Deb's Night: Healthy Enchiladas

"Would you call this...a bunch of spinach?"

The problem with Deb's cooking nights is that we have to follow the recipe.  So a bunch of spinach means...erm...well, it depends if you ask Hungry Deb or Full Deb.  This month's Deb is on a juice fast, though, so basically anything that requires chewing is the best food in the world.  And as a result, all the food is still trying to follow a healthy theme, and mostly comes from health food blogs.  The bad news is that it's health food.  The good news is that we have the recipes!  And the links to the original pages, too.

Colcannon Puffs

Ingredients

• 1½ pounds potatoes (you can peel if you want, but I didn’t)
• 6 ounces kale

• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons soymilk
• 2 tablespoons potato starch or corn starch

Instructions

1. Cut the potatoes into small cubes (about 1/2-inch), put them in a large pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are tender.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, remove the center stalk from the kale and slice the leaves into strips. When the potatoes are done, lift them out with a slotted spoon and place in a large mixing bowl. Put the kale into the potato water and cook for 6 minutes or until kale is tender. Remove kale with a slotted spoon to a food processor. Add 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid and pulse to chop fine.
3. Preheat oven to 425 F. Mash the potatoes and add the kale and all remaining ingredients. Stir well. Using a well-rounded tablespoon, form into balls about 1 inch across. Place them on an oiled baking sheet or, preferably, a baking sheet covered with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes. Carefully turn over and bake fore 20 minutes more, until lightly browned.

Here are the half-cooked colcannon
puffs before going back in the oven.

A colcannon puff, in case you're not Irish, or an Ireland-enthusiast, or a reader of the ridiculously buff firemen who read this recipe from fat free vegan, is a potato-kale ball that involves a lot of boiling.  And if that doesn't sound enticing...then you're just not hungry enough.  Hopefully the powdered goodness of nutritional yeast, onion powder and other seasonings will make it extra delicious.  Barring that, well, that's what health food is for.  Nourish your soul with healing energy and your body will...um...who cares about your body if your soul is nourished?

"How'd you get kale on your forehead?"

After lots of mashing and spicing, you get to roll them into balls, which is always delightful.  Hungry Deb made some gigantic balls, in that not-at-all-sexual-but-actually-just-really-very-hungry way.  Yeah.

And mysteriously enough, we managed to get the salt wrong (or was this an especially salty recipe?)  It might have been smart to taste before baking, especially since they were all vegan-y and didn't have anything that required cooking...

Served hot, the puffs should be crispy on the outside and moist on the inside.

 

Enchiladas

Ingredients

• ½ large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• Some cumin and cinnamon
• 1 can diced tomatoes (or ½ box Pomi crushed tomatoes)
• 1 can black or pinto beans
• 1 can corn
• ½ bunch greens (spinach, collards, chard or kale)
• 8-10 lightly steamed corn tortillas

Instructions

1. Sauce: Preheat oven to 400. Line the bottom of a rectangular baking dish with parchment paper. In a skillet sauté the onion and bell pepper on medium-high with a little water for 5 minutes. Add spices and mix, followed by the diced tomatoes, beans and corn, and cook for another 5 minutes. Add in greens and cook for 2 more minutes, and turn off heat. Place 1 cup of sauce into a blender and blend until smooth; set aside.

2. Rolling enchiladas: Fill each steamed tortilla (so they won’t crack) with ½ cup of sauce and roll tortilla snugly, placing it seam side down in the baking dish. Continue until dish is full of rolled enchiladas, all placed closely together. Pour the blended sauce over the top, and bake uncovered for 20 minutes on the center rack. When done, let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

3. Guacamole topping: With a fork, mash the avocados with the lime juice, cumin and garlic powder. Mix in cilantro and tomatoes. Spoon mixture on top of enchiladas. Garnish with green onions and pumpkin seeds (optional). You can make this ahead of time if you like, so that the flavors mingle.

Recipe from StraightUpFood.

One of the dangers of making super healthy vegan enchiladas is that only super healthy vegans can be really, truly enthusiastic about them.  Thus, Jim and Brian made meat (meat?!?) to put in their enchiladas, and Jim brought cheese.


