Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

Along with that we had a Charred Corn, Black Bean & Toasted Barley Salad from the book "Spilling the Beans: Cooking and Baking with Beans and Grains Everyday". (Not a vegan book, but lots of recipes vegans can use or veganize.) The recipe is here (I added some salt to the dressing).

           For our last company dinner, we had some of my husband's yummy homemade bread:

                                     And, since we've got plenty of basil growing on the deck....


I made a creamy pasta dish, using leftover Tofu Sour Cream, Tofu/Cashew Ricotta, and Quick Tofu Feta Crumble (from the squash tart recipe above) mixed with white vermouth, soy milk, garlic, soy parmesan, and LOTS of sliced fresh basil for the sauce.  I also added mushrooms and chopped tomatoes.  I was "winging" it and in a hurry, so I didn't write it down, but it was gobbled up...
                               My Vegan lemon and Coconut "Pound Cake"  from my blog.

And, when we were all alone again, we had this for lunch:
Spaghetti with Garlic, Roasted Chickpeas & Braised Kale or Chard (I used some of both).  DH really liked this and so did I!  It was also from the book "Spilling the Beans: Cooking and Baking with Beans and Grains Everyday". (Not a vegan book, but lots of recipes vegans can use or veganize.) The recipe is online here.

                                                                     And for dinner:

                                                                            and
Spinach Salad with Mushrooms, Artichokes and Sundried Tomatoes with Creamy Lemon-Agave Dressing from my blog.

I'll be writing again soon!

My grandaughter Hannah's birthday cake, my New Lower-Fat Chocolate Mudpie Cake with Coffee/Coconut/Pecan Frosting-- recipe here!-- we celebrated her 12th birthday (belatedly) on Sunday night.

We had 8 guests for the weekend-- 2 of my daughters and their spouses, and 4 grandchildren, ages 15 to 6. I simply forgot to take pictures most of the time! When I did, the light wasn't great, but below is a bit of what we ate. On Monday everyone headed home, and DH and I went to one of our vegan potlucks, where 5 couples meet to eat great vegan food and chat up a storm. Again, the light was bad and the pics are not great, but the meal was very yummy and we could hardly walk out of the door! This time we had a rainbow theme and I chose yellow, mostly to use up our homegrown patty pan squash!

Friday night my youngest daughter and her husband and son came from Vancouver, so we were few enough to have a sit-down meal. We had a Middle-Eastern meal of hummous (my lower-fat version), Saniya, a Levantine dish in wish I use ground Field Roast Classic Grain Meatloaf instead of meat, topped with my lower-fat Taheena Sauce (recipes here). They loved the Saniya!

We had a green salad with our own tomatoes, olives, and wholewheat pita bread brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with the wonderful herb blend, Za'atar, and heated in the oven. We used this to scoop up both the hummous and Saniya.




Everyone brought food, of course, and we had Terra chips, homemade blueberry popsicles, homemade banana muffins, lots of fruit, corn, chile and cornbread, and vegan posole soup.  DH made crepes for breakfast one morning and on another morning I made Orange-Blackberry-Pecan Scones (recipe here, but I left out the chocolate chips).

On Monday night, we attended a vegan potluck. I made a very simple patty pan squash (from our garden) and fresh local corn casserole in a creamy sauce with thyme and tarragon, with a topping of my "New, Improved" Okara Parmesan Substitute and Daiya vegan cheese. It didn't look like much (and the picture is bad-- sorry!), but it was really delicious!  The recipe is below.

Cheesey Vegan Patty Pan Squash and Corn Casserole

                                     Homegrown patty pan squash

Printable Recipe

I can't believe this week has gone by so fast! Sheesh! And here it is Thursday again! We did have a fun few days with DH's stepdaughter from Montreal and her two lovely 12-year-old twin daughters. We had a picnic the beach with some friends and 2 of my granddaughters, the girls having a great time swimming, canoeing, going out on my stepson's motor boat, and getting to know each other. We went to Salt Spring Island for a night, with the "gang" (as DH calls them) to visit more family-- driving in style in a friend's immaculate white 1972 Chevy Caprice. We would have been squished in our little car, with no air conditioning on the hottest weekend of the year, so our friend offered his ride. Very fun, and a big surprise for the Salt Spring relatives when we drove up!

But, along with company, cooking, the ordinary daily running of a house and job, family, and, of course, the Book-- hours of editing-- it's been mostly work and very little serious cooking, I'm afraid!

