Tag Archives: tomato

Pad Kee Mao - Drunken Vegan Noodles

Drunken noodles has always been one of my favorite things to order at Thai restaurants. I have always loved stir fried tomatoes in Asian food, in fact, I wish that they were an option more often. I recently went to Titaya‘s which was purported to have great food and the whole menu could easily be made vegan. I am happy to report that the rumors are true and the food was great but as soon as I tried my food I realized that I could easily recreate it now that I am growing Holy Basil.My tomatoes in the backyard couldn’t take the heat but the Holy Basil that I got just a couple of months ago is growing fantastically. It is a beautiful plant too with its purple tinted leaves. If you like Thai food I highly recommend growing it and a Kaffir Lime plant because it makes cooking Thai food so easy. I am not going to claim any authenticity in this recipe, however, it isn’t based on any of my cookbooks because they didn’t have it but I assure it was really great! Maybe the best Thai Dish I have ever made. The wonderful thing about cooking Southeast Asian food is that the methods are designed to have the heat going for a short amount of time since it is hot there too. Make sure you have all your ingredients preped and the noodles ready and the whole thing will come together super quickly.

Pad Kee Mao

soak

1 lbs of dried rice noodles

chop

4 cloves of garlic
1 small red onion
2 bell peppers
3 tomatoes (in wedges)
1 jalapeno
1/2 cup of basil

mix

2 Tablespoon light soy sauce
1 Tablespoon dark (sweet) soy sauce
1 teaspoon Oyster (mushroom) sauce
1 Tablespoon Sugar

garnish

1 lime (juice)
2 green onions, chopped

Rice noodles are all a little different so they should be prepared according to package directions. If they are the tiny ones it is usually better to soak them in cold water for 30 minutes and the drain before adding to the stir fry. If they are big ones you can cook them more like Italian pasta, over boiling water. If you are unsure, bring the water to a boil, add the noodles and turn off the heat. Check every couple minutes until they are nearly al dente.

Heat your wok or skillet up to very hot and add cooking oil. You want a piece of onion to sizzle on contact. First add the onion and cook until it just starts to change color. Next, add the peppers and the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the tomato and stir fry for 1 minutes. Run cold water through the noodles and add them in bunches to the pan. Keep flipping in between every bunch to get everything well distributed. Once all the noodles are in add the sauce mix. After the noodles add the basil. Remove from heat and serve with a wedge of lime and green onions.

Enjoy!

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How to make an Environmentally Conscious Vegan Michelada

Let’s imagine for a minute that you live in Texas. Just picture it, the heat hits you like a suffocating wave of vaporous molten lava. You crave a savory bloody mary because you want something spicy and substantive but it is Sunday and you live in Texas so you can’t buy liquor (buying alchohol on Sunday makes baby Jesus cry) plus a Bloody Mary isn’t exactly refreshing. No, when its this hot and you want a savory drink there is really only one option: the Michelada. Now, the non vegan version often involves a substance called clamato which sounds like a lot of fun but in fact muders defenseless clams. You could buy vegan micheladas but if you make it at home it can be so green that you can feel good about it.

Step One: Fill your glass with ice (preferably made from filtered rainwater)

Step Two: Pour organic tomato juice into the glass until you hit the halfway point. (If you are using a lazy smurf glass that is about to the third z)

Step Three: Add Bragg’s liquid aminos or any other non GMO organic soy product to taste

Step Four: Add Happy Dogs Hot Sauce to taste. There are other vegan hot sauces out there but are they really going to make dogs happy? I personally prefer a happy dog.

Step Five: Add “the Wizard’s Original Organic Vegan Worcestershire sauce. If you want the ultimate vegan drink you gotta go with the wiz, man, NO SUBSTITUTIONS!

Step Six: Squeeze in some lime. I think key limes are more authentic and usually regular grocery store limes are hybridized with lemons, picked before they are ready (probably by underpaid illegal workers), chemically “ripened” through some sort of a crazy formaldehyde process and then shipped all over the world.

