Mad About Udon

The University of Ottawa has crappy, crappy, crappy food. Unbelievably bad. It’s like WW2-era, desperately overpriced rations. Thank christ I couldn’t afford the meal plan in first year, else I might have contracted scurvy. Because you can be damn sure I wouldn’t buy a soft, crinkled apple for $1.70. Screw you, Chartwells, you’re not getting a cent of my money!

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, I once reviewed the food court at Carleton University for a Fulcrum article. Holy crap was it ever good (but expensive). I remember the Moroccan-spiced couscous blew me away. (ALSO THE SOY MILK ON TAP!!!)

Most of the recipes for Moroccan couscous have an extensive list of ingredients. I’m at the point right now, financially, where I can’t spend $5 on tons of new ingredients. So although this recipe might not be crazy authentic, it is damn easy and you probably have most of the ingredients in your cupboard or fridge.

4 tbsp vegan margarine
3/4 cup chopped shallots
3 cups vegatarian stock 
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 cups couscous
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup currants
3/4 cup shredded zucchini (optional; I just added this because I had it)

In large sauce pan, melt butter.  Add the shallots and cook for 3 minutes over medium heat. Add stock, salt and pepper, raise the heat to high and bring the stock to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the couscous and zucchini; stir. Cover the pan and let it sit for 10 minutes. Add pine nuts and currants, and fluff with a fork

I served the couscous with (counter-clockwise from the couscous): sweet-potato soup, steamed vegetable dim-sum buns from Chinatown, naan for dipping in the soup (not vegan, for O.B.), and dipping sauce for the dim sum buns (1:3 hoisin:sweet-thai-chilli sauces). Perfect for a night in with Lost on DVD!

-Maureen

This past weekend I travelled to New England to hike the Presidential Range of mountains in New Hampshire. This was my first trip into the States this hiking season. Usually I go to Adirondacks in New York but something drew me to New Hampshire. I went with 8 other hikers from the Alpine Club of Canada. The drive through Vermont was lovely, tarnished only by the uproarious admission by my car-mates that they had (all!) smuggled fruits and veggies across the border. What. The. Hell.

Hiking burns about 500 cal/hour, and for long stretches on the trail, it’s important to pack lots of food and pack it well. I made a dozen sandwiches consising of baked tofu (marinated in soy & ginger salad dressing), soy cheese, and sweet thai chilli sauce on a bun.

I also packed 12 granola bars (seen above) and 8 apples (which I legitimately purchased in Vermont, unlike my obnoxiously felonious comrades).

Aside from tofu sandwiches, apples, and granola bars, there is a lot that the active vegan can pack for a hike. Unless you’re trying to create a calorie deficit (which is often the case), you may need to pack up to 5,000 calories/day. Packable fruits and veggies include oranges, carrots, peppers, avocados, broccoli, cauliflower, and potatoes. For long hikes, you can dehydrate certain fruits like pineapple, bananas, mangoes, apples, strawberries, and kiwis.

Additionally, Luna Bars, some Clif Bars, and random brands of granola bars are vegan, so check the labels. I find it’s easier to pack a dozen identical sandwiches because it saves money and stress, and packs well, but other ideas include: peanut butter or hummus on a pita, crackers, dry cereal, trail mix (although I personally think that hikers eat waaaay to much trail mix), raisins, wild rice, vegan cookies, fruit leather, or just any type of homemade sandwich using your favourite vegan protein.

Our group dinner the first night was fortuitously vegan—pasta and sauce. I co-ordinated dinner the second night, which was 6 different kinds of store bought curry (all vegetarian, two vegan), brown basmati rice, and naan. Unfortch I forgot to take a pic but here is a salad that another hiker made that night for the group:

The hikes were great—the storms lifted just in time on Saturday morning for us to scale Mt Madison and Mt Adams, and hike along the rocky ridge of Mt Jefferson. On Sunday we hiked a small mountain just to stretch our muscles back into shape. It was very challenging overall (I’m still sore!) but good practice for my Rockies trip in August. The views were incredible.

Happy Hiking!

-Maureen

Good news–I got my degree on the mail (having skipped convocation). So I officially have my Bachelor of Science in Biopharmaceutical Sciences (concentration Medicinal Chemistry). Whoo whoo!!

*crushes beer can on head*

Okay, so onto the food, I have so much to post. I’ve been re-making a couple recipes just for convenience. The other day I made falafels again from The Garden of Vegan. Let me tell you, that book is on fire! No seriously, it’s on fire, I turned the wrong element on (like I do every time!!) and it caught fire. Now my book is charred but my favourite recipes are intact so it’s all good.

Other foodz:

Banana Bread. I’ve made this before but with vanilla icing. Chocolate is equally good.

Grilled melons and pineapple with So Good soy vanilla ice cream

Not-yet-barbecued kebabs. I used PC Blue Menu Marinated Tofu and red and yellow peppers drizzed with oil and sprinkled with various herbs. Loblaws has been out of zucchini for like, a week (!!), and so peppers were the only vegetable I could come up with. Unfortunately, the BBQ was out of propane so I just baked these instead (didn’t get a picture, oops)… we’ll try again with the BBQ next week I think.

Another batch of Thai red curry, this time with little grilled tofu squares and served over brown rice vermicelli (upper left).

My friend “T” and I were wandering around the city last weekend, on a sweltering summer’s day, looking for a place to eat. We ended up at Sushi Go, right in the Byward Market. The prices were decent (also since I make sushi at home, no price for take-out sushi is every really satisfactory) and the sushi was excellent. We were, however, a little disturbed at the “Doors-Wide-Open-and-Air-Conditioner-Blaring” policy that Sushi Go and every other restaurant/cafe/business in the Market seemed to operate. Is it even remotely ethical or responsible—in this current age of environmental concern and reform—to engage in such a business practice?

