What do Papa Tofu and I have in common?

A love for Ethiopian food!

This week I've been doing a little cooking from Kittee's Papa Tofu Loves Ethiopian Food.  Kittee has done a great job of explaining techniques, ingredients, and recipes in this adorable zine.  She worked really hard on both the designs and the recipes and it shows.  I'm super happy to have it in my collection.

The recipes I've tried so far have tasted really authentic, but even more importantly, yummy!  It was hard to decide on just a few dishes to try this week.  I'll be cooking through these pages, until I've tried every recipe, and then keep going!  The most fantastic thing about zines is that the number of dishes to try is manageable.

So what have I made this week?

Don't mind the horrible state of the injera.  I wasn't gentle with the ripping.

Here you'll see (clockwise from top right): Ye'abesha Gomen (mild collard greens), Ye'miser W'et (red lentils in a spicy gravy), mushrooms sauteed in Niter Kibbeh (seasoned "butter"), and Selata (tossed salad) with Citrus Vinaigrette.

The Ye'abesha Gomen was gingery and really on par with greens dishes I've had in Ethiopian restaurants.  I loved the Ye'miser W'et the most.  I actually made that one in the slow cooker, minus the initial sauteing.  We've had variations of the salad for three nights in a row.  The citrus vinaigrette is really simple, but I love it.  It's definitely going to become a go-to dressing in my house.

Tonight I'm going to make Keysir Allecha (Ethiopian style beets) to go along with leftovers of the other dishes.  It's been really easy to prepare one dish every night to add to the plate.

Super Breaded Tofu Dinner and a Thank you!

The full title of this meal is "Super Breaded Tofu 'Fried Chicken'-y Dinner" from Rabbit Food Cookbook.

Now that's a big lunch!  (And I ate it all!)

Vegan MoFo gave me the kick in the butt I needed to cook more from this cute little book.  Last night I made the above meal, which I loved.  It contained four components:

Breaded Tofu
The tofu was wonderful!  I don't know why, but I've never done the "shake 'n bake" thing which involves throwing the ingredients for the breading in a baggie, tossing in the cubed tofu, and shaking it up.  It worked out so well.  I did stray from the recipe just a bit by baking the tofu at 350* for 40 minutes (flipping half way through) instead of pan frying it.  The result was crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, peppery goodness.

Sauteed veggies
This was pretty straight forward- just green beans, carrots, and onion.

Mashed potato
Again, pretty straight forward.

Brown Gravy
Deeeelicious!  Again, I sort of strayed from the recipe.  Instead of using the exact dry ingredients listed in the recipe, I just threw in what was leftover in the baggie from the tofu.  This was a really, really good gravy.  There was almost this mustard taste, but there was no mustard in the recipe!  (Please excuse the 'gloppiness' in the photo- these were my reheated leftovers, which I was too lazy to heat separately.)

Also, I wanted to extend a big thank you to the lovely folks that honored me with a Liebster Award last month.  I'm going to be playing catchup in the weeks (months?) to come and will be sure to post links to some "under 200" blogs that I love.

Thank you so much:

Dawn from Veg-Am
Glauce from  All About... (vegan) Food
Christine from Christine Eats Gluten-Free And Vegan
Jeni Treehugger from Heathen Vegan

Aaaand the winner is...

Random.org has decided that the winner of one pink jar of grape jelly is Number 9: Amberle.  Amberle, please send an email to inmyveganlife a t gmail dot com with your address!  Congrats!  I hope you enjoy the jelly!

Thank you for all the ideas, everyone!  I'm definitely going to try some of them soon!

Collard Wraps and a Wrap-Up

It's the last day of MoFo!  Although I'll be able to breathe a sigh of relief, I've also enjoyed the immense amount of vegan goodness shoved in my face this month.  I'll miss it!  I've enjoyed reading so many new blogs as well as old favorites.  I look forward to continuing to read throughout the year until MoFo 2012!  On my own blog, I've been able to blog every day, with the help of a few friends, but I didn't succeed in blogging about greens every day.  Oh well!

Just a little roundup of some of my greens dishes this month! Try the collards soup!

For my last Vegan MoFo 2011 post, I decided I really needed to go out with a greens dish.  I give you "Collard Wraps with Sunflower Seed Spread".

Sunflower seed spreads are really versatile.  A creamy texture is achieved by soaking and blending the seeds.  You can add whichever herbs or flavorings you'd like.  In this version I've flavored the spread with rich miso, garlic, and parsley.  The spread is accompanied by leftover majadra, shredded beets, carrots, and red cabbage, and sliced onion and cucumber.

