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.

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.

chili with millet and avocado

I had a bunch of cooked pinto beans in the fridge that needed to be cooked, so I decided to make a chili. I don't really believe in using recipes for chili, I just use the ingredients I have around. I used a can of fire-roasted tomatoes w/ chipotle, the cooked pinto beans (2.5 cups), some onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, onion powder, oregano, paprika and a lil frozen corn.

The millet was toasted, then cooked with water, a lil tomato paste, salt, splash of hot sauce, then simmered for 25 minutes.

This tasted fabulous topped with some chopped avocado :)

Taco Tuesday!

We had a super fantastic taco night last night! :) I used recipes from the Veganomicon to make baja marinated tempeh, spicy slaw and mexican millet. I didn't follow any of the recipes exactly, but I used the general idea and everything came out super yummy. Other ingredients in our awesome taco bar included some Newman's Own salsa, Guacamole (courtesy of awesome neighbor Leah), Organic Blue Corn Taco shells and Daiya Cheddar cheese (courtesy of awesome friend Kaitlin). We were all very happy with our tacos!

Oh oh oh! I also made a Cilantro-Lime Creme for the tacos, I made this up myself and I thought it was a key topping :)

ingredients:
1 box silken extra firm tofu (the cardboard box kind, not water packed)
1 Tb olive oil
juice of 1 lime
dash apple cider vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

-blend everything until really creamy, i use an immersion blender for several minutes

Raisin-Millet Soda Bread

Today, I made the Whole-Wheat Millet Soda bread recipe from the Veganomicon, I substituted raisins for the currants and coriander for the caraway seed. I love warm yummy bread on a rainy afternoon!