Whoa, just spent WAY too long trying to get into the blog. (I forgot my username AND my password. Duhhhh.)
Okay, so you want to see a really messed up kitchen?



Ahhh. Nice. Now on to the cooking!
Everyone in our house is going to attempt a mostly vegan diet, with Mom and Dad able to eat non-fat dairy and egg whites. (I'll probably eat egg whites, too, but I'm gonna stay away from dairy.) So we've been having lots of fun at our vegan cooking classes and shopping for vegan foods.
Last night, I cooked this stuff.



If you go to Quorn's Website, and if you read enough, you will eventually discover that it's, basically, err... fungus.
Ick.
But so are mushrooms, I said, so just get over it!
The product is not strictly vegan, by the way (it has egg whites in it).
So I cooked half an onion and some garlic and then added the... um... let's just call it fungus, okay? So the package said not to overcook it, so I added it to the pan last.

In the meantime, back at the inn...

I had a pot of pasta and spaghetti sauce cooking (yes, out of a jar, who do you think I am?!). After the fungus was cooked, I mixed it all together.
And you know what? It was really, really good.
I tasted the fungus before I added it to the sauce, and it tasted like ground beef. This is good stuff, folks!! (I ate the leftovers twice today, they were so good!)


In other news, we had delicious 'sausage gravy' at cooking class last week, so we bought a roll of the Gimme Lean sausage grounds(Gimme Lean... get it, get it?). Mom and I decided to have waffles and sausage for dinner.
(When you shape the grounds into patties, make sure your hands are oiled, cause this stuff is STICKY.)

Voila. 'Sausage.'


And whole wheat waffles. (From a mix, yes... sigh.)


A successful week, I'd say.
Oh, a couple of more things:

Go buy this. It's awesome.


And this, too.

Swedish Chef Day #1

It's Sunday, so you know what happens next!
Oh, you don't?
Well, since we have late meetings on Sunday and I never really feel like cooking anything, Sunday is now reserved for my favorite cook to make an appearance:
The Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show.

Chocolate pudding (plus: a frightening experiment with whole-wheat flour and a breadmachine)

Well, we always need dessert, right? Right! So I made this chocolate-peppermint pudding. I had tried the recipe before, but the amount of cornstarch hadn't seemed quite right, and since our microwave is a pain I used the stove top instead and (eeekk!) burned some of the chocolate.
Do not give up. Do not give up.
So I tried it again last night, and (shock and awe) it was actually pretty good. I added more cornstarch than before, which made it a touch too sticky, so I added a bit more soymilk to compensate. The texture wasn't, you know, like this stuff, but it was good.
(And a note to all you adventuring types: it says 1/8 teaspoon of peppermint extract. Do not use more than that.
It's dangerous stuff, people. I added 1 tsp. to my hot chocolate once and felt like I'd just been bludgeoned with a peppermint patty.)

All in all, good chocolate, good peppermint, good recipe, good pudding, good dessert, happy Hooded Chef.
As for this:
One day!! One day!! One day, I swear to Gordon, I WILL MAKE WHOLE WHEAT BREAD!! AAAaaaarghhhHHHhh!!!!
I'm gonna go lie down now.

Soup, a tasty soup!

So, since it was rainy, icy, cold, and just generally sad looking outside today, I spent the day cooking. First off: soup!
I tried the 'Dirty Little Secret Soup' recipe for my first attempt at making soup. I love the FatFree Vegan blog, and I thought I'd start with a recipe from there. I had to alter it a bit, since I only had a little bit of veggie stock left. I just put some water in the pot and then some celery, garlic, and onion in and let it cook awhile.

It was a little, er, soupy for me, so I added a pot of rice.


The soup turned out okay, but we were short on a lot of stuff and it was hard to get the seasoning just right. Still a recommended recipe; you just have to be inventive.