Grilled eggplant and soba noodles (sparkles)

Here are the eggplants from the farmer's market on their way to dinner tonight. They rode in on the hedgehogs. 

The soba noodles looked just as dapper wrapped delicately in ribbons. 

Together they made a really good dish. The marinade takes the bitterness away from what people usually dislike about eggplant ( or just salt them if you want to make something with eggplant, let sit for 30 min and rinse) and the grilling takes away the mushy if that is your problem. If you already like eggplant and rice vinegar noodle bowls then I recommend this. I grilled in a pan on my stove and the soba noodles were yummy although only at Whole Foods in my area. 

46ish recipes together now!!!! 

Roasted Sriracha Cauliflower Bites with Peanut Dipping Sauce and Grilled Peach Salsa (Kacie)

We had a lovely time at book club! This is where we skip the pretense of discussing the book, and just get down to chow time!

When I first tasted the cauliflower, it was way too hot for me. Then, I kept eating it, and had no problem. We went out to dinner and had Sriracha shrimp as an appetizer, and I had those with no problem. Clearly that stuff grows on you!

The salsa was great. I don't think the peaches need to be grilled. They would have been delicious without any grilling.

Good stuff.

“CRISPY MILLET AND PEANUT BUTTER BUCKEYES and sweet corn and black-eyed pea dip” (sparkles)

These little tasty pieces of heaven that a very smart 12 year old said were better than Reese's peanut butter cups are so ugly!!!! This is one of the top ten recipes in the book. I will have to work on them looking nice in the future but they are so good- go make them now for yourself or a sad friend - or happy one. There is no wrong emotion to eat a CMPB buckeye or ugly Betty ball as I call mine. Or a Betty Oops? 

This dip is good. I would like it on some lettuce too as a little salad. 

These were my book club snack contributions. Christina, Ellen, Kacie and the twins all were fun to hang out with at the Thug Kitchen book club. Also fun to see the rest of Kacie's fam as always. 

Chickpea salad Sammies (Sparkles)

Is it a Northern thing to call it a Sammie? I've just only heard Rachel Ray and these guys use it so I was thinking maybe it's a cute sandwich name up there that I just don't hear often in FL or GA. 

I ran out of almonds but they were still good without. "It's the Vegan tuna fish sandwich", says Jason. Hot sauce was key I think and the Dijon. I imagine the crunch of the almonds would take this up to 11. 11 is one louder 🎸. 

Tortilla Soup (Kacie)

Immersion blender twice in one week! Woo!

Tortilla soup was yummy. Lots of flavor and nice and thick.

Everyone enjoyed it. I topped it with everything I had laying around--lime, avocado, chips, cilantro, and pinto beans. Tasty stuff.

Cornmeal Waffles and Strawberry Syrup (Kacie)

 Sometimes when the boys get up extra early, I make a bigger breakfast. Yesterday was one of those day. So, cornmeal waffles made it to our little morning menu.

Here are the fellas chowing down on some greek yogurt and waffle.

The waffles were pretty good. They were really dense, though.The strawberry sauce was delicious. It soaked right into the waffles and made them yummier. It is certainly a better alternative to your regular syrup on pancakes and waffles. 

Creamy Ravioli (Sparkles)

 The two chapters after bfast are the funniest. There is a lot of processing of food to blend ingredients in this book so far. My blender has never been used so much. I tend to eat vegetables roasted or steamed so I am missing that simplicity a bit. Ravioli on a Thursday in a state of exhaustion is probably not the best plan but it was fun and they were good. And we are those people who are very picky about Italian food. 

The noodle tasted better than the raviolis we bought at the farmer's market and the filling was fine. My star ravioli stamp was awesome and my co- raviolier, Jason, was the best. 

I will say that all I want to do is make another ravioli filling recipe though like butternut squash or mushroom or something with cheeeeeese. Tofu was fine but kind of bland and I can now imagine all the better flavors that could be in those little stars.

In addition- before I would think making fresh ravioli would be too hard but it's really not and I never buy ravioli because the store kind is disgusting to me. So it's fun to get it at a restaurant but NOW we can make our own. I am even going to order some more stamps. 

A plus is that ravioli store bought or at a restaurant is crazy high in fat and calories so this version IS much healthier, I think, based on actually no evidence. But I assume it is, so go with it.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/en/nutrition-facts-calories/thug-kitchen/1

Tip:

You have to roll that dough really thin- ours were a little too thick. 

Had to include my dancing stars video =)

Sweet Corn and Green Chili Baked Flautas and Mid Summer Salsa (Kacie)

From the book: "If you don't know what flautas are, then grab your lunch box because we're taking your ass to school." Mwahahahahaha..that's pretty funny.

