Maggie's Vegan Wild Rice Stuffing

A few years ago, I was FaceTiming with my sister, talking about our respective plans for Thanksgiving. We were heading to the home of some friends (remember when we could do that?!). Of course, the conversation turned to what we planned to eat. Among other things, I told her that I was planning to bring the wild rice stuffing we grew up eating and we both said, simultaneously, "because it's the only kind."

Fast-forward to Thanksgiving 2020, when COVID cases are out of control in much of the country and every major health official is telling us not to join together. With complicating layers of tradition, troubled historical legacies, a sense of unease pervading most of the US, a desire to be mindful about giving thanks, and an unknown future during the darkest months of the year, many of us may have a hard time feeling festive. However, food can bring a great sense of comfort and normalcy, especially when imbued with memories, as this stuffing is for me. 

Not pictured, all of the gravy that I pour on my stuffing.

Maggie's Vegan Strawberry Pie

While I love all fruits and vegetables, I certainly have my favorites. For fruit, there's no comparison to strawberries, as far as I'm concerned. This year, I planted my own strawberry plants, which hopefully means I'll have my own source of strawberry deliciousness for years to come! In the mean time, I'll be making this strawberry pie with berries from other local & organic sources. That's actually how this pie originated! 

Shana knows I love strawberries. Last summer, she surprised me with a delivery of 5 pounds of local & organic strawberries. That's love, folks. I kept eating them a bowl at a time, but worried that I wasn't going to get through them all quickly enough! Then a dinner party with some friends took shape and I asked if they'd all mind trying out a new strawberry dessert. After enthusiastic positive responses, I decided on a strawberry pie and began scouring the internet for ideas. As usually happens, none of the recipes I found were quite right. Instead, I decided to take some ideas from all of them, plus from some of my other recipes, and created a magical dessert. It was a hit at the dinner party and is a perfect cool treat for summer temperatures.

Maggie's All-Cuisines Salad Dressing

Well, we are mid-way through spring with hints of summer in the air. This means that it is time for our CSA again! I was *so* excited to sing our "CSA-day" song on the first week of pick-up. The joy at our CSA starting up again is also set against the backdrop of the global pandemic that rages on. Indiana has slowly begun to open up, but we're still very wary about heading to restaurants and we've only been going to the store every three weeks or so. Our weekly CSA box has dramatically expanded our access to fresh veggies, especially leafy greens! Seriously, we've gotten lettuce mix, heads of lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, arugula, braising greens, and micro-greens, plus turnips, radishes, and the first bit of asparagus; it's magical.

With so many leafy greens to eat, we've been finding new ways to eat them. Shana has been craving tikka masala with regularity, which is fine by me since it is delicious. A leafy green salad is a wonderful companion. When we first confronted the combination of tikka masala and salad, I looked at the dressings in the fridge and didn't love any of the possible taste combinations. So obviously, I made up my own! 

While originally intended as a lovely accompaniment to flavors in Middle-Eastern dishes, this salad dressing works beautifully with every flavor profile we've tried. It's a fast, easy, and tasty dressing for salads with any meal. 

Poured here on a simple salad of spinach and toasted almonds.

Maggie's Vegan Charoset for Passover

Happy Passover, friends! As you've read in other posts on my blog, Shana was raised Jewish and I've been slowly developing a repertoire of traditionally Jewish foods. For example, I've got two recipes for kugel (sweet and savory), challah, matzo ball soup, and a faux brisket.

Both the frisket and matzo ball soup graced our table recently when we hosted our annual Seder for Passover. I *love* Seder. It's filled with tradition, symbolism, storytelling, and singing. It brings together an amazing group of people (we always bring in at least a couple of Seder newbies). Moreover, the fundamental message that's relayed is that no one is free until all are free. I love everything about all of that.

One of the symbolic foods eaten at a Passover Seder is charoset (huh-ROE-set), a lovely mixture of apples, walnuts, and other ingredients. I think of charoset the Italian red sauce of Seders - every family has their own traditional version, which they claim as the best. I'll stake my claim on that as well, because my charoset is so good you'll want to eat it other times of the year!

