Blueberries abound! A couple of things I’ve made are:

Agnes’s Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream from Vegan Ice Cream:

Mark keeps saying he doesn’t care much for ice cream, but I know better. I also know what flavors he likes, because he’ll get certain flavors out of the freezer and eat them right out of the Pyrex bowl while playing video games, but pretty much ignore others. He actually confessed to liking this stuff though. I believe he said it was the best ice cream I’ve made. I recently got some MimicCreme and have been playing around with it; I’ll probably have an ice cream recipe up sometime soon.

Wild Blueberry Yogurt Smoothie:

Just some plain soy yogurt (maybe 1/2 cup?), one frozen banana, a handful of frozen wild blueberries, a splash of soy milk to thin it out, and a squeeze of agave nectar for a hint of sweetness. Yummy!

In my post on how to make soy milk, I cautioned that you need to use a pot large enough that that the contents could double because soy milk has a tendency to swell up very high very quickly. Well, this is why I said that.

Ugh.

I made another failed batch of tempeh over the long weekend. Sigh. Tempeh is so picky!! I’m nearly certain it got too hot. I think when I use the yogurt maker, at least in the summer, I need to not put the lid on it at all. I was putting it on ajar – really sort of half on, half off – for the first 12 hours or so, then removing it, but I forgot to remove it and when I remembered, the thermometer was reading 100 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit: too high. I pluckily tried a second batch that day, though – without the cover – and that one turned out. I can pretty much make tofu in my sleep, but I am no master of tempeh at this point.

Since I did manage to have a good batch, tonight was tempeh night. I’d had it in my mind to cook the tempeh in a tomato/soy sauce combination, which I thought might go well for my planned side dish, and flipping through a couple of cookbooks for inspiration, I came across exactly what I was looking for. This recipe was adapted from Mark Bittman’s Braised Tempeh Three Ways in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Braised Tempeh in a Tomato and Soy Sauce

12 ounces tempeh, chopped in 1″ pieces
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 thumb-sized piece of garlic, minced or grated
1 large can chopped or whole tomatoes
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 very small head Savoy cabbage
several leaves of regular or Thai basil, torn

Prepare the ingredients by mincing or pressing the garlic and mincing or grating the ginger:

Tear up the basil:

Chop the tempeh:

If you are using whole tomatoes, pulse with an immersion blender a few times to break them up:

In a large skillet or wok, fry the tempeh in some oil until it is beginning to brown:

Add the garlic and ginger and sauté for a minute. I added a little water to the pan because the tempeh had absorbed all the oil and I didn’t want to use more:

Add the tomatoes and soy sauce:

… and the cabbage:

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and boil at an active simmer for 15-20 minutes. Toss in basil and season with salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste.

I served it with China Forbes’ Quinoa with Avocado from Tea and Cookies.

In other news, Mark and I went to a nearby regional park on Sunday and I captured this picture of a deer:

I’m sharing this with you mostly because that picture cost me more than 25 bug bites, from my scalp to my toes, and damn it, I’m making it worthwhile by showing it to whoever will look at it! I AM SO ITCHY! There were three deer in all, and they stood there in the distance staring at us for a full 5 minutes while I switched to my telephoto lens from the macro lens. I don’t know why. Perhaps they knew I was being eaten alive by bugs and found it amusing. Here is what I had just photographed with the macro lens, though:

It’s an extremely tiny frog!

And finally, this also has absolutely nothing to do with food, but since you always see pictures of Mark, and you always see pictures of Tigger, but you never see pictures of me, here is a self-portrait I took this weekend of me and Tigger. I’m completely amazed Tigger’s looking at the camera: I was controlling it with a remote. I always thought he was looking at me when I took his picture, but I guess he’s so used to having his picture taken he knows what to do even if I’m not behind the camera!

After swimming for a long time tonight, I was looking for something quick to make for dinner. Opening all of the cupboards in succession and pondering, as usual, I decided to use up the rest of the anellini pasta, making what else but Spaghetti-Os. Mark said I should name this dish “Renae-Os”, but I decided Smark-Os sounded better. Plus Mark (whose nickname is Smark, much to his chagrin) really liked them.

Smark-Os

2 cups anellini (small rings) pasta
1/2 onion, minced
1 stalk celery, minced
1 small or 1/2 large carrot, minced
5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed (I love garlic, so maybe that’s a lot to some people, if so, just use less)
1 14.5 ounce can tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups veggie broth (that’s the frozen stuff in the measuring cup in the photo)
3 cubes frozen basil, or 1 tsp dried
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 – 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp beet powder, for color (optional)
1/4 cup Dragonfly’s Bulk, Dry Uncheese Mix, or nutritional yeast
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
juice of 1/2 small or 1/4 large lemon
3 vegan “franks”, sliced (optional)

Cook the anellini until barely al dente and drain. Meanwhile, heat a small amount of oil in a soup pan. Add the onions, celery, carrot, and garlic.

