Confetti Couscous

Did a major cupboard clean-out last week and discovered a package of couscous I had meant to use at Thanksgiving. Well, tofurky day is long past, but I got inspired anyway and made my favorite couscous salad. It's actually more of a summer-time thing. Maybe?

I don't always use all the veggies, sometimes more of one than another, it depends on my mood and what I have in the fridge.

At any rate, I could eat this stuff 3 meals a day, the girls like it for the most part and it's pretty and colorful, ...yeah, I should be inspired more often!

Confetti Couscous

1 cup uncooked couscous

2 cups (or one can) cooked black beans, well drained and rinsed

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 small red pepper, chopped

1 cup cooked corn (or mini-corn is cool too!)

2 medium tomatoes, diced (sometimes I use little yellow pear tomatoes)

1/2 cup chopped green or Kalamata olives

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 green onions, finely sliced or 1/4 cup minced purple onion

3 Tb. olivie oil

1 Tbsp lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Pour couscous in medium heat-proof bowl. Bring 2 cups water to a boil and pour over couscous. Cover and let stand 15 minutes, then fluff with a fork and allow to cool to room temperature.Transfer coucous to large boil. Add remaining ingredients and toss to mix. Serve at room temperature, or chilled.

BEST EVER, FOOLPROOF, VEGAN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIIES!

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes are tough to find, even if you're using butter, eggs and whatever else. My 12-year-old adjusted this recipe from an old family favorite one day when she was home alone and wanted to surprise me with some vegan cookies. We didn't exactly have "enough" of several crucial ingredients so she substituted - played around with the recipe and the end result was the most wonderful cookies EVER!!

It is honestly AMAZING (hence the name). Now her recipe is famous among family, friends and her classmates, most of whom had never heard the word "vegan" before - at least now they associate the word with yummy cookie goodness.

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Amazing Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup Smart Balance Light (or regular Earth Balance will work fine too, though for some reason SB Light works the best)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 heaping Tbsp. flax meal
1 heaping Tbsp. Ener-G egg replacer powder
1/4 cup soy milk
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups vegan chocolate chips (Good quality vegan chocolate chips are absolutely essential here. Guittard Semi-Sweet is my favorite - available in regular grocery stores and VEGAN!)

1.) Preheat oven to 375 F.
2.) In a small bowl, mix soy milk VERY WELL (until creamy) with Ener-G egg replacer and flax meal using an electric mixer or hand (immersion) blender. Set aside.
3.) In another bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt. Set Aside.
4.) In a large bowl, cream together coconut oil, Smart Balance and sugars. Add soy/flax mixture and vanilla. Beat with electric mixer until smooth.
5.) Gradually add flour mixture to liquids. Stir in chocolate chips.
6.) Drop by well rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 - 10 min. until lightly golden. (Can also be made into bar cookies in 9 X 12 pan)

You can add nuts, raisins, coconut, whatever... but we like them just as they are!

Hot Cocoa and a Snow Day

We had an unexpected snow day today which, in Western Washington usually means, oh, about two inches of snow. It also means no work for me and kids home from school.

So, I cleaned out kitchen cuboards suffering from post-holiday chaos (found all sorts of things I need to try cooking with...)and the kids spent most of the day back and forth between the snow and making forty-bazillion cups of peppermint hot cocoa - great way to mess up the kitchen AND use up all those Christmas candy canes I wasn't sure what to do with.

Candy Cane Cocoa

For each cup (multiply this recipe as much as you need)

1 cup soymilk, or other non-dairy milk (we actually used 1/2 almond milk and 1/2 Silk Soy Creamer because that's all we had, it came out DEEE-LISH!)

1/2 T. unsweetened Dutch Process cocoa powder

1 T. sugar

1 T. isolated soy protein powder (optional - if you have it, it makes it extra creamy!!)

1/4 tsp. vanilla or 1/8 tsp. peppermint extract (or the adults can use a shot of Peppermint Schnapps - woo!)

garnish with:

Soy Whip or Hip Whip or whatever

crushed candy-canes left over from Christmas

Blend all ingredients in the blender or with a stick-blender. Heat on stove or in microwave being careful to watch for boil-overs. Garnish with whip "cream" and crushed candy canes or stir with whole candy canes for an even more glorious mess.

Red and Green for Christmas

Happy New Year!

After spending a couple vacations last year, with friends and relatives in New Mexico, I've been wanting to write down a few of the ideas and recipes I've come away with. The food there is amazing; colorful, flavorful, creative and full of ingredients or combinations I'd never tried. I fell absolutely in love with (among other things) the green chiles that New Mexico is so famous for.

