Back to the kid food- Vegan pizza, tacos, mac &cheese OH MY

From the Real Food Daily some yellow split pea curry soup. Zeenes suggested the tacos from the Real Food Daily in a comment from my last post how to use up some of the left over seitan that the kids weren't wild about. OH MY THIS IS SO GOOD!!!! Thanks for the suggestion!
My taco picture didn't turn out so here is little Emma enjoying hers!

The kids had a guest over one night and I made them a separate dinner. Which then gave me the opportunity to do a very spicy grown up meal. From the Flavors of Korean the cucumber salad (oi sangchae), cucumber noodles (oi kuksu muchim) and fiery tofu (maeun tubu bokum). All of the recipe use the spicy gochujang paste. Honey thought the tofu was the best he had ever eaten w/ the carmelized onions it seem to have a slight BBQ taste to it. Emma LOVES the noodles and has been eating them for lunch.
Some asparagus soup I made up the recipe using a box of leek and potato soup as the base and then added a dash of this and a dash of that. In the end it was okay.. but, not great. From the Vegan Deli I made the curried tofu salad. I was trying to introduce the kids to a tofu sandwich and thought this would be a good one to start with. It has tofu, vegan mayo a bit of curry powder, crush pineapple and raisins. A bit too sweet for my liking but, the kids ate most of their sandwiches. It surely wasn't one of their favs. Not a great photo but that's some baked mac and "cheese". It seems we haven't had in a while and the kids just go CRAZY for it!

Another use for some the left over seitan.. Honey got creative and added some sausage like seasonings to some finely diced seitan fried it up and added some to our pizza. Believe me its under all those tomatoes, green onions, red onions, red pepper and mushrooms so is a bit of veganrella mozzarella. Thanks Honey! Now I will leave you w/ this shot of Emma on her snow slide Daddy helped make for the kids over the weekend. Kleo asked if maybe this was normal for us to have sooo much snow this time of year.. Well, nope under this very spot where Emma's slide is where the tulips were coming up last year at this time. The weather man is calling for YET ANOTHER 8-12 inches headed our way tonight.. only to turn to RAIN tomorrow.. Ohhh what a mess.

still cooking

Awhile back I made the lentil balls from the Vegan Lunchbox and thought that my Honey would love them (he was traveling). The kids were not that thrilled about them and I thought it was the brown lentils so this time I tried it w/ red lentils. I cut down on the cooking time but, they ended up being a bit too mushy and well, just plain not as good as the original ones.

I made some more "beefy" seitan from La Dolce Vegan and covered them in some homemade bbq and baked them. Really good flavor but, the seitan didn't firm up enough for Honey who suggested a light fry after baking would have made this over the top good!
Sweet potato curry. One of Emma's favorites.
Ginger hoisin noodles from the Everyday Vegan. I double the recipe for the sauce and marinated the tofu in it- then lightly fried it up. I used udon noodles instead of rice, which was okay but, would have been better w/ rice noodles I think. Emma LOVED these noodles. Very kid friendly.
From the Real Food Daily- I made the basic seitan in the morning (4 lbs worth!) then marinated it using the Salisbury seitan recipe then smothered it w/ some Golden Gravy(all from the same book). The kids I must say had to be coaxed to eat this one. I thought it was good. I think it was the texture of this seitan more then the flavors the kids didn't like. Everybody in our house prefers the Vegan w/ a Vengeance seitan.. So now what do I do with the other two pounds of seitan? Along side I made Granny's hurry-up dinner rolls. Which were okay.
Roasted pepper Cannellini bean Sauce from Vive le Vegan. Honey liked it - The kids and I -not so much. I added some red pepper flakes to mine.
So, I saw Bazu's post w/ her walk the other day I thought I would share w/ you what our walk looks like.. I am 5'11 and the wall of snow is about eye level. It has been one heck of a crazy year here. We are working our way to braking the snowiest year on record here in Juneau. So far this is the fourth snowiest year w/ about 177 inches the record is 194 inches. The weather forecast calls for yet another storm headed our way and snow likely all week... uuuggghhhh! Yes, I know I live in Alaska but, we live in the rain forest not way up north.