Cook until very soft. If necessary, deglaze the pan with white wine or some of the veggie broth.

Add the tomato sauce, broth, basil, oregano, and red pepper flakes.

Add the uncheese mix or nutritional yeast and simmer for 10 minutes.

Puree using an immersion or regular blender.

Pureeing it turned it an orange color, so I added the beet powder to take it back down to red. I also thought it would add a subtle tangy sweetness, but honestly I couldn’t taste the beet powder. I did like the color better though.

Add the anellini and optional franks. I happened to have some vegan hot dogs on hand in case I decided to celebrate our nation’s independence by eating faux pig innards. Heat until franks are cooked through (about five minutes).

It was hard to take a decent picture of this plated, or “bowled”.

But Smark liked the Smark-Os even if they aren’t very photogenic!

I made Bryanna’s okara parmesan with that dried okara I had. It’s pretty good; the miso makes it. I sprinkled it on top of my Smark-Os. Tigger was pretty interested in it, which was no surprise considering it contains nutritional yeast.

Mark went to a friend’s house tonight, leaving me on my own for dinner. I embrace such evenings as opportunities to eat stuff he won’t eat, so tonight found me flipping through a few cookbooks in search of inspiration. I ended up with Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and found myself intrigued by a very Bittman-esque table of “sushi bowl ideas”, the idea being you take a bowl of sushi rice, add a topping from column A, a sauce from column B, and a garnish from column C. Fast, easy, flexible, and scalable, i.e., good for a one-person meal. The only problem with the whole idea of a sushi bowl is Mark would have loved it. This is the boy who at least once a day claims he’s going on an “all-rice diet” (an idea I keep rejecting: “you need to eat a balanced diet”). Nonetheless I was getting hungry, so sushi bowl it was.

I am a fan of tsukemono, Japanese pickles. I make them sometimes, although not as often as I want to. I mean to start making them more often, but in the meantime, I usually have a few packaged kinds on hand to eat as sides with noodles, my go-to dinner when I don’t feel like really cooking. I have a bunch of such tsukemono in the refrigerator, so I chose that suggestion from Bittman’s column A. In column B for that row was something like “seaweed ‘mayo'”, which I almost completely ignored as I wasn’t about to put mayo on my sushi bowl, even if it DOES sounds like something the Japanese would do. But curiosity got to me and I checked out the recipe for “seaweed ‘mayo'”…and was surprised to find out it was not only vegan, but really just seaweed (arame) pureed with a tiny bit of oil and sake. So I whipped that up.

Column C was slivered scallions in this case, but I also added shredded nori and shredded shiso. To shred the nori and shiso, I rolled each up lengthwise, made two cuts lengthwise on the nori and one on the shiso, then snipped the rolls up into small pieces (like chiffonading).

Sushi Bowl

1 1/2 cups sushi rice, prepared
1/2 cup different kinds of tsukemono (Japanese pickle)
2 Tbsp “seaweed ‘mayo'” or other mild sauce
2 Tbsp chopped scallions
2 Tbsp shredded shiso (optional)
1 Tbsp shredded nori (optional)

Cook the rice in a rice cooker or on the stovetop and prepare as if for sushi (cut in sushi vinegar and salt to taste). For the sauce, choose something mild that won’t clash with the pickles, but also non-salty (the pickles are really salty, so a soy sauce-based sauce is probably a bad idea). Place the rice in a bowl, top with the tsukemono, then the sauce, then the garnishes.

Serves 1.

Here’s what it looked like after mixing it all up:

I served it with miso soup, which is incredibly easy to pull together. I discussed in an earlier post how to make dashi. Simply soak a piece of kombu in some water for at least half an hour. If you are in a hurry, you can simmer it instead for 15 minutes. Here’s how I usually make miso soup:

Miso Soup

2 cups water
1 3″ piece of kombu
1 tsp dried wakame
1 splash mirin
1 splash seasoned rice vinegar
2 Tbsp light miso
2 Tbsp chopped scallions
1/4 cup chopped tofu

Soak the kombu in the water for 1-24 hours (refrigerate if longer than a couple of hours), or, simmer it gently for 15 minutes. Remove kombu. This is the dashi. Rehydrate wakame by soaking in warm water for 10 minutes. It will expand considerably, so don’t use too much and give it enough room. Heat dashi in a small saucepan. Add a splash of mirin and a splash of seasoned rice vinegar. Remove 2 Tbsp of the dashi and place in a small bowl. Set aside. Add the scallions, rehydrated wakame, and tofu to the pot.

Add the miso to the reserved 2 Tbsp of dashi and stir until smooth. Add to the pot.

After adding the miso, do not allow the soup to boil. Serve when it has been warmed through.

Makes two servings.

Brachtune read V For Vendetta while we ate. And by “read”, I mean “licked the cover of”.