There are as many definitions for "chile"as there are people in New Mexico, but most simply it's either "red or green". Either its the famous green New Mexico-grown chile peppers (especially the Hatch chiles, grown in southern New Mexico) that are roasted over a fire until their skins blacken and char. The skins get peeled off and the soft chiles are chopped and cooked in whatever recipe.
Its counterpart, the red chile, which is the same pepper, but picked later in the season so it is red (ripe) and then dried, ground into powder and blended with liquid to make a red sauce. You also see the dried red pods made into beautiful chile ristras (strings or wreaths of chiles) for sale all over Santa Fe and Albuquerque's Old Town. (Well, everywhere actually, I just happened to see them a lot in the "tourist-y" places because that's where I went mostly, this trip).

Spanish settlers brought the chile pepper into what is now New Mexico in the 1600s, and it is now the state's largest agricultural crop; it's consumed at every meal, celebrated in songs and at festivals, and is the subject of the Official New Mexico State Question, "Red or green". The question refers to the color of chile you want on your food and you'll get asked at every Mexican (or New Mexican, sorry!!) restaurant.

I think the reason the rest of us know so little about New Mexico's green chiles is because they don't transport so well. They're a fresh and seasonal vegetable, (well, yes, technically a fruit) and the only way to really appreciate them is freshly fire- roasted, though the fire-roasted and frozen variety are pretty close if that's your second choice. Canned slimy green chiles are not even an option.

OK then. So this past Christmas break, I spent some time in New Mexico, and returned with my tummy full of green chile and my brain full of recipes, ideas and happy memories.

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(I know, the picture doesn't look
all that great, but it IS yummy
stuff!)

OK, so, first of all, one of my new favorites, Green Chile Stew. This stuff is addictive, it doesn't have to be SUPER spicy but I tend to like it that way. With all those Vitimin-C-filled chile peppers, it's great for a cold and (I discovered), it's sorta like meatloaf or apple pie, there are hundreds of slightly different versions of the "official" recipe! Normally it has pork or something dead and disgusting in it, but here's the vegan version that I learned from one of my wonderful veggie freinds.

New Mexico Green Chile Stew

1 pkg. Boca crumbles or 1 pkg. Morningstar Farms Beef Meal Starter Strips or if you prefer something else, go for it...
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups roasted, peeled and chopped New Mexico green chiles
1 large potato, peeled and diced
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 to 4 cups water
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano, Mexican preferred

Place the Crumbles or Meal Starter strips in a skillet and brown a bit in the oil, remove and place it in a kettle or stock pot.
Put the onions in the skillet, adding more oil if necessary, and sauté until they are browned. Add the garlic and cook for an additional couple of minutes. Remove them from the skillet and add to the 'meat'.

Pour a little of the water into the skillet, bring to a boil, and deglaze. Pour the liquid over the 'meat'. Add all the remaining ingredients, and simmer for an hour or so, 'till the potato is soft.
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Another new favorite for me is Posole. (Also spelled 'Pozole'). Posole is a New Mexican soup traditionally served on Christmas Eve. It is made with a type of corn, hominy really, that's been treated with lime (I know, sounds weird). You buy it dry, soak it forever, and when the kernals start to burst, it's time to cook the rest of the soup. Posole is also 'traditionally' made with pigs feet. Obviously I left those out (UGH!). I love creating my own traditions with veganized versions of regional and cultural favorites and this is a great example, though in all honesty, I got the recipe - or general idea - from a friend who's lived in NM basically all his life.

My 6-year-old goes NUTS over this stuff, she'll eat three bowlfulls in a row, with really HOT green chile sauce (though I think it's 'traditionally' served with red, once again, there we go, breaking tradition).

I have to buy the dried posole corn or hominy (or cacahuazintle is technically what it says on the package) in New Mexico, or at a tiny little specialty market in Seattle, or bribe a friend to mail some to me, so we don't make this as often as my kids would like. Canned hominy is JUST not the same. I tried it, it was AWFUL!

POSOLE SOUP

2 c. posole or dried hominy (or cacahuazintle as my package says), picked over for dirt or stones
1/4 c. vegetable oil
2 c. chopped onion
2 T. minced garlic
1 oz. New Mexico dried red chile pods, (4 or 5 pods, stems and seeds removed)
5 c. vegetarian UNchicken broth
pinch of cumin and Mexican oregano
1/2 c. coarsely chopped cilantro
2 t. salt, or to taste

Soak posole/hominy corn in a large amount of water overnight (it will swell quite a bit!!). The next morning, cook posole in water in crockpot on low for about another 12 hours until the kernels have softened and begin to burst. Drain the posole and rinse well.
Heat the oil in a 6-quart pot and sauté the onions until golden. Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the posole, dried chiles, broth, cumin and oregano. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the salt, to taste, and continue cooking for 30 minutes. Stir in the cilantro. Taste and adjust seasonings.
Serve with warm red chile sauce on the side. Yum!
**In the picture I took above, I had added some red and green bell peppers for a little extra interest though they're not necessary.