No Whey, José!

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veganmofo kick-off

Published October 2, 2008 Uncategorized 13 Comments
Tags: cupcake tattoo, diana f+, veganmofo

there’s a lot that’s been going on the past few days that need to be accounted for! first off, yesterday marked the first day of veganmofo! which means we’re going to be trying to post as much as possible this month about vegan food…shouldn’t be too hard considering this blog is about vegan food. ha!

ok, second important thing is september 28th was my 22nd birthday! woohoo! josh and i went up to my parent’s house last weekend to celebrate..josh and my parent’s bought me a diana f+ camera and it’s been super awesome experimenting with lomography. for my birthday dinner my parents made me a spinach lasagna with tofu ricotta cheese and my daddy’s super amazing tomato sauce. what made it even more special was that my mom actually helped cook! she doesn’t do much cooking (unless it’s her famous arroz) but she assembled the lasagna for us, and did a kickass job! it turned out so yummy.

third important thing, josh and i went for back to back tattoo appointments on tuesday, and i got this!!

i think the photo speaks for itself josh got one side of his zombie chest piece finished..i’m sure he’ll be posting pictures of it on his blog sooner or later.

the fourth important thing is september 30th was no whey jose’s 1st birthday! one year of blogging..super cool.

ok, and last but not least..today is our 6 year anniversary! i’m planning on cooking josh a surprise dinner tonight for when he comes home from work. we’re a little low on food but we have tofurky italian sausage and some canned tomatoes, so i’m thinking a big pasta dish is in order. can’t go wrong with that!

Pizza bites!

Published September 12, 2008 Uncategorized 8 Comments
Tags: caramelized onions, pizza bites, vegan appetizers, vegan white pizza, vespa

my mommy and daddy came down to visit josh and i last weekend and we really wanted to pump up the level of our appetizers. usually it’s the same old hummus and chips, pretzels, blah blah blah. not that i don’t LOVE that, but we wanted to do something a little more fancy josh suggested we make bite sized pizzas..and i thought it was a great idea. there’s something really amazing about bite sized things, right?

i’ve recently realized that the ingredients to many amazing pasta dishes can easily be translated into a super amazing pizza. so we decided to go with sausage and caramelized onions as a topping. we used our usual packaged dough mix and added some fresh rosemary from darren’s garden. i rolled it out and used a small circle cookie cutter to cut a bunch of small dough circles. then i added some leftover tomato sauce, some sliced tofurkey italian sausages (i fried these a bit first to brown them a bit), salt and pepper, and caramelized onions that i made up while i was cleaning the house earlier that morning. we baked them for about 10-15 minutes and then josh garnished them with some fresh basil. they turned out amazing!!!

the only thing i wish i did differently would be to make more! the 4 of us tore through these little baby pizzas in about 10 minutes. they were super scrumptious and i’ll definitely be making them again. i’ve also had a lot of ideas for variations…maybe bite-sized white pizzas or i was even thinking about doing a dessert version using sweet dough and maybe some fruit and melted chocolate. mmmm yes please!

in other news…..MY VESPA IS RUNNING!!!!!! i went to pick it up wednesday night and holy shit it’s runs so well. it’s like a brand new bike! for anyone who doesn’t know the story of this scooter, let me recap for you:

i bought it 3 years ago…in boxes.
a year later we finally pieced it together and got it running (yay!)
after two months of riding it and one night of forgetting to lock it up outside, it was stolen (gasp!)
our local scooter shop owner tracked it down after the guy who bought it from the kid who stole it brought it into her shop
josh and i went to the guy who bought it (for like 1/4 of what it’s worth with still-wet red spray paint..dumbass) and he gladly gave it back to us (yay!)….in boxes (awww..shit)
josh and i spent months sanding all the paint/rust off and repainting it a gorgeous off-white
in march we asked our friend darren to do a complete engine rebuild (since the old one was blown up, thanks stupid kid who stole it!)
it’s finally done!!!!!! (SUPER YAY!!!!)

i’m really excited…doesn’t it look happy to be home?

