Blue Pancakes for a Little Girl Blue

The last week here in the Philly suburbs have been a little on the grey side.  Rain has been our constant companion this past week and the forecast is hedging on rain all week.  Everyone around is cranky, tired, and wet. . .

Weeks like this call for comfort foods and pajamas.  And nothing makes me want to get out of bed on drizzling grey mornings like a big ol' stack o' pancakes.  So I brought out the griddle and started flapjacking away the other day.  And I came up with some pretty impressive results!

Fruit Sushi

I loved sushi.  It is one thing that I do miss eating. . . sure I can go and still enjoy my veggie rolls, but I was always a sucker for a good rainbow roll and some sashimi.  One of my last meals before the vegan revolution took over was at D.C. top rated sushi restaurant, Sushi Taro.  And it was memorable!

Enter Fruit Sushi.

Cornbread: Can't Beat the Classics

I'm in the middle of reading The Flavor Bible among a few other food-obsessed books.  In it is a great quote from Emily Luchetti, the pastry chef at Farallon (in SF) that explains the problem with the first cornbread recipe I tried the other day.  She says, "Too many chefs start adding things that in the end all taste muddled, because nothing can stand out on its own."

When I tried making the Quinoa Blue Cornbread in Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Color Me Vegan, I added just about everything but the kitchen sink.  I couldn't find blue cornmeal at my local grocery store, so I substituted yellow cornmeal, which the recipe itself recommended.  It also suggested that you try buckwheat flour instead of all-purpose, adding corn, or adding blueberries.  I decided to try all of the above.  If one is good, all three would be great, right?

Veganish and Spaghetti-nos: If it Makes You Feel Gross, Stop Eating It!

I've been a lazy blogger. . . mostly because I've been an unbearably busy employee.  This past week, I worked myself into exhaustion, ate poorly (which didn't help my exhaustion), and got some bad news (again, exhausting).

So rather than being too exhausted to think about food-like, I've been looking forward a day off on Thursday when I can slave away in MY kitchen for MY belly and then share it with you!  And I've got plans to make a lovely dinner for my husband and at least one yummy treat to get me through the week.

Classic Coffee Cake

I guess I established myself as a lover of those sugary, fatty treats at Starbucks a few posts ago, but truly, life without coffee cake stinks.  I should say, life without being able to eat any kind of coffee cake out of the Starbucks pastry case stinks.

Falafel- A Vegan Staple

My husband is not vegan.  I am.  This works out just fine, because he is an "at-home" vegan, meaning that when he is home, he eats the foods that I eat, because we currently purchase almost exclusively vegan foods for our home.  I say "almost," because he did bring home yogurt covered raisins on our last trip, but he ate most the bag on the car ride home.  Typical.

But even before I had switched over to a vegetarian diet, he was eating a vegan lunch almost daily without meaning to.  When he worked in Philadelphia, he was addicted to pita's brimming with falafel and hummus at Mama's and would eat lunch there almost every day.  When I would ride into the city to see the art museum while he was at work, we would go here every time.

The other day, Mike said to me, "it's too bad you are working tonight, or we could ride into the city and have falafel."  Yes, he like the falafel that much.  So when I agreed to make a batch before going to work (having never tried before), I was in for a pretty big challenge.  I was going to be compared to the world's best falafel.

Iced Lemon Pound Cake