And these are super tasty. Look at my little flauta army:

So my picture isn't pretty, but these were great. The crispiness is such a fun thing.

I would make these again for sure. Easy, tasty, and relatively healthy (I will try whole wheat tortillas next time).

Oh, and the salsa is yummy and simple. I agree with Sparkles that it's just pico de gallo, so nothing new, but still tasty. I didn't chop--I just threw everything into the food processor and let it do the work. George says that the salsas are the best things I've made from the cookbook.

Corn and Basil Chowder (Kacie)

I meant to make the flautas tonight. My new, "I make my own beans," got me! I forgot to soak and cook them! Whoops!

Actually, I was just intimidated by Sparkle's amazing plating on her flauta post, and I wanted to make sure there was a post in between before my post on them so you guys wouldn't be dissapointed.

This was a nice take on corn chowder. It was fresher tasting than the ones I've make before, and I think that's because there wasn't cream. It made for a nice dinner.

I might have gotten carried away and made a Ginger Peach Gallete today. I had a ton of peaches that needed to get eaten up stat. I loved it. It had a lot of butter....

Sweet corn baked flautas (sparkles) and mid summer salsa

This is 35 different recipes on Jason's 35th BDay but if I don't blog faster Kacie will have cooked more things! 

They were awesome and crispy and The sweet corn really shines. 

 I made the plantains too but burnt them to death so I think they need to turn the oven down on some of their recipes -400 degrees kills plantains in 7 minutes. They never even had a chance. Mid summer salsa is pico de gallo so that's simple and fresh. Jason loved the flautas so I will be making them again. It's a keeper.

 

Moroccan Couscous, Almond Caesar with Croutons (Kacie)

This was a nice and green dinner. I read Sparkle's post of this same dinner, where she said it felt like dessert, so I went heavy on the spinach. I thought it was a nice dish.

I loved the Caesar dressing and croutons. So much flavor! Can't wait to eat the leftovers of that for lunch tomorrow!

We might have had ice cream for dessert. Not super vegan!

We just started watching prison break in the last week or so. It's pretty good.  I started reading The Boys on the Boat, and I haven't gotten as into it as I hoped I would. Maybe I just need to read a little more of it. I only have one more episode of season 8 of Dr. Who. I don't want to watch it because I love it, but I want to know what happens.

Birthday Desserts for Mom! Coconut Cornmeal Cake, Lavender, Blueberry, and Walnut Scones, AND Chocolate Dipped Tangerines (Kacie)

Happy Birthday to my mom! Yippie! She was gone all day doing not super fun stuff, so I wanted to make sure she came home to some awesome treats! 

So, let's look closer at this pretty pretty cake! My mom loves coconut, and my dad hates it. That makes a coconut cake the perfect gift for her. This cake is like a lightly sweet cornbread with a nice topping. It is a gentle little flavor and tasty. Candler ate as much as anyone else in the family! It was also easy peasy to make. Combine ingredients, throw it in a pan, and bake for  35 minutes. Dessert cornbread!

Here are the boys "smelling" the flowers that my mom's friend gave her. They are super over dramatic when they sniff, which is hilarious.

The chocolate dipped tangerines took absolutely no time. They were tasty, and totally gone by the end of the evening. That's a good one to have in the tool box for kid parties and well grown up parties too! They look fancy, but they are really simple.

And finally, the lavendar, blueberry, and walnut scones--these were impressive.  I have tried to make scones before, and gotten pretty frustrated by it. You have to cut the butter, but keep it cold, all while folding it into the batter. Ugh. Too much work. This is more of a "toss it all in together" kind of thing. The lavendar is subtle, but really yummy.

It made for a super lovely breakfast the next morning (even though they were yummier the first day, and the recipe said they would be).

Have you had Noose yogurt? That stuff is so tasty. I found a pumpkin one, and decided to just jump right into fall and buy them. So yummy. I like the buy the little ones though, because I totally eat the whole container of the big ones.

Chickpea and Dumpling Soup (Kacie)

I did my meal planning on a rainy Sunday morning, which meant that I planned comfort food for the night. It turned into a beautiful day, and the twins and I spent the majority of it outside. I wasn't so sure about comfort food by the time it was time to make it! Oh well.

Then I got going. This is a recipe with a capital R. Holy Moly. It is WORK. 

Check me out hand rolling out little dumpling noodles.

There are a LOT of steps and a lot of work to this bad boy.

I think it's worth it. I really loved my bowl of goodness. George loved it. My sister ate the bowl I gave my mom, so I gave my mom another bowl. The boys loved it the next night for dinner. 

Pretty much everyone like it.