An interesting facet of this recipe was steaming the tortillas.  Normally, people steam them in that magic box at the burrito joint that you pump on and melt your slice of American cheese, but barring that, you actually have to do it on the stovetop!  It looks goofy, but it seems to have worked out alright.  Apparently, not steaming the tortillas results in them turning all crispy-sad in the oven.  Sounds right to me!

Steaming tortillas is almost as fun as eating them.  Right, Bri?

The most important part of the enchiladas was definitely the sauce, and I thankfully was figuring out how to blog this entry while that sauce happened, so it's a mysterious mystery from where I stand!  The sauce ended up getting cooked on the stovetop, but the beans got added before the blending of the sauce.  End result?  Kind of a hummos-y bean-y topping for the enchiladas, rather than a sauce-y topping with a bean-y filling.

Enchilada sauce - definitely
good with some extra hot sauce!

The guacamole that goes on top required ripe avocados, which the supermarket didn't have.  (Somehow, avocados aren't in season in Boston?  What?)  So we have vacuum sealed guac, and we're fancying it up with tomatoes and fresh cilantro.

It seems like maybe we should have ended up with a lot more sauce to smother the enchiladas - there was some exposed tortilla in there at the end.

The toasted pepitas on top of the
guacamole made for a delicious addition!

Chocolate Cherry Cake

Ingredients

• 20 frozen pitted cherries (about 1 cup)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon rum extract (optional)
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup unbleached flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy yogurt
• 1/4 cup vanilla soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)
• boiling water

Instructions

1. Cut the frozen cherries in half (it’s easiest to do this while they’re frozen). Put them in a bowl and stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and rum extract, if using. Allow them to sit at room temperature until they’ve completely thawed and become juicy, 1-2 hours.
2. Oil or pan spray 4 7-ounce ramekins. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix together the brown sugar and 2 tablespoons cocoa powder and set aside.
3. Pour the juices off the cherries into a measuring cup. Press lightly on the cherries to get all of the juice (I had about 1/4 cup). Sprinkle the corn starch over the cherries and mix well. Divide the cherries equally among the 4 ramekins.
4. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa, and baking powder. Stir in the vanilla extract, soy yogurt, and soymilk. (Mixture will be very thick.) Drop by tablespoons over the cherries in the ramekins, dividing equally among them. Smooth to cover the cherries.
5.  Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture evenly over the batter, about 2 tablespoons per ramekin. Use a spoon to level the tops.
6.  Add boiling water to the cherry juice up to the 3/4 cup line. Pour or spoon it gently over the brown sugar in the ramekins, about 3 tablespoons per ramekin. Place the ramekins in the oven and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until tops appear mostly dry (they should be streaked with darker, wetter looking areas) and sauce is bubbling around the edges. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.

"I've been waiting for this all week!" --Hungry Deb

What this translates to in real life is that Bri has to sort through the frozen mixed berries and isolated all of the cherries.  Mixed berry cake?  No.  Cherry cake!  Poor Hungry Deb then discovered that she was supposed to thaw those berries for several hours...so much for the recipe!  Into the microwave they go!

Afterwards, Deb had the fun job of squeezing juice out of the cherries, and then mixed the rest of the ingredients, including greek yogurt.  Unfortunately, Deb also...uh...had  no ramekins.  It's a little...experimental.  And the cake certainly has a lot of moving parts!  Pouring boiling cherry juice onto brown sugar on top of cocoa'd yogurt?  That's bold, yo.  Well, no matter how bad things get, there's always ice cream.

The cake texture was nice, but the whole
cherries inside has a kind of weird goo-like
property.  Did I mention ice cream?

Farscape

Deb: "Oh my God, so weepy."
Jim: "Pilot's entrails look suspiciously like cable covers."
Bri: "As flashback episodes go, it was pretty good."
Alex: "I watched maybe 40% of that episode."

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Colcannon Puffs	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy potato puffs...	They were...they were potato puffs.	Way too salty, but they have potential.	Even I thought they were salty.  They were Irish (read: bland)
Enchiladas	Maybe next time, we can make cheesy enchiladas...	The meat and cheese made those enchiladas!	Really good, but they didn't come together right, taste-wise.	They needed a lot more sauce!
Cake!	I think it has potential.  Maybe next time, we can make a cake WITH FAT.	I don't like the pieces of cherry either.  Buried under ice cream you can make pretend that it's not a very good sundae.	I don't like it.  I don't like the pieces of cherry.	Meh.