local scooter-fixin grub

Published August 30, 2008 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Tags: sun tea, vespa

as some of you might know my vespa small frame is being completely rebuilt after it was stolen around this same time last year. our friend darren owns a scooter repair shop out of his garage and i went down there today to give him my gas tank and to take a look at the progress. my bike is SOO close to being done and i’m super excited..even though i totally missed the season but i will ride that damn thing through winter once i get it back

anyway, darren has a garden and every time we go down there he always gives us some herbs or whatever he has an abundance of.. awesome right? well this time i was on my way out and he stopped me to tell me to go pick some basil. so of course i obliged since who can ever have too much basil? well before i knew it he had gone inside the house to get a plastic bag and he filled it with all of this:

mint, rosemary, parsley, basil, tomatoes, banana peppers, and jalapeno peppers. you know that fresh from the garden smell that veggies and herbs have? i wish i could bottle that summery smell. well my car smelled just like that the whole way home…a mix between mint, basil, and that fresh tomato smell that you just can’t get from store-bought tomatoes.

i’m so excited. i already have a batch of mint sun tea out on our back porch. i probably should have waited until tomorrow to get a full afternoon’s worth of sun but i just couldn’t wait.

this is exactly why i can’t wait to have a house with a yard. apartment living is fun but there’s only so much you can grow in pots. we have a few pots on our porch with herbs and tomatoes, and the herbs really took off but we only got two tomatoes this year…and they were the size of grape tomatoes (which would be good, but it was supposed to be a big heirloom tomato plant). josh always says the reason why they didn’t get big is because they weren’t in a big enough pot..but i’m just so sick of pots, i want to plant them right in the ground damnit. someday though, right? in the meantime we’ll just keep buying veggies from farm stores and getting scrumptious fresh veggies from awesome scooter fixing people thanks darren!

back to school blahasasdjf;O#*$u3

Published August 29, 2008 Uncategorized 6 Comments
Tags: bento lunch box, leftovers, veggie florentine

yup. the title says it all. i just finished my first week of classes for this semester and i realized that 8:30-11:30am classes combined with little to no sleep and little to no food or drink= cranky mccrankum chelsea. josh works every day from 10am-6pm and unless i’m able to come bring him a sandwich for lunch he usually goes all day without eating anything. it’s such a bad routine to get stuck in and i’m sure there are thousands of people who understand the feeling.

when i was growing up my dad always ~~nagged~~ reminded me to eat breakfast every morning. he’s always believed that when you start the day with a good breakfast you’re able to concentrate better and all of that…and i have always agreed with him. i think the only thing that’s been stopping me from eating a good breakfast before class is a) i don’t give myself enough time in the morning and most importantly b) the fact that we have absolutely no breakfast food in the house. nada. zip.

so first thing’s first..buy some breakfast food. but since i doubt i’ll ever drag myself out of bed at 7am to fix some breakfast before my class at 8:30am, i’ll have to be able to bring my breakfast with me. so i’m thinking bagel and cream cheese, granola bar, that type of deal. once i have have that, i should be able to pack it up and bring it with me to class. so now that i have an idea of what to bring, i decided i should get one of these:

bento lunch boxes. in case you haven’t heard of a bento before it’s a style of japanese meals where each portion has it’s own separate container. you may have seen them on the vegan lunch box blog. these lunch boxes kick so much ass because first of all everything is reusable, so there’s nothing to throw away (like ziplock sandwich bags, etc). plus it separates each different food item so that flavors don’t mess with one another AND it all fits so perfectly into it’s cozy little box! yay for food organization! josh is reallllly into japanese culture so he jumped all over this one

another thing that i want to try doing is having prepared meals in the fridge so i can pack it with me when i need to bring a lunch. this summer i babysat for a little boy named emerson and his mom was awesome about having ramekins of pre-cooked green beans, soups, and other veggies and lunch items all wrapped up the fridge ready to be heated up for lunch or dinner. i thought this was such a great idea because sometimes the worst part about making yourself something to eat is, well, making it. so i think i might start doing that..maybe i’ll roast up a bunch of veggies and store it for easy lunches for josh and i.

