Friday, February 19, 2010

Foodie Friday: Smoothies and why I'll never order Chinese takeout again

It's Foodie Friday! Foodie Friday is my weekly feature that gives you a window into my kitchen. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to read cookbooks, and I love to inspire people to give vegan food a chance. Thus, Foodie Friday was whipped up and baked to perfection.
I didn't do a ton of special cooking this week. We (well, I) have been tired from staying up late to watch the Olympics--really, NBC? Figure skating at 11 p.m.?--and I just haven't been feeling like slaving over a hot stove. Barefoot. NOT pregnant.

Luckily for me we had a ton of leftovers from previous chef-ing sessions and we splurged on some Subway footlongs the other night (that's what she said).

Here's what I've been making recently:

Creamy orange smoothies (from Robin Robertson's 1,000 Vegan Recipes). This tastes like an orange Creamsicle! Jason looooved it.

I also made another fruit smoothie, this time of my own creation. I didn't take a picture, but it looked about the same as Mr. Creamy Orange right there. Try it for yourself:

Banana-Pineapple-Coconut Smoothie
Serves 1

1 large ripe banana
1 1/2 cups frozen pineapple chunks
1/2 cup coconut milk

Combine all ingredients in a blender. Add more coconut milk if your blender needs it, or use part soy, rice, or almond milk for a lighter coconut flavor.

Black bean and corn tofu scramble (my recipe) with corn muffins (from Robin Robertson's 1,000 Vegan Recipes).

This week's showstopper is General Tao's tofu. When I found this recipe while blog-hopping recently, I knew immediately that I had to make it. Jason and I love Chinese food, but we haven't been able to find a takeout place that we like since we've moved to California. We seem to have the worst luck with Chinese restaurants. We tried so many in Massachusetts, and when we finally found one we liked, it closed soon after! We miss our favorite place in Virginia Beach.

The process of preparing the tofu is labor intensive, but I doubled the recipe, so that was my own fault. All that work was worth it though--this is SO GOOD. Way better than any Chinese tofu dish I've had here in California.

And who's that in red in the corner of the picture? It's one of the pairs of chopsticks that my bloggy BFF Jamie sent me! It was a complete surprise and made my whole week--especially when I got to use them to eat something so delicious. Thank you, Jamie!

5 comments:

Jes said...

oh my gooooooood that sounds so good. It's sort of a splurge for me to eat anything other than brown rice and frozen veggies and canned beans (you'd think I'd be losing weight in my impoverished grad student lifestyle, but you'd be so, so wrong), but I am TOTALLY going to make this and eat it for every meal.

In return, I give you my two favorite "wish list" recipe websites, where I bookmark recipes for when I have the time and money to make delicious vegan food again. I know you're blazing through your 1,000 Vegan Recipes book, and you might already know of these, but just in case...

http://www.randomgirl.com/recipes.html

This has every non-vegan food you've ever missed reborn into cruelty-free deliciousness (including tuna salad, which was apparently my favorite food until age 5 when I became a vegetarian. I haven't tried this recipe though.)

http://www.veganchef.com/recipes.htm

I love that you can search by ingredient when you're really craving something or for when you have random stuff left in your pantry to use up.

In the meantime, I'll continue to live my vegan chef dreams vicariously through you!

Jamie said...

yay chopsticks!! And holy crap, General Tao's Tofu is my absolute favorite Chinese dish- there's a restaurant in Salem that makes it so good, but I'm going to make this this week and maybe I won't have to go out anymore. I kind of want to make it right now...

Chelsea Talks Smack said...

whhhat, this sounds delicious

Bayjb said...

Yes, all of this looks amazing and now I'm hungry again!

Jamie said...

So I tried the General Tao's tofu- which was very good, but I think next time I'm going to add red chili peppers. I like to cry when I eat Chinese food, go figure. :)