I showed it here with bread, but I didn't eat it. It was filling, rich, and comforting for any rainy...or sunny day.

Look at this pot of goodness. I have been a vegetarian since I was 18, and I don't think I've tasted this kind of flavor since I last ate a chicken pot pie...probably in the 90's.

My mom said that this could be "my recipe," you know the one you pull out when you want to impress. I am a little intimidated by that. I kind of wish my recipe were something where you just pour stuff in a bag, like trail mix.

But I also can't imagine never eating this again. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Savory Carrot and Tempeh Sandwiches and Root Vegetable Fries (Kacie)

These are tasty little sandwiches! You marinate the tempeh and carrots all day. The liquid smoke really comes through. I was excited yo try that ingredient out, because it seemed so mysterious.

My fries suffered from me being overly zealous about my new mandolin. First, the French friend attachment made them too small. Then we just sliced the remainder of the potatoes, and that was yummy.

We often do veggie burgers as a simple Saturday night meal. This is not  the same thing, but it was tasty!

Whole wheat banana pancakes AND Basic Maple Granola (sparkles)

Book club is next weekend. I decided to read the whole breakfast chapter quickly yesterday while Jason was digging through comic books on Clairmont Road at a cool bookstore after we ate at MY Parent's Basement in Avondale. http://www.myparentsbasement.squarespace.com

They really want you to eat b-fast. Raise your hand if you do....good job for you and your health. Many of these recipes are not for quick mornings though. The to- go bars, granola, oatmeal and pancakes can be made ahead and eaten throughout the week. I really have enjoyed having my to-go bars around for my long days and sometimes rushed mornings now that I'm back at school. Those first graders will make you work up a reason to eat. I easily walk 10,000 steps around that classroom right now helping everyone. Plus, our school is a quarter of a mile long :). You can do a mini marathon each day. 

Today I made the granola while I made the pancakes. Multi-tasking! 

Mickey Mouse Pancake attempt: 

That's a flux capacitor watch btw. We time warped to 2025. It was nice there. Pancakes in the future taste pretty good. 

I only eat pancakes about twice a year but I liked the banana flavor and I actually followed the recipe for once and using all whole wheat and no milk still made a nice fluffy, tasty pancake. 

The granola turned out great and I will use it this week for my yogurt, blueberry and maple granola lunch. 

I just made half the recipe. I added dried raspberries and Jason thought they were gross. Overcooked a bit. 

In other news everyone should listen to This American Life podcasts The Problem we all Live With and discuss it with me later. 

http://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with

possible points to reflect on: the worst schools have the worst  teachers, the data, and your experience on teaching in an "integrated" school vs one that is not so much ( or what you imagine that would be like).  

Many more interesting conversation points but I'll stop there since this is a cooking blog not "Sparkles cooks up an educational debate". ...Ok two more: teacher evaluation expectations vs compensation and if not compensating teachers for higher degrees (Sonny Perdue) will have a positive or negative impact if districts are expecting teachers to be experts to receive the highest marks on their evaluation while decreasing achievement gaps. Ok now I'm really done. TTYL! 

Whole Wheat Biscuits (Sparkles)

Happy Birthday Jason weekend started with biscuits and they were preeeetty good but needed more salt and I would like them to be fluffier. This is super easy though and fun!!! I tried to master the perfect biscuit with my aunt Linda one summer and biscuits are hard!!! This attempt went better than most of our recipes so this is a great place to start. 

https://society6.com/product/tea-rex-6g7_print#1=45

Awesome Tea Rex mug by the bday boy Jason Allen 

I then headed to the farmer's market to get ingredients for this week's selections from Thug Kitchen: grilled eggplant and soba noodles, the silky red pepper repeat because it was so good, and flautas.I had to get soba noodles at Whole Foods so I bought a couple since I can never find them. 

 Also making that chickpea cookie dough dip for people at work to try and salmon burgers and oatmeal cookies for Jason's BDay. Don't tell, it's a surprise. 

Lemon Mint Quinoa (Kacie)

   Crazy toddlers emptying my spice cabinet. Nothing is safe. Quintin carried around the bottle of Mediteranean spices all morning. He was quite attached. They were pretty ticked off when they got up from nap time and realized that dad had locked up that drawer.

This recipe was super easy. Cook up some quinoa, make the seasonings, toss together. The recipe says to eat it at room temp or cool. When I first mixed it and it was warm, I tasted it, and I was NOT impressed. Looking back, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, lemon and mint are pretty disgusting warmed up. I was so not impressed, that I ran to pinterest and found another quick and easy recipe I had pinned and whipped it together while the boys were reading books with George. It was a Roasted Sweet Potato Salad you can find here. While I was putting them to bed, I realized that my dinner didn't make any sense or go together at all. So I made a salad.

