Here are the cookbooks I use, and some of the recipes I've tried. (I only started recording them in December 2010, but I've cooked from them before that.)
Albi, Johnna: Greens Glorious Greens (vegetarian).
Stir fried bok choy - nice simple meal, added udon noodles
Abbas, M.A. and Dalal Holman: From the Tables of Lebanon (vegetarian).
- Hummus - usually from Veganomicon, but this time from Lebanon book, except with less tahini (I find it too bitter) -- both are good
- Garlic sauce - simple and perfect - used it on chickpea patties from Supermarket Vegan, but used leftovers on pasta
Burton, Dreena: The Everyday Vegan; Eat, Drink and Be Vegan (vegan).
- Pecan chocolate chip cookies - Everyday Vegan - husband liked, but too sweet for me
- Nicer Krispie Squares - This is one of my faves from Eat, Drink
- Oatmeal cookies - Eat Drink - I was looking for a non-margarine oatmeal cookie to replace my faves from Dolce Vegan. These are equally good, though next time I'll use less sugar.
- Spice chocolate chip cookies - Eat Drink - Made with less sugar and carob chips. I did this bc her recipes usu too sweet, but carob chips were unsweetened. So this time not sweet enough. Doh! But the spices are nice. Might try just as a spice cookie next time.
- Raspberry scones - Eat Drink - Wanted a scone made with oil not margarine. These were SOOO good. Will definitely make again. - Made again! Yummy again!
- Berry muffins from Eat Drink - SO good. Nice and big and tasty.
Denny and Ingram: The Complete Encyclopedia of Vegetables and Vegetarian Cooking (vegetarian).
- Winter Warmer Soup is a fave.
Klein, Donna: Supermarket Vegan (vegan).
- Chickpea patties - Kind of like falafels, only flat, so they didn't need to be deep fried. Easy to make, tasted good, also good cold the next day in my lunch. Added garlic sauce from the lebanese cookbook.
Claffey, Karen: Fast and Fun Food (vegan). --My first vegan cookbook.
- Doughnut holes: One of my favorite recipes from Dolce Vegan. Brought to New Years and they were enjoyed.
- Vegetable corn chowder from Dolce Vegan. Made often, LOVE.
- Fried "chicken" - Dolce Vegan - made with bought fake chicken - quite good, actually had a bacon-ee taste - easy to make
- Walnut apple pudding ohhhh so easy and yummmmm (pudding in the traditional sense of the word - it's bready, not wet) - made often - Dolce Vegan
- Baking powder biscuits that I cooked in soup to make dumplings, from Dolce Vegan - turned out perfectly - next week: made them as biscuits, turned out perfectly
- Raspberry walnut pancakes - Dolce Vegan - one of my favorite recipes, they turn out perfect and make for a nice cold snack
Moskowitz, Isa Chandra: Vegan With a Vengeance; Veganomicon (with Terry Hope Romano); Vegan Brunch (vegan).
- Coffee cake, made with 2 bananas - Vegan Brunch - perfect, not too sweet
- Corn bread biscuits from Vegan Brunch. They're alright, but I'll just make cornbread next time.
- Fake tuna fish sandwich spread from Vengeance - I love this recipe and make it all the time but I don't recommend adding the vinegar - if you need more liquid try lemon juice, or more mayo - I also sometimes add sweet pickles, or celery, or salad dressing with bits of onion
- Bran ginger muffins - my fave bran muffins, from Vengeance - I didn't have much granulated sugar left, so I used 3 tablespoons of Stevia, and a couple TB of maple syrup. I wouldn't have used Stevia at all, except I didn't know if too much wet sugar, instead of dry sugar, would throw off the recipe. Next time I would use only 2 TB of Stevia--it's so strong!! And to think the Stevia bag recommended 5 TB! Yikes.
- Hummus, from Veganomicon - this is the one I usually make
- Chickpea patties from Veganomicon - really really good, but I think the baked variation is WAY better than the fried - good cold for lunch
Patrick-Goudreau, Colleen: The Joy of Vegan Baking (vegan)
- Pancakes - this is the best basic pancake recipe I've made - fluffy and most like the kind my gramma used to make.
- Chocolate cake - made once before and it was great - this time I was absentminded and forgot baking soda, so it was flat like brownies, but good enough for a craving
Peterson, John: Farmer John's Cookbook (omnivore).
- Eggplant lasagna - Farmer John, and ricotta from here -fantastic -- don't know if that's the recipe, or the famous Daiya cheese -- made again, without Daiya, and still great
- Swiss chard with pine nuts & cranberries - Farmer John - this was really good!
Phyo, Ani: Ani's Raw Food Desserts (raw).
Lavender chocolate bars & carob walnut cookies - I combined the ideas from these two and sort of made my own cookies
Murray, Jennifer and Mark Reinfeld: The 30-Minute Vegan's Taste of the East (vegan).
- Tempeh korma - very good, and versatile
- Cauliflower subji - just okay, wouldn't make again
- Persian rice - yummy
- Nepalese dhal bhat - yummy and easy (used chick peas instead of lentils, didn't use cabbage)
Robertson, Robin: Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes; Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker (vegetarian with vegan options).
- Tahini broccoli casserole thing - from Meat and Potatoes - good, have made a few times - made again yum! - Made again, didn't even bother baking it, so it was fast and great.
Steele, Jae: Get It Ripe, and Ripe From Around Here (vegan).
- Lentil dahl - Get It Ripe and Taste of the East - fine but too big quantity
- Curried eggplant - Ripe From Around - very yum
- Kale crisps - Ripe from Around - good!
