Food (Old)

Here you will find some of the old recipes from the blog. I only saved the ones with the most views, plus my favorites.

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SPICY GARLIC BUTTER COOKIES WITH CASHEW GOAT CHEEZE: Makes 20-25 cookies   (modified from this recipe)

Cookies:
1 cup all-purpose flour (unbleached preferred)
½ tsp cayenne pepper (this makes it fairly spicy, feel free to tone it down to even 1/4 tsp)
¼ tsp baking powder
1 stick plus 3 tbsp Earth Balance, softened (I think you could cut this down a table spoon or two, the dough was almost too oily)
¾ cup sugar
5 cloves roasted garlic

Topping:
3 ounces cashew goat cheeze , softened
3 cloves roasted garlic
Agave
Hungarian paprika

Directions:

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cayenne pepper in a small bowl.

Beat together Earth Balance and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the cloves of roasted garlic and beat for another minute or until cloves are incorporated. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture. Mix until just combined. Form dough into an 8″ to 10″ log (approximately 2″ diameter) and wrap it in plastic wrap. Chill dough until firm.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut log into 1/8″ to ¼” slices and fill ungreased large baking sheet(s), arranging slices about 1″ apart (seriously, make sure you leave the one inch, these suckers spread like none other!).

Bake cookies until the edges are golden, approximately 12 minutes. When pulled from heat, immediately indent center of each cookie with the back of a spoon. Cool on the sheets then transfer to wire racks to completely cool.

Meanwhile, combine softened cashew goat cheeze and 3 cloves of roasted garlic in a small bowl, combining well.

Once cookies have cooled completely, add a good-sized dollop of garlic cashew  goat cheeze mixture in the center of each cookie, then spread it out a little bit over the cookie. I made the mistake of just leaving the dollop in the center. If you spread it out you get cookie and cheeze together (yum). Drizzle some agave over each, add a dash of Hungarian paprika and serve.

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Super Simple Chilli

Ingredients:

32 oz. diced tomatoes

30 oz. black beans

15 oz. hominy

1/2 white onion

1 bell pepper (we used the roasted Anaheim peppers from a couple recipes ago)

1+ clove of garlic

1C veggie stock

1 tsp. cumin

1 Tbs. chili pepper

1 Tbs. olive oil

Directions:

1. Heat oil in pot. Add diced onions and garlic.

2. Cook until onions are soft.

3. Add rest of the spices and vegetables. NOTE: if you don’t drain the beans, hominy or tomatoes, just add the veggie stock cube without the water. This will keep the chili nice and thick.

4. Turn the heat down, cover it, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

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Vegan Egg Drop Soup

RECIPE: about six cups

6 cups vegetable broth

3 stalks green onions, chopped

1/2 tsp white pepper

Dash of toasted sesame oil (optional)

Tofu Curds

Here’s the involved part: you are going to make tofu curds. It’s fairly simple, you will need a thermometer and a nice big pot. Follow Brenda Wiley’s awesometutorial. It should only take you twenty minutes to do it. I think you can use store bought soymilk, it will say on her site. When your curds have been stirred twice you will need to stir them again. Do it pretty vigorously, you want the massive clumps to be just medium particles. Drain the whey away (or save for cleaning, putting in bread,etc). Bring your vegetable stock to a boil and add the pepper and drained curds. Cook for ten minutes, turn heat to low and add the green onions and sesame oil. Serve hot with cool spoons. It’s all about the spoons.

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Raspberry Bars

Ingredients:

1 1/4C quick cooking oats

1 1/2C flour

1/2C sugar

1/2C brown sugar (we made some with 1/2C regular sugar and a teaspoon of molasses)

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2C chopped almonds

12 tbs. earth balance (softened)

1C raspberry preserves (although you can substitute raspberries with your favorite type of fruit)

Directions:

1. Grease a 9X9 pan (we used a casserole dish because we’re lame.)

2. Mix the first 7 ingredients together

3. Blend butter with fork. Lacey says it should have the texture of wet sand.

4. Put 2/3 of this mixture into the pan

5. Spread the preservatives on top

6. Top with the remaining 1/3 of the mixture

7. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees

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Apple Butter

I happend upon this apple butter recipe on The PPK.  http://www.postpunkkitchen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=36651

Apple Butter
Preparation time: 2 1/4 hours including baking time

3 lbs cooking apples

1 c pitted prunes

3 c apple cider

1 t cinnamon

1 t allspice

2 t ground cloves

Instead of using apple cider, I used R.W. Knudsen’s Cider & Spice since there was no regular cider. I cut the spices in half.

Peel, quarter and core apples and put them, with the prunes and cider, in a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer partially covered for 20 to 25 minutes, or until soft. Preheat oven to 300° F.

Put fruit and cider mixture in a food processor, add spices and puree the mixture. Pour into a shallow 9- by 13-inch baking dish. Spread mixture out evenly and bake in the center of the oven for about 1 hour. During baking, scrape sides and stir occasionally.

