Friday, December 4, 2009

Vegan Pizza 3: Squash Blossom & Heirloom Tomato

The South Pasadena Farmers' Market is a magical place. The quaint block, intersected by train tracks and lined with brick shops & cobblestone walkways is really too charming for its own good. And that's just the architecture, but then they throw in the babies. And, oh god, the babies. The sheer volume of young professionals who stroller up and down Mission Street, stinking of newfound wealth and naive wonder, is enough to make a cynic keel over and die right there, in front of Buster's Ice Cream Shop.

Luckily, I'm no such cynic. At least not on the days I get my pants charmed off by little towns like South Pas. So you can imagine my dismay when my schedule this fall barred me from witnessing this microcosm of happiness and fertility every Thursday. No, those days are now spent rushing in traffic from work (ironically, in South Pas) to Pasadena City College. My heart always leaps when I see a couple strolling away from the market, spears of baguettes and brussel sprouts sticking triumphantly out of their Radio Flyers. I gape longingly out at them through my car window, waiting for the street lights down Fair Oaks to change.

It's a sad state of affairs, really.

But! Last week! While I still had a freezer full of vegan pizza slices from Whole Foods' Black Friday sale, work let me off early enough to visit my old sampling grounds. I hit up all the usual spots, toothpicking a makeshift dinner for myself and buying a teeny kabocha squash along the way. I hadn't planned to purchase anything else, until the squash blossoms.

I am always looking for new things to do with these, ever since I realized they are probably the best quesadilla filling after cheese. So what else has been carby and cheesy in my life lately? VEGAN PIZZA.

The charade could have stopped there, but the vendor took forever to notice me. During my wait to purchase 5 measly blossoms, I noticed the beautiful heirloom tomatoes perched beneath them. Pizza. Tomatoes. Obviously.
I'm thinking you can probably guess what I did when I got home from class...
And...it was delicious.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Soyrizo Chili

For dinner last night, I whipped up a bowl of my winter stand-by soyrizo chili. I used to make this stuff by the truckload last winter, when emotionally unavailable men and my fears of the future were failing to keep me warm at night. I'd make one giant batch and store it in tiny containers in the freezer, like little pockets of hope saved up for the more biting nights.
I don't know if it was spring weather that made me grow tired of it, but this habit eventually came to a halt. It wasn't until last week, shivering in the Trader Joe's fridge aisle, that I spotted the soyrizo and decided to give it another go.

As soon as I added the fake pork to my oil-onion-garlic combo spitting in the pan, the smell of senior year on Armadale hit me like a load of textbooks upside the head. I hadn't realized I missed it, but man alive, the nostalgia that came from the smell of ever-softening carrots and kidney beans bubbling up with chipotle paste was enough to make my eyes water. And no, it wasn't from the onions--I had my goggles on.The sweet potato boat was a last-minute decision, but one I'm pretty proud of. I think it's safe to say I'm about to go on another chili binge--next time I pop one of these out of the freezer, it's going on my vegan wheat cornbread!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Vegan Pizza Part 2: Cranberry Bacon

In celebration of Whole Foods 50% vegan pizza sale, my experimentation posts continue!

Last time
I put avocado and tempeh on top of my whole wheat-black garlic-mixed Daiya pie. This time, it was Fake Bacon! And because the meal didn't seem complete with just that, I reheated some roasted kabocha squash from my work, a winter vegetable I literally could eat every day--I know this because I've had it the past 4 days. The cranberry sauce was also from my work, and it made its way onto the pizza at one point, with pretty delicious results. But I'm not that into gussying up Daiya too much--it's a great topping in its own right, and sometimes (most times) I want it to be the overpowering taste.