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.

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 :)

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..

mashed taters, smokey tempeh and corn on the cob!

This is tonight's dinner. It starts with the fresh corn we found at the farmer's market this morning! I love fresh corn :) The farmer's market was wonderful today, so many people out, and so much variety in the produce. We brought our friend Kaitlin, and we all had a fabulous time. We got some spicy pad thai for lunch from the thunder mountain curry booth. I love them because they ALWAYS have something vegan and yummy. In addition to the corn we had smokey tempeh from the Veganomicon. And some super yummy mashed potatoes. For flavor: I mashed in some vegenaise, horseradish, onion, garlic, soy milk, salt and pepper and fresh chopped parsley.
Dessert was: Tofutti Marry Me bars. Oh my, are these delicious!!! Just like the fudge bars I remember.... and a nice cool down on a hot and humid summer day!

Southwestern Corn Pudding, Red Beans & Rice

This was last night's "Lost" night dinner with friends :) I made the Southwestern Corn Pudding from the Veganomicon, I've seen it on so many other vegan blogs and it sounded delicious. I thought it came out super yummy, I'll probably go a lil lighter on the cilantro next time, but overall so creamy and delicious!

I made brown rice in the rice cooker and made up a red bean recipe as I went along :) I'm definitley going to make beans like this again!

ingredients:
1 small onion-chopped
3 cloves garlic-minced
2 stalks celery- chopped
1/2 red bell pepper- chopped
3 c. red kidney beans (i had these precooked in my freezer, so i just let thaw out on the counter for the day)
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
salt
liquid from the beans/water

-sauteed onion for a bit in a lil oil, then added the garlic, celery, red pepper
-add in the beans and spices, liquid smoke, etc..
-cook for an hour or so until the beans break down in a creamy saucey concoction
-top with a lil hot sauce :)

yummy corn pudding!!!!