TGIF!

-Maureen

This post has been brought to you by Jake, my catsitting charge last week, seen here crunching data and compressing files.

Crap! I just posted this and went to check the blog and it mysteriously disappeared! Er, let me know you if you find it?

Here is the gist of that post:

1) It’s really freaking hot in Ottawa.

2) Despite this, I made sweet potato soup… voila:

This soup was so good!!
The recipe came from Canadian Living Magazine and can be found here. I used curry madras paste which worked well. I also garnished with cilantro (mint would also serve the purpose, I think), and a streak of soy milk.

Hoping this posts,

-Maureen

There is a trend in the veganomosphere to make everything–or most things–from scratch. I have to say, I don’t agree. Okay, so cooking lots of food from scratch, like a huge pasta dish that can be portioned out for lunches, does save money in the end. But for sauces and other additives which contain obscure and expensive ingredients, I just have to ask the question: why make life more complicated than it already is? There are a lot of perfectly vegan products on the shelf that are so much tastier than anything I could ever concoct. And so convenient!

Anyway, I’m not trying to pick a fight, it’s just more of a disclaimer for the following pictures which obviously contain pre-packaged products:

I love the Taste of Thai Red Curry Paste, not only because it DOESN’T CONTAIN FISH PRODUCTS (!!!), but because it goes so far–one tbsp is mixed with a can of coconut milk for the curry sauce seen on the left. And there are probably about 7 tbsp in the package.

I used flat rice noodles from Chinatown for this recipe and garnished with bean sprouts (and as an afterthought not pictured, crushed peanuts).

-Maureen

Yes, I cooked a lot this weekend!

This recipe came to me from Romina over at Vegan For One, but the original is from the Happy Herbivore. The recipe calls for 1 tbsp coriander… which I’m pretty sure is the same thing as cilantro, and I LOVE fresh cilantro, so I put in 4 or 5 tbsp. I also cooked up a pot of Thai Glutinous Rice (for lack of other options), but unfortunately this rice so so sticky that it’s hard to mix with the dal. Still, the recipe made a TON of lunches for O.B. and I. I’m looking for some vegan naan to go with it, but no dice so far.

-Maureen

I had Maureen and Karina over for supper earlier this week to test out my first shot at bean balls.

The bean balls, which contained mung beans, onion and short-grained brown rice, were based on the curried variation of the Beany Ball recipe from Fat Free Vegan Recipes. These are best prepared ahead of time!

I topped off the pasta and bean balls with a store-bought tomato sauce. I personalized the sauce by adding grated zucchini, onions, garlic, avocado, capers and a variety of herbs and spices. A serving with approximately four bean balls, half a cup of spiral pasta, and half a cup of tomato sauce is around 335 calories. The final product was quite tasty and elicited a comparison to the delicious fare at The Table from Maureen <3.

- Aly

In case our readers haven’t caught on, Alison is more of a make-it-from-scratch kind of eater than me. I don’t mind using vegan pre-made sauces in my recipes. In fact, my bottom line is not creativity and taste, but mostly economics. I love to spend $5-10 on ingredients and cook 12-15 portions. In fact I feel like I’m channelling my Eastern European grandmother circa WWII. Time is also a major prohibitive factor, since I have none. So I have to mention Glico Curry, a product which actually has honey so not all vegans may be able to eat this.

Glico is a Japanese curry. I buy it in Chinatown for $2.29/110g or $4.09/220 g. It comes as a clay block which you melt in water, et voila–curry sauce. I melt the 220g block, pour it over a large mixing bowl full of veggies, and portion this out into dishes of half curry mixture, half brown rice. At those proportions, it’s about 50 cents a meal, but a bit more if you add tofu which I usually don’t. It also freezes well. The perfect recipe for exam period!

Don’t be fooled my the murky brownness. It’s supremely delicious. Looking at these pics, I see that the missing ingredient is BEANS. I’ll be sure to add a can or two of black or kidney beans next time.

-Maureen

My mom recently returned from a trip to visit family in Trinidad. She brought back quite a few interesting foods and spices to give me a taste of her home. Here is a curry I made with a few of the things she gave me:

Saim curry

½ onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ medium potato, cubed
½ c pigeon peas (from my aunt)
¼ c saim (broad beans also from Trinidad), cut in half
¼ c purple cabbage, coarsely chopped
1 c water
1 T curry powder
½ T garlic powder
1 t salt
1 tortilla

Heat a large skillet and add the onions with a small amount of water. Once the onions have become translucent, proceed to add the other vegetables and curry powder. Fry on medium-low heat for 25 minutes and add the rest of the water as necessary. I didn’t feel like making rice so I heaped the curry on to a crispy tortilla instead. With the tortilla, this meal was about 350 calories.

For dessert, I had sapodilla:

This fruit is as tasty as the Wikipedia article claims it is!

- Aly

Today is the last day of classes at the U of O and hopefully also the beginning of a more active blog :). Here are a few of the meals that I have been consuming over the last month.

I <3 bean burritos

I last mentioned these tasty burritos in my guacamole post. The “recipe” has not changed significantly since then! All it requires is frying up some onions, mushrooms and black beans with a little soy sauce and whatever spices and herbs are within reach.

More sushi?

Yes, here is yet another post about sushi! This batch contained baked tofu, boiled sweet potato, avocado and a mixture of fried onions, mushrooms and soy sauce (mmmmm).

Vegan pizza

I am not sure if this can really be called a pizza since the dough was really a tortilla, and I used roasted red pepper curry instead of tomato sauce. It also had sliced tomato and green onion, strips of red pepper, rosemary, capers and vegan cheese.

- Aly