Happy Tuesday, everyone!  I hope all of you who live in the US enjoyed the long weekend.  I guess the passing of Labor Day also means the unofficial end of summer has passed, too.  We’re having scorching hot weather here in Ohio, though, so it still seems like summer is going strong.

I spent a bit of time in the kitchen this weekend and, thankfully, everything I made other than the cream puffs turned out really delicious!  Here’s the rundown:

Friday & Saturday

My husband wasn’t home on Friday night, so the munchkin and I had some pasta with VeganYumYum’s popular creamy tomato sauce.  Saturday lunch featured the any-time-of-day burritos from Vegan Express.  I’ve made these before, so I won’t post pictures again, but I do want to reiterate that these burritos couldn’t be faster or tastier!

We went to a “Pay it forward” party at a neighbor’s house on Saturday, so I just had some leftover pasta before we went because there were no vegan-friendly options.  No big deal!  It was so nice of my neighbors to hold this party, though.  Basically, they had a raffle and took donations for our community’s resource center.  They provided wine, food, a children’s concert (adorable!) and a bouncy tent (crazy!).  It was a lot of fun and it really helped to wear out our daughter before bed time.  Hooray!

Sunday

My mom had an end-of-summer get together at her house on Sunday and I provided some side dishes and a vegan dessert.  I made the Smoky Spuds with Barbecue Beans from Cooking with PETA.  So easy (it’s just sweet potatoes, black beans, and bbq sauce) and so good!  It was well-liked by most everyone and made for some awesome leftovers.  I also made the Indonesian Style Vegetable Salad, which I just made last weekend, but we liked it so much that I wanted to make it again.  I was able to find jicama at the grocery, so I used it this time and there really wasn’t that much difference between this salad and the last one for which I used yellow carrots.  In fact, I should have probably stuck with the yellow carrots because I sliced three of my fingers across my mandoline while I was julienning the jicama.  The tips of my fingers are sore and it hurts for me to type this (how’s that for dedication?  just kidding.).

I also contributed a delicious (and huge!) cantaloupe from my CSA and a chocolate vegan dump cake.  Instead of using the glaze called for in that recipe, I topped the cake with the quick chocolate ganache recipe from VCTOTW.  The cake was super easy and super good.  You know, nothing special, but really satisfying.

I didn’t get pictures of the cake (if you just picture a chocolate cake in an 8 x 8 pan you’ll get the idea), but here’s a pic of the beans (with some cheddar-style vegan rice cheese on top), cantaloupe, and salad:

Monday

I made a special treat for my family on Monday morning – mochi!  I’d never had mochi before, but after reading this post the other day, I really wanted to try it.  I bought some of this (the cinnamon raisin type) at Whole Foods.  It was so easy to make; cut the mochi into 1 or 2 inch squares, pop them in the oven and wait for them to poof up.  I served our mochi with agave nectar drizzled on top.  Delicious!

Since the oven was still warm (the mochi had to be cooked at 450 degrees – yikes!), I made another simple treat.

My brother-in-law brought some tortilla chips to the bbq on Sunday and had a real easy way to make them; take a few (as many as you want) whole wheat tortillas, slice them into strips, spread them out onto a baking sheet, spray or brush on olive oil and sprinkle on some salt.  Toast them in the oven at 400 degrees until nice and crisp (mine took about 10 minutes).  Easy, right?  My daughter absolutely loved munching on these yesterday.  How great to find an easy, but child-pleasing treat!

I got a little fancier with dinner last night, but both the entree and the side dish were still incredibly simple.

The inside shot.

The inside shot.

For the entree, I made Pesto-Stuffed Tofu Steaks from Vegan Planet we had Lemony Roasted Potatoes from Veganomicon on the side.  It was my first time making both of these recipes and both were tremendous hits!

All in all, it was a great Labor Day weekend.  I’m looking forward, though, to getting back to reading all of your blogs!  Have a great day!