Sunday, February 12, 2012

Vegan Superbowl Snacking

Life has been crazy since the new year started. Like so crazy that I haven't even been browsing foodgawker! I know, I can't hardly believe it either. I don't have nearly as much time to cook so that's probably a big part of it. To be honest, I don't remember much of what I've been cooking lately.

My current favorite post-workout meal has been stir fry. I prep the veggies on the weekend and keep them in the fridge, I've made a jar of stir fry sauce as well so that's ready to go. We can start the rice before the workout then afterwards through the veggies in a skillet for a few minutes and we're ready to eat. Seriously, what could be easier? My favorite recipe for stir fry is still this one from PPK - the avocado and basil additions are amazing.

The most cooking I've done in a long time was last weekend - Jonathan invited a few of our friends over to watch the Superbowl and we decided we would try to make some "healthier" snacks. I have serious issues with only picking one or two things to make and we ended up making no less than six different dishes.

Vegan Ranch Dip (I didn't even know how much I missed creamy dips until I made this!)
 Baked Sweet Potato Fries
 Black Bean Dip (with some added kick from chipotle powder)
 Crunchy Coleslaw Salad
 Sweet & Spicy Chipotle Tempeh Bites (ok these photograph terribly but they taste super good!)
 Chipotle Potato & Spinach Quesadillas
 Gardein Buffalo Chikn Wings (these are kind of cheating because all I did to make them was heat them up and pour the sauce over them)

There seemed to be a spicy theme - I think I ended up putting chipotle in just about everything, but I can't help it - it's just so delicious! It was also unintentional that everything ended up being vegan... although that may have had something to do with most of the recipes coming from my new cookbook Party Vegan that my cousin gave me for Christmas! This was the first time I'd used it and I was pretty happy with all of the recipes (coleslaw, tempeh, quesadillas, ranch dip).

There is much more I want to share from the last month, but we just returned from a weekend of skiing and tubing at Mt. Bachelor and I'm exhausted so it will have to be another time!

-C