roasted golden beets and fingerling potatoes with spicy tempeh

Well.. I bought some golden beets at the Greenmarket last sunday. Years ago, I ate some dish made with golden beets when my brother was a student at the Culinary Institute of America. (I got to eat lots of yummy vegetarian food in their restaurants while he went to school there yum yum!) Now.. I've always loved beets, but damn golden beets are amazing!!

I have never spotted golden beets at the Greenmarket or at Hannaford before. So when I saw these beauties at the market, I had to grab them up! We also bought some amazing fingerling potatoes from an adorable little girl. Her family has a little stand, and they sell no-spray heirloom beans, potatoes, and garlic. We bought a bunch of varieties of cute lil potatoes, some red ones, some yellow ones, even some blue ones.

For dinner tonight, the hubby and I used some teamwork. He cut up the potatoes and the beets, and tossed them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, crushed fresh garlic, thyme and a lil Spike seasoning. We baked them for about an hour at 400. I added some red onion to the pan about half way through.

We also made some baked tempeh. We cut the block of tempeh up into triangles, steamed them for like 10 minutes. Then I coated them thoroughly with Frank's RedHot and a lil peanut oil. They needed to bake for about 2o minutes.

This dinner came out really yummy, and was totally satisfying. I love tempeh, it's so hearty. I like dinners when I have an excuse to use a steak knife (I could definitely have just cut the tempeh with the side of my fork, but I used a steak knife anyway!)

ps mustard and horseradish sauce added to the yum yum! WHAM-A-JAMA!

veggie pizza appetizer

This is a vegan-ized version of one my family's classic snacks, this was the go-to dish for my parents to bring to work parties,and it was a favorite snack at all our family holiday dinners. I made this for one of my work functions a couple of years ago, in my pre-vegan days. Someone requested that I make it again... so I decided to makeover the recipe. It really didn't taste any different than I remember, and I remember it being TASTY!

Here's what I did:

ingredients:
-2 packages refrigerated crescent rolls (the reduced fat version is vegan, full of weird ingredients, but vegan still)
-1 tub Tofutti cream cheese
-1/3 c. Vegenaise
-1 small red onion- finely diced
-about 1 c. fresh broccoli- cut into really small florets
-about 1 c. grated carrot
-about 1 c. tomato (i used cut up yellow and red cherry tomatoes)
-1/2 c. vegan parmesan cheese (i used 'almesan' from the veganomicon)

Roll out the crescent rolls onto baking sheet, meet end to end to form a pizza crust, bake according to package instructions. Allow to cool completely.

Mix together the creamcheese, vegenaise and onion. Spread mixture on the crust.

Arrange veggies on top, sprinkle with 'cheese.'

Tastes best after being refrigerated overnight.

pizza before being cut up :)

corn chowder

Delicious corn chowder for dinner tonight :) We ate this with some Rustic-Italian bread we bought at the Greenmarket this morning. The chowder was full of farm fresh veggies: leeks and rosemary (from my parent's garden), garlic, potato, red pepper, corn, and carrots from the Greenmarket.

ingredients:
2 leeks- cleaned and thinly sliced
1 Tb oil
1 red pepper- diced
2 carrots- diced
4 small red potatoes- diced
3 cups water
1 veggie bouillion cube
1 cup chickpea cooking broth
2 Tb fresh chopped rosemary
3 ears corn- cut off cob
1 cup frozen corn
4 bulbs roasted garlic
2 cups unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup nutritional yeast

-cook leeks in oil, over med heat until slightly soft, add pepper, potato, carrot
-add water, broth and bouillion cube, cook over med heat (low bubble) for 30 min
-add rosemary, and fresh corn, season with salt and pepper
-in blender, combine corn, almond milk, roasted garlic and nutritional yeast until smooth
-add corn mixture to soup, and stir until combined
-heat through for 5 more minutes

-serve with chewy bread :)

corn dip RECIPE :)

This is one my most requested recipes. So, I guess I'll share ;) I believe I copied down the general idea from an old issue of Vegetarian Times, but I'm not really sure. I've changed the ingredients a bit to suite my taste anyways...

ingredients:
2 ears corn -cut off cob (you could use like 2 cups frozen, wouldn't be nearly as good though)
2 Tb vegan butter
salt/pepper
1 small red onion -diced
1 jalapeno pepper- seeded and diced
1/2 red bell pepper- diced
2-3 scallions- sliced
2 cloves garlic- crushed
1/4 Vegenaise or other vegan mayo
dash cayenne pepper
optional:
1/4-1/2 cup vegan cheese

-heat butter in skillet over med-high heat, add corn and cook for several minutes. season liberally with salt and pepper. when the corn starts to get golden, transfer to a bowl
-in the same skillet, add onion, jalapeno and red pepper, cook for several minutes until everything starts to soften. add the scallions and garlic and cook for a few more minutes.
-combine all the cooked vegetables together, season with a lil cayenne pepper, add the Vegenaise and "cheese" if you are going to use it. then transfer to oven safe bowl
-bake for 20-30 minutes, at 350, until its all hot and bothered

-i always feel weird about serving corn dip with corn chips. so i usually buy kettle cooked potato chips or flour tortilla chips. enjoy!

corn dip and mexican millet

It has been a lovely long weekend spent with my wonderful husband and lil puppy dog. We've been running around, seeing friends, and family and eating lots of good food! We originally had plans to have a 'Mexican night' with my brother and sister-in-law's family tonight. But the whole family isn't feeling well :(

We decided to cook the dishes we were planning on contributing at our house and enjoy a quiet night at home.

For an appetizer, I made my corn dip :) This stuff is super addicting! All the produce (for the whole dinner) was fresh from the Greenmarket yesterday, so the flavor of the fresh corn, and peppers were amazing in this dip! We gobbled it up with some tortilla chips.
For dinner, I was planning on making Mexican millet as a side for tacos. Since we didn't end up having the ingredients for tacos, we ate the millet, with some canned re-fried beans and some more corn chips. And we both added a lil dollop of Vegenaise, cause we can't resist the stuff!
I've made this Mexican millet recipe (from the Veganomicon) many many times, but it definitely turned on the best tonight. The secret? I followed the recipe exactly, for once :) I even topped it was some fresh lime juice. yum-my! I think I could eat this stuff every day.