To test for doneness, dab a spoonful of apple butter on a saucer and turn the saucer upside down: Apple butter should be thick enough to stick to the saucer. Ladle into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Seal with new lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath at least 5 minutes. Yields about 2 pints.

Once my apple butter had cooled down a bit, I just ladled it into a veganaise jar and set it into the fridge (instead of canning/preserving it).

This turned out so tasty! Mixing and scraping the sides while it was cooking gave me excuse to “try” some.

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Potato-Broccoli-Cheese Soup

POTOLINO SOUP

6 Russet potatoes, peeled, and diced

Enough water to cover potatoes to boil

1 cup water

1 cup unsweetened or plain soy milk (I think a fattier “milk” would be good here too, hemp, perhaps?)

Salt and Pepper to taste

3 tbs earth balance

Half a head of Broccoli

NOOCH SAUCE:

3/4 cup nooch

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp garlic powder

1 1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk

2 tsp yellow mustard

3 tbs earth balance

Put a large pan with water on the stove at medium heat. Peel and dice your potatoes and start your broccoli steaming. When the water starts to boil, add the potatoes. Your potatoes and broccoli should be done at about the same time. While these cook, start on the nooch sauce. This is going to be thick, more of a paste. On medium heat add soymilk, flour, garlic powder and nooch. Once boiling, reduce heat to low and add earth balance and mustard. When the earth balance is melted, turn burner off and set aside.

By this time your veggies should be done. Drain your potatoes and put them back in the pan. Add the soymilk and one cup water. Take half of this soup and blend it in a blender. Add the mash back to the pot.  Go ahead and add the earth balance, salt and pepper. Chop up your broccoli super fine (it should be quite easy, since it’s really soft). Add this to your potato mixture. Cook for a couple of minutes, then turn the heat off. Add your nooch paste and stir until just mixed, a few clumps of nooch paste are o.k.

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Easy Potato Salad

RECIPE

14-17 Red Potatoes, diced, either peeled or unpeeled

3 stalks of celery

1/2 of a yellow ( or white..or red) onion, diced

1 block of extra firm tofu, pressed and drained

1 jar of pickles, diced

1 bottle mustard

A lot of veganaise

Salt and pepper to taste

Start boiling a stockpot with water. Once the water reaches a boil, go ahead and throw in your potatoes. While these are cooking (until soft enough to poke a fork through), cut your tofu into blocks and pan fry until slightly crispy. Feel free to add any spices to it. We added cumin, tumeric and curry. Yum! Prep all of your veggies. When you potatoes are done, mush them a little with either a fork, hands, whatever. Toss them in your bowl, add your veggies and ‘fu. Take as much liberty as you wish with the veganaise and mustard. We used 1/2 a jar of veganaise, it was juicy. Mustard, salt, and pepper to taste.

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Volunteer For Veggies Program (Garden City Harvest)

Missoula is a beautiful town to be in during the summer. The only bad thing, due to the economy, is lack of jobs and high level of competition for those that are available. For any of you out there like me, pretty close to breaking the bank, getting anything free can be a major relief.  Missoula has great free programs. One such program is the Volunteer for Veggies Program sponsored by Garden City Harvest.  There are several gardens to volunteer in all around town. For every four hours you volunteer, you get five pounds of fresh picked, organic vegetables. Sweet deal?! Hells yeah!

I currently volunteer at the Orchard Homes Gardens. Everyday is different. Monday and Thursday’s are harvest days. Everything that is ripe is harvested for the mobile market, the Orchard Homes Thursday market, and CSA shares. Other days there’s weeding, pulling up expired plants, planting cover crop, watering, etc.  Below are some pictures of the Orchard Homes Community Gardens:

Sign walking into the garden

Herb Garden

Flower Garden

Cantaloupe

So, if you need something to do and volunteering at the community gardens sounds good, give the people at Garden City Harvest a call! They really appreciate any volunteers they can get. Just to make you more enticed here’s some of my loot I got this week:

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Nigerian Stew

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

Oil (Peanut preferred; others ok)

3 Jalapenos, cleaned and minced

1 green bell pepper, chopped

7 Roma or 3 (ish) large tomatoes, chopped small

1 Small can tomato paste

3 cloves garlic, minced

Spices : curry, ginger, basil, rosemary, salt (all to taste)

1/2 block firm tofu, cubed and sauteed

Rice, any kind will do

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oil in skillet, add onions and garlic. Once onions look almost translucent, add tomatoes. Five minutes later add the tomato paste. Get your spices ready and dump them in your skillet and then add the peppers and tofu.  Sautee for five more minutes, then add two cups of water and boil for ten minutes. Now it’s ready!

The stew was delicious served over rice!

