Teriyaki Rice Bowls

We spent a lovely evening last night with friends ringing in the new year with games and too much food and then Shana and I slept in this morning. According to our meal plan (made upon our return from Minnesota), we'd planned a new soup we've been eating for tonight, but Shana wanted to shuffle our remaining plans. The shuffle led to a new dinner tonight, which is kind of perfect - new year, new dinner!

Coming quickly together (after the rice is cooked, anyway), this is a keeper of recipe and will be a part of our regular rotation. The homemade teriyaki sauce is full of flavor, the veggies provide a great range of textures, and the rice provides just enough chew to make you think you're eating a more carb-heavy meal. In addition, everything in this dish can be found at a well-stocked grocery store.

Vegan Christmas Wreath Cookies

Every family has holiday traditions. In my family, we have a LOT of holiday traditions. We have traditions for where we go when, who we see when, how to open presents, what we eat when, and of course, what cookies we make.

Mom making wreaths in 2012

One of our traditional holiday cookies we call "wreath cookies." They are the most simple cookies (essentially like rice-crispie treats), but my mom made them every year. When we would get together with various groups of people over the holidays, we would ALWAYS be told to bring wreath cookies. Although other people made them, most people said that my mom's were the best. I don't know why they were the best, but they always were. Maybe it was the deep green color (there's a lot of research telling us that color matters in food perceptions!), maybe it was simply that her making them was tradition, or maybe it was that she clearly loved that other people loved them. Although this is our first Christmas without her, she was too weak to make them last year, so my sister took up the mantle. For the past 5 years or so, I've also been making a batch of vegan wreath cookies, just so that I could have my own taste of tradition.

These cookies take only about 15 minutes to make, but then take a while to set. In addition, given the food coloring, expect green everywhere (your fingers as you make them, your tongue when you eat them, and anywhere else the food goes*). But, these are a quick and festive cookie, so I think the green is worth it.

Devil Fingers

If you ask many non-vegans, vegans eat "weird" foods. While a number of previously "weird vegan foods" have gone mainstream (kale, anyone?), there are still a number of "weird vegan foods" that aren't really anywhere close to hitting the mainstream food consciousness in a major way. One of those foods is seitan. It's clear that I like the "weirdness" that is seitan. What is also fun about seitan is that the word is commonly mispronounced. The real pronunciation is say-TAHN, However, a lot of people mistakenly say "satan."

For anyone NOT sensitive to gluten, seitan is an awesome food! It's a high-protein option that can replace meat in a number of dishes. Depending on how it's made, it can be stringy (like chicken) or more dense (like beef). If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll have seen my post for how I make my own seitan. That seitan version is toward the "beefy" side of the seitan spectrum. Given that that recipe is "beefy," it only works in some recipes. Thus, years ago, I started making a chicken-style seitan recipe by VeganDad. With this recipe, I slightly adapted another of his recipes (see below) and created what we refer to as Devil Fingers. See, if seitan is mispronounced, and these are kind of like breaded chicken fingers, what better name than Devil Fingers? Plus, the looks on people's faces when they ask what we're eating is awesome. Given that they're also delicious, this recipe is just plain fabulous.

Served with ketchup for dipping and roasted cauliflower on this night. 

Vegan Scallion Pancakes

Shana and I have totally different comfort foods. It's no secret that Shana loves Chinese food. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling up to the challenge of Shana's ultimate comfort food: vegan wonton soup. Although that particular attempt was close, it wasn't good enough (the wontons are awesome, it's the broth that I'm struggling with). What WAS good enough was my attempt at scallion pancakes to accompany our soup.

In my memory, scallion pancakes are served at every restaurant approaching Chinese cuisine. In reality, I have no idea how Americanized scallion pancakes are (so much of our "Chinese" food is not eaten in China the way we eat it here) and they are certainly not served everywhere. We tend to order them when we find them on a menu, because oniony fried bread is always a good option. Unfortunately, none of the Asian restaurants in our area (we have a couple of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants) serve scallion pancakes. And clearly, since making one new dish isn't enough for a meal, I simply had to take on two.

But wow, am I glad I did! These scallion pancakes were the real deal and they were surprisingly easy, if a bit more hands-on than I anticipated. Regardless, these will certainly go into rotation as an occasional side for Asian-inspired foods.

Super Simple Breakfast Cookies

Somehow or another I went a whole month without posting - how embarrassing. October is always a busy month for us (we were gone two consecutive weekends in the middle of the month) and this is when the semester really starts to explode. Still, those aren't appropriate reasons to have neglected my blog for a whole month.

With that said, I'm back and cooking all sorts of new things this week. Hopefully some of them will be blog-worthy! I've got something blog-worthy today, though: breakfast cookies! I saw these on a blog I follow and decided I had to make them. They are SO simple and really delicious! Plus, they're full of healthy ingredients (oats, flax seed, bananas), soy and gluten free, take next to no time, and are low in sugar. What's not to love?