Ty and I opted to bring our favorite macaroni and “cheese” recipe, which he ended up making, and a batch of my current favorite food in the entire world: soft pretzels. (I really wish I could take credit for those pretzels…)

I spent the majority of yesterday baking and doing dishes, due to the fact that we were also going to be attending a James Bond-themed cocktail party after the vegan potluck, and I’d promised to make pretzels and “crack cookies” — I mean chocolate chip cookies — for that. So, two batches of pretzels and a double recipe of cookies later, I’d fulfilled my baking commitment, Ty was finishing up the macaroni, and we were ready to go.

So we made some new friends, caught up with old ones, and generally had a good time at both events. Unfortunately, Ty’s down for the count today, with what appears to be the flu. Poor guy — he’s feeling so rotten. I wish there was more that I could do, other than wait it out and hope his fever goes down soon. I put the word out on Facebook for everyone we’ve had contact with recently to shore up their immune systems. I sure hope nobody else has caught it — we mingled with 50+ people yesterday.

On a positive note, I have to say, it’s really an awesome feeling when you arrive at a party, whip the covering off a bowl of some tasty thing you’ve made, and half of said food item have already been removed from the bowl before you can even set it down on a table. Especially when someone has a pretzel in one hand and a cookie in another, and can’t decide which to eat first…

We hosted tonight’s WND and I decided that I just had to make pretzels. Adina had sent me the recipe and I was so ready to taste them again. They’re a bit more work than my old recipe, which just had you mix the ingredients together, roll out the dough into pencils, and bake. These involve proofing the yeast, kneading and letting the dough rise, rolling and twisting the pretzels together, then dunking them into a baking soda and water bath and sprinkling with salt. As long as you have the time to let the dough rise (and half a cup of baking soda to spare for the water mixture), these are definitely worth the effort. And really, the effort is minimal.

The recipe says to brush with butter/margarine, but I didn’t bother. The salt stuck to the dough nicely after its water and baking soda bath, and who needs the extra calories, right? We enjoyed them straight up and also had some fun dipping them in melted semi-sweet chocolate from the fondue pot which was in attendance tonight.

Amazingly, we had two pretzels left of the dozen the recipe made. And there were six of us at dinner, tonight. I guess that gives you an idea of how good they are. Ty and I are looking forward to enjoying pretzels with our lunch tomorrow. Yum!

Oh, did you want the recipe? Here you go! Buttery soft pretzels, by Christa Rose.

One quick note: The recipe says to cut into 12 pieces of dough, but 16 yields a similarly-sized pretzel. Just bake for 7 minutes instead of 8.

For Christmas last year, I brought stuffing using this recipe from NovelEats.com, and it was a pretty big hit, even among Ty’s “meat and potatoes”-type family. I liked it, although I felt that it needed some tweaking to suit my tastes. I had a chance to have another go at it yesterday, while making it for Friends Thanksgiving. Everybody raved about how delicious it was last night, and I was all, “Score for the vegan team!” Something like that.

The funny thing was, my first batch of the stuffing was almost a disaster, and I saved it by quickly whipping up a second batch and mixing them together. And thus, my version of this tasty dish was born. It’s actually a blessing in disguise that my first batch didn’t turn out well (I’d used too much veggie broth and ended up with very soggy stuffing), because the original recipe doesn’t make a ton, and my doubling it ended up feeding the 25+ people in attendance, with a few cups of leftovers for me to take home.

The alterations I made to this recipe (other than essentially doubling it) are as follows:

• More bread
• Less sausage
• More onion
• Olive oil for cooking
• Fresh vs dry rosemary
• More apple
• Less margarine
• Cooking the celery more

Apple Sausage Stuffing

Modified from NovelEats.com

Ingredients:

• 2 loaves of crusty bread, cubed (enough to fill two full-sized baking sheets in a single layer) — I used Avenue Bread’s sourdough and Bread Farm’s Chuckanut multigrain
• 1 package Field Roast smoked apple sage sausage, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• olive oil, minimally as needed
• 1 small head celery, chopped (approx. 6 stalks)
• 5 teaspoons dried sage
• 2 ½ teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 stick Earth Balance margarine, melted
• 4 apples, peeled and chopped into small pieces
• 1 to 1 ½ cups dried cranberries
• ⅔ cup minced parsley
• 2 cups vegetable broth

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Cut your bread into cubes, and put them on baking sheets on a single layer. Bake in the oven for about five to seven minutes, until dry.

