Call for Testers!

Do you crave intrigue? Mystery? Fame and fortune?

Satisfy all your earthly desires, become a tester for my cookbook!

If you'd like to be a tester for my book (and I hope you do!!)  just leave me your name and email address in a comment below and I will get you the details.

Since I moderate the comments here, I won't "publish" them to the post to keep your email addresses private.  So, you won't see your comment appear on this post, but rest assured I see it and you should get an email from me shortly with the testing details.

Fame and fortune await!

Lessons in Love: V-day feast, Temp Tatts, Contest Win, Two Pies and a Tester

I love temp tatts, and I suggest you get 'em on for this post!  

Emory's Flaming Panther

 Daddy's Cobra

Mommy's BBQ Dragon

I love blueberries.  And lemon.

 Homemade Blueberry Lemon Compote

 Over Hoecakes!

Next...I really loved this recipe!

 DIY Bisquick from Betty Goes Vegan.  So useful! So fun to make!

I needed it to make the amazing...

Cheezeburger Pie (this is SO good).  I love savory pies!

A delicious, cheezy, doughy bite.

Onto another tester from Joni's upcoming book, 

The Sesame Sriracha Sauce:

I am in love with Joni's new book!  And, now I'm more into spicy stuff than ever (and that's saying a lot since I always loved spicy stuff).

Sesame Sriracha Sauce over Korean Fresh Noodles with Organic Baby Kale, "Heathy Food" Vegan Shrimp (:-) and Black Sesame Seeds.  SO GOOD.

I had never, ever seen baby kale before, but Wegmans had it last week in the pre-washed salad greens-in-boxes section.  It's DELICIOUS and super convenient.  I hope they will carry it on a regular basis.  I LOVE BABY KALE.  

A more traditional, Asian presentation.

And this year, I made a special Valentine's Day Dinner.  I used two recipes from The Inspired Vegan:

Beet Tapenade Crostini and (from scratch) Jerk Tempeh and Peppers over Coconut Lime Rice. 

Molded Beet Tapenade Crostini.

Unmolded! Served with a surprise olive oil (see below!). 

Jerk Tempeh:

This was a wonderful Jerk sauce, even though it had, like 1,000 ingredients!

For dessert, I was out of my Whoopie Pies, but, my friend had made a batch of her own (a GF version of the recipe in BGV!).  She had extras leftover and was nice enough to 

re-purpose some of them over to me :-)  

These were SO delicious.  She promises to give me her GF recipe for them, guys!

I love whoopies!

And, I got a big box on my porch earlier this week...

What could it be?

 Ah ha! My prize from winning The Urban Vegan's Colavita contest!  

I got both the Private Selection and the Argentinian Fruity Olive Oils. SCORE!

I love winning :-)

And here's an early birthday present to myself (to fill all those future whoopie pies I still want to make!):

I was a little tired of the pastry bag thing (they always have some kind of issue), so I thought I might try this gadget.  Got good reviews on amazon, so, we'll see...

My birthday is coming up (I love my birthday!!) and I'll have more exciting stuff to show you and recipes to share.  If you can't wait, here's my birthday post from last year! Gonna be hard to top that...

Anyhoo, have a great rest of your weekend, everyone.  

(I love Mondays off for President's Day :-)

XOXO

Sesame Sriracha Tempura Veggies!

Testing, testing...Is this thing on?

Oh, yeah! It's on!

On to another great tester: Joni's Sesame Sriracha Tempura from Vegan Fusion!

I fried this tempura in my enameled cast iron pan with a clip-on candy thermometer.  It was easy to monitor the temp of the oil that way.

First, I picked out some veggies from my stash...

Onions, broccoli (leftover, pre-cooked), Brussels sprouts, avocado, carrot and apple.

I also added a chopped, pre-cooked beet at the end since I had enough batter! 

Joni's batter recipe.

I kept mixing in enough veggies for a full round in the oil.  Then, I added them right to the hot oil from the batter.

Clockwise from bottom: Broccoli, onion, avocado, carrot, Brussels sprouts, and in the center, beets and, above, apples.

This was a decadent and delicious dinner, I served it with jasmine rice.  

Which one of those was my favorite?

Nope, it wasn't the avocado, but it was rich and creamy. YUM.

I loved serving this tempura with a Sriracha vegenaise, and I needed a sweet soy dipping sauce, but ended up using tamari + rice vinegar since I was out of time.

