Thai Tofu Spinach Soup

My husband and I started a weekly date night tradition when we started dating almost six years ago. We felt it important to keep our relationship fun and fresh by continuing to "date" each other, now almost six years into our marriage. Since moving to the country, we frequently spend our date nights in Hickory, about 25 minutes from our cabin. Last week, we tried out a new Thai restaurant. I had been feeling a bit dehydrated that evening, so David recommended I start out with a light soup. We both ordered a small spinach tofu soup in a clear garlic broth and were pleasantly surprised at the simple and healthy concoction. I decided a couple nights later to make my own version, as a small bowl at the restaurant runs almost $3.00. I was able to make a giant pot (holding at least a dozen of those small bowl servings) of it for less than $5.00. I've never made this before, and this is only my second time making soup, but this soup seemed easy enough to figure out without digging up someone else's, since I knew what the restaurant's recipe tasted like.

Start with a big chili pot. Fill it about 1/3 of the way with water. The amount of water really doesn't matter. You can add more later. I'm guessing there were 10-12 cups in my chili pot, but as I've said before, I refuse to measure things. Boil the water on high heat. While the water is boiling, cut up a block of tofu into small cubes, about 1/2" squares. Dump the tofu cubes into the boiling water, and reduce heat to medium. Dice 1 - 2 sweet onions and 6 cloves of garlic. Dump those in with the tofu. Sprinkle in either regular sea salt or garlic salt, and fresh ground pepper to taste. Pour in some oil. I used Sesame oil for a bit of added Asian flavor. Not too much oil... just enough to get the water a little oily. The water will start to look shinier and shinier as you pour in more oil. Open a full bag of fresh spinach. After washing all of it, drop it in at the very end of cooking. The longer you leave it in, the softer it will become. I left it in for a couple minutes and it was relatively soggy (easier to scoop into your soup spoon). Turn off the heat and serve. Leftovers should keep for 1-2 days. Don't feel the need to slurp down all of the broth... it contains a good bit of sodium and some fatty oil. I ate my soup with the broth, and then dumped out any excess broth remaining in my bowl. This soup is LOADED with protein, fiber, and Iron. A great low-calorie health booster. 

Peas Pass the Confetti Salad

Pretty much any dice-it-all-and-toss-it-all-in-a-bowl salad is a confetti "salad". Here's one I made tonight. Dice one sweet onion and one can of black olives. Throw in a large mixing bowl. Open two cans of no salt added sweet peas and toss those in as well. Add one bag of vegan cheese (I prefer some with orange "cheese" for color). Toss in a tablespoon or so of minced garlic. Spoon in some vegan mayo (about five heaping tablespoons). Pour in a little oil (I used sunflower). Add about ten capfuls of white vinegar (creates the mayo tang without adding so much mayo). Sprinkle in some bacon bits (most, if not all, are vegan). Grind lots of fresh pepper and seasoning salt to taste.  Serves about eight as a side dish, and keeps well for leftovers. 

It'll Make You Scream

Let me be quite clear... this is not a product-posting blog. This is a vegan country cooking blog. That said, since going vegan, I've been remiss to find ice cream that tastes like real ice cream from my animal-eating days. And I promised myself that if I ever found real vegan country ice cream, that I'd scream it to the world. I FINALLY found it, after three and a half years of searching and taste-testing. The closest I'd found thus far were Almond Dream and hemp milk ice creams, both lacking the traditional creaminess. Seems you need to leave them out on the counter for at least 10 minutes to allow them to soften. Otherwise, they're frozen blocks of pureed flavored nuts and grain.

And I'll tell you, I'm an ice cream connoisseur. Growing up, my mom started a weekly Tuesday night tradition: game and ice cream night. It's one of my greatest memories as a kid (and on through college!). Each Tuesday night at 7:30, my mom, sisters, and me would choose a board or card game, sit on the den floor, and play games until about 8:30, at which point, the main event happened... My mom would go into the kitchen and scoop humongous bowls of ice cream for each of us to devour until 9:00. The bar for ice cream quality was henceforth set impossibly high. 

There's not been much I've missed as a vegan. I don't miss wearing animal skins as fashion statements. I don't miss animal carcasses served as entrees on my plate. I don't really miss the fatty textures of cheese or butter. I don't miss the farm-y taste of another species' milk. And I certainly don't miss eggs... the bane of my existence, as I'm impossibly allergic. 

But I have missed a good bowl of ice cream for old time's sake. So when I stumbled upon Trader Joe's strawberry coconut milk ice cream I was hopeful... though skeptical, as I HATE HATE HATE coconut, and have not been able to stomach the taste of coconut milk ice creams. Too tropical, too heavy. So I bought one and once home, gingerly tasted it, hopeful that I hadn't wasted another $4 on fake (hard, crumbly, weird) ice cream. 

I'd pay $10 for this stuff. No coconut flavor at all. This stuff tastes like old fashioned, country, homemade, rich ice cream BURSTING with strawberry flavor. Even my husband who passionately hates coconut was instantly addicted to this stuff. Not one hint of coconut flavor. We both just kept sitting there at the kitchen table, mumbling like idiots, "It's sooooooooo creamy........" and stuffing our faces. 

I read that this comes also in chocolate, however none of our local Trader Joe's seem to carry the chocolate yet. For now, I'm in love with strawberry. For part of my Valentine's Day gift yesterday, my husband surprised me with six containers of this stuff! Living out in the country, we're about an hour from the nearest Trader Joe's, so he made the journey to hold me over for a few weeks. I'd been saving about a quarter inch's worth in the carton for weeks, terrified that I'd not be able to get more... until David showed up with an armful to ease my heart! 

