VeganMoFo: Pass the Radioactive Vegetables Please

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip....

For today's installment of vegan mofo, I cooked up a TV-themed dinner to an episode of Gilligan's Island. Gilligan reels in a mysterious crate containing seeds, but he failed to see the warning....
The seeds produced carrots, beets, spinach, and other vegetables as fast as the half life of radium-216m (7 nano seconds)! Then it was time to dig in and pass those vegetables!Mary Anne's favorite vegetable was the carrot, and these radioactive carrots had so much carotene in them that her eye sight allowed her to see miles away! Here she is pointing out a potential rescue ship as the Skipper and the Professor look on squinting.
Mrs. Thurston Howell III (aka "Lovey") just adored sugar beets! All that sugar made her a bit hyperactive though and she actually ran around the hut cleaning.
Gilligan ate more than his share of spinach, and the radioactive amounts of "oxalic minerals" enabled him to pick up entire tree trunks and even the Skipper!
So how did we eat our radioactive vegetables? I roasted the beets (along with fennel), sauteed the spinach, and made a curried carrot soup. And although we didn't experience the same effect as the castaways did, at least we didn't have to "apply the principals of theoretic chemistry to the problem of radioactivity" and eat soap to "prevent the bombardment of radioactive chemicals", as the Professor puts it.
Hope you enjoyed your three minute tour!

Dinner for Dad

Since my mom is traveling in Spain for the next few weeks, this evening John and I headed out to west Houston to have dinner with my dad. He'd been eating lots of brown rice, black beans, and Boca burgers this week, so I figure I'd change it up a bit for him. On the menu was:

Roasted carrots with rosemary and sage from my new Vegan Italiano cookbook( a birthday gift for John, so I can try and cook him more "authentic" Italian) and fresh green beans with leftover cashew sauce.


Fusilli pasta with sun-dried tomato pesto and lemon-herbed tofu (both from the Everyday Dish DVD)



And finally for dessert chocolate chip oatmeal cookies from the Candle Cafe cookbook.



The whole meal was a hit, and John claims that all around it's one of the best meals I've fixed (he always says that though...). And for a meal for company, not only was it delicious, but also quick and easy! The pesto I made a day early, and the rest took almost no preparation. One note about the cookies, I ended up added almost 3/4 c. extra flour! The dough was really runny, not sure why. They had a strange texture as a result, but still delicious. Not too sweet, but lots of yummy chocolate chip goodness. I was especially proud of the carrots since both my dad and John are not fans of cooked carrots, but they both gobbled them up with numerous compliments. This was also one of the first time's my dad has had tofu, and he asked me to pass along the recipe to my mom for future use! And what could be better than a pesto made with sun-dried tomatoes? I loved the nutty crunch from the toasted almonds and pinenuts. A successful dinner, plus we enjoyed good wine and conversation.

In other weekend cooking, I made(and froze) a bunch of Sneaky Girlfriend's Tomato Sauce, a modified version of the Sneaky Momma's Tomato Sauce from Vegan Lunch Box. I add mushrooms, zucchini, Boca burger crumbles, red wine, and black beans (yes, beans!). Perfect for a quick dinner when I don't feel like cooking.

I also made Coconut Chai Breakfast Cake from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen since we were going over to a coworker's house this morning to help take down a dead tree (that was a lot of work, and John did most of it!). It was a nice treat to have. Very dense but sweet at the same time. I added pecans which I thought were a yummy addition. Here's the piece I snuck on Saturday night after baking it just to "test" it out.