Richa's Peanut Lentil Sauce

As I do periodically, a few weeks ago I went digging through old recipes I'd saved or tagged or noted in some way or another. I came across one from a blog I've been following for a while, leaned over to show it to Shana, who responded with "why aren't we eating that right now?!" I got her subtle message and we had it later that week.

While we both loved it, I realized I needed to make it again to make sure that the notes I'd jotted down about adjustments while cooking were actually correct (more than one note was a I-think-that's-what-I-remember-doing note). I'm thrilled to say it's still amazing. In the time it takes to cook rice in the instant pot and lentils on the stove (aka, less than 30 minutes), you can make a hearty, beautiful, flavorful meal that tastes like it belongs at a fancy dinner party.

NYT Chinese Sesame Cucumbers

It's been quite the whirlwind of a summer, folks. Already we're more than halfway through and I'm wishing I'd been more productive. To be fair, I've been working, but I've also been doing things for me, like reading, visiting family/friends, gardening, and cooking.

Speaking of those last two, this year I decided to grow cucumbers for the first time. Shana loves cucumbers. Our CSA was selling garden plants, so I picked one variety of cucumber to try. The variety I picked, Diva, is amazing! I don't love cucumber, but even I like these ones. I wasn't prepared to like the cucumbers, but I was even less prepared for how well they seem to be doing. I think the vines grew multiple inches per day and I'm pretty sure the cucumbers just magically appear.

Before I started growing them, we'd often receive a cucumber a week in our CSA box, which was just enough to put on a salad or Shana to eat as a snack. However, with the rate that they grow, I needed a recipe that used a lot of cucumber. Shana reminded me of one we'd had at a potluck years ago and it fit the bill perfectly.

This cool summer cucumber salad is a great side dish, snack, or appetizer that doesn't heat up the kitchen when summer temperatures soar. Plus, it's delicious and will keep you coming back for more.

That's part of my garden in the background! 

Rainbow Quinoa Salad

At the beginning of this year, a high school aged friend of ours decided to go vegan. We invited her and her mom, whom we know from an organization in town, over for vegan dinner. Her mom was very supportive of her daughter's plan to be vegan, but didn't quite know what to cook for her when she was also cooking for her 11 year old son, 4 year old daughter, herself, and her husband. We figured that we could invite them over and answer vegan food questions while also providing an example of a delicious vegan meal.

In asking what they'd like to eat, they said they were pretty open to flavors, so we chose to serve one of Shana's favorites - broccoli, tofu, and garlic sauce. They asked what to bring and we suggested "something that goes with dinner?" In other words, we were super unhelpful. However, our friends rose the challenge and brought a delicious Asian quinoa salad! Overall, dinner was a giant success. We answered all sorts of vegan-related questions, laughed a ton, and ate amazing food.

Since our dinner, we've eaten this salad a few times. I tweaked the original recipe, found at Two Peas & Their Pod, to make it more our style - doubling some veggies, removing some ingredients, and adjusting the dressing. It's SO delicious! It's also great for the unseasonably hot temps we've been experiencing - when I just don't want to eat anything. This salad has tons of protein and fiber and is a feast for your eyes as well.

Smoky Quinoa and Vegetable Soup

Full of good-for-you and easy-to-find ingredients - such as sweet potato, quinoa, and peas - plus flavors that are out of this world delicious (smoked paprika for the win), this amazing soup has been on regular rotation at our house for a while. Plus, even though the calendar says it's late March, we've been dealing with below-normal temps and even snow days causing cancelled schools! With all of that, it's no wonder this soup has made regular occurrences in our meal plans. But let me explain how we even got to this recipe.

First, Shana figured out about a year ago that she looooooves quinoa. She wants to eat it all the time in any form she can. Second, we had a dinner a while ago with our friends the Thompsons. They cooked a version of this soup from America's Test Kitchen's vegetarian cookbook. You can even see a video of the original recipe here. It was their idea to use smoked paprika. Third, we had family stay with us a while ago on their drive from PA to WI. We figured this would be an easy dinner for everyone (minus the youngest, who doesn't really like dinners and had PB&J). It was at this meal that I subbed in the sweet potato, because when I went to grab the white potatoes I was *sure* we had, I found them curiously absent. But the sweet potatoes were a perfect substitution.