Alex's Night: Muffins! in! Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

Greetings, beautiful readers! It’s Brian, documenting this week after waking up at 6AM and working for nine hours at a high school jazz festival, so tonight is going to be.....special. (When did a memo go out to high school jazz bands that they should all dress like backup gangsters from 42nd Street? No more black shirts and skinny ties for me, no, not for a long time.)

Another sign of the apocalypse: Alex is following a recipe! For those of you not in the know, this is like Charlie Parker walking on stage, setting up a little stand and putting up some sheet music.

First up: a disagreement about the TV series “Numb3rs”, which Deb loves and Jim thinks is amazingly silly. As Jim just took his final and did amazingly well, Jim wins!

Next up: this week’s menu--DO YOU KNOW THE MUFFIN MAN? Do you know his ability to create an entire meal out of muffins?? The muffin man is as versatile as he is insane. He’s very versatile.

We are having:

MUSHROOM MUFFINS

involving eggs, mushrooms, grated cheddar. We substitute olive oil for butter.

Thyme butter, cream cheese, salt and pepper make a savory frosting!

PIZZA MUFFINS

involving parmesan and pecorino cheeses, vegan sausage substituted for olives(yesss), tomatoes,...it’s noted that with the substitution we have less salt than the original recipe, and compensate with a 1/2tsp.

UPDATE: In place of the “Italian seasonings” the recipe calls for, Alex substitutes ‘Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasonings’. As one does.

Update 2: There's a proposed topping for this muffin, roasted garlic/pepper jelly, remembered 4/5 of the way through the meal. Yay! We add the leftover pecorino cheese for added yumminess.

ONION MUFFINS, with Avocado/Brie Cream Cheese.

Already I can tell that we’re going to go into terra incognita here, because Alex’s recipe for the cream cheese reads, in full, “avocado, brie, lemon juice ?” There are a grand total of five question marks in this one recipe, which is always a good sign. A sign, anyhow. Cilantro butter is made as a side note. As opposed to a foot note, which you need stinky tofu for. (I’m sorry.) It turns out this was originally a recipe for Bell Pepper Muffins, only Jim despises bell peppers. We forge ahead!

SOUP: Jim’s CSA Share of Whatever Soup: parsnips, sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, leaks. There’s squash, too, which was obtained at the Market Basket, but 70-90% of this item is still local and spending a weekend morning in a Somerville parking lot waiting for a spot to open up earns a little slack. Salt and pepper with a little hot sauce to taste; with such a melange of roasted vegetables it doesn't need much herb help, goes the theory.

MUSIC: Mog on random shuffle, replaced during baking by Andrew Bird’s new album.

(Different bird)

Deb announces that she’s skeptical about the need for salt in food, generally, and is going to test this theory by no longer putting salt in ANYthing. (In her home cooking, not tonight). She and Alex verbally joust about nutrition a bit--Alex expresses dubiousness about anyone who begins sentences with “My favorite nutritionist says...”, which goes over about as well as you’d expect. Deb’s recent experiments with Juicing (vegetables, not steroids) have educated her about things like the inherent sweetness of cucumbers--you add them to juice to cut the bitterness of kale, apparently.  Jim has a counter-proposal involving Not Drinking Kale. Deb rejects this, yet notes 20 minutes later that if you have too much kale it can lead to Thyroid Issues. As someone with only one thyroid gland left in his body (long story) that seals the deal for me in a bigtime way.



We get the muffin tins out, and to our delight we realize we’re making mini-muffins!



True food fact: recently someone at Alex’s house washed their hands in broth he was making.



True food fact 2: recent attempts at sesame-soy muffins and cucumber-yogurt muffins were...well, the best thing that can be said about them is that they were recent, and they were muffin-shaped.



