green chili skillet cornbread, refried beans and noochy veggies

The star of tonight's dinner was definitely the cornbread. I had a green chili pepper from Nancy's garden on my counter, so I decided to make the skillet cornbread recipe from the Veganomicon. I cooked the chili pepper with some onion, and added it to the top of the corn batter before it baked. Such an easy yummy recipe, and we ate the bread warm from the oven, and boy was it good :) The beans are leftover refried beans that my parents made, creamy and satisfying (and all I did to tweak was add some chili powder, needed a lil more heat!). The hubby contributed ti dinner with some sauteed pepper, carrot, garlic and zucchini, cooked with nutritional yeast and Bragg's.

I got fancy with a lil cherry tomato garnish :)

jalapeno poppers and mexican millet

These were some crazy spicy poppers I made the other day. I found a standard popper recipe online, substituted Tofutti cream cheese, used some peppers we bought at the Greenmarket, and one from Nancy's garden. These were crispy and delicious, nice and greasy from the Tofutti. The peppers were super super spicy.. I could only eat one. I remember being able to eat like 8 poppers when I used to order them from a pizza place in my prevegan days. This was a very successful experiment
I also made this Mexican millet from the Veganomicon. yum yum yum. I could eat this stuff everyday. I even put a dollop of Vegenaise on top for creaminess.

corn on the cob, roasted fingerling potatoes and chicken-ish nuggets

This time of year is great for vegetables. People give me zucchini at work, my parents give me tons of tomatoes, neighbors give me cucumbers, its awesome! Every sunday, the hubby and I make a trip down the Greenmarket in downtown Schenectady, right now the market is bursting with delicious produce. Last weekend, we discovered a stand that sold these amazing fingerling potatoes, each bin was potatoes of a different color: pink, red, white, yellow, purple and purple speckly ones. We got some of each. For this dinner, I roasted the potatoes in the toaster oven. I really love my toaster oven this time of year, mine has a convection feature, so it cooks, roasts and toasts perfectly, and doesn't make the kitchen all hot. For the potatoes, I tossed them with a lil olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted at 425 for around 30mins.. You can't really tell that they are all different colors in my pic. As they roasted, the intensity of the colors faded. Even though, we lost some of the color that made me buy them they sure were delicious! Creamy and almost sweet. The purple ones did stay bright purple on the inside. yum-my! I've learned that bright colored food are the healthiest. So I'm going to pretend these potatoes were super healthy too :)

The corn on the cob was also from the market, I simply boiled it on the stovetop. My dad always said to boil corn for 7 mins in salty water. So thats what I do :) I have to say my favorite cooking method for corn on the cob is the grill, but when the grills not on, boiling works fine. All the corn I've had this summer has been super yummy. Corn must like humid and hot NY summers.

We had chicken nuggets for dinner too. They were Gardein brand, they came with some hot sauce, as they were supposed to be "wings." We weren't really in a wing-mood, so we just pan-fried and tossed with fresh chopped parsley and some lemon juice. I have to say they were pretty yummy, chewy and chickeny without being too chickeny.

I'm not really the biggest fake-meat fan, it freaks me out a lil because its so damn processed. These nuggets were our second "Gardein" purchase. A couple months ago we bought the Tuscan chicken cutlets (from the refrigerated section of Hannaford).... those were super gross. These chicken wings came in the freezer case, I thought they had a way better texture than the refrigerated chicken. I probably won't be buying Gardein again anytime soon regardless..

cook-out food :)

The hubby and I hosted a cookout the other night. Here's some goodies from the night: I made my spinach-artichoke dip. It's a hit every time :)

ingredients:
1 block silken tofu
1 1/2 c. vegenaise
2-4 cloves garlic
salt
pepper
1/4 c. nutritional yeast
1 package frozen spinach
1 can artichoke hearts

-using blender, combine tofu, vegenaise, garlic, salt and pepper to taste and nooch. make it super creamy!
-once mixture is texture of sour cream and totally smooth, fold in frozen spinach (you might want to thaw spinach, and squeeze dry) and chopped artichoke hearts (i like to chop them a bit smaller than they come in the jar/can).
-combine mixture, spread into baking pan (10"by 10")bake 20-25 min @375 it's done when slighty brown and bubbly
-serve with chips/crackers

For the main course, we had a couple pasta salads, hot-sauce tempeh from the Veganomicon and some corn on the cob. It's was a beautiful night with friends on our great deck! :)