I did make an interesting recipe yesterday-- Lucuma ice cream (vegan, of course!). Lucuma is a Peruvian fruit and, as many of you may know, my father was Peruvian. I remember lucuma ice cream from my three months in Peru as a six-year-old. Lucuma is a fruit with a quite dry texture, so it isn't eaten as a fruit, per se. Mostly it is used for a delectable, rich ice cream. Lucuma is rather sweet and has a butterscotch-y sort of flavor. When I was in Vancouver last, I found a store with Peruvian foods and bought some frozen lucuma puree-- what a coup, I thought!

Yesterday I worked out a recipe based on my vanilla gelato recipe made with Instant Clearjel®, with the help of a (non-vegan) recipe from the internet. After splattering the kitchen with soy cream after a little accident (Mercury is in retrograde-- what can I say?), I made the mix and tasted it-- WAY too sweet!! I couldn't figure it out! My gelato is not as sweet as most, and I had used less sweetener than the non-vegan recipe called for (in relation to the volume of liquid, etc.). So, I got out my (new, under-used) reading glasses and read the small print on the bag of lucuma puree-- sugar! I had been assuming that it was unsweetened, since the label did not say "sweetened" and the recipes I found online all called for unsweetened puree. My mistake!

I tried diluting it with more soymilk-- still overpoweringly sweet! (I now have about 2 quarts of very sweet milky liquid in the fridge that I have to think of some ways to use!  Any ideas?) So, I started over and used no sweetener at all. It still tasted too sweet to me, but I know that when food is frozen, the sweetness is not as apparent, so there was hope. I stuck it in the freezer and hoped for the best, as I was hoping to take it to a family dinner with my sister and my mother on Friday-- they will remember this treat, too!

Last night I looked for unsweetened lucuma puree in Canada online-- no luck. But I did find lucuma powder. It seems that lucuma is all the rage in the raw foods community and is even used as a natural sweetener. I found some at a good price from this Canadian vendor, and ordered 2 lbs for future experiments!

BTW, lucuma is being called a "superfood", but I think this is somewhat of an exaggeration. It's true that it has lots of fiber and beta carotene, but, then, so do carrots! It is high in natural carbohydrates, so it was used by the Incas to provide energy, and evidently the trees are very prolific-- no wonder it was a popular food. Tasting sweet and butterscotch-y didn't hurt! I just feel that we should not go hog wild over exotic foods that are supposed to provide miraculous nutrients, when, in fact, we have foods at home that are just as good, more available, and much cheaper! For me, his is an exotic treat to relive some childhood memories.

Anyway, that said, we tried a bit of the ice cream when I was photographing it and re-packing it, and it is delicious! Here is the recipe I used with the sweetened puree, but I plan to try it again with the lucuma powder and will report back!


Printable Recipe

Update Aug. 2012: See a recipe for Vegan Lucuma Ice Cream using lucuma powder here. And stay tuned for Take 3!

BRYANNA'S VEGAN LUCUMA ICE CREAM (PERUVIAN), TAKE 1 (WITH SWEETENED LUCUMA PUREE)
Servings: 10
Yield: 5 cups

1 1/2 cups soy creamer (plain)
1 1/2 cups nondairy milk
1 1/2 cups lucuma puree (with sugar)
3/4 cup raw cashews or cashew pieces, soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes and drained
(if allergic to nuts, use 1/2 cup more nondairy milk, or soy creamer, and 2 tablespoons oil)
1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract or vanilla paste
3/8 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 teaspoons Instant Clearjel® (see info below recipe)OR 3/8 tsp. guar gum or xanthan gum

Place the creamer, milk, and lucuma puree into a blender along with the soaked, drained cashews, and blend until VERY smooth and frothy (make sure that it is not grainy at all).

Mix all of the remaining ingredients, into this mixture and blend again until it is VERY smooth.

Chill the gelato mixture thoroughly, and then freeze according to directions for your ice cream machine. Scoop into a quart plastic container, cover and freeze for several hours (preferably 24 hours) before serving.


Keep cool!

Piedmontese Rice salad from my book "Nonna's Italian Kitchen" (Update: the recipe is on this blog here now.)

I was rushed today (as usual these days-- book deadline looming-- that's why not much blogging these recently!) and trying to figure out what to make for my husband's discerning (but omnivore) stepdaughter from Montreal, and her 12 year-old twin girls. I was also trying to figure out what to blog about before everyone gets here and I have no time to blog!

So, here's what I made for dinner tonight (well ahead-- everything but dessert can be eaten at room temperature) and they are due in about half an hour, so I'd better get going! I'll try to blog most of our meals over the week or so that they are here.




Italian Romano Bean salad (also from "Nonna's Italian Kitchen")




Summer squash "a scapici"-- the first picture with our own pattypan squash, and the second with a neighbor's green and yellow zucchini. (Also from "Nonna's".)