Because of the mini-ness of the muffins, we guesstimate the amount of time to bake them as 8 minutes. Alex notes that trying to put tiny amounts of batter in tiny little paper cups is one of the things he hates the most. We carefully avoid invoking Godwin's Law and just assume he hates Hitler more. Deb takes a turn with the batter and notes that it *is* painstaking work. (As opposed to hating Hitler, which is open to all sorts of approaches.)


The avocado/brie frosting is a challenge.  We're acting on the assumption that avocado shouldn't get too hot, but the brie needs to be melty, so finding a balance between the two is like finding a balance between a tie-dye t-shirt maker and a high school jazz band...ye gods I have to let go of this.

Deb Tires of chopping cilantro...this leads her to muse that she would be the worst sous chef in the world, as Variety and Stimulation are not exactly highlights of that job. It's pointed out that being constantly asked to taste something when you're on a juice fast would also be challenging for her.

The conversation turns to movies and watching them with your parents: Alex can watch ANYthing with them, even threesome movies...while we greet this news calmly, inside we're screaming at the mere thought of this. I'm still remembering the trauma from the holiday when we thought watching 'Love, Actually' with my parents was a good idea.

As Deb and Jim, our two artisans, begin the frosting process they unconsciously switch from calling them muffins to calling them cupcakes.

RESULTS AND THOUGHTS:
Jim's biggest takeaway from this is that four of us canNOT eat 94 mini-cupcakes.

Alex's biggest takeaway is that making delicious frosting is waaaaay easier than making delicious cake. Alex could eat ALL the frostings. A lot. Really a lot. He's really pleased with how well the avocado-brie came together.

Deb's biggest takeaway is that she came to this meal intending to stay true to her juice fast and only taste each of the items. Nine mini-muffins and a big bowl of soup later, she realizes how foolish this was.

Brian's biggest takeaway is that garlic/pepper jelly is versatile and yummy and should go on many, many things.

The finished product

Soup: A+ from Deb...she wants to make it a million times. A from Jim! The parsnips really gave it an earthy goodness, plus squash is very lovable. Alex gives it a B+...it's Fine. It's a roasted vegetable soup; the mix of veggies is good, but it's not epic. For myself, it felt like other soups we've done, but without the little kicks we've given soups in the past (and by kicks I guess I mean hot sauce and/or cheese). A good supporting character for the muffins.

Pizza Muffin: Deb's favorite. My favorite. Jim and Alex didn't even taste the sausage. Jim's definite winner was the pepper jelly! You lose the concept of a savory muffin with it a bit--the jelly turns the muffin sweet (which isn't a bad thing, mind you). Alex feels it has some goofy flavors that don't quite mesh together, grades it B. I give it an A+, wants to create a Muffin Van that will go around selling them.  I quietly note that a carnivorous version with bacon would be even better.  Muhuhahaha.

Mushroom Muffin: Deb's not a fan. Doesn't even remember the cake. Didn't like the frosting. Gives it a C. Jim felt the mushroom was superfluous--maybe if we had a stronger flavor of mushroom it'd be better? I enjoyed the frosting, vaguely remembered the cake.

Onion Muffin: Cake was a bit on the bland side, sez Deb. Frosting was delicious. Avocado is tricky since it will begin to oxidize if we leave the muffins out too long, so this isn't the best candidate for food carts or competitive muffin competitions. Jim enjoyed the little bit of onion. I thought, again, that the cake was just a carrier vehicle for the yummy frosting.  Would caramelizing the onions or in some other way boosting their flavor have made a difference? 



Tonight's Farscape episodes:
Taking the Stone (season 2, episode 3)
An exploration of Chiana's backstory, aka the producers saying to each other "guys, we've got to do something so the viewers like her character and stop thinking of her as annoying. So let's have her go off and try to join a commune of brainless death-hippies. The kids'll love it!" Ugh.

Crackers Don't Matter (season 2, episode 4)
I remembered this episode as being a lot better than it actually was.  The shakycam work actually made Jim feel motion-sick, bits seemed ludicrous or jarring, and we were all in food comas.  Bad combination.

Jim's Night: Gnocchi, from a French point of view.

Our official menu tonight:

French Bread with garlic parsley olive oil ...and Taleggio?

