…Vegannifer! Yes, my new blog will now be called Vegannifer and can be found at http://vegannifer.wordpress.com. Vegannifer was my favorite from the beginning, but my husband thought it was kind of silly. Meh, what does he know?

I’ve posted a little note on the new blog to let everyone know that I’m there. Thanks to everyone who voted in the blog name poll and thanks for your patience (**cough cough** Celine) in awaiting the results.

I also want to thank everyone who submitted suggestions. My two favorite were “Extreme Vegan Makeover” (courtesy of Jen (Instead of a bus blocking the reveal to the new house, I could have hidden all my pictures behind a cow and the dish would only be revealed after clicking on the cow) and “Jenny from the Block *Vegan Style*” (I’m not sure who made that suggestion, but it cracked me up (♪ Used to have a little now I have a lot – I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the Block ♪).

Thanks for visiting Small Space Sweets and for always leaving such awesome comments. I hope you’ll keep reading over at Vegannifer!

In Tuesday’s post, I mentioned that I couldn’t wait to get home to see what other ways I could come up with for using the curry tofu spread I made to top Monday night’s dinner of masala burgers and ginger lime dal. Upon reviewing the contents of my refrigerator last night, I decided to make a tofu scramble incorporating one of the HUMONGOUS mangoes I bought at Whole Foods this weekend (I love how both the taste and texture of mangoes lend themselves to being a great part of both sweet and savory dishes!). I also saw that I had a little bit of dal left (not even enough for one serving (well, what I consider a serving)) and I had some of the potato kale enchilada mixture leftover from Sunday. I considered that both the potato kale mixture and the dal had lime juice in them, so I thought that I would try mixing the two together and forming potato-dal patties.

This dinner turned out wonderfully! For the tofu scramble, I used two 11 oz. packages of extra firm tofu, one cup of diced mango, one and a half cups of tomatillo salsa and one and a half teaspoons of curry powder. After mixing the potato kale mixture and dal together, I formed patties and cooked them up on the skillet. I served the scramble over brown rice and served the potato-dal patties on the side. I topped both with the curry tofu spread and both items went from being “really good” to REALLY, REALLY, REALLY GOOD! At first, my husband didn’t realize that there the curry tofu spread was on the table, but after I told him to put it on his scramble and patty, he stopped eating and said “Wow, that is GOOD!”. He told me to put the recipe away for my cookbook but I have no immediate plans for one of those! Still, though, I’m going to commit it to memory and maybe it will show up in the cookbook I write when I’m happily retired in 20 years.

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Today is the last day for voting in my blog name poll. Please vote if you haven’t already!

After seeing this recipe for Ginger Lime Dal late last week, I was inspired to make an Indian-themed dinner. I have never made dal before, but this recipe sounded too delicious for me to resist. I followed the recipe exactly, except I was confused by how much water I would need in order to cook the dal until soft. I started with a 1:2 ratio and then added water as needed. What I ended up using was more like a 1:3 ratio (3/4 cups dal to 2 1/4 cups water). I wasn’t intending on serving the dal right away, so I stored it in the fridge and just added a little more water to it before heating it up in the microwave. The final product was as delicious as I thought it would be.

As delicious as the dal was, it was still not the component last night’s dinner of which I was most proud. To go along with the dal, I simply cooked a Trader Joe’s masala burger and topped it with a curry tofu spread. The spread AMAZED me! I really didn’t anticipate it turning out so well, but it really did and it is the component of last night’s dinner of which I am MOST proud. I can’t wait to get home tonight and find other ways to use this flavorful spread. Here’s the recipe:

Curry Tofu Spread
Half of a block of Mori-Nu tofu
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
juice of half a lime
1/2 t salt
1 t curry powder
1/4 t red curry paste
1t-3t oil (I used about 2t, but some folks might like to use more oil)
2t agave nectar

Put all the ingredients into a food processor or blender (I used my little coffee grinder and it worked perfectly!) and blend until smooth then spread away!

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Blog name poll voting is open until 11:59PM tomorrow night. I will reveal the new blog name on Thursday. If you haven’t already, please vote in the poll!

Since this was the weekend I needed to both make and post the results of September’s Daring Bakers Challenge, I didn’t have much time left for other kitchen adventures.  The two other things that I did make this weekend were both really good, though.

For Saturday lunch, I made this soup and substituted Parma! for the optional parmesan cheese:

and for Sunday dinner I made Veganomicon Potato and Kale enchiladas.  I’d been wanting to try this recipe for a long time and today was the day.

While I thought these were really good, I think they will be even better tomorrow after the enchilada sauce ingredients have had time to get to know each other better.  The flavors were still being shy today and the sauce didn’t have the kick I wish it would have had.  I have no complaints, though, about the potato and kale filling.  I left the skin on my potatoes and only did a rough mash and the filling came out perfectly.