All of this adds up to a hearty and healthy deep red soup - due to the smoked paprika and tomato paste - filled with vibrant colors and textures. We've fed this soup to so many folks and everyone has loved it! In addition to everyone above, it's been a hit at our monthly vegan potluck and wowed our friend Max's parents when they were in town. It's a bowl of warming winter magic for your tired taste buds.

The red color is from both the smoked paprika and the tomato paste.

Creamy Black Lentil Soup

Sometimes I go to grocery stores and buy something I've never cooked with before because it looks interesting. I did that a while ago with some black lentils. Then, of course, they sat in my pantry for a long time because I didn't have a recipe that called for them.

Finally, I decided they had existed, unused, in my pantry long enough, so I started in on some creative googling. I don't remember exactly what search term or random list I found this recipe, but I flagged it as a good option. I loved the idea of a creamy soup with the toothsome chew of lentils. I loved the idea of a subtle influence of Indian flavors. I was intrigued at the addition of tahini.

More importantly, this soup had an ingredient that would make Shana want it, too. See, this beautiful creamy soup calls for eggplant.Shana loooooves eggplant. Me? I feel strongly middling about eggplant. It's fine. I never crave it and will always pick another option over it, but I don't hate it, either. But here, in this recipe, it looked like we would both have something to love. I was right.

Saffron-Garlic Rice

Fall semester finals were last week and final grades were due on Tuesday. The nearly instantaneous flexibility that comes with the end of the semester generally means I can cook more creative meals and/or more time-intensive meals with some frequency. Thus, this week we've had all sorts of fun dishes, including chickpeas romesco, which we haven't had in ages!

To be honest, I'm not sure why we don't make this saffron-garlic rice more often. It's an easy recipe that involves mostly hands-off cooking, and the flavor is seriously good. I could see this rice as a side dish for a fancy dinner party, an option for a night you want something other than plain rice, or our favorite way to eat it - under chickpeas romesco. Regardless, we should eat it more and you should eat it, too! While it does take a bit of time, I'll remind you that it's easy and that your taste buds will thank you.

See that little spot of red? That's a saffron thread!

Maggie's Vegan Challah

Hanukkah is coming up. Neither of us is religious, but we both grew up with holiday traditions. Although Shana's Jewish traditions weren't my own, many of my friends were Jewish while growing up, so they are more than a bit familiar to me. One major tradition at Hanukkah is eating challah bread. Beautiful, braided, sweet, soft, magical challah bread; generally full of eggs.

A while ago I had an idea to try to make challah, figuring there had to be a way to make that magic vegan-friendly. Plus, the way Shana's eyes lit up when I mentioned the idea meant I had to try. More important was the way her eyes closed in pleasure when eating the finished bread. One way I show my love is through feeding people, so feeding my wife a food she'd not had since childhood made my heart overflow. It was only a matter of time before I'd make it again. With Hanukkah coming up in less than two weeks, I can feel the magic coming.

Chickpea Tart with Roasted Vegetables

Some very dear friends of ours got some wonderful news just about a week ago, which meant a celebratory dinner was in order! They have a 3 month old baby at home, so I offered to cook and bring over dinner for our celebration.

Since one of these friends is gluten-free, there's always a fun adventure figuring out what we can all eat. While talking about our celebratory dinner, Shana remembered this delicious chickpea flour tart that we first had at our vegan potluck. It's gluten-free and soy-free and sounds like something that should not be good. But it really is amazing. Since the first time we had it, I've deviated from the recipe a bit, but also decided that we needed something else to eat with the tart. The recipe below was born (and devoured).

Somewhere between a quiche and a custard, this tart and the veggies were just the celebration we needed. Well, this and the baked apples I made for dessert, but that's another post.

Maggie's Vegan Zucchini Boats

This year, we doubled the size of the garden. With extra space, I was able to grow a greater variety of veggies and decided to grow zucchini. My zucchini is...prolific. Talk to many folks who grow zucchini and they'll tell you the same thing.

As it turns out, growing a ton of zucchini is a blessing and curse. I've made batches upon double-batches of zucchini bread. We've grilled more zucchini than any summer before. And as much as I love both of those options, we needed something else to do with zucchini. 

