Foodie Friday: Pasta and Brownies, squared

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.

This week I made pasta twice and brownies twice.

First up, my STAB Rigatoni. That is, sun-dried tomato, artichoke, and broccoli. It's the same idea as my Sun-dried Tomato and Olive Strozzapreti: you cook and drain the pasta, mix in a jar of oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, and add whatever else you have on hand. For me, that happened to be a can of artichoke hearts, which I drained and quartered, and some frozen broccoli, which I steamed in the microwave.


For last night's dinner, I cracked open the good ol' 1,000 Vegan Recipes and picked out springtime rice noodles with coconut crème. I know, I'm such a rebel making a recipe with "springtime" in the title while everyone else is playing with pumpkin guts.


Finally, we have brownies pan uno and brownies pan dos. I wanted to surprise Jason with a treat one night, so I decided to give chocolatey peanut butter brownies from Vegan Planet a whirl. I botched the first batch because I didn't use the right kind of peanut butter. It calls for "natural" peanut butter, which I guess means no added oil, and then you add oil into it to make it smooth enough to mix into the brownie batter. Instead I used my oil-added Smart Balance peanut butter in addition to the oil called for in the recipe, resulting in something that resembled the Gulf of Mexico, BP-style. I tried again tonight, omitting the extra oil, and mostly redeemed myself.


Ok, I have to stop here. Craig Ferguson has people in a horse costume dancing around and I'm dying laughing.