Welcome!
This blog will be a record of our culinary adventures during the summer of 2014.
We plan to post about once a week and will be sharing a vast array of sweet and savory recipes with an emphasis on hearty, nutritious, delicious and (mostly) vegan meals. Some recipes will come from existing online blogs (when this is the case we will provide appropriate links), and others will be mashups/experiments of our own.
We greatly encourage feedback, and suggestions, and look forward to sharing our love of cooking together.
We felt that the perfect way to launch this blog was to honor our dear father, MiLo, who has cooked us thousands of scrumptious breakfasts throughout our lifetimes.
We cooked him a breakfast of vegan blueberry oat waffles and swiss chard frittata as inspired by Isa Chandra Moskowitz's delightful blog The Post Punk Kitchen.
Below we will provide photos and comments documenting this experience.
The frittata included:
1 tablespoon olive
oil
6 cloves garlic,
finely chopped (Note: Isa's recipe calls for 6 but we used 4 instead)
1 bunch of red
chard, rough stems removed, chopped well (about 4 cups)
2 teaspoons dried
oregano
1 tablespoons
tamari or soy sauce (use tamari if gluten free)
1 teaspoon wet
mustard (dijon or yellow, whatever you got)
1/4 teaspoon
tumeric
several dashes
fresh black pepper
1/4 cup nutritional
yeast flakes
salt to taste
1 pound firm or extra firm tofu
Note: For cooking instructions, see here.
For the waffles, we needed:
1 cup white whole
wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking
powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground
allspice
1 cup quick cooking
oats
1/3 cup unsweetened
applesauce
1 1/2 cups
unsweetened almond milk (or your fave non-dairy milk)
3 tablespoons pure
maple syrup
2 tablespoons
canola oil
1 teaspoon pure
vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups frozen
blueberries
Note: we used sweetened almond milk without using maple syrup, and substituted coconut oil for canola. For further instructions, see here.
The recipes turned out to be very simple and enjoyable to follow and the results were delicious.
Both dishes tasted great on their own but were even more divine with our individual additions (pictured below).
Jenai had her frittata with sriracha hot sauce, Xóchitl had it with cayenne pepper and our dad had it straight up plain.
For the waffles, Jenai used crunchy cookie butter, raw cacao nibs, cardamom and cinnamon. Xóchitl had hers with earth balance margarin, lemon, brown sugar and raw cacao nibs, and our dad used a multitude of toppings including raspberry jam, honey, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and maple syrup. We found it is best to go crazy with the toppings. There's no such thing as too much goodness.
Here are pictures of the happy results:
Ever since Jenai's Japanese friends in China taught her the blessing that is said before and after every meal, she has begun to do the same:
Before the meal we say, itadakimasu いただきます, which literally means "I humbly receive", as a way of honoring all those who have played a part in bringing the food to the table, as well as to the life within the food, which we accept graciously as a part of the cycles of physical energy and spiritual nourishment. At the end of the meal, it is customary to say gochisōsama (deshita) ごちそうさま (でした), which again expresses gratitude for a delicious meal.