Given that zucchini grows well in most gardens, a google search for "things to do with zucchini" brings up list after list of options. A number of these lists included some kind of zucchini boat: a hollowed out zucchini stuffed with ingredients, baked to deliciousness. While I loved the idea, I didn't love any of the recipes I found. Most recipes were filled with cheese and/or meat, while some were nothing more than flavored rice - not what I wanted. 

Instead, I took the idea of zucchini boats and ran. Where I ended up is a delicious and healthy recipe, full of protein and garden-fresh summer flavors. Infinitely customizable, add or remove ingredients to make this into something you'll eat, if only to switch up how you're consuming zucchini. 

Maggie's Vegan Massaman Curry

I love Thai food. When Shana and I have something to celebrate, or have people in town visiting, or just a craving for an amazing dinner, we head to Thai 9 in Dayton. In the past two months, we've gone 3 times. Once when my family came to visit, once when Shana's family came to visit, and once to celebrate that I'd been awarded tenure!

While everything there is delicious (we think they must have a wall of avocados because they are always ripe), there's one dish they can't make vegan for me: massaman curry. Their recipe includes half & half and fish sauce. After feeling sad about missing out on massaman curry, I figured I would try to make my own.

In my explorations of possible recipes online, so many had ingredient lists full of things I knew I couldn't get in my town. I started feeling a bit hopeless. But then, one of the recipes I saw had an aside about a really good pre-made curry paste that was also vegan! I jumped on the chance to have massaman curry in my own kitchen and purchased two cans from Amazon. I didn't need to make this more than once; I ordered more the next day. Now I can have massaman curry whenever the mood strikes.

Vegan Teriyaki Boats

On summer nights, I can't bring myself to heat up my kitchen. But as hot days and warm nights stretch on, I also get sick of grilling dinners and Shana wouldn't be satisfied with continuous salads. This means a recipe that can satisfy the requirements of not heating the kitchen, not using the grill, and not being a salad is a huge win for our summer eating.

This particular recipe was in a special recipe collection called "Best Vegan Recipes" published by Vegetarian Times magazine (which now exists in an altered state under the title Vegetarian Today; I no longer subscribe). Shana and I had been standing in line at a grocery store and saw this special collection. While waiting to check out, I perused it and found so many recipes I wanted to make that we ended up purchasing it.

These teriyaki boats are ridiculously fast and easy - so much so that Shana has made them - and they are delicious and healthy. Everyone we've served them to has enjoyed them and I can see them being quite flexible, if you wanted to add/remove ingredients.  Serve them as a lunch, a light dinner, or even as an appetizer (see Helpful Hints).

Maggie's Vegan Peachy Cream Bars

Last week, my neighbor brought over 10 beautiful, juicy, perfectly-ripe peaches. She got them from The Peach Truck, which makes runs of Georgia peaches during peach season. I looked at them and daydreamed about them, but finally figured I really needed to DO something with them.

The first thing I did was dehydrate six of them. I blanched them (like you do with tomatoes), so that I could remove the skins easily, and then sliced them for the dehydrator. Approximately 6 hours later, we had these chewy, candy-sweet peaches. What is in that tiny bowl is all that remains. Next time, I'll do double the amount.

After that, I needed to figure out what to do with the remaining blanched/peeled peaches. I knew we were having some friends for a late dinner to break their Ramadan fast, so I starting thinking about some kind of dessert. After double-checking that they like peaches and were willing to try a brand new recipe (both of which got enthusiastic positive responses), I starting digging around. One of our friends is completely gluten-free, so that was a constraint. I also didn't want to simply make a peach cobbler or pie. I stumbled upon a recipe that seemed like a good place to start. What emerged was a delicious dessert, perfect for a summer sweet tooth.

KMW's Vegan Honduran Black Bean Soup

It was this time two years ago that we were moving into our new house. We are so happy here and a lot of that has to with our neighbors. We have AWESOME neighbors.

One set of our across the street neighbors, Katie and Marc, work at one of the other colleges in town. Both of them are biological anthropologists. They do field work where they dig for bones or artifacts in carefully arranged grids. (And habits die hard; you should have seen them digging a very precise 3'x3' hole for a new tree they planted!) Although they do field work in a variety of places, one of their primary locations is Honduras.