Happy Monday, everyone!

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If you haven’t already, please vote in my blog name poll.

It’s 9:10PM on the day that all Daring Bakers are supposed to post our challenge results and I’ve just finished making and tasting my final product.  Even though I got started late (very, very late), this challenge was so easy and so awesome that I’m still able to get my post up today!

The challenge was to make lavash (hence the dorky play on words in the title of this post) crackers and to make a topping of our choosing to go along with them.  We had the option of making the crackers with or without gluten, but they had to be vegan – hurrah!  I am so happy that Natalie and Shelly were this month’s challenge hosts – it was my favorite challenge yet!

I chose to make my crackers with whole wheat flour, so they were not gluten free.  To top the crackers, I sprinkled them with a cinnamon/sugar mixture and with some pumpkin seeds.  They really did turn out wonderfully!  The topping I made was a chutney of sorts, and turned out equally as wonderfully as the lavash.  I’ll first show the photos of the final product and then I’ll give the recipe for the chutney (the lavash recipe can likely be found all over the Interweb today).

I’m just going to call this “Autumn Chutney” because the flavors are all so incredibly autumnal!

Autumn Chutney
2t Earth Balance
1 apple, peeled and diced (I used gala, but I’m sure a granny smith would taste amazing!)
1 nectarine, peeled and diced (mine wasn’t ripe enough to pull away from the stone inside, so I just cut around it)
4 dried mission figs, diced (I cut off the tops and bottoms before dicing)
1/8 cup raisins
2T chopped walnuts
2T water
2T rum
1t cinnamon
pinch nutmeg

In a small saucepan, melt the Earth Balance over medium heat.  Add in the apples, nectarines, figs, and raisins and mix everything together.  Add in the water and the rum and turn the heat up to high.  Add in the cinnamon and nutmeg and mix everything together.  Once the liquid is almost completely cooked off, add in the walnuts.  Again, mix everything together.  Remove from heat and serve.

I just want to extend another HUGE THANK YOU!!! to Natalie and Shelly for hosting this challenge.  It was such fun to participate in and was the enormous Daring Bakers boost I needed after last month’s disastrous eclairs challenge!

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If you haven’t already, please vote in my blog name poll!

I’ve been so bad lately at planning dinners ahead of time and I have found myself on more than one occasion not knowing where to begin when I set to work making that evening’s dinner. This was the situation I was in last night until I opened our cupboards and saw that cute little jar of Trader Joe’s Curry Sauce smiling back at me. It gave me the inspiration I needed to get dinner going and on the table fast.

To make this quick and easy meal, I did the following:

1) Diced and sauteed one onion
2) Drained and patted dry some tofu and then cut it into cute little triangles.
3) Tossed the tofu into the pan with the onion and sauteed it for just a few minutes
4) Tossed a package of frozen cubed butternut squash in the pan with the tofu and onion.
5) Tossed half a package of frozen spinach into the pan with the onion, tofu, and butternut squash. Covered the pan for a few minutes to thaw the squash and spinach.
6) Removed cover from pan then diced two medium-sized potatoes and tossed them in the pan with the other ingredients.
7) Poured jar of curry sauce in the pan and mixed the ingredients around.
8)Added 1/2 cup of light coconut milk, 1T of garam masala and 1T of curry powder and mixed the ingredients around.
9) Covered the pan again and let the curry simmer for 10 minutes (or until potatoes are soft).

I served the curry over some brown rice that was mixed in with some leftover quinoa from a previous night’s dinner (I’m trying to jump on the quinoa bandwagon, but it’s not my favorite grain).

Cheap, quick, easy, and delicious – now that’s what I call a successful meal!

Have a great weekend and, if you haven’t already, please vote in my blog name poll!

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about changing this blog’s domain and blog title. There are several reasons for this:

1) I registered the jennycestcake.wordpress.com blog name several years ago when I was doing a lot of cake baking/decorating and I was going to use the blog to feature my cakes. Since I don’t do a lot of this anymore, I feel like the domain name is rather irrelevant to my focus on vegan cooking.

2) When I started posting about vegan food, it was mainly so that I could post my results for the Daring Baker’s Challenges. I chose a blog title that was different than the blog domain and one that gave the impression that I would be posting a lot about sweets/baked goods. As much as I love my sweets (and I do!), I actually haven’t made them or posted about them as much as I thought I would. So, again, I feel the blog title is irrelevant to my focus on vegan cooking.

3) I’d like to have a blog domain/title that has the word “Vegan” in it.

So, here’s where I need your help. I have already registered four wordpress.com blogs and I need your help in choosing the new domain and title of this blog. As an added bonus, if you don’t like any of the names I’ve selected, you can submit your own suggestion! After all the votes are tallied and the suggestions are considered (and I check to see if those domains are available on wordpress.com), I’ll reveal the new name of this blog and will begin posting on that domain. Voting is open until 11:59PM on Wednesday, October 1st.