Gather the ingredients which you will be frying: the vegetarian or vegan sausage, onions, celery, sage, rosemary and thyme. Chop your sausage, onions and celery into smallish pieces. Fry the onion in a drizzle of olive oil until soft, adding the celery a couple of minutes in. Add the sausage and cook until browned (doesn’t take long for Field Roast). Add the sage, rosemary, and thyme, and cook for about two minutes. Remove from heat.

Chop your apples and parsley, and measure out your cranberries. You can probably do this while cooking the onions and sausage mixture.

Place the toasted bread cubes in a large mixing bowl, then pour the sausage mixture on top of the bread. Pour melted Earth Balance over the mixture, then add the apples, cranberries and parsley. Mix well.

Drizzle with vegetable broth until thoroughly moist but not soggy. Mix again. Transfer to a baking dish (or two) and allow to bake for about 20 minutes.

Note: Because of my cooking flop and the fact that I had to cook the stuffing quite a while before serving it last night, I ended up combining everything in my large crockpot once in was cooked, and keeping it warm in there until it was time to eat. This actually worked quite well and I plan on using the crockpot when we host Thanksgiving at our house, this year. I might even try baking the stuffing in it — would save me from having to wash a couple of Pyrex dishes.

Another note: I think we could probably get away with not using the melted margarine when combining all of the ingredients. I haven’t tried it yet, though.

Perfectionism aside, I was able to snag the seeds from the 8 or 9 pumpkins in attendance, which everyone (thankfully!) tossed into large bowls while they were cleaning out the pumpkin innards. Only a small amount of washing was needed to separate out a few stray bits of pumpkin from the seeds, and suddenly I found myself with somewhere around ten cups of raw pumpkin seeds! Um, yum?

To preserve my sanity, I decided it would be a good idea to try out a couple of different toasted pumpkin seed recipes. I’m not a big fan of monotony; gotta mix it up a bit. Also, the last time I tried toasting the seeds (a few years ago), the recipe wasn’t a real hit and I believe I ended up tossing most of them out. (Don’t stone me!) This time around, I have plenty of seeds at my disposal, so I can try as many new recipe as I like! It’s a win-win, all around.

So, without further delay, here are my two favorite recipes:

Spiced Pumpkin Seeds
For a salty-but-more-character-than-just-olive-oil-and-salt pumpkin seed, this recipe worked out pretty well. The original recipe called for both salt and garlic salt, which seems silly. There’s enough salt already, and the garlic powder worked just as well.

• 2 cups raw pumpkin seeds
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Cinnamon & Sugar Pumpkin Seeds
At first taste, I thought the cinnamon was over-powering and that this recipe had failed. Once the seeds (and my annoyance) had cooled off, I gave them another try and I actually quite like them!

• 2 cups raw pumpkin seeds
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Instructions (for both combinations):
Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet (one which has edges, so the slippery buggers don’t slide off).

Bake for approximately 50-60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so. Keep a close eye on them during the last 15 minutes, as they will start to brown really quickly, and you don’t want to burn the seeds. I actually don’t think any of mine made it to the 60-minute mark.

I like this recipe because it’s from scratch, uses ingredients which you probably have on hand, and is super simple. And any dish that has my picky husband returning to the kitchen for a heaping plate of seconds most definitely has my vote! However, if you have a distaste for nooch, you probably won’t be a fan. Just sayin’.

This vegan macaroni and cheese recipe came to me via my friend Christina, who received it after having it a friend’s wedding. Original source: unknown! But happy to credit where credit is due.

EDIT, Sept. 16: It looks like the recipe came from VegWeb, where it’s titled “Best Vegan Mac and Cheese in the entire world…seriously”. Works for me! Found via a post on Vegan Soapbox from a couple days ago, which listed store-bought options and recipes for macaroni and cheese.

EDIT, Feb. 19, 2012: We discovered that we prefer to use a cashew cream base for this, as it yields a much more flavorful sauce. The original recipe uses firm tofu, so if you’d prefer to go that route, check out the link above. I maintain that my modified version is better, though — and so does my picky husband.

