I am getting so burned out on cooking semicircular food. I really feel like I’ve exhausted the options, and even though it works great, I find that the best stuff it does is baked goods, but it would be boring to just blog about muffins all the time. I am going to look for some more infomercial products to try out and see if I mix it up with those. I don’t want to be burned out. I love my blog!
For now, here is something kinda nasty I made. It tasted ok, but, there just something a little gross about blended up chinese food.
I had some yummy sauteed string beans leftover as well as some brown rice, so i blended up some firm tofu and then added the beans to the food processor right at the end just to chop them up a bit. They ended up getting really chopped up, kinda like baby food. I carried on though, and mixed up the green beans and tofu puree with some brown rice and plopped it all into the gt xpress.
I don’t even know what I’d call this. Leftover casserole? It was kind of like a chinese frittata, I guess. It ended up tasting ok, but I was not down with the texture.
I will also share some Snickerdoodles I made as a tester for Terry because they were really yummy and crunchy and ‘buttery’ and sweet and cinnamony and nutmeggy. Good stuff!>
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I was tagged by Jess to share the contents of my freezer. I’ve never been tagged before. I feel like a real blogger now!
As you know, since I’ve been using it as an excuse for my lack of posts, I just moved. We brought all my stuff over on Monday and even though my clothes are still in bags, my kitchen is fully unpacked and put together. In all the purging and making room for my stuff we thoroughly cleaned out the freezer. I guess we’re better off this way because if I hadn’t cleaned you would have seen a tupperware of year old chana masala and some really old stuffed shells and like 5 pints of rice and soy ice cream with 2 bites left in them.
Here’s the door: morningstar crumbles, various frozen peas and mixed veg, cashews, seitan and a Silk container of flax seeds.
Here’s the main part: KitchenAid ice cream bowl attachment, a few sorbets and some tofutti vanilla (tofutti + rasp. sorbet is my new favorite dessert) soy curls, mini potato pancakes and a bunch of ice and alcohol of Jason’s. I’m sure we’ll fill up the freezer more very soon.
And now, as an official blogger, I get to tag some others!
1. My sister and her new blog – Go Eve!
2. Amy – who rocks!
3. Level 20 Vegan Bard – Because I want to see more of his nerdy foodie posts!
Oh, and one more thing…in my blog stats I’ve been noticing people have been finding my blog by googling “semale” and at first I thought it was weird that people weretrying to find my semicircular tamale pie, but I’ve been getting like 5 hits a day from that search, so i googled it myself and without clicking on any links for fear of crazy porn spam, it appears that “semale” is a common misspelling of “shemale”? niiice.
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I mentioned before that I am moving to a new apartment. Well, it’s in the final stages now. I’m renting a van on Monday and hauling all my stuff to my new place, lugging it up 2 flights of stairs and then probably passing out forever. But until then, my GT Xpress and I are separated. It’s very sad, but I can’t leave Vegan Mofo hanging, so here is a fully circular post to fill in the gap.
I’ve also been really busy making cookies to sell at Robot Uprising, a play my friends are putting on. It’s such an awesome show, you should come see it this weekend if you’re in New York.
The best part about making cookies for a play about robots is making up robot cookie names.
Featured here are Ginger Gigabites, Mocha Micro Chips and Mint Chocobots. The gingers are the VwaV sparkled ginger cookies and the others are the VCon double chocolate cookies with different flavorings.
I also made Binary Balls (aka Buckeye Balls from http://pakupaku.info/), which are SO insanely good. My friend John ate at least 5 of them at last week’s performance.
You can see more about last weeks cookies on Terry’s blog.
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Today I am going to depart from semicircular cooking to talk about another infomercial gadget. I think I’ll do this from time to time, if I can pick up some of these crazy gadgets for cheap.
Recently my favorite infomercial has been the one for the Ped-Egg, or as my friend Stephen at work called it, the Ped-o-file! You’ve probably seen this commercial for the weird foot file that collects all your foot shavings. It’s pretty gross, but somehow, maybe in a dream, I got the idea that it would work just like a microplane zester and would probably be pretty convenient for catching the zest.
Here are the results (I washed the hell out of the thing before I started even though it was brand new):
The lemons are ready to be zested
And here is three lemons worth of zest.
The results: This worked really well! I mean, I wouldn’t go out and buy one over a microplane because the grater definitely doesn’t feel as nice or sturdy, but hey it zested well and the collection of zest was nice. This would also be great for nutmeg, but it doesn’t hold much so it wouldn’t really work for chocolate or other things like that.
I’m moving this month, which I’m really excited about, but as you probably know moving is kind of hell. I really wanted to cook something awesome last night, but I had to make the apartment sparkly so they can show it tonight. That meant that I couldn’t really do anything fancy because I already had a mountain of dishes to wash. Thank god for the GT Xpress. Seriously. I didn’t have to use any pans or extra bowls or anything.
