Chili Chapultapec

In my quest for the perfect chili, I wanted to try the chili recipe out of the Healthy Heart Handbook. Although it doesn't call for as many vegetables as my usual chili recipes, it uses TVP (textured vegetable protein) as a base and I wanted to give that a try.

This chili was easy to prepare and tasted okay, although I don't plan to make it again. There are so many outstanding chili recipes out there, that I have more I want to try!

Red Smoothie

Can this still be a green smoothie if it came out red? I feel like if I call this a green smoothie people might think I am color blind.


I have been eating green smoothies almost every day now since I discovered them last month. When I first thought of making green smoothies, I really wanted to use either Kale or Swiss Chard as my leafy green. However I was a little hesitant to try something new since the spinach smoothie was amazingly delicious.

To be fair I have been checking out this rainbow color swiss chard for over 2 months at Whole Foods. Well, not this particular bunch, but the plant-type in general. Last time when I was there I decided to give it a go!

Look how pretty it is! It sort of reminds me of Care Bear color vegetables, which in my case is a very good thing. Now if for some reason those colors are toxic or not natural, I will stop buying them and try something else. Until then, I am loving this:


I also picked up some frozen organic strawberries so those were going in the smoothie for sure. So here's what's inside:

Ingredients:

1 banana
1 cup frozen strawberries
3 leaves of rainbow swiss chard
1/2 Tablespoon of ground flaxseed
1 cup of water

Directions:
1. Put it all in the blender and blend!



For some reason it didn't occur to me that adding strawberries would change the color of the smoothie. This smoothie tasted more like the chard and less like the fruit compared to my previous spinach smoothies. I still liked it though and I am going to be making these until the chard is gone.

Grapenut Bars

With finals fast approaching, I am in search of healthy snacks that transport well. I saw a recipe for grape-nut snack bars and thought that might fill the need. The recipe is from the Healthy Heart Handbook (why is that not a surprise) but I first found the recipe online here. I didn't have raisins so I added dried cranberries instead.

Here I am mixing it all up:


Zoey keeps an eye on me from above:


Into the oven for 35 minutes:


Out of the oven:


Oh, did I mention that I added vegan chocolate chips to one corner? I was just curious to see if that would make it better - it did.

This is the only corner that I ate because the consistency just was not what I was expecting. It was a little too chewy so not my perfect snack bar. I will note that the rest of the bars were gone within 2 days though, so it may have just been me that was not crazy about these.

Whole Grain Banana Pancakes

Over the weekend, Zoey and I found ourselves with a banana on the edge of being over-ripe. This is a reason to celebrate at our house because it means that we are going to bake something yummy! I happened to be reading Greenlite Bites, and I came across Roni's recipe for Whole Grain Banana Pancakes and decided to give them a try.

Zoey and I made some basic substitutions, the first being creating an egg out of flaxseed. I mixed 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed with 3 tablespoons of water in my mini food processor. As long as I had the food processor out, I added the banana and 1/2 cup of light soymilk instead of regular milk:



I added in the dry ingredients. I knew things were looking good when I saw how great the batter looked.


I cooked the pancakes over medium heat for a couple minutes on each side:

This recipe made 9 pancakes this size. They were delicious plain or with a little maple syrup. To be fair, these were not quite as exciting as my recent pumpkin pancakes or pear-walnut pancakes but they were still delicious!

Sweet Potato Fries

One of the best treats at my house is fresh baked french fries. I usually blend 2 Yukon gold potatoes with 1 sweet potato for the perfect blend of gold and orange. I often make these if we are having company for dinner and I am making some sort of veggie patty. Recently we had them with Quinoa and Black Bean Burgers and they were quite popular. The hardest part is chopping all the potatoes, and that doesn't take too long. I usually fill a bowl about this size:



Then I add:

1. A dash of salt and pepper
2. About 1 Tablespoon of taco spice.
3. A drizzle of olive oil.

I stir the fries so that everything is coated and bake them at 425 degrees for about 25 minutes. Be sure to flip them about half way through!

They are always a little limp and they are not crisp like fried french fries, but they are very tasty and there are rarely leftovers.

I've been tagged

I've been tagged twice for the current survey that is flying around the blog world so I guess that means I should answer some questions before I feel compelled to answer everything twice. It is going to be hard enough for me to come up with 7 random things. I was tagged by both Tara and Yasmin. So here are the rules:

Rules:

Link the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.

Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links.

Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I am in the middle of writing a big paper right now on divorce mediation so my brain is just fuzzy enough to be thinking about weird facts about myself. I chose the topic of divorce mediation because it interests me academically but terrifies me as a possible career choice. I like to pick paper topics that both interest me and scare me, it keeps me on my toes.

2. I have a running joke with my friends about becoming the "crazy cat lady". You know, that single woman in her 30s+ with no partner and like 15 cats in her home? I thought I was doing pretty well because my cat-load is currently two and I am planning to get married soon. However, then I named a blog after my cat. Strangely no one has teased me about the crazy cat thing since I started the blog- I must have crossed some sort of threshold line by doing that and now "crazy cat lady" is my reality.

3. I love having a blog where I cook new foods and try to take pictures of my cat near those foods. It is an added bonus if I can get Zoey to actually sniff something. Sometimes Zoey isn't in the mood and I call in her BFF, Will. Some of my favorite pictures are the times when the picture doesn't quite capture the look I was going for. For example, this is my favorite picture from my sushi experiement:



4. I met my first vegetarian in high school and I thought that the whole idea was very strange. At that time I was sure that I could never be a vegetarian. I have since learned to never say never.

5. I became a vegetarian primarily because of my older sister. When I was in my early teens she decided to start boycotting Proctor & Gamble because they did tests on animals. Since I looked up to my sister and wanted to be like her, I did the same. Because of her inspiration I later took the next step and became a vegetarian.

6. I live in Oregon, so once it starts raining in the winter I may not see the sun in months. I have been known to call people outside of Oregon just to confirm that the sun still exists. It also gets dark at 4:00pm right now, that gets old pretty fast.

7. I got my camera as a birthday present from my mom for my 30th birthday. I asked for it because I wanted to take more pictures of my cat, Zoey. In fact, I even refer to my camera as "The Zoey Cam". See #2.

Just in case you are missing pictures of Zoey, I have a great picture of her watching TV:



This was a great study break distraction and now I am tagging the following 7 fabulous bloggers:

Katy, at Legally Vegan
Liz, at Food Snobbery is my Hobbery
Stephanie, at Vegan Duckling
Alicia, at Vegan Guinea Pig
Jess, from Get Sconed!
Marni, from La Vegan Loca
Sanja, from Coconut and Raspberry

Peanut Butter Banana Bliss

This recipe was inspired by something that I saw in Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. Basically, it is a peanut butter banana sandwich in a tortilla, and boy is it good! I added some powdered sugar on top for some artistic creativity, but it is optional.

I spread peanut butter over a whole wheat tortilla and added slices of banana to half:


I added some cinnamon for fun:


I cooked it up on the skillet on medium:


The end result was rich and delicious. If you love peanut butter than this treat is for you (you know who you are!). It was easy and quick and surprisingly better than a regular peanut butter banana sandwich.

Banana Oatmeal Cookies

This week I had the fortunate event of having 2 bananas get overly ripe. Bananas don't get ripe very often in our house because we are avid banana eaters. Even if I was to double our banana supply, we would probably eat them all before any of them went bad. So when a banana starts to get brown at my house, I start getting excited. I wanted to try something different from the banana chai muffins that I have made in the past, and for some reason I was craving a banana-oatmeal combination. Luckily I found this recipe in the Healthy Heart Handbook. That book is officially one of my favorite cookbooks these days.

The highlight of these cookies for me is that I created an egg on my own! The recipe calls for an egg-substitute but I have heard that you can make an egg substitute by combining 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed and 3-4 tablespoons of water. So I gave it a try and it seemed to work out well. This way we get all the good stuff from the flaxseed too, like all the Omega 3's.


Next I mixed up the batter. Once again I used chocolate chips instead of raisins (although I added raisins to the shopping list to stop this new habit!) The dough was delicious and so I knew that things were going to turn out okay.


This recipe made a lot of cookies. I used a 1 tablespoon measuring spoon to shape the dough into balls, and that made about 4 dozen cookies. Since I didn't want to eat 4 dozen cookies at once, I made 1 batch in the oven, and then froze 3 dozen balls of dough so that I could make a fresh batch anytime.


These were good cookies, especially right out of the oven. I will admit that they didn't taste as good as a cookie that has butter or oil in it, but it is much healthier and still felt like a real treat!

