Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan Recipe Reviews, and some crappy pictures

I have been cooking my little heart out, but have been remiss in reporting to you all on my escapades... (luckily the food tastes better than these sad pictures might indicate)


Last Thursday, I made Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan's Chickpea Sensation Patties and they were indeed sensational. We had them with green beans, plus Potato Squashers and Thick 'n' Rich Gravy from the same book; unfortunately I can't say that I enjoyed the gravy (yuck), but the potatoes were fun and tasty (I think they would have been better with Yukon gold potatoes or regular brown potatoes though, rather than the red potatoes I used). And I have been enjoying the leftover chickpea patties for lunches, on a sandwich with homemade bread, lettuce, sprouts, avocado, and Chipotle Lime Two Bean Hummus (again from ED&BV).


Last night I made ED&BV's Sweet & Sour Chipotle Tempeh with Sweet Potatoes and Coconut-Lime Basmati Rice. YUMMY!!! I loved the addition of sweet potatoes and chipotle hot sauce to give regular old sweet-and-sour a fun twist, plus it was SO easy to make - you just throw all the ingredients in a casserole dish and bake it in the oven... I loved that part. The rice was also excellent. I think I might omit the lime zest next time and use a bit more lime juice instead, but still it was fabulous. Nice and creamy; a great way to jazz up brown rice, which can sometimes seem a little too health-foodey. Matt loved both the sweet and sour and the rice, and he doesn't usually care for brown rice.

One thing I'm a little disappointed with though in this book is the inaccurate portion guides. For example, the chickpea patty recipe said it served four, and I was making dinner for seven, so I doubled it, then we ended up with WAAAAAAY more than we needed. A single recipe would have easily been enough for all seven of us. (Not that I'm complaining about the leftovers necessarily, I just like to know how much it's really going to make before I have a mountain of chickpea sludge overflowing my bowl and necessitating separate processings in my generously sized food processor). Also, the sweet and sour tempeh said '4-5 servings' and the coconut rice said '4 servings,' seems compatible, yes? Well, actually not... we ended up with a lot more sweet and sour tempeh than rice. And I don't think we used unusually large amounts of rice in comparison to our tempeh... okay, I don't mean to go on and on, it's really not that big of a deal, I just thought I'd mention it in case it might save someone else some undue suffering, ha ha.

And a funny little Carlos side-note... yesterday I was catching up on reading some other vegan blogs that I follow, and someone (I can't remember who) had posted a photograph of Veganomicon and Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan side by side and Carlos pointed to the picture and said "Mama books." Hmm, I guess he has noticed me poring over them obsessively since they arrived last week.