The other day, my friend Carissa emailed to ask a question.   It seemed that she was going to serve 30 guests that evening and wanted some thoughts on making this recipe from RecipeZaar for

Fresh Orange Rice

and wanted my thoughts on how to make it.

First off, Carissa is a great cook, so I had no doubt she could follow the recipe, own it, and make it great.  There was one problem, though, as far as I could see.

Being a big fan of Chipotle, I have tried and tried to make their cilantro lime rice and I just can’t get it right.  It’s ALWAYS too limey.  (Since trying and failing several times, I think I figured out the key.  I think they add the lime juice after the rice is cooked, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, I told her my misgivings that basically a little citrus goes a long way and that some people (like myself) were going to really taste the citrus if it was strong.  She later emailed me, telling me that she had changed the recipe, reducing the citrus and it had turned out wonderful.

I asked permission to share this story and her recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, so sometimes I gotta throw a little bonus out to my readers.  That’s right the 8 Days of Cabot is really the 8 Days of Cabot PLUS ONE!

I had way more fun playing with Cabot Creamery Collective cheese than I thought I would and came up with an extra cheese dish.  Here’s to the ninth dish:

Cheesy Olives

This dish came to me when I was writing an article for Big Blend Magazine.  I was working on an Italian spread for a basketball feast and I had a few left over olives.  I also had some left over Cabot Horseradish cheddar cheese and I got to thinking about a dish my wife and I used to love.

One of our first big romantic dates was catered by Target (no, really) because they had these fried cheese stuffed olives called oliveinos which were amazing.  They were basically a black olive stuffed with herbed cheese coated in batter and deep fried.  What’s not to love?

My first thought had been to replicate that dish, but use some leftover green olives I had until I realized they were unpitted olives.  (D’oh.)  So what I did was take the olives, dry them, and coat them in batter.  I deep fried them and then topped the olives with cheese while they were still warm.  By doing so, I got a lovely flavored melted cheese without needing to stuff the olive.  It was a win-win situation.

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So I am up to my old tricks again…  I did another live demo, this time with just two Twitter friends.  The audio quality is not so great at first, but it does get better.

For this demo, I made…

Ma Pa Tofu

I needed to do a cooking demo to prepare for my big demo on February, 25th (mark your calendars people!).  Originally I wanted to make mac and cheese using some Cabot cheese, but I had no milk.  Then I thought Indian.  I had no ginger.

What I did have the ingredients for was my absolute favorite tofu dish, Ma Po Tofu, which I gave the recipe for in my series on how to make tofu that doesn’t suck.  Here I am cooking it with @bunnyslippers and @eatlikeagirl who were absolutely great!

Hope you enjoy the tofu!

I promised you all something nice and slow and when I promise, I deliver.

In the spirit of February, which has the honor of being the month to house Valentine’s Day, I am trying to spread the love.  This is why I am featuring Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queenâ„¢, M.S, R.D., author of The Veggie Queen: Vegetables Get the Royal Treatment cookbook and owner of two sites on veggies and slow cooking:www.theveggiequeen.com or www.pressurecookingonline.com.

Her recipe:

Brazilian Black Beans and Rice

I had a mission for Jill: I needed a vegetarian slow cooker recipe because, frankly, I haven’t found many good vegetarian pressure cooker recipes.  Jill delivered in a big way.

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UnResolution month…how we hardly knew ye.  Yes, that’s right, unResolution month is almost over.  There is but one post left after this one.  Ah, so many calories, so little time.

Anyway, I never meant for the “A month is four weeks, which is 28 days BUT January has 31 days so I need to find 3 more days worth of delicious but unhealthy foods” section of unResolution month to be a review of other bloggers’ ooey-gooey, delicious, and plain ol’ bad-for-you-but-still delicious recipes, but that’s how it turned out.  So why, fight it?

Today’s post comes from Cook Local a great food blogger I met on Twitter who seemed to really embrace unResolution month as a concept and suggested:

Parmesan Stuffed Dates Wrapped in Bacon

Yep, that’s right.  Cheese, bacon.  For the carnivores out there, this recipe is for you.  For the vegetarians, might I suggest some nice vegan bacon and vegan Parmesan?

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And the desserts keep on rolling in this, the last week on unResolution month.  Hopefully yesterday’s crepes hit the spot, but today we’re going in a different direction: we’re dipping back into vegan territory!  After seeing my post for Egg Nog Bread Pudding, my friend The Word Vixen asked for a vegan version.  Who am I to refuse?  So today we’re making:

Vegan Bread Pudding With Cinnamon Crumble

Continuing this tradition of chef’s desserts, or at least desserts that don’t require fancy baker’s techniques  (which will have their day, I promise!), bread pudding is one of those desserts you can make without a whole lot of fuss.  In fact, making vegan bread pudding is easier than making the non-vegan kind because there is far less mixing of eggs and milk to make custard.