Spinach Gnocchi

Baby Arugula Salad

Polenta and Roasted Squash

Vanilla Bean Cheesecake with Walnut Crust

Appetizer

It's Jim's night and as usual, he has graciously provided us with appetizers, something Deb and Brian often forget.  This might be our favorite appetizer, yet. Even though Brian and I are not big fans of Brie, we LOVED a cheese that Jim bought with which looked a lot like it, called Taleggio. Wait a second... no, scratch that...I just looked up Taleggio on Wikipedia and our cheese doesn't look anything like it. Ok, so the store lied to Jim. We have no idea what cheese this is. Do you?  We love a mystery cheese, apparently. Geez, maybe it IS Brie. Maybe this is what really good quality Brie tastes like. Hmm. Anyway, besides that, Alex made us a parsley infused garlic oil dipping sauce which was perfect for baguette dipping.

Spinach Gnocchi
The recipe said it was the perfect pasta to make for beginners. "30 minutes to prepare" it promised. Ha, we say. Getting the right consistency is a nerve wracking challenge. If you knead it too much or roll it too much, it can be tough. It can be too oily, too floury. "So did you get the right texture?" I asked. "We hope so." is all they can reply.

It should be noted that "to prepare" apparently doesn't include the hour of chilling time in the middle, just the actual chopping/grating/mixing bits.  Tricky, tricky recipe!

Brian here, taking over
the blog while Deb
takes Rommy out for a walk.
 Hellooooooo, loyal readership!

Making the gnocchi
This is our biggest countertop challenge, as to roll out each piece they want us to cover a flat surface with flour and roll our little proto-gnocchi-nuggets through it.

Interestingly (to me, at least), the gnocchi balls at this stage looked like little green dessert truffles.  The first batch tasted VERY healthy...so healthy that Steps Must Be Taken.   A sprinkling of grated cheese across the top and a tomato sauce are suggested, as is just coating them in breadcrumbs and turning them into arancini, as is just plain ol' sauteeing them in butter.  The decision was to toss them in butter/olive oil/paprika/rosemary mixture, saute them, THEN toss them in an improvised sundried tomato/cream of porcini & white truffle/butter sauce (YES. I KNOW), and sprinkle pecorino cheese on top.  If Paula Deen was a vegetarian, this would've been the solution she came up with.


...And I'm okay with that.

Here we are in our action poses:

The polenta is going to be basted with the olive oil-garlic mixture also used on our bread, then broiled, cooled, and turned into nummy medallions.

Roasted Squash
There's cubed squash going into the oven, roasted with olive oil and Herbs de Provence, AS I TYPE.  (The excitement is palpable.)  When they're all cooked we'll combine them and drizzle them with a balsamic reduction, bam!  (Or, wait, that should be the French variant.  Le Bahm!)

The balsamic drizzle is an old friend at this point; your old friend with a big truck who never seems to mind when you need to move an appliance, as long as you kick in for gas and maybe a burger.  Everyone needs a drizzle like this.

While there's a slow moment I'll take this time to grade our "mise en place" tonight, which....well, we're able to mostly contain the prepping to the kitchen.  Not exactly Michelin standards, but we've done far, far worse. (And probably will for my meal next week.) Plus, extra points for having a flashlight in the middle of the prep area, in case of a blackout.  B+!

The polenta and gnocci recipes are from 'Cooking School Provence', by the way.  Authors: Gui Gedda and Marie-Pierre Moine.  The squash is a Supper Club Original, and was kept in the oven just long enough to become crispy and caramelized.


Baby Arugula Salad

Arugula, like rising sea levels, happens.  (Is that negative, you ask?  Not if you're a whale, it's not.  An arugula-eating whale. Yes.)  If the salad is the star of your meal, Jim avers, you've either done something wrong or you're having a meal of nothing but salad.  We'll have a parsley-parmesan dressing with it.  We have some grated carrots for it, some cucumbers, and some CSA Mystery Mixed Greens. (They're green, local and organic...what, you want names, too?  

Vanilla Bean Cheesecake with Walnut Crust
There's been a little confusion with the sour cream topping for the cheesecake--the directions call for it to be poured/brushed across the top, then put in the oven for just 5 minutes.  As far as we can tell, the 5 minutes did noooothing....it was a delicious schmear of glop when we put it in, and it's a delicious schmear now.

