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!
Filed under: Uncategorized
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.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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!
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What’s better than brunch? Brunch at 11pm! I was super lazy all day and didn’t get around to eating dinner until 11 tonight. I also just picked up some Tofurkey breakfast sausage on sale at Whole Foods, and pancakes in the GT Xpress seemed like a good way not to have to use the stove and dirty another pan when my sink is already full.
I’ve been wanting to make a breakfast corndog for a while, and I’m super glad I finally did. I used the Blueberry Corn Pancakes recipe from Veganomicon, but left out the blueberries. I also used a little maple extract because I was out of vanilla.
This little contraption does pancakes really well! They always come out super fluffy, even with a sausage in the middle. The corn pancakes recipe is one that I hadn’t made before, but I definitely will use it often because they came out great!
In other semicircular news, I just saw another blog that linked to mine, and it made me think about how I really had intended on being more snarky about the GT Xpress when I started this blog, but I really haven’t had anything come out too terribly. And while the shape of the food is kinda weird, it’s not quite as funny in person as it is on the infomercial. Of course, the food I put into it is almost always from scratch and much healthier than the recipes they show, but over all, it’s kind of a cool little machine. I’ll have to finally try the ’stuffed soup’ and see if I can dredge up a little sarcasm.
I really can’t think of anything better than Heinz beans, mashed potatoes and pie crust, and together they were pretty much the perfect comfort food. Little pies are what the GT Xpress is really good at. You know there’s no way it can get messed up.
I’ve gotten pretty good at making pie crust, so these were a cinch to whip up using the little semi circular pie shaper that comes with the GT Xpress. You can also use it to cut out the circles for the pies.
If you’ve never had Heinz beans, I suggest you try them. They are so yummy and go great on toast or a baked potato (jacket potato in the UK, i think) or in a little pastie! I love the word pastie. It just reminds me of Harry Potter eating pumpkin pasties on the train to hogwarts!
I ate these with some sauteed kale while watching Willow (probably the cutest movie ever made). These were a perfect, hearty treat to go along with watching Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis on a grand adventure.
Oh! and I forgot I was rating things when I first started. I give these little pies 5 out of 5 semi circles because they were totally awesome.
Wait! One last thing! I posted a while ago about Cathy Mitchell making a guest appearance on the Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Well, the clip is finally on line! Here she is with John C. Reilly!
Filed under: leftover makeovers
Leftover Makeover! Although, I didn’t do too much to make this over. I made some spaghetti with a cashew cream sauce and sauteed mushrooms earlier in the week and it was really good, but I made way too much and I’m not that into reheated pasta so I thought it might be nice to heat some up in the GT Xpress and get a crispy top like spaghetti pie I saw Giada make once on food network.
This totally worked, although I had a slight mishap. I put it in one of the wells without any oil and it stuck like crazy! so I scraped it up and put it into the other well, which I had sprayed with EVOO.
I loved the crispy parts so much! Crispy spaghetti might be my new favorite comfort food.
Not a very cute name for this one, but omg this was SO good! I’ve been wanting to make Monkey Bread for a while now, and I figured it would be perfect for the GT. Monkey Bread is basically just some dough balls stuck together and baked into a loaf, so that it pulls apart really easy. I think the balls are usually covered in cinnamon and sugar, so you have a gooey cinnamon roll type bread.
For this recipe I used this Big Daddy Biscuit recipe subbing soy milk. They are really good and light and fluffy. I also had some nice peaches, so i diced up one of those and mixed it into the dough. Then I made the dough into balls and rolled each ball in a brown sugar/cinnamon mixture. I put 3 balls in each well of the GT Xpress and let it cook for about 10 minutes. The result was this super yummy, sweet, but not overly sweet breakfast. I really loved this and it was a perfect way to get a baked treat for breakfast on a hot day without turning on the oven.
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I think Cathy Mitchell would be proud of this one. This tostada bowl could only be made in the GT Xpress. It’s got a layer of refried beans, a layer of fake meat crumbles and a layer of cheezy sauce mixed with salsa. Really, all I had to do was set it and forget it! It tasted pretty good too and the xpress made the corn tortilla nice and crispy without being fried.
Here they are cooking. Another nice thing about the GT Xpress is that it doesn’t generate as much heat as the stove or the oven does in these hot summer months.
I ate them with some salsa on top and and some arugula salad on the side.
Filed under: stuffed things
Hi everyone. Paula’s sister here!
After much poking and prodding (virtually, through teh intarwebs), I’m finally posting my first GT Xpress endeavor. Unfortunately, it’s not very creative, but I figured it would be ok since I used Trader Joe’s pizza dough instead of Pillsbury, so they actually tasted amazingly delicious!
First, the b-fri and I made a vegan pesto using basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and…instead of parmesan…our special ingredient… Stacy’s Sundried Tomato and Pesto pita chips!
Then we cooked up some veggies (broccoli, bell peppers, mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts) and mixed in some mashed up vegan meatballs. This was our result:
Then, after much stretching and rolling, we fashioned the pizza dough and filling into GT Xpress shapes and cooked them up! The dough puffed up considerably in the pockets, so the machine didn’t really stay closed…meaning next time we won’t use quite so much dough. Here’s the final product, which we dipped in tomato sauce and ate with glee!