Vegan Macaroni and “Cheese”

Ingredients:

• 20 oz macaroni or other pasta (actually, a 14oz bag is plenty!)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 1.5 cups nondairy milk
• 1.5 cups nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup low-sodium tamari
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon paprika (use the good stuff)
• 1 tablespoon salt (maybe less if tamari has salt added)
• 1 rounded tablespoon yellow mustard
• chopped veggies to your heart’s content!

Recipe:

Cook macaroni until it’s al dente. It will cook a bit more while it’s baked, so just try not to cook it to death in the pot.

While pasta is cooking, combine the water and cashews in a blender and process until creamy. Add the remaining sauce ingredients and process until well-blended and smooth.

Chop up any veggies you’d like to add. Broccoli is a delicious add-in, along with bell peppers.

Combine veggies, pasta, and sauce in a seriously large baking dish (our was our largest Pyrex glass pan, at around 4.5 liters — don’t know the dimensions, but it’s one step up from the 13″ x 9″ pan, and twice as large).

Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes. You want it to get a little toasty brown on top, but don’t overcook it too much, as it might get a little dry around the edges.

One of the main things that I usually fail at with my diet is consistently making good, wholesome meals. I try here and there, but I need to improve on that, and that’s something that I’ve been aware of for a long time. One of my issues is that Ty will sometimes try a bite of what I cook, but usually will end up making his own meal. (I’m still trying to find meals that he likes, but he’s not very forthcoming with ideas.) So, most of the time I’m left with large amounts of leftovers which last me for days (lunches and dinners), so the whole cooking-every-day thing isn’t very practical.

Documentaries such as “Forks Over Knives” and “Food Matters” have left me with a renewed sense of resolve to keep expanding my catalog of favorite meals, which I can refer to when I’m out of ideas. (And I really need to get around to designing and putting together my own notebook of “absolute favorites” and “Ty will eat this” recipes, which I keep telling myself I’ll do…)

In any case, I’ve decided on a few dishes that I’d like to cook this week (or maybe next, depending on our schedule and how leftovers get eaten):

• Spinach Linguine with Edamame Pesto: One of my all-time favorites! I actually prefer this pesto over the “normal” oily stuff. This pasta is so hearty and delicious and good for you, all at once. You really can’t go wrong…
• Pineapple and Potato Curry: My friend Sarah brought this to last week’s Wednesday Night Dinner (a weekly potluck with some friends), and I totally fell in love with it! Some comments on the recipe mention adding a can of chickpeas, and I plan on adding some of those, along with some fresh peas from the garden. I figure I’ll have this over some basmati rice that my dad brought us a couple weeks ago (he bought too much at Costco — oops!).
• Thai Salad with Slow-Cooked Tofu in Pineapple Barbecue Sauce: I saw this on the FatFree Vegan Kitchen blog today, and just went, “Oh, yum!” Even being sick today and not thinking ANYTHING could possibly taste good, my brain said, “Oh yes, you will like this.” So now this is on my menu.
• Macaroni and “cheese”!: I don’t have a link to this recipe, but my friend Christina brought this to one of the first Wednesday Night Dinners that Ty and I went to (we made it a vegetarian theme), and Ty actually liked it so much that he had seconds! Win! The recipe uses a non-dairy milk and nutritional yeast-based sauce, and you can throw in whatever veggies and other add-ins as you feel inclined. I plan on tossing in some broccoli, at the very least.
• Potatoes Gratin: Ty picked out this recipe from one of my cookbooks. It’s not a creamy dish, and actually seems more like a variation on roasted red potatoes. But looks good, nonetheless!

So, that’s what I’m hoping to create. I’m really excited about the linguine (it’s been so long!) and the macaroni (since Ty will eat it). I’ll probably look forward to the others more once my stomach starts behaving and I get my desire to eat back. Right now, I’m just trying to get enough calories and nutrients into my body so it can heal and start feeling better. (Food poisoning is the culprit, I believe. Yesterday was miserable, but today I’ve been able to eat more than just saltines, which is an improvement.)

So what about you? Do you have a hard time making and sticking to a meal plan? And what are your favorite go-to meals to cook at home? (Shamelessly trying to boost my inventory, here!)

Things continue to grow in our garden. We’ve been able to start picking strawberries by the bowl and they are fantastic! The garden actually looks slightly ridiculous, because we couldn’t figure out a decent way to cover the strawberries, so Ty spread the netting over some sawhorses that he found in the barn and stapled the sides down to some 2×4′s along the perimeter. It does the job, but looks rather silly and amateurish. Probably because it is.