('Delicious Schmear' is also the stage name of a Tel Aviv stripper, btw.)

This recipe was found on FoodandWine.com

To our surprise, as the cheesecake cools it sinks a little in the middle, souffle-style. It's not that attractive looking in this photo, but 3 out of 4 cooks loved it.

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Appetizer	B I thought it was great, but hard to good grades to things that you had no hand in cooking.	A Delicious and a cheese that would make you proud to be in a cave in Italy	B+ Good bread. Totally loved the mystery cheese and the garllic oil infusion was excellent. But the oil was all we made	A Good bread, excellent cheese...whatever it was
Polenta	B  I feel like I learned a lot about polenta. It's really easy to make and broiling it gave it crispness. Lots of potential with this recipe.	A-  Without the cheese it would have been not as good. Cheese=goodness	A- I thought it was awesome, but it needed a sauce...some mushroom.	B I thought it needed something. Maybe more balsamic drizzle.
Spinach Gnocchi	B-  I think I learned a lot about it. You have to make it delicious before you boil the balls. We should have added more salt.	A  We went through a lot of hoops for this. We went a few miles off course from what the recipe called for (out of necessity. to make it tasty)	B+ They were so damn healthy until we sauteed in butter and drenched in cheese. I feel like we could make these and put them in tomato sauce and they would be delicious.	C- As "gnocchi" they were a dismal leaden failure. As "Spinach meatballs" they might have had some potential. But this recipe needed a lot of help.
Roasted Butternut Squash	A-   On the whole, it was great, but we still have room for improvement. The flavors were good, but safe.	A   Surprising what a high point it was considering how easy it was.	A-  They were good, but we have had this dish before. Very healthy, though. Just squash and balsamic vinegar!	A   Delicious.
Cheesecake	A  Really good. Flavor, texture perfect, presentation just ok	A Really tasty. Only reason it's not an A+ is that it was missing caramel or chocolate on top.	B-  I don't get the love. To me, it tasted like a vegan cheesecake, but it wasn't! All the fat and cholesterol for a vegan flavor? Odd.	A+  Strawberry coulis would have made it better. The sour cream might not be necessary.

Farscape, Season 1, Episode 21: Bone to be Wild. 

Brian: There was actually a lot more plot advanced than I expected there to be. It started off with a Monster of the Week sort of feel.

Deb: I loved it, especially the bonding between Aeryn and the Leviathans.

Alex: I liked the "who's the bad guy feel".

Jim: I liked it. I hope we meet Imle again. 

Farscape: Season 1, Episode 22: Bad Timing.

Deb's Night: Stations of the Place

One of Deb's seven stations!

Any time you go to a cooking night, and Deb says "here are the seven phases of this meal" and she's written each one out by hand on a separate piece of paper, you expect it's going to be good.  It's like there are different stations...stations of the [mise en] place.  Yesssss punnnsszzz.

Uncooked bread with onions.

Rosemary Onion Focacia!

We're using the recipe from Artisan Bread in 20 minutes a Day or Less.  The trick is that you don't have to knead the dough, and that you have to fill the oven with steam as you bake the bread.  Deb read that we cook the bread for five minutes, which seemed incredibly surprising to me, but Deb baked us delicious focacia before.  Well, it was 25 minutes.  But it was pretty good!

The Baked Focaccia! 

Jim with unbaked cookies.

Polenta Almond Cherry Cookies! 
With maple syrup as the sweetener and coconut oil as the fat.  Gotta love the vegans.  Quick-cooking polenta, rice flour and almond meal.  Take that, gluten.  Jim made them, and was shocked by the dryness of the dough - the only liquid came from the coconut oil, which is solid at room temperature.  Yum, saturated fat.

Cookies, in their cooked glory.

Sauteeing was great for the fake meat.

Steak Sandwiches! 
A foreman grill plus fake meat and horseradish dressing.  Not to mention fresh watercress to go on top.  Nothing says manly steak sandwich like fresh baby watercress.  I feel bad for dissing the gluten, earlier, since we're relying on it for our protein...and...uh...the bread.  We're still trying to figure out how to make it not taste like a gummy mess, but I think that might just be gluten getting back at us for being so snarky in the above paragraph.  :-(  We grilled it on the foreman, but that didn't quite cut it, so we're trying to sautee it and see if we can induce a more delicious texture.