josh and i really need to start eating more leftovers. we’re horrible about leftovers. anyone else have this same problem? i can’t tell you how much gets wasted sometimes because we just don’t ever get around to eating leftovers. ah i hate it. i will say that our veggie florentine is AWESOME as leftovers.

my grandma doubles and sometimes triples this recipe for big family dinners because we all love it so much. it’s such a yummy casserole with veggies like carrots, celery, spinach, tomatoes, and some veggie burger crumbles. it’s a really mouth-watering and tummy-pleasing dinner. i actually ate the entire container of leftovers by myself over the course of 2 days. i guess some things are just better the next day than others.

so does anyone else have any ideas for packing good lunches? we can take all the help we can get!

branching out

Published August 25, 2008 Uncategorized 0 Comments

josh and i have both started new blogs! maybe you were thinking “man the food looks good but all i really want to do is read about chelsea or josh”..or “hmm i wonder if these two do anything besides bake”…well, we do! in fact while vegan food is hiiiiiiigh up there on our list of passions, we both have several other interests that don’t necessarily involve food. sometimes we want to talk about this sweet knitting pattern i found, or some new super geek project josh is making, but we don’t think it would be relevant to no whey jose.

soo…behold! chelsea’s new blog seed and josh’s new blog zombi! and yes we realize that both blogs use the same layout, but great minds think alike right? of course no whey jose will still be churning out delicious recipes and other yummy discoveries, so don’t worry

Individual Blueberry Pies

Published August 15, 2008 Uncategorized 10 Comments
Tags: blueberries, blueberry pie, individual blueberry pies, vegan blueberry pie, vegan blueberry pie recipe, vegan pie

the other day josh and i went to pick our own blueberries! we had so much fun when we went to pick strawberries so we figured picking blueberries would be awesome too..and it was! it was a beautiful day and we had tons of fun trying to find the biggest, plumpest blueberries and we ended up with this many blueberries for only $5!

the whole time we were picking them we were talking about making a blueberry pie, since for some unknown reason neither of us have had a blueberry pie before. but when we got home and started thinking about it some more we realized that if we made a whole pie, we would probably eat a piece or two that night, maybe another two the next night, but after that we were afraid it might go bad (since we’re horrible at eating leftovers). so instead we decided to make individual blueberry pies in small ramekins!

the filling consisted of mashed and whole blueberries, sugar, water, lemon juice, a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg, and some flour to thicken it up. we based the crust off of a recipe from vegan planet, just a basic “butter” crust.

here’s josh doing our usual routine of watching our baked goodies baking. olly was curious too

we were super excited for these to come out of the oven!

as you can see josh got a little fancy with the pie crusts. i love a guy who can make pretty leaf designs to place on top of a beautiful little blueberry pie :) these were reallllly easy to make and they perfectly satisfied our blueberry pie cravings without having to make a full sized pie. fortunately if you wanted to make a whole pie you can easily double the recipe and it would work great that way too. the filling was delicious! perfectly sweet…there’s nothing like eating blueberries that were ripening on the bush just a few hours earlier. we still have a ton of blueberries leftover which we used for yummy blueberry pancakes, and i’ve got about 2 cups reserved specially for my bakery blueberry muffins that i’ve been perfecting

Bruschetta!

Published August 1, 2008 Uncategorized 5 Comments
Tags: roasted garlic, bruschetta recipe, vegan bruschetta, roasted garlic bruschetta, fresh basil

our herb garden has grown b-e-a-utifully and we have tons of fresh and yummy sweet basil. one of my favorite ways to enjoy fresh basil is to pair it with tomatoes, so i made bruschetta! it’s such an incredibly simple recipe but when you serve it on a pretty platter it looks so fancy and restaurant-y. it’s on the menu at almost every italian restaurant out there and they charge sometimes up to $8 for a plate of it, and every time we order it i’m always like “god this is not worth the x dollars” or “ugh i could make this at home so much better”..so i did. hah!

