Posts Tagged ‘mexican-ish’

Tacos!

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Saturday I met up with some people from Food Awareness (the local veggie society) - including Bianca from Vegan Crunk - at Java, Juice and Jazz for lunch.  My oldest sister also came and brought her youngest son for the fantastic meal.

We had some awesome vegan soft tacos, along with chips and three dips - guacamole, salsa and vegan cheese dip. The tacos were amazing.

We were all so full, but no one could resist when the server came around and offered a dessert of crumbled vegan cookies topped with bananas, strawberries and chocolate mint sauce. Luckily my sister was there for me to share with, otherwise I might have had to eat it all myself (what a shame that would have been). 

Not much interesting in the way of cooking lately. I’ve been eating a lot of sandwiches (I almost shed a tear when I ate the last of my mock tuna salad). For breakfast the last couple of days I’ve had soy yogurt with granola. This morning it was peach yogurt with apple blueberry granola - tasty!
The Brit and I will be going out of town later this week. We’re heading down to Fort Worth, TX to visit my grandparents. We’ll be leaving on Thursday (I think) and coming back probably Sunday or Monday. I’m going to make sure I get to visit Spiral Diner while I’m down there!

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Pico de gallo is fun to say

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
I made some faux meat fajitas! for dinner today. The most important part of fajitas! is plenty of bell peppers and onion. Look at all the pretty colors!

I cooked them in my beloved cast iron wok in some olive oil until they were tender but not soft.

After transferring them back to their bowl, I cooked some fake steak and chicken strips until they were heated through, then added some fajita seasoning and a little water and cooked it down a bit. I added the peppers and onions back in and let them heat back up.
Served on a whole wheat tortilla with some pico de gallo and Tofutti sour cream, my fajitas! were awesome. Tomorrow I may make some guacamole to go along with the leftovers, because goodness knows I have enough leftovers to feed an army.

After dinner I decided to try my hand at making some homemade chocolate syrup. I adore chocolate syrup but I cannot bring myself to buy it anymore with all the high fructose corn syrup and preservatives. I searched around for a recipe but couldn’t find one that looked right, so I sort of modified a couple to get what I wanted.

I haven’t tried it on or in anything yet, but the tastes I already snuck let me know that it is oh-so-yummy.
It was really easy, actually. In case any of you out there want to try it, here’s the recipe:

  • 3/4 cup cold water
  • 1 1/2 cups evaporated cane juice
  • 3/4 cup dutch process cocoa (gives a richer flavor than regular cocoa)
  • 1/8 tsp (a pinch) kosher salt
  • 1 TBS agave nectar
  • 2 tsp real vanilla extract

 

  • Mix the water and sugar together in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
  • Whisk in the cocoa, salt and agave and boil until slightly thickened and reduced, maybe about three minutes. (I boiled a little too long, not taking into account the amount the syrup would thicken as it cooled).
  • Stir in the vanilla and let cool to room temperature. Pour into a bottle and store in the refrigerator.

I made some almond milk this morning, I can’t wait to try it with this syrup!

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Lots of pictures totally make up for lack of content

Thursday, March 13th, 2008


As promised, today I will share my delicious tacos with you. Well, not my tacos themselves, but pictures of them.

First I must tell you about one of my new favorite things: Tofutti sour cream. I bought it not really expecting to like it, but the first time I tasted it I had to go back and check the package to make sure I hadn’t somehow gotten confused and bought real sour cream, or something that had milk in it. Nope, it is a totally vegan sour cream substitute. If you like sour cream, this stuff is da bomb.


Now, on to tacos. I find that when I make tacos, I can never get the amount of filling I want in there without them breaking and falling apart everywhere and making a huge mess. Yes, I like lots of ’stuff’ in my tacos. So I decided to just cut to the chase and break the shells in half before preparing them. I know this sort of makes them more like a tostada than a taco, but I prefer to call them “open faced tacos”.

Step 1: Toast the broken taco shells (I used blue corn) lightly in a dirty, dirty toaster oven. Hey, I was at work, okay? It’s not MY toaster oven…


Step 2: Spread on some heated refried black beans (or refried pinto beans, if you prefer). I heated mine in the microwave.


Step 3: Top the beans with some vegan soy ‘crumbles’ that have been cooked with taco seasoning. I used Morningstar Farms brand, cooked on Monday and reheated as needed in the microwave.


At this point I also added some taco sauce, but I didn’t get a picture. Use your imagination.

Step 4: Pile on some shredded lettuce. I used pre-shredded out of a bag, because I am lazy.


Step 5: Dollop on some delicious Tofutti sour cream and spread it around with great difficulty on the unstable lettuce. Lick fingers.


Step 6: Top your tacos with some diced (or in my case, chopped) tomatoes.


Step 7: Do I really have to tell you what step 7 is?

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