What Kate Ate

If I were stranded on a desert island with one of my sisters, I would definitely pick Alyssa. Because I love Alyssa more, right? FALSE. What a terrible thing to say! Everyone knows I love Erin way more! Actually, it’s because Alyssa and I eat virtually none of the same foods. So, I wouldn’t have to share my food supply with her. But Erin and I, on the other hand, love the same foods! In fact, we made a bunch of these foods this weekend when she came to visit. So many foods, in fact, that I will probably need three entries to discuss them all.

Exhibit A: chickpea cutlets. Chickpea cutlets are from Isa and Terry’s newest cookbook, Veganomicon. They are über famous for their awesomeness. Basically, you mash up some chickpeas with gluten flour, bread crumbs, vegetable broth, garlic, and spices. You knead the dough a bit and then you form them into, well, cutlet shapes. Erin was the expert cutlet-shaper sous-chef.

Then you just cook those suckers in a frying pan. And that’s it! They take less than a half hour to make in total. Beside them are some steaming hot lemony roasted potatoes from Veganomicon as well. They might be my favorite way to make potatoes yet. I also ate mine with asparagus and kale, and Erin had hers with carrots.

The chickpea cutlets actually don’t taste overwhelmingly like chickpeas, but they do taste overwhelmingly like happy. Just like Isa says, they are vegan food that you can cut with a steak knife. Erin and I both thought they would make the best burger ever as well. I even think Alyssa would like them. And that’s saying something.

Bonus picture! Erin and me in Cascadilla falls.

Up next: banana ice cream and pancakes! But not together. Though that would be a great breakfast.

This tofu scramble is doubly scrambly (say that out loud, please) because I made it in a hurry. It is really more of a veggie scramble with tofu than a tofu scramble with veggies because of all the vegetables–broccoli, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, and spinach. Well, mushrooms aren’t a vegetable, they are a fungus. But they might as well be an honorary vegetable because it’s lonely in the fungus food group. Heck, it’s not even a group, it’s just “fungus” in the singular. Poor shrooms.

Tofu scramble makes me nostalgic because it is one of the first recipes I made after going vegan. It is, I think, one of my favorite dishes to make. You can use any ingredients you have, you can use any spices you like, and you can make it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So much awesome in one little meal.

I used turmeric to make it yellow, which got me thinking about this enigma of a spice. Does anyone really like turmeric? Does anyone actually use it for its flavor and not to color foods radioactive yellow? Honestly, by itself it tastes like powdered sidewalk chalk that’s gone a bit stale, if such a thing were possible. But it does turn tofu into sunshine, and that’s what matters here.