leftover biscuits and cornbread in the freezer, and a few leftover pancakes from breakfast. John had been wanting stuffing. Easy.

I crumbled up the bread products in a casserole dish, sauteed some sausage, diced apple, minced onion, and chopped fresh sage in a skillet, then mixed all that together and poured vegetable broth over the whole thing. I baked it at 350 for a while, until it looked done, maybe 25 minutes or so.

The squash was pretty easy, too. I sliced them in half, brushed them with olive oil, and baked them until they were sweet and mushy. I cooked some red chard, onions, and garlic in a pan with some nutritional yeast and other spices (I have no idea what I put in there, maybe some Cavendar's?) and dropped a spoonful in the middle of each one. Finally, I topped them with shredded mozarella teese. When John tasted the filling, he asked if it could be his boyfriend. This was an awesome birthday meal.