Of course, I wanted to give this dish a little more oomph than a normal vegan bread pudding so after careful deliberation, I decide on adding a little cinnamon crumble.  Given the prevalence of vegan margarine these days, doing a vegan crumble is as easy as doing one with regular butter.  Still, if you can’t find vegan margarine, use just a little bit of soy milk.  It’s not going to be quite the same, but it will taste cinnamon-y and sugar-y and that’s a good thing!

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And the beat rolls on.  Today brings the second week of unResolution month to a close.  Hopefully by now you’ve learned that vegan food can be just as fattening as comfort food. If not, here’s one more chance to convince you!  It’s also a good segue into the next seven days which will be focusing entirely on deep friend foods! Mmmmmm…

However, before we get into this dish, I’d like to thank Gourmet Girl for all her tempura advice.  Thanks!

Now without further ado…

Tempura Veggies

There’s just something wonderful about tempura vegetables.  The lightness and the saltiness of the batter mixed with the crunch and the natural flavor of the vegetables… there’s no finer way to eat vegetables.  Of course, despite the lightness of a tempura fry, it’s still a fry.  Which is how tempura veggies made it to unResolution month and why they’re a sometimes food.

With that being said, on to the recipe!

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First off, happy thirteenth day of unResolution month.  I hope January is speeding along for you.  I know it is for me.

Okay, so something strange happened last night during my first vegan nacho post.  I got really into talking about the different faux meats and making vegan cheese and suddenly I forgot that I wanted to add an ENTIRE section on making tempeh and tofu to top the nachos  Once I finally remembered, it was too late for yesterday, but not too late for today!

So today I proudly offer…

Vegan Nachos Part 2

The inspiration for this dish actually came from an episode of Dinner: Impossible where Chef Michael Symon had to fix dinner for a group of cowboys and their families with one catch…everything had to be vegetarian.  Further complicating things were the fact that the cowboys weren’t in on the surprise (apparently veg*n cowboys are hard to find) and Symon’s bad attitude.

For his nachos, the original concept was to cook and crumble tempeh like ground beef on the nachos.  Good idea…

However, during the episode, some tofu, which was going to be used in sandwiches, got overcooked, dried up, and got chewy.  Rather than let it all go to waste, Symon chopped the tofu and sprinkles it on the nachos like grilled chicken.   So with that inspiration, here is my interpretation of those toppings.

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Maybe it’s just clever marketing, but I am starting to believe the hype: maybe 2009 is the start of something grand.  Right now our economy is in the tank, we are at war, and the ranks of the jobless swell every day.  The experts say 2009 is the year that we pay for the excesses of the past.  As a world we’ve got real comfortable with greed and overindulgence, but it didn’t make us happy.  It got us into a mess.

But there’s reason to hope.  Some people point to a new president and a new attitude in the White House, but I’ve noticed there is something going on that is far more grassroots.  Not only do people seem to be more willing to work smarter, but they seem to want to work greener, cleaner, happier, healthier, friendlier, and with deeper passion for what is truly important.  The change is inspiring.

It is in this spirit of hope and renewal that I would have my ultimate meal.  I would invite several couples and single friends to my table with the ultimate goal of sparking thoughts of four different types of renewal:

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Okay, so my resolution to help everyone else ruin theirs was to do 31 posts in 31 days.  Fortunately, my resolution was not to release one post per day or else my resolution would be undeniably broken since you may notice January 11th is empty.  However, I did release two posts today.

The worst part is that I had the post done, it was just in a draft form.  Oh well, life, goes on right into today’s lesson: vegan nachos.

Vegan Nachos

All things considered, vegan nachoes maybe the healthiest thing that comes out of this month in terms of the amount of bad stuff you might consume.  Still, I have done my darndest to make sure the recipe is packed full of things which are delicious enough to qualify this as comfort food.

Now, I know what you are thinking…vegan nachos?  If you have hung around the site at all, you know I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve for vegan ground beef (Fantastic Foods taco meat) or chicken (Match Foods).  Still, nachos are known for one thing: cheese.  How can you have cheese without animal products?  Fortunately, in my post on Nutritional Yeast, I provide the answer using How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet‘s Eazy Breezy Cheezy Sauce that we will kick up a bit.

After that, it is a simple matter of adding some vegan refried beans (hello Fantastic!), some olives, tomatoes, and some other goodies and we are ready to rock some nachos.

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