We also made a mayonnaise horseradish sauce, with a little agave and some salt and pepper.  Simple, but pretty effective...


Tapioca pudding! 
Tapioca, coconut milk and agave nectar for sweetness.  He's making it on the stovetop, and it's looking dangerously bubble-over-y.  As it turns out, Bri did the whole 'accidentally add twice as much tapioca to liquid' trick!  We attempted a rescue by adding more liquid to the pudding, and that liquid was pineapple juice.  A food chemist might know if there is some sort of acid in the pineapple that would prevent tapioca strands forming, but we're much more in favor of just throwing caution to the wind.  But that's what our backup dessert is for anyway, right?  Speaking of which, hey, we have leftover cherries.  Into the pudding they go!  We used pearled tapioca, which gives it a pretty groovy "thing from outer space" look once it's cooked.

Attack of the killer tapioca.  Watch yourself, Internet.

Don't forget the taters.

Corn Chowder! 
 Deb is making corn chowder, vegan style.  Her current cookbook guru says that you should head up the pan, then add salt, then add oil, which is pretty much the opposite of how we normally roll.  We added some mirepoix, and a chipotle pepper which came in a can of adobo sauce.  Meanwhile, we're broiling some corn in the toaster oven to give it that toasty browned goodness.  We made cashew cream, which was soaked cashews that were food processed.  It was a little grainy, so we strained out the gritty bits, but aside from the oil, that's the only fat in this one.

Deb's vegan meal, ruined by the "I can't believe it IS chicken" moment.

Salad 
This salad is mostly a delivery vehicle for a Caesar Dressing, which is a blend of capers, garlic, nutritional yeast, miso, fake mayonnaise, water, olive oil and agave.  Those vegans, they just put the agave in everything!

All together.  We spread the horseradish sauce on the focaccia first, then the
'meat' and the veggies.  Watercress, red onions and red peppers.

	Alex	Brian	Deb	Jim
Soup	C+  I’ve had way better corn chowder.  The corn could have been fresher, and the flavor was just OK.	C+  It was too hot for me and it stuck on and the corn we used could have been better.  Fresh corn would have made it go up.	“I’m really full now...”  A solid B.  You could serve it to your mama.	B  I really liked the spice from the chipotle.
Salad	B  Fun dressing, but nothing else distinguishing.	B  It’s an eh salad with a great dressing.	A-  I loved the dressing...but it wasn’t very healthy.	The dressing was awesome (A).  The salad was just a delivery vehicle.
Sandwich	B+  The bread could have risen a little more - it wasn’t perfect for a sandwich.  The sauce was great, but the innards didn’t blow me away.	A  It’s only the rookie mistakes with the seitan and focacia cooking time that keeps it from an A+.	Oh my God, A fucking plus.  I looooved that sandwich.	I give it a solid A.  Shocked at how good it was!  Awesome focaccia, sauce was amazing, and the stuff was just fine.  Red onions!  Zing!
Cookies	B+  I think the coconut oil was amazing.  It was rich and had an interesting texture, and the cherries were lovely.  Gluten would have been great, though...	C+  The coconut oil reminded me of a girl scout cookie (in a good way).  The grainy cornmeal texture reminded me of cream of wheat in a bad way.	I really wasn’t in the mood to eat them...they didn’t strike me as being perfect.  I got a weird aftertaste...?  I have to wait until I’m hungry again.	B+  I like the texture, I could live without the crunchiness that persists after you’ve eaten it, and I thought the taste was pretty darn good.  And no liquid at all!  (Bri:  It was the greatest cracker I’ve ever eaten...)
Pudding	D-  Pineapples and cherries alone would have been better.  Poor, unloved tapioca.	The pudding curse continues.  Rarely has there been such a dessert...in a bowl...in front of me.  D	Full Deb is full.	F.  The consistency was horrible.  I like pineapple and cherries, but otherwise.  The taste wasn’t very good for the pudding itself.