- Apple spice pancakes - Ripe From Around - very good (and good without anything on them, even though I used very little sweetener--so would be a good snack)
- Dragon bowl - Ripe From Around - Made it twice, super yummy and filling, now a staple! The second time I made enough to last me three meals worth (just kept the ingredients separate in the fridge.)
- Alfredo sauce - Get It Ripe - Pretty good, a little bitter like most faux-cheese sauce, but better than most.
- Tofu cream - Whenever I want a sort of whipped cream I use one of the ones from this book, cause it's super easy and thick and yummy. Today I ate it on pancakes.
- Warning: This book is notorious for having the worst mac & cheese recipe of all time. I've never tried it, but had fun reading all the reviews on amazon once. I tried the colby cheese years ago and it was good.
Other
- Shortbread cookies - from the Benson's corn starch box, very easy to veganize - Made them again.
- Pizza - use Daiya cheese for the first time on some pizzas with fake salami, and fake ground beef, and some yellow peppers (that's all I had in the house) - the cheese made all the difference.
- Pasta with lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Sometimes add other things like tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, Daiya cheese, fake Parmesan. This time I used the leftover garlic sauce from the Lebanese cookbook and I'll definitely do that again.
- Tried mini toy choy for the first time. SO CUTE.
- Made these apple muffins, turned out great. I used a lot less oil, but shredded the apple so that it was throughout, which kept the muffins moist even with less oil. And didn't use molasses, so the sweetness was nice, milder.
- Naan from two websites. It turned out okay--not light and fluffy, but not a disaster, which pleased me cause I rarely do anything yeasted. Will definitely try again. I used this video to get an idea, and this recipe, more or less. The video is great because he takes the "fear" out of it--eggs are optional, etc.
- Okra and tomatoes, from the back of a bag of frozen okra bag. Never tried okra before, enjoyed a lot.
Tools
Slowly and judiciously accumulated. I'm more likely to cook when I have the right instruments for the job.
- Food Processor - a must. Mine's lasted for 10 years now - I think it was a graduation gift in 1996.
- A good knife - and just last week I finally found the kind of knife sharpener I've been looking for!
- Pastry cutter - for my shortbread cookies and baking powder biscuits yummm
- A good vegetable peeler (I admit I have two)
- A small grater for ginger
- Blender - and they're cheap!
- Hand blender - cheap too! Mine was $8. So much easier to blend soup when you don't have to remove it from the pot. Also use to blend up tofu for fake whipped cream type stuff.
- Electric mixer - not essential but nice once in awhile.
- Bullet - I kept not giving in to buy one, but then my husband gave in. I tried it for garlic sauce, but it just wouldn't grind up the garlic all the way, so not good for that. (Maybe if I did the garlic before other ingredients?) But when I've wanted to make a quickee smoothie it's worked perfectly.
- Coffee grinder - Good for raw cooking since you're always grinding up nuts. I mostly use it for grinding flax seeds, since they're my favorite egg replacer.
- Juicer - A moment of weakness. I like it for when the fruit is going bad. Still haven't gone as far as using it for greens.
- Ice cream maker - Mine doesn't work. I don't think it's the make, cause it has good reviews; I think my freezer isn't cold enough. My ice cream always juuust quite doesn't freeze.
- Popcorn maker - Alton Brown proved that an air popper isn't the best kind, but that's ok, it's easy, and I got it for a couple bucks at Village des Valeurs.
- Crockpot - Stepmommy gave me hers' when she moved away. I don't use it a lot, more because I haven't found tasty recipes yet.
- Haven't given in to yet: A griddle, a waffle maker, in-bowl-mixer, pasta maker!
Invented: Mabel's Pecan Truffletude
I altered this one so much I think I can legitimately call it "new"! I was making Ani Phyo's "Lavender Chocolate Bars" but with none of the ingredients on hand lol.
Commentary in parentheses to see insight into My Brain When Baking (or not, as it was raw.) I've learned that baking is the only area of cooking where I'm comfortable experimenting.
1/2 cup liquid coconut oil (all I had left)
3 TB honey (I use honey now, because I've become convinced now that if we don't support honeybee combers, there will be no foods, cause the wild ones are dying. But I buy local. But it's just a personal choice. The original recipe is for agave.)
3 TB maple syrup (cause it didn't taste sweet enough, but I was using a regular spoon, not a measuring spoon)
3/4 cups cocoa powder (I'm not a raw foodist, so this is run of the mill cocoa, and though I buy a lot of expensive vegan things, I'm afraid I don't yet buy politically nice cocoa... one thing at a time)
1/4 cup natural peanut butter (and some of oil, to make up for the lack of coconut oil)
1 cup pecans (it was the only kind of nut I had in large quantity)
1 cup dates (I don't like raisins, and all of Phyo's recipes seem to use raisins)
I put it all in the food processor and grinded the hell out of it. Formed into little balls, then pushed flat into cookie shapes, onto a cookie sheet, that was covered with a reused parchment paper. Put in freezer til hard. But this recipe, even with less oil, is the vegan equivalent of French high patisserie. Because as I squished it into balls it was almost DRIPPING. It was SO DISGUSTING. Maybe it was because of the maple syrup too which is watery.
End result = rich and chocolatey like truffles. I'd even serve to non-vegans except as they melt they get more oily. I might make again and try less oil. Except coconut oil gets rock hard when cold, so it's a big part of what's holding the cookie together, methinks. Raw food is weird.
Shopping
Since it's so expensive to buy fancy vegan processed food, but I do love to buy some things (cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, Earth Island mayo and Tofurkey sandwich meat) I decided to give myself a $20 budget when I go, which isn't every week. This way I won't go nuts and buy everything in sight. I have to pick and choose the things I most want, until I've got a $20 basket. And that comes out of the $100 grocery budget.