i’m sure there’s a lot of variations for this delicious appetizer, but i personally favor the simple tomato, basil, olive oil and garlic combo. all the flavors just go so well together and it makes you really hungry for a great big italian dinner! i made this on a whim and i didn’t have a bunch of fresh tomatoes to use so i opted for a can of petite diced tomatoes. i drained them really well in a colander in the sink to make sure all the water was out, then threw them in a bowl and added the spices. i just so happened to have some leftover roasted garlic from a previous dinner, so i chopped up about 5 cloves and tossed it in with the tomatoes. roasted garlic has a more mild, sweeter flavor than raw garlic so that’s why i was able to use so much of it. but now that i’ve had bruschetta with roasted garlic, that’s the only way i’ll ever want it again! so yummy.

ok so then i chopped up a big handful of fresh basil and stirred it in the tomatoes and garlic. some fresh ground salt and pepper topped it all off. so now for the bread. you HAVE to have a loaf of crusty italian bread for this recipe. we were stoked about the roasted garlic aspect of this so we got some bread with roasted garlic in it, which was super good! so we sliced that up, toasted it just a bit, drizzled the slices with olive oil, and topped it with the tomato mixture, which i had chilled in the fridge for about 30 minutes. i’ve found that some restaurants serve the tomato topping cold, and some people are like whaa my bruschetta is cold. for me, i like the contrast of the toasted bread with cold tomato topping, but i’m sure you could serve it room temperature or even heat them up a bit in the microwave and it would be yummy as well.

so yea! if you’re looking for a quick summery appetizer or even a light snack or lunch, this is it.

Beer Sundaes!

Published July 25, 2008 Uncategorized 8 Comments

so josh has been really interested in home-brewed beer lately, so he bought a book about it. in the back of the book there’s all the recipes for the beer, and then there’s a few pages with desserts that you can make with beer..yada yada yada, we made chocolate sauce with reduced stout and caramel sauce with reduced pale ale!!

here’s some shots of josh’s beer reduction factory. for the chocolate sauce, we first reduced some stout until about half the original volume, then added chocolate syrup and reduced again until it was thick and creamy. for the caramel, we reduced some pale ale the same way and then added brown sugar to make a crazy delicious caramel sauce. the end result was amaaaaaazing..you could really taste the beer in the caramel sauce, and at first you’re probably thinking ew beer on ice cream? but no! it was delicious. seriously. beer lovers would have a blast with this, trying different kinds of beers and such.

i will say it did take a bit of time and lots of stirring and checking for all of this to come together, but it makes about a cup of each sauce so we store them in some plastic squeeze bottles to enjoy for later! they go wonderfully on some nice soy ice cream. i think we’re going to be experimenting more with beer in our baking as well..maybe a chocolate stout cake with the stout sauce drizzled on top? mmm yes please!

Phew

Published July 15, 2008 Uncategorized 3 Comments

i have to confess- we’ve been back from vacation for 2 weeks but still have yet to post about it :/ well better late then never, right? we had a GREAT time in florida.. disney world was great even though we had a few problems with that pesky finding food we can eat thing, but we didn’t let that stop us from enjoying our time. we stayed at the disney pop century resort for 2 days and 3 nights, and then we went to venice to stay at my aunt mar’s house for the remainder of our vacation. i grew up in that area so it was really nice to go back and see what’s been going on (a whole lot of nothing).

we were there for the 4th of july, so we decided to rent a boat for the day! it was awesome..my family used to rent boats a lot when we lived there and we would go out on the intercoastal and putz around for the day. it was always so much fun. we even were lucky to be greeted by this beautiful dolphin!

then we watched fireworks on the beach..it was really a super awesome day. so we had a lot of lazy beach days, and it was just what we needed after such a long year of work and school and fantasizing about opening vegan bakeries.

so two days after we got back, josh went on a camping trip with my dad and two cousins. they went last year and decided to make it a yearly tradition. so he was gone for 4 days and i was here by myself, cooking for one. it was a lot more difficult than i thought it would be..mostly because it took me a long time just to get the motivation to cook if it was only going to be for myself! dinner time is probably our most favorite time of day, mostly because we love to cook together but also because we love to make yummy food and enjoy eating it together. so the first night i had put off cooking for a while, and when my stomach started to eat itself i decided it was time to just shut up and cook something for myself. i ended up throwing together this really delicious pizza that came about after many ideas that had to be changed when i realized we had just about nothing in the house to make. it had caramelized onions, olive oil, garlic, a big bunch of fresh oregano and basil, and fresh from the garden sliced tomatoes. it was something that i threw together out of desperation but it was so good that i think i’ll make it for josh next time we make pizza.