Thanks, everyone!

For the past two weeks, I’ve received these types of winter squash in my CSA.

Kabocha Squash

Black Futsu Squash

I didn’t really know what to do with them since I’ve never prepared squash like this before, but I started playing around last night and here’s what I came up with.

These are Winter Squash and Soy Chorizo (the vegan kind!) enchiladas. When I started preparing the squash last night, I was intending to come up with something more akin to burritos or even a “bowl” of some type. I thought I would cube and roast the squash and the add in some beans and the soy chorizo. Well, preparing the squash took WAY longer than I anticipated, so I ended up finishing cooking it by peeling the squash and boiling it. At this point, I couldn’t do much with it but mash it up. So, I put both types of squash in a bowl with the soy chorizo, some earth balance, some almond milk, and a variety of spices (garlic powder, chili powder, cinnamon, a little curry, some cumin, and some salt) and got to mashing. This created a really nice enchilada filling. I topped the enchiladas with a simple enchilada sauce: 2T EB, 3T flour ( I used chickpea), 2T chili powder, 1T garlic powder, one 8 oz can of tomato sauce, one cup of water and some salt (melt the EB, add in the flour, whisk in the rest of the ingredients, reach a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes).

The final product was not bad – not great – but not bad. It was nicely spiced, but it lacked depth to it’s flavor. As my husband said, “They’re all treble and no bass” (he’s a music geek). This was a situation where I really longed for some cheese, like a nice sharp cheddar, because that was exactly the taste I felt was missing. If I would have had time, I would have made a cheezy sauce and I think this would have helped. greatly. Overall, though, they were pretty good; I gave this dinner a C (it would have been an A+ with some cheezy sauce) and my husband gave them a B+. Next time I prepare squash, though, I’ll make sure I do it on a weekend when I have more time to play around in the kitchen.

Last night was a bit hectic as we were trying to fit in all of our normal activities, but in truncated versions, so that my husband and I could leave by 7:30PM for a date. A date??? What’s that??? Why, I haven’t been on one of those in years!!!! We went to see a concet by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (aka the Swell Season), who are the stars of the movie Once. If you’ve never seen that movie, SEE IT NOW!!!! The concert was very entertaining, but we left just a bit before it ended so we could relieve my sister of her babysitting duties. It was nice, too, to get home and go to bed!

Anyway, because we had entered into a race against time last night, I didn’t make anything special for dinner. For my husband, I baked one of the Trader Joe’s cheese pizzas and topped it with some Lightlife soy chorizo (surprisingly not vegan – it has egg whites in it). For me, I baked a Trader joe’s Vegan Roasted Veggie Pizza and doctored it up with some white carrots, sweet potatoes, and red potatoes and I sprinkled a good helping of Parma! on top. For the side, I made some broccoli sauteed with balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil and walnuts. I really liked this, but I think that next time I make it I will use fresh instead of frozen broccoli and I will make the balsamic, agave, and olive oil into a sauce for drizzling over the top.

The pizza looks really pretty, but the broccoli looks a little lackluster. Regardless, here’s a picture:

Have a great day everyone!

Let there be light! And television! And Internet! And good food! I love electricity!

If you haven’t already heard, we are back on the grid!!! The good news came on Saturday at around 1:30PM – almost 6 whole days after the power went out. The power company trucks flooded our neighborhood around 9AM Saturday morning and the munchkin and I stood outside and did a little dance for them. They were all very nice and it was so great of them to come from all around the country to help restore our power! The guys who hooked up our power were from West Virginia, but I saw trucks from other parts of Ohio, Virginia, and even Canada all helping out this week. Woo hoo!

I didn’t get back to cooking right away because we had no groceries. We took care of that problem Sunday morning when we went on a shopping spree at Trader Joe’s and then went to my Mom’s house to pick up the food we had dropped off there earlier in the week.

We came home and I set to work unloading the bags – it was like Christmas! I got to put everything away in a clean and empty fridge. Here are the pictures of our newly-stocked fridge and freezer:

So clean and orderly! I love it. There are some non-vegan items visible, but I don’t eat those. And those little Trader Joe’s yogurts visible in the top photo??? They totally have gelatin in them. I forgot to check and am so bummed that I didn’t think to check until my daughter had eaten almost one whole container. Ugh.

So, even though we had all this fancy new food in our fancy clean fridge, I didn’t make anything fancy for dinner last night. Here’s a pic of what we had:

I made Wildwood Tofu Veggie Burgers with corn (from my CSA) topped with chipotle cream and roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes. The corn with chipotle cream is DEEEEEEElicious! So easy to make, too! The tofu burgers were just okay; not nearly as yummy as Sunshine Burgers.

So, those are all the food-related highlights from my weekend. I hope everyone had a great weekend with beautiful weather and tasty food!