Veggie Burgers.

June 10, 2010

Wow, I am the worst at this! Sorry for the delay, I've just been incredibly busy with moving into a new apartment and getting settled in (sitting on the couch all the time watching tv) and busy working 2 jobs (Representing the green apron(s) haha). Anyways enough about why I am too lazy to post a new recipe, yet have time to check facebook, oceanup, youtube and twitter on a daily basis.

Okay, on to the recipe. Today is Lentil Burgers. I had a recipe a few years back for curried lentil burgers, I believe it came out of Canadian Living at least 3 years back, but I've tweaked and changed a couple of things here and there to make it how I like it.

Ingredients (for about 4 patties)

• Can of lentils, mostly drained of liquid
• a cup of mushrooms, I use baby 'bellos
• 1/2 a small onion
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 cup cashews
• veg oil
• bread crumbs
• red wine vinegar
• salt/pepper

1. Begin by sauteing the mushrooms, onions, garlic and then toss the cashews in to toast them up
2. In a blender, puree the lentils with a bit of vinegar, then puree the mushroom mix, until somewhat smooth. (don't over do it)
3. Next mix the bread crumbs in, until the mixture is no longer sticky. Form into patties and fry on moderate to high heat in a couple tbsp of oil, let them brown a teence.
4. Either eat them on their own or on a bun with your favorite burger toppings.

This recipe is so diverse, I make it probably once a week (sometimes more) but I am constantly changing it up. For example today I had no cashews so I used walnuts, and we tried it with balsamic vinegar and some wilted spinach in the patties. I eat mine on skinny buns with grainy mustard, a drizzle of hot chili sauce and tomato and avocado. SO GOOD

Anyways, until next time... Happy Cooking!

xo- Stacy

Loaf

Okay, so I'm going to try to update about once a week, and I've been trying to think of a couple more recipes to start trying out over the next little while. Before I completely forget though I'm going to post my loaf recipe.

I often talk about loaf when I call home, and every time my mom says to me 'what is loaf?' Well I guess you could call it banana loaf, but bananas barely even make an appearance (and half the time don't even make their way in at all). Another name would be vegan loaf I guess. So here goes...

• 2 cups of whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/4 cup-1/2 cup of sugar (not always necessary, although it does moisten the loaf)
• 1/2 cup of water or soymilk

Those are the basic ingredients that make up the base of the loaf, now the flavors can be anything you want... For example:

• Moist fruit: a couple mashed up bananas/pureed pumpkin/apple sauce/grated carrot- frankly it can be anything that adds a decent amount of moisture, and a good rule of thumb can be 2:1 flour to fruit
• 1/4-1/2 cup of berries (I use whatever is in the freezer) or dried fruit (something I tend to avoid because I'm allergic to cranberries and raisins)
• a handful of chopped nuts- your call
• Flax seed*, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds etc
• Vanilla
• Spices- Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg etc
• 1-2 tablespoons of peanut butter

Now that you have your ingredients assembled:

1. Begin by preheating your oven to 350F. In a mixing bowl combine your sugar and your moist fruit (and peanut butter or vanilla if using).
2. Next, in another bowl (or just on top of your first mixture) combine flour, baking powder and soda, nuts, seeds, spices, and frozen/dried fruit.
   
3. Using a wooden spoon, mix until just combined. It should look rather dry, so now you add you water/soymilk to moisten up mixture.
4. Give your loaf pan a good spray with pam, then dump that hearty loaf in and toss 'er into the oven for mm let's say 1 hour.
5. Check with a skewer inserted in the center, should come out clean, then using a knife, go around the edges of the pan to loosen the loaf, and dump it out and let it cool. Ta-da! Loaf!

*Just a quick side note, I put the star next to flax seed above, flax seed mush be ground before being added. Reason being the seeds are not easily digested in their whole form. I use either a coffee grinder or my magic bullet to grind them up, or they can be purchased already ground!

To store loaf, wait until completely cooled, then wrap in plastic wrap or in an air tight container. It can also be frozen, just double wrap it. To thaw it out, throw it in the microwave or set it out overnight.

Well that's about it for now!
Loaf,

Stacy

pasta salad.. if you can call it that ;)

Gooood afternoon,

So as promised I'm keeping up with this blog and I figured I would share with you my -interesting- supper that I threw together today.

So I guess you could call it a pasta salad, it included pasta anyways! So I'll give a quick run down of the ingredients first.