Chop Salad, No Soggy Lettuce

This is my go-to recipe for our own quick dinners or dinner parties. I don't really have a name for it. I just refer to it as my "tomato and salad". First, salad doesn't need greens to be a salad, so toss those to the side. Admit it, they sometimes get in the way of the good stuff. Chop approximately:

1 avocado

1/2 sweet onion

2-3 tomatos

2 seedless cucumbers

1/3 bunch fresh cilantro

1-2 fresh garlic cloves

Pour some olive oil and a bit of balsamic vinegar (or lime juice) over the veggies. Sprinkle some sea salt and grind some fresh black pepper. Stir it all up. Toss in a bit of vegan cheese if desired, or sprinkle a tablespoon or so of nutritional yeast. Don't plan on leftovers. The avocado doesn't tend to last long and the vinegar or citric juice cooks the tomatoes. Prepare fresh, serve promptly. Serves 2-4 people, depending on whether you're using this as an entree or side dish.

Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes

Another oldie from our city life... the last one I documented with my iPad. We had our best "couple's friends", Michele and Gator, over a after the New Year. I asked Michele if she had any meal requests at our cabin. She requested one thing: my gourmet cupcakes. I had to laugh, because out of all of my creations, these are the least gourmet, the least creative, the least unique. But I sure know how to put on a good facade. These suckers will make anyone think you dropped $50 and were covered in various ingredients for hours on end. 

So these cupcakes are compliments of a Betty Crocker box of orange cake mix and tub of vanilla icing (I can't remember if Betty Crocker or Duncan Heinz frosting is vegan... but one or both is, just check for "milk" in the ingredients). After baking the cupcake mix, I plopped two tubs worth of vanilla frosting into a huge ziploc bag, and cut a rather huge hole in the corner of the bag to create a makeshift frosting squeezing bag. Not necessary, but makes the frosting look a heck of a lot prettier on the cupcake. After coating the cupcakes with frosting, drizzle with (optional) Hershey's chocolate syrup. Sprinkle on some chunky all-natural cane sugar, and these babies look expensive. They actually only cost about $5 to make two dozen, once all is said and done.

It Doesn't Really Make Me Sneeze

Of course if it had any real cheese in it, this dish probably would make a lot of people sneeze. Most of us know by now that dairy products cause congestion. I used to be a Kraft mac and cheese addict... and I also used to be addicted to Afrin. 

But my mac and "cheese" is sneeze-free. I make this several times a month, and the included picture is admittedly not from a recent cooking adventure, but rather from when we lived in Lake Norman. However, this recipe stands the test of time, migrating from city to country life.  

I buy Road's End Organics dairy-free shells and chreeze from Healthy Home Market in Davidson. I just don't follow the instructions on the box. Remember, I told everyone in a previous post that following instructions to the T is chef suicide! Instead, I cook the noodles and after they're done, I use 1/3-1/2 tub of vegan cream cheese, chop it up a bit, and dump it in with the warm, drained noodles. Add some almond milk and stir. Once the cream cheese starts melting, add the powder packet included in the mac and cheese box. The powder is mainly nutritional yeast and salt, so if you want to make this without buying the boxed product, just experiment with nutritional yeast powder, salt, and spices on this step. Add a bit more almond milk to keep it all creamy. Taste, and see if you need to add any of your own spices. I often add either some garlic salt (I prefer garlic salt because it cuts back on total sodium to mix in the garlic), dill, or pepper. One box makes the large bowl pictured, and the leftovers are great the next day, warmed up in the microwave. Add some more almond milk to it before reheating to keep it moist. For this recipe, the cream cheese is the trick. Many vegans find mac and cheese recipes to be dry or tasteless. I tried adding cream cheese a year ago, and voila... it stays extremely creamy!

Sushi... Hold the Rancid Marine Life

When I tell people my favorite food is sushi, I usually get a raised eyebrow, as if I'm unaware that fish are animals. What it seems many don't know is that "sushi" doesn't contain raw fish. "Sashimi" is the nasty, rotting, depressing animal carcass crap that makes you puke in the toilet five hours later. (Seriously, I've had food poisoning twice... once from mayo and once from sashimi... what an animal product coinkidink.) 

We made vegan sushi a few weeks ago, for the first time, after envying the rainbow of homemade veg sushi my sister and her fiance created and of which they posted a photo montage to Facebook. I decided heck with paying $30 for vegan sushi at Eez Fusion in Birkdale (hands-down the best place in Charlotte-metro to get vegan sushi), I'm gonna try it on my own. 

I'll say David didn't enjoy the adventure as much as I did. His sushi rolls weren't wrapping tightly, and began busting open like piñatas at the slightest movement. Realizing that it's best to learn from other people's mistakes, I rolled up my sushi rolls so tightly that I'm sure the cucumbers were gasping for air. 

Start with white or brown sushi rice. Must be sushi rice (STICKY!!!), or else your rolls will fall apart like confetti. Cook the rice, wet seaweed sheets (nori). Take a damp nori sheet, wet your fingers, pick up some cooked rice, and spread it over the nori. Wetting your fingers helps with the spreading, as the rice is like glue. After the nori is coated, start filling with strips of various vegetables. We used: tofu, vegan cream cheese, avocado, red onion, sweet pickles, cucumber, squash, jalapeño, fried crispy onions. Then, roll it all up (think "open-ended-burrito"). TIGHTLY!!! Slice carefully, into about 6-8 pieces per roll. I also made a vegan spicy sauce: a couple tablespoons of earth balance vegan mayo mixed with a couple teaspoons of Trader Joe's chili sauce.