vegan cardamom cashew shortbread cookies

Y'know what's really hard to photograph in an appetizing way? Things that are beige! Even delicious beige things, like these cardamom cookies! Eek. I made these over a week ago now and I'm just getting around to getting these pictures together. 

Anyway, these, like I said, are delicious. They're hardy and creamy and you should go bake some and dunk them in soy milk and eat them. I've been munching on these all week for breakfast and dessert and snacks. Also, they can be cut into exciting shapes! If you have cookie cutters on hand, don't wait until winter, break them out for these shortbread cookies. 

VEGAN CARDAMOM CASHEW SHORTBREAD COOKIES 

Ingredients: 

1 cup earth balance, softened 

1/2 cup packed brown sugar 

1 cup ground cashews 

2 cups flour, plus extra for rolling

2 tsp cardamom powder 

1/4 tsp salt 

1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 375 F. 

Cream together earth balance and sugar. Add nuts, mix well. 

Sift in remaining ingredients. When mixing with a spoon stops working, mix with your fingers. It will be crumbly. Don't refrigerate before rolling, unless you have time to return to room temperature first. Keep working at the dough until it becomes cohesive and smooth. 

Roll. Add extra flour a tablespoon at a time, as needed, to prevent sticking. Try to be patient, and keep rolling. (Then roll some more.) Roll until the dough is smooth and consistently about 1/4 inch thick. 

Cut into shapes! I chose diamonds. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. 

Bake 8-10 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen delicious diamonds. 

simple & quick meal: rice noodles with tofu, scallions, and sesame seeds

This dish fed me through finals when I'd gone 3 days in a row living on nothing but pasta and cereal. It's fast, satisfying, and fun to vary depending on what's on hand. And it's not pasta or cereal, so it has that going for it. 

For example, with the scallions, tofu, and sesame seeds, this is actually a complete meal (which is why I tried to eat it when I got in a finals-and-pasta rut), but if you're in a hurry, just the noodles and the sauce are delicious on their own. Or, if you add sugar, the whole thing makes an amazing cold salad -- in the past I've made variations on this salad to carry around on weekend and road trips. The sauce also works great as a tofu marinade, for more salads or to bake for a dish with less oil. 

This recipe is approximate, based on proportions. The quantities are based on what I would make to serve 2 people (I think noodles plus 1 pound of tofu serves 2 people if this is pretty much all they're eating.) 

RICE NOODLES WITH TOFU, SCALLIONS, AND SESAME SEEDS (or whatever)

Basic Sauce: 

2 tbsp soy sauce 

2 tbsp sesame oil 

2 tbsp rice vinegar

(1 tsp sugar, if serving cold) 

Sauce with variations: 

2 tbsp soy sauce 

2 tbsp sesame oil 

2 tbsp rice vinegar

(1 tsp sugar, if serving cold)

1 tbsp black bean paste 

1 tbsp fresh grated ginger, or 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp white pepper 

Everything else: 

rice noodles to serve 2 

1 lb firm tofu, drained and pressed 

2 tsp red pepper flakes 

peanut oil for frying the tofu 

sesame seeds for garnish 

2 or 3 thinly sliced scallions for garnish 

Drain and press the tofu as far ahead as possible. Cook the rice noodles to packet instructions. Whisk the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. 

Cube the tofu. Begin heating the peanut oil in a heavy skillet or wok. Fry the red pepper flakes until they sizzle, then add the tofu. Wait for a crust to form on the bottom face, then stir. Repeat until every face of the tofu cubes has some texture and are coated with the pepper flakes. 

Drain the noodles and toss with the sauce. Top with the fried tofu, sesame seeds, and sliced scallions. Serve hot or chilled. 

thoughts on 500 Vegan Recipes

This isn't a book review, this is just, like the title says, my thoughts on this recipe book. First thought: YAY! This book is everything I hoped it would be. (More info on it here.) For one thing, it contains 500 recipes that are vegan. And loving have cake, will travel is a good indicator toward loving this book. It's fun to read. It's fun to make the food in it. It's fun to eat the food in it!

There was this moment where I was first paging through the recipes, and accidentally skipped the first breakfast section, so I was only in the muffin section, and, okay, I don't like muffins. (Many people have tried to convince me that I like muffins. I also don't like cake or cupcakes or brownies or other cake-like foods. It seems a lot like bread that has something wrong with it. The fact that I like banana bread is what makes some people think I am simply biased against muffins and would really like them if I bothered to try. I keep trying; muffins are not for me.) So I was dismayed. I was like, why is this breakfast section all muffins?! 

Then I found the actual breakfast section (or the rest of it -- for now I'm just going to keep pretending there are no muffins). Smoothies with oats in them? Banana fritters? Pumpkin tofu scramble? Zucchini fritters? Maple hickory tofu strips? I am so there. I've been making banana fritters and zucchini fritters for breakfast all week. I also made the lentil tart and it was amazing, and I'm pretty sure my time making the tahini crust for it is the only time I have ever, ever, followed a pie crust recipe as written and it made the amount of pie crust it suggested it would. 

This is what really sold me on the book though: deviled "egg" salad. I'm pretty sure deviled eggs are the only non-vegan food I miss. I see them at dinner parties (for some reason, they always appear at dinner parties!) and it's difficult. Also it's actually been so long since I've eaten eggs that the actual smell of actual eggs is gross, and kind of rotten-seeming, so when I actually get near enough to real deviled eggs to contemplate them, I get queasy. (This does have the advantage of making it easier to avoid ingesting eggs.) Okay, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Basically, deviled eggs are great, and the ones made out of tofu in this recipe are even greater, because they're delicious and animal-free. Hooray! 

Other recipes I can't wait to try: spinach quiche; basically all of the seitan sausages; mushroom lasagna; white pizza; open sesame cookies; peppermint bark; and baked chocolate almond pudding. 

Rie Nakajima

Not sure I have this artist's name correct... here's the artist's site. Anyway, I love the use of material, negative space, and patterning.

(Note: I've fixed the link to the artist's site, which seems to have moved since I first wrote this post. It should be correct now! Except there's no work like this on the site? I'm confused! This is definitely the name I first saw associated with this content, and if you do a google search on it, you get similar work, as well as images from this post...not sure what's up.)

Gocken Jobs design

I'm obsessed with these textile designs right now. Jobshandtrick.se

discovered via ullabenulla

Anthony Goicolea

Loving the atmosphere, modeling, and light in these paintings by Anthony Goicolea. 

book art by various artists

Red Dos-a-Dos by A. Fain Books

Bendy Spine by littlepaperbird

Untitled by littlepaperbird

The Legacy of Scheherazade by Donatella Franchi

Tea Times by Allison Cooke Brown

Lizzie Thomas

Spirit Book #30 and Spirit Book #27 by Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord

Book in a Cage by Elisabetta Gut

Rock Book by Mary-Ellen Campbell

Es-tu Comme Moi? by Donna Ruff

Volume 16 by Donna Ruff