• Rainbow Fussili pasta
• Baby eggplant (canadian grown)
• Red Pepper
• Vine tomatoes (canadian grown)
• Garlic
• Spinach
• Olive oil
• Chili flakes
• Goat cheese
• Balsamic Vinegar

Okay so now for some steps:

1. Put water on to boil, and remember always salt it! The a couple drizzles of olive oil in an already preheated frying pan. I then threw in some chopped pepper and eggplant and 1 clove of garlic just roughly chopped and sauteed those bad boys up. And not for too long either, I didn't want to brown them, just soften them up some. (ps this is all on medium heat)
2. I dumped the remainder of the pasta in the box into the boiling water and simmered that for 7 minutes. I was pretty upset when I realized I had maybe 1/4 cup of pasta left to cook tonight, so it got bulked up with all the veggies instead!
3. In with the veg I dumped.. I would say about a cup and a half of spinach, then turned the heat off all together. It wilted down in no time and then I added a handful of chili flakes some s+p and chopped tomato.
4. When the pasta was al dente I strained off the water, dumped the pasta into the veggies, mixed that up, then crumbled some goat cheese over top, and finished with a light drizzle of balsamic. Ta-Da!

Okay, so that was supper tonight, it sounds a little like leftover soup, but it actually turned out alright! All the flavors I threw in there easily complimented each other, and it was a healthy alternative to a rich mayo based pasta salad that's for sure.

If I were to make it again... I would maybe use a salty feta or mozzarella over goat cheese. Also maybe chop y garlic a little smaller, biting into a chunk was not the highlight of my meal, haha, but it wasn't too bad seeing as it had the chance to cook off a bit with the eggplant and peppers.

Anyways, that's all the foodie blogging I have for today, onto current events. I got a job.. at the grocery store... not too sure how I'm feeling about that one still. Maybe holding out for something else? is that awful. Anyways another quick rant-y moment.. It drives me CRAZY when people have massive discussion/arguments in a status update on facebook. Okay seriously, seriously? It's just a bit of an annoyance right now. Like what is chat, inbox, heck wall-to-wall for? status updates... little juvenile.

Okay, I'm done now. I've got quite a sore throat today so I think it might be time for me to have some juice and snuggle down with the cat for a nap. Talk soon!

Stacy

Where to next?

May 14, 2010

Oookay, so it's been a while since I last updated, but I've just had another epiphany telling me to blogblogblog. So here goes attempt 617940.

Alright, so as of my last entry I was still in school, well I'm all finished now and I am searching for work for the summer. I'm not sure what I want to do so I'm pretty much keeping my options open. I'll letcha know when something is more definite.

So onward, I've decided to start sharing some recipes, and some cooking tips of the trade on here (That should fill up a bit more space, and keep me more updated). But have no worries it's not going to be a lame "add cinnamon to batter" kind of thing, I'm talking legit recipes, also I'm not looking for praise, in fact, more than likely some of my -recipes- may sound a little less that delicious (Peanut butter noodles for instance) but oh well, not like anyone reads this anyways =) haha

Well until we meet again xo
Stacy

Bonjour.

Dear world of bloggers,

Okay, here goes. This is probably my 4th attempt at starting up a blog in the last few years, this time maybe, just maybe I'll keep it up.
So to start out let me introduce myself somewhat. I am currently a culinary student in my final year (like 2 more months to go, ugh) and don't get me wrong I LOVE to cook. I adore being in the kitchen and creating and plating and serving to others, buuut I'm not at all interested in working in a kitchen of a restaurant ever again. Also I might mention now that I'm a vegetarian and have been now for over 7 years. I am now also dabbling in vegan diets. For the past few months I have slowly been trying to ween myself off of dairy and eggs, and I have to tell you that it has been the hardest thing I've ever done. Cheese of any kind is pretty much calling my name and I have to force myself away from it. Also soy milk is great in Chai Lattes and in baking and such but having it with my cereal in the morning or the thought of potentially drinking it straight gives me the willies.
So on with the introductions. I am very young and some people may say I'm naive and immature, but it's all in perspective and opinion. I am young and am lacking in life experiences that's for sure but I'm not the dumb blond that many take me for.
I am also a die hard fan of figure skating. I was a competitive skater more than half my life, and only recently have I begun to get back into it. I love the feeling of being out on that ice. It's great for the body and also such a relief to me to go out every saturday morning after a rough week at school. And with the olympics going on right now I am glued to the TV watching all of the skating events.
Watching Shen and Zhao win their gold medal on monday night was beautiful! I am so happy for them, and I can't believe how amazing they are, at their age too. They definitely deserved the Gold. Congrats to them!
As for the mens short program last night, it was a very tight competition, man those scores are close. Evan Lysacek is my favorite and I'm secretly rooting for him, although watching Plushenko power out those quads is amazing, too bad he doesn't have the spins, footwork, and program components to match those powerful jumps.
Well enough about skating, down to the real reason I've started this blog. As mentioned above I'm about 2 months shy of graduation, and also said I'm not interested in working in a restaurant kitchen, so I have a couple tough decisions to make in the next few months... And so I'm going to look into all aspects of what I could potentially do.
Here goes, wish me luck!

Stacy