Summer Treat : POM, Strawberry and Orange Juice Smoothies

POM Wonderful (or should I say P♥M Wonderful?) recently sent me a case of the cuuutest little bottles of their 100% pomegranate juice to experiment with! I've been using them to make some refreshing and delicious summer drinks for myself, friends, and family. My two favorites are a Pomegranate & Strawberry Smoothie and POM with Orange Juice.

First off, POM and orange juice makes an absolutely gorgeous drink. The POM sinks to the bottom of of the orange juice so you get beautiful orange and pink layers. The flavor of POM and orange juice also blends really well- the tartness of the orange juice is more subtle and the sweetness and tartness of the POM is mellowed as well.

To make this drink just pour POM slowly into your orange juice (you can use any ratio, they all taste good). So, so pretty:

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Today's Dinner : General Tao's Tofu (from Vegweb)

General Tao's Tofu is probably one of the most non-tofu-lover friendly tofu dishes out there. That is to say, even if you don't like tofu or have had some bad experiences with it in the past, chances are you will actually enjoy this dish. Everyone in my household loves it and just check out the 33 pages of rave reviews on the recipe listing!

Even if you're positive you will hate this dish because of the tofu, you might try preparing just the sauce to toss with some veggies. The sauce is great and requires only garlic, ginger, veggie broth, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and cornstarch.

I've made this at least a dozen times but tonight I thought I'd take a picture of a "mini bowl" of the dish with some brown rice to share with you!

Today's lunch : spaghetti and veggies with homemade pasta sauce

This is isn't a food blog (nor am I a "foodie") but I noticed that my very rudimentary food posts seem to get a fair number of views so I decided that I should perhaps be a little more diligent in sharing my meager (sometimes pathetic) attempts at cooking. Oh yes, and I'll even post the inevitable disasters... I can't wait!

On today's menu: spaghetti and steamed veggies.. yum!

This was actually pretty good even though I used *gasp* canned tomatoes. I used one large can of whole peeled tomatoes which I "chopped" very slightly in my blender. I then poured that over 1 large chopped onion and about 4 cloves of crushed garlic that I had browned with oil in a large pot. Also added were a nice healthy sprinkle of thyme (about 1 tablespoon), a dash of olive oil, a few pinches of salt and sugar to taste and about 3/4 cup of water. This was cooked on medium for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. I opened the lid every once in awhile to let the extra water evaporate off.

Somewhere along the line I added a huge heap of fresh chopped parsley which subsequently turned brown. In retrospect I'm not even sure adding the parsley that early even helped with the flavor so I added some more fresh parsley to the top of the pasta once it was cooked. I also added about 3/4 cup of peas about half an hour before the pasta was done cooking.

That yellow-orange sprinkle on the top? That's nutritional yeast. It's a somewhat controversial (I won't really get into that here) yeast product that's often used as a cheese substitute in vegan cooking. I've sometimes likened the taste to a wet dog which is probably the least appetizing (almost vomit inducing?) description EVER. I mean, it's slightly accurate, but the overall taste is more or less slightly nutty, slightly bitter and slightly cheesy. Why that equates to wet dog in my mind I'm not really sure, but I won't dwell on it!

I usually use whole wheat pasta but I was out (booo!). Today's veggies were some organic steamed broccoli and Brussels sprouts covered with a somewhat gross looking slathering of Vegenaise.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookie baking adventure.. wheeeee!

Today was another one of those make-a-quick-snack-requiring-very-few-ingredients days. I felt like making an eggless & butterless (i.e. vegan) chocolate chip cookie, but eggless, butterless cookie recipes are few and far inbetween. However, in a time of great recipe need, my #1 go to recipe site Vegweb never lets me down.

The ingredients for this cookie: flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, chocolate chips, sugar, oil, vanilla and water. Check, check, check... got all of these things. Yes!

I made some slight variations in my cookie:

• I added a slight bit more water then the recipe called for.
• I used slightly less sugar than the recipe called for.
• I used Ener-G egg replacer instead of baking soda. Which in retrospect I think makes no sense. Correct me if I'm wrong (which I am more often than not), but I believe baking soda is a leavening agent and Ener-G is a binder... but whatever, it worked!
  
• Rather than chocolate chips I chopped up a bar of 70% Cacao Bittersweet Scharffen Berger Chocolate which I think helped out a ton flavor-wise.
• I also halved the recipe for trial purposes which produced about 9 medium sized cookies, perfect for myself and a couple others as a midday treat.
  
• I heated the cookies for 7 minutes on one side and about 5 minutes on the other- worked out well for me, slightly crispy (and not burned!! arg... oven fry flashback!!) on the edges and chewy in the middle.
  

I forgot to take pictures as I was cooking, so all you get to see is the finished result: my semi-malformed, sort of too shiny chocolate chip cinnamon cookies. They were actually very tasty (the cinnamon was great), also the perfect combination of crunch and soft! Best of all, super simple to make!

snack of the day : garlic oven fries (+ recipe) !

I was running low on food (I need to get to the grocery store STAT) so I cooked up a batch of garlic fries with the staple ingredients that I had lying around (and that are always around). Not the healthiest snack, but still beats fast food. This recipe is super simple & very intuitive, so if you haven't tried making your own yet, I definitely recommend it. Also, if you have any tips on the perfect oven fries, I'd love to hear them! *Takes notes frantically*.

This is my method: Cut up 2 medium sized potatoes into wedges or strips. Personally I prefer thin strips because they seem to cook more evenly and also more quickly (I'm impatient), you also minimize the risk of a fry thats uncooked on the inside and burned on the outside ewwwwie! Toss the fries with a little bit of cooking oil (just enough to coat them).


Place the fries in a single layer on a cookie sheet (place the side with the greatest surface area down on the sheet). Set your oven to 425 and cook for 15 minutes on one side then scrape the fries off the sheet, place browned side up and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes.

While you're waiting for the fries to heat up, crush 1-2 cloves of garlic and place them in a bowl. I cover mine with a little bit of oil to enhance the flavor and make my fries a little bit more soggy (gotta love those soggy fries!).

After your fries are cooked they should look something like the picture below. I was watching youtube with headphones on so I missed my timer going off, thus this batch o' fries is a little more.. well... burned.. than I'd like them to be. Note to self: don't wear headphones when cooking. Toss your fries in your garlic and top off with a sprinkle of salt.


Dip in your sauce of choice and you are doneeee. Voilà!

chocolate cherry mice recipe!

I was just browsing the flickr page of My Paper Crane's Heidi Kinney and came across her version of homemade chocolate mice. So precious! I had never actually seen these before but I thought they would make a nice stocking stuffer or last minute gift item for Christmas.

I found a recipe from Family Fun Magazine & while I don't think these are quite as cute as Heidi's (click the "chocolate mice" link above to see hers), they are still pretty dang adorable!


Also, if you're looking for a last minute gift item, I totally recommend Heidi's Yummy Donut pillows. Available here, here, here and at Kid Robot retail stores in LA, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, and New York City (call for availability).


Katy Perry has one!