I told George to pretend he was at the Whole Foods salad bar. I know I always make a salad and then get prepared salads that look good, even though they don't really go well together.  It was actually a pretty tasty dinner.

This recipe is very much a side dish. I know that sounds strange from a vegan cookbook, but it is. It will go nicely with a salad at lunch time, but don't make it the center of your dinner. If you eat fish, it would be great with a piece of light fish on top. It is actually pretty flavorful and yummy.

Baked Okra and Potato Hash (Kacie)

Check out the cool mandolin I got myself! I am totally impressed and intimidated by it. It cuts so easily, has a bunch of different cutting attachments, but it's really sharp! That just means I need to be extra careful and focus on using it!

Some people like a minimalist kitchen. Not me. I like ALL of the toys! Ask my grandmother--she is the one who usually generously feeds into my love of kitchen gadgets (electronic pressure cooker, juicer, and my very favorite kitchen electronic, my Vitamix).

So, I'm excited about my new toy, and I plan to put it to good use!

However, this was the "Night of overcooking." I kept the okra on the same pan as the potatoes, as the recipe suggested. This was a mistake. My okra overcooked, and my potatoes were perfect. I also over-poached the eggs, so they were not runny in the middle like I wanted them (I have an egg poaching pan that George gave me for christmas, and I love it).

I think I owe this recipe another shot. I don't think I've ever cooked okra before, and I think I would have liked it in this recipe. When I find it again in the grocery store, I'll try it again.

I also crinkle cut some zucchini with my mandolin, and tried to make the chips again. I got too excited and cut them to thin, and guess what, they overcooked.

Moroccan couscous and almond Caesar salad (sparkles)

The words "flavor explosion" and "it's almost a dessert" were the reviews of dinner tonight. I like the photo above but mine is the real forking deal. 

The almond Caesar salad dressing will blow off your socks. Make this now. Take it places. Share it with everyone. 

This is 25ish out of 107ish  recipes from the book I think! (As a pair). That's a lot for two busy ladies in a short time! 

Air high five with a fork from far away! Tink!  

Roasted Chickpea and Broccoli Burritos and Fire Roasted Salsa (Kacie)

The chickpea burritos were tasty.

Here I am trying to improve my photography for the blog!

The salsa was FANTASTIC. Really really really good. I put too many pepper seeds in, so I doubled up on all of the other ingredients to mellow it out a little. It was seriously delicious. Not sure if I can say enough about the salsa.

So I 've decided to cook my beans from scratch lately. Tired of buying them in a can, so I'm doing it (it's not a big deal).

That means I had a lot of chickpeas leftover. After nap time today, the boys and I used some of them to make this: vegan "cookie dough" with beans! Otherwise known as dessert hummus! Tasty!


Kacie Out!

Sweet Potato, Squash, and Black Bean Enchiladas (Kacie)

Today was George's first day of class. I figured that meant the boys and I should do something educational too, so we popped over to the aquarium.

There were twin boys on display!

I considered skipping my plan to make this tonight, and just having the pasta leftovers. But, I tend to get less motivated to cook as the week goes on, so I figured I would benefit from having leftovers around.

Here's George in our Thug Kitchen.

These were really really really good. I think this was George's favorite thing from this cookbook, and it might be mine.

Why have I never made enchilada sauce? It was SO easy (vegetable broth, tomato paste, chilli powder, cumin, oregano, garlic, soy sauce, done). It was way better than buying it at the store. The sauce recipe will go down in my life recipes for sure.

I was kind of shocked that I really didn't miss the cheese. I love making enchiladas, but I do depend on at least some cheese. It's really not necessary with this recipe. I served it with avocado, lettuce, and a little plain greek yogurt. So good.

Vegetarian silky roasted red pepper pasta (sparkles)

Kacie just made this and it looked awesome - my version for the sauce because my silken tofu expired in Feburary so I had to quickly improvise: 

7 oz ricotta 

7 oz shaved parm

2 roasted red peppers

Salt

Red wine vinegar

Nutritional yeast 

Garlic 

Olive oil 

Over:

Pasta Noodles and zucchini noodles 

Basil 

It's really awesome and I tested out some raviolis with wonton papers that I bought as a back up for ravioli day just to see. 

I would not use wonton papers again to make ravioli. I am Italian and I do not approve of this ravioli. I need that pasta taste. It also looks weird. The sauce is awesome though for ravioli so it has many uses! I will make the real raviolis next. 

I also made the zucchini chips the other day. Tasty stuff! They do burn fast! 👀Keep a watchful eye!