Marinated Tofu

I have been making this tofu, marinated, breaded, and fried in olive oil, quite a bit lately. It is fast and has a really great flavor. I press the tofu for at least a half hour first. The marinate is random amounts of fresh garlic and ginger, Bragg's Liquid Aminos, Sriracha chili sauce, rice vinegar, some splashes of lime juice, and olive oil. I then bread the tofu in a mixture of panko and nutritional yeast. Finally, I fry it in olive oil. Here is also made green beans with walnuts and shallot crisps (recipe from Thanksgiving meal!)

Carrot cake with Cream Cheese Icing

I have made this recipe before, not vegan. Tonight I tested it with egg substitute and vegan cream cheese and was definitely not disappointed. It is from an In Style magazine from 2005 and is called "Jenny Belushi's Carrot Cake." The ingredients for the cake are: 2 cups All-Purpose flour (I substituted one for Whole Wheat Pastry), 2 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp baking soda, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp salt, 2 cups sugar, 1 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used safflower), 2 eggs (Ener-G Egg replacer), 4 cups grated carrots, and 1 cup sweetened (I used unsweetened) coconut. Heat the over to 350 and grease/flour two 9" cake pans. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into a medium bowl. In a large bowl beat sugar, oil and eggs until well blended. Beat the two mixtures together. Add carrots and coconut. Divide between two pans and bake for 40-45 minutes. Cool on wire wracks. Ingredients for the frosting are: 11 oz. Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, 4 TBSP Earth Balance butter, 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 2 tsp vanilla (I forgot to add the vanilla). I added all the ingredients to my food processor and mixed. I had to add at least a cup more powdered sugar to make it thick enough. This cake rocks!

Mushroom Turnovers

This recipe is from an old Cooking Light magazine. It was not vegan but very easily converted. I used Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and for the butter, Earth Balance. Instead of egg, I used Ener-G Egg Replacer. The only other substitute was to replace one of the cups of All-Purpose flour with Whole Wheat Pastry flour. Mine baked for almost double the time specified and I only had filling enough for 15 instead of 24. I froze the extra pastry and will make more filling in the future.

Rigatoni with Red Pepper, Almonds, and Bread Crumbs

Happy New Year....finally! I don't think I am going to even try to catch up! I really have cooked a lot lately but haven't taken many pictures so I will wait to make it all again before I post recipes! Tonight though, I tried a recipe that my friend/co-worker Debbie gave me. I roasted three small red bell peppers for the 1 cup the recipe called for. Instead of buying croutons and crushing them, I made my own breadcrumbs. I have been saving my "heals" of bread for a while in the freezer and they worked really nicely! I just laid them on a cookie sheet and baked at 225 for about a half hour. Then I dumped them into the food processor with a little sesame Parmesan cheese and they were ready to go. 3/4 cup of oil really seems like a lot, but it needed it! I also substituted toasted hazelnuts for the almonds because I had run out.