lets see…what else have we been up to….well right now i’m in the kitchen cooking up some roasted veggies to make our roasted vegetable ziti. i changed it up a bit and used some organic yellow squash and zucchini, an orange bell pepper, and a yellow tomato. i think i must need whatever vitamins are in yellow and orange foods because i was immediately drawn to them in the store and i was like i HAVE to buy these. my sister made this pasta with squash and yellow and red peppers and she said it was really good, so i thought i’d give it a try. i think it’s a nice twist on the original recipe…more summery perhaps.

i guess i’ll end the post with some pictures from our trip!

Vacation time and some drunken noodles!

Published June 27, 2008 Uncategorized 9 Comments
Tags: disney world, drunken noodles recipe, soy milk, thai drunken noodles, vegan disney world, vegan drunken noodles

josh and i are getting ready to leave for disney world really early tomorrow morning, like 3 am kind of early, and we’re super excited. we went to disney in 2005 and then stayed at my aunt mar’s house in venice (which is where i’m from) for about a week, and it was great! so we’re going to recreate that vacation by doing it again this week.

we haven’t been cooking all that much lately. the intentions are there, as in we bought the makings for a few different meals, but sometimes it’s so much easier to just go out and have someone cook for you. we did however make these bangin’ drunken noodles a few days ago. we like to go to this thai place called “thai diner too” and every single time we go i get the drunken noodles because they’re soooo delicious. the noodles we made ended up tasting a lot like the dish i get there, so that’s always good.

there’s an asian food market near us so we went there to get the ingredients. we found this case of thai peppers and we just loved all the gorgeous colors. we also got a huge bag of thai basil, which is the kind of basil with purple stems and smallish green leaves. that’s pretty much the flavor that makes drunken noodles so delicious. the sauce consisted of tamari, vegetarian oyster sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, and a little canola and peanut oil. we sautéed up some red and green bell peppers, the thai peppers, and some onions and then added the sauce, the thai basil, and a few chopped roma tomatoes. the noodles we bought weren’t exactly the right kind, and they ended up sticking together and causing a big fuss..but regardless we added those into the pot once they were done cooking along with some tofu that josh had deep fried (yum) and stir fried everything all together for a few minutes. the flavor was to die for…

everything tasted really well together..and next time we make it we’ll use the right kind of noodles (i think rice noodles works best) and hopefully it will turn out even better. another thing that we always get when we go to the asian market is these canned soy milk drinks..

it’s totally different from any kind of soy milk i’ve had. it’s sweeter than regular soy milk, and if you drink it super cold or over ice it’s sooo yummy. it was perfect for combating the spiciness of the drunken noodles.

so now i’m spending the day getting ready for the trip. i just made up a batch of the most awesome delicious bakery style (hint hint) blueberry muffins i’ve ever tasted so those will be perfect for breakfast or for snacks on the ride down. oh and i also twisted my ankle the other day so i’ve got my foot in an ankle brace type ace bandage and i’m hoping that it will be better on sunday when we get go to the parks. i’m supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible, but there’s baking to be done!

we’ve also been doing a lot of research about disney world’s vegetarian/vegan food options, and while most of it seems to be glorified boca burgers and fruit salads (there was a website telling what is vegetarian at each of the restaurants at disney and one of them actually said “the fresh fruit is vegan”…a duhhhh), apparently if you call ahead to specific restaurants you can have a vegan meal made for you. there’s even a place that is said to be able to make you vegan pancakes! needless to say we’re gonna be making a call to those fine folks. so we’re probably going to be out of commission for about a week as far as posting goes.. but we’ll be back with lots of pictures of us reeking havoc at the most magical place in the world..sure to be quite amusing.

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