Collard Wraps
Ingredients:
6 collard leaves
sunflower seed spread (recipe below)
shredded or sliced veggies of your choice
prepared rice, quinoa, beans, or lentils of your choice

Method:
1. Bring a pot large enough to fit a collard leaf to a boil.  Blanch each leaf for about 20 seconds.  Rinse under cold water.  Set aside.
2. Fill the rolls with your fillings.  If the leaves are large enough (unlike mine), roll them up like a burrito so that the short ends are folded in before you roll the long side up.

Sunflower Seed Spread
Ingredients:
1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked in enough water to cover for about 1 hour, save 1/2 cup soaking water
1 tbsp miso
1 tbsp raw tahini
1 small clove garlic
pinch pepper
pinch smoked paprika
several leaves parsley (pulse a few times into it)

Method:
1. In a food processor, combine the sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup soaking water, miso, tahini, garlic, pepper, and paprika.  Process until smooth.  Add the parsley and pulse a few times so that the parsley is distributed throughout the mixture, but remains in bits.

Here are some photos of the wraps I made last time.  You'll see the leaves were a little bigger, so I was able to make wraps that retained their contents a little better.  Last time I filled the wraps with quinoa, black eyed peas, bell pepper, tomato, parsley, carrots, and the spread.

Here you'll see the leftover contents of the wraps, as a salad with the wraps in the background!






















Don't forget to enter my giveaway for homemade grape jelly! 

IMVL's first ever GIVEAWAY!

Update: Amberle, you're the winner!  Please send me an email with your address to inmyveganlife at gmail d ot com. 

Friends, I made a big batch of grape jelly for the first time, from grapes I picked from my own yard.  I used mostly green grapes along with several bunches of deep purple grapes, which yielded this fantastic pink color.  See the original post here.

Up for grabs is a little jar of this delicious pink stuff.   I'm not going to lie.  There's a lot of sugar, but that's jelly for you.  Three simple ingredients: organic grapes, organic cane sugar, and pectin.  There was a lot of pulp straining involved, but it was worth it!

Grape jelly for you?

What will you do with this jar of jelly (besides the obvious pb&j sandwiches)?  Well, that's up to you.  So far, I've enjoyed it best, slathered on a homemade biscuit with Earth Balance, as pictured below. 

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment below.  You earn extra appreciation points if you tell me what you intend to use the jelly for.  I'm looking for grape-y inspiration!  This giveaway is open to EVERYONE everywhere, but there is only one jar up for grabs.  I'm saving the rest as holiday gifts for friends and fam.  A random winner will be chosen at 10:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday, November 1.

Dovetail Bakery is Love

I love this place. It's my favorite bakery and on weekends one has the option of the super delicious biscuits and gravy with tempeh bacon.  Did I mention Dovetail is one of (at least) three vegan bakeries in Portland?  My friend and I stopped by this morning and had a serving each before I drove him to the airport.  I didn't have my camera with me.  I did, however, get some treats to go, which are photographed below.

Morgan, from Dovetail was one of the competitors in Vegan Iron Chef earlier this year.  And I was excited to hear that a more extensive menu (sandwiches! soups! salads!) will be rolling out of the bakery on NE Alberta St. soon.  I hope they stay in that spot forever, as it's really convenient for me :)

Oh the soft, moist goodness.

I usually love Dovetail's scones most of all, but today the lemon poppy seed muffins and cinnamon rolls beckoned to me to take one of each of them home.  Matt and I will enjoy them, along with some green tea, while working through a Halloween movie marathon based on some of the recommendations made by Katie from Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk.  Have you been following along with her Vegan Dinner and a Horror Movie theme?  It's fun!

I guess we're not really following Katie's dining suggestions, with the beautiful baked goods and all, but her recommendations are really imaginative and some of them sound downright delicious!

Yum Yum Yum Lentils and Rice

Majadra is a Middle Eastern dish consisting of lentils, rice, caramelized onions, olive oil, and salt!  Simple!  I think it's comfort food at its finest.  I've posted about this easy and satisfying dish before.  I saw this episode of Everyday Dish (doesn't Rose seem like the sweetest lady?) a while ago and have made it a few times since, tonight being one of those times.  It's great!  Perhaps the best thing about eating this dish is that it's an excuse to turn on the oven and heat up your kitchen a little after spending all day trying to fix your furnace to no avail.

You should give this a try yourself!