Smoked Tofu! YUM

Last week I found a new treat at the store. Smoked tofu! I looked around for recipes and settled on a lovely smoked tofu/tomato/pasta concoction. Smoked tofu tastes sooo good I was eating it right from the package while I cooked. It really seems to give dishes a substantial feel. I found this recipe online and adapted it to what I had at home. I used tomatoes from the garden, and threw in a little of my basil and thyme from outside.

The base recipe: http://jeenaskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/01/saturday-kitcen-recipe-smoked-tofu.html

My results (endorsed by Pumpkin the Wonder Kitty):

PIzza, Football, and Birthday Redux

This weekend was ridiculous, and I mean that in the good way! Busy as bees, hot as...well burning up hot here in the tropical Louisiana paradise. Yowser! I made Teese pizza this weekend with veggies from the garden. This stuff shreds amazingly! I really wouldn't recommend the taste of Teese right out of the package, but for cooking it knocked my socks off!

We celebrated my birthday a little late. Brad brough me a Special Delivery from Spiral Diner...a meatball sammich and potato salad. Oh yum!! There was also a pinata, vegan peach cobbler and soy ice cream made by my mom, and ohhhh! Sit down and hold on tight...three magically special and rare albums from the untouchable Jane's Addiction. Vinyl-tastic!

On Sunday, we drove to Jackson to watch a Saints practice at Millsaps, made more special for the #1 Saints fan in our house by the autograph session with Drew Brees, who seems like a nice guy! Yay!

Links:

Brees: http://www.drewbrees.net/home.html

Teese: http://www.teesecheese.com/

These: http://www.janesaddiction.com/

Yesterday was my birthday!

We celebrated, although the family gathering will be Saturday when my honey is back in town. My friends took me out and gave me pretty things like the garden excitement above!

This plate was on fire when it came out!

Good friends!

Nacho-rific!

Last night I made a mini Mexican fiesta!

A plethora of yummy veggies, blue corn chips, and local peach salsa...

Nacho sauce from Yellow Rose Recipes, complete with jalapenos from my own garden!

Asian Persuasion

In honor of the lovely waving birthday kitty and of my lovable Chloe who is on the mend after her good vet visit,

I made up a nice batch of sushi: golden tomatoes, red bell pepper, green onion, cabbage, and avocado. Yum!

Friday I'm In Love

We went out to check on our little patch o' flowers and foods.

Giggling makes plants grow happier!

The marigolds are busy keeping the baby tomatoes company.

The peppers are growing as hot as the summer sun.

The Lamb's Ears are soft and fluffy and growing like wild.

We hope you enjoy our garden! We do!

Pretty plants!

I am so excited about my garden! Brad brought me about a gazillion seed packets, my cousin gave me a little gardener's kit for my b-day, friends helped me dig and till way back in April or so...it's been a big process. Well...it's paying off in a big leafy, fruity, herby, flowery way! Seriously...it's all I can do not to wake all my little loves and big love in the mornings to show the amazing stuff that I get to pluck off the vines and stems and such.


I printed out the Farmer's Almanac calendar for July and August: http://www.farmersalmanac.com/home_garden/gardening. Then I organized and labeled all my seed packets. Yesterday, I planted broccoli and cauliflower.

The tomatoes are going nuts, and I am incredible proud of my first seed to flower success, giant beautiful sunflowers! Take a looksie and stay tuned. I'm a gardening nut now!

Meetloaf, Muffins, and Mmmmm...Sushi!

This weekend was, as usual, a big fun blur of cooking, swimming, gardening, and sleeping (yay!), with a bonus side of Lemony Snicket's #12 book which I bought for $1 at a garage sale and read in it's entirity on Sunday.

The cookins! I made 2 meetloafs, one nice and pretty, and one old-skool and loafy-like. Check out the recipe: http://justthefood.blogspot.com/2007/07/old-fashioned-meetloaf.html

Then I made some nice Sarah Kramer muffins.