Step Seven: Add olive juice optionally and only if you like olives.

Step Eight: Slowly pour in your Pasbst Blue Ribbon Beer or other locally brewed Mexican style pilsner. The choice here is a little more complicated, on the one had the “Schwag Beer” is brewed through an evil multi-national company that supports all sorts of republican-style malarkey but the locally brewed choice will probably be filter through a fish bladder so here you are going to have to pick your battle.

Enjoy with a clear consious.

The Trifecta- a sandwich from Cupcake Punk

One of my favorite bloggers is Jes from Cupcake Punk. We have a lot of things in common including our love of beer and tasty vegan food. The other day she created a recipe and I just had to try it because it involved tomatoes which are pretty much my favorite thing about summer and it looked so yummy. The sandwich is called the Trifecta which is a word that originates from the very non-vegan activity of horseracing. A trifecta is when you guess the three winners in the order that they win. It is hard to decide what order the winners come in here, there is a cornmeal crusted fried green tomato, sundried tomatoes , and a plump juicy red tomato. You may think that the tomato might be overwhelming but that was not the case at all, the flavors were all so different and worked magically together. It makes me feel like singing.I also made the avocado potato salad from Vegan Brunch. It was suprisingly more like a potato salad and less like guacamole than I thought it would be even though it had 2 avocados, lime, red onion, and cayenne. With the leftover potato salad, bread, and sundried tomatoes I made another sandwich for today and I can’t wait to eat it!

Homeade Bagles

I made this bagel with Kalamata olives. It was a revelation so good with a perfect consistency and taste. It is the first bagel I ever made and maybe the first bread that I have ever felt was perfect. Maybe it was the olives. They can solve anything. Not only did I make the bagels but I also made the garden herb spread with fresh herbs from my garden. The yellow grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes were also from my backyard. The broccoli sprouts were from the jar next to my kitchen sink. To get more homemade at this point I am going to have to start growing my own wheat and milling it myself. This bagel with so different then the bagel you get at the store with its dying sprouts and tomatoes ripened by chemical sprays. Both the bagel and the spread are recipes from the new vegan brunch which I am starting to work through, everything has been great so far!

I also went camping this weekend at Krause Springs in Spicewood. It was the PERFECT weekend for camping; not to hot or too cold. I could sleep in my sleeping bag and still be comfortable in the morning. It was a weekend of readin’, napin’, and swimin’ the epitome of the Lazy Smurf lifestyle that I am constantly striving for.

Here is our lovely shady camping site And the hiking pathAnd some flowersAnd a little streamAnd finally the big smimin’ hole, complete with waterfall and rope swing

This is going to be the best summer ever!

Grilled Vegan Pizza

Memorial Day starts the official summer season for me even though it has been unofficially summer since I saw my the first firefly on the same day as I got my first red tomato. Memorial Day makes it official because when I was growing up that was the weekend that the water park opened up and I loved the water park. Wait, I still love the water park I just never get to go here in Texas because it is an hour away. This summer it is going to happen! In my summer enthusiasm I decided to grill some pizzas. Unfortunately I ran headlong into the project without doing any research and though my pizzas were good, I have a lot to learn! I made the dough recipe from Vegan Lunch Box and maybe I overworked the dough because it came out really hard. I decided to make mini pizzas so that I could experiment with the technique. The first one I tried was peaches and olives with some sage and some chives on top.It was a great combination but I should have grilled the crust on both sides before putting on the toppings because the bottom got over-grilled (I think another word for that is burned).

The next one I grilled on both sides first before topping but I should have done it for a shorter time or maybe the grill was too hot because this one got a little crispy as well. Plus, tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, and mushrooms was a great combo but would have been so much better with a tofu riccota base.The last one was maybe the best (I liked the peach a lot, but it was burned). The grill wasn’t as hot when I put it on so it didn’t get as hard. The topping were Zucchini, Tomato, Olives, Mushrooms, and Garlic. So here is what I have learned, oil the crust and grill it on both sides before you put the toppings on. Have all the toppings ready to go before you start otherwise you can’t keep on eye on the grill, use lots of toppings in general, and most importantly; add lots of olives and everything will be yummy regardless of what happens.