Roasted Squash Seeds

Sometimes I wonder how I miss things that are so obvious. I have been eating an abundance of winter squash lately and I have been scooping the seeds into the trash each time. Now, the added interesting fact is that each time I walk by a pumpkin in the store I complain that pumpkins don't seem to have seeds anymore and I love roasting pumpkin seeds. At the farm stand near my house I even asked if their pumpkins have a lot of seeds. Around this time of year I become almost pumpkin seed obsessed.

I picked up a golden acorn squash at the store over the weekend and after a good sniff, Zoey starting licking her chops. I thought this was a funny picture of her.


After I cut the squash in half and scooped half of the seeds into the trash I realized that this squash had a lot of seeds in it and that was sort of annoying from a seed-scooping perspective. And then it dawned on me- those seeds look like pumpkin seeds!

A little research on the internet showed me that it is common to roast winter squash seeds so I decided to give it a try.

Roasted Squash Seeds:

Ingredients:
1 winter squash (I used this golden acorn squash but from now on I will be using all my winter squash- so pick your favorite)

Directions:

1. Cut the squash in half and scoop the seeds into a bowl.
2. Rinse the seeds well to remove the goop.
3. Dry the seeds a bit with a paper towel (or clean kitchen towel)
4. I lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper but you could also use some non-stick spray.
5. Place the seeds on the cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt or seasonings if desired.
6. Roast at 275 degrees for about 15 minutes.

These were not quite as good as roasted pumpkin seeds, but they were a close second. We almost ate them all before I remembered to take a picture. Since it seems I may be living in a world without pumpkin seeds, these will satisfy my cravings. I may try a spice blend with them next time just to keep things interesting.

The Best Vegetarian Chili

This is my all time favorite chili recipe. This is the chili that I measure all other chilies against. And with my current chili quest, I needed an old favorite. This may actually be the first vegetarian chili that I ever made and I was blown away by all the vegetables that are included. This is a job for someone who likes chopping, because there is a lot of it. But the flavor and texture make all that chopping worth it!

Here are some onions, peppers and herbs steaming up. The only downside to this cookbook is that it assumes that you know something about cooking. For example, the instruction here is to cook the vegetables until they are half done. Yes, but how long is that in minutes??

I usually cook them for about 8 minutes. Perhaps I should embrace the creativity of being able to define "half done" myself.


Time to add the tomatoes and TVP:


My mouth is watering.

Oh, and check out my soaked and cooked kidney beans. I used to mourn the loss of the bright red colors that only can kidney beans provide, but I am starting to appreciate the look of these beans without the bright red hue. In fact, I may even prefer this look now.

And since I learned from an earlier mistake, I cooked the garbanzo beans separately from the kidney beans so that they both remained their intended color. If you look at the top picture you can see how much better those beans look than my 3 bean chili attempt. Individual colors are important to me.


Here's my bowl and the book that started it all. And now I am drooling.


Oh, I should also mention that this recipe claims to serve 20 people. I have never reduced the quantity because I love it so much that I eat it for every meal for 3 days. This time I did put some in the freezer though, so hopefully it freezes well!

Garbanzo Beans

When I started this blog I decided to try soaking and cooking beans instead of relying on canned beans. We eat a lot of beans at my house so it wasn't exactly a perfect transition. Well, it was perfect in the sense that I haven't had canned beans since I started blogging, but it was imperfect in that sometimes I forgot to soak the beans the night before and I had to make do with what I had on hand.

The soaking part is easy, I set beans out to soak almost every night now as part of my before bed routine. I am also in a routine of setting up the slow cooker in the morning and slow cooking my beans all day. This works great if you only need 1 type of bean per day. However, if you need multiple types, I do not recommend soaking them and cooking them all together in a slow cooker. I learned that lesson the hard way.

So that means it is time for me to learn to cook beans the traditional way - on the stove top. I like to start my new bean adventures with garbanzo beans because they are my favorite. If something doesn't work out quite right, I will probably still eat them anyway because I like them so much.

I soaked them over night and rinsed them well. Next I put them in my big chili pot on the stove with water on high. I brought it to a boil and then reduced the heat to medium low for 2 hours.


While they were cooking, this is what was going on in my kitchen. Since I had my camera with me I decided to document for you why this blog is called Zoey's Kitchen. She is the star of the show:




Two hours later I had these. Given the option I would still rather slow cook my beans because I like the idea of not worrying about them while they are in the slow cooker. There was something about having the stove burner on for 2 hours that kept me feeling like I was on guard. They did turn out great though, and I am looking forward to using them in chili.