So, what is my assessment of the different veggies?

Actually (and this surprised even me), my favorite was the Brussels sprouts (upper right in this picture). They were perfectly cooked, a bit sweet, toothsome, and went perfectly with the batter and the sauces.  Not bitter or brascia-like at all :-)  

Second runners up were the onions, cooked broccoli and carrots.  The onions were delicious, crispy, sweet and delicate--a fancy onion ring! The broccoli was creamy and tender, you could really taste the subtlety of the batter the most with the broccoli.  The avocado was creamy and perfect, but needed a slightly saltier batter and a sweeter sauce, which would have brought out all it's glory.  The apples were fine, the texture was good, they went well with the batter and the sauces, but overall, merely average.  

The least interesting were the beets, which just tasted like cooked beets with tempura batter cooked onto them.

All hail Brussels sprouts tempura!

Who knew?

Sweet Chili Tofu, Korean Fresh Noodles and Betty Goes Vegan!

I made Joni's Sweet Chili Tofu tonight (but I pan fried it on my cast iron pan vs. grilling it) over Korean Fresh Noodles from my Asian Market haul with Broccoli and an Easy Asian Dressing.  This was an unbelievably delicious dish!

That tofu! Those noodles! That broccoli! OMG.

Marinating the tofu (it was already pressed in my TofuXPress) in the Sweet Chili Sauce: 

Pan Frying the tofu in one of my cast iron pans (the crepe pan, actually!). 

Served over Korean Fresh Noodles with Easy Asian Sauce, garnished with Scallions and Sesame Seeds 

My Easy Asian Sauce is EASY! 

This was one of my favorite Asian Noodle and Tofu dishes ever.  OMG.

And for those of you who know and love Annie and Dan Shannon and their Betty Crocker Project, their book came out yesterday (I received it yesterday because I had pre-ordered it on amazon months ago) and they were even on The Today Show! 

 There are so many amazing recipes in there, I don't know where to start, though I think Salted Caramel Apple Whoopie Pies is a good place!  Or maybe Inside-Out Peanut Butter Cup Whoopie Pies!  I may have just bought a heart-shaped whoopie pie pan, you know, for Valentine's Day Whoopie (Pies) :-)

XOXO!

Testers: Spicy Korean BBQ Jackfruit and Pull Apart Buns!

Here are three more testers from Joni's new book, Vegan Fusion!  This is an amazing Pull Apart Bread filled with Spicy Korean BBQ Jackfruit. I made all three recipes (the BBQ sauce, the Jackfruit and the bread itself) yesterday!

BBQ Bun Pull Apart Bread from Vegan Fusion

This was made from three recipes...

The Spicy Korean BBQ Sauce:

Delish!

The BBQ Jackfruit Story:

This was my first time working with jackfruit, it is very hard right out of the can.

Here it is just starting to cook with the sauce, etc.

 I couldn't really begin to break it up until it had been cooking a good while, though I got some of the pieces apart a little using two forks at the beginning.  Next time I may chop up the jackfruit with a chef's knife before adding it to speed up cooking a bit (I was a little impatient last night, if I had more time I wouldn't have worried about it, it gets soft as it cooks).

After 45 minutes and a bit of effort (with two forks as well as cutting it up with my spatula--I wanted to make those buns!) to break apart the chunks of jackfruit, here is the finished Spicy Korean BBQ Jackfruit! It was delicious!

And, I needed a snack while I was making all this, so I put some of Joni's Sweet Chili Sauce on my tofu from the Asian Market (the homemade tofu, which is always amazing) and had it over some organic "marathon" bread from Wegmans.

A super tasty snack!! That gave me enough energy to finish the buns!

And here are pictures of the bun making and baking and eating:

 This dough is so smooth and silky, a joy to work with!

 Bun Assembly Station.

 A second filling: Sweet Chili Seitan and Tofu with Lime!

Raw buns ready for the oven! The center ones are the BBQ Jackfruit, the outer circle are the Sweet Chili Seitan & Tofu ones.

Curious passersby! 

Baked Buns!! Aren't they gorgeous? 

 Time to eat!

Sweet Chili Seitan in the Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce. YUM.

BBQ Jackfruit, YUM. 

 We jammed these!

Para llevar!

Now, what to make next...