A while back, they invited us over for dinner. They were a little worried about what vegan thing to cook, but then realized that a traditional meal they ate while doing field work in Honduras could easily be made vegan. Katie Neighbor* told me that two women, Rosa Hernandez and Elvia Martinez, in Copan, Honduras taught her the recipe. I'll never meet these women, but I am SO glad they shared with her. This black bean soup was so. freaking. good. Seriously good. The underlying flavor is layered and complex and round. Plus, each of us gets to personalize our own bowl with the via all sorts of add-ins. Finally, while I hate to tell anyone how to eat, whichever add-ins you choose, you simply must add the radishes! Yes, radishes.

Vegan Peruvian Lomo Saltado

More than three years ago, I mentioned that there were some Peruvian recipes in Bryanna Clark Grogan's World Vegan Feast that I wanted to try. Let's just say that life got a little bit hectic between then and now.

In any event, we have some Peruvian friends who work with me at Earlham and we have a night of dinner and games with them. Last month, I told them that I wanted to try cooking a vegan version of a popular dish in Peru called lomo saltado. According to Robertson, this dish is an example of a fusion between Chinese and Peruvian cuisine and has become an incredibly popular dish all over the country. Our friends agreed.

When we first decided to make lomo saltado, I was a bit perplexed by the variety of flavors that I saw in the dish. Traditional to Peruvian cuisine, potatoes play a role, as does steak (for which strips of seitan substitute wonderfully), vinegar, lime juice, oregano, and cumin. Traditional to Chinese cuisine, we have the stir-fry technique, along with soy sauce and rice. I was skeptical until I took my first bite, wherein I discovered what a wonderful and flavorful fusion these two traditions created! Our Peruvian friends thought it was delicious, too! Shana and I decided to have it again this week, which is why I'm sharing it with you.

Smoky Rotini Dinner

The semester is over, my grades are entered, and I'm looking at all the things I neglected over the past few months. Although this blog is one of those neglected items, it hasn't been far from my mind. I have loads of new recipes lined up to post.

Although the weather the past couple of days was quite warm, the week before had been rainy and cool and reminiscent of fall, which led to Shana and I seeking warmth and comfort. Given that it was also finals week for me, we also needed speed and ease. Luckily, we've been enjoying just the thing over the past couple of months: this smokey, savory, and speedy dinner that we adapted from Robin Robertson's More Quick-Fix Vegan cookbook. I've had this cookbook for a while, but we hadn't given it much of a chance. If this recipe is anything like the others in this cookbook, I have a feeling we'll be coming back to it over and over.

But back to the food! This dish has so many amazing flavors and textures in it! Even though the ingredients list looks long, you can find what you need in nearly any grocery store and you really only need to be able to boil water to make it. With all that going for it, the complexity of the flavors makes this meal something you can serve at a dinner party. Just make sure to double what I've listed below, as you and your guests will go back for more.

You can't see them, but there are chickpeas hiding in there, too!

Veganomicon's Chickpeas Romesco

Every so often I just get sick of everything we eat. It usually happens once or twice a year, such that when Shana and I plan our meals absolutely nothing sounds delicious. It was in a bout of hating everything that I turned to my cookbooks to find inspiration. Upon paging through my trusty copy of Veganomicon, I came across something that tickled my taste buds, simply upon reading the recipe. The recipe in question was one for Chickpeas Romesco.

Romesco sauce is of Spanish origin (northeastern Spain, arguably Tarragona according to this NYTimes article), although similar types of sauces exist in other places. Generally, romesco is a pepper, tomato, and nut-based mixture, ranging from thin-ish to spreadably thick. This recipe takes a bit of prep-work, only because you need to toast almonds and roast peppers before you can actually make the sauce. But! The extra steps of preparation really ARE worth it, as they add such wonderful depth to the flavor. If that still seems out of reach for you, many grocery stores carry toasted almonds and roasted red peppers, but make sure they are not packed in brine.*

This dish is worthy of your next dinner party, especially if you serve it over saffron-garlic rice! We brought it to our monthly vegan potluck in February and it got rave reviews. We always share recipes, but forgot after February's dinner. This month, people pointedly asked for this recipe, which I'll take as a good sign that it was well-received.

You can see the chickpeas romesco over the saffron-garlic rice we like,
as well as another dish from February's vegan potluck.