Well, truth be told I don't fair well in hot weather - but, right now I am dreaming of a warm sandy beach and a cool drink something w/ an umbrella in it!

Snow ball fight anyone?

International kid friendly cuisine (vegan)

Black bean and salsa soup. So easy. I had some black beans in the freezer- Daddy had bought some very yummy salsa from Costco.. So Ta da! I did add some corn to the soup. On the side we have our favorite country corn muffins from The Garden of Vegan. If your looking for a quick dinner idea this is it! It is not fancy but very satisfying!
This was my first recipe from the Flavors of Korea- Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine cook book. I made the Sweet potato stir fry which was great! It is basically 2 large sweet potatoes, onion, green pepper and a dash of soy sauce.. The sesame noodles however had a big ol' typo in the cookbook that render them inedible! They look good though don't they?.. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of soy sauce as the base to the sauce to 1/4 lb noodles (it was only the kids and I so it seemed like the perfect amount).. After looking through the book though I think the recipe really should have been at least one pound of noodles.. but, even that seems like an obnoxious amount of soy sauce. I did added some chopped "chicken" seitan but, it was all for not. I even tried to save the noodles by rinsing them w/ some water. Nope, even that didn't help.

So, I didn't give up though! Honey had gone to a Asian market on one of his trips and brought back some Korean vermicelli (made from sweet potato starch), some Denjang paste(Korean miso) and Gochujang (fermented hot pepper paste). So, here we have my second attempt from the Korean cook book. I made the Tofu Noodles (tubu kuksu) minus the tofu. I just don't think my kids are up for plain fried tofu YET. Instead I made thee three-way sesame coated tofu strips w/ spicy broccoli from the Vegan Planet. And the orange looking pile is the Cucumber salad (ol sangchae) from the Korean cookbook. In the cucumber salad I got try the Gochujang, which is so good! It is spicy but, not a eye watering kind of spicy -just chalk full of WONDERFUL flavor! I love spicy food and this could very well become a new addiction for me! Our adventurous 4 year old Emma tried it and liked it - Eli no way! They ate the rest of the dinner, though the next day Eli informed me he didn't like the "cooked bits on the crunchy tofu" I think he might have gotten some burnt sesame seeds on his tofu.

(I can't believe but I found all three of those recipes online they are all linked)
For lunch the next day I made a Korean miso noodle soup. The Korean miso is so different then the Japanese kind. The Korean is not salty and there is a hint of mustard seed that really sets it apart. It was nice but, I ended up spicing it up w/ the red pepper paste YUM!
A long time ago Honey had brought back some black lentils from Trader Joes and they have just been sitting in the pantry for the longest time. I scoured the Internet looking for recipes and found this one Kaali Daal. On the other side of the rice is Vegetarian Korma. I substituted the heavy cream w/ plain soy creamer for both dishes but, in the end I wish I had used coconut milk I think it would have made it creamy-er. I only had two green chili's so I used 1 1/2 in the bean dish and 1/2 one in the vegetables. Funny the bean dish didn't have any heat and the vegetables were spicy- a little too spicy for Eli but, he still ate it.

Saturday morning I was watching a cooking show and on it they were making a lasagna. It looked so good and I was inspired- So, I had some left over home made spaghetti sauce from last week and tried my hand at making Susan's (fatfreevegan) My Favorite Lasagna. To her filling I added 2 tbs tofutti cream cheese and 2 tbs lemon juice. I topped it w/ some Parmezano sprinkles from the uncheese cookbook. In this lasagna I tried the no boil rice lasagna noodles and I must say they are wonderful! I have tried the whole wheat ones in the past and they just seem to be so heavy.

Yes, my lasagna is lacking the olives that Susan's recipe calls for. I had been cutting some up when a friend of mine called. When I got off the phone and went back to cutting them I discovered that the little ones had came in and ate ALL of the olives and I was left w/ just a small hand full to put on the lasagna. What little kid (or big one for that matter) could resist ten whole olives on ten little fingers?

Well, there you have it. Quite a bit different they the last few weeks. I am happy to report the kids did enjoy all of these dinners and it was a pleasant change from the strictly kids foods we have been eating.