Carrot Cake Cookie Monster!

Life gave me carrots, and a Cookie Monster reshoot. Actually, my CSA delivery gave me carrots. My director from the short film I had a lead in, “Cookie Monster”(playing a girl named Cookie!), announced that we had to do some reshoots and voiceover work this week. I took all this as life’s way of telling me it was time to tackle the Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting recipe that I’d long ago written on my “To do” list after perusing the May 2010 Bon Appetit. And now it’s May 1st, 2011. Took me a while but I got to it!
Dooooooo it. Make these cookies. Even my bastardizations of the recipe, which included fat free cream cheese, Smart Balance instead of butter, and stevia instead of some, but not all, of the sugar couldn’t keep these cookies down. I do wish I’d had raisins to add. I do not like eating them by themselves but love them in a good carrot cake. One tip: if you are gonna try to save fat and care about texture, use a lowfat cream cheese. I am finding the fat free type doesn’t get entirely smooth.

Laissez les bon temps…remoulade

Ok, that was the best play on words I could come up with. But “laissez les bon temps rouler” is a New Orleans expression, and remoulade seems like a southern-ish thing…right? Anyone out there know what remoulade means? Anyway, I got a bunch of celery in my CSA delivery and decided I would make Mark Bittman’s Celery Remoulade recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. This recipe is ideally made with celery root, but Mark says celery is a permissable sub, so yay that. Ideally, I also would make my own mayonaise for the remoulade, and while Mark does not say pre-made jarred vegan lowfat mayonaise is permissable as a substitute, if he ever wants to eat at my place he’s gonna have to get over that. And surely he would love to come cook dinner with me, dontcha think? I’d make a very non-lowfat and non-vegan(i.e. butter-filled) dessert! Alas. I imagine I would be low on his list of dining companions but someday…
Ok, enough blahblah, here is what I ended up making,, based on How to Cook Everything Vegetarian’s recipe:
Celery Remoulade, Ellen’s Way
Mix up:
1/2 cup vegan mayo
2 Tbsp. chopped scallions
2 Tbsp. chopped parsley(using my kitchen scissors is my new favorite way to chop herbs)
1 1/2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. ketchup(I used the sugarfree type)
A dollop of horseradish and a pinch of cayenne
Add to this a pound of celery stalks, trimmed, strings peeled, and very thinly sliced, a sqeeze of lemon and some salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you wanna get fancy garnish with some parsley. You should get something like this:

Supervegan!

Well, not really. I am vegetarian. But I enjoy my certified organic cage-free eggs and organic happy cow milk products. Anything non-dead makes it in my mouth. Except maybe coconut. I hate coconut. Or live animals, for that matter. They may not be dead but that wouldn’t make eating them right so I guess non-dead is not the correct term. Can ya tell I’ve been drinking champagne with a girl friend?
Anyway I made this ages ago and debated posting it since its beyond not pretty. Vegan creamed spinach, one of the variations on creamed onions in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. The original recipe used light or heavy cream and butter. The vegan version used oil, all-purpose flour, and almond or hazelnut milk. I used smart balance(for that buttery taste sans animal product), whole wheat flour, and almond milk. And baby spinach plus some salt n’ pepa. Yummy-ness! I love almond milk, and the whole-wheat flour added a nice nutty flavor too. But it was sort of ugly:

But delicious. I might try it with some other greens sometime…

No time, no thyme

Ok, this week I really had no business trying to find time and concentration to follow recipes and/or blog but I did:) This time around, the variation on Bittman’s Vegetable Pancakes. From How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, mais oui(can you tell I am studying French? another thing I shouldn’t have time for).
Anywho. CSA gave me beets, and the recipe had a variation which called for using beets for the 2 cups of shredded veggies, and you were also supposed to add time. I mean thyme. But added time would have been helpful too. I was rushing, trying to return phonecalls and cook simultaneously. D’oh! No time for the thyme. But they still tasted nummy. Oh, and I substituted whole wheat for regular flour. And melted Smart Balance for melted butter. So essentially, 2 cups of shredded beets, 1/2 of an onion, grated, one cup of whole wheat flour, some S & P, an egg, and milk to make a thick batter. Then 2 tbsp. of melted smart balance. Mix it up and cook on a griddle! Nutritious and delicious. And gorgeous!