Sunday was sushi of cabbage, mung bean sprouts, carrots, Farmer's market peppers, my garden tomatoes, and a little Tofutti cream cheese. Yum! Deeelightful eating! Check out my post about playing in the garden patch too :)

Southern Cookin'

Last night I experimented with a yummy grits recipe (coming soon from the fabulous Miss, er, Mrs. Kittee!) and made some fajitas from Hot Damn and Hell Yeah to go along with them. Yum! I used some vegan Not-Beef bouillion and made the marinade for xtra firm tofu , then sauteed that with red peppers, green peppers, onions, and garlic. We filled tortillas with spinach leaves, cilantro, salsa, and v. sour cream from Yellow Rose Recipes. Alright! It was delicious. I hung up some Misfits and Social Distortion screen printed patches in the kitchen near our windows full of fairy lights to highlight the festive meal we had :P

Kittee:
http://www.pakupaku.info/

Hot Damn & Hell Yeah (out of stock at the moment): http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/title/86/

Yellow Rose Recipes:
http://herbivoreclothing.com/books.preorder.html

Nontoxic Housecleaners Zine

This is a great zine! It costs one dollar (and once you buy a copy, you could xerox it for friends, although hey! spend a dollar at an indie company and give your people a cute little zine!)

http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/1553/

Today we ran out of cleaner and I whipped up 2 new bottles. It's such a satisfying feeling! I saved two spray bottle from cleaners that I used up(one http://www.mrsmeyers.com/?gclid=CO2kkqPFrpQCFQllsgodyEuktQ and one http://www.citra-solv.com/) and now I refill them with my own mixtures.

Great things about making your own cleaners:

*non-toxic

*you can pick the scents and purposes as needed

*it's cheap!

*it's fun and makes you feel proud :)

*way less wasteful than buying at the store

*you can keep the base ingredients in bulk so you're always ready

*essential oils are super multi-purposed around the house

*much much more!!!

Anybody got any great home-made cleaner tips?

La Dolce Weekend

We feel tough!!

This weekend I cooked up a storm. There were Dijon Brussels Sprouts and a tofu scramble from La Dolce Vegan. I am really getting into that cookbook and I have always loved Sarah Kramer's recipes.

Next recipe I want to try is Cajun Tomato Potatoes, hopefully using tomatoes from my garden.

I also made vegan chocolate mousse and some soy milk whipped "cream." It was screaming for a graham cracker crust to become the happy version of the KFC Little Bucket Parfaits, which I adored when I was little. The recipes I used were sort of a conglomeration of several cookbooks, as I usually am cooking to use up stuff on the weekends. We completely polished off numerous carrots and a batch of the COK Garbanzo Spread (recipe posted in an earlier entry). I am so in love with carrots that I saw a giant billboard that said CARPORTS and went nuts thinking it said CARROTS! Hehehe.

In other news...I dispersed myself the first check from https://www.surveysavvy.com/?id=3367579&action=join. I first saw this on http://zenhabits.net/ and decided to check it out. It's been gimmick-free thus far. The surveys take minutes and range from being .50 to 2.00 (at least the ones I've seen.) When you complete one, they add the money to your Survey Savvy account. Fun! More money for buying avocados and agave nectar!! (yes...my ideas of luxury food!!!)

And finally...a blurry shot of a resurrected snapdragon! Yay!!

Dispatches From Leslie's Kitchen

Yay! Brad's co-worker ever so kindly gave us several plants a few months ago when we moved in the new place. With lots of help from friends, I got a garden started (my first real one!). Me and Tyler the doggie get up early every morning and water the plants. The results: a buncha big healthy herb plants, a giant lemongrass sprigg, eucalyptus, sunflowers (no blooms yet!), buncha tomatos, and stringbeans. Eggplants and peppers should be making an appearance soon. Here's a picture of my first big tomato. Last night I cooked spaghetti and vegan meatballs using the garden tomatos!

The Kitchen a' cookin':






Our sexxxay little D.I.Y. Itallian dinner...