Oh, and have beagles around to eat any excess crust.

Tempeh Salad Sandwich

Yesterday was another wonderful trip the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market. I couldn’t believe that tomato season appears to be ending, there were only a couple let (I might have just gotten there later than usual). Everyone seemed to have tons of produce however and it was really difficult to make decisions. I got some beautiful carrots, spring onions, peaches, tomatoes, and I can never resist mushrooms and Kombucha.I also had some inari sushi that was fabulous and the guy assured me that it was vegan.

For lunch we were busy doing things around the house so I wanted something very simple and decided since I had veganaise for another recipe I would try to make chicken salad sandwiches with tempeh. I was never a big fan of chicken/potato/tuna salads in my pregen days (unless my grandma made it) because I don’t like raw celery. So in my version I used carrot instead and fresh herbs and vegetables. It was pretty great, totally unlike what you get at the store which once again goes to show, if you want good food it is best to make it yourself.

And look at that tomato! My god, I love summer. Tempeh Salad

8oz of tempeh, cubed
1 carrot, grated
1/3 cup veganaise
1 scallion, minced
4 Tablespoons of fresh parsley, minced
2 leaves of sage, minced
1/4 tsp of fresh rosemary, minced
1 tsp vegeta broth powder
salt & pepper

Simmer to tempeh in enough water to cover it with 1 Tablespoon or so of soy sauce for 20 minutes. Drain and let it cool, I was in a hurry so I put some ice cubes along with the tempeh in the freezer and it was cold by the time I was ready for it. Prep all the vegetables and herbs and toss until they are well incorporated. In a larger bowl measure out the veganaise and whip it with a whisk or a fork until light and creamy. Add the rest of the ingredients together and carefully toss. Enjoy!

VeganMoFo- Taco Town III

Sometimes I have a waking nightmare that I will be riding up to Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse and find a sign that says, “closed to put up condos”. In Austin this seems to be happening more all the time. Nothing was worse than going to the Cosmic Cafe for my birthday and seeing that it was closed. But thankfully Bouldin continues to go strong. It is one of my favorite coffee shops in Austin.

Bouldin is on South First, just down the street from me so I like to hang out under the oak trees and drink Mexican Mochas and watch the hippies and the scenesters do there thing.

On beautiful Sunday mornings it can get kind of busy but the people and staff are so laid back that you never feel like you are in a rush to get your food and get out. It is the kind of place to while away the morning.

It is also my favorite vegan food in Austin. I somehow didn’t even realize for the first few years that it was an all vegetarian menu. All of their entrees can be made vegan, and really they should be made vegan because Bouldin Creek has the best tofu scramble I have ever had in my life. It could make anyone go vegan. So often at restaurants the tofu has too many spices and is too liquidy, and the tofu has been crumbled into pieces that are just too tiny. At Bouldin Creek the ‘fu always comes out absolutely brilliant. You can sub it in any of the egg dishes, I love the Breakfast Sammich with tomatoes and spinach mixed in the tofu on a poppyseed bagel. My man Dan loves the Slacker’s Banquet which is rice & beans with vegan cornbread. They even have a soul food plate.

The tacos are out of this world. They are all named after people and each is delightful. Especially with a homemade potato hash cake on the side.

Here is what I had, on the left is the Ren, sauteed onions, garlic, jalapeno, and tofu scramble. In the middle is the glorious potato hash cake, which is crispy on the outside creamy in the middle and filled with rosemary goodness. The taco on the right is the Timmy and had homemade vegan chorizo, tomatoes, and red & black beans.

Bouldin’s chorizo is out of this world good. You can even order a side of it and on its own it is quite good which I can’t say for any other chorizo I have ever had.

Now I am so hungry, I hope I’m not driving everyone crazy with this taco tour, I will try to go back to cooking at home now that the weekend is over.