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.

Vegan Viands #20: Vegan Brown Sugar Cookies

Yesterday was my mother's birthday; she would have turned 66. Growing up, my dad did 98% of the cooking at our house. He also made pies. But my mom, she was the baker. Cookies, cakes, sweet breads - those were her primary culinary home. I've shared some of the things she was noted for, such as Christmas wreath cookies, chocolate chip zucchini bread, and rhubarb bars.

One year, my mom got a giant recipe book filled with nothing but cookies. I remember her going through the book and exclaiming over the recipes. I think that most of the cookies in the book got made at least once, but one recipe kept returning: brown sugar cookies.

I think what made these cookies a hit was some combination of the crunchy/chewy cookie, the frosting that is reminiscent of the frosting we all put on our birthday cakes, and the group effort necessary to frost the cookies before the frosting set.

Since we were headed to a party last night, I wanted to bring a dish to share. I'm sure that the memories of my mother brought these cookies to mind. Making and sharing them with others was a wonderful way to honor her memory.

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.

Lazy Dinner Paustages (Pasta and Vegan Sausages)

Sometimes a Lazy Dinner is just what you need.

The past few weeks have been incredibly busy for us. For two weeks straight, we had something on the calendar for every single night (and weekend days, too). Part of the busyness includes the classes Shana is taking, part of the busyness was due to the festivities surrounding the inauguration of Earlham's 18th President, and part of the busyness is that we like to see our friends. I loved all of our activities, but I also love that things have calmed down just a little, and we have the occasional evening with flexibility. Tonight was one of those nights.

We'd planned for easy meals all week (mostly), just because I knew that I wasn't going to want to spend a lot of energy on making dinners after all that we'd been doing. This dinner, paustages, was one we'd not had in a long time. It was quick and delicious; just perfect for hectic nights.

You may be wondering why we call this dinner paustages. Well, it's mostly because I love playing with words. While not a perfect example (we took some liberty with letter order), our made up dinner name is essentially a portmanteau, which is the combination of two words and their meanings. Common examples are things like smog (smoke + fog) or brunch (breakfast + lunch). Plus, paustages is just fun to say!