"A scapici" is a southern Italian version of the Spanish or Caribbean "escabeche" (cooked fish pickled in a vinegar sauce), or Latin American "seviche" (a method of "cooking" fish with the acid of lime or lemon juice, which is a very typical dish in Peru, where my father was born-- now I make seviche with mushrooms). In Italy, many vegetables are prepared a scapici, including eggplant.


Some versions use vinegar instead of lemon juice, add garlic, use other herbs (such as sage), and fry the vegetables in olive oil. I like this very simple grilled version (I "grill" it under my oven's broiler) made with fresh lemon juice. It's such a simple recipe that you might tend to overlook it, but it is one of my absolute favorites! The eggplant melts in your mouth, and the zucchini is juicy and sweet.

Here's the recipe, which is really mostly a guide:

BRYANNA'S MELANZANE O ZUCCHINI A SCAPICI (GRILLED EGGPLANT OR ZUCCHINI WITH LEMON JUICE AND HERBS)
Serves about 4

1 large eggplant or 2 medium zucchini
salt
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1 T. fresh lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
OPTIONAL: chopped fresh mint or basil

If using eggplant, slice it about1/2" thick. Salt it liberally and leave it to drain for half an hour in a colander. If using zucchini (I usually do some of each), slice it 1/4" thick and don't salt it.

Rinse and pat the eggplant dry. Brush both the eggplant and zucchini with 1 T. of the oil and grill or broil it on bothsides about 3-4" from the heat source, or until slightly browned and soft. (This takes just a few minutes per side.)

Cut the vegetables into thick strips and arrange on a serving platter. Drizzle them with the remaining olive oil and the lemon juice. Sprinkle with pepper to taste, and salt the zucchini lightly (salt isn't necessary for the eggplant).  Sprinkle with chopped fresh mint or basil.

For a bread, I made Potato Fougasse, which will be in my new book coming out late this year, I think. It's a sort of French focaccia, with an interesting tree-like design, and very yummy! I sneaked in quite a bit of fiber!





Here it's just placed in the oven:



And, for dessert, we're having what I call "Grown-Up Nanaimo Bars", a vegan, less sweet, and more healthful version of a popular BC sweet:




UPDATE: I forgot the roasted beets with olive oil, wine vinegar, salt and pepper and Italian parsley!



And here is the dinner before everyone demolished it! (It was a hit!)



Hope you're enjoying your summer!

Cheers!

The pattypan squash are blooming-- can't wait for the little beauties!

DH does most of the gardening-- 99% of it-- around here, but neither of us is really into gardening. But you can't live in the country and not grow something in the summer! So here is a picture essay of our conventional garden and our deck garden. It's really producing now! So nice to have fresh greens and herbs, and there is is absolutely nothing like your own home-grown tomatoes!  (And our island market and market gardens can provide the rest for us!)

The Conventional Garden:


Lettuce, chard and kale


The tomatoes in the garden, surrounded by chicken wire to keep the cats from digging!


Chard up close


A pattypan blossom peeking out


A volunteer nasturtium cuddling up to a lettuce

BTW, in the front of the house, I have sage and a big rosemary bush, but I forgot to take pics!

The Deck Garden: (We always grow basil and cherry tomatoes on the back because it gets nice and hot, but this year we also have Italian parsley and we used some old dresser drawers to grow mesclun, baby spinach and more lettuce. I can go out and snip off some salad without getting my feet dirty! Evidently, if you cut lettuce about an inch above the soil, it will grow back! And I'm told you can do the same with spinach.)


I never had any luck with ordinary parsley, but the Italian parsley is doing wonderfully!


Dresser-drawer lettuce planter!


Dresser-drawer spinach-- so tender, and so clean when you snip it off!


Spinach and lettuce growing in drawers




Basil on the deck




Black cherry tomatoes-- so good!

The Harvest:


Fresh basil




Lettuce in the colander and spinach in the bag-- picked this morning!


Lettuce DH picked on Tuesday-- we save organic greens boxes and layer the cleaned, spun greens in them between pieces of paper toweling-- they keep quite well that way.


Fresh arugula in the spinner


My favorite lettuce spinner-- the Oxo Good Grips. It spins so well, it has a "brake" on it!

The Eating:


Lunch yesterday-- a "chef's salad" of fresh butter lettuce topped with Soy Curls sautéed in a little olive oil with some homemade bacon salt (no bacon in it!- here's my recipe), toasted pecans, and some strawberries and blueberries, with my Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette (low-fat). Yum!


Lunch today was a piece of leftover homemade pizza with this salad of fresh butter lettuce and arugula with marinated artichokes and some homemade bean salad.

Boy, don't we vegans suffer (not!)?

Enjoy!