Finals are right around the corner and the weather is beautiful. I'm cooking. My boyfriend and I fired up the bbq this weekend when the weather started getting warm. I made some veggie kabobs. I don't have pics of them, but they were just different veggies. Made a quinoa salad to go with that. It was inspired by VLV's Quinoa Spring Salad, but I added more veggies. I like lots of fresh veggies in my salads. It was all really good. I love the flavor of bbq.

I also made thai curry. It's a recipe of my moms that I veganize. It's sooo good. I don't have a pic of that either, sorry. I can't remember the name of the book, but it's a very good curry. I put cubed eggplant in it and the eggplant turned all buttery and melted in your mouth. My favorite :)

I had squash left over from the kabobs so I decided to use them in a pasta sauce. Pasta is one of my favorite things because it's fast and easy and you can always add a little twist making it a brand new dish.
Here I've crumbled firm tofu. I sauteed the tofu with some onion, a little garlic and the rest of the squash (cubed). I also added "pasta spices" (oregano, thyme, marjoram, basil). Then I added a can of tomatoes and served it all over some penne. It was very good. I like pasta with a little crunch. I also think that the crumbled tofu gives the dish an interesting texture.





Yesterday I decided on Indian. I love indian food, but I find the sauces to be a pain to make so this weekend we got a jar of vegan sauce from the store. Naan is one of my favorite parts of an indian meal so I decided to make that too. Much to my surprise I discovered that naan is full of animal ingredients. There's yoghurt, eggs, milk, butter... the works. I felt stupid, but thankfully I haven't had it for months, only once after going vegan. I decided that I would make vegan naan that would be every bit as good as regular naan. So I used regular vegan yoghurt, soy milk and margarine and flax eggs instead of regular eggs. The naan was great. Even my boyfriend who was super skeptical when I told him I hadn't put eggs in the naan loved them.

You can see the flax (the black things). I also added some garlic to give the naan a little extra flavor. This pic is from before they were cooked, but they looked the same after, if only a little more golden (we ate them before I could take a pic...).

Today I decided I wanted to make Lemon-Herb tofu from VLV. Wow! It was amazing. It was so tender and nice, and the lemon flavor was so delicate.


The tofu before going in the oven. I also liked that the tofu didn't have to be marinated. You just make it and it turns out wonderful. I served the tofu with quinoa with walnut basil pesto, also from VLV. The pesto was good, but it didn't taste like pesto at all. I loved it as a sauce for the quinoa and it was wonderful with the tofu, however I wouldn't make it for when I crave pesto. It was just too different for my taste. I think it might be good as a salad dressing too, but I haven't tried that yet. The recipe made a fair bit, so I now have a jar of it in the fridge. I'll be having it for lunch tomorrow along with the left over quinoa. I intentionally made a lot so that I would have leftovers. I'm going to crumble the leftover tofu, mix it with avocado and tomato and put it in a pita (inspired by Dreena's website).

Walnut basil pesto.

Quinoa with pesto, roasted pine nuts (love pine nuts) and lemon-herb tofu. Mmmm...