zenpawn

This was my entry in the Iron Chef-style vegan_cookoff this week where the featured ingredient this time is carob.

When I first read that carob was the star of the show this week, this play on words immediately came to mind, and the ideas flowed from there.

These little firecrackers contain a sweet secret!

My local grocery stores, unfortunately, only had the non-vegan version of Sunspire’s carob chips. (It’s crazy that milk powder is actually the first ingredient on their standard variety! And whey the third.) So, I looked around for carob powder, also to no avail. Alas, I settled on the carob chunks in the bulk food bins. I hadn’t planned on including sunflower seeds and the other fun things in these delicious bites, but it’s all I had with which to work, and that it did.

Here’s the recipe for one stuffed jalapeno. I recommend making up more, of course, but I was watching the calories today.

1 large jalapeno pepper
1 carob chunk (15 g)*
2 Tb cooked black beans
small shot of coconut rum

*to make with unsweetened carob chips, combine with sweetener and sunflower seeds

1) soften carob, if necessary, and smash all filling ingredients (the last three) into a paste
2) cut the top off your jalapeno and carefully scoop out the interior
3) stuff pepper with the filling from step 1
4) bake in the oven (I went 15 minutes at 425)

Serve atop brown rice and black beans baked with diced pineapple and its juices to stay with the Caribbean theme.

As you know if you’ve managed to find this humble little blog, there are a ton of bloggers out there these days, writing about every conceivable subject under the sun. And how addictive it is to read them all.

So, how do you find those of us whose blogs are not resident on one of the big name blog sites like blogger.com or livejournal.com? That’s where compilation sites come in handy. Some of them search out blogs using spiders in a manner similar to google, while others require you to register your site. Still others do both.

Technorati is one such site. And there are other listings with an emphasis on the vegetarian scattered about the web, such as the links page at vegweb.com. The more the merrier!

I recently purchased the popular cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance. Last night’s dinner was inspired by her Ethiopian seitan with peppers recipe. I seldom follow a recipe verbatim, even the first time around (I know, “tsk, tsk …”), and this was no exception.

The homemade seitan strips were marinated and baked in a sweet and spicy sauce of brown rice vinegar (she used white wine), with splashes of apple cider vinegar and raspberry vinegar, and unmeasured quantities of garlic, cayenne, ginger, cumin, cardamon, coriander, cinnamon, turmeric, and cloves. They soaked it all up nicely and were moist and delicious. I will definitely have this again in the near future.

Also shown are roasted acorn squash with cumin, cinnamon, and chipotle (a dish I made for Thanksgiving), and smoky mustard-dill green beans.

For lunch, I finally finished up the last of the huge “fight night” batch of hummus. I served it in romaine lettuce wraps with a cucumber salsa (salad?) and cilantro.

As a mid-afternoon snack, simply some sliced apple (dusted with cinnamon and chipotle) and avocado really hit the spot.

This creation was my first entry to the vegan_cookoff. This week’s contest was for rice desserts.

1/2 C brown rice (measured dry)
1/2 C smooth natural peanut butter
1/3 C maple syrup

Cook brown rice as directed on package.

Mix peanut butter and maple syrup until smooth.
Stir in cooked rice and combine well.
You should have a sticky mess like this.

I almost stopped here and called it peanut butter rice pudding. LOL.

Plop onto well-oiled tinfoil-lined baking sheet by heaping tablespoonfuls.
Flatten each blob with a moistened fork. Bake in preheated oven at 375 F
for 20 minutes. Remove carefully to cooling rack. Makes about 20 cookies.

They came out pretty well, but are definitely delicate. They have a crispy
bottom with a toothsome, soft center. For an entirely soft cookie, bake
for only 15-17 minutes and/or press less flat.

Last night and tonight, I used my little 2-cup food chopper to blend up an impromptu, fat-free pesto of raw broccoli stems, onion, garlic, and, of course, basil. After combining with the “pasta” (in quotes because I use konjac noodles), I mixed in some nutritional yeast.

Meanwhile, a quick stir-fry was busy caramelizing. It included the broccoli tops, onions, garlic (these last two ingredients really go without saying in my cooking, lol), zucchini, maitake mushroom, tomatoes, homemade seitan chunks, and a sprinkling of red pepper flakes.

Once nicely browned, I topped the pasta and took this picture before stirring it all together in typical one-bowl, bachelor fashion.