I took some canned refried beans, left over super yummy seitan from Kittee’s blog, and some Cheezly cheddar with bacon pieces (omg, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!) folded them all inside a whole wheat tortilla and popped it into one of the wells along with some broccoli in the other side.
I pretty much got what I was expecting from this burrito. It was beany and seitany and cheezy (oh so cheezy) and was great with a little salsa on the side. Plus, there was essentially no clean up!
The broccoli was also really good. It got nice and roasted and crispy.
Now back to dealing with insane New York landlords and other fun moving stuff!
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Katie has set for an iron chef challenge for the mofo-ers. This weeks mystery ingredients were revealed to be apples and ginger! Yum!
Yesterday was the first day I was really feeling that Fall was here. It was chilly in the apartment, yet warmer outside – a sure sign that cold weather is on the way. There are leaves all over the sidewalk and you can see people bravely trying to deny the cold by getting just a little more time out of their summer wardrobe.
On my brisk walk to C-Town, I thought about my last post and how I wanted to try to make some non-wheaty, non semicircular foods in the Xpress, and I came up with the simplest idea – Ginger Baked Apples. My dad made baked apples all the time when I was a kid, and I hadn’t had them in a million years!
So, I picked up some crisp Macintosh apples and a hunk of ginger and set to work.
I sliced the apples in half and cored them with a spoon, filling the hole with diced ginger, brown sugar, cinnamon, earth balance and pecans.
Then, I closed the lid and cooked them for about 12 minutes until they were soft, but not totally mushy.
These were delicious (even though they don’t look very pretty) and oh so perfect for a chilly day served with some vanilla Tofutti.
*I should note that these were my second attempt at baked apples yesterday. I’ve learned my lesson. I will never start playing Viva Pinata 2 while something is cooking. I had heard a rumor that if you feed a Rashberry 10 pumpkins he will turn into a Chippopatmus.
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It’s been nearly a year since I started using the GT Xpress, and I think it’s time for a honest, official, semicircular review of the product. What’s funny is that when I got this little machine as a sort of joke gift from my cousin, I didn’t really think I’d ever use it. I also had no expectations of it. All I knew was that it was basically a waffle iron that made food in a funny shape. But then I read a bunch of reviews online saying that the non stick surface flaked off, or that it didn’t work, or that people got charged too much on their credit cards (I hope that didn’t happen to Cousin Diane!). I figured if it totally sucked I’d just stop using it, no big deal. But as you can see, it didn’t totally suck! In fact, I actually like it non ironically.
The Pros:
- It’s convenient! Sometimes I don’t want to turn on my oven and I just want to make 1 or 2 muffins or pancakes or something and it’s really easy to do with the GT Xpress
- It’s easy to clean. I admit that sometimes I don’t totally clean it right away, but even if i leave some crumbs on it, I can always just wipe them out with warm water later.
- It cooks evenly and quickly. Since the heat sources are so close to the food everything cooks very quickly. Muffins in 10 minutes! I was afraid this would mean that you’d have burned on the outside raw in the middle foods, but that doesn’t seem to happen.
- All your food comes out in a semicircle
The Cons:
- All your food comes out in a semicircle. Sometimes, I don’t want semicircular food, and therefore, I don’t cook in it or blog as much as I could.
- The name. GT Xpress is really a terrible name and I feel kind of embarrassed every time I type it. What else should I call it?
- No on off switch. Unplugging is the only way to turn it off
- Carbs! Not that I don’t love me some carbs, but it’s pretty hard to find things that will hold their half moon shape that aren’t baked goods and I’d like to be able to cook healthier stuff in here.
And now for your viewing pleasure, courtesy of youtube some people who seem really high cook with the GT Xpress and also a Portuguese infomercial.
It’s Vegan Month of Food, or as I will be calling it Vegan Semicircular Month of Food! I’m really excited because I always mean to blog more, and this month the pressure is on! Everyone in the vegan blog community (blogomunity?) is going to be blogging up a storm! Check out the ppk blog for the blog feed.
For my first post, I made the Hot Tamale Vegetable Pie from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson. I used to make it a lot in college, but I had totally forgotten about it until it was mentioned again on the ppk.
I was kind of glad to make a non bread product in the this machine. It seems like there aren’t too many food products that will hold their shape in here that don’t have a lot of flour, but this recipe is mostly just vegetables, tofu and a little cornmeal and it’s really good!
I learned a trick this time around, which is just unplugging the gt xpress (that’s the only way to turn it off) and just letting your food sit in there for a little while to set. It really helps with getting your food out in that lovely half circle we’ve all come to love.
I ate this tamale pie with some salsa on top, but it would be even better with some guac or just avocado slices.
Happy MoFo!
Semicircular Vegan 