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Classic Zucchini Bread

Keith scored his grandma’s zucchini bread recipe and it was easily veganized. It has a slighty crispy outer shell but the inside is pure sweetness. *** We realized that if you rub margarine all over the top after you pull it out of the oven, then the top gets nice and soft!****

CLASSIC ZUCCHINI BREAD (Makes two loaves)

3/4 cup soy yogurt (plain or vanilla)

2 cups sugar

1 cup oil

2 cups grated zucchini

2 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

3 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

Optional: 1 cup nuts

2 greased and floured bread pans, or muffin tins

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 F

Beat the soy yogurt and sugar well. Add the oil, zucchini and vanilla. (I like my zucchini to be small, so I put all the liquid ingredients in the blender and pureed). In another bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, baking powder and nuts if using. Add the wet ingredients to dry until combined. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes or a knife/toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

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Top 10

Thanks to Lazy Smurf for the great idea of making a top ten list of our towns!  Here is my top ten favorite places to get vegan dishes in Missoula, Montana. (Ranked by how often we eat there). Just another note: all photos taken from google images because I’m a lazy ass.

10. Biga Pizza:  Biga Pizza is a pizzeria located downtown off Front Street. Biga specializes in using as local ingredients as possible. Their pizza is reasonably priced and delicious. We custom order a veggie pizza with no cheese. I really like the fact that they put a lot of veggies on the pizza and drizzle oil on top. There’s nothing worse than a pizza place that doesn’t know how to make a cheeseless pizza , a.k.a., skimpy veggies that are dried up from being baked. Yuck!

9. Staggering Ox:  Is there anything cooler than eating a sandwich that’s been baked in a can? Um…NO? The Staggering Ox has an extensive sandwich menu which is slightly overwhelming when trying to see if any are vegan.  They have a few vegetarian, which are easily veganized if asked for. Although the sandwiches are top notch, for me it’s the novelty of eating a sandwhich that resembles a stuffed jar. Just say’n.

8. The Kettlehouse Brewery: Missoula has several breweries, but we’re partial to the Kettlehouse. They have two locations, one downtown near the Hipstrip and one out on the North side of town. I’ve frequented the one off Myrtle more just because it’s closer to campus for that bad in between class beer. Also, it’s seems like there’s always guys there. Just guys. Kinda awkward. The one on the North side is absolutely beautiful. They renovated an old warehouse, used old bowling alley lanes to furnish the bar and railroad tracks as well. The most unique thing about this location as we found out, is the fact the women’s bathroom must have been designed by a guy. Why the hell else would there be two toilets…..WITHOUT THE STALLS? The beer is fabulous, as well. We favor the Cold Smoke, Hemptober and the Bongwater.

7. Le Petit Outre: Oh, how I love Le Petit Outre. Only a minor part of their bread selection isn’t vegan. They have damned good bread. Our favorite (do we HAVE to pick one? They are all so good!) is the Rosemary Foccacia. It has a nice combination of big salt, rosemary and olive oil drenched goodness. Good to eat with hummus, pasta or just by itself.

6. Bernice’s Bakery: Bernice’s Bakery is the only bakery (that I know of) that has a vegan sweet offering. I wish they had more, as they only offer one thing: a pumpkin muffin with blueberries (? I think it’s blueberries). It is delicious and highly recommended! Get there early because they are usually out of the vegan muffins around nine-ish.

5. Hong Kong Chef: The Hong Kong Chef is located off Brooks, just North of Trempers near Boomers Bar. They have really good food, I love their Cashew Broccoli and noodle dishes. Just make sure not to get their crispy tofu, it’s dipped in egg and fried.

4. The Country Store (on U of M campus): I usually eat at the Country Store on campus because I work there. Not going to lie, the food is scary and 99% not vegan. However, the things you can get vegan (though be specific to the person working there otherwise you’ll be screwed): smoothie (has frozen yogurt, ask for it without), Hemp Granola and Soymilk, Bagel Sandwhich (my diet staple, LOVE, get your bagel from the Broadway Bagels bulk section and take up to the sandwich line), tostada salad (the colored chips aren’t vegan, ask for crunched taco shells) with rice, pinto beans and the works. The salsa is vegan and made in Missoula, but usually gets contaminated with cheese because they are right next to each other, so be careful!

3.  Iza: One word: Bubble tea. Ask for the non-dairy tea, though, I know matcha and one other has cream. They have about four vegan dishes on their menu. I have had two so far: Nepali Dhal Baat and….Tofu Teryiaki (?). They were both out of this world. Love, love, love! I thought they were reasonably priced for being on the HipStrip (near Ciao Mambo) and a “nice” restaurant. I did ask if they had any vegan dessert, they don’t but they seemed like they were going to take a look into it. As a side note: beware the dishes they set out to keep you occupied while your food is cooking, ours was peanuts with fried guppies. Gross. If you want to use the oils on the table, ask which ones have animal products in them, there are at least two that have fish oil.

2. Bridge Pizza: I love Bridge Pizza, it’s one of those places we never get tired of. Highly recommend a custom pizza with white sauce (olive oil/roasted garlic), lots of veggies and soy cheese. It. Is. ORGASMIC. Well, maybe not, but it’s damned good. We always get a large and have two pieces each left over for breakfast.

1. The Good Food Store: The GFS is the holy grail of vegan eating in Missoula. Whether it be the cold items from the deli, the breakfast burritos, whole hot meals, sandwiches, smoothies, or desserts, you can’t go wrong. It’s all scrumptious and great prices to boot. We eat there several times a week and still can’t get enough of it!