One of the things on our list to do today or tomorrow is to pick up some hay/straw/mulch and spread it under the strawberry plants. So far we’ve only lost a couple to rot, due to sitting on the dirt, but I’d like to halt that process before the number of casualties increases. I love my strawberries!

I have a few pots and containers on the back patio, where I’m growing cilantro and basil. The basil is taking its sweet time, but the cilantro is thriving! Unfortunately, you can only have so many plants within a small area, so most of my baby cilantro plants will have to go. I’ll probably keep two or three in the large bin along with the basil, which is closer than they recommend, but I figure it won’t hurt to try!

I’m super proud of my peas — not that I’ve had anything to do with their achievements. Ever since they sprouted, they’ve been growing like weeds. Tasty weeds, though. We planted sugar snap peas for me and shelling peas for Ty (we disagree on which is the best pea, so we’re doing both), and the snap peas are about twice as tall as the shelling peas, currently. It might just be general plant differences, but I’m proud of them anyway.

Both kinds are technically bush peas, but Ty spread some netting from one side of the posts up and over to the other side, so it forms a netted column for the peas to grow up between. It actually seems to be a pretty good method, as the peas are latching onto the netting and twirling their little tendrils around it. One of my biggest gripes about bush peas is when the plants just sort of flop all over the place, so I’m super happy that these are going to be strong, supported plants.

Our potatoes are a mismatch of spuds that we bought to eat and failed to use fast enough, so they sprouted! (We have a bad habit of repeating this process quite often.) We planted six potatoes: 2 each of reds, Yukon golds, and russets. I’m a little disappointed, because I’ve suddenly discovered that I love sweet potatoes, so I’m wishing we’d planted some of those, too.

Things are finally moving past the “grass” stage, which I’m so happy about. The carrots are getting their signature frilly-looking tops and the spinach is looking spinach-like. We thinned out the spinach the other day, to give the plants room to grow as big as they like. The broccoli plants are growing like weeds, too. I’m pretty sure that all but one broccoli seed sprouted. Of course, we had to thin them out, but they’re clearly very healthy.

Our romaine is looking pretty hearty, as well. We’re doing small batches of romaine so it doesn’t all need to be eaten at once. The second set has been planted and is already peaking through the soil. I have a feeling that, even with our efforts, we’re going to be inundated with lettuce.

And last, but not least, the kale! This is definitely a new venture, for me. I’m hoping I’ll actually eat it. If not, I’ll need to find someone to donate it to, who will enjoy it. So far, I love it as kale chips, but I’m trying to branch out in my tastes and find new ways to enjoy it. I guess we’ll see!

I didn’t get photos of everything. These don’t include the sweet onions, scallions, corn, tomatoes, bell peppers, and strawberry plants. There’s not much to see for the onions, yet, and the corn currently looks like very ambitious grass — definitely not knee-high by the 4th of July! I don’t feel like showing off the tomato and pepper plants yet, since we bought them as young plants and they’re still getting established.

I’m currently watching NBC’s coverage of the Tour de France (stage 1 was today), and after that I’ll probably figure out something for lunch, then go check out the garden, again. Ty picked a large handful of strawberries yesterday evening before we went dancing, but I’m sure there are already more to be found!

Initially, we’d intended to dig some beds in our field, but when Ty took our rototiller to the intended bed areas, all it did was gouge out some deep furrows in the ground. Nice. Things were a bit too wet and dense to be straight-up tilling. We’ll give it another go when summer is in full force and the soil has dried out. Hopefully we can make something work.

In the meantime, we cleared up an existing garden area which was used by the previous owners of the property. It’s to the side of our lawn, next to our four apple trees (which are growing little apples!).

A couple of months ago, we bought some baby strawberry plants from Bakerview Nursery and settled those in. They’ve grown up nicely and we should have some ripe strawberries within the next month. With 25 Summer-bearing plants, we’re going to have a lot of strawberries on our hands! And I’m really looking forward to that.

We also made use of some past-their-prime potatoes which we had sitting in our garage. They’re just now sprouting up through the soil, mixed in with a few marigold plants to help with pest control. (We’re trying to plant companion plants next to each other — here’s hoping it works! Plus, the flowers bring some much-needed color and vibrance to the garden.)

We also planted what seems like a ton of things from seed. Let’s see if I can recount everything: sugar snap peas, shelling peas, broccoli, kale, Walla Walla sweet onions, scallions, romaine lettuce, spinach, sweet corn, and carrots. We picked up two roma tomato plants from the nursery, along with some bell peppers. Our potatoes are russet, red, and Yukon gold.

It’s amazing to see the baby veggies poking out from the soil! The baby pea plants were barely breaking the surface one day, and the next afternoon we found them already an inch tall! And today they were leafing out!

So far, it’s very difficult for me to keep from snatching the wayward stalks of grass out from between the sprouts, but Ty keeps reminding me that I need to wait until the sprouts are bigger, so I don’t risk dislodging them. Lame! But it’s for the best, I guess.

I’m hoping that tomorrow’s weather will cooperate and that I’ll be able to take my camera out and get some shots of my little sprouts. The pea plants are just plain adorable, and the broccoli and kale are very happy. I’m slightly dissatisfied with the plants that look grass-like, but I know they’ll pass that stage soon enough and I’ll be harvesting veggies left and right. I’m so excited to finally have a garden of my own! I just hope that I can make myself keep up with it and not let the weeds take over.

As a side note, this brings to mind a question: What do vegans do about slugs? Any advice?

I do my best to avoid processed food-type-products as much as possible, but I do have an ongoing love affair with Earth Balance, which started in high school, before I went vegan. I also keep a jar of Vegenaise in the fridge, to use on sandwiches whenever I happen to make them, which isn’t super often — so it takes us a while to get through the jar.

I was prompted to look up the ingredient list for Vegenaise today, while having a chat with my mother-in-law. At family events, she often will contribute a bowl of potato salad. I much enjoyed this potato salad when I was an omni, but even then I was aware of how utterly artery-clogging it is. Back to our chat, though. So my MIL wanted to bring this potato salad to our housewarming party this weekend, which I’m sort of okay with. I would prefer if she made a recipe that I got from the co-op, which is absolutely delicious and feels loads lighter than the one she makes. But I really didn’t feel like picking up the ingredients for her and honestly, I hate the comments about how it’s “different from the other potato salad, but I guess it’s okay.”

So I let her know that if the potato salad was what she wanted to bring, that would be fine. She offered to leave the eggs out (yes, there are eggs in it), but I pointed out that mayonnaise has eggs in it. She replied that she actually uses Miracle Whip, so I went to The Google and did some digging to find out what’s actually in Miracle Whip.

Behold, the miracle that is Miracle Whip:

Water, soybean oil, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, modified food starch, eggs, salt, mustard flour, artificial color, potassium sorbate as a preservative, paprika, spice, natural flavor, dried garlic.

Meanwhile, the organic Vegenaise is comprised of:

Organic Expeller-Pressed Soybean Oil, Filtered Water, Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Soy Protein (non-GMO), Sea Salt, Organic Lemon Juice Concentrate, and Organic Mustard Flour.

Which one sounds more appetizing to you? I know which one gets my vote.

There will be a very un-vegan potato salad adorning the food table at my housewarming party. I guess it will fit in with the pigs-in-a-blanket made with Lil’ Smokies and crescent rolls (Haggen brand are vegan but have trans fats), which my husband requested and will be making himself. I may try to pick up a small container of the co-op’s potato salad if they have any in the deli, but otherwise I will be content with the rest of the delicious food we’ll be having:

• Black bean and quinoa salsa with sweet potato tortilla chips
• Rosemary-chickpea dip with pitas
• Fresh fruit salad
• Locally baked bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil
• Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting (from Manifest Vegan)
• S’mores!

Yes, I picked up a bag of Dandies marshmallows, some 70% dark chocolate, and honey-free graham crackers! Finally, I’ll get to put our fire pit to good use!

And you know, I don’t think I’ll be going hungry…

I’ve made this recipe several times and it never fails to deliver. When bringing these cookies to a potluck, they’re always the first to go and people just keep grabbing them, one after another. I usually get lots of comments along the lines of, “No way — these are vegan?”

Yeah. Pretty cool.

ETA: Tony, who hosts the weekly Wednesday Night Dinner potluck at his house, posted this on Facebook: ‎Trish Haveman‘s cookies at WND are like crack cocaine. I don’t think it’s practical to make them a controlled substance but I think maybe